Toshiba confirms HD-DVD for 360?

[jvd]

Nope But looking at the two systems, if we accept they are comparable systems in capability, than they should be comparable price wise, assuming both parties are able to make smart decisions of price/performance efficiency. With similar transistor counts and components how can one be substantially cheaper? Okay, you've explained how above.

As I said above , there are diffrences in size , The cell gives twice the flops as the waternoose . There will be a size diffrence. If anand is to be believe the waternoose is even smaller than the 90nm prescot . But popular theory is 165m transitors vs the 230m of the cell

For me, I see MS having maybe cheaper components because of size and structure being offset by other factors. For CPU, they may have a smaller chip than Cell, but the have to pay profit to their fab

And the 2 billion yen fab sony made doesn't have to be repayed ? doesn't have to be upkeeped , doesn't have to pay for the silicon used to make the chips , power the machines , pay the people that work in the plants , pay taxes ? pay upgrade costs when they come around ? pay for the r@d on the chips?

Also remember others have said places like tmsc operate on razor thin profits .

For GPU, 2 chips for GPU might be good for yields, but if say yields for the eDRAM are really poor, those 2 chips could still be alot more expensive than the one die for RSX. Do we have examples of two-die chips like Xenos for price comparison? Do we know it's a cheaper?

That is true , it can be . However the edram is around 120m tranisotrs I believe on 90nm ? Should provide very good yields and even if yields aren't that great a chip that small on a 300m wafers gives you alot of tries . The logic portion is around 200m transitors about the current nv40 size and should get very good yields . The rsx by itself is a huge chip on the 90nm . Also remember that we are getting rumors of very good yields out of the xenos . I really don't see how 2 smaller chips will have worse yields than the 1 bigger chip unless ati messed up huge some where and thast simply not what we are getting in the rumor mill

As you say, you were only going by that one analyst.

To be fair its heavly rumored that the ps3 will be very expensive and we have alot of sony quotes that can be taken as them softening up he public for a more expensive unit . What the final price to us is I dunno. But remember the ps2 price in japan was much higher than what it was in the usa and we got lucky in the usa because of the micron process change between them launching in japan and them launching here .

At the moment we only have different figures from different analysts who will no doubt be getting different estimations. And without comparable estimations for the two differing hardwares it's really far too early to say how much price difference in hardware there is, other than our own best guesses

Well to be fair we keep hearing from the ms camp that it will be around the same price as the xbox 360 cost to us and from the sony side we are getting mixed signals about it being priced higher . I wish i had the exact quotes from sony but don't have time to look them up since its 6am and i can't sleep .

Of which mine is very poor as I know sod all about chip fabbing cost but I still can't see XB360 being $100 cheaper to make, especially with HDDVD drive.

Well my numbers arent 100$ cheaper with hd-dvd . It would be 425 vs 494 about 70$ . As I said in that post toshiba may be willing to take a hit on the hd-dvd drives allowing the cost to ms to be cheaepr than it would be . Toshiba may feel that the preimum they will make on the media from both x360 games that might make use of it or the movies they will be able to sell to those x360 users may be enough to share the burden with ms .


Also on the ram. Ms is buying 512 megs of gddr for each console in bulk. They want 10 million systems + made and shipped in its first full year of life which means they can order in huge quanitys . Sony on the other hand is ordering half that amount which will equal (all things equal ) a higher price . Then sony has to make thier own xdr ram of which rambus wants a premium on (they've said it ) or i believe samsung is making xdr ram for sony ? That means paying rambus and samsung both a fee for it .

Lots of things to consider .


