Toshiba pulling the plug on HD DVD already? - Yup it's over.

Japan's NHK has followed up The Hollywood Reporter's earlier indications Toshiba was ready to dump its money-losing HD DVD business, with news that the company is prepared to cease manufacturing software and hardware, at a loss of hundreds of millions of dollars. This caps the worst week ever for red, when HD DVD was dumped by Netflix and Wal-mart, pushed to the background by Best Buy and put on -- an apparently incredibly short -- deathwatch right here. Toshiba is mum on the subject right now, but we hear there's plenty of cheap players and movies in a dumpster around back of the HQ.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in; via Reuters; warning, Japanese read link]

Update: Along with an English translation of the NHK's article (Thanks sfditty!) comes additional confirmation from Reuters sources, it's a wrap. Toshiba is shutting down its DVD manufacturing facilities in Aomori Prefecture, Japan, while official word is expected "soon".

[JimmyStewart @ Feb 16th 2008 2:06PM]

Why do people keep assuming that without two formats prices will go up? DVD has been the only format since it launched and it's done nothing but decrease in cost. Unlike the RIAA it seems the MPAA or at least the studios know what they're doing... I can buy two or three DVDs for the cost of one CD these days.

When it comes to media... it seems like the only one who has really kept costs for the consumer down is the lone format DVD. So let's stop trying to create things to be alarmed about. By eliminating a second useless format it means that now the bulk of the population have one format they can buy into. Now no one has to fear that their investment in one format or another will be wasted. In other words... now we can start to see the true HD-DVD (Blu-Ray) take off and once they start selling we'll finally be able to see those prices start falling. Competition is exactly what's been keeping the price of these discs so high initially.

[Gator @ Feb 16th 2008 10:45AM]

As a HD DVD guy, I say congratulation to the BR folks. They fought the better battle and won the war. I will continue to buy HD DVD discs until they are stopped being produced and will begin looking for the best deal in a quality, upgradeable BR player. I guess I am one of the few people who loved the "extras" on the HD DVD discs, especially the in movie experience (PIP stuff) and hope that BR can begin to bring this feature to more of its discs. Watching 300 with the making of showing how the scenes were filmed was fascinating. Hopefully, the lack of competition will not cause prices to stagnate or even rise. But in any event, again, congratulations to the Blue folks.

[Gilbert Tang @ Feb 16th 2008 10:47AM]

It's funny how the opinions of the tech community ebb and flow like the tides. Months ago, people were touting HD-DVD to the point of fanboyism, while bashing Sony for the "mistake" of "forcing" people to buy Blu-Ray in its PS3 (by the way, take a look at the sales charts this week), and its supporters for various levels of "ignorance." Now, on the other hand, the boards are filled with people singing Sony's praise.

This, of course, could be for two reasons, (1) because the HD-DVD supporters in question simply aren't commenting (for obvious reasons), or (2) people are simply backing the winner to save face.

Of course, I could be totally wrong, and totally a jerk for stating the obvious trend; and of course, this is not global. A closer reading of the boards still shows some animosity; but it's so striking and drastic a change that it's worth noting.

I'd love to see the comment histories of some of the posters in order to test my theory. In fact, I'll do that as soon as this is over. In the meantime, I've obviously subjected myself to much deeper scrutiny. Have at it.

Lastly, it's worth noting that this is not an "I told you so" kind of email due to my support of Blu-Ray and the PS3 (see my comments for my reasons). Again, I'm simply calling attention to the icky phenomenon that is only being a fan when your [insert major sport here] team is winning.

[ComradeZ @ Feb 16th 2008 11:13AM]

You missed the obvious reason, that people from a year ago see that, okay, they were wrong, life goes on, congrats Sony.

[Jay @ Feb 16th 2008 11:11AM]

I hate Sony. They forced us to take rubbish like Trinitron TVs, personal stereos and floppy disks (who ever used them?!) and then conspired with Philips to take away our beloved magnetic tapes and forced on us those awful CDs and DVDs we all hate so much.

Then they forced us to use those lousy CDs and DVDs on our games machines instead of those amazing cartridges! What useless propietary crap, all of them!

Oh no, wait a minu

[KayRazy Ken Kutaragi @ Feb 16th 2008 11:17AM]

And now comes the slow inevitable march towards Chumpvision (DVD) players. I do not think that it matters much though simply because ALL movie studios will want to continue to release HD movies and they know that Blu is the ONLY format out there. Not to mention every BaM retailer has NO Chumpvision TV's on sale.

