Inside a Toshiba HD-DVD player

[pretender2j]

Not sure if any of you have seen this video already? A guy pulls apart a Toshiba HD-DVD player and finds the drive to be a standard pc drive with IDE and a Molex power connector. He also finds that it is a fairly standard pc with a 2.5GHz P4 and some DDR2700 RAM.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5dsiCXsDH6g

Hope you enjoy

JB

[JTK]

Originally Posted by pretender2j

Not sure if any of you have seen this video already? A guy pulls apart a Toshiba HD-DVD player and finds the drive to be a standard pc drive with IDE and a Molex power connector. He also finds that it is a fairly standard pc with a 2.5GHz P4 and some DDR2700 RAM.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5dsiCXsDH6g

Hope you enjoy

JB

Laptop in a box.

Even Home Theater Magazine and some of the other "non PC" magazines had that out there, clear as day, when these players hit the streets.

Thank you for posting this irrefutable proof to what myself and many others have been saying for months about these piece of junk.

I know I had a few feathers ruffled from people that thankfully are no longer posting here.

Toshiba and MS have attempted to pull off one of THE biggest shams in the history of consumer electronics. There's some of your proof right there, folks.

[Maximus]

News is that they can't have an SoC design like BD players currently have, HDi won't support it, it needs to be running some layer of windows I imagine, so PCs in a box for a while for Toshiba until they can redo parts of HDi so they don't require a computer.

[pretender2j]

Hey JTK is it a Toshiba HDA1?

Oh and I noticed Toshiba's new HDA2 which all the fanboy's were saying would be cheaper is still $499.

[Maximus]

Originally Posted by pretender2j

Hey JTK is it a Toshiba HDA1?

Oh and I noticed Toshiba's new HDA2 which all the fanboy's were saying would be cheaper is still $499.

It is cheaper, cheaper for Toshiba, they are losing less money on it now.

[Blue]

Have a look at the back of the unit before they pull it appart HD-A1.

[Emannikcufesin]

Originally Posted by Maxpower1987

It is cheaper, cheaper for Toshiba, they are losing less money on it now.

Manufacturing is just like any other industry. The general focus is to produce the same product for less money. Fast production methods result in equipment that can be assembled and sold for less but in no way does it improve on the quality of the units previously produced. This is not only true for HD DVD players but also for Blu Ray players. Which is why I'm an advocate of buying first generation players, regardless of your format preference. All companies have the same goals, to reduce costs and usually that's not to the advantage of the consumer. So why isnt' lower cost to the advantage of the consumer? The lower cost is a result of the equipment being assembled in China for lower labor wages and inferior parts. The Wal-Mart mantra, but that's another topic for another thread.

So this thread is pointless. The HD-A1 is a quality piece of equipment, so is the Blu Ray.

[Maximus]

Originally Posted by Emannikcufesin

Manufacturing is just like any other industry. The general focus is to produce the same product for less money. Fast production methods result in equipment that can be assembled and sold for less but in no way does it improve on the quality of the units previously produced. This is not only true for HD DVD players but also for Blu Ray players. Which is why I'm an advocate of buying first generation players, regardless of your format preference. All companies have the same goals, to reduce costs and usually that's not to the advantage of the consumer. So why isnt' lower cost to the advantage of the consumer? The lower cost is a result of the equipment being assembled in China for lower labor wages and inferior parts. The Wal-Mart mantra, but that's another topic for another thread.

So this thread is pointless. The HD-A1 is a quality piece of equipment, so is the Blu Ray.

I completely understand capitalism thank you.

The A1 is very clunky, and the NEC drive misfires a lot, the specs of the computer part are very good, better than the laptop I am typing off infact. The implementation of the software was the exact opposite, awful.

The problem for Toshiba at the moment is moving to a SoC design, which is going to be difficult for them because the HDi spec didn't allow for it from the beginning as it was designed for a computer. For Blu-ray companies there is no trouble with the SoC design, because the manufacturers had a lot more say in how the devices should work and they knew that this method of manufacturing is going to be cheaper in the long run.

So from G3 onwards expect Blu-ray players to be cheaper than HD DVD players, unless of course Toshiba continues to sell the player at cost or makes a loss on them like the A1. The difference between the two formats is that HD DVD was designed for a quick win, which is why there were so many early gains in this war by the HD DVD camp. Blu-ray was built with a long-term plan which they have now started to execute since the PS3 was brought to the market, and that is why we now see gains being made by the BDA.

All-in-all I wish HD DVD would give up this nonsense so the large majority of consumers can go into a store and pick up a BD player without worrying that they might be wasting $700-800, and then we would see some real price drops in software and hardware.

[pretender2j]

Originally Posted by Emannikcufesin

So this thread is pointless. The HD-A1 is a quality piece of equipment, so is the Blu Ray.

Excuse me but this thread is not pointless. if you look at what is in my original post you will see i'm not making any personal comments about the play just thought everone would like to see the insides of an HDA1.

Please no arguing. Here at the Blu-Ray forum we pride ourselves in being well mannered and discussing instead of arguing.

JB

[Nismobeach]

Originally Posted by JTK

Laptop in a box.

Even Home Theater Magazine and some of the other "non PC" magazines had that out there, clear as day, when these players hit the streets.

Thank you for posting this irrefutable proof to what myself and many others have been saying for months about these piece of junk.

I know I had a few feathers ruffled from people that thankfully are no longer posting here.

Toshiba and MS have attempted to pull off one of THE biggest shams in the history of consumer electronics. There's some of your proof right there, folks.

Wow. I never would have expected that thing to be made out of mostly plain Jane PC parts under the skin. IMO, That's kind of a rip off given that the HD-DVD drive and tv specific outputs are the only unique things in box.