Finally, a Cell processor that might be fully utilized

Toshiba's new Regza ZF HDTVs don't upscale your DVDs to HD resolution with any old chipset or engine: they do it with a Cell-processor based system. Bonkers! It's the first TV to upscale with a Cell, and according to its European executive vice president, Toshiba's future "does not involve Blu-ray disc" but will use this sort of tech to deliver high-res imagery. The upscaling system uses the Cell for some advanced image-processing techniques, creating interpolated pixels to give the final image "near-HD" quality. The sets will also have Active Vision M100 100Hz HD picture processing, 178-degree viewing angle, 30,000:1 contrast ratio and 10-bit processing. The ZF TVs will be in 40- and 46-inch sizes, the 40-inch out now with pricing of around $2,390, the 46-pricing and availability is not announced yet.

[via Gizmodo via Toshiba.co.uk and Toshiba.de-via Google translate.]

Microsoft digs doing the 'ostrich thing'

"We do not believe the recent reports about HD DVD will have any material impact on the Xbox 360 platform or our position in the marketplace," the company said. "We will wait until we hear from Toshiba before announcing any specific plans around the Xbox 360 HD DVD player." [MSNBC.com]

Well, that's a nice try. But I'll give it a failing grade. If Microsoft continues with no platform changes, it will be a nearly Xbox-only platform, which means further development will be expensive compared to the number of units on the market (which should keep dropping like a stone?).

Waiting for Toshiba? Why? What? If the future is this clearly blue, why the waffling? Or is there something else in the wind?

HD Format War Is Over: Toshiba Throws In Towel

Well that's it kids!!!

Although no official word from Toshiba, a report on Japan's NHK said that Toshiba has decided to pull from the next generation of high definition DVD production. Obviously this doesn't come as a surprise to anyone following the HD format war. With the decision of Wal-Mart, Netflix, and Best Buy going exclusively to Blu-Ray this week, it was just a matter of time for Toshiba to end production on HD DVD.

The NHK report states that HD DVD products will stay on the market for a while, Toshiba will cease production of HD DVD and will close factories in northern Japan. The report says that Toshiba will take a financial hit in the ball park of "hundreds of millions of U.S. dollars". The official announcement is set to come sometime next week.

So if you find that HD DVD player you've alway wanted for the low low price you were looking for, there is a reason.

[NKH via Crave]

How HD DVD Was The Better Format

I don't usually care for long posts, but this subject just needs to be talked about. Brian Lam of Gizmodo just says it all about the HD format war. Just read below:

"Before winning the majority of Hollywood studio support, those partial to the Blu-ray format have primarily relied on a few points to make their case: more storage and rocketing sales at the ratio of 2:1 to HD DVD. Those are bullshit arguments. As consumers, we should have only been looking at what each format delivered and in that case, HD DVD was a more stable platform with more features on almost every disc that was offered in both. It's a moot point now, because the platform with more content deserves to win, but here's why I wish HD DVD wasn't on its knees:
When Wilson compared the same discs in each format, Harry Potter and 300, HD DVD had many, many more features. Proof is in the pudding:

The difference is still less subtle when comparing the two editions of 300:

Blu-ray could technically support a lot of that functionality, according to the spec, but the trick here is that most of the spec is not and still isn't mandatory. And even when all the Blu-ray players on the market are up to the final spec, whenever that may be, the majority of the original players will still not support extras, so why would anyone develop those extras? They won't. A stair-stepped rollout of what each player must have to be spec compliant has severely limited the Blu format, despite all that great storage capacity. And this might take a very long time to fix, if it ever does.
HD DVD, you were the people's format: R.I.P.

Why I Wished HD DVD Had Won: The Format That Loved Me [Gizmodo]

Why Warner Bros. REALLY Went To Blu-Ray

So as I had suspected all along, the real reason that Warner Bros. defected to Blu-Ray has come out. And it turns out that it's the reason I thought it might be, money.

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette columnist Don Lindich uncovered the WB's dirty little secret, and the numbers that are involve are staggering. Aparently Warner wanted to stay with HD DVD, and gave Toshiba some time to bring in another studio into the camp before they turned Blu-Ray. Toshiba had Fox lined up to go HD DVD exclusive, which would have also made Warner HD DVD exclusive, but Fox nixed the deal in the last minutes.

The reason why Fox canceled the deal? Well Fox received a reported $120 million payout from Sony to stay with Blu-Ray. Warner Bros. then switched to Blu-Ray and received between $400 and $500 million to go Blu-Ray exclusive. Warner Bros. Kevin Tsujihara said that it wasn't a bidding war that brought them to Blu-Ray, which is true considering that HD DVD didn't get a bid in.

So it's not that the consumer made the decision to go with Blu-Ray, or the line that "Blu-Ray is the more advanced format, so that's why we went with them" crap. It's just Sony flat out paid more than Toshiba was willing to do, and the consumer suffers for their greed.

