Business News Holding

Tag: bda

  • Toshiba Enters Blu-ray Group

    Toshiba announced that the company has applied for membership of the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) and plans to introduce products that support the Blu-ray format.

    Almost seven-year format war is over. Toshiba, the primary backer of the HD DVD format, which has been defeated after a number the largest movie studios (e.g. Warner Brothers) and U.S. rental services and retailers announced the exclusive support for Sony backed Blu-ray products, finally decided to join Blu-ray group.

    “In light of recent growth in digital devices supporting the Blu-ray format, combined with market demand from consumers and retailers alike, Toshiba has decided to join the BDA,” says the company’s brief statement.

    Toshiba aims to introduce digital products that support the Blu-ray format, including BD players and notebook PCs integrating BD drives, in the course of this year.

    The first rumors of the company’s new HD strategy appeared in June this year, when the Toshiba’s president, Atsutoshi Nishida, told shareholders at the annual shareholder meeting in Tokio, that the company is considering making Blu-ray products.

    Later, at the end of July, the Japanese newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun raported that Toshiba would introduce a Blu-ray player called BD-18 before the end of the year. Thus the latest company’s announcement didn’t surprise anyone at the HD market. The decision to support Blu-ray format is considered a good (and the only logical) business move.
     

  • Japan Grasps Blu-ray – US Starts To Get Taste


    Blu-ray players bucked generally weak Black Friday sales in the US – helped considerably by average prices dropping to USD $200, according to DisplaySearch.

    Stripping out sales of Sony’s PlayStation 3, the researchers report that US Blu-ray Disc player revenue "more than tripled from a year earlier" during the week of Thanksgiving and Black Friday .

    Over USD $30 million was generated on sales of 147,000 Blu-ray decks.

    With Sony and Samsung leading the charge by dropping the price of their entry-level machines to below USD $200, overall costs averaged half the $400 price tag of a year ago.

    Coupled with the strong BD player sales, retailers have been reporting sales of HDTVs have been similarly buoyant despite the economic difficulties.

    If the US – finally – appears to be on the cusp of grasping Blu-ray, take a look at the Japanese market.

    BD recorders now account for half of all DVD recorders in the country – up from just 10 per cent last October.

    Even if this phenomenal rise is down to price drops it must still make for cheery year-end reading for the Blu-ray Disc Association.

    Now maybe it can turn its attention to the price of Blu-ray Disc prices.

    While the release of The Dark Knight is expected to boost the high-def format’s disc sales, the general perception is that the movie studios need to cut prices to ensure Blu-ray really does take off.

  • Growth Towards 3D HDTV Gains Pace


    Panasonic has submitted a proposal for a 3D Blu-ray standard to the Blu-ray Disc Association.

    The standard would offer guidelines for creating "left/right-eye two-channel full HD images".

    Hiroshi Miyai, Panasonic’s director of AV developments, said that the changes should be quite simple, claiming that the discs would simply need some kind of flag to identify image data, equipment and other elements supporting 3D imagery.

    "We really don’t need any other major changes," he said.

    Panasonic’s submission comes as Korea’s LG announces its intentions to bring 3D TVs to some markets in 2009.

    Choon Lee, vice president director of LG’s Digital TV Research Lab, gave no specific information about the launch details other than that one or two unspecified markets will be getting the technology.

    He said the tech itself would undergo a slight change to existing Blu-ray technology and use the media to keep costs to buyers down.

    In Japan, viewers receive two hours of 3D programming daily over satellite broadcasts.

  • Sanyo Laser Could Double Blu-ray Discs' Capacity


    Sanyo has announced that it has developed a blue-violet semiconductor laser capable of outputting 450mW.

    The company said this allows it to read and write data on discs with up to four data layers at speeds of 12X.

    At present, Blu-ray discs store 25GB of data on each of its two layers. Sanyo’s four-layer disc would hold 100GB of data or about eight hours of HD video.

    Sanyo claims that a device equipped with the laser would be able to burn an entire two-hour program to disc in as little as ten minutes.

    The only thing you’ll have to wait for is the new laser coming to market – Sanyo said it’s unlikely to be available for at least another two years.

  • VOD Will Reach Blu-ray Quality – And Beyond

    hdtv.biz-news.com spoke to Mark Horchler, corporate marketing director with video compression provider ATEME, about its plans to deliver video of Blu-ray quality and beyond.

    The Blu-ray Disc Association doesn’t take kindly to satellite and cable providers claiming their products deliver high definition picture and sound “equal” to that delivered by Blu-ray Disc.

    The trade body recently described just such assertions of equality as irresponsible and misleading to the consumer.

    Yet if the noises coming out of video compression provider ATEME are anything to go by, the BDA might have to get used to it.

