HD-DVD officially discontinued by Toshiba

[raulpica]

Today Toshiba announced that the HD-DVD players and recorders production will cease by March 2008.

Here's the official press release by Toshiba:

TOKYO--Toshiba Corporation today announced that it has undertaken a thorough review of its overall strategy for HD DVD and has decided it will no longer develop, manufacture and market HD DVD players and recorders. This decision has been made following recent major changes in the market. Toshiba will continue, however, to provide full product support and after-sales service for all owners of Toshiba HD DVD products.

HD DVD was developed to offer consumers access at an affordable price to high-quality, high definition content and prepare them for the digital convergence of tomorrow where the fusion of consumer electronics and IT will continue to progress.

"We carefully assessed the long-term impact of continuing the so-called 'next-generation format war' and concluded that a swift decision will best help the market develop," said Atsutoshi Nishida, President and CEO of Toshiba Corporation. "While we are disappointed for the company and more importantly, for the consumer, the real mass market opportunity for high definition content remains untapped and Toshiba is both able and determined to use our talent, technology and intellectual property to make digital convergence a reality."

Toshiba will continue to lead innovation, in a wide range of technologies that will drive mass market access to high definition content. These include high capacity NAND flash memory, small form factor hard disk drives, next generation CPUs, visual processing, and wireless and encryption technologies. The company expects to make forthcoming announcements around strategic progress in these convergence technologies.

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.

This decision will not impact on Toshiba's commitment to standard DVD, and the company will continue to market conventional DVD players and recorders. Toshiba intends to continue to contribute to the development of the DVD industry, as a member of the DVD Forum, an international organization with some 200 member companies, committed to the discussion and defining of optimum optical disc formats for the consumer and the related industries.

Toshiba also intends to maintain collaborative relations with the companies who joined with Toshiba in working to build up the HD DVD market, including Universal Studios, Paramount Pictures, and DreamWorks Animation and major Japanese and European content providers on the entertainment side, as well as leaders in the IT industry, including Microsoft, Intel, and HP. Toshiba will study possible collaboration with these companies for future business opportunities, utilizing the many assets generated through the development of HD DVD.

Source: Toshiba

Goodbye, HD-DVD...
So... Blu-Ray, here you go.

 

[arctic_flame]

Doesn't change the fact that Blu-ray doesn't follow its own specs properly. I hope HD-DVD won't die...

 

[raulpica]

Doesn't change the fact that Blu-ray doesn't follow its own specs properly. I hope HD-DVD won't die...

Yeah, I don't like Blu-Ray because of that.

Toshiba was the main supporter of HD-DVD and if they officially dropped it... It is good as dead...

 

[ackers]

Unlucky to those who bought HD DVD players...

Will Xbox 360 be getting a Blu-Ray drive now?

 

[raulpica]

Unlucky to those who bought HD DVD players...

Will Xbox 360 be getting a Blu-Ray drive now?

Speculations say that Microsoft already has a working Blu-Ray addon prototype for X360 ready, and that will be launched in 3 months.

Other speculations say that a new Xbox360 revision will be out in May 2008 and it will come with a Blu-Ray unit instead of the traditional DVD ones.

 

[xJonny]

Looks like bluray wins because of PS3

 

[matriculated]

I don't know why you'd buy a standalone Bluray player - they cost as much or more than a PS3. Thank goodness this stupid war is over... but I'm not looking forward to Bluray DRM.

 

[Hitto]

Now, the war between DVD and BR can begin...
Oh, wait, meanwhile, everybody was watching their torrented divxes.

 

[fischju]

Blu-Ray wins because it has better DRM. This is great fo the companies, and bad for consumers. The disks cost more, the players cost more, they keep updating the standard so only the PS3 can play all BD disks.

 

[Extreme Coder]

DVD > BR

 

[raulpica]

Blu-Ray wins because it has better DRM. This is great fo the companies, and bad for consumers. The disks cost more, the players cost more, they keep updating the standard so only the PS3 can play all BD disks.

So the consumer loses and Sony and the other bad evil companies win... Everything's clear now

 

[Rayder]

Even though it became obvious to me that HD-DVD was losing the battle in the last few months, when the war started, I really thought HD-DVD would win regardless of technical specs.

I figured it would win simply because HD-DVD and HDTV sounded better together and people would relate to it better. Blu-Ray sounds like sunglasses or something.

So now, all the early-adopters who bought HD-DVD players are screwed and now have what I like to call a "tree lawn compatible" device. Don't you feel special knowing the format you chose is now dead only months after buying into it? Do you think any of the companies that produced those units even care about all the people that just got burned? Nope.


And they wonder why people just pirate everything they can nowadays.

 

[nando]

hd dvd buyers should file a lawsuit. i would if my purchase became obsolete so quickly

 

[SavageWaffle]

Unlucky to those who bought HD DVD players...

Will Xbox 360 be getting a Blu-Ray drive now?

Speculations say that Microsoft already has a working Blu-Ray addon prototype for X360 ready, and that will be launched in 3 months.

Other speculations say that a new Xbox360 revision will be out in May 2008 and it will come with a Blu-Ray unit instead of the traditional DVD ones.

Thats pretty much a lie. Microsoft isnt working on the Blue-Ray Add on Player for the Xbox 360. Why? Because whatever Sony makes, ya they celebrate for awhile, then after a few months or even years, they die out. Its cause they never "share" there products. They keep it to there selfs. If they started working with Sony and Microsoft, it wont work out. One or the other will be spying on eachother. And it will pretty much start like a war. Not literally but yea.

Dont put your hopes up for Blue-Ray Add On for Xbox 360.

 

[dsbomb]

Actually, now is the time to buy up HDDVD stuff. It's going to be so discounted, it'll provide hours of entertainment. There are already sales around sites for buy-one-get-one-free, next we'll see the $5 bins filled with them. You can buy 80 $5 movies for the price of one bluray player. Maybe, by the time you watch all those, the prices of players/movies will be down to a reasonable level...

Do PS3s and Bluray players play standard CDs/DVDs also? I wasn't sure how compatible the technology was with the old-fashioned stuff like that.

 

[martin88]

I'd just go with the x264 rip if I want HD movies.