OPINION: Upping the ante

The Japanese press has been full of speculation in the past week over purported plans by Toshiba to introduce a super up-converting DVD player that surpasses current up-converters and produces images from existing DVDs that are virtually identical to Blu-ray Disc.

The speculation was touched off by a report in the Daily Yomiuri  saying the new players would be released “by the end of the year.” According to the report, the new technology was made possible “by developing a large integrated circuit that can instantly convert images produced in the current format into high-resolution images.”

The report said nothing about pricing, nor about whether Toshiba plans to keep the new technology proprietary or will license it to other manufacturers.

So far, Toshiba has yet to officially confirm the reports, but I’m willing to bet they’re pretty accurate. In March, following Toshiba’s decision to abandon the HD DVD format, CEO Atsutoshi Nishida told the Wall Street Journal, “If you watch standard DVDs on our players, the images are of very high quality because they include an up-converting feature. And we're going to improve this even more, so that consumers won't be able to tell the difference from HD DVD images.”

As for any plans to introduce the new players in the U.S., Toshiba America Consumer Products VP of marketing Jodi Sally said in an email, “Although there have been reports from Tokyo’s Daily Yomiuri regarding the launch of high-resolution DVD recorders/players, there have been no specific product plans or introductions announced for the U.S. market.”

Which is not to say there is no such thing as “a high-resolution DVD recorder/player,” or that “specific product plans or introductions” won’t be announced for the U.S. market at some point.

Presumably, the U.S. models would be players only, rather than the player/recorders that are popular in Japan.

Should Toshiba go ahead with the new players, it would represent a break from the hardware maker’s history of studio-friendly product development: a device with a clear consumer benefit and appeal but with no corresponding benefit to the studios.

The studios, in fact, are likely to view the new players as a net negative. They would give consumers another reason not to invest in Blu-ray technology at a time when even Toshiba’s erstwhile HD DVD allies are keen to get consumers buying movies on Blu-ray.

And up-converting players take away any incentive those consumers might have to replace any of their existing DVD libraries with new-fangled discs.

On the other hand, it’s not like the studios really had Toshiba’s back in HD DVD’s battle with Blu-ray.

To hear Toshiba officials tell it, they were stunned when the company’s long-time studio partner Warner Bros. abruptly switched its allegiance to Blu-ray in February, precipitating HD DVD’s ultimate collapse.

The introduction would also further underscore—if more were needed—a fundamental mistake made by Blu-ray developers and their studio allies: They acted as if they were working in a vacuum, and that improvements in digital processors, compression software, manufacturing processes, digital delivery and other refinements would not continue apace all around them while they tried to engineer the perfect, “future-proof” piece of hardware.

In fact, they were in a race to establish blue-laser technology in the marketplace—not against HD DVD but against the rapid pace of digital technology development—before consumers had other options.

They still are.


Get more of Paul Sweeting's analysis here.