Cheap HD-DVD players can still win!!

[hd1080p]

News abound that Toshiba is slashing MSRP by 50%. That means street prices will be even lower. When the Chinese HD-DVD players coming on stream later this year, the prices will erode further. The strategy is not to win the format war but to win the player market war. Who cares about the format, Toshiba is a hardware company who does not care about software. This is how it can win:
1. Consumers will stop buying all up-convert DVD players, because cheaper HD-DVD players can play all DVD/HD-DVD movies and up-onvert all DVD to 1080p/i.
2. There will be many re-encoded HD movies made available from various sources (Blu-Ray, ATSC HDTV, Cable/Satellite, ..... etc) which are able to play on HD-DVD players in various HD formats like Divx-HD, WMV-HD, in MKV containers via firmware upgrades. HD-DVD players will become video equivalent of MP3 players of the music world. Do you really think Apple makes 8GB MP3 players for people to listen to downloaded music bought all legally? Toshiba just like Apple will make money selling lots of hardware.

3. CH-DVD, a variant of HD-DVD for the Chinese market, is gearing up mass production of HD-DVD/CH-DVD players. DVD players production will cease soon, making HD-DVD players really a replacement for DVD players.
It is a brilliant strategy and Toshiba does not need to court movies studios to win!!

[lazyn00b]

Win what?

The business plan you've just described is a recipe for turning HD DVD into the new SVCD - good for nothing except piracy and Asian markets. But there is a fatal flaw even in this sad plan, in the US market anyway, because people here know they'll STILL have to buy a Blu-Ray player to watch Hollywood content in high definition. So why would they buy an extra player, even a cheap one, just to watch Bollywood musicals and Chinese soap operas?!

I really wish HD DVD had won over the Hollywood studios because I hate Sony and BD+, but now that Warner has sold out, it's pretty much over. No amount of wishing or dreaming is going to change this.

I returned my Toshiba HD-A2 last week and bought a Sony BDP-S300 instead. I hated to do it, because the Toshiba was a much better player both in functionality and load times, but I refuse to get stuck with money invested in the losing format.

Look at the bright side, at least we won't have to deal with pulldown issues any more on 720p and 1080p.

[hd1080p]

Win what?

The business plan you've just described is a recipe for turning HD DVD into the new SVCD - good for nothing except piracy and Asian markets. But there is a fatal flaw even in this sad plan, in the US market anyway, because people here know they'll STILL have to buy a Blu-Ray player to watch Hollywood content in high definition. So why would they buy an extra player, even a cheap one, just to watch Bollywood musicals and Chinese soap eras?!

I really wish HD DVD had won over the Hollywood studios because I hate Sony and BD+, but now that Warner has sold out, it's pretty much over. No amount of wishing or dreaming is going to change this.

I returned my Toshiba HD-A2 last week and bought a Sony BDP-S300 instead. I hated to do it, because the Toshiba was a much better player both in functionality and load times, but I refuse to get stuck with money invested in the losing format.

Look at the bright side, at least we won't have to deal with pulldown issues any more on 720p and 1080p.

Sorry, I did not explain CH-DVD very clearly. CH-DVD is an official standard for DVD and HD movies supported by the industry and Chinese goverment. The format has better anti-piracy DRM than HD-DVD and DVD, all HD movies will be released in CH-DVD formats including Hollywood movies.
CH-DVD and HD-DVD share the same electronics but slightly different firmware. In China, they have declared that CH-DVD a replacement for DVD players. If Chinese swithced to mass ch-dvd/hd-dvd players production, the whole world has to buy hd-dvd players to watch dvd movies. Since, almost all the DVD players are made in China.
That means, even CH-DVD is meant for the Chinese market, we can still watch Hollywood movies in CH-DVD if we have the CH-DVD firmware or the actual CD-DVD players.
You did the right thing for returning the HD-DVD player. Because, you can buy it back a lot cheaper later on.
HD-DVD is not going to go away. As the market volume of HD-DVD
players build up, you may see some Hollywood studios switching back to HD-DVD. Toshiba knows what they are doing.

