Sources inside Toshiba have begun leaking to the press - that Toshiba is no longer going to be manufacturing HD DVD players - and is abandoning the format altogether. Apparently, this decision is going to cost Toshiba hundreds of millions of dollars -
In the last few months, Sony has completely and totally flanked and surrounded HD-DVD. It started with the Warner Brothers move, when Warner's announced their decision to become dedicated to the BLU RAY format beginning this June - the world could feel a seismic shift. Then in a series of announcements from BEST BUY to NETFLIX to the most recent WAL-MART support for Blu Ray and abandonment of the HD DVD format... well, the rush to bury HD DVD has become quite aggressive.
Now that it has ended - I hope that the focusing upon BLU RAY means that the format becomes better. That the prices can begin dropping on their players - and their discs. MORE SO - I hope that BLU RAY winning the "war" means that a wider and greater supply of titles begin to be released. In the upcoming months - as the various outlets blowout their remaining HD DVD titles - there will be added shelf-space for BLU RAY to take up.
Now that the Format war is over - there's still another war for the companies to wage... the war to get the populace to abandon standard def DVD and en masse convert to BLU RAY. The only way that will happen is if Blu Ray lowers their prices significantly on their titles. There's a lot left for SONY to do - but now that they've slain their biggest enemy - all that is left is to win the hearts, minds and dollars of the rest of the consumers to make the big conversion.
This is my friends response after I emailed him of the towel being thrown in by Toshiba.
http://www.reuters.com/article/ousiv/idUST34593320080218
Consumers lose, but maybe not. Many people I work with don't see enough of a difference between a good DVD in an upconverting player and High Def DVD (HD or Blu Ray). I don't believe that the majority of people were waiting for this and are going to run out and buy a player and disks. There will be an upswing, to be sure, how much of one remains to be seen. With the era of downloading on the horizon, Blu Ray could also be the next HD CD (not too many of those out there, although I suspect Blu Ray will get more market penetration than HD Audio did). I'm not buying one until they get the kinks and bugginess out. One of my customers has a profile 2 BluRay player (the latest profile) and over 20 movies, says he actually doesn't watch it that often because it takes forever (his words) to put in a disk and play. He says he can turn on the player, go to the bathroom, make some popcorn, get something to drink and it still won't be ready to play (again his words, not mine, I have no personal experience with them other than researching the technology behind them).
