When do you think Toshiba will release a stand alone Blu-ray player? - Page 3  

Originally Posted by bt12483

And Westinghouse doesn't either.

Question: Would Toshiba rather be compared with Mitsu and Westinghouse, or LG, Samsung and Panasonic?

Unless they want their brand image to fall, I would hope they choose to compete with the higher end of the CE pool...not the lower end.

Originally Posted by jvillain

Toshiba's whole approach to HDM has turned me off so badly that I will never consider buying another Toshiba product ever again.

Originally Posted by Steeb

Which story to believe... hmmmm....

Originally Posted by ottscay

You realize that BD has only been competing against DVD as the defacto followup format (e.g. after the format war) for less than a year and a half, right? How much of VHS's sales where DVD after 18 months of competition?

Originally Posted by Lee Stewart

Toshiba is a $70+ Billion company.

So how much of that $70+B comes from their consumer electronics division?

Originally Posted by Splicer010

...Never...And Toshiba has already made their position clear that they will not support blu-ray...

TOKYO -- Facing the prospect of a record loss and the possible need for additional capital to shore up a battered balance sheet, Toshiba Corp. said its chief executive will step down in June and be succeeded by a veteran of the company's nuclear-power business.

Norio Sasaki, the 59-year-old head of Toshiba's infrastructure systems group, will become the next president and CEO in June, pending shareholder approval. The current CEO, Atsutoshi Nishida, 65, will become the company's chairman as part of the management change. Tadashi Okamura, the current chairman, will become an adviser to the board.

Originally Posted by ottscay

I'm not sure what the point of the poll was, but from it's results I think we can conclude that somewhere between 40 and 45.45% of the people that use these forums see the world through grudge-colored glasses...

Originally Posted by bt12483

I am not going to dig up all the releases that have averaged at 20% or higher. The Dark Knight has. Probably Iron Man. Probably Hellboy II. Eagle Eye. You figure it out.

Long way for what? I enjoy the hell out of blurays I buy and rent regardless of their % of sales versus DVD.

Bluray sales are killing digital download sales. And digital downloads have been out longer.

I keep hearing about downloads, but yet they are still clocking single digit %'s all around. Apple TV has been out for over 2 years. I don't see it making many waves. Vudu has been out for over a year. Where are the sales???

If bluray and downloads will be 25% each in 5 years....downloads already have a lot of catching up to do.

Originally Posted by Bozster

It's an ocassional flick that appeals to a specific demographic. It's far from a trend for all releases.

Originally Posted by bt12483

And yes, there is a trend. Most new actions flicks do about 20% on bluray.

Originally Posted by Bozster

The fact that major CE Blu-ray manufacturers are integrating Netflix just shows you where it's going.

Originally Posted by Bozster

And btw, VOD/Digital Downloads made more money then Blu-ray in the last article I read from Video Business.

Originally Posted by Bozster

We have Blu-ray for 3 years. Where are the sales???? It's growing in single digit percentage as well.

Originally Posted by Bozster

Digital content delivery is just at a swing. It has growing pains (somewhat different from BLu-ray's but still present), just like Blu-ray did, but unlike Blu-ray once the problems are fixed there's no ceiling in growth. Add convenience and it's easy to see it's the future and that the market will most likely be split between various content delivery methods.

Unlike your way of thinking, I don't diss BLu-ray but I also get content from a variety of other sources, a thing that was not present when DVD was growing. So to imply that Blu-ray is the next DVD is extremely optimistic, especially since studios nor CEs are too happy about the fact that consumers are completely uninterested for Blu-ray unless they lower the prices close to DVD, which is by itself something they want to avoid.

This brings me to Toshiba. Why in the hell would someone who has majority of royalties from still most present format (DVD) even get into Blu-ray. They might as well just jump on board, keep holding the DVD market plus helping growing new digital medium for physical distribution in online content delivery.

As a businessman that makes more sense to me then getting into Blu-ray market which is still in less then or just about 10% of all market. Don't confuse individual title sales percentages to overall unit sales on both formats.

As I said, Blu-ray has a looong way to go to reach serious market penetration among housholds and become a true standard. Right now it's still an enthusiast format.

