Pioneer, a leading maker of consumer electronics, will reportedly cease production of its DVD recorders and will concentrate on Blu-ray disc devices, which are more lucrative to manufacture. The firm will get key-components for the Blu-ray consumer-oriented recorders from Matsushita Electric Industrial, according to Nihon Keizai Shimbun news-paper cited by AFX news-agency.
According to the report, Pioneers consumer DVD recorders did not bring any profits, which is why the company is planning to stop developing the appropriate products on its own. Instead, it would continue to develop Blu-ray disc burners and use for them “key microchips and software from Matsushita”.
In 1999, Pioneer became the world’s first company to commercialize DVD recorders, and is currently the fourth-biggest supplier of the devices, the report claims. However, price competition with other consumer electronics makers caused Pioneer’s DVD burner business to become unprofitable.
Ceasing of the development means that sooner or later the firm will halt production of the devices, whereas linking up with Matsushita, which is known for Panasonic and Technics brand-names, means that the firm will try to keep the Blu-ray recorders development costs as low as possible. The report further claims that the the company is trying to eliminate unprofitable businesses and focus on its lucrative car-navigation equipment and other vehicle-electronics operations.
Pioneer recently began to ship its Blu-ray disc burner for personal computers for the price of about $1000.
Pioneer did not comment on the news-story.
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Latest comment: 06/07/06 07:51:39 AM
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...in other news, consumers around the world yawn at the idea of purchasing a device with highly restrictive DRM and replacing their current DVD movie library. Several of these consumers could be heard saying, "I'll stay out of this round of player upgrades and wait until something more consumer friendly and truly revolutionary comes around." When asked why so many consumers were put off by the idea of purchasing a Blu-Ray drive, Sony had no comment.
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Posted by: 9Nails
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Date: 06/07/06 06:46:06 AM]
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HD-DVD is not any better. It was also implemented with those so called "highly restrictive DRM". Hollywood Studioes even requested HD-DVD to employ same level kind of DRM with BluRay when shiped to countries like China. It means that, HD-DVD will carry different DRM across different region, and lacks a common standard!
On the other hand, both BluRay and HD-DVD are initially targeting for high end AV users. THey are those who worth to pay much money for software, payng $10000 for a true 1080 HDTV, and another $20000 for a system which can fully utitliza the performance of Dolby HD. Those people would not be care about $100-200 difference between HD-DVD and BluRay. THey would care such $100-200 and get 1080i HD-DVD instead of higher quality BluRay with 1080p!
Taken in mind that Toshiba had never produced a quality DVD/LD player/recorder that can beat Sony/Pioneer/Panasonic's offering. HD-DVD can never pull the interest of high end AV market!
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Posted by: ET
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Date: 06/07/06 07:51:39 AM]
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