No, we're not kicking Toshiba while they're down. In fact, it's pretty much the opposite. When you read up on Toshiba's purchasing of some Cell manufacturing plants, you might start to imagine Sony and Toshiba have been in talks for quite some time. See, right after Toshiba announced its plans to drop HD DVD, they turned around and finalized a major business deal with Sony -- buying microchip processing facilities in western Japan for the advantageous price of $835 million USD.
Basically, starting in April, Toshiba is going to assist Sony in producing Cell and RSX chips. Take note that in days past, Toshiba didn't really sing praise to either of these technologies and wouldn't put them in their own products. Now they sing a different tune. Sony and Toshiba were in talks since last October about these facilities but couldn't agree on a price -- the fall of HD DVD may have led both to find a resolution and we're glad to have Toshiba on board.
While the news was already technically broken on Saturday by NHK, Toshiba has today held a press conference to tell the world that HD-DVD is being dropped. Toshiba will no longer develop, manufacture or market HD-DVD, bringing the shipping of hardware to retailers to a gradual halt by the end of March. The format war ends today with the much-signposted victory for Blu-Ray. This is obviously great news for PS3 owners (as well as would-be PS3 owners who were sitting on the fence about Blu-Ray).
We suspect we'll hear from Universal and Paramount before too long regarding their schedule for Blu-Ray releases. Finally we can expect to see films like Serenity and TV shows like Heroes on our favourite Hi-Def medium. Obviously, we'll keep you up to date with any announcements these studios make. The "war" is finally, officially, over. How does that make you feel?
Everyone, let's get together. This is (hopefully) going to be the last HD DVD/Blu-ray news you'll ever read (we're saving one post for when Microsoft joins the Blu-ray camp). After the obvious death bells were ringing, Toshiba has finally called it quits. Although HD DVD players will still be sold in stores for now, Toshiba will abandon all new production of players. Most likely, they will be quick to create a Blu-ray player of their own.
According to Reuters, "Toshiba is expected to suffer losses amounting to tens of billions of yen (hundreds of millions of dollars) to scrap production of HD DVD players and recorders and other steps to exit the business."
That's what happens in a high-risk all-or-nothing format war. Sony must feel pretty good right about now, especially after historic defeats with Betamax, ATRAC, UMD, and more. Blu-ray in PS3 was a risky gamble: it created a price point that many mocked, and generated a good amount of negative publicity for the Japanese electronics giant. However, it was also the Trojan Horse that allowed it to gain such a large percentage of the HD-aware mindset. With this victory, it appears that Sony's plans are finally coming together.
Posted Jan 12th 2008 2:30PM by Nick Doerr Filed under: News
The Cell processor, a key component in the PS3, has been making headlines all over the place this week. This latest bit of news for your mastication and consumption comes from Toshiba again. Remember how they put the Cell in an HDTV just for kicks? Now they've slapped the sexy processor in a laptop. It makes up the backbone of their new Spurs Engine -- a laptop that has motion-sensing, video-indexing, face-morphing, upscaling madness.
Imagine footage from a mobile phone or camera getting processed heavily from their crappy resolution into 1080p -- this laptop can do it and from the demonstrations, it doesn't look that bad at all. It's not going to look like it's 1080p, but it won't be blocky and horrid to look at. YouTube lowered our standards, after all. We'd talk more about it, but there's a video of the demonstration available -- check it out and get ready to wish for another electronic device to utilize the Cell Processor.
Posted Jan 11th 2008 6:30PM by Nick Doerr Filed under: News
What would a TV be like if it used the Cell Processor as the base for its technology? Toshiba asked themselves this question and built a prototype television utilizing the Cell and we have to say -- it's almost sensory overload. First off, real-time upscaling of regular ol' TV to high-definition is done flawlessly. No need to pay a premium for HD channels, we guess. The TV will do you one better -- in addition to upscaling the picture, you can actually zoom in on the picture being shown in real-time and the picture will auto-focus and re-upscale itself. Impressive? You bet. Useful? If you're analyzing a sports game, perhaps.
How about this: instead of channel surfing one channel at a time, the Cell allows your television to display multiple channels simultaneously. It's like picture-in-picture, but 48 of them. Or 24, depending how you interpret our math. Clicking on one of these thumbnails brings up the video in the bottom half of the screen while the top half continues to stream the other channels; push whatever the button is again and it moves to full-screen. These small thumbnails are in standard definition -- if they were in HD, the TV would only be able to stream six of them at once. Other features haven't been decided on yet, but with that at the very outset you can bet this will be the ultimate TV set to own in the coming years. Color us impressed.
In additional cost-reducing maneuvers, the troubled Japanese electronics giant has announced that they're no longer going to develop the manufacturing technology for producing microchips with circuitry of 32 nanometers or less. These responsibilities will be handled by partners Toshiba and IBM. This announcement comes week after the sale of both Cell and RSX graphics chip facilities to Toshiba.