Anyway I really don't care to much about either optical medium as I said. The only thing that intrests me about them is evil dead on hd-dvd . So if ms came out with a x360 at launch with a hd-dvd drive for 400$ or the regular dvd drive for 300$ , I would most likely being a crazy idiot for evil dead but the expensive x360 . But if that movie wasn't coming out i prob would pass on it . Right now with a dvd player in my car , one in my lounge , one in my bedroom , one on our deck outside overlooking the pool so i can lounge and watch movies (yea i'm friggen lazy ) I'm not in a rush to update my moive collection that has now surpased 800 movies

 

[cthellis42]

They really can't . Since they made the desicion . They already announced dvd . IF they said oh we are reconsidering it for launch that will be fulling the rumors and all but confirm it . Lot diffrent then if this was pre e3 when nothing was announced and they said they were considering it or looking at the possibilty. The desision was made and now they could be reevaluating .

That's only if you believe that Toshiba has been utterly silent on the matter and only in the past week or two said "holy shit, you know what would be a GREAT idea...? Get Bill Gates or that Allard fella on the horn, we want to talk to him!"

Considering we heard similar rumors a while back, and considering we all KNOW Toshiba'd love to get in on the ground floor with another console (especially the 360, which will be first to market) to counteract the PS3/Blu-Ray combination, they'd have been talking to Microsoft for a while, and MS would have basically come to a full decision if they wanted to announce it definitively at E3.

If they were still in talks and mulling the possibility--working out the cost or such a deal--then they wouldn't have said anything at E3 but "we haven't decided on final specification of the optical drive yet, but it of course play DVD's and be support the play of Xbox games." We message board folk would wonder if they were just debating drive speed, or the possibility of a burner built in, or the possibility of an HD DVD drive, and life would be normal, as "vague" and "coving all your bases" is basic corporate speech. They wouldn't have had any need to commit on such a trivial detail, they'd easily be able to continue talks, and they could ultimately go whatever way the want without stepping on any toes or contradicting themselves.

However, when MS releases a full spec (and not something that's an "oops, we had to pull back from that mhz/ghz because we couldn't make enough chips" thing)... when a few days ago Bill Gates says outright to the effect of "we'll have DVD to start, but we're in talks about putting HD-DVD in a device of some sort later"... That's just way too much information for me. Else the message they're sending is completely asinine. (The only situation I can really dream UP is if they wanted to apply pressure to Toshiba to give them a much better deal by giving them the cold shoulder, but still... Why would MS care that much, and why would they want to directly contradict themselves to save what would probably be a trivial sum to them?)

Chances of it being in the base model? I'd say very little. Chances of it pulling a Panasonic Q from launch? Perhaps. If not, I'd hope they take their time and bring out a solid product later on because--as you've said--it will irritate people to see something they WANTED come out too close to what they've recently purchased and can't return.

 

[jvd]

That's only if you believe that Toshiba has been utterly silent on the matter and only in the past week or two said "holy shit, you know what would be a GREAT idea...? Get Bill Gates or that Allard fella on the horn, we want to talk to him!"

how about this one . Toshiba and ms have been going back and forth with pricing . Ms didn't feel the cost was enough . Got some devs like the guy from doa4 saying hey we want more room , why don't u give it to us so we can make pretty cgi , toshiba on the other hand is seeing that talks failed and wont go anywhere even if started again and see that sony will have an advantage with the ps3 and droped the price lower to what ms wnats .

As I said in another post figuring they can make back the money through the movies sold to those players or wining the format war if they could .

Considering we heard similar rumors a while back, and considering we all KNOW Toshiba'd love to get in on the ground floor with another console (especially the 360, which will be first to market) to counteract the PS3/Blu-Ray combination, they'd have been talking to Microsoft for a while, and MS would have basically come to a full decision if they wanted to announce it definitively at E3.

Gave some points above . I can add this though. Ms could have used e3 as a push to get toshiba to lower the price. Hey look at us toshiba , we will go ahead with standard dvd if you don't give us the price we want and toshiba caved . Or what i said above .

Chances of it being in the base model? I'd say very little. Chances of it pulling a Panasonic Q from launch? Perhaps. If not, I'd hope they take their time and bring out a solid product later on because--as you've said--it will irritate people to see something they WANTED come out too close to what they've recently purchased and can't return.

