HD-DVD Officially Dead!

[CDN_Merlin]

Toshiba has pulled the plug on their HD-DVD business, allowing Sony's Blu-Ray to 'win.'

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.
HD DVD was developed to offer consumers access at an affordable price to high-quality, high definition content and prepare them for the digital convergence of tomorrow where the fusion of consumer electronics and IT will continue to progress.

\"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 will continue to lead innovation, in a wide range of technologies that will drive mass market access to high definition content. These include high capacity NAND flash memory, small form factor hard disk drives, next generation CPUs, visual processing, and wireless and encryption technologies. The company expects to make forthcoming announcements around strategic progress in these convergence technologies.

Toshiba will begin to reduce shipments of HD DVD players and recorders to retail channels, aiming for cessation of these businesses by the end of March 2008. Toshiba also plans to end volume production of HD DVD disk drives for such applications as PCs and games in the same timeframe, yet will continue to make efforts to meet customer requirements. The company will continue to assess the position of notebook PCs with integrated HD DVD drives within the overall PC business relative to future market demand.

This decision will not impact on Toshiba's commitment to standard DVD, and the company will continue to market conventional DVD players and recorders. Toshiba intends to continue to contribute to the development of the DVD industry, as a member of the DVD Forum, an international organization with some 200 member companies, committed to the discussion and defining of optimum optical disc formats for the consumer and the related industries.

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.

Numerous people will have to eat crow today - are you one of them?

No more wars. Let's hear it for cheap BLu-Ray players.

[Testiculese]

Let's hear it for bricked players and more rootkits! I'll wait it out until BluRay-Shrink32. I'm not desperate for content like some of these people.

With no competition, why would prices drop? Eventually, yea, but I'm guessing that's a year off, Sony and friends have to recoup the billion dollars or so they bribed the studio executives with.

[Foil]

Yep, I'm expecting to see Blu-Ray prices rise (for a while) due to lack of competition. Guess it'll be longer before I get a Blu-Ray player.

[TIGERassault]

Lets hear it for DVDs, because they're still the kings of the market! I don't care much about HD stuff when it costs so much.

[Top Wop]

HD and all of that other fancy thingamajigs that go along with it isn't going to help the fact that nearly all movies put out by Hollywood today sucks ass. Watching a movie in HD doesn't make it better, instead you are just watching suck at high-res.

[Testiculese]

How long has bluray been out? I thought it's been a year or two. How can companies justify $400-800 for nothing but a player? How can an entire gaming console cost less than a stand alone player? That's absolutely pathetic. It's like buying an iPhone instead of a smartphone!

Someone call me when the players hit sub-$100. Until then, I'm just going to laugh at everyone. (Dude! I just bought a $500 DVD player to watch TRANSFORMERS!! The 5 seconds of that girl posing in front of the car was SO worth it!) oh rofl...

I wish I didn't have morals so I could strip mainstream America of their money too. It's soooooo easy.

[Hostile]

I wish I didn't have morals so I could strip mainstream America of their money too. It's soooooo easy.

You can't rape the willing Testi....

[Gooberman]

I wish I didn't have morals so I could strip mainstream America of their money too. It's soooooo easy.

You can't rape the willing Testi....

I spent about five minutes on the quote and couldn't come up with anything....so disapointed in myself....

[TOR_LordRaven]

Actually, the Prices should Drop. With only one Format to contend with, there should be a Rise in Competition.

Sure, it sounds strange. But there are several smaller companies out there that have been waiting in the wings to find out who the winner would be before they could or would invest their smaller budgets to back a specific format. Like Apex for example.

Now that Blu-Ray will be the standard, those other companies will or should begin building their players..

The more Blu-Ray player makers there are, the cheaper the players will be.

I suspect a small increase in the price, but overall it should start to drop soon.

[Duper]

I find it interesting this is happening on the eve of getting a bunch of free money from the government. Many will be running out an getting the blue ray players with their \"bonus\". Funny thing is, is that the money was given to us to spend to put into the economy... here.. not Japan. o_0

[Testiculese]

What? Things are manufactured in America? LOL you're pulling my leg. Vietnam has more manufacturing plants then we do.

[Duper]

what ARE you talking about? All I'm saying is that the timing couldn't have been better to capitalize on an opportunity to get everyone to upgrade their players.

Of course those things aren't made here. I never said they were.

[JMEaT]

I find it interesting this is happening on the eve of getting a bunch of free money from the government. Many will be running out an getting the blue ray players with their "bonus". Funny thing is, is that the money was given to us to spend to put into the economy... here.. not Japan. o_0

PS3 ftw!!!.... erm wait

To be honest won't be upgrading players at all. My DVD player is currently a PS2. Eventually my Blu-Ray player will be a PS3... when the games don't suck.

[Testiculese]

Oh, just a slightly off-tangent thought when you mentioned that the money we were 'given' (that's a joke in itself) should go into our economy, here.

[Hemp]

Its a win win for me I have the combo player.

[Aggressor Prime]

I'm so happy Blu-Ray won, since it is technologically superior. It also gives the chance for Microsoft to give away their HD-DVD players for $50 a piece (http://www.xbox.com/en-US/hardware/x/xb ... dvdplayer/) and 5 free HD-DVD's. Pick up one before they are gone!

Seriously though, Blu-Ray is said to still have some competition, the internet, and I'm not talking about pirates, although they can be competition too. I'm talking about legal downloadable content. EA already has an online store from which you can download all your favorite games from Battlefield to Crysis to some sports game I don't know the name of. And Apple, along with other companies I believe, allows you to download HD movies and TV shows. Since the downloadable content is sometimes cheaper, easier to make backup copies, and features no lifespan, the move to downloadable content is only a matter of internet bandwidth vs the postal service. Anyway, I personally still prefer a disc to a file as the disc doesn't just vaporize when a computer system malfunctions, but I can see myself in the future prefering downloads. You never have to worry about breaking discs, or even finding one for that matter. And with 1TB hard drives, people have plenty of storage now.