Blu-ray vs. DVD !?!
With HD DVD out of the picture, the main competitor for Blu-ray will be the DVD…
The Wall Street Journal interviewed Toshiba Corporation Chief Executive Atsutoshi Nishida on the occasion of their withdrawl from their HD DVD business. Nishida blamed it on Warner Bros declaration of support for rival Blu-ray on Jan 4, saying the resulting diminshed 20-30% market share would have been too small to justify continuation of HD DVD. He was upbeat about the remaining 44 business units (down from 45) including semiconductors, appliances and nuclear reactors.
Nishida did say however that T will “continue to sell standard DVD players” and that movies will continue to be produced by Hollywood in both Blu-ray and DVD formats. The plan is for Toshiba to improve their upscaling DVD players to such an extent that “consumers won’t be able to tell the difference from HD DVD images”.
…ambitious stuff. However, DVDs deliver about 350,000 pixels, whereas the lowest resolution high-def video is 1024×768 or about 786,000 pixels, which means that any upconverting DVD player would have to guesstimate at more than 400,000 interpolating pixels. …might not make for a pretty picture.
Perhaps Toshiba is playing ‘DVD is good enough’ card, something along the lines of regular audio CDs continuing to hold their own vs the higher-fidelity SACD & DVD-Audio formats. And perhaps they’re right…on a smaller screen and from further back, Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl on DVD (top) doesn’t look that different from the Blu-ray version (bottom). [Click on image to see magnified version]. More images at Piratas del Caribe (DVD) vs. Piratas del Caribe (Blu-ray).
Toshiba’s Plan for Life After HD DVD - WSJ, March 3 2008
