Roughly Drafted's take on Blu-ray victory

[Galley]

Lessons from the Death of HD-DVD

Toshiba wanted to dump HD DVD back in 2005, but was pressured by Microsoft?

Through 2005, Toshiba continued to struggle with HD-DVD. The components required to to render HD video and display Microsoft’s HDi were similar to a low-end PC, and cost roughly $675 just for the bill of materials. That left Toshiba with a major hardware loss when trying to sell the players at a $500 consumer price target. The company was ready to drop HD-DVD that year and join the Blu-Ray consortium, but Microsoft pushed it to continue.

The first HD-DVD players weren’t ready until early 2006. Blu-Ray players debuted just weeks later, priced closer to $1000. By the end of that year, Microsoft began selling an external $200 HD-DVD player for the Xbox 360, just as Sony introduced its PlayStation 3 with an integrated Blu-Ray player.

[Grubert]

Originally Posted by Galley

Lessons from the Death of HD-DVD

Toshiba wanted to dump HD DVD back in 2005, but was pressured by Microsoft?

It's not the first time I hear it.

HD DVD was supposed to have launched in 2005, with a substantial first-to-market advantage over Blu-ray. They even had a tentative title list during CES 05. But then AACS got delayed (among other things), so the launch got pushed to 2006, thus missing the crucial holiday season.

If you think about it, Toshiba was (and is) 2nd-tier in CE and by mid-2005 it was clear it wasn't getting any more support from manufacturers, and that it had lost the time advantage. So there was no real possibility of 'winning.'

[Neo65]

This is the line that most piqued my interest :

Through 2005, Toshiba continued to struggle with HD-DVD. The components required to to render HD video and display Microsoft’s HDi were similar to a low-end PC, and cost roughly $675 just for the bill of materials. That left Toshiba with a major hardware loss when trying to sell the players at a $500 consumer price target. The company was ready to drop HD-DVD that year and join the Blu-Ray consortium, but Microsoft pushed it to continue.

If we think about how successful the perception of HDi 'superiority' over BD-J was supposed to be, you have to realize the HDi people did a valiant job of twisting facts and major obfuscation that had even supposed experts baffled.

We do know that HD-A1 launched with a P4, the HD-A2 with a 900MHz celeron. The BD players typically had SOCs with 300-400MHz MIPS-like riscs or external ARM like RISCs, in all cases, tiny processors that are < 1/4 the speed of a 900MHz celeron (without even considering MMX or the simd extensions!).

Yet so many believed that BD-J was much more resource hungry than HDi when the exact opposite was true. The reality is actually that HDi is a bloated processor hungry beast that is typical of binaries coming out of redmond, and yet they managed to twist things around to let people believe the exact opposite.

Of course, JAVA is no saint either when it comes to being a processor hog, but between native byte code vs interpreted javascript, even PC neophytes easily understand which takes more processor power to run.

In the end, I think the whole HDi/BD-J thing is an interesting exercise in improving the value of HDM, but unfortunately, the facts appear to be clear that the current crop of buyers into HDM really don't find that stuff THAT interesting. Which is unfortunate for the people working on them.

My suggestion is that if there really is room for the interactivity in blu-ray, the people who want to push this better think it through very carefully and come up with something compelling. Right now, every single execution of the interactive concepts from spinning coins/skulls/space-invaders/painted-cars have been rather uninspiring.

The problem with overpromising something with superlative adjectives is that it build up expectations, and when the reality of what people are seeing is even less than their pre-hype thoughts on this, the disappointment will kill interactivity even faster. After a while, it will become the butt of jokes. And lets face it, we're probaby a hair line away from that point right now.

So, if people want this interactivity thing to be successful the engineers working on presenting interactivity with BD-J have to come up with something really compelling --- something shocking enough that people will give internet / interactivity another chance. My belief is that they can't use the PC as a template --- there is no keyboard on the BD player, there is only a remote, so there is no exact precedent on how best to present an interactive experience since the most successful model --- the PC won't work here.

