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?
August 10th, 2009 at 6:06 am
I take this news as a good news. Not only Toshiba will make more profit but hey, it’s time to move on and jump in the bandwagon. I am a supporter of both formats so for me, this is good news. What I would like to hear is if Toshiba would make a combo HDDVD/BD player. Now that is something that I am interesting to invest my money on.
August 10th, 2009 at 12:49 pm
I bought a Samsung Blu-Ray player this past winter and attached it to my 42 inch TV in my bedroom, it’s OK but I’m not that thrilled about it. If as ogscorpion said Toshiba came out with a duel format player that would be great, but if not I probably would still buy a stand alone Blu_Ray player from them. Right now I’m waiting for the UPS guy to drop off my Blu-Ray burner (also reads and burns HD disk) so I guess I joined the Blu-Ray camp by default.
August 11th, 2009 at 5:41 am
At Cliff:
What brand/type of blu ray burner you got? You mentioned that it also reads and burns HD disk. I’m just curious coz I’m also looking for one (assuming the price is right).
August 11th, 2009 at 6:31 am
A combo player from Toshiba would be the perfect answer for me.
(I guess Sony would still get some revenue from the blu ray disc licenses, but oh well)
August 11th, 2009 at 10:26 am
I got Blu-ray before Toshiba threw in the towel. I’ve had, and love, both formats.
Do you all remember back in the day before DVD when Panasonic introduced the VCD, aka, CD-i?
After it failed, DVD manufacturers began to offer VCD compatibility to their DVD players. Even today, VCD support is standard on most DVD players.
It would be nice to see Toshiba to pick up on this trend. To be able to offer a Blu-ray player with HD DVD playback capability without the rip off price.
I would also like to see Toshiba release a BD player at $75 with BD-Live support and an Ethernet Port for firmware upgrades. That’ll make the bid dogs drop their prices.
August 11th, 2009 at 3:38 pm
ogscorpion, it’s a lite-on player and is burning my 4th blu-ray vid right now, as far as burning HD videos there is no media available now. Verbatim started to produce some when the stuff hit the fan and it was dropped from production.
August 29th, 2009 at 7:05 pm
No more comments? Anyone?
I guess the next big news is when Toshiba finally releases these players. Till then, ciao.
August 31st, 2009 at 7:33 am
Yeah I keep checking back but nothing further to add so far, just want a dual format player from Toshiba! (Was watching balde runner final cut in Hd last night, very nice), lol just to mention HD DVD somewhere in this post!)
Rick
September 2nd, 2009 at 11:40 am
I have not submitted anything to this site in a, very very, long while. Well, I was a Blu-ray fan from the start so maybe it’s not so surprising.
However, I really find it sad how this site seems to just … well … dissapear into the shadows. It was (is) one of the most well managed sites around (which is more than one can say about many BD sites).
I can not help feeling that, maybe, we should finally just get over the Red versus Blue fight and just concentrate on HD optical media and make the best of the situation.
I would really like Pravin to consider making a “Best of HD” site or something. Maybe I’m dreaming on that subject but when I read most of the material on the net, it seams like most people do not realize that there is a difference between hugely overcompressed 1080p streams and proper 1080p material delivered on optical media (regardless of if it is red or blue).
Having someone like Pravin making a seriously managed site on HD material would be very interresting as far as I am concerned.
Okay, end of the ramblings…
September 2nd, 2009 at 12:00 pm
Thanks for your vote of confidence, Jonsson. I would actually love to present topics for discussion, but I have not had lots of opportunities to follow through. Maybe it’s a good time to revisit that notion and see if there’s a practical way to do it without duplicating the good efforts of others.
September 2nd, 2009 at 3:16 pm
I agree with Jonsson, the quality of transfers varies greatly. specially with warner… blade runner and I am legend are some of the best i’ve seen, but most of their catalog titles that use the old original transfer from the HDDVD version (not HDDVD’s fault, just that the transfer is older) are underwhelming. even in the same matrix box set, i was blown away by the brand new animatrix transfer, but a little underwhelmed by the recycled transfers for the movies. again, I’m not saying that the transfers from some of the HDDVDs are shit because of HDDVD, its just they are older, and being released as bluray catchup titles along side brand new transfers of proper new releases. And I can say they have come quite along way in quality since the first blurays and HDDVDs were released.
been fairly underwhelmed with paramount as well, given the high quality of the transformers DVD, I expected a little more from the bluray. apparently they are copping a bit of flack for their new gladiator release as well.
September 11th, 2009 at 10:22 am
Matt, the first HD transfers were not the best, but that wasn’t just an HD DVD issue, it happened with BD as well. Remember the first BD releases? The Fifth Element, Stargate, and a few others out there?
Sony cleaned up The Fifth Element and offered a one for one trade to fans that bought the original release, but that first release was horrid. I ended up watching High Def film scratches on the movie throughout.
I do agree that the studios should of gone back and cleaned up a lot of the poor quality transfers they had done for HD DVD. The Last Star Fighter could of used a nice cleanup before going unto HD DVD, I don’t even know if it’s come out for Blu-ray yet.
Also, somewhere on this site I read someone say that we need to move on from HD DVD, or something of the sort. Made it sound like we were all helpless. Again, do you guys not read these posts all the way through? Do you guys miss reading where we mention that we are proud Blu-ray owners? Just because your car manufacturer stops producing your car’s model doesn’t mean you junk it, or stop using it. If it runs and gives you great gas mileage you keep it. Same with HD DVD, as long as it works and I can continue buying movies for it, I’m keeping it.