Toshiba Blu-ray players? Don’t count on it
Early in the morning yesterday, way before most in the Eastern Standard Time zone even had their first cup of coffee, Toshiba announced it was dumping the HD DVD format. In effect, Toshiba jumped out of the format war letting Blu-ray stand as the winner and official successor to the DVD.
Among Toshiba’s press release, the company stated it would "…continue to lead innovation, in a wide range of technologies that will drive mass market access to high definition content."
The next few lines refer to Toshiba’s advancement in solid state storage and micro-hard drives. Nothing was said about possibly developing Blu-ray disc players. As Toshiba reduces manufacturing of HD DVD a lot of people are wondering it has any intention of replacing it with the manufacture of Blu-ray machines.
Toshiba CEO Atsutoshi Nishida said Toshiba has: "…absolutely no plans…" to make Blu-ray players.
That’s not just a no, that’s a HELL NO! It sounds like the Toshiba boss might have a case of sour grapes. But give it a few months, these decisions can’t be made at such short notice. If the Blu-ray format takes off Toshiba would be foolish not to let bygones be bygones and build players if it helps the bottom line. A likely place for Toshiba Blu-ray players might be optical storage devices for PCs and notebooks.
Why did Toshiba lose the format war? One studio.
