"your assuming Sony would allow Toshiba to carry (at a reasonable price) Bluray tech."

Well, yours is an interesting theory.

But,

it works for Panasonic.
it works for Samsung.
it works for Pioneer.
it works for Denon.
it works for LG.
it works for Sharp.
it works for Onkyo.
it works for Yamaha.

Why can't it work for Tosh?

El Lizardo - Problem with that assumption, your assuming Sony would allow Toshiba to carry (at a reasonable price) Bluray tech.

As for the rest, Toshiba is one of the worlds leading companies that spends a HUGE chunk of its incoming coin on R&D. That operating profit is what is left after they give money to all their departments.

They also manufacture pretty much well, everything, from Toilets to Nuclear Power Plants to being one of the leading producers of NAND Flash tech and chip manufacturing.

The problem for Toshiba is they have a wholesaler attitude and not a marketing attitude, they lack significant marketing and consumer knowledge about their products.

Now if only they had stopped fannying around with HD-DVD, that loss might not have been quite so bad.

Even after they lost the format war, they failed to put out a blu-ray player and then tried to convince the world and dog that traditional dvds were the future, making more and more players with more and more upscalers.

Shame really, because their DVD players are actually decent bits of kit. If only they had a blu-ray drive in them and they might have been able to compete with... every other manufacturer out there.