Toshiba Makes It Official - HD DVD Is Dead

A press release today on Toshiba's website states "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." The ax has fallen swiftly and decisively with the company saying "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 should come as no huge surprise to anyone as the supporters of the format have been dropping like flies over the last several months, just glad that I didn't buy that XBox HD DVD drive!

Wal-Mart Backs Blu-ray

In what could be a finishing blow to Toshiba's HD DVD format, Wal-Mart has decided to sell high-definition DVDs in the Blu-Ray format exclusively. “We've listened to our customers, who are showing a clear preference toward Blu-ray products and movies with their purchases,” said Gary Severson, Wal-Mart senior vice president on the company's web site yesterday. The move comes days after Netflix put it's support behind Blu-ray, as did consumer electronics chain Best Buy. I don't think I'd be incline to by an HD DVD player now, it's only a matter of time until Toshiba throws in the towel. The only thing that might save the format is the availability of write-able discs and drives but it looks like movies will be published and distributed on Blu-ray.