Shares of Sony were up 0.5 percent after the announcement.
Sony has officially announced a deal where they will sell Cell production facilities to Toshiba. The Cell chip, which was developed in part by IBM and Toshiba, is regarded as the main reason why PS3 is so powerful. Production facilities for the chip will be sold to Toshiba in a deal that's worth an estimated 130 billion yen ($1.1 billion US).
Due to the sluggish sales of the console, Sony will need to reduce losses from the games division to something more acceptable. Osamu Hirose, analyst at Tokai Tokyo Research Center, notes that this is a good step in the right direction for the beleaguered electronics company. "In this context, the spin-off of the chip business, which requires continued and heavy investment, is positive for Sony," he said.
Sony will also sell RSX (the graphics chip of the PS3) manufacture to Toshiba. Sony stock rose 0.6 percent after the announcement.
The second time in less than a month, Sony is supposedly considering selling its chip manufacturing plants to rival electronics company Toshiba. According to a report by Reuters, "Sony was in negotiations with Toshiba to sell its manufacturing facilities in Nagasaki, also in western Japan, for advanced microchips including the Cell microprocessor." The Cell processor is a vital part of the PS3 architecture and is one of the costliest and most powerful aspects of the system.
Although both companies have declined to comment, the Business Daily Nikkei has estimated the sale value of the production facilities at 100 billion yen ($856 million).
When Sony, Toshiba and IBM began development on the Cell processor, they had bigger plans for it than just running PS3s, and it looks like Toshiba has been hard at work to put it to more use.
Daily Tech reports that Toshiba plans to take the Cell processor out of the PS3 and extend it for use as a graphics chip in its notebook PCs. Toshiba has coined the new technology SpursEngine and should unveil its first laptop using the graphics chip at the CEATEC JAPAN 2007 conference in early October.
However, the truly interesting piece is DailyTech's speculation that Toshiba may have even more plans for the SpursEngine beyond just PCs. It could look to eventually implement the technology in other consumer electronics, including its line of HD DVD players. Now how dastardly, would that be?
The European Commission has recently initiated an investigation into the two new formats of media being released, namely, our lovely Blu-Ray and the less-lovely-but-still-worth-a-look HD-DVD. No, Sherlock Holmes was not called in on this detective's dream, but an unofficial probe was. "Under what charges?!" demands Sony and Toshiba, spear-headers of the two formats. The EUC responds: "The Commission suspects that the licensing terms the companies are applying breach European competition rules." Egads!
An unnamed spokesman for the EUC told reporters that they had sent letters to the "makers" of Blu-Ray and HD-DVD to request licensing info, but refused to name names. Sony did that for them, eagerly telling the world they received one of the letters and have agreed to cooperate openly. Good move, since Toshiba and other HD-DVD makers have refused to comment or go public about the claims. Well, however the initial investigation goes, the EUC will either drop the whole thing or create a large anti-trust probe investigation. Let's hope it's the former so we can get our PS3's in a few months. Please!
In a recent interview at DailyTech, they sat down with IBM vice president of Semiconductor and Technology Services Tom Reeves. He discussed the abilities of the cell processor and, more importantly, the inability to successfully create many working 8-core units. The cell processor is so complex that "IBM even accepts chips that have only four out of the eight cores working." Egads! Hopefully those aren't going into our PS3's, right? No worries. However...
Sony won't allow cell processors with less than seven working cores. But they aren't clear when it comes to using seven or eight. Will it be a throw of the dice when we buy a PS3 as to whether we have a working 8-core processor or one with only 7 working bits? Would making the lower SKU accept the 7-core be any better? If that seventh one shorts out and you had the PS3 with only seven working cores, you have to send it back to Sony or IBM or Toshiba to get it fixed. That's a pain and it depends on your warranty. No matter what, they need to get these things working because November is pretty close.
Electronics company Ricoh has announced that it has mystically created an "optical component that reads and writes all disk formats-Blu-ray Disc and HD-DVD, as well as DVD and CD-with one pickup and one objective lens," says a report at EETimes. July 12-14 is the International Optoelectronics Exhibition outside of Tokyo and the device will make its public debut at that time.
How does it work? Diffraction, friends. Diffraction: "The diffraction plate is placed between lasers and an objective lens. The diffraction grating is designed to adjust a light beam to an optimum incident ray relative to the objective lens so that light focuses on the proper position for each disk format." Neat.
Does this bring a short stop to the console/format wars before they have even begun? Would Sony ever consider delaying the PS3 further to incorporate this type of technology? That is doubtful and doesn't really matter too much, most likely. Initially this technology is just for disk players, but someday it may reach console merit. Until then, the wars will continue, if only on gaming/multimedia consoles.
