Toshiba Finally Pull The Plug: Format War Over
February 19, 2008 | Filed under Electronics, High Definition
It’s a sad day for HD-DVD. After months of fighting for life it seems that HD-DVD has finally been put out of it’s misery by Toshiba. With every major studio backing Blu-Ray and many US retailers ceasing to stock HD-DVD, a hard war has been fought.
Toshiba have revealed they will no longer develop, make or market HD-DVD players. They released a press release which said,
‘Toshiba Corporation today announced that it has undertaken a thorough review of its overall strategy for HD DVD and has decided it will no longer develop, manufacture and market HD DVD players and recorders. This decision has been made following recent major changes in the market. Toshiba will continue, however, to provide full product support and after-sales service for all owners of Toshiba HD DVD products.
It is said that Toshiba will gradually reduce shipments of the HD DVD players and recorders to retail channels. They aim for cessation of these businesses by as soon as March 2008. The company will also end volume production of HD DVD disk drives for PCs and games.
So that’s it! The format war between HD DVD and Blu-Ray is over, caput, fin! Just bought a HD-DVD player? Gutted!
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Too bad, I have always liked the quality, flexibility, and price better on HD DVD. Oh well, in the next few years I’m sure even Blu Ray will die a slow death to downloadable HD content. An area Microsoft is getting a huge head start over Sony via the Live service. If you ask me, I think Microsoft is making the smarter move in the long run.
My Logic? Would I pay $30+ for a BluRay movie I already own? Probably not, especially when you can spend $75 on an upconverting DVD player. So for the price of two BR movies I can make my existing library near HD quality! In my opinion, both HDDVD & BR are destined to fail, HDDVD just happened to die a little sooner.
But who knows, maybe I’ll still pick up a HDDVD player that upconverts for dirt cheap along with clearance HDDVD movies!