Though Toshiba has joined other PC vendors and included Blu-ray drives on their laptops, Microsoft joins Apple on this Windows 7 release week in continuing to leave Blu-ray off their own machines.

In a Windows 7 launch day interview with gadget site Gizmodo, Microsoft CEO, Steve Ballmer made some statements that included the words “360″ and “Blu-ray” in the same sentence. Ballmer’s exact words were, “Well I don’t know if we need to put Blu-ray in there — you’ll be able to get Blu-ray drives as accessories.” Ballmer stated that the future of movies was to view them on-demand, and not on physical media. There was enough ambiguity in his words to lead some to conclude that an external Blu-ray drive was in the 360’s future, even though Microsoft spokespeople denied a new Blu drive.

Much later in the day, there was an emphatic clarification from Major Nelson, the Director of Programming for Xbox Live, who was able to burst the 360/Blu-ray rumor immediately. Major Nelson explained that Steve Ballmer was referring to the fact that Blu-ray drives are available as add-ons and options for PCs in home theater setups, and that Microsoft’s focus is on instant streaming of HD movies on the Xbox 360, as they’re doing now with Netflix.

Is this enough to completely squash the short-lived story about a Blu-ray 360? Only time will tell. Is there going to be a Blu-ray add-on drive? Only time will tell.

• Original Gizmodo interview (includes video)
• Engadget reports on Major Nelson
• Major Nelson at his own site denies 360/Blu-ray drive

As I predicted in the previous posting, Toshiba made an announcement about their Blu-ray player right on time for the IFA show.

There will be pictures and interviews at the gadget sites, but here’s the scoop on what Toshiba included in their press release:

• Model: BDX2000
• Available in November for $249
• BD-Live Profile 2.0 and Bonus View
• SD card slot so that you can store any downloaded content
• does not play HD DVD discs

I did not expect availability in November, however none of us should be surprised that the BDX2000 supports the complete interactivity of the platform, since this kind of feature was already available on HD DVD players. The $249 price is pretty amazing, and is likely to catapult Toshiba towards the top of the list of popular Blu-ray players.

What do you think? Are you miffed about no HD DVD compatibility? I think it would have been nice to include, but would have confused some customers about HD DVD discs, and would also have made the player a little more expensive.

UPDATE: CNet points out that competing players in this price range offer Netflix and YouTube. I suspect these can be added via firmware updates. We’ll find out soon enough as more technology sites start picking up this story and begin to interview Toshiba reps.

For the last couple of months, Toshiba has mainly been making headlines on their memory and netbook models, and their blatant hesitation to make Blu-ray products.

The latest buzz about Toshiba and Blu-ray went into high gear a couple of weeks ago, when a local Japanese paper mentioned that Toshiba would start making Blu-ray machines.

No specific details were mentioned, like time frame or models, so it was easy to dismiss this news and file it away along with the endless Xbox 360 Blu-ray rumors.

The news became slightly more interesting today, August 10, as Toshiba put out the following press release at their corporate website:

Tokyo—Toshiba Corporation (TOKYO: 6502) announced today that the company has applied for membership of the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) and plans to introduce products that support the Blu-ray format.

As a market leader in digital technologies, Toshiba provides a wide range of advanced digital products, such as DVD recorders and players, HDTVs and notebook PCs that support a wide range of storage devices, including hard disk drives (HDD), DVD, and SD Cards. In light of recent growth in digital devices supporting the Blu-ray format, combined with market demand from consumers and retailers alike, Toshiba has decided to join the BDA.

Toshiba aims to introduce digital products that support the Blu-ray format, including BD players and notebook PCs integrating BD drives, in the course of this year. Details of the products, including the timing of regional launches, are now under consideration. We will make announcements in due course.

I’m sure we’ll see some demos at CES, unless they’re already preparing to show something at the September IFA show in Europe.

If you’ve been holding out on getting a Blu-ray player, how do you take this news? Would you wait for a Toshiba player? Or did you already get some Blu-ray capability months ago?

An article at Financial Times points out something that many active HD DVD enthusiasts have known for quite a while now: despite its official death in February, there are still a lot of people buying a lot of HD DVDs. The statement is validated by Jeff Wisot, vice-president of marketing at Buy.com, and Ryan Kugler, president of Distribution Video & Audio, an excess inventory liquidator.

Here’s the scoop on the article highlights:

• Demand for the format is fueled by discs going for less than $10 a piece, and players available for under $60.
• “HD DVD sales are still very strong,” says Jeff Wisot, VP of marketing at Buy.com

He is no doubt recalling their recent sale on $60 Venturer HD DVD players.

• “Cheap entertainment always does well in a recession or depression,” says Ryan Kugler, president of Distribution Video & Audio.

Kugler’s company has bought millions of unsold HD DVDs, who, having already sold 1 million discs, expects to sell another 2 or 3 million by Christmas.

In the spirit of good journalism and equal coverage, the article also includes a disclaimer by Andy Parsons of the Blu-ray Disc Association pointing out that their format is not dead and they’ve had some good sales figures too.

• HD DVD slashed prices drive sales up article at FT.com

Acknowledging that their new eXtended Detail Enhancement (XDE) tech does not actually replace a true HD source like HD DVD or Blu-ray, Toshiba is hoping to attract all those consumers who are mostly satisfied with their HDTVs and DVDs by offering the XD-E500 up-converting DVD player today.

The new XD-E500 retails for $149 (although it debuts for $179 today at Amazon) and offers DVD up-scaling that’s superior to what’s been offered in their own lower-end models, and probably from other up-scaling DVD players.