They don't have a lot of catching up to do because unlike Blu-ray, people will be able to utilize download networks from the equipment they already have. Unlike Blu-ray who still needs to actually physically occupy retailer locations and rely on hardware and so on.

The problem online content delivery has (let's call it that because it's not just digital downloads we are talking about, we are talking about any way of delivering content through your online connection) which is slowly getting resolved but if they reach 25% within 5 years (which I'm pretty sure it's not a problem) and Blu-ray takes 25%, it's still not going to be anywhere near the standard as a format. DVD will be king for a long time IMO while the rest of the market will be split between Blu-ray and other ways of content delivery, as least IMO.

We are looking at very diverse future IMO. The age of optical media will be behind us as it's already declining. How many more articles we have to post here that show that Blu-ray simply won't be able to compensate for DVD decline.

I would've thought it's very obvious. And if that's something we can expect, then I don't see Toshiba getting involved with Blu-ray when they can have a much more lucrative business supplying remaining DVD and alternative content delivery methods and hardware instead of Blu-ray where they have to pay others to release hardware. I don't expect nor want Blu-ray to fail cause I enjoy it a lot and would like it to provide us with content until a better and more flexible way of delivering content takes over (which would be digital downloads) but I still think they won't grab nowhere near significant market share as DVD did. From Toshiba point of view, if we go with my estimate that let's say by 2015 we'll have 50% DVD/25% BD/25% online content) ratio, I would definitely understand them wanting to keep a hand in 75% of the market (which is DVD+alternative formats) instead of 25% of the BD market. Just putting numbers to illustrate the point.

A simple example is Samsung, LG and other who are integrating online services for content delivery in their BLu-ray players. How long do you think will take before people realize that instead of going to the Blockbuster or going to the store to pick up a new Blu-ray movie, it's just less problematic to use online delivery on the Blu-ray player or PC or whatever. I say not too long, especially since when I watched Netflix HD latest shows like CSI they look pretty damn good. The point here is that unlike Blu-ray, theoretically, with online delivery we can have all content immediately available. How long do you have to wait until you get your latest TV show or whatever on BLu-ray? That right there is the key. People want instant gratification and that human nature won't change.

Originally Posted by Richard Paul

I have never seen Toshiba say that they would not support Blu-ray. Could you link to the article where Toshiba said that?

Toshiba did not equip any of its notebooks with a BluRay drive so far, and this won’t change in the future. The Toshiba senior vice president Yoshihide Fujii told, that they won’t equip a recorder or player with a BluRay drive.External observers think that there are two reasons for this statement. Firstly, the manufacturer does not want to support its competitor Sony. Secondly, the BluRay Disc Association wants a $ 30 fee for each device which offers a BluRay drive.

In a former interview Toshiba representives told us, that Toshiba counts on downloadable HD content or other alternative storage methods (SD cards for example).

Originally Posted by 42Plasmaman

Really?
I thought it had to do with losing billions on getting Paramount to be HD DVD exclusive then Warner going blu-ray exclusive several months later.

Originally Posted by Richard Paul

Interesting, though I would mention that saying in September of 2008 that Toshiba had no intention of selling a stand alone Blu-ray player/recorder is not the same as saying that they will not support Blu-ray. After all intentions can change with time and for example that quote could be accurate even if Toshiba were to release a stand alone Blu-ray player in 2010.

Strangely enough, Blu-ray is a non-topic so far at CES 2009 - and is trumped by presentations about Wireless HD as well as Internet content streaming. Toshiba is still not offering Blu-ray players and today said that it won't introduce such players in 2009 either.

Originally Posted by Bozster

Longer how? We just had maybe a year of real digital downloads/subscription services. And they are growing at a rapid rate because people like them and convenience. The fact that major CE Blu-ray manufacturers are integrating Netflix just shows you where it's going.

Over the past 12 months, we've seen a lot of new content offerings announced by companies like Netflix, Amazon and YouTube as they look to directly target the living room via entertainment devices. Indeed, the adoption rate of hardware devices like the Xbox 360, PS3, TiVo, Roku, VUDU, Apple TV and broadband-enabled Blu-ray players and TV sets will be crucial in determining if content owners can make money delivering video to the TV.

