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  1. June 4th 2006
    Pioneer Ends DVD Recorder Development.
    DVD and HDD recorders will continue to be sold under the Pioneer brand, but the components will be licensed from Panasonic.


    TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan's Pioneer Corp. will end development of conventional DVD recorders and seek a tie-up with Matsushita Electric Industrial in next-generation models in a bid to turn the loss-making business around, the Nihon Keizai Shimbun said on Sunday.
    Pioneer is the world's fourth-largest player in the DVD recorder market after Matsushita, Philips Electronics and Sony Corp., but it has been losing money due to fierce price competition and heavy development costs.
    After finishing work on models still under development, Pioneer will stop all development of current-generation DVD recorders and consider buying DVD recorders from other makers for sale under its own brand, the Nihon Keizai said.
    The newspaper said Pioneer would continue development of next-generation DVD recorders using Blu-ray technology, and would propose an alliance with Matsushita that would include Pioneer procuring chips and software from its larger rival.
    Matsushita, maker of Panasonic brand products, is expected to agree to the tie-up, the paper said.
    A Matsushita spokesman said it had not received an official request from Pioneer for a tie-up. Pioneer officials could not be reached for comment.
    Pioneer President Tamihiko Sudo told Reuters in March that he was looking for a partner in the DVD recorder business to share hefty software and chip development costs.


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    http://news.moneycontrol.com/india/news/technology/pioneerseeksdvdrecordertiesmatsu***...le/6658/999999
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    so Pioneer dvd recorders are going to be rebadged panasonics?

    No thanks
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    Good to hear. Maybe the prices of their devices will drop somewhere close to market value.
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  4. Member Marvingj's Avatar
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    Pioneer finally Sales there soul to the Devil..............
    http://www.absolutevisionvideo.com

    BLUE SKY, BLACK DEATH!!
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  5. Member kush's Avatar
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    Does this mean only their STB recorders are gone, or does this affect the PC drives so many of us have?
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    Originally Posted by ROF
    Good to hear. Maybe the prices of their devices will drop somewhere close to market value.
    It's terrible to hear. Pioneer is one of the few good brands out there. We all lose.

    Matsushita owns JVC and Panasonic both. So who knows where it'll go from there. For DVD recorders, Panasonic is the consumer wing, JVC is the prosumer and professional wing. Will Pioneer be "consumered" or "prosumered" is the question.
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  7. Member Seeker47's Avatar
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    Originally Posted by lordsmurf
    Originally Posted by ROF
    Good to hear. Maybe the prices of their devices will drop somewhere close to market value.
    It's terrible to hear. Pioneer is one of the few good brands out there. We all lose.
    Agreed. Prices for the mass-market junk you can find at any Walmart or Sam's Club will always be the prevailing standard, but intelligent enthusiasts will always want something much better and be willing to pay for it. Very bad news if this proves true. I'm still quite curious to check out the forthcoming 640 model. Still, this may be a reluctant case of Toshiba here we come.
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    Originally Posted by lordsmurf
    For DVD recorders, Panasonic is the consumer wing, JVC is the prosumer and professional wing. Will Pioneer be "consumered" or "prosumered" is the question.
    Do you remember back when Sony essentially invented the whole prosumer thing ? Seems like very ancient history, now.
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  9. I had a JVC DMR30 recorder and it was a crap machine. The Pannies and the Pioneers are much better machines in my personal opinion.
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    Originally Posted by lordsmurf
    Originally Posted by ROF
    Good to hear. Maybe the prices of their devices will drop somewhere close to market value.
    It's terrible to hear. Pioneer is one of the few good brands out there. We all lose.

    Matsushita owns JVC and Panasonic both. So who knows where it'll go from there. For DVD recorders, Panasonic is the consumer wing, JVC is the prosumer and professional wing. Will Pioneer be "consumered" or "prosumered" is the question.
    While true DVD has hit the end of the production line. High Definition is the future of these companies. That is why you are seeing the switch and it is also why you only see a few media makers producing dual layer media. They knew BD and HD DVD media was coming out so they never started production of DL media. Pioneer is a good brand, but so are many others which are much much cheaper and with plenty more options. Whoever said mass market products at Walmart is junk? My Walmart special has outlasted every other DVD device.
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  11. Imagine how us Laserdisc owners felt in 1999 when the LD format was abandoned by the big media companies in favor of DVD?