The next generation of optical media is riddled with safety and anti-piracy mechanisms (think the AAC encoder on Sony's music program Sonic Stage ...what a pain). With this encryption in mind, movie producers felt they could rest easier, knowing their works of art (debatable at times) could not be plundered by CyberPirates, or Cyrates.
But avast, mateys! A loophole has been discovered and it's fairly elementary. The first Blu-Ray enabled PCs have the ability to take a lovely full resolution screenshot whilst a movie is playing. Manipulate that Print key (Prt Sc for the hunt n' peck typists out there) so it takes pictures to match the frames per second of the actual movie and you've got a pirated video track! Snag the audio separately and voila -- a super HD movie free for distribution.
Sony and Toshiba are going to counter this with updates for the video players and graphics card that will close the loophole before too much damage is done. Still, kudos to the magazine c't that found said loophole and Heise Security for bringing it to our attention.
Some want it, others don't. Either way, Sony is going to get Blu-ray into your home one way or another. That's their plan anyway, thanks to the PlayStation 3. Like we've said before, it's not just about the games this time and Sony is in it for the long haul.
That's what makes this little bit of information so intriguing. What would happen if a Blu-ray partner like Samsung, who is technically not supposed to mess with HD-DVD, decides to foster a partnership with Toshiba in an attempt to make a hybrid player? Everyone is talking format wars with HD-DVD and Blu-ray going head-to-head. But what happens when you have a machine that can play both?
Having a dual-player would essentially take the "war" out of the formats. And with Sony trying to smuggle their medium into homes via the next-gen PlayStation, how is this move going to affect their strategy? It gets even more interesting with talks about making an HD-DVD/Blu-ray hybrid disc to go along with it. The kicker is this: Sony knows the PS3 is a good deal, as a Blu-ray platform, as they're trying to appeal to non-gamers with it as well. But would non-gamers still want to invest if they can have their cake and eat it too with a hybrid machine that can play both formats?
[UPDATE: Well, looks like you can cut through this rumor like a knife through warm butter. Check this out for the skinny on the mess. So all of the above is more of a hypothetical scenario. Yeah, that's it-]
Everyone, let's get together. This is (hopefully) going to be the last HD DVD/Blu-ray news you'll ever read (we're saving one post for when Microsoft joins the Blu-ray camp). After the obvious death bells were ringing, Toshiba has finally called it quits. Although HD DVD players will still be sold in stores for now, Toshiba will abandon all new production of players. Most likely, they will be quick to create a Blu-ray player of their own.
In additional cost-reducing maneuvers, the troubled Japanese electronics giant has announced that they're no longer going to develop the manufacturing technology for producing microchips with circuitry of 32 nanometers or less. These responsibilities will be handled by partners Toshiba and IBM. This announcement comes week after the sale of both Cell and RSX graphics chip facilities to Toshiba.
The second time in less than a month, Sony is supposedly considering selling its chip manufacturing plants to rival electronics company Toshiba. According to a report by Reuters, "Sony was in negotiations with Toshiba to sell its manufacturing facilities in Nagasaki, also in western Japan, for advanced microchips including the Cell microprocessor." The Cell processor is a vital part of the PS3 architecture and is one of the costliest and most powerful aspects of the system.
When Sony, Toshiba and IBM began development on the Cell processor, they had bigger plans for it than just running PS3s, and it looks like Toshiba has been hard at work to put it to more use. 
The European Commission has recently initiated an investigation into the two new formats of media being released, namely, our lovely Blu-Ray and the less-lovely-but-still-worth-a-look HD-DVD. No, Sherlock Holmes was not called in on this detective's dream, but an unofficial probe was. "Under what charges?!" demands Sony and Toshiba, spear-headers of the two formats. The EUC responds: "The Commission suspects that the licensing terms the companies are applying breach European competition rules." Egads!
In a recent interview at DailyTech, they sat down with IBM vice president of Semiconductor and Technology Services Tom Reeves. He discussed the abilities of the cell processor and, more importantly, the inability to successfully create many working 8-core units. The cell processor is so complex that "IBM even accepts chips that have only four out of the eight cores working." Egads! Hopefully those aren't going into our PS3's, right? No worries. However...
Electronics company Ricoh has announced that it has mystically created an "optical component that reads and writes all disk formats-Blu-ray Disc and HD-DVD, as well as DVD and CD-with one pickup and one objective lens," says a report at EETimes. July 12-14 is the International Optoelectronics Exhibition outside of Tokyo and the device will make its public debut at that time.
The next generation of optical media is riddled with safety and anti-piracy mechanisms (think the AAC encoder on Sony's music program Sonic Stage ...what a pain). With this encryption in mind, movie producers felt they could rest easier, knowing their works of art (debatable at times) could not be plundered by CyberPirates, or Cyrates.
Some want it, others don't. Either way, Sony is going to get Blu-ray into your home one way or another. That's their plan anyway, thanks to the PlayStation 3. Like we've said before, it's not just about the games this time and Sony is in it for the long haul.
