HD DVD returns and kicks Blu-ray to the gutter !!

soundsgreat

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Hi,

Hey all you Blu-Ray fans and high def junkie's hold all your purchases of Blu-Ray for the Chinese are about to give you a cheaper alternative and are also about to kick the Blu-Ray where it hurts :yahoo: !

Here's the complete scoop on this !

ust when Blu-ray thought it had clear sailing, a tempest has risen in the East: China Blue Hi-definition Disk (CBHD). Toshiba has licensed its HD DVD to them and it will be the unit world leader in HD optical technology in just 12 months.

Why? The Times Online reports that the CBHD players are outselling Blu-ray in China by 3-1 and the CBHD disks cost a quarter of Blu-ray.

Blu-ray, we hardly knew ye
What happened to Blu-rays dominance? Blu-rays dominance.

Conceived by Sony at a time when few thought upscaling would succeed, the idea was that HDTVs would require HD content on optical media. Reliving the glory days of DVD adoption they forecast tens of billions in revenue from players and disks, enormous licensing fees and consumer-proof DRM.

Watching the CD business crater, studio thought that HD would drive their business to new heights while eliminating piracy. It was an optical gold rush - that has turned into a mirage.

The fundamental problem is that the slightly sharper HD picture isnt worth the extra dollars. 10%-15% max.

Enter the dragon
China has good reasons to support a home-grown HD format. First, the exorbitant Blu-ray royalties hurts Chinese manufacturers ability to compete on price.

An equally important, but unspoken, issue is the econoclypse. The Chinese government has made a deal with the Chinese people: leave us in control and well deliver rising living standards. The current slow down has hit China hard: millions have been laid off and economic growth is anemic.

CBHD is a double win for the Chinese government: billions saved in royalties; and a much cheaper, locally manufactured, luxury item for the restless masses. Blu-ray is simply collateral damage.

Studio knuckle-draggers no doubt are salivating at a tough new form of Region encoding: incompatible formats for the West and Asia. But will that really work?

English is the #2 language in Asia, so English-language CBHDs will be popular. Shanghai vendors will happily sell CBHD players and disks on Ebay. The economics are irresistible and, other than the studios, who will turn down HD content at DVD prices?

The Storage Bits take
Toshibas gambit is brilliant. Instead of taking a total loss on their billion-dollar HD DVD investment, theyll get incremental revenue and, no doubt, valuable future consideration from the Chinese government.

It is a nice win for the Chinese government and manufacturers. Blu-rays high cost has slowed its acceptance to a crawl, so Chinese CBHD players will rapidly climb down the cost curve to prices lower than DVD-only players since they arent paying DVD royalties either.

The studios get a couple of years to make some money on Chinese CBHD releases, but will piracy disappear? Not anytime soon.

The big loser is the Blu-ray camp. Boo-hoo. Theyve consistently misjudged the market and Blu-rays appeal. Guys, Im sorry you made a bad business decision, but its time to man up and take your write-offs.

CBHD vendors should not ignore the writable CBHD market. Many consumers would like something larger than DVDs for backup and much cheaper - and more compatible - than Blu-ray.

Heres hoping the CBHD storage market is running wild by this time next year. CBHD will be the worlds #1 format in unit volume by next year.

The above is a post of ZDNet and the Author is Robin Harris,All rights and other such stuff is belongs to him !


Regards.
 
Hi,

Here are pics of the unit and such !

cbhd-players.jpg


cegSijtYF0meg.jpg


Player from Shinco

11573_300409121040.jpg


TCL Player

11573_300409120751.jpg


Players from TCL and Shinco with some Discs

11573_300409120803.png


The CBHD Logo

Well guys please post your feedbacks and such on this !

Regards.
 
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sounds very interesting, but I have a strong feeling it will (at best) remain a local phenomenon and not have that much of an impact on Blu-Ray outside of China. If it forces Blu-Ray to bring down media and player prices, wonderful, but somehow I don't see it happening.
 
This was bound to happen. In an age where digital media prices is shrinking and capacity growing, it was just a mistake to exorbitantly price the BD. Now the time again has proved that consumer market cannot be ignored when it comes to consumption in the third world countries where prices are the major driving force.

BTW any comments on PQ of CBHD's?
 
Hi,

but I have a strong feeling it will (at best) remain a local phenomenon and not have that much of an impact on Blu-Ray outside of China

Well buddy had it been a normal thing,the world wouldn't have noticed it right ;) ! also since its surrogate mother is Toshiba you can expect it to be out of china soon !

BTW any comments on PQ of CBHD's?

It will be exactly same as Blu-Ray since its based on HD-DVD (its a 100% HD-DVD techonology licensed from Toshiba )

Regards.
 
Without Hollywood backup, no format would come to life. True, Sony is dreaming of continued royalty payments and looking at the trend that may be the case for few more years. Hey, early adapters fuel the research right?

Another threat lurking in the horizon is web 2.0. Once it becomes popular, HD content will be delivered on demand. But again, it is still far away! If you are holding to your horses, by the time it arrives, your horse may be dead and it is against all the principals of instant gratification and consumerism :D
 
China uses lot of standards which are not popular outside their country. For example, their 3G network. They have their own standard for thism which is not used in any other country.

Also, being a country well known for the piracy of Hollywood and other movies, any standard adopted by them is highly unlikely to be popular outside. So far, only universal seems to be supporting this format that too with only 2 titles so far. And also, even though it is based on HD DVD, it is slightly customized and so will not play on existing HD DVD players. Agree with psycotropic - it will only be a local phenomenon.

The studios are not ready for another format war and there is now little doubt that blu ray will reign atleast for another decade.
 
they key thing will be patronage. The hollywood studios will probably ensure that Blu-Ray remains the standard everywhere outside of China, and parallel imports and ebay shipments do not a blockbuster make!

Well buddy had it been a normal thing,the world wouldn't have noticed it right ;) ! also since its surrogate mother is Toshiba you can expect it to be out of china soon !
 
I think this is "THIRD" chinese AV standard I am reading about...
I eel that studio backup is important and it will be interesting to see how it will be accepted outside china...
I raed about some advance VCD & then Advanced chinese DVD based format...I think the later one was discussed on this forum..

Around 3 years back another format was planned ,it was called VMD or Versatile Multilayer Disc...these guys had stall in one of exhibition.Also these uys contacted onida and wantdto launch the format ( I was DVD product mktg head then) That time these guys told us that T Series is supporting this format...

hen I read now about it on wikipedia ,I found company is having uncertain future!

Versatile Multilayer Disc - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Why there is a media which is easily pockatable like SD Cards? Which wll play in my HD Device,MY PC & On my pocket device like cellphone or ipod?
 
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