[mitsubishi]

Without content though, people will need both the standalone and a burner to create their own. Either downloads (illegal or otherwise) or a few DVD backups, maybe TV caps. These kind of things are for the technically literate though, so the audience is limited. The only thing I can see for them to build a market is if they can get, very quickly, standalone recorders onto the market for not too much more than DVD recorders. Offering vastly more storage time than a standard recorder and the ability to handle HDTV. But how likely is this......

hd1080p, I had not seen your post. Where are the upcoming release lists for CH-DVD?

[lazyn00b]

That means, even CH-DVD is meant for the Chinese market, we can still watch Hollywood movies in CH-DVD if we have the CH-DVD firmware or the actual CD-DVD players.

So what are you saying - that people in the future are going to buy cheap Chinese HD DVD players and then flash the firmware to CH-DVD just so they can watch imported or pirated content? If so, you're making a big assumption that such a firmware update will even be possible and that the English (or French or Spanish, etc) soundtrack will always be intact. In the USA at least, renting movies (including Blu-Ray) is so cheap thanks to Netflix that nobody is going to screw around with an extra player with hacked firmware just so they can watch dodgy CH-DVD content.

CH-DVD is not going to happen the way you describe. First of all, there probably isn't going to be any significant quantity of Hollywood movies released on CH-DVD. Secondly, China keeps making up new formats (EVD? FVD?), and they always flop. The best case (likely) scenario for CH-DVD is that it succeeds as a Chinese language format in the Chinese market.

[ilovejedd]

I don't think CH-DVD would have that much of an effect on the US market. For one thing, majority of the people are unlikely to import players direct from China. If production of regular DVD players were to stop (quite unlikely seeing VCRs are still being sold today), keep in mind that Blu-Ray players can also play regular DVDs so it's as viable an alternative as HD-DVD.

Another thing, even if Hollywood movies are released CH-DVD, distribution of those videos would be limited to the Chinese (or Asian) market, at least legally. There's also this little thing called region-coding which movie studios hope will deter people from buying and playing movie releases from other parts of the world.

Supposing CH-DVDs are a success in China, it doesn't automatically carry over to the United States as (sadly), the industry is governed by the dictates of big movie studios instead of the consumer.

[hd1080p]

So what are you saying - that people in the future are going to buy cheap Chinese HD DVD players and then flash the firmware to CH-DVD just so they can watch imported or pirated content? If so, you're making a big assumption that such a firmware update will even be possible and that the English (or French or Spanish, etc) soundtrack will always be intact. In the USA at least, renting movies (including Blu-Ray) is so cheap thanks to Netflix that nobody is going to screw around with an extra player with hacked firmware just so they can watch dodgy CH-DVD content.

CH-DVD is not going to happen the way you describe. First of all, there probably isn't going to be any significant quantity of Hollywood movies released on CH-DVD. Secondly, China keeps making up new formats (EVD? FVD?), and they always flop. The best case (likely) scenario for CH-DVD is that it succeeds as a Chinese language format in the Chinese market.

I don't want to get into heated debate. Next year this time, you read my posts again then you would understand what I meant.
Ch-DVD is not Chinese language format, it is HD-DVD in disguise for the Chinese market with better DRM to stop wide-spread piracy thus encouraging more local and western movies releases. Hollywood movies would be released in multilanguage tracks including English. They can also stream HD movies stored on hard disk in h.264 MKV containers with various encodings.
What I am saying is that you don't need blu-ray players to watch HD movies even they were not originally released in HD-DVD formats.

[mitsubishi]

Hollywood movies would be released in multilanguage tracks including English.

Well as the President of Warner Bros* I can confirm that we will be releasing all of our movies in China with European languages and subs. We will also not do anything underhand like force the use of hardcoded Chinese subtitles. This is because I have recently gone insane.



*May not be true :eek:

[hd1080p]

Well as the President of Warner Bros* I can confirm that we will be releasing all of our movies in China with European languages and subs. We will also not do anything underhand like force the use of hardcoded Chinese subtitles. This is because I have recently gone insane.



*May not be true :eek:

Read this and its links.
http://http://www.hddvd.com/go.php/ch-dvd-third-format-or-cunning-hd-dvd-plan/ (http://www.hddvd.com/go.php/ch-dvd-third-format-or-cunning-hd-dvd-plan/)

[mitsubishi]

Seen that before, what relevance is to studio content?