[ezcobar411]

I am not surprised by Microsoft's decision to "push" Toshiba. I am more disappointed in Toshiba being unable to see that it was fighting a battle that it couldn't win. With Microsoft or without Microsoft. Hopefully the company will make the wise decision to join blu now. Pouting isn't a good look for a company of that size.

[radagast]

Originally Posted by Neo65

If we think about how successful the perception of HDi 'superiority' over BD-J was supposed to be, you have to realize the HDi people did a valiant job of twisting facts and major obfuscation that had even supposed experts baffled.

Yet so many believed that BD-J was much more resource hungry than HDi when the exact opposite was true. The reality is actually that HDi is a bloated processor hungry beast that is typical of binaries coming out of redmond, and yet they managed to twist things around to let people believe the exact opposite.

Of course, JAVA is no saint either when it comes to being a processor hog, but between native byte code vs interpreted javascript, even PC neophytes easily understand which takes more processor power to run.

Now with this news:

http://www.cdrinfo.com/Sections/News...x?NewsId=22556

BD-J will be easier to use, thus removing any obstacles or objections to it.

[cajun1975]

Originally Posted by Grubert

It's not the first time I hear it.

HD DVD was supposed to have launched in 2005, with a substantial first-to-market advantage over Blu-ray. They even had a tentative title list during CES 05. But then AACS got delayed (among other things), so the launch got pushed to 2006, thus missing the crucial holiday season.

If you think about it, Toshiba was (and is) 2nd-tier in CE and by mid-2005 it was clear it wasn't getting any more support from manufacturers, and that it had lost the time advantage. So there was no real possibility of 'winning.'

Question I have is this. If the Xbox 360 was built with HD DVD playback right out of the box like the PS3 was with Blu would it have made a diffrence??
I think Sony was genius for doing this with the PS3.

GO BLU!!!

[Blu-Ray Buckeye]

Originally Posted by cajun1975

Question I have is this. If the Xbox 360 was built with HD DVD playback right out of the box like the PS3 was with Blu would it have made a diffrence??I think Sony was genius for doing this with the PS3.

GO BLU!!!

It could have been a game-over scenario. PS3 was the trojan horse no doubt.

[Grubert]

Originally Posted by cajun1975

Question I have is this. If the Xbox 360 was built with HD DVD playback right out of the box like the PS3 was with Blu would it have made a diffrence??
I think Sony was genius for doing this with the PS3.

GO BLU!!!

But that would have prevented Microsoft from launching the Xbox 360 in 2005, and they weren't going to give up that advantage vs the PS3.

[Neo65]

Originally Posted by ezcobar411

I am not surprised by Microsoft's decision to "push" Toshiba. I am more disappointed in Toshiba being unable to see that it was fighting a battle that it couldn't win. With Microsoft or without Microsoft. Hopefully the company will make the wise decision to join blu now. Pouting isn't a good look for a company of that size.

Probably sometime since Toshiba built a wince pocketPC (possibly earlier), Toshiba and Microsoft had been working so closely on so many projects, it's pretty obvious Toshiba pays a lot of attention to overtures from MSFT. As for whether MSFT really believed they could win, or all of these were just an attempt to make both fail, or perhaps even to buy a couple of years for their download efforts to start or even just an attempt to improve x360 vs PS3....

Only the key people in MSFT will know for sure. I suspect Toshiba only did it because they really believed they could win. But if MSFT truly believed that a 15GB/layer media with problems in getting recordable media into production is going to win, why wasn't there a SKU of X360 with HD DVD drive built in and HDMI-audio working?

Now what I am most curious about is what Toshiba feels about their relationship with MSFT after the whole HD DVD thing. It's clear that MSFT is distancing themselves from this decision to go ahead with the format war, even a-man is making posts saying that this format war is launched because these were east-asian companies without western common sense, so from his perspective, Toshiba did it alone, and Yoshihide Fujii-san and Hishashi Yamada-san are the likely architects of the format war. A-man also pointed out (quite correctly imo) that this is seen as a failure within Toshiba and that by his absence from the Nishida Press Conference, Fujii is likely to bear the brunt of the blame.

