Sony selling their Blu-Ray factory to Toshiba
A bit of surprising piece of news appeared today on the internet - the format war between HD DVD and Blu-Ray is officially over and one shop after another gets rid of everything with HD DVD logo on it. One would expect Sony and other companies promoting Blu-Ray format to strengthen their position, but exact opposite happened: Sony Corp said on Wednesday it will sell its microchip production facilities in western Japan to Toshiba Corp for 90 billion yen ($835 million), in their latest move to focus on their core businesses. The equipment will be used by their semiconductor joint venture that will make high-performance Cell chips and RSX graphic chips, both used in Sony’s PlayStation 3 game console, as well as other microchips that go into Toshiba products.
The venture will be established on April 1. Sony, which is focusing on image sensor chips for digital cameras and pulling away from heavy investments for cutting-edge chip production equipment, said in October it would sell production facilities for making key microchips used in the PS3 to Toshiba, but the price has been unavailable. It’s also well known that Sony had to pay a lot more money (estimates ranged around $300 / unit) for every PS3 console with Blu-Ray drive, which turned out to be one of the reasons why this format won in the final battle with more than 8 million owners in contrary with only 1.4 million sold HD DVD drives.
Source: AP
Well…that makes no sense.
BluRay: We won, yay!
HD DVD: Screw you guys, I’m going to Disneyland.
BluRay: N’aw, here, have a consolation prize: us!
HD DVD: Uhhh…. ookay. Sure…
April fools day?
WHAT??? I wouldn’t of guessed that would happen…and for only $835 million ……..lol
Hey Martin…someone is pullin your chain bud?
I’m calling BS.
Wtf is Source: AP? Give a link, and to a reliable source
Well as april first is april fools…
Weird…
They sold that one and now they will aquire other factory for maybe half the money they earn from that sale.
And btw, AP is The Associated Press…
LISTEN TO ME !!!!!!
This is a HUGE waste of money on both Sony and Toshiba, all of it, EVERYTHING! WHY? Because high definition disks are not going to catch on the same way DVD’s did. Why? Because it’s all gonna go digital. Instead of going to a dvd rental store, all we will need to do is download the movie onto a flash drive, plug it into a “flash-drive player” and watch it on our TV. You can do this over the internet or you can download movies to your flash drive from a massive selection available on “digital movie machines” found in your common grocery store. It will be VERY easy for the consumer and less costly for movie producers. If you want to own the movie, just buy the “flash-drive-movie-chip” available in stores.
Believe me. I know.
Sony is selling their Chip production facilities
Whats a Blu- Ray Factory ??
Also this news is old its been on the net since last year
The factory has NOTHING to do with BLU RAY, theyre selling basically the factory that makes an essential PS3 component LOL
The Headline is in no relation with the article, what has the chip factory to do with BluRay ??? BS!
Wake up and smell the google…
http://afp.google.com/article/LeqM5hWngrNdd1DlbkiBlQaV9Cw3bRndQ
http://www.reuters.com/article/ousivMolt/idUST28617520080220
Why on earth would they wanna sell their chip factory to Toshiba anyway? :S Unless that was the deal for them ending the format War :S
Sorry still sleeping…
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5hWngrNdd1DlbkiBlQaV9Cw3bRndQ
WOW……. SLOW RLS DAY HEY FELLAS
sPaM = 11
Try reading the news in future before you post, THEY ARE NOT SELLING THERE BLU-RAY factory to Toshiba, they have set up a join t venture with Toshiba To sell there Cell Factory.
CPU’s not Disc’s.
Quote from article “The venture will be established on April 1″
April first…. yow.
@Martin
They aren’t selling a Blu-ray factory.
Change the headline.
rs links? i want to try out this blu ray factory on my linux before i buy it.
it’s the chip facility not Blu-ray… this is quite logical since the cell cpu is from Sony, Toshiba and IBM.
And i was under the impression that IBM rather than sony stood behind the production of cell chips.
Any way, this piece of news is obviously tabloid, probably true in every word, except the essential facts…
@9
Congrats my friend, I have been saying the same for many months now and few believe me.
Blu-Ray will not last as long on the shelves as DVD has (and will).
Don’t be fooled… Optical Discs are NOT the future… Blu-Ray is only a way for those involved to make a little more money while a much better format (digital downloads onto flash drives) does not become mainstream.
Mark These Words my friends and forget Blu-Ray.
@9 / @23
I also believe the same thing. But no one listens to me.
@9, @23 and @24. Any idea when this would happen and would this be same quality (eg 1080p) as blu-ray? Blu-ray is there now…
Wow, a company hug, how sweet.
If they put at least one decent movie on Blu-Ray or HD DVD I might be interested in this whole HD scene.
As it is, it’s only useful as a 20GB backup medium.
