The 8-Track
Betamax
HD-DVD
Posted on 02/19/2008 5:38:19 AM PST by cbkaty
Japanese corporation Toshiba surrendered to Sony’s Blu-Ray technology and released a statement announcing the end of the road for the HD DVD. Toshiba says however that HD DVD consumers will continue to have full product support despite the decision not to develop and manufacture HD DVD players anymore.
Toshiba Corp. will put an end to the HD DVD business by the end of March 2008, which includes besides players and recorders, HD DVD disk drives for PC applications and games. However, the company will continue to support and develop the standard DVD format, regardless of what is going to happen to the HD DVD market.
“We carefully assessed the long-term impact of continuing the so-called ‘next-generation format war’ and concluded that a swift decision will be best help the market develop,” Atsutoshi Nishida, President and CEO of Toshiba Corporation, said according to the company’s press release. “While we are disappointed … Toshiba is both able and determined to use our talent, technology and intellectual property to make digital convergence a reality.”
Since the beginning of this year, several retailers took the decision to swear allegiance to the Blu-Ray, including Woolworths and Wal-Mart, and despite Toshiba’s announcement that it will stay devoted to the HD DVD format, the inevitable happened. Analysts expected Toshiba’s move sooner or later, as Blu-Ray became a market’s favorite.
Several attempts to find a common solution and promote a single format brought Sony and Toshiba to absolutely no agreement, and Blu-Ray continued to make its way to the top. Despite several announcements in the past few months of companies such as Warner Bros. Entertainment or China Film Group that they’ve decided to turn exclusively to Blu-Ray format, Toshiba said it will continue the collaboration with Universal Studios, Paramount Pictures, DreamWorks Animation, Intel, Microsoft and HP in the future, “utilizing the many assets generated through the development of HD DVD.”
Since Toshiba is on my BOYCOTT FOREVER list, I am happy to see them lose.
sub propeller?
Laggards of the world unite!!! Yes indeedie-do, we can be proud that our reluctance to pay top dollar for new technology like the early adopters has finally paid off. The product cycle time is now so short that entire technologies can come and go before we get up off our wallets and buy one. :) Woohoo!
I don't have cable, just checkout movies on disc from the library. My old Sony TV and cheap DVD player work fine.
Yup. Forever is forever.
Yeah, but just think of how cheaply you will be able to pick up all those old HD-DVD titles..
Ditto.
Agree.
But I’m such a Laggard that the technology is almost out of date by the time I get around to buying something.
I feel like such a fuddy-duddy, but I have begun to let successive waves of the latest-and-greatest just pass me by. Eventually I will plunk down and buy and HDTV, but not fore a while.
Fortunately, my visual acuity is going, so the old LDTV looks fine from across the room. If I get HDTV, I am going to need a new pair of glasses so I can see it!
Old DVDs will work on both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray players.
I don't know how long it will be before studios abandon the old DVD and start publishing titles in Blu-Ray only. I expect that Sony will do it first, but initially will probably just have the Blu-Ray release a few months before the regular DVD in order to boost Blu-Ray sales.
The 8-Track
Betamax
HD-DVD
Does this mean that my DVD player, which I used only one time in the last four years is obsolete?
Seesh for that $200 I could have hired a limo to take us to the movie.
I hear that Costco is getting them all returned. I haven’t decided whether to return mine or not. I don’t intend to buy into Blu-ray.
Thank god I did not buy that Toshiba last Dec!!
the PS3 is quite the incredible machine. Does alot more than just play blu-ray and games.
I’m really glad I bought it now.
Sony finally gets revenge for the VHS format beating out the far superior Betamax format.
It's also possible to build Blu-ray drives that can play both Blu-ray and HDDVD. I posted some info about one that came out a few weeks ago on one of these HDTV threads. Putting in backwards compatibility for HDDVD would allow people with exiting libraries of HDDVD'S to be able to play them long into the furture even if no more new ones get pressed.
I wonder if Toshiba will contribute it's expertise and programming of the interactive features of HDDVD to the committe in charge of Blu-ray? That's precisely what is under developed about the Blu-ray format so far.
DVD sells about 100:1 over Blu ray.
Sony may not want blu ray to be a commodity product. I would expect blu ray to remain at least $10 a disc higher than DVD and continue to be same day release.
I was one of those suckers!
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