I thought I would take the time to explain to you a little bit about the Toshiba Manufacturing Company and their history. This post will briefly detail their beginnings, how they entered the US market, and what the future holds for Toshiba.
One, Tanaka Seizosho (Tanaka Engineering Works), was Japan's first manufacturer of telegraph equipment and was established by Hisashige Tanaka in 1875. In 1904, its name was changed to Shibaura Seisakusho (Shibaura Engineering Works). Through the first part of the 20th century Shibaura Engineering Works became a major manufacturer of heavy electrical machinery as Japan modernized during the Meiji Era and became a world industrial power.
Toshiba was responsible for a number of Japanese firsts, including radar (1942), the TAC digital computer (1954), transistor television and microwave oven (1959), color video phone (1971), Japanese word processor (1978), MRI system (1982), laptop personal computer (1986), NAND EEPROM (1991), DVD (1995), the Libretto sub-notebook personal computer (1996) and HD DVD (2005).
In 1987, Toshiba Machine, the subsidiary of Toshiba, was accused of illegally selling CNC milling machines used to produce very quiet submarine propellers to the Soviet Union in violation of the CoCom agreement, an international embargo on Western exports to East Bloc countries. The Toshiba-Kongsberg scandal involved a subsidiary of Toshiba and the Norwegian company Kongsberg Vaapenfabrikk. The incident strained relations between the United States and Japan, and resulted in the arrest and prosecution of two senior executives, as well as the imposition of sanctions on the company by both countries.[2] The US had always relied on the fact that the Soviets had noisy boats, so technology that would make the USSR's submarines harder to detect created a significant threat to America's security. Senator John Heinz of Pennsylvania said "What Toshiba and Kongsberg did was ransom the security of the United States for $517 million."
The HD future for Toshiba
Toshiba's president has stated that the company has no intention to begin manufacturing Blu-ray disc players and he also said that Toshiba will "think about its role in online video-downloading more seriously". The press release stated the following; "Toshiba also intends to maintain collaborative relations with the companies who joined with Toshiba in working to build up the HD DVD market, including Universal Studios, Paramount Pictures, and DreamWorks Animation and major Japanese and European content providers on the entertainment side, as well as leaders in the IT industry, including Microsoft, Intel, and HP. Toshiba will study possible collaboration with these companies for future business opportunities, utilizing the many assets generated through the development of HD DVD."
Source Wikipedia
One thing I love about Toshiba is that they offer some of the best support in the electronics industry. Toshiba Support has an official website where they offer a huge number of common problems, with fixes, and a way to contact Toshiba Support directly.
Have a question on the warranty coverage of your new Toshiba HD TV, no problem, there is plenty of information on their support page varying by Toshiba model number. In addition you can find a list of updated drivers, notices, and general issues regarding any Toshiba manufactured product.
Toshiba is known for their quality laptops, but an expired make of Toshiba is the Qosmio. According to industry experts an all new Qosmio X305 will be making a triumphant return to the gaming market. It looks like this gaming laptop will come jam packed with more than enough extras to run even the most high end pc game.
- 1GB NVIDIA GeForce GTX with turbo cache VRAM
- Intels hot new 3GHz dual core processor
- dual high-speed 7200RPM hard drives of 200GB each for a total of 400GB
- up to 4GB of DDR3 RAM
- 17 inch WSXGA+ with 1680 x 1050 resolution
Pretty incredible for any laptop! This is a huge upgrade to the previous Toshiba Qosmio G35.
It looks like Toshiba has finally decided to stop supporting HD-DVD, citing that it would benefit the industry and customers in the long run.
I'm shocked, but hopefully the prices of Blu-Ray players and Blu-Ray DVDs will finally start dropping. Until then, looks like I'm sticking with my standard definition library...for now.
"We carefully assessed the long-term impact of continuing the so-called 'next-generation format war' and concluded that a swift decision will best help the market develop," said Atsutoshi Nishida, President and CEO of Toshiba Corporation. "While we are disappointed for the company and more importantly, for the consumer, the real mass market opportunity for high definition content remains untapped and Toshiba is both able and determined to use our talent, technology and intellectual property to make digital convergence a reality."
Toshiba has made a break through announcement about doubling the life of OLED TVs. The OLED TVs while beautiful and a sight to behold had significantly shorter life spans than normal LCD TVs. Expect life spans a little less than 40% of regular LCD TVs.
But what it really means to us thrifty consumers is that we will have a TV we could pass on to our children. 40% may seem drastic, but consider that old OLED TVs had a life span of about 30,000 hours or 8hrs of non-stop boob tube watching per day for 10 years. EEEeeeeek! No, my eyes will fall out long before I reach that milestone, but thanks to Toshiba it will now be doubled to 20 years and 60,000 hours of use.
Toshiba Doubles Longevity of OLED Source
Toshiba is fighting back against allegations that HD-DVD is going to lose the format war. In a strong move on Monday, Toshiba announced HUGE price cuts on all their popular HD-DVD players, including the HD-A30 player.
It looks like right now it's another win for consumers, because Blu-Ray will have to do some sort of price maneuver to not look like the stuck up step father. If Toshiba captures enough market, studios pledging allegiance to the Blu-Ray clan will not be able to ignore consumer demand. According to Toshiba 4th quarter of 07 shown they had a 50% market share in next generation DVD players.
So, who else is going to be buying a brand new HD-DVD player this year?
The problem with HD camcorders is that they rarely, if ever, reach full HD standards. Samsung set out to fix this problem and announced today their very first FULL HD camcorder, the HMX 20.
No price has been announced yet, nor has availability.
"You will be amazed at the picture," said J.W. Park, president of Samsung Electronics digital media group.
Source Market Watch