It's official: Toshiba announces HD DVD surrender
(Credit: Crave UK)The two-year war between HD DVD and Blu-ray officially ended Tuesday morning as Toshiba waved the white flag and declared it would stop producing HD DVD products.
The company, which began sales of HD DVD in March 2006 with the HD-A1 player, "decided it was not right for us to keep going with such a small presence," said chief executive Atsutoshi Nishida. The Blu-ray format is now the definitive winner in the war and stands unopposed as the optical media replacement for DVD.
Toshiba's news release goes into a bit more detail: "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."
Three movie studios currently support HD DVD--Universal, Paramount, and DreamWorks Animation--but we expect them to follow suit and announce support of Blu-ray sooner rather than later. Update: All of these studios have indeed followed suit.
With Blu-ray support announced by industry heavyweights Netflix, Wal-mart and Best Buy, speculation ran rampant before the weekend that Toshiba would end the war, and the company deserves credit for pulling out as soon as it did. The two incompatible formats have led to plenty of confusion among prospective buyers of next-generation hardware and software, although some have opined that the war was a good thing--at least it led to price drops.
We've been advising readers against the purchase of HD DVD players since the announcement by Warner Brothers in January that it would exclusively support Blu-ray. That doesn't mean we're telling everyone to rush out and buy a Blu-ray player now; we still believe that most home theater fans would be better served to wait for prices on players to fall. Of course, with the exit of Blu-ray's major competition, those prices may fall later rather than sooner.
David Katzmaier reviews HDTVs for CNET. E-mail David.
or 'what could have been.'
I've been waiting and didn't buy either format. Now that I've waited this long, I'll continue to wait until Sony drops their ridiculous prices or I'll just buy an up-convertering DVD and be happy with 1080i.
I'm with the other guy. Either Sony drops their prices or I'll get an upconverting DVD player and watch 1080i instead.
I have only seen a couple of HD-DVD movies (great! by the way). Fortunately I dont have a big budget so I only bought a couple HD titles. I will buy a Blu-Ray at some point, maybe around $100. I may have a long wait. Since HIGH-SPEED broadband is not ubiquitous, and 1 meg is a bit slow for digital downloads, I bet we will have discs for some time to come.
years ago. Luckily, I can see BluRay being surpassed by digital downloads before
it becomes as ubiquitous as DVD...
:(
You think Blu-ray will be surpassed by digital downloads? Not likely, personally I don't know how many people would want to download dozens of gigs of entertainment then watch them on their small PC monitor. Sure some may connect their PCs to their TVs but this isnt very reliable especially with plasmas. I'm happy that this format war has ended, now I can buy a Blu-ray player with peace of mind.
Even though Im all for it, do you people honestly think everyone can afford this? Sure we can say the same about BD but come on! Im on the fastest internet I can get in my area, and I still have to wait over night for a tv clip :P
last I checked, no ones been offering a 1080p version of Cars on the internet :P
Give this Digital Downloads a rest till its actually showing signs of consumer viability. Crap, people are just moving from rabbit ears :P
Kenny K
afford don't have ethernet jacks, or support all of the new features, and also
still cost around $300-$400 and are basically obsolete. And the next best
deal is the PS3 which gives me a bunch of other features I don't care
about(already own an Xbox 360, I only play shooters) And I have an HD DVD
player at home that cost $99 and works just fine with every HD DVD movie,
has an ethernet jack for upgrading, and has combo discs that I can play in HD
at my house and take somewhere else and still watch on a regular DVD
player. Why have people been buying Blue Ray players????
The other features like PIP commentary and min-games. Who needs or wants those? No one. 99.99% of people just want to watch the movie and the older BR players do that just fine.
Microsoft will in fact come out with a blu-ray add-on for your precious 360.
Quit hating the war is over. Get with the program or just sit there and cry because you were stupid enough to buy HD-DVD. HD-DVD player wer only cheaper because Toshiba was selling them at HUGE losses to combat blu-ray. If there wasn't blu-ray Toshiba would still be selling them for $300 and movies would still be $30.
To the other poster who said he bought 360 because the PS3 didn't play PS2 games.
A) Since when did the 360 play PS2 games? Of course it doesn't which makes your point rather confusing. Basically what you're saying is that you bought a game system that doesn't play PS2 games because some other game system didn't play PS2 games.
B) Yes the PS3 does play PS2 games. The 80 GB does and if you want that bad enough you'd have paid the extra $100 or kept your PS2. I don't get people that want to spend $400 on a next gen gaming machine only to use to to play old gen games.
think of having an hd jukebox. this is the real deal.
http://www.vudu.com/
blu-ray won and prices WILL drop.
http://www.socoolaz.com/article.cfm?articleID=30121
If you want to impress your friends with size buy a projector if you want a great picture buy a Pioneer Plasma.
FACT: 1/6 of Americans have dial-up( most not by choice )
That's leaves 50% of the country of out digital downloading.
FACT: Currently 50% of Americans with broadband have speeds of 2 Mbps. Too slow for either HD downloading or streaming.
FACT: Since the US doesnt have a broadband policy ISPs are not motivated to provide broadband to those areas currently not served nor to increase speeds where they face no competition.
FACT: Even in areas where there are broadband speeds fast enough for HD downloading and streaming ( 8 Mbps minimum ). Prices remain much to high for the average consumer to want to fork out the cash for any "benefit"
FACT: HD movie downloads from places like Xbox live and Itnes are RENTALS. Which is fine if you like that. If you want to OWN Hd movies you still need to buy discs. Even if the studio did allow you to own HD downloads no doubt they would be full of restrictions to make them impractical and inconvenient to even want to own.
FACT: HD movie downloads from XBL and Itunes are 720p not 1080p like blu-ray and have bitrates from 4 Mbps( itunes ) to 6 Mbps (XBL) whereas blu-ray is 40 Mbps. Anyone claiming a 720p HD download with a 6 Mbps bitrate is the same thing as a 1080p blu-ray disc that has a 40 Mbps bitrate is ignorant.
FACT: It's a good thing HD downloads aren't 1080P with 40 Mbps bitrates because they would take 3 1/2 hours to download even with a 16 Mbps connection and nearly 6 hours with a 10 Mbps connection.
So physical media will be need an wanted for a LONG time.
- Hurdle for BD is pricing for 1080p HDTVs
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by dkarageo
February 19, 2008 12:52 PM PST
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