But despite all these new offerings, that content still only reaches a few million customers, a number largely unchanged from this time last year. Such low adoption rates in the face of so much effort leads me to think that while the market of delivering content to the TV will grow, it is unlikely to do so at the rate that many in this industry would like to believe. In fact I don't think we'll see these devices having a combined impact in any measurable way for at least another 3-4 years.

Here is a breakdown on the number of devices on the market and some data on the volume of content being consumed on them:

Xbox 360: Microsoft has so far sold 15.1 million Xbox 360 consoles in North America, according to NPD. Since the Xbox LIVE Video Marketplace launched in November 2006, there have been more than 42 million downloads of entertainment content, which includes movies, TV shows, music videos and featured trailers, Redmond told me, while Xbox 360 owners have downloaded nearly 12.3 million hours of video content from the Xbox LIVE Video Store.

Xbox/Netflix: As of February, 1 million Xbox LIVE Gold members had downloaded and activated the application for streaming Netflix movies to the Xbox 360 console. Meanwhile, users had watched more than 1.5 billion minutes of movies and TV episodes from the Netflix Watch Instantly library.

TiVo: While TiVo doesn't break out how many Series 1, 2 or 3 units have been sold individually, it has 1.6 million standalone TiVo subscribers. I estimate that 65 percent of those are Series 2, which means that there are roughly 525,000 Series 3 TiVos today. The company has said that 85 percent of its HD TiVos are connected via broadband, which puts the number of units capable of getting content via Amazon or Netflix at around 445,000. For DVRs that can get YouTube content the number is likely higher, since YouTube only requires a Series 2 DVR.

Roku: Roku won't say how many units it's sold to date, but if we estimate that 3 percent of Netflix's 10.3 million subscribers at the end of the first quarter bought the $99 unit, a total of about 300,000 Roku units have been sold.

VUDU: VUDU told me it's sold five figures worth of devices, which I believe is less than 50,000 units.

Apple TV: Published reports put the number of Apple TVs sold at less than 500,000. Notably, of course, Apple has, on multiple occasions, acknowledged that the device hasn't been nearly as successful as the company had hoped it would be.

Blockbuster Mediapoint Player: The company has never offered up numbers as to how many of these have been sold, nor has anyone really bothered to hazard a guess. Bottom line: Blockbuster has no online video strategy of any kind and while the Mediapoint player was first unveiled some five months ago, when you visit the Blockbuster.com web site, it's nowhere to be found.

Broadband-enabled TVs: There are more than 50 broadband-enabled TV models due out in 2009, but analysts estimate that only about 3 million total sets will be sold in the next two years combined.

Broadband-enabled Blu-ray Players: To date, 9.6 million Blu-ray players have been sold, but less than 2 million of them don't include the PS3, according to DEG. While new broadband-enabled players continue to be released into the market, the total number of sales to date has to be less than 50,000.

Even with all these numbers, they don't truly give us an idea of the growth, as there are a lot of unanswered questions. For starters, Microsoft won't say how many of the 15.1 million Xbox 360 consoles are connected to a broadband connection. And while Netflix says that a million Xbox LIVE members have downloaded and installed the Netflix app for their Xbox 360, since Netflix offers free 48-hour streaming trials to Xbox 360 owners, we don't know how many paying Netflix subscribers are using the service today. With Netflix spending about 5 cents to stream every movie to the Xbox 360, clearly content offerings such as this are not yet making any money due to the small number of devices in the market.

While some may suggest that the Wii gaming console is missing from this list, so far the Wii doesn't really offer up any content. Whether or not set-top boxes should be included in these numbers is debatable. It's my belief that the cable companies are the ones that should be winning in the market when it comes to delivering Internet-based content to the TV or premium content with all-you-can-eat models. But so far, I don't see the cable companies doing a very good job at this.

On the surface, some of these numbers look really big. But once you break down how many of these devices are being used via a broadband connection and how many consumers have more than one of these devices in their living room, the actual number of individual consumers content owners are reaching via these devices is still very, very small.

Dan Rayburn is EVP of StreamingMedia.com, has his own blog at BusinessofVideo.com and is a principal analyst with Frost & Sullivan.

May 27 (Bloomberg) -- Toshiba Corp., needing funds for investment after a record annual loss, raised 289.7 billion yen ($3.04 billion) in Japan’s biggest stock offering by a non- financial company in eight years.