I don't think its something people want . I really don't want a hd-dvd drive nor a bluray drive right now as in a year or two either or may not exist anymore . But your right , it will upset me if a few months later they put out another model that doesn't have a large price preimum . All things being equal i would pay 50-100$ more and just get the hd-dvd drive . It would be easier to swallow if it lost the format war than if i spent 500$ on a stand alone. To me it would be a 50-100$ hd-dvd player .

Why would MS care that much, and why would they want to directly contradict themselves to save what would probably be a trivial sum to them

Contradict ? No , don't think so . Think of it like the ram everyone was bummed out about the 256 and then ms upped it to 512 and looked good for it .

Ms can come out with a huge announcment at tgs and say we've listend to the developers and the fans and have decided to include the high def drive of the future (or something to the affect ).

That would line up with what toshiba is saying and fatimsu . Do i see it happening ? Mabye . It would certianly be big and a plus if it was standard or an option from the start . would i be bummed if it didn't happen ? Not really

As I said with the optical storage they can simply use more discs if they need more space.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Well to be fair we keep hearing from the ms camp that it will be around the same price as the xbox 360 cost to us and from the sony side we are getting mixed signals about it being priced higher . I wish i had the exact quotes from sony but don't have time to look them up since its 6am and i can't sleep .

I can't supply the exact quotes but I think they went something like...

"PlayStation Flee is thing of most beauty. Beauty has no plice. Lot plice you put on Mona Lisa? PlayStation Flee is work of art in your home. It worth any price to have Mona Lisa in home. Velly good plice even at a tlillion yen"

Anyway, I agree with your reasoning and it seems to paint a reasonable argument for XB360 being a good deal cheaper for MS.

Regards HD playback, will there be a difference in quality between BR and HDDVD given the difference in capacities and transfer rates? If one has inferior picture quality, history suggest this will beomce the standard

 

[jvd]

Anyway, I agree with your reasoning and it seems to paint a reasonable argument for XB360 being a good deal cheaper for MS.

thank you

Regards HD playback, will there be a difference in quality between BR and HDDVD given the difference in capacities and transfer rates? If one has inferior picture quality, history suggest this will beomce the standard

For 720p there shouldn't be a problem. dual layer discs for both should be avalible at the start so you have 30 vs 50 gigs . Worse comes to worse an extra hd-dvd disc but then again the hd-dvd disc should be cheaper . Perhaps tri layer hd-dvd will be ready for launch too changing it to 45gigs vs 50gigs.

As I've siad i think both will get surpased by something else by the time this decade is over . It seems to me like neither are really suited for 1080p . I wouldn't mind a 100 gig single layer disc format . I would wait a few more years fro that . Sadly sony and toshiba can't or just don't want too

 

[Wicked_Vengence]

Just as a side thought, didn't MS say at E3 that they weren't going with the HD-DVD because they couldn't get enough units for the console in time? They could easily turn around and say "Gee, Toshiba really came to the table and made more than enough units. We can actually put them in from the start now instead of later like we originally thought." Everyone would be happy and they wouldn't really look like they contradicted themselves.

Almost like the rumor floating around about the R500 yeilds. "Gee, we have had much better yeilds than we were expecting. Isn't ATI great? We will actually be able to release the R500 at 550mhz because of the nice yeilds..."

 

[mckmas8808]

Regards HD playback, will there be a difference in quality between BR and HDDVD given the difference in capacities and transfer rates? If one has inferior picture quality, history suggest this will beomce the standard

Well I've talked to people that have seen both in action LIVE. Everyone agrees that Blu-ray has a better picture than HD-DVD due to more compression.

Perhaps tri layer hd-dvd will be ready for launch too changing it to 45gigs vs 50gigs.

Yeah and maybe Sony could get their 6X Blu-ray player out by lauch too.

As I've siad i think both will get surpased by something else by the time this decade is over .

