Toshiba Officially Confirms Death of HD-DVD
Posted on | February 19, 2008 | 13 Comments
The high definition media war is finally over and Toshiba’s HD-DVD finally raises the white flag. Toshiba said it would stop promoting its HD DVD format for the next-generation DVD after losing the support of key studios and retailers to the Blu-ray technology backed by Sony.
Toshiba’s president, Nishida-san said that they are clearly in a good place until last December and January. Based on Nishida-san statement, it appears that the knock out punch came from Time Warner’s announcement on supporting Blu-ray instead of HD-DVD.
Overall, 730,000 units were sold worldwide and majority is in the US which 300,000 of those are Xbox 360 HD DVD drives. Microsoft’s PR Team already sent out a statement regarding these developments and the rumors about an Xbox 360 Blu-ray add on.
A lot of early adopters must be pissed off by now after the announcement but I guess they already accepted the fact that there will always be a risk of buying specially if there is two competing standards. This is just like the betamax - VHS of the 80′s which the VHS format won at the end (poor us, we got a betamax player).
Having one format should also help accelerate the shift to the new technology and hopefully Blu-ray writers and medias will become cheaper as this will definitely be the next storage choice after DVDs. If everything goes smoothly, we might see affordable Blu-ray burners by the end of the year.
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13 Responses to “Toshiba Officially Confirms Death of HD-DVD”
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Etcetera
February 19th, 2008 @ 11:32 pm
[...] Read the rest of this entry » [...]
February 19th, 2008 @ 11:49 pm
[...] Appropriate Infrastructure Development Group (AIDG) wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerpt The high definition media war is finally over and Toshiba’s HD-DVD finally raises the white flag. Toshiba said it would stop promoting its HD DVD format for the next-generation DVD after losing the support of key studios and retailers to the Blu-ray technology backed by Sony. Overall, 730,000 units were sold worldwide and majority is in the US which 300,000 of those are Xbox 360 HD DVD drives. Microsoft’s PR Team already sent out a statement regarding these developments and the rumors about a [...]
February 20th, 2008 @ 3:20 am
February 20th, 2008 @ 12:27 pm
I pity those consumers who bought those expensive HD-DVD players.
Jaypee’s last blog post..WP 2.3+ Tiger Style Admin Fix
February 20th, 2008 @ 3:14 pm
No kidding, buying a $400 player then finding out that is now an obsolete junk is no joke. Sometimes it helps if you don’t have the money to buy one.
February 20th, 2008 @ 6:12 pm
Such a big loss on the company as well surely.
Blogoloco’s last blog post..What is your ideal Prince Charming?
February 21st, 2008 @ 10:56 pm
R.I.P. HD-DVD
thank God I didn’t buy one!
Jamaipanese’s last blog post..Gears of War 2 Announced
February 25th, 2008 @ 4:57 am
Blogoloco,
Yeah, imagine the R&D Toshiba put on getting HD-DVD out.
Jamaipanese,
Lucky you!
February 25th, 2008 @ 10:28 am
Being old enough to remember the Betamax-VHS battle, I waited. Good move on my part …
Ghosty’s last blog post..The Advancement of Culture (conclusion)
February 25th, 2008 @ 12:51 pm
Wow, when i bought my HD-dvd addon for my xbox 360 i figured it was a safe bet. Microsoft has enough money to keep any technology alive, well so i thought….
February 27th, 2008 @ 3:42 am
sadly, MS might kill the HD-DVD add-on too. Anyways, I read somewhere that XBox 360 isn’t really a good choice for High Def movie player and its better to buy a separate one.
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February 28th, 2008 @ 4:24 pm
Vance,
I read somewhere that MS is already starting to pull out the HD-DVD add on. MS needs to catch up now with the High Def arena especially that Sony’s PS3 is the “bang for the buck” when it comes on getting a “cheap” Blu-ray player.
March 3rd, 2008 @ 1:24 am
True… but still an expensive one for non gamers…
and definitely bang for the buck as its a good upscaler DVD player and mediocre blu-ray player plus if you support folding@home project, PS3 can be used for that.
Hopefully MS accepts that their format of choice is dead! and start acquiring Blu-ray technology.
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