    ATEME is a leading provider of MPEG-4 AVC / H.264 video compression technology.

    Its offline and streaming encoders power numerous high-end digital video applications, including mobile TV, Video on Demand (VOD) and IPTV.

    These solutions support both standard and HD content, deployed across any platform – from mobile to Ultra HD.

    Mark Horchler, corporate marketing director with ATEME, said there was room for continued improvement with H.264.
    He said the 3rd generation of the codec had just been released and was 25 per cent more efficient.

    “I think we are reaching near Blu-ray quality,” he said. “I have not made a set by set comparison but we are there.”

    Horchler said image quality was continually improving and the company was experimenting with Ultra High Definition video.

    “That’s the future of high definition,” he said. “H.264 will take us to Blu-ray quality and beyond. Blu-ray is largely based on H.264 technology.”

    France, where ATEME was founded in 1991 and has its head office at Bièvres near Paris, is a strong market for the company.

    It recently announced that its H.264 encoding solutions were now serving over one million French IPTV customers in HD.

    This was as a result of major French broadcasters using the encoders to provide HD video over low bitrates.

    IPTV has reached mass market status in France, largely because of its strong ADSL subscriber base of over 15 million customers, value for money offered by triple play services and healthy competition amongst ISPs.

    By the end of this year, France is expected to have up to six million IPTV subscribers, with a quarter having access to HD channels such as France 2 and M6 that use ATEME’s H.264 encoders.

    “France is a leading market for IPTV and is miles ahead of any other country in Europe, if not the world,” said Horchler.

    However, he said that while there was a lack of HD content in some markets, it was only a matter of time before that changed.

    “The potential for HDTV is huge. We are only at the beginning,” he said.

    “As more and more people adopt HD equipment, flat-screen TVs and so on, there will be a snowball effect. People will ask for more HD content.”

    Every market is different

    While IPTV is particularly strong in France, Horchler said that in other countries the infrastructure favored cable or satellite.

    In the US, where the cable market uses MPEG-2, he said there was a strong argument for using H.264 and he believed cable providers would start adopting it.

    “Our solutions carry over all these platforms,” he said.

    Another area where ATEME saw potential for H.264 was the mobile market, something that fitted well with its partnership agreement with Adobe.

    Horchler said the codec could adapt to various sizes and shapes of media device and had a scaleability that allowed the same video to be broadcast on HDTV or a mobile phone, for instance.

    This was a feature that would fit well with the live broadcast of sporting events.

    The internet offers immense possibilities for video and Horchler said he was confident that H.264 would be able to adapt to new opportunities as they emerged.

    He said there were many interesting applications, such as bundling video with advertising services, that were just beginning to take shape.

    “We are in that space. We work with Adobe Flash and this is compatible with 90 per cent of PCs out there,” he said. “I am sure by next year there will be some crazy idea for a business.

    “But the codec will adapt to the business model. It’s so flexible.”

  • Blu-ray is an unstoppable train

    Europeans told to learn from US retailers in order to convert consumers to Blu-ray and drive it into the mainstream

    Why upgrade to Blu-ray when the old DVD player still manages to churn out a pretty good picture?

    That appears to be a question many people have been asking themselves, especially when prices for Blu-ray players and discs remain high.

    Not for much longer, however, according to various speakers at the Blu-ray Disc Association’s (BDA) press shindig at the IFA electronics trade show in Berlin.

    They were keen to dispel any concerns that the format will never quite make it into the mainstream – though it was conceded that more work is necessary before Blu-ray finally puts DVD to the sword.

    Jim Bottoms, managing director of Futuresource Consulting, told the IFA conference that DVD’s market penetration had reached a point in the 1990s when it could be described as an “unstoppable train”.

    He said that was now the case for Blu-ray in the US and within 6-12 months it would also be true for Europe.
    “At this stage it’s too early to make that call for Europe but we are only six months away from it,” he said.

    “In the US, that call can be made now. It will be pretty much impossible to stop Blu-ray becoming a mass market product in the US.”

    He added: “We are moving forward to a situation where Blu-ray really is growing with its own momentum to become a train that is unstoppable.”

    Work remains to be done in Europe

    Things aren’t hurtling along quite so forcefully in Europe, though, where BD sales will reach 12 million discs this year, according to Bottom.

    This only accounts for around 2 per cent of total video sales, although he expects the share to climb to 5-6 per cent next year – and keep rising swiftly.

    However, by 2012 DVD will still lead in the UK, 56 per cent to 44 per cent. BD will do better in Germany – it’ll take 46 per cent of the market – but less well in Spain and Italy – 43 per cent and 39 per cent, respectively.

    To encourage the market along, Bottoms said Europe had to learn from the US, particularly from retailers there who have got behind Blu-ray by promoting it in stores and demonstrating the format’s superior quality.