Well tell me what that something is. It takes years before something can take over another media. Blu-ray and HD-DVD were introduced years ago yet they have not even made it to the market yet. Once they do and find a winner the companies involved will want to stick with it for at least the rest of the decade.

 

[jvd]

Well I've talked to people that have seen both in action LIVE. Everyone agrees that Blu-ray has a better picture than HD-DVD due to more compression.

Yawn . I perfer to wait for the final product before I say one is better than the other .

Yeah and maybe Sony could get their 6X Blu-ray player out by lauch too.

Care to tell me why you don't think its possible for toshiba to have a tri layer disc ready for launch ?

Well tell me what that something is. It takes years before something can take over another media. Blu-ray and HD-DVD were introduced years ago yet they have not even made it to the market yet. Once they do and find a winner the companies involved will want to stick with it for at least the rest of the decade.

There are plenty of things introduced . There was that one company with the 100gig red laser games , there are the holographic discs in the future .

The longer hd-dvd and bluray fight the longer other formats have to emerge

 

[mckmas8808]

Care to tell me why you don't think its possible for toshiba to have a tri layer disc ready for launch ?

Didn't say it couldn't happen. Just saying that Sony could by then mass produce a 6X Blu-ray drive or a 100gig disc.

There are plenty of things introduced . There was that one company with the 100gig red laser games , there are the holographic discs in the future .

The longer hd-dvd and bluray fight the longer other formats have to emerge

And what support do they have. You said yourself that a technical advantage is not the only thing that matters. Look at Betamax vs. VHS. To me it's about a technical advantage, support, amongst many other things. And Blu-ray and HD-DVD haven't even started fighting yet. HD-DVD has to come out first.

 

[PC-Engine]

Just saying that Sony could by then mass produce a 6X Blu-ray drive or a 100gig disc.

 

[NavNucST3]

Well to be fair we keep hearing from the ms camp that it will be around the same price as the xbox 360 cost to us and from the sony side we are getting mixed signals about it being priced higher . I wish i had the exact quotes from sony but don't have time to look them up since its 6am and i can't sleep .

I can't supply the exact quotes but I think they went something like...

"PlayStation Flee is thing of most beauty. Beauty has no plice. Lot plice you put on Mona Lisa? PlayStation Flee is work of art in your home. It worth any price to have Mona Lisa in home. Velly good plice even at a tlillion yen"

Anyway, I agree with your reasoning and it seems to paint a reasonable argument for XB360 being a good deal cheaper for MS.

Regards HD playback, will there be a difference in quality between BR and HDDVD given the difference in capacities and transfer rates? If one has inferior picture quality, history suggest this will beomce the standard

They both use the same standards, HD DVD is approved by the DVD Forum, which in and of itself may not mean much, but it is also why Sony has only one non-Sony studio behind BluRay. Albeit the studio is big, Disney. Also, if I am correct HD DVD already has over 80 or so movies...(let me find my damn link)...and some top notch ones at that:

http://www.dvdtown.com/article/hd-dvdupdateandlistoftitles/1582/

the list was done in March. *edit* the article was updated April 25th

Both formats have approved a hybrid, Dual-layered DVD/HD DVD or BD-ROM. There should be no quality differences they both support bitrates higher than the HD spec. The only true differences are how much it costs to make the hardware and discs. Not to start a war but HD DVD, should be cheaper to produce as it will use modified DVD lines, not that studios will pass those costs along to us, but last I checked a BD-ROM was about $26 for a blank...so imagine a movies cost. Cost of movies will decide who wins because whomever has the better costs gets to get in bed with the Devil AKA Wal-Mart. Movie studios love wal-mart, that is their primary source of DVD income. Although it will be tough for wal-mart to choose with Disney being in the BD camp...

As I have said before I have already preordered so I could care less, but as someone that owns a couple of hdtvs, if I could get an x360 with HDDVD I will be a happy camper. If not at least have a viable upgrade path, so I can put my D-VHS out to pasteur.