    The same thing is about to happen to owners of DVD machines when HD-DVD/Blue Ray gets going.
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  12. Don't you mean if, I'm suspecting the HD formats won't hit their stride in the home recording field for quite a while. I have a Pioneer 531h with 80Gb drive in it. When HD gets to the same price point and has a drive big enough to store the same amount of HD video time on it and discs become around the same price per and when HD Camcorders become affordable, Then I'll be interested in buying. Most of the prereorded content available for quite a while will be of questionable quality upconverted etc. Have you ever seen some of the transfers to DVD? You would at least think they'd clean the film first. If that is the quality and care they use for DVD do you really think they'll do more for HD?

    I have some original Disney VHS tapes and the film there should have been cleaned before the transfer. When I can see dirt on my TV screen that is just pathetic.
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  13. When DVD was brought in in 1997 I didn't think that by the summer of 1999 that Laserdisc would have been completely killed off(least in the UK anyway).
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  14. Member ntscuser's Avatar
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    Originally Posted by Robbins1940
    Imagine how us Laserdisc owners felt in 1999 when the LD format was abandoned by the big media companies in favor of DVD?

    The same thing is about to happen to owners of DVD machines when HD-DVD/Blue Ray gets going.
    There's an important difference. DVD was much cheaper and more accessible to most people than LD. HD-DVD/Blue Ray will be more expensive.

    Also, I don't believe the potential market for HD will be nearly as big as it was for DVD since there are so many competing sources of images these days.

    Worst case scenario is that HD fails to ignite but succeeds in destroying DVD as a commercial format.
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  15. Originally Posted by ntscuser
    Originally Posted by Robbins1940
    Imagine how us Laserdisc owners felt in 1999 when the LD format was abandoned by the big media companies in favor of DVD?

    The same thing is about to happen to owners of DVD machines when HD-DVD/Blue Ray gets going.
    There's an important difference. DVD was much cheaper and more accessible to most people than LD. HD-DVD/Blue Ray will be more expensive.

    Also, I don't believe the potential market for HD will be nearly as big as it was for DVD since there are so many competing sources of images these days.

    Worst case scenario is that HD fails to ignite but succeeds in destroying DVD as a commercial format.
    Yeah but it wasn't like they were making a loss from it. Admittly the PAL market was dead to begin with but the NTSC market was bursting. The Japanesse LDs fetch a small fortune on Ebay.
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  16. Laserdiscs were a different story than HD-DVD and BluRay. Laserdiscs were expensive, up to $90 each, while DVDs were around $20 or less each in 1999. Also laserdiscs were much larger and had to be flipped over in most machines. The average Joe isn't very worried about picture quality, HD-DVD and BluRay are going to be a hard sell for them.
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  17. Originally Posted by samijubal
    Laserdiscs were a different story than HD-DVD and BluRay. Laserdiscs were expensive, up to $90 each, while DVDs were around $20 or less each in 1999. Also laserdiscs were much larger and had to be flipped over in most machines. The average Joe isn't very worried about picture quality and HD-DVD and BluRay are going to be a hard sell for them.
    The average LD here in the UK was £24.99.

    Most LDs in the states were about the $50 mark.

    The average DVD film costs about £19.99 and a box set is around the £40.00.

    The only difference between the two is that DVD players are sold at a loss whist LD machines cost over £500 when new.
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  18. Originally Posted by samijubal
    Laserdiscs were a different story than HD-DVD and BluRay. Laserdiscs were expensive, up to $90 each, while DVDs were around $20 or less each in 1999. Also laserdiscs were much larger and had to be flipped over in most machines. The average Joe isn't very worried about picture quality, HD-DVD and BluRay are going to be a hard sell for them.
    Nah. All they have to do is ditch the DVD format, stop releasing anymore DVD films and force everyone over to HD-DVD/BR.
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  19. $50 is still 2 1/2 times or more what DVDs were in 1999. HD-DVDs aren't any cheaper, so why would someone who doesn't care about better picture quality buy them? People over here are cheap, I see it in the cheap junk they buy every day. DVD is here to stay for awhile.
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  20. Originally Posted by samijubal
    $50 is still 2 1/2 times or more what DVDs were in 1999. HD-DVDs aren't any cheaper, so why would someone who doesn't care about better picture quality buy them? People over here are cheap, I see it in the cheap junk they buy every day. DVD is here to stay for awhile.
    Can't buy them if they aren't being released.
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    These remarks are interesting. It's that price vs quality issue. Electronics companies are having to constantly find ways to cheapen their products to stay competitive in the mass market. Yet companies like Pioneer are staffed with people who are innovators. They want their products to be among the best. We need the innovators (especially with the next generation of video). But then we buy the cheaper ripoff product from companies that spent no money on development and are only innovative at cutting costs.

