Did Toshiba Dupe HD DVD Owners?
The company CEO now downplays the chance of success for high-def discs.
By Swanni
I reasoned that it would be good business for Toshiba to send a signal to its customers that it appreciated their commitment to HD DVD.
Now that the format is going out of business, the HD DVD player will be nearly obsolete. So, an offer, let's say, of 20 percent off a Toshiba LCD HDTV would make people feel better about their investment in not only HD DVD, but Toshiba as a company and the CE industry as a whole.
At our TVPredictions.com message board, several readers last week said Toshiba had no responsibility to HD DVD owners at all; that they knew what they were getting into when they bought the high-def player.
Last week, although I disagreed with that argument, I could understand it. But today, I think that Toshiba's responsibility to assist HD DVD owners is even greater because it appears that the company was selling them a product it didn't even fully believe in.
In Monday's Wall Street Journal, Toshiba CEO Atsutoshi Nishida was interviewed about the company's plans following the HD DVD exit. Rather than applauding HD DVD owners for their commitment, Nishida suggested that anyone who purchased a high-def disc player had bought into a suspect technology.
Although Toshiba had said repeatedly over the last year that people needed to buy HD DVD because it would become the next-generation home video player, Nishida now says that the upconverting DVD player is nearly as good. In fact, he adds that future upconverting DVD players will offer images just as good.
"If you watch standard DVDs on our players, the images are of very high quality because they include an 'upconverting' feature," he told WSJ. "And we're going to improve this even more, so that consumers won't be able to tell the difference from HD DVD images."
In other words, now that Toshiba will no longer sell HD DVD players, it says that people don't need a high-def disc player after all; that an upconverting DVD player will do just as well.
Contrast Nishida's remarks with the language at HD DVD's official web site, thelookandsoundofperfect.com.
"HD DVD improves powerfully upon the technological foundation of DVD, replacing the red laser reader of a standard DVD player with a blue laser. Because blue lasers scan data using shorter wavelengths than red lasers, manufacturers can store three times more data on an HD DVD disc. That's what allows you to experience the eye-popping 1080p high-def picture, window-shattery surround sound and awesome interactivity that you can get only with HD DVD."
In the WSJ article, Nishida now also questions whether the high-def disc industry can even succeed.
"Next-generation DVD players are in a much weaker position than when standard DVD players were first introduced," he said.
Well, folks, it might have been nice if Toshiba had made its feelings known when people were being asked to pay up to hundreds of dollars for its HD DVD players.
If it really believed that the next line of upconverting DVD players would be just as good as the HD DVD player, why did it urge people to get the latter?
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Swanni (Phillip Swann) is
president and publisher of TVPredictions.com. He has been quoted in
dozens of publications and broadcast outlets, including CNN, Fox
News, Inside Edition, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The
Chicago Tribune, The Financial Times, The Associated Press and The
Hollywood Reporter. He can be reached at
swann@tvpredictions.com
or at 703-505-3064.
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