Sony and Toshiba working together on wireless HD

[frank_t]

http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/01/03/w....ap/index.html

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just thought it odd that the two companies squaring off on the next physical media format can at the same time belong to a consortium working on a spec to transmit HD content to displays sans wires.

[Marcusarilius]

Matter, anti-matter together?

[ranma]

Kinda normal for bussiness. I.E. Toshiba owns the cell processor factory for sony's ps3s

[Septimus Prime]

Yup. Toshiba is actually one of the three companies who founded the CELL. Hell, even the Xbox 360 is running a CELL prototype CPU from IBM (the other of the three founders).

[Neo65]

Japanese companies are made up of various business units. If you know them well enough, you'll realize that each business unit competes with other business units within the same company even more aggressively than with outside companies.

The reason is simple : promotion to higher echelon in corporate HQ requires that GMs in other divisions stumble badly. My guess is that the GM and his top lieutenants of the division that runs the HD DVD business (in Ome, I believe) are basically maxed out in terms of the career prospects within Toshiba because of the way this is unfolding. That alone will make (eg) the semicon GM rub his hands in glee.

[ranma]

And actually, I believe sony control(51% share) and nominate CEO of the major HD DVD drive and control chip suppilier.

One of the biggest HD DVD strong point was, NEC which control 70% of current DVD laser head and chip, was HD DVD backer. Sony resolve this problem by cooperating with NEC, to form a new company which controlled by sony(51% share) to manufacture Blu-ray and HD DVD lenses and chips.

[STI Jaguar]

Sony actually owns both BD and HD-DVD and is basically manipulating the entire market to it's own ends. This is why I support HD-DVD...

wait a minute...

-some HDdvd meathead.

[kjack]

Originally Posted by frank_t

just thought it odd that the two companies squaring off on the next physical media format can at the same time belong to a consortium working on a spec to transmit HD content to displays sans wires.

There are typically dozens of both collaborating and competing projects between two companies of this size. Trick is that they don't take it personally, it's just business. Even for smaller companies, today's competitor can be your friend next month.

[frank_t]

Originally Posted by kjack

There are typically dozens of both collaborating and competing projects between two companies of this size. Trick is that they don't take it personally, it's just business. Even for smaller companies, today's competitor can be your friend next month.

i hope they can make it work (the wireless HD).

i had tried to stream HD video I shot with my vid cam to the ps3 from my PC in another room over 802.11g wireless and it was terrible. had to hardwire the ps3 into the switch next to the pc. the video was encoded AVC with fairly low-bit rate DD 5.1 audio

not to stray too off topic (and I get your point above, just always find it strange as we take this stuff way too personally in these forums), but...

ultimately I'd like to see a managed copy of HD-content to a server in my house that I can then stream [wirelessly] to whatever device I want -- an iPod, HDTV, SDTV, etc. let is be transcoded as necessary.

[David Forbes]

Wireless HD would be incredible. I wonder how affordable gen 1 products are going to be? Keith, any inkling at all of where prices might be?

[statikcat]

Wireless N should be able to stream high bitrate HD and it has been around a while. But really, not too long ago we finally got audio and video to just one cable lol. I guess for media center/server applications this would work well.. but most people do not have HD files to stream. HD is primarily on hdm. So this is just eliminating a cable?

[bwillcox]

Originally Posted by Septimus Prime

Yup. Toshiba is actually one of the three companies who founded the CELL. Hell, even the Xbox 360 is running a CELL prototype CPU from IBM (the other of the three founders).

Actually, the Xbox 360 is using a three core PowerPC processor, not a Cell processor. The Cell processor also uses a PowerPC core for system/control, but the Cell is a completely different beast from what Xbox uses.

[WimeTime]

I don't know if there is any truth to it, but I heard soemthing about Toshiba and Sony both originally working on blu-ray as the next format, and Toshiba figured they would test the market to see what the people wanted. So HD-DVD came along.This all start in the early 90's. Does anyone know if there is any truth to this or am I just gullible?

[DaViD Boulet]

Wireless N should be able to stream high bitrate HD and it has been around a while. But really, not too long ago we finally got audio and video to just one cable lol. I guess for media center/server applications this would work well.. but most people do not have HD files to stream. HD is primarily on hdm. So this is just eliminating a cable?

This concept of "high bit rate HD" is already going in a bad direction... because wireless needs to replace *uncompressed* HD transmission... ie, it's a "wireless" version of your HDMI cable which is transmitting full decoded 1080p60 and multi-channel PCM audio. There's no high/low bit-rate issues... you're transmitting linear digital 1080p video and you need wireless to accomodate that required bandwidth... plain and simple.

[daisuke149]

Originally Posted by ranma

Kinda normal for bussiness. I.E. Toshiba owns the cell processor factory for sony's ps3s

didnt that deal fall through and so toshiba does in fact not own the sony MP facilities?

[kjack]

The semiconductor groups of CE companies are very independent from the CE products groups.

The semiconductor groups will typically sell their chips to any company that wants them, and will fab/package/test other company's chips (foundry services).

The CE product groups can typically use chips from any company they wish to meet their feature/cost/schedule target.

[PLASMA-1080P-FULLHD]

Japanese company do that all the time. They might compete for one format but they will join venture for something else that will benefit them both

[Terjyn]

Not sure why you said "Japanese" companies. Companies all over the world do this.

Any company larger than a certain size will have projects working with "enemies" of other parts of the company.

[whippersnapper]

Originally Posted by frank_t

http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/01/03/w....ap/index.html

--

just thought it odd that the two companies squaring off on the next physical media format can at the same time belong to a consortium working on a spec to transmit HD content to displays sans wires.

Well, it seems that Microsoft is being left in the dust once again. Apparently, the executive they have assigned to these home entertainment solutions is spending all his time posting on internet websites instead of trying to be innovative and get his folks to be innovative.

Oh well, Microsoft will come up with an inferior competing solution several years down the road and try to monopolize the wireless HD by offering bribes and other "incentives". They might even try some viral internet marketing badmouthing the Sony-Toshiba-Intel solution. They'll certainly say that the Microsoft solution is "good enough".

[DaViD Boulet]

Well, it seems that Microsoft is being left in the dust once again. Apparently, the executive they have assigned to these home entertainment solutions is spending all his time posting on internet websites instead of trying to be innovative and get his folks to be innovative.

Oh well, Microsoft will come up with an inferior competing solution several years down the road and try to monopolize the wireless HD by offering bribes and other "incentives". They might even try some viral internet marketing badmouthing the Sony-Toshiba-Intel solution. They'll certainly say that the Microsoft solution is "good enough".

Beyond brilliant.