    Which of those kinds of companies would you rather work for? Which would you rather see stay in business?

    Pioneer is different from its competitors in its products and approach. I'm glad they stayed with the Laserdisc format until something better came along. I'm glad they built my DVD recorder. I wish them the best.

    I'm not associated with Pioneer in any way except as a happy customer.
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  22. VHS tapes can still be bought almost a decade after DVDs introduction, DVD isn't going anywhere in the near future. There are far more DVD players than there ever were laserdisc players, people would pitch a fit if they couldn't get discs to put in them. Laserdiscs were a niche market, DVD isn't.
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  23. Originally Posted by samijubal
    VHS tapes can still be bought almost a decade after DVDs introduction, DVD isn't going anywhere in the near future. There are far more DVD players than there ever were laserdisc players, people would pitch a fit if they couldn't get discs to put in them. Laserdiscs were a niche market, DVD isn't.
    DVDs don't sell as well as you think. Apart from the big hollywood blockbusters most releases don't sell more than 3 or 4 thousand in 1 press run of 8,000 copies.
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  24. Member ntscuser's Avatar
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    Am currently on my third Pioneer DVD player, a UK-spec DV-575A. The mechanism is slow and noisey even in standby mode. The controls take exactly twice as long to respond as the entry-level DV-350 I had previously (I timed it). When playing discs from which vobs have been ripped it's painful listening to the Pioneer search feverishly for the next file. The higher video frequencies are far less distinct via RGB than they were from the same output on the DV-350. The one and only Scart socket is a loose fit frequently resulting in reversion to composite video output. I certainly won't be buying Pioneer again regardless of disc format.
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  25. Originally Posted by Robbins1940
    Originally Posted by samijubal
    Laserdiscs were a different story than HD-DVD and BluRay. Laserdiscs were expensive, up to $90 each, while DVDs were around $20 or less each in 1999. Also laserdiscs were much larger and had to be flipped over in most machines. The average Joe isn't very worried about picture quality, HD-DVD and BluRay are going to be a hard sell for them.
    Nah. All they have to do is ditch the DVD format, stop releasing anymore DVD films and force everyone over to HD-DVD/BR.
    Would you like to be the person that decided to stop releasing any titles in DVD format for your studio to try and force consumers to buy a HD player?

    Such a person would be looking for a job the next day.

    My own feelings are that HD would remain a bit of a niche product for many, many, more years if the government wasn't forcing it on us here in the USA.
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  26. Member ntscuser's Avatar
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    Originally Posted by TBoneit
    Originally Posted by Robbins1940
    Originally Posted by samijubal
    Laserdiscs were a different story than HD-DVD and BluRay. Laserdiscs were expensive, up to $90 each, while DVDs were around $20 or less each in 1999. Also laserdiscs were much larger and had to be flipped over in most machines. The average Joe isn't very worried about picture quality, HD-DVD and BluRay are going to be a hard sell for them.
    Nah. All they have to do is ditch the DVD format, stop releasing anymore DVD films and force everyone over to HD-DVD/BR.
    Would you like to be the person that decided to stop releasing any titles in DVD format for your studio to try and force consumers to buy a HD player?

    Such a person would be looking for a job the next day.

    My own feelings are that HD would remain a bit of a niche product for many, many, more years if the government wasn't forcing it on us here in the USA.
    That didn't stop studios abandoning vinyl discs and musicassettes in favour of CD's with much higher profit margins.
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  27. DVD was the fastest selling technology in history. Now they're going to tell those millions of people they can't get discs for their players, not going to happen.
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  28. Member ntscuser's Avatar
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    Originally Posted by samijubal
    DVD was the fastest selling technology in history. Now they're going to tell those millions of people they can't get discs for their players, not going to happen.
    Warner Bros have already begun releasing hybrid DVD/HD-DVD titles. Essentially, you will have to pay for HD whether you make use of the technology or not.
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    Music companies didn't "abandon" LPs or cassettes until the sales in those items were <5% of general sales. IOW, the consumer had already voted it out. I don't know where you're getting your numbers Robbins1940, but DVD's are still king of the roost. Only reason H'wood is wanting to move on is they want a better profit margin (less discounting, premium cache, etc.).

    I am in agreement with TBoneit's remarks.

    Scott
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