Money certainly does talk.

[Post-Gazette via Gizmodo]

Cow Bell Deals: Toshiba Gigabeat For $59.99

If you’re in the market for a cheap MP3 player, then head on over to Office Depot for the 2GB Toshiba Gigabeat MEU202. This tiny little guy has a 1.1-inch OLED display, and 20 hours of battery life. It can play MP3, WMA, and WAV files, and has a built in FM tuner all for $59.99.

Not bad for the price!

Toshiba Gigabeat® MEU202-BK 2.0GB MP3 Player With FM Tuner [Office Depot via Crunchgear]

Toshiba Drops Price On HD DVD Players

It didn’t very long for the hardware deals on HD DVD to come through, as Toshiba has dropped the prices of the HD-A3 and HD-A30. The HD-A3 and HD-A30 are available on Amazon.com for $134.98 and $174.98, and you still get 2 free movies (Bourne Identity and 300) with them. What’s interesting about the price though, is that often time’s retailers will use the last two digits to reflect the status of the product. Prices ending in 99 cents represent current products and 98 cents represents no new product will replace the item.

So if you’re interested in picking up a high definition format that will not have any new movies for it soon, get ‘em now!

Amazon.com: Toshiba HD DVD via Crunchgear]

Case Closed... I'm firmly in the HD-DVD Camp

Toshiba's done it. They've made a classic style Star Trek Phaser HD-DVD remote control. Need I say more? Check it out here!

Cow Bell Deals: Buy $200 HD DVD Player, Get 10 HD DVD Movies Free

Amazon is trying to make sure that you come to them first for Black Friday. This time they're offering 10 HD DVD movies when you purchase a Toshiba HD-A3, HD-A30 or HD-A35 player for $199.99.

How cool is that!!!

Of course you have to jump through a few hoops for it, but nothing crazy. You can find out all the details after the jump.

Courtesy of Crunchgear.

$198 Wal-Mart Toshiba HD DVD Player Confirmed

Wal-Mart and Toshiba are making it very hard to stay on the fence with this HD format war.

The rumor about a sub-$200 HD DVD player seems to have some legs to it. The HD-A2 HD DVD player from Toshiba, (which you can hardly make out in this blurry ass picture) is not set to be sold until 11/03/07. The guy who posted it said that each store will get 18 units, and that it is a "non-replenishable item", so once they're gone, they're gone. This might be the reason to run out a pick up an HD DVD player (and Transformers), and cut away at Blu-Ray's bottom line.

It might be a good idea for Blu-Ray to respond to something like this, and soon.

[Gizmodo]

Toshiba AC Adapters Recalled For Portable DVD Player

If you're one of the unfortunate owners of a Toshiba portable DVD player, you might want to pay attention to this one. Toshiba has issued a recall on the power adapters to the units, due to the potential defect that causes the DVD player to overheat and could result in a burn hazard. Over 142,000 AC adapter were sold with the SD-P1600 between January 2005 and April 2006.

If you have this adapter, stop using it and call Toshiba for a replacement at: (877) 290-6064.

Toshiba Recalls AC Adapters sold with Portable DVD Players Due to Burn Hazard [U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission via Crunchgear]

IHD-DVD ownership

Today I purchased a HD-DVD player. The reasoning was quite basic. I am about to start at a new job, and my wife so kindly allowed me to reward myself with a gadget. So I picked up the Toshiba HD-A20. This is the middle level HD-DVD player, falling between the HD-A2 (which only supports 1080i) and the HD-XA2 (which has better sensing of true color). And the other reason? Well it was on sale for $299 and still had the offer of 5 free HD-DVD's with the purchase.

You may have asked yourself why I decided to go HD over Blu-Ray? As much as I may have wanted to stick it to Sony, as I hate them, it was much more basic than that. First off, it's a 1080P player for under $300. To me that's huge. Second, I do not see a picture quality difference between Blu-Ray and HD-DVD. Third, well, title wise it's a toss-up. Sure I don't get to watch the Pirates of the Caribbean and a few other exclusive titles...but I can get the Matrix trilogy and the Transformers on it.

I still think that HD will win out as well. Simply because it is the lower cost alternative to Blu-Ray.

In the days ahead I'll post a review. I can say that the upconverting of 300 to 1080p is absolutely stunning and incredible. And I just performed the first firmware update (which to me canot be topped by Blu-Ray) and the display is perfect. It's awesome!

The latest in HD-DVD v.s. Blue Ray Slap Fight

Well, I don't have a dog in the fight; but I sure do have an opinion. Fredzilla likes the HD-DVD and is a Blu-Ray Hater... Actually, more accurately, Fredzilla is a Sony Hater.