[communist]

News abound that Toshiba is slashing MSRP by 50%. That means street prices will be even lower.
The strategy is not to win the format war but to win the player market war. Who cares about the format, Toshiba is a hardware company who does not care about software.
Toshiba just like Apple will make money selling lots of hardware.
It is a brilliant strategy and Toshiba does not need to court movies studios to win!!
Brilliant! :rolleyes:
Except.. how do you expect them to make any money if they're selling the hardware at such low prices?

[hd1080p]

Brilliant! :rolleyes:
Except.. how do you expect them to make any money if they're selling the hardware at such low prices?
The whole point about making HD-DVD players and discs is that they are cheap to make using existing DVD manufacturing facilities. Retooling costs are minimal. Blue laser diodes were expensive due to shortages and low volume, now they are coming down in price with more suppliers and volume. To make HD-DVD/CH-DVD discs, retooling only cost $35,000 per line whereas Blu-ray line is completely new. If the Chinese ramp up their production of CH-DVD players, HD-DVD players can be produced at the same time for export. There is a link on my previous email showing all the new CH-DVD players available before the Summer Olympics.
By summer 2008, China will showcase their home-brewed HD technology based on HD-DVD. CH-DVD can not play HD-DVD, but there will be a cottage industry to make firmware so that CH-DVD can play HD-DVD.
There will be more interesting developments, we just have to wait and see.

[setarip_old]

@hd1080p

Hi!The whole point about making HD-DVD players and discs is that they are cheap to makeNo, the business concept/model that is/would be applicable here is the famous "Gillette" scenario:

The SOLE purpose in selling the razors - and selling them at low prices - is to SELL MORE RAZOR BLADES, because that's where the profit margin is...

Applied to players and media, it becomes:

The SOLE purpose in selling the players - and selling them at low prices - is to SELL MORE MEDIA, because that's where the profit margin is...

[Shinigami-Sama]

The SOLE purpose in selling the razors - and selling them at low prices - is to SELL MORE RAZOR BLADES, because that's where the profit margin is...


last I checked it was 15$/4 of those razors so iuno where cheap comes in

but yes

they may only make lets say 30% profit on them at this low price, rather than 50%
but they sell 75% more, and the more they sell the cheaper it gets to produce making up for that 20% loss per sale
macro economics at work
note this is based on fictional profit data, the content is however, accurate

[mr soft]

Those Chinese sweat shops would get worse . They would have to work even harder to produce the same margin .

I agree, those razors are like dvd players, I was forced to go mach 3 turbo when I could´nt find any blades . :D

[Inventive Software]

(OT) Who'da thought disposables would be so attractive eh?

And what's with these multi-blade razors? What the hell's wrong with one sharp blade? :D

It'd be good to see a comparison between CH-DVD players and the current or future crop of HD-DVD players.

[dburckh]

To get back on topic...

Another possibility would be to turn there units into media centers (aka extenders) that happen to play HD DVDs. They could even try to compete with Apple TV. They are already in bed with M$. Maybe partner up with NetFlix...

This has issues too. They aren't wireless, they don't have a HDD for buffering.

Hopefully, they'll be good enough to their customer to "open up the units" if they do decide to give up on HD DVD.

[Trahald]

Well.. in a few days im going to get one of those $125 toshiba a3's . I figure.. even if bluray wins, for $125 i get a nice upconverting dvd player and 7 free hd movies. currently there are new movies still coming out. But even when that dries up there are tons of catalog movies out there and they will be pretty cheap if the format fails. by the time all this happens i can replace it with a bluray drive which will be reasonably priced at that point. at best the format has a comeback and im all set.

I was wondering.. does anyone have one of these players.. and does it play hddvd format movies on dvd9 and/or dvd5?

[Blue_MiSfit]

fail.

hd-dvd is dead.

long live hd-dvd.

[hd1080p]

Toshiba HD-DVD is dead, but Chinese HD-DVD not dead.
HD-DVD will be carried on by the Chinese manufacturers.
HD-DVD formats are not dead, only the media is dead.
Now, we can all focus on cracking BD+.

fail.

hd-dvd is dead.

long live hd-dvd.

[setarip_old]

In addition to the fact that you are "beating a dead horse":I can watch HD-DVD movies on hard-disk and download in MKVs.You might want to RE-read the "Announcement" at the top of the "Newbies" sub-forum, as well as all of the Forum Rules (particularly #6)...