The XDE player offers a choice of three video enhancements: (1) sharp for edge detail (2) rich color (3) more contrast, of which you can select two to be active at any time. I’m sure forthcoming articles and interviews will reveal why you can only select two at a time, and we’ll be on the lookout for the inevitable comparisons against the highly vaunted Oppo up-converting DVD players, as well as true HD media.

Toshiba’s website for the new player, http://www.toshibaxde.com hasn’t gone live yet so we don’t really have a lot of pictures to show from the sales pitch, but you can see some before/after enhancement shots over at Amazon.

Toshiba’s product description page states the following:

This product does not play HD DVD or Blu-ray discs. It upconverts standard definition (480p) DVD content to HD (720p, 1080i or 1080p) to match the resolution of your HD display. Although near the picture quality, it does not produce or output native HD video content.

In other words, it’s not “The Look and Sound of Perfect” but just “Good Enough.” I’m curious to see whether “good enough” and “near HD” take a hold in the marketplace. I know that you and I are probably not amongst that crowd of buyers, but I’m sure you’ve got at least a few acquaintances who think a big screen is all it takes to have a great home theater.

Microsoft is at the Sundance Film Festival for the coming week demonstrating one of their main contributions to HD DVD technology: HDi, the interactivity layer.

According to this post at Andy Pennel’s developer blog, representatives from the HDi team will be at the Microsoft House for some demos and movie screenings. This is intended for independent filmmakers who may be interested in learning how to take advantage of HDi in their disc releases.

We’ve talked about HDi a few times at the site, and it’s one of the features that demonstrates how the HD DVD platform was well thought out from the very beginning. HDi interactivity is mandated on all HD DVD players, and it’s such a cool and next-gen kind of feature. On conventional DVDs, you have to pretty much stop the whole movie just to revisit the menu and change your various viewing options, but that’s not so on HD DVDs where you can do all of these things while the movie continues to play. You can change viewing options, select a chapter to skip ahead to, or even change your mind and resume viewing, all without interrupting the main flow of the movie.

Some discs have bonus content that augments the viewing experience. For example, in The Kingdom, you can pull up brief explanations about the cultural and political aspects of things that come up in the plot. In The Bourne Ultimatum and on Heroes, you can look up some story related items such as character profiles.

Web-enabled interactivity has also been interesting. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix has a “Live Community Screening” mode where friends can watch together from their own homes, and even send each other text messages in a manner similar to multiplayer video games. The simpler web implementations have been more about downloading bonus content, purchasing things like ring tones, or taking quizzes and comparing your results with other viewers. (more…)

I like to avoid “format war” material and prefer to talk more about how to maximize your current or potential enjoyment of HD DVD. But it’s not like you can avoid those topics forever, and they do spark a little bit of interest in some of the more involved enthusiasts.

Here are a few tid-bits from recent news around the web and real life, which qualify as “format war” material, and naturally, they’re mostly good news about HD DVD. If you want to hear bad things about HD DVD (including made-up stuff), then you’ll need to visit the websites that have the other format in their name… naturally. (more…)

At its September 12 Steering Committe Meeting, the DVD Forum approved an extension of the HD DVD format to be implemented on red lasers instead of blue (HD DVD and Blu-ray utilize blue laser diodes). Earlier, we heard that HD VMD used traditional red laser technology to make multi-layer DVDs with upwards of 40GB of storage, but that’s not what this is about. Named HD REC, this format is more about using conventional DVD-R media to store HD content, and Toshiba demonstrated some recorders at CEATEC that implement this technology (and display the new logo).

DVD recorders (not the burners on your PC) allowing you to record TV broadcasts to DVD are a big deal in Japan, and Toshiba’s newly announced RD-X7, RD-A101 and RD-201 recorders bring the ability to record TV broadcasts in real-time. Toshiba says that a single-layer HD DVD-R disc can store about 6 hours of content, while a DVD-R disc can hold about 2. Recordings are stored in the MPEG4 format, which is pretty standard for HD DVD and Blu-ray discs.

Since it uses standard and freely available DVD-R discs, HD REC is an inexpensive way to make high-def recordings for home use. It’s not a replacement for blue laser discs for movie releases because DVD-Rs can only store about 9 gigabytes whereas HD DVD and Blu-ray movies are usually encoded in full 1080p glory, and include audio tracks and bonus materials that fill up the rest of their 25, 30 or 50 gigabyte discs. However, it’s more than enough for personal use.

• PCWorld article with picture

A couple of recent developments seem to demonstrate how Team Blu-ray follows in the business footsteps of HD DVD, and maybe HD DVD has done (or needs to do more) things similar to Blu-ray. My point isn’t to ding Blu-ray as a disc format, but to show that its promoters are finally coming around to realizing that victory is not their birthright.

The first news item is just like a page out of a business textbook, and it’s an example of Team Blu doing something right that I hope HD DVD is already working on.

Hastings Entertainment, a small video rental chain in Texas, announced they’d be taking advantage of the Blu-ray profit-sharing program that puts more Blu-ray discs on their shelves. Specific terms of the deal were not disclosed by Sony or Hastings, but Hastings video category manager Mason Goodfellow candidly revealed:

“It basically helped us to spread [Blu-ray] to all of our stores and not have to make that much of a financial investment. We might be able to get in as many as 8 to 10 copies per title [in one store]. Without revenue-sharing, that might have been three to four copies.”

Proving that all Sony execs have to memorize the following statement: “[loosely related event or statistic] demonstrates that consumers have chosen [Sony product],” Marshall Forster, Sony senior executive VP of North America, said of the Hastings deal, “Naturally, SPHE is delighted about this since Hastings obviously acknowledges the fact that consumers have voted for Blu-ray as the high-definition format of the future.”

This rental profit-sharing plan is a great idea. (more…)