The country’s biggest chipmaker sold 870 million shares at 333 yen apiece, Tokyo-based Toshiba said today. The stock, offered at 3.2 percent less than its closing price today, was sold at the high end of a range indicated last week.

“Investors’ risk appetite is recovering,” Mamoru Shimode, chief equity strategist at Resona Bank Ltd. in Tokyo, said by telephone. Technology companies “haven’t been received positively by investors, but some started to see them as under- valued,” he said.

Toshiba has lost 60 percent of its value in the past year, almost twice the decline in Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 Stock Average. About 500 companies worldwide have raised $124 billion selling stock in 2009, 27 percent fewer issuers and 22 percent less in value than in the same period last year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

The proceeds from the offering will help Toshiba invest in factories to compete against Samsung Electronics Co. in making chips that store data in cameras and mobile phones after last year’s net loss more than tripled the Japanese company’s ratio of debt to equity.

The sale, the first for Toshiba since 1981, may be increased to as much as 1 billion shares with enough demand, the company said today in a statement to the Tokyo Stock Exchange. Toshiba said May 8 it planned to sell as much as 313.1 billion yen of stock and 180 billion yen of 60-year subordinated debt.

Biggest Since DoCoMo

It’s the biggest offering of new stock in Japan by a non- financial issuer since 2001, when NTT DoCoMo Inc., the mobile- phone operator that was the country’s largest company by market value at the time, raised 950.4 billion yen.

Toshiba Chief Executive Officer Atsutoshi Nishida, 65, plans to return the maker of semiconductors and nuclear reactors to an operating profit this year as production cuts by chipmakers worldwide prompt a rebound in prices.

The industry is recovering after manufacturers curbed output to boost prices of NAND flash memory, which stores songs and data in portable musical players, handsets and digital cameras.

Originally Posted by Bozster

I'd be interested to see what are those quite a few BD releases that sell 20% of DVD version?

Originally Posted by Bozster

It's an ocassional flick that appeals to a specific demographic. It's far from a trend for all releases.

Originally Posted by Grubert

This just came up:

The Streaming Content Is There, But Not Enough People Are Watching It Yet



That from the EVP of a site whose goal is "to foster the adoption of streaming media technology and applications."

Worldwide shipments of consumer-electronics devices capable of supporting Internet video are projected to rise by nearly a factor of five from 2009 to 2013, according to research firm iSuppli.

The firm forecast that 376.5 million devices supporting Internet video will be shipped annually by 2013, up from 80.5 million in 2008. The devices include televisions, set-top boxes, Blu-ray DVD players, videogame consoles and dedicated video platforms.

"The expansion of broadband Internet access from home computers to other devices including [set-top boxes] has opened up a world of new possibilities for supporting Internet video via streaming and downloads," said iSuppli analyst Sheri Greenspan in a statement. "More importantly, the public is demanding this type of content on a wider variety of platforms. However, they want this content to be easily available, and they want it to be of the same video quality as the programming on their living room televisions."

Originally Posted by Grubert

This just came up:

The Streaming Content Is There, But Not Enough People Are Watching It — Yet



That from the EVP of a site whose goal is "to foster the adoption of streaming media technology and applications."

Originally Posted by Grubert

This just came up:

The Streaming Content Is There, But Not Enough People Are Watching It Yet

But despite all these new offerings, that content still only reaches a few million customers, a number largely unchanged from this time last year.

Xbox/Netflix: As of February, 1 million Xbox LIVE Gold members had downloaded and activated the application for streaming Netflix movies to the Xbox 360 console. Meanwhile, users had watched more than 1.5 billion minutes of movies and TV episodes from the Netflix Watch Instantly library.

Originally Posted by Grubert

Body of Lies
Let the Right One In
Max Payne
My Bloody Valentine 3D
Quantum of Solace
RockNRolla
Taken
Tales of the Black Freighter
The Dark Knight
The Day the Earth Stood Still
Valkyrie
Watchmen Motion Comic

The first title to sell 20% or more of total packaged media sales on BD in its first week was The Dark Knight.




The market share for other genres is also increasing.

