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Toshiba officially discontinues HD DVD, Sony wins format war
It’s official: HD DVD is dead. Putting an end to all speculation, Toshiba today announced that it will stop developing, manufacturing and marketing HD DVD players and recorders as soon as next month, handing victory to rival high definition disc format Blu-ray.
Toshiba said its decision came after careful analysis of the long-term impact of continuing the format war, and added it expected bigger profits over the next year as it will cut spending set aside to promote HD DVD. While Toshiba has lost the chance to be the leader in the $24 billion next-gen home DVD market, investors welcomed the decision to cut losses on HD DVD early to focus strengthening its flash memory business. Meanwhile, the company will continue to provide services to all owners of HD DVD products – although for how long remains unclear.
Now, HD DVD’s defeat will no doubt clear up much of the confusion over high-def DVDs among consumers, but Blu-ray still needs to convince them that their format is worth upgrading to.
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User Comments (9)
Post a comment| phantasm66 on February 19, 2008 10:30 AM | Sorry but I have to said I knew this and I said so.
Something just told me from the beginning... HD DVD was not going to win. This is nothing but good news for consumers.
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| Eddie_42 on February 19, 2008 10:54 AM | bye bye
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| Julio on February 19, 2008 12:14 PM | Originally posted by phantasm66:
That's probably correct in the longer run, but right now I'm a bit pissed off about the future of my Xbox HD DVD add-on and the few movies I had bought... good thing it's only a few as I also saw it coming 
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| icye on February 19, 2008 12:50 PM | I never bought into the idea that Microsoft really cared about HD-DVD even though they had an add-on drive. Its going to be a paperweight very soon.
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| viperpfl on February 19, 2008 3:39 PM | Sony won't need to convince consumers to upgrade if the movie companies just drop the DVD format all together and adopt Blu-Ray. People will have no choice but to upgrade to Blu-Ray or be without.
What's going to get consumers mad if the Blu-Ray players won't be backwards compatible to play the old DVD format. This may happen if the movie studios have there way just so people will have to spend the money to get the movies in Blu-Ray format.
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| Julio on February 19, 2008 4:14 PM | Originally posted by viperpfl:
I have no idea where those comments are coming from but I can assure you that will not happen for at least many many years. DVDs are a cash cow and are cheaper to produce than ever, so no, they are not going anywhere.
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| aznn3rd on February 19, 2008 6:32 PM | Originally posted by viperpfl:
I doubt that they will discontinue DVDs until the price of HD and creating BluRay becomes cheaper. Otherwise, they will lose a huge chunk of their market as the vast majority of people still use DVDs
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| socrfan on February 21, 2008 7:46 PM | Originally posted by phantasm66:
I don't agree with the "nothing but good news" part. Competition is what's good news for consumers and this will stomp a lot of that out of the picture. Sure, you'll see some inovations from brands trying to get you to buy their BR player or recorder but a lot of the new features that a healthy "format war" would have brought about are gone now. Why bother when you have a captive, no longer have a choice audience? A company that "owns" the market never puts as much development effort into it's products as when there's another brand they could lose sales to. There was no reason why both formats could not have exsisted together and backed by all the movie houses. Something tells me more went on behind closed doors than we will ever know about.
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| gingerbill on February 21, 2008 9:07 PM | Originally posted by socrfan:
Originally posted by phantasm66: . Something tells me more went on behind closed doors than we will ever know about. that's for sure .
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