Digital Home Thoughts - News & Reviews for the Digital Home

"Imagine this -- you, sitting in a dingy airport terminal waiting on your flight with a lifeless laptop and just 10 minutes to spare. You've got oodles of spreadsheet work to do before 8:00AM tomorrow, and unless you get it done on this flight, you're fubared. Toshiba is looking to make said scenario seem like one that's not so grim, as its prototype SCIB (Super Charge Ion Battery) purportedly has the potential to get 90% full in just 10 minutes."

I've been traveling a lot lately and can really appreciate the need for something like this. This will be a killer feature that hopefully Toshiba will license out for all sorts of devices. Of course the cynic in me thinks that technology like this would be kept out of the marketplace in order to maintain the market for extra batteries.

"Toshiba Matsushita Display is about to mass-produce OLED screens that could be used for a wide range of portable devices, according to a report from Japan's Nikkei BP. The joint venture between Toshiba and Matsushita (Panasonic) is claimed to be producing as many as one million 2.5-inch organic screens per month starting from Autumn of 2009 and would be the first Japanese company to do so. The development would be primarily targeted at cellphones, GPS navigators, and other handhelds, the newspaper says, though no specific products have been announced. The screen size is also commonly used for portable media players such as the iPod classic and Zune 80."

OLED is shaping up to be like most of those crazy-cool battery technologies that look so great in concept but never seem to go anywhere in real life. We've seen a few devices ship with tiny OLED screens, like the outer displays on mobile phones, but few devices using OLED screens as their primary display. We've been hearing the hype about the power savings of OLED screens for several years now, so why haven't they come to market? My guess is cost - no one ever talked about the costs of those 15" prototype screens we were seeing at CES 2008. There's no mention of screen resolution - one would hope they'd be VGA screens if they're 2.5" in size. QVGA would be a let down, even if the power savings would be substantial. And the article is wrong about the Zune 80, that device uses a 3.2" screen. Hopefully we'll see some OLED screens in that size as well.

"Toshiba has halted production of HD DVD players and recorders and is close to making a decision on whether to throw in the towel on the high-definition movie disc format, Japanese public broadcaster NHK reported Saturday evening. The decision, which NHK said will likely cost the company several tens of billions of dollars, is being made in the face of flagging support by movie studios and major U.S. retailers. "We are making considerations following the impact on sales of Warner's announcement but we haven't made any decision," said Keisuke Ohmori, a spokesman for Toshiba, when reached on Saturday evening. He was referring to the January decision by Warner Bros to stop issuing movies on HD DVD and go solely with Blu-ray Disc. Other local media reports on Saturday said an official announcement from Toshiba is likely in the coming week."

The fat lady? She's singing.

"The format war has turned into a format death watch. Toshiba is widely expected to pull the plug on its HD DVD format sometime in the coming weeks, reliable industry sources say, after a rash of retail defections that followed Warner Home Video's announcement in early January that it would support only the rival Blu-ray Disc format after May. Officially, no decision has been made, insists Jodi Sally, vp of marketing for Toshiba America Consumer Products. "Based on its technological advancements, we continue to believe HD DVD is the best format for consumers, given the value and consistent quality inherent in our player offerings," she said. But she hinted that something's in the air. "Given the market developments in the past month," she said, "Toshiba will continue to study the market impact and the value proposition for consumers, particularly in light of our recent price reductions on all HD DVD players." Immediately after the Warner announcement, the HD DVD North American Promotional Group canceled its Consumer Electronics Show presentation. The following week, data collected by the NPD Group revealed Blu-ray took in 93% of all hardware sales for that week."



So this is what all those Betamax owners felt like in the '80s. I've never backed an unsuccessful technology format before, so it's a strange feeling knowing that HD-DVD is all but dead. It was the superior format in almost every way, but just like the VHS vs. Beta battles of yore, it didn't have the marketing muscle or industry support to win out in the end. Oh well. I only bought six or so HD-DVDs, so it's not like my investment was huge - and as long as my Xbox 360 HD-DVD drive keeps working, I have a place to play them. I imagine by 2009 we'll see dual-format HD players around $150 or so, so there's a path for those of use with HD-DVD content. In the meantime, if you have an Xbox 360, it's tough to beat the price of $119 for the HD-DVD drive with six free movies total - hell, you won't find many HD-DVD discs for $19 USD each, but that's what it works out to, and you get a free player to boot.