Case in point: drama movies. This time last year, dramas never got even 10% Blu-ray market share in their first week. The first drama to get 10% was The Express, released January 20, 2009.

Recently, several dramas have done 10% or more:

The Wrestler (19%)
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (14%)
Slumdog Millionaire (13%)
Australia (12%)
Frost/Nixon (12%)
Notorious (12%)
Milk (10%)

In other words, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is doing better this year than Rambo did last year. And Milk did better than National Treasure 2.

Of course, other drama titles didn't do so well (Rachel Getting Married 5%, Last Chance Harvey 4%).

The genre that still does worst is comedy/family, although some of them did 10% or more (Yes Man, Zack and Miri, Role Models).

Originally Posted by Bozster

As for your comparison on the movies, what you you noted is still such a small number of movies that it's hardly a huge chunk in the market. Big hits/blockbusters, oscar winning movies will sell well and they are mostly action based. I was with a friend at Walmart yesterday and we had a chuckle when we saw Terminator 1 Blu-ray for $25 and on the other side Extreme Edition T1 on DVD was $7.90.

On the scheme of things, Blu-ray is still a drop in the sea compared to the overall DVD market and will be most likely like that for a forseeable future.

I have no doubts it will grow, but how much, that's the real question and if growth is directly connected to lowering prices to DVD levels then I don't see an incentive for studios to continue pushing furiously Blu-ray when they can make a lot more money with online content delivery.

CEs are a different story, they might be introducing hardware because they can still charge a premium (to an extent) on it, but for how long that's another question too. To be honest I don't see a lot of those chinese BD players anymore and I don't really see who's gonna sell Blu-ray player for $99 come this Christmas when they are still around $250. Maybe clearance on older models but I guess we'll have to wait and see.

If market is already saturated with equipment and software for Blu-ray (in a way) what chance or reason has Toshiba to join it.

IMO, zip, nada!

Originally Posted by Grubert

Well, market is saturated with LCD TVs and laptops, and Toshiba continues to make them. Why?

Originally Posted by PSound

It would be great if there was either a consensus that the streaming/downloading market IS a HDTV Software Media market, or to move this converstation to the Digital Downloads sub-forum.

Originally Posted by PSound

NOTE: Just providing competing data since someone decided to put an article that is focused SOLELY on the topic of streaming/download in this section.

Originally Posted by Bozster

We just had maybe a year of real digital downloads/subscription services. And they are growing at a rapid rate because people like them and convenience. The fact that major CE Blu-ray manufacturers are integrating Netflix just shows you where it's going.

Originally Posted by Grubert

Right now you can get a Samsung BD-P1600 (new model) for under $200, with four free movies.

Originally Posted by Grubert

First, catalog sales on DVD are residual. They're not selling a lot, not even at $7.90.

Second, you wouldn't chuckle so much if you shopped around. The Terminator Blu-ray is $12.99 at Best Buy. (T2 Skynet edition is $14.99).

Originally Posted by Grubert

False.

I was just responding to Bozster who brought up streaming/downloading. Allow me to quote him again:

Originally Posted by Grubert

Good idea, thanks for your suggestion.

And BTW, the streaming/downloading market is by and large SDTV anyway.

Originally Posted by Bozster

Where? Everywhere I looked it's $249. I don't really buy a lot of electronics stuff online through stores (because it's a lot of hassle to return if it doesn't work or whatever - most people I know don't buy electronics online just for that reason too) so I'm not keeping a track of where and when I can use coupons or special sales to get a player for $200. Maybe some people do, but I'm pretty sure people like me are in majority.

Every single B&M store I went to sells them for $250 and they won't budge the price.

Where is $200 with 4 free movies? Amazon? EDIT: Well it's certainly not amazon because there it's $250 as wel: http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-BD-P16...3592666&sr=1-1

And these are all temporary sales anyways. If you are lucky to stumble upon. Same with Blu-ray movies. I was at Walmart where I saw these prices, so it's quite relevant as it's one of the major retailers. Fry's is no better.

The point is at long as at B&M stores it costs what it costs that's the real price. Online sales and deals are not a real measure of price.

And again, Samsung probably has a better deal within BDA, I can't even imagine Toshiba getting into BD production when they have to pay through the nose and will probably lose money.