@25
I personally don’t know when such a better format will arise, but think about it: it took 10 years for Blu-Ray to “attempt” to move DVD out of the way. The way tecnhology is being thrown at us these days, do you think it will be long before something better appears? I don’t think so!
I don’t know when, but soon a better format (non-optical disc) will arrive.
@27
Not even that! a 500 Gb external hard drive costs 100 euros, much less than the equivalent Blu-Ray discs, which offer less user-friendlyness.
Serious archivers don’t use optical discs anymore… they use extra hard drives.
(Actually the best back up is on hard drive ANDA on optical discs, with many copies just to be sure)
Downloads and flashdrives probably is the future yes but now it’s all about blu-ray, appararently. And how stupid would you feel if you just bought a HD-DVD player, bwahhahahaaahahaa!!! But maybe over time they become rare museum items, like the laser disc..
wow this is a surprise, maybe there was some secret agreement, so the format war to be ended
This is strange indeed!!
But also this means, that Toshiba is ages ahead in the HD technology, than Sony.
It was a same that the far superior HDDVD lost the battle.
I won’t believe this until I fully see it happen, this sounds very strange. Also, IBM makes the PS chips, I guess Sony could manufac the chips and use the design IBM gave them, but this all sounds weird. Then seeing April 1st in there makes it even more iffy.
Although it sounds strange (probably because of the RLSLOG’s title), you can go to the Reuters and do a search for ‘Sony’ and ‘Toshiba.’ I don’t think a company can go unscathed for making an announcement that’s actually an April Fool’s Day joke. In actuality, I think this move greatly benefits Sony more, as the joint venture will reduce costs for their PS3 and other products while making Toshiba their wage slaves.
This reminds me of the Microsoft/Apple thing years back.
Just conjecture though.
All you morons talking about how flashdrives and downloaded contet will take over blu-ray really need to learn how much a flashdrive costs and how much one can contain. 32Gb is quite expensive and it’s not even sure thats enough for a blu-ray move.
Also realise that a large amount of isp’s have limited amounts of traffic (eg. 50Gb/month) not to mention the strain this will put on the already “crowded” internet cables. And since most people sit on crappy 4/8Mbit dsl connections it’ll take forever to download the eqvilent amount of data an blu-ray disc holds.
An uncompresed blu-ray movie can be up to 50Gb and a decent
1080p encode atleast 10Gb
The title is misleading, Sony sold a Chip factory not a blu-ray factory.
Here’s the Reuter’s link:
http://www.reuters.com/article/ousivMolt/idUST28617520080220
There s a quite simple explanation to this.War is over.Blue-Ray wins.Ok the.Now Sony will focus on selling PS3 (the one with Blue Ray,remember?)and gets Toshuba working for them manufacturing the chips.It s all about the console war.The real money is in there.
@34 hgf
So what are you doing here? You think people actually give a crap about HD? Scene movies usually come out under the 2gigs. Quality loss is usually minimal. Who would download a B-Ray movie as is?
@25
I don’t know when, but a it already exists.
Look at us who download hd-rips for example.
Also I saw on MTV Cribs thats 50cent has a system with over 3000 movies. The technology already exists. A 1TB hard drive is $350 CAN. A lot less then a blu-ray player. You can fit about 125 HD-movies (mkv) on 1TB. Thats less then 3$ per movie. And prices of hard drives are always going down.
The Future is Digital, not Discs.
Well, limited d/l quotas is a good point - I just hope RLSLog keep posting normal scene 700MB movies, coz I for one certainly don’t have the quota to be downloading 2GB per movie.. it’ll be a shame if that’s all we end up with.
I guess epic widescreen movies like The Warlords require more - 2CDs then - but the average movie really doesn’t need HD, and it’s simply too much to download.
So Blue ray won huh? WANNA BET!
All-star LED team quietly working on Blu-ray successors
Blu-ray is finally getting some momentum in the market, and two secretive start-ups are already looking at ways to replace the standard, or at least retrofit it.
Kaai and Soraa are trying to develop lasers and LEDs that could, conceivably, replace conventional LEDs in the lighting market and serve as a standard for optical data storage, Ford Tamer, the newest partner at Khosla Ventures, said in an interview. The firm has invested in both companies.
Tamer didn’t provide many details on the companies, but that’s par for the Khosla Ventures course. The company is placing many investments in companies that are still in the exploratory and scientific discovery phase and thus wants to keep a lid on details. Tamer did, however, say that Kaai and Soraa are both interested in the lighting and data storage markets. (And if anyone can ferret clues out of the “aa” in both company names, send it along.)
Both companies will exploit gallium nitride, which is also the basis for existing blue LEDs and blue lasers, although the technologies at the two companies differ from each other. Blue lasers, used inside Blu-ray players, would be used in far more movie players and computers than they are seen in now, but they cost too much, said Tamer.
Shuji Nakamura
(Credit: UC Santa Barbara)”We will go after lasers first,” he said.