So what is the truth here? I wonder if Japanese mentality are so petty that they would knowingly enter a format war they know they can't win out of spite or some perceived historical wrong, nor do I believe that the checks and balances within Toshiba management is such that they would let a rogue division lose over 100 billion Yen (in total) over a doomed exercise out of corporate pride alone. So the answer must be that the entire company believed they could win this.

Now, why would Toshiba believe they can win this when on the other side, Sony, Matsushita, Sharp, Hitachi are all hellbent on building BD players and components? They must have looked at Sanyo and NEC and realized that these two entities are not exactly in the same calibre as far as CE goodwill is concerned. So why can toshiba management, being very rational, arrive at the conclusion that they can win this?

My belief is thay they must have a had a partner that they believe must be equally commited to see HD DVD succeed. And the only logical partner that they have in mind must be MSFT. There is no other candidate.

If so, the pressure to include a hd dvd drive on the X360 from Toshiba must have been intense, yet MSFT balking at that move still did not force Toshiba to give up on HD DVD --- perhaps by then they already launched, and they were all like frogs sitting in a pot of cold water that was slowly boiling, unable to realize they have to move until it was too late.

Still, what was the most important single thing that caused them to believe they can win? Could it be the rumored per player unit subsidy that MSFT made available to each HD DVD player? Could it be MSFT simply committing software resources to build the players and reference DKs for brcm chips?

[Dew]

Here is their article on the 'Origins of the Blu-ray vs HD-DVD War' from Aug 07.

http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2007/0...vs-hd-dvd-war/

It's a very interesting read.

[scragham]

Originally Posted by cajun1975

Question I have is this. If the Xbox 360 was built with HD DVD playback right out of the box like the PS3 was with Blu would it have made a diffrence??
I think Sony was genius for doing this with the PS3.

GO BLU!!!

the war would have been much closer, but not by THAT much assuming the backers of the format stayed the same. what this really would have done is screwed MS on the console war side of things... HD DVD was simply not ready for prime time when the 360 came out, so if HD DVD had been built in, you have to figure the 360 would have launched within a few months (+/-) of when the first HD DVD players came to market.

which means that they would have only had <1 year's worth of a lead over the PS3...

[Prometheus59650]

Originally Posted by Grubert

But that would have prevented Microsoft from launching the Xbox 360 in 2005, and they weren't going to give up that advantage vs the PS3.

Indeed. As it is they knowingly put a substandard product on the market because they had to "get to market 1st"

[Neo65]

Another take on the format war is this microsoft employee's blog :

http://blogs.msdn.com/andypennell/ar...ormat-war.aspx

June 2006: Samsung release the first Blu-ray player, for $999. A few weeks later the team gathered in front of one and checked out the first BD titles. Man how we laughed: lots of hour-glasses while we waited for, well pretty much everything. The menus were more primitive than DVD menus: tiny chapter icons, and only as many that could fit on a single screen. Weird. Then we watched The Fifth Element, and saw how bad the picture quality was. We couldn’t believe how lame everything was in comparison to HD DVD. And for twice the price. Things were looking up.

He's right about one thing, lots of hour glasses is bad. But his disdain on tiny chapter icons, and only as many that could fit on a single screen reflects the problem with the engineers trying to deliver interactivity. What Andy Pennel doesn't realize that his excitement over the ability to deliver LARGE icons and many items that fill the screen is indicative of what is wrong with their approach to menus for HDM. I actually found that the best thought out pop-up menus are the ones that are not obtrusive on the main movie. For example, Casino Royale's popup had a tiny text that changes as you move the navigation arrow, but the entire selection was a tiny rectangle that did not block the screen.

In the end, when you think about it, the attempt to get glitzy cute icons by HDi engineers is misguided from a GUI perspective. Does anyone remember the paper-clip with Microsoft Office? Is there anything done that was as universally hated by windows users as that animated paperclip icon? How does the engineer who spent months of his life trying to perfect every cute expression on the icon, and getting every detail to work feel if he realized what he was doing?

