HD Disc Format War Not Over By a Long Shot

[TheMoose]

This is from NHK (Japanese TV)

Toshiba plans to withdraw from HD-DVD production
Toshiba Corporation has decided to withdraw from next generation high-definition DVD production.

Toshiba has been struggling with its version of the next generation DVD format, as support for Blu-ray technology has spread among US retailers.

Toshiba has been in heated competition with other Japanese electronic giants such as Sony, Panasonic and Hitachi, which produce the high-definition DVD format, Blu-ray.

The Blu-ray format now makes up 90 percent of the Japanese high-definition DVD market after winning last year's price war for DVD recorders and players.

Toshiba faced even more difficulty when the major movie studio, Warner Brothers Entertainment, announced that it planned to use only the Blu-ray format for its movie software.

The company said it will continue to sell HD-DVD products for a while but will stop further development of HD DVD. Meanwhile, it said its DVD factories in Aomori Prefecture, northern Japan, would be closed.

Market observers said that Toshiba could suffer a loss of hundreds of millions of US dollars.

[Ken S]

From The New York Times, February 16, 2008:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/16/te...16toshiba.html

The fat lady has sung!

[PFC5]

The Fat lady sang yesterday after the Walmart announcement. Toshiba has already responded today that HD DVD is over so hopefully BD fans who now have what they wanted, can be gracious in their format winning and work to move HDM forward so it does not remain a niche market.

I have seen a lot of gloating and taunting around the forums by some childish BD fanatics, and this will not help get HD DVD fans to move to BD. It will not help the BD format move from niche status either, so hopefully BD fans will consider what it would be like if the roles were reversed and act accordingly.

[bootman]

The fat lady started to sing when Warner went blu.
Then threads like this pops up everywhere trying to convince the masses otherwise.
Hopefully not too many were persuaded to go and spend on a now dead format because of threads like this.

Now we will continue to see threads touting the greatness of HD downloads vs HDM.
It is this that truly has me puzzled since if this war went the other way around, I don't know if we would all be buying into the greatness of HD downloads.

[prerich]

Originally Posted by kennyt

Yep, but we all knew that coming into this 'war', so no one has a right to cry. If your format lost, sorry, but I have both players so if I'm not crying, neither should you!

I am sure we've all lost more at the tables in Vegas in one night than any of us have in this war, especially me!

I've lost nothing - I have a great upconverting hd-dvd and a blu-ray. No lost to me - My dvd collection is way bigger than my HD-DVD and Blu-ray together.

[prerich]

Originally Posted by bootman

The fat lady started to sing when Warner went blu.
Then threads like this pops up everywhere trying to convince the masses otherwise.
Hopefully not too many were persuaded to go and spend on a now dead format because of threads like this.

Now we will continue to see threads touting the greatness of HD downloads vs HDM.
It is this that truly has me puzzled since if this war went the other way around, I don't know if we would all be buying into the greatness of HD downloads.

Downloads will initially get computer geeks like me and the 20 somethin' crowd. Geeks have a way of making things go and so do youngsters (can anyone say Ipod, Iphone? I don't get it, I saw my son watching a movie on his "superphone" and wondered how he could watch a movie on that little screen like that and enjoy it - with inferior sound at that). That's just whats happening. We have several here on this forum that are eagerly awaiting downloads for their convenience factor. I don't rent as many movies from Blockbuster or even Netflix now. I just watch a movie on demand - and determain if its worth buying. It's a good way of auditioning a movie before you buy it.