Tweet
The Blu-ray news recently has been dominated by rumours of Toshiba joining the Blu-ray camp, the last hold out and for some Blu-ray fans, the moment they've all been waiting for. Toshiba is still not commenting those rumours, but a "no comment" from a company that has trashed Blu-ray time and time again in public is probably as good as a confirmation at this stage.
There is a Cnet article that talks about this decision, and they wonder, and so do I, why Toshiba isn't looking beyond Blu-ray, like they've been talking about ever since HD DVD died. Beyond Blu-ray means streaming, downloads kiosks, flash memory storage for movies and basically a home video format that's not dependent on a single type of storage media.
I suspect that Toshiba's Blu-ray player may be more than just a Blu-ray player. They've seen LG and Samsung come out with successful Blu-ray players that integrate Netflix streaming into the setup, the exact sort of "next-gen" stuff that Toshiba's been talking up, and they've probably decided now's the time to get into the market. However, making a DVD player with streaming isn't going to sell, not when everyone already has DVD players, so the logical step would be to produce a Blu-ray player. And then if Toshiba has their flash memory movie system worked out, then they could easily include a flash memory reader (USB port basically). Toshiba has a lot of interests in flash memory technology, and a 64 GB rewritable USB drive will make Blu-ray recordables obsolete before it is even launched, but only if it can tie it in with some kind of movie distribution network (and suitable standalone players).
It could be the situation where Toshiba is only joining Blu-ray so it can destroy (or replace) it from within - the classic Trojan horse situation. To be fair, this is what LG and Samsung have been doing with their streaming Blu-ray players, albeit possibly not intentionally.
The Cnet article:
Toshiba "no comment" on Blu-ray rumours:
There is a Cnet article that talks about this decision, and they wonder, and so do I, why Toshiba isn't looking beyond Blu-ray, like they've been talking about ever since HD DVD died. Beyond Blu-ray means streaming, downloads kiosks, flash memory storage for movies and basically a home video format that's not dependent on a single type of storage media.
I suspect that Toshiba's Blu-ray player may be more than just a Blu-ray player. They've seen LG and Samsung come out with successful Blu-ray players that integrate Netflix streaming into the setup, the exact sort of "next-gen" stuff that Toshiba's been talking up, and they've probably decided now's the time to get into the market. However, making a DVD player with streaming isn't going to sell, not when everyone already has DVD players, so the logical step would be to produce a Blu-ray player. And then if Toshiba has their flash memory movie system worked out, then they could easily include a flash memory reader (USB port basically). Toshiba has a lot of interests in flash memory technology, and a 64 GB rewritable USB drive will make Blu-ray recordables obsolete before it is even launched, but only if it can tie it in with some kind of movie distribution network (and suitable standalone players).
It could be the situation where Toshiba is only joining Blu-ray so it can destroy (or replace) it from within - the classic Trojan horse situation. To be fair, this is what LG and Samsung have been doing with their streaming Blu-ray players, albeit possibly not intentionally.
The Cnet article:
Toshiba "no comment" on Blu-ray rumours:
