Posted on 02/18/2008 2:09:57 PM PST by Las Vegas Dave
Washington, D.C. (February 18, 2008) -- Toshiba is likely to hold a board meeting as early as tomorrow to discuss dropping its HD DVD business.
That's according to a report by the Associated Press.
Various news reports over the weekend said Toshiba, the main backer of HD DVD, was planning to end its high-def disc format battle against Blu-ray.
In recent weeks, Blu-ray player and disc sales have far outpaced HD DVD and Warner Bros. and several retailers have decided to endorse Blu-ray in the war.
Toshiba publicly said Monday that it has started a review of the HD DVD business, but would not comment further.
However, AP quotes an anonymous Toshiba official as saying that a board meeting could be held as soon as Tuesday to discuss pulling the plug.
"If true, this will be good news for the next-generation DVD industry in clearing up the confusion for consumers because of the format competition that had curbed buying," Koya Tabata, an electronics analyst at Credit Suisse in Tokyo, told the wire service.
The Wall Street Journal reports today that Toshiba is "expected" to pull out of the war this week. The newspaper says that Toshiba will continue to offer service for existing players.
Will Harry Reid act as Toshiba’s spokesman for this announcement?
>>Will Harry Reid act as Toshiba’s spokesman for this announcement?<<
Anybody from the DailyKos, DU, CNN, LA Times or NYTimes are qualified to make the announcement.
Now there’s no reason why GL can’t release SW in HD.
Its dead Jim
The big reason that blu-ray is outpacing HD is that the hype has all been that Blu ray had already won.
I’ve made the decision that I’m not going to Blu Ray. I don’t have 1080P resolution, so it won’t benefit me. I’m just going to rely on the DVR. The movies that Hollywood is putting out are all junk, anyway.
Japanese regard deep-discounting as cheapening a brand image. The players are still perfectly OK for playing standard DVDs. But I would expect the HD-DVD software to follow in a few months.
Are they going to give me my money back because I bought one of their stupid units for Christmas?
If the 1080p HD DVD player hits $99, it will be a good buy as one of the best upscaling DVD players available. They’re built like tanks and have beautiful picture quality.
I don't think that HD DVD quite gets to 1080p quality. Blu-Ray doees.
They can blu ray all they want. I am not replacing hundreds of DVD’s again to put money in their pockets.
Oh well...
I wonder if Microsoft will start making BluRay Xbox 360s.
Does Blu-ray or HD-TV even matter? As format, perhaps yes, but not as disks.
At the current rate of development, flash memory chips will contain more data storage at comparable prices in 3-5 years, as well as being reusable. At 2” x 1”, much easier to store. HD disks contain about 58gb, expensive chips already contain 64gb.
And while disks in the future may contain several HD movies worth of data, why bother? Perhaps people will want an entire TV series on a single disk, in HD quality.
In any event, you can now watch “The Hottie and the Nottie” in high definition.
Why you would do so at all is still a good question.
All HD-DVD’s are 1080p. The Toshiba A-2 will only play in 1080i, but if you have a 1080p television set, it does the de-interlacing, so you get exactly the same picture.
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