RIP HD DVDToshiba announced yesterday that it planned to end development of HD DVD players and recorders. Yes, that means Blu-ray wins the high-def disc format war.

"We concluded that a swift decision would be best," Toshiba President Atsutoshi Nishida said of his company’s move.

Nishida says Warner’s decision to go Blu-ray exclusive had tremendous impact in his company’s decision.  "If we had continued, that would have created problems for consumers and we simply had no chance to win."

The Warner decision refers to the decision of Warner Brothers to abandon HD DVD movie releases and exclusively release its new films in Blu-ray and DVD. Warner’s move to Blu-ray was widely considered the slamming of the coffin lid on the HD DVD format, despite Toshiba’s insistence it would keep fighting.

We suspected the Warner move had greater impact than Toshiba was letting on. Too much time had gone by with no good news from Toshiba camp about HD DVD. The Warner decision came after a strong showing by HD DVD at the holidays, it almost looked like HD DVD would win the format war - how quickly fortune changed for Toshiba.

So, the high-def disc civil war is over - now begins the real war, the war of public opinion over whether or not high-def movie discs are even worthwhile.

Tags: iPhone, Microsoft, Mobile Computing

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 19th, 2008 at 9:59 am and is filed under Media, Video. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.