    He said there was evidence that some consumers had been “turned off” HD based on only viewing broadcast HD programmes.

    They hadn’t found the quality sufficiently superior to judge it worthwhile paying to upgrade from their existing DVD players.

    Demonstrating Blu-ray at point of sales areas had been shown to be very effective in persuading people about the format’s quality.

    Initiatives such as improved retail support would ultimately help close what Bottom described as the HD content gap in Europe.

    He said this situation had arisen because currently around a third of households had HD screens but only 2 per cent could get high def content.

    This was compared to the US, where 50-60 per cent of households had HD screens and around a third could access high def content.

    Frank Simonis, chairman of the Blu-ray Disc Association’s European Promotions committee, not surprisingly agreed that Blu-ray had reached the point of going mass market.

    He said the European market would start to accelerate in the autumn, adding: “You will see a lot of good things this fall. European consumers are hungry for high def.”

    Simonis defended the lag in the release of European movies compared to the US and the higher price of European Blu-ray discs – a huge sore point with many consumers.

    He said Europe, despite being a similar sized market to the US, had 15 different languages and individual markets in each country – making it a very different proposition to the US.

    “We have to work on an individual country basis for each launch plan,” he said. “So it’s one year behind the US. It’s not something we like but something that’s due to the nature of the European continent.

    “So we are not doing that badly – in fact, if you put Europe on the same timeline as the US, Europe is faster.”

    How would you describe the Blu-ray Express – hurtling unstoppably or trundling along? Please let us know your comments.

  • PC disc drives to boost Blu-ray growth


    Blu-ray Disc drives installed on PCs are expected to help “convert” more consumers to the format, with growth forecast at 117 per cent annually through 2013.

    According to the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA), a report from IMS Research shows that non-broadcast HD video households are expected to increase 90 per cent annually through 2013, reaching 38 million homes worldwide.

    Although the research study shows that satellite continues to lead in households converting from analog to digital, OEM-installed Blu-ray Disc drives on PCs are expected to play an important role in increasing user numbers for the format.

    Victor Matsuda, Chairman of the BDA Global Promotions Committee said: “Blu-ray drives within PCs is a key strategic market which we foresee growing strongly in the short, medium and long term.”

    IMS Research suggests that the increasing prevalent of Blu-ray discs in PCs over the next five years will help generate revenue of US$46 billion for Blu-ray.

    Over the next 12 months, the market will see Blu-ray PC offerings from Dell, HP, FujitsuSiemens, Packard Bell, Acer and Sony.

    As a result, Blu-ray Disc sales are expected to benefit as well as sales in the HDTV display market.
    The IMS report joins a study from Futuresource Consulting, which forecasta that Blu-ray discs will outsell standard DVDs by 2012.

  • Blu-ray step away from being HD format for China

    “Chinese companies will play an important role in driving the rapid adoption of the Blu-ray Disc format worldwide” – Xinhua Zhao, president of CESI Technology

    The Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) has announced that DigiRise Audio (DRA), a locally-developed Chinese audio codec, has passed an important technical evaluation, and is now on its way to being adopted into the format.
    The adoption, if it is approved, is seen as a major step towards Blu-ray becoming the high definition optical disc format for China.

    Meanwhile, CESI Technology Co. Ltd, a contributor member of the BDA, has been designated as the first official Blu-ray Disc Test Centre in China.
    CESI Technology’s joining BDA as a contributor member and their establishment of the Test Centre is another indication of the strong momentum building for the Blu-ray Disc format in China.

    Xinhua Zhao, president of CESI Technology, said BD, as the successor of DVD, presented new business opportunities for the Chinese consumer electronics industry.
    “I am confident that Chinese companies will play an important role in driving the rapid adoption of the Blu-ray Disc format worldwide,” he said.
    “The establishment of our Blu-ray Disc format Test Centre will help complete the ecosystem of Blu-ray Disc business and this centre will help Chinese companies shorten the time to market while saving cost.
    “We expect to collaborate closely with the BDA to bring the high definition experience to Chinese consumers as soon as possible.”

    The establishment of the Test Centre is a critical piece in the Blu-ray Disc value chain in China.
    From today, Chinese manufacturers can receive verification services for the official production of BD-ROM Movie Players at the centre.
    This will dramatically shorten the time needed for product development and market launch of fully compliant BD products for Blu-ray Disc product manufacturers.

    Sumitaka Matsumura, chair of the BDA China Task Force, said the BDA was working hard to bring HD Chinese consumers and the development with CESI Technology was another “significant indication” of the strong support for the format in China.
    “The establishment of an official test centre in China is critical to the acceptance of Blu-ray Disc in China by the industry and consumers and so we very much look forward to the contribution of CESI Technology,” he said.