And HD DVD dies

[PRO-630HD]

Originally Posted by TheMoose

I was surprised by the lack of any action by Toshiba or the HD-DVD group since the Warner announcement.
At CES instead of fighting back & showing the TL51 disc & new players they just folded up their tents & left.
The lowering of hardware prices was half hearted at best, I don't care how cheap the player is if there is no content to play on it.

I think the loss can be seen as a failure by Toshiba as much as a victory for Blu-Ray.
They seemingly had many advantages out of the gate but either they got cocky or were incompetent & it's going to cost them big bucks!

I thought the WB announcement was the beginning of the end but I didn't expect the end to come so quickly & without a fight.

They did not know how to market their product. HDDVD truly survived just from great word of mouth from happy consumers.

[TheMoose]

From Arstechnica

Official HD DVD obituary a matter of days, not weeks



On Friday, rumor spread fast that Toshiba was about to bail on HD DVD, following a string of unhappy news for the HD DVD camp, beginning with Netflix and Best Buy's decisions to throw their weight behind Blu-ray earlier in the week. While a Toshiba marketing exec denied on Friday any definite plans to bail on HD DVD, in the past two days sources have come out of the woodwork to tell Ars Technica and many other publications that the HD DVD machine is grinding quickly to a halt. Yesterday, Reuters reported that a source said that "Toshiba was in the final stages of planning to exit the HD DVD business."

We've reached out to a few sources to find out what's going on. Here's what we know, starting with the most recent information gleaned from a source close to the HD DVD camp. Surprisingly, our source tells us that exit plans for HD DVD were already in the works before the Netflix announcement this past week. The loss of Warner Brothers demoralized the HD DVD camp, and when it was clear that deep price cuts weren't going to give HD DVD a second wind, the writing was on the wall. The only question, pre-Netflix announcement, was how to gracefully shutdown while liquidating existing product. Now that retailers and rental joints have turned their back publicly on the format, there's nothing graceful about the shutdown plans. There's little face to save on the consumer side.

What's more, our source says that Netflix and Wal-Mart were aware of HD DVD's impending official death, and rather than allow a long and drawn out withdrawal from the market that could burn customers, those companies chose to broadcast their intentions to the marketplace immediately. This puts pressure on Toshiba and its partners to exit the business without spending months trying to unload product that's essentially already obsolete.

At this stage, the hold-up on an official announcement, according to our source, is the need for a definitive shutdown plan that can be announced at the same time Toshiba officially gives up HD DVD. Toshiba and its partners are concerned to show that they have plans that can minimize the financial damage resulting from the shutdown, presumably to keep shareholders happy. But the damaging announcements from Best Buy, Netflix and Wal-Mart have forced an acceleration of the company's plans. An announcement could come as early as Tuesday, and will be most certainly made by the end of the week, our source indicated. At the top of Toshiba's list is how to maintain investor confidence in the face of factory shutdowns that will cost the company and some partners dearly.


It looks like Toshiba was ready to draw it out as long as it could so they could dump stock but Netflix & Wal-Mart busted them on it.

[akbungle]

Originally Posted by TheMoose

From Arstechnica

Official HD DVD obituary a matter of days, not weeks
..........
What's more, our source says that Netflix and Wal-Mart were aware of HD DVD's impending official death, and rather than allow a long and drawn out withdrawal from the market that could burn customers, those companies chose to broadcast their intentions to the marketplace immediately. This puts pressure on Toshiba and its partners to exit the business without spending months trying to unload product that's essentially already obsolete.
.....


It looks like Toshiba was ready to draw it out as long as it could so they could dump stock but Netflix & Wal-Mart busted them on it.

Certainly not to rub salt but this coming from the company all the HD DVD fans said has always been doing this format for the customer and has always put the customers needs first.

[1shotstudios]

I got this news today in my email and was just checking to see if anyone has heard that the format war is really over? Is blue-ray the winner? Is HD-DVD really stopping production? View the link for details.

http://www.psxextreme.com/ps3-news/2598.html

[1more4HDDVD]

You win some, you lose some. I had a lot of fun with HD DVD and tracking the format war was a lot of fun too.

I downloaded 3:10 to Yuma on Xbox Live this past weekend and I was very impressed with the visual quality. I will support Blu-ray, but I will be saving a lot of money by incorporating downloads into my movie watching. Did I really need to pay $30 for ‘License to Wed’?

[akbungle]

It's official folks:
http://www.businesswire.com/portal/s...20080219005651