 

[Bobbler]

Just saying that Sony could by then mass produce a 6X Blu-ray drive or a 100gig disc.

You actually edited your post to add more "lol"s?

Way to go.

 

[NavNucST3]

Regards HD playback, will there be a difference in quality between BR and HDDVD given the difference in capacities and transfer rates? If one has inferior picture quality, history suggest this will beomce the standard

Well I've talked to people that have seen both in action LIVE. Everyone agrees that Blu-ray has a better picture than HD-DVD due to more compression.

Well tell me what that something is. It takes years before something can take over another media. Blu-ray and HD-DVD were introduced years ago yet they have not even made it to the market yet. Once they do and find a winner the companies involved will want to stick with it for at least the rest of the decade.

I find it strange that someone would say that BD-ROM looked better than HD DVD when they both use the exact same compression schemes. I won't say that I disbelieve you, just maybe the people you spoke with...

 

[NavNucST3]

Care to tell me why you don't think its possible for toshiba to have a tri layer disc ready for launch ?

And what support do they have. You said yourself that a technical advantage is not the only thing that matters. Look at Betamax vs. VHS. To me it's about a technical advantage, support, amongst many other things. And Blu-ray and HD-DVD haven't even started fighting yet. HD-DVD has to come out first.

I would say that the HD DVD support in terms of movies is solid take a look at my above post or :

Universal:
The Bourne Supremacy
The Chronicles of Riddick
Van Helsing
Apollo 13
U-571
12 Monkeys
Dune
The Thing
End of Days
Backdraft
Waterworld
The Bone Collector
Spy Game
Pitch Black
Conan the Barbarian
Dante's Peak

Warner Bros., New Line and HBO:
Above the Law
Alexander
Angels in America
Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery
Batman Begins
Blade
Catwoman
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Constantine
Contact
Dark City
The Dukes of Hazzard
Eraser
Executive Decision
Final Destination
Friday
From the Earth to the Moon
The Fugitive
Gothika
Hard to Kill
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
House of Was (2005)
The Last Samurai
The Mask
The Matrix
The Matrix Reloaded
The Matrix Revolutions
Maverick
Million Dollar Baby
The Music Man
Mystic River
Next of Kin
North by Northwest
Ocean's Eleven
Ocean's Twelve
Passenger 57
The Perfect Storm
The Phantom of the Opera (2004)
The Player
The Polar Express
Red Planet
Rush Hour
Se7en
Soldier
The Sopranos
Spawn
Swordfish
Troy
Under Siege
U.S. Marshals
Wild Wild West

Paramount:
The Manchurian Candidate
Spongebob Squarepants
Elizabethtown
Coach Carter
The Italian Job (2004)
School of Rock
Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow
Forrest Gump
Braveheart
Ghost
Grease
Mission Impossible 2
Black Rain
Save the Last Dance
Sleepy Hollow
U2 Rattle & Hum
Vanilla Sky
Lara Croft: Tomb Raider
Star Trek: First Contact
We Were Soldiers

Not to mention the support in my household being that there are at least two vin diesel movies on there, and I would imagine since there is already a D-VHS for fast and furious that it will come out, all of these will be mandatory to keep the wife happy.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

They may use the same compression tech, but if one has more space and higher bandwidth, it won't need so mich compression = better quality.

Sony has only one non-Sony studio behind BluRay

What do you mean by this? AFAIK all major studios are supporting BluRay, with some saying they support BR and HDDVD. Support only means releasing some films on the format and not backing it exclusively. I haven't heard of any studios 'We're not gonna release on format x'.

 

[NavNucST3]

They may use the same compression tech, but if one has more space and higher bandwidth, it won't need so mich compression = better quality.

Sony has only one non-Sony studio behind BluRay

What do you mean by this? AFAIK all major studios are supporting BluRay, with some saying they support BR and HDDVD. Support only means releasing some films on the format and not backing it exclusively. I haven't heard of any studios 'We're not gonna release on format x'.

