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No plans for Toshiba to go Blu

by on20 February 2008

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$30 royalties making them think twice?


While Toshiba’s technology in the current generation of standalone HD DVD players is very close to the specifications of Blu-ray’s 2.0 profile players, it would be possible for Toshiba to change the drive in their current design and load new firmware and they would be pretty much ready to go, except for joining the Blu-ray Disc Association and to start manufacturing the players.

Toshiba has no current plans to do this, and that might have more to do with having to pay rival Sony $30 per player in royalties than anything else. While the modular and nature and excellent design of Toshiba’s third generation HD DVD standalone players do, in fact, lend themselves well to conversion to Blu-ray players, it’s just something that Toshiba is not ready to do.

It is clear and it makes sense that Toshiba needs time to lick its wounds in the HD format war loss before it is ready to move over to the Blu-ray camp. Toshiba is going to need to have Blu-ray support down the line to go with their extensive lineup of other HD products, but today is just too soon for Toshiba to move in this direction. While we have no doubt that it will happen, it just will take a little more time.

Last modified on 20 February 2008
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