So, I was real glad when Sony accidently spilled the beans about the underperfoming Blu-Ray player's slowly failing, weak sales, getting weaker when compared to the HD-DVD drive; which is catching up nicely! Check it out here!!!

Toshiba Portege R500: 1.73 pounds? Damn!

Toshiba is going for the title of 'light weight' laptop of all time. The 2.4-pound Toshiba Portege R500 just get cleared by the FCC, but that wasn't good enough for them, Toshiba introduces the R500-S5003 which comes in at a staggering weight of 1.73 pounds.

So how did they do it?

They removed the standard HDD out and used a 64GB solid-state flash drive, which gives the laptop no moving parts (less things to break) and will cost $2,600. The draw back is that there is no integrated optical drive, but you can add one for $300 and get the R500-S5004 for $2,999.

This is great for Business people who like to travel light.

Hit the jump to see more. [Sci-Fi.com via Gizmodo]

Sony Laptop Batteries Catching Fire, Again

"Woe is me" must be the company motto for Sony because they've been trying to put out one fire after another, literally. This time around it isn’t Dell that got burned, but Toshiba. In late May a Toshiba notebook caught fire and the culprit was a Sony battery, again.

The list of models from Toshiba is extensive, so I’d take a look and take appropriate measures.

Read the article after the jump. [CRN]

Toshiba announces Dynabook Satellite WXW gaming laptop

If you’re looking for a real gaming laptop, you might want to check out this new laptop that Toshiba has announced.

The WXW notebook is based on the Santa Rosa platform with a T7300, 1GB of RAM (you can upgrade to 4GB) and a GeForce 8700M GT GPU with 256MB of dedicated memory. That will certainly be enough to power your way through most games. This is all displayed on a nice 17.1-inch screen capable of 1680 x 1050 and topped off with a nice red outer finish.

The notebook will be difficult to get though, as it is only currently slated for Japan. The starting price for these is around $1800.

Read more after the jump. [newlaunches]

Toshiba's VARDIA RD-A600 HD DVD recorder with 600GB disk

Toshiba has just unleashed their new HD-DVD/HHD hybrid called VARDIA, recorder in Japan. The 600GB RD-A600 and 300GB RD-A300 feature a pair of digital hi-vision HD tuners, Firewire, and HDMI and can write to HD DVD-R and DVD-RAM/R/RW media and of course to its hard disks.

It will cost more than its $199.99 brothers out there, as much as ¥200,000 (about $1,643) for the RD-A600 model when these start shipping to the states later in the year.

Read the rest if you have a translator after the jump. [Toshiba]

Toshiba to Cram HD DVD Into All Notebooks by 2008

In a major move for the HD-DVD camp, Toshiba has announced that starting next year all of there laptops will come with HD-DVD standard. While this may not be as big of a competitive advantage as Blu-ray in every PS3, it will definitely help out the HD DVD camp with its install base numbers. That is as long as they're smart enough to eat some of the increased costs.

Now if only we could pick a format and end this video war before the industry goes completely digital anyways.

Toshiba's 12.1-inch Portege R500 is world's thinnest with disc drive

One thing that would drive me crazy about claims of 'thin' laptops is that most of them sucked. They would either not have a disc drive, lack serious horsepower or the screen would be the size of my cell phone display.

Not so with Toshiba's new entry!!!

The Portege R500 packs a first ever 7mm optical drive, 12.1-inch transflective (outdoor readable) LED-backlit screen, and does it all with a mere 0.77-inches of thickness, and a weight of 2.4 pounds. The R500 Core 2 duo U7600 1.2GHz processor, Intel GMA 950 graphics, up to 2GB of RAM, a 120GB HDD and a 1280 x 800 screen resolution. There's even a PCMCIA slot, gigabit Ethernet, Bluetooth and VGA out.

The laptop starts at $2,000 with XP Pro, or $2,150 with Vista Business.

Read more after the jump. [laptoping]

The Toshiba terror: The Qosmio G40

The Toshiba Qosmio G40 has hit Japan and is due in the US soon. This technological terror has all the goods that any one could want in a desktop replacement. As expected, it comes along with the Qosmio F40 just in time to join all that hot Santa Rosa action from Samsung, LG and HP.

But unlike the HP Dragon, the 20" beast that can be used as a laptop, desktop, surf board, and forklift, the 17-inch Qosmio G40 panoramic is a full high definition system. It's powered by a NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT with 256MB of RAM, running at 1,920 x 1,200 pixel.

Their flag ship comes with a Core 2 Duo T7300 processor, 320GB hard drive and a HD DVD player/recorder built-in, plus 1 GB of flash RAM for accelerated Vista operation. To complement its HDTV capability it also comes with digital/analog TV tuner, remote control and four speakers, plus HDMI and S/PDIF digital AV outputs.

I think that will get it done. Don't you?