Toshiba Confirms Plans for Blu-Ray Player, Laptops

News
By Jane McEntegart
published

Toshiba has confirmed plans to launch Blu-ray players and computers.

A few weeks back there were rumors that Toshiba was going to bite the bullet and launch a Blu-ray player. The company confirmed reports this past weekend, stating that it intended to introduce products that support the Blu-ray format.

In a press statement, Toshiba announced that it had applied for membership to the Blu-ray Disc Association and went on to say that the company plans to introduce players and notebook PCs with integrated Blu-ray players in the course of 2009, elaborating that the details of the products, including the timing of regional launches, are now under consideration.

Toshiba is known for making good quality consumer electronics, so format-war aside, the company's decision to launch Blu-ray products shouldn't come as a surprise. Why not produce something that will earn you money? Will you be buying a Toshiba Blu-ray player? Let us know in the comments below!

Jane McEntegart
12 Comments Comment from the forums
  • Hanin33
    nope, don't really see much value in them... not owning a HDMI receiver that supports HD Audio signal decoding... nor having an HDTV over 42" that would take advantage of the high bitrate HD content... i prefer using an HTPC and can live with upscaled or streamed HD just fine. Netflix FTW! Dishnet HD service!
    Reply
  • Kaiser_25
    Its the natural progression of tech...5 inch....3.5 inc...cd...dvd..blue ray.. not a real surprise but exciting none the less. Go Toshiba!!
    Reply
  • SAL-e
    NO. Blu-Ray Disk = DRM crap.
    Reply
  • I hope it will be backwards compatible with CD and DVD, and is able to burn CD's and DVD's!
    I'm not about to change my DVD writer for a reading device that can not save data to a recordable.
    Reply
  • back_by_demand
    What is the point of BluRay?

    Billions spent on increasing the capacity of a disk 5 times. For home movies users I can see a point, for computer users pointless. For portable storage we have flash drives bigger, faster and can be reused.

    We need to try and seperate the idea of high capacity media from high definition content, what BluRay does is enforce HDCP. If content protection in the factor then moving away from rotational optical disks should have been the goal all along.

    If I had the money Toshiba spent on HD-DVD I would have looked at SDHC cards. Large enough to hold tons of Hi-Def content, compatible with all SDHC readers in computers, laptops, portable devices. Adding an SDHC reader to an upscaling DVD player is easier and cheaper than having disk reader that reads Blue and Red lasers. Physical media is the size of a postage stamp and the surface wont scratch, even an oversized protective plastic case with the movie poster on it could be the size of an old audio cassette.

    The only thing to do to keep the studios happy would be to find a way to make them read only, (not hard), and to disable copying, (bit harder). If they crack the non-copy bit then the capacity of the media can scale up much higher than optical. Sony have already said a new type of Memory stick could do up to 2TB.

    C'mon Toshiba, get your thumb out your ass and get on it!!!
    Reply
  • grieve
    ProDigit80I hope it will be backwards compatible with CD and DVD, and is able to burn CD's and DVD's!I'm not about to change my DVD writer for a reading device that can not save data to a recordable.This is a pretty good point...

    As long as you can still burn CD/DVD with it then this is good news.
    Reply
  • stradric
    I will never be buying a bluray player. For one, my HD tvs are all only 720p. The upgrade to 1080p only makes sense for a larger TV of which I do not have the room for. Besides that, the bluray players and discs are expensive.

    I'm waiting for the first service to offer downloadable HD content whether it be on Xbox Live or Netflix or whatever. To me, that makes way more sense than.

    I imagine a future where you can go to a high speed download kiosk (or use your computer) and download movies that you purchase to digital media like flash drives. Screw this bluray crap. It's worthless.
    Reply
  • Upendra09
    I own a sony BD player and it is good and all but i often never use it, all the monies i play in it are DVDs and it is upscaled but there really seems to be pointless in buying it, except that i will be ready for future digital Media storage
    Reply
  • Hanin33
    back_by_demand: like your point but i think there's something about extremely small media that turns off the mainstream... just look at the fate of sony's minidisc... while there was more to it's failure than it's small size it's not the first of the mini physical media formats out there. microSD has been around for quite a while now and still very few devices use them in their native format.. almost all devices need an adaptor to at least the miniSD format if not full SD... why? i think people tend to loose stuff easier once it gets to a certain size and then people fear having stuff that small around children so it becomes this big mess and those are the kind of people that make up the bulk of the target audience for something of that nature.

    i think this would be the biggest obstacle to overcome for a media format such as that.
    Reply
  • stevebertrand
    There are BD roms and BD writers. The BD writers are backwards compatible with prior formats. BD writers are a bit more expensive, around 180 dollars right now. BD roms are about 80 dollars.
    Reply