What makes the companies intriguing are the founders Shuji Nakamura and Stephen DenBaars. Most Americans, even those in the tech industry, probably don’t know Nakamura, but in Japan and some electrical engineering circles, he’s a major celebrity.
Nakamura invented the blue LED in the early ’90s while working for Nichia. When combined with a particular phosphor, blue LEDs produce white light. Energy-efficiency white light LEDs will likely begin to replace incandescent bulbs in the future. (Blue lasers, of course, are also used to store data on Blu-ray discs.)
Nakamura also made history by suing his employer, which gave him a bonus of around $200 for his invention, and winning in court. The somewhat un-Japanese action on Nakamura’s part resulted in a settlement in the millions. He later became a professor at the University of California at Santa Barbara. He also won the Millennium Technology Prize. (You can read more in a biography of Nakamura by Bob Johnstone called Brilliant!)
“I was in Japan with him and people come up to him in the street for autographs,” Tamer said.
Stephen DenBaars
(Credit: UC Santa Barbara)DenBaars, a professor of material science at the University of California at Santa Barbara, is one of the leading researchers on LEDs. DenBaars has said that if 25 percent of the lightbulbs in the U.S. were converted to LEDs putting out 150 lumens per watt (higher than the commercial standard now), the U.S. as a whole could save $115 billion in utility costs, cumulatively, by 2025.
“They (Nakamura and DenBaars) found the next breakthrough in LEDs in 2000 and they have been working on it for seven years,” said Tamer.
Tamer, who formerly worked at Broadcom, will primarily focus on energy-efficiency investments. Earlier this month, for instance, the firm announced it has an investment in EcoMotors, which is developing diesel engines that could get 100 miles per gallon.
What else is Khosla Ventures cooking up? It has investments in G IV (semiconductor lighting), Seeo (a new type of polymer battery), Topanga (a plasma light similar to one produced by Luxim), and Lumenz (a zinc-oxide LED company).
Seems like Blue ray buyers got screwed just as bad as the HD buyers.
Wow, I can’t believe Sony sold their Blu-Ray factory after they just won the format war. Incredible.
And especially when the whole business is going to disapper shortly once HD movies move onto flash drives.
Crazy world we live in.
@25
5TB drives are coming in 2010.
Thats a collection of 600 hd-movies.
It will take a lot less place that 600 blu-ray cases no?
OFFS.
Sony HAVE NOT sold their BluRay factory at all. The Cell processor was jointly developed by Sony, Toshiba and IBM. It is the factory that makes their cell processors that they are selling to Toshiba. Nothing to do with BluRay at all. Sony do have their own BluRay production plants but they also outsource in exactly the same way as they do with DVD production.
@34 hgf is correct.
Only a few countries have the infrastructure to provide full high definition downloads at the same quality, resolution and bitrate as the high def disc formats. Even then, most people will run into such nasties as traffic shaping, download quotas and everything else ISPs do to limit use.
This is just shocking to me that after winning the format war, Sony would go and sell their Blu-Ray factory to their former enemies.
——>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holographic_Versatile_Disc
Now that’s a real disc… Blue-Ray is also yesterday like so much else. Give me some UHD please…
whatve u been smoking martin?
This is a very smart move by Sony to sell their Blu-Ray factory, since they realize that there will be no market for physical discs in the very near future.
All HD movies will be sold for use on flash drives, and people won’t need an actual disc with the movie on it. For Sony to get $835 million for their Blu-Ray factory now is a great move.
Very dumb move by Toshiba though.
optical discs will be around for a long time yet with the exception of countries like japan, the internet in lots of countries varies from fast and cheap to overpriced and lame like here in australia. places like new zealand are worse off again.
see usage limits and speed shaping are becoming more commonplace over the world so with HD movies being over 2 gig as a .mkv and say your like me and have a 40 gig limit a month what does that leave you with? and that is including all the other things like gaming, streaming TV?? and general web browsing.
i personally welcome blu ray since my housemate has a HDTV and surround sound so i can enjoy high def, but the cost of BR is still too much 40 - 50 bucks for one isnt worth it!! so if the costs go down i will be getting more BR eventually!
but still online is the future but the way the internets currently is, it is unlikely that with everyone and i mean everyone who has the net starts downloading HD content, the internets simply will die!!!
I totally agree with the DL thing. but then again it would take quite some time to happen. for the tech-savvy people, perhaps its happening right now, the DL thing. especially the internet is freakin fast these days like in Japan they have like 1gigabit internet there and hard disks are dirt cheap too. but for the average joe who cant even program his vcr properly… uhhh…
so are they not gonna make anymore blu-ray’s???
Obviously no one reads the comments or the article.
The title of this article is WRONG.
Sony sold their Cell processing factory to Toshiba. NOT a Blu-Ray factory. Infact that is OLD news.