So when people forget that the movie is what sells the disk, we can end up with GIANT icons that can make the HDi programmer happy, but they make the movie watchers mad, and when it comes down to it, we are the ones buying the movies, so next time, think about how to improve the movie watching experience and not about giant glitzy icons, or animated paperclips.

[PaulGo]

Microsoft currently has two successful products - Windows and Office. They have never really innovated. Even their original operating system MS-DOS was purchased and Windows is based upon Xerox and Apple technology. Office is a combination of Wordperfect and Lotus. They try to stifle competition through leverage with the operating system - Netscape was the browser of choice before Microsoft included IE in the Windows operating system. Even then they tried to put in unique features to render Netscape unusable on many sites. Their only other innovation seems to be purchasing successful companies and exploiting them.

[Kendall]

Originally Posted by Neo65

Another take on the format war is this microsoft employee's blog :

http://blogs.msdn.com/andypennell/ar...ormat-war.aspx

That blog was really interesting - it illustrates that at least at first, there was indeed a very strong relationship between Toshiba and Microsoft. If there's one thing Microsoft is really good at, it's wooing - and woo they did with Toshiba at the start.

It also shows that Microsoft people, for whatever reason, seem to be unable to look at something like the Samsung player and say "OK, some parts of it suck but what parts do not suck that will stand out when the other parts are fixed later"? They seem a little too willing to laugh at competition and then seem blindsided when the world passes them by.

A really interesting insiders take on things though...

[Kendall]

Originally Posted by Grubert

But that would have prevented Microsoft from launching the Xbox 360 in 2005, and they weren't going to give up that advantage vs the PS3.

Aha, but they didn't have to launch with HD-DVD - it could have been included in the Elite, to help justify the higher price and it would have showed a real commitment to the format war that I don't think was demonstrated otherwise. It would have been a little late in the game but being right around the time of Paramount, they would have sold a few million units easily - especially with some kind of Halo 3 tie-in, like a Halo HD-DVD extras disc included with the game. All the Halo game cutscenes in HD-DVD for example? That would have been a powerful sales tool indeed. I remain astounded to this day they did not do that.

[Josh]

It will be interesting if history ends up showing us that this whole war was fought publically online, and privately under-the-table. A lot of money was spent by the HD DVD group planting employees on message boards to deceive consumers, and even more spent buying allegiance. I have no doubt that Toshiba got caught up in a battle that was really meant to be fought by Microsoft and Sony.

[Kendall]

Originally Posted by Josh

It will be interesting if history ends up showing us that this whole war was fought publically online, and privately under-the-table. A lot of money was spent by the HD DVD group planting employees on message boards to deceive consumers, and even more spent buying allegiance. I have no doubt that Toshiba got caught up in a battle that was really meant to be fought by Microsoft and Sony.

I'm still not sure how much online support was paid for, it's easy enough for me to believe there really are as many devoted people behind both formats as we saw. Too often the cry of "shill" goes up now when people express positive opinions in forums, and I am reluctant to think that a paid shill would ever be as tireless or repetitive or dedicated as people posting to online forums in strong support of something usually are.

[Neo65]

Originally Posted by Kendall

That blog was really interesting - it illustrates that at least at first, there was indeed a very strong relationship between Toshiba and Microsoft. If there's one thing Microsoft is really good at, it's wooing - and woo they did with Toshiba at the start.

It also shows that Microsoft people, for whatever reason, seem to be unable to look at something like the Samsung player and say "OK, some parts of it suck but what parts do not suck that will stand out when the other parts are fixed later"? They seem a little too willing to laugh at competition and then seem blindsided when the world passes them by.

A really interesting insiders take on things though...

What is even more surprising is that he overlooked the 2 minute load times on the HD-A1, the occasional freezing with certain disks, and went only to his comfort zone of interactivity. This is what happens when you want to believe something too much that you fail to see things objectively.

For all the weaknesses that the samsung player had, in terms of user experience, the whole package felt like a finished product, while my HD-A1 felt like a linux PC someone put together in a garage. Wait a minute...

[marzetta7]

Excellent article!