Blu-Ray has Sony-owned Columbia Tri-Star, and Sony just bought MGM. Recently, Disney said that it would release titles on Blu-Ray discs. HD-DVD is backed by Time Warner (Warner Bros. and New Line), Universal, and Paramount. 20th Century Fox has yet to decide but is on the advisory boards for both formats.

At this year's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, the supporters behind HD-DVD put action behind their words, announcing more than 85 titles that will be released on HD-DVD before year's end, including "Batman Begins", "Braveheart", and the Harry Potter series. With that kind of line-up, it looks like HD-DVD may have taken the lead, leaving Blu-Ray with only titles from one other studio other than the ones owned by Sony and no announced movies.

That is from the article link I posted earlier, I am sure someone will correct me if I am wrong, but if I remember correctly nothing dramatic has changed in those aspects. I actually dont recall any studio saying they would release on both formats. Let me point something out here though, I am NOT against BD-ROM at all, I am all for HD. Hell, I have a D-VHS player how many of you have heard of that, lol? So going with a losing format doesnt really matter to me as long as it has what I am looking for...If BD-ROM doesnt have Dune, The Fugitive, The Matrices, The Harry Potters for my son, and the Vin Diesels for my wife then, it is just another bonus for me as an xbox fan (had to throw that in there to stay somewhat on topic, lol) that it is possible we may see x360HD.

Let me correct something I said earlier, that HD DVD had a higher bitrate standard(36.55) than that of HD spec, I should have said DTV spec (24Mbps).
http://www.hddvdprg.com/hddvd/index.html
http://www.blu-ray.com/faq/

Shifty if you can find me something that says some studios are going both ways I will rescind what I have said, well some of the things

 

[therealskywolf]

They may use the same compression tech, but if one has more space and higher bandwidth, it won't need so mich compression = better quality.

Sony has only one non-Sony studio behind BluRay

What do you mean by this? AFAIK all major studios are supporting BluRay, with some saying they support BR and HDDVD. Support only means releasing some films on the format and not backing it exclusively. I haven't heard of any studios 'We're not gonna release on format x'.

Uh well, the Movie Studios that are making Hd DVd movies have not announced any kind of support torwards Blu Ray.

 

[jvd]

Didn't say it couldn't happen. Just saying that Sony could by then mass produce a 6X Blu-ray drive or a 100gig disc.

So before the end of the year sony will have a 6x bluray drive or a 100 gig disc ?

And what support do they have. You said yourself that a technical advantage is not the only thing that matters. Look at Betamax vs. VHS. To me it's about a technical advantage, support, amongst many other things. And Blu-ray and HD-DVD haven't even started fighting yet. HD-DVD has to come out first.

Right now they have none ? IN a few years when hollywood sees theeres no emerging standard from the war that is going to break out between hd-dvd and bluray ? Wel lthats a whole diffrent story , I would expect hollywood and all of hollywood to get behind it .

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Uh well, the Movie Studios that are making Hd DVd movies have not announced any kind of support torwards Blu Ray.

Yep. I haven't kept abreast but to date, it seems said studios have only announced HDDVD versions of their films, though I'll be surprised if they don't also release BluRay versions when that format is released, just like with the 2 video standards.

 

[mckmas8808]

So before the end of the year sony will have a 6x bluray drive or a 100 gig disc ?

I'm not saying it is. But if you are going to bring up the triple layer HD-DVD disc then I might as well bring up the 6X Blu-ray drive and 100 gig disc.

IN a few years when hollywood sees theeres no emerging standard from the war that is going to break out between hd-dvd and bluray?

Not sure if thats a question or a statement but Hollywood will only not back both formats for a few years. Too much money to be made to just stick with half an audience. I would say within the 18 months studios will start to choose who they side with. And before that happens the consumers will tell Hollywood which format they like more with their money.