I hope the rumblings of Transformers and others from Paramount are real, I would imagine that they are. I cannot for a moment believe that the retailers and Netflix did NOT inform Paramount and Universal that they were dumping the DEAD format. It just does not work like that. I am thinking this was planned during the WB conference about 2 weeks ago.

And I thought the Berlin Wall came down fast. WOW that was quick. 1 stinkin week and its finally over.

Bring on the BIG catalogue releases please.

Nfinity, and Truth Teller...it's been fun, and like others said post your Blu collection when you have one, and if your stubborn enough to NOT buy Blu...then whatever.

PS3 will DOMINATE 08 and beyond. Like Sony said, this is a marathon....NOT a sprint.

[steve @ Feb 16th 2008 10:10PM]

exactly why the first xbox didnt do well and the 360 is a huge sucess. Sony is taking a pitstop in this race

[kuromiko @ Feb 16th 2008 11:24AM]

From the better industry support the outcome this was very clear even a year ago. The one and ONLY point in the format war where HD-DVD actually had a chance was when Warner was considering going Red again. But they didn't, everybody saw that with 70% support and an 80 / 20 sales ratio that HD-DVD wasn't profitable at that point.

Everyone who complains about the prices needs to step back a few and look at the big picture. HD-DVD's prices were artificially low to begin with. When other manufacturers cannot make money making players, you see a single player manufacturer emerge as clearly larger than the others (Toshiba in this case) as they had undercut all of their competitors in order to push players. Who cares about an 5%-10% sales lead in standalone players when it wasn't selling software which was the only profitable sector of HD-DVD, and even that was nearly buried in player losses.

It was cheaper for the consumer, but expensive to the rest of the industry. Blu-Ray made money, HD-DVD didn't. Now we have the obvious outcome.

I guess Sony paid off Toshiba, NFinity?

[karl @ Feb 16th 2008 11:27AM]

yessss


its over. sorry toshiba, but it was just time to go.
be a good sport.

[Mike Hunt @ Feb 16th 2008 11:51AM]

Format wars only matter when you aren't filthy rich like me. Who cares when you can afford to by the top-of-the-line players for both formats without blinking. Too bad for all you suckers who bought HD-DVD stuff. You now have a very expensive upconverting DVD player, LOL.

[Stranger @ Feb 16th 2008 11:58AM]

I never really cared about which format would win the war, I'm just happy we have a winner. Finally I can start collection HD movies without feeling that they may someday in a not to distant future find themself in the same situation as betamax.

[Stompntom @ Feb 16th 2008 11:59AM]

@zerotech - right now the PS3 is the only BluRay player to buy toat will be supported with BluRay 2.0....and it is the same price as the stand alone players so why not?

[ZeroTech @ Feb 16th 2008 9:52AM]

Because I have a Harmony 880 that I love and the PS3 is lacking in the IR department. Otherwise I'd be all over it.

[harveylubin @ Feb 16th 2008 11:49AM]

ZeroTech,
You can use your Harmony remote with your PS3! For $19.99 you can get the Nyko Blu-Wave (http://www.nyko.com/Store/ProductDetail.aspx?i=113). I have one and it works flawlessly with my Harmony remote.

[harveylubin @ Feb 16th 2008 11:55AM]

ZeroTech,
I forgot to mention that Logitech has all the commands for the Nyko Blu-Wave, so you just need to attach the USB IR receiver to one of the PS3 USB ports, and then program your Harmony remote with the Nyko commands.

[ZeroTech @ Feb 16th 2008 12:18PM]

@ harveylubin: So, I can natively control all of the BluRay functions of the PS3 with this via my 880? That would be a lock if that was true. I don't console game at all, but the ability to play the new Gran Turismo on my movie player might lock this up. Hmmm....

[Geoffrey Sperl @ Feb 16th 2008 1:49PM]

@ZeroTech: Harvey's right. I have an 880 and a PS3 and I use the Bluwave dongle, too. It's the size of a standard USB drive, so it really isn't all that obtrusive.

You might find yourself tweaking the Harmony commands to get them where you like them, but it's not that difficult.

The only caveat: You cannot control power settings with an IR remote on the PS3. There are some hacks out there that allow for attaching a pad to the power button or hacking the Sony Bluetooth remote, but those are a bit less elegant that the USB dongle.

Plus, if you set up your PS3 for Folding@Home then you won't want to turn it off (just keep in mind that the PS3 is running all the time at that point).

[TorontoGuy @ Feb 16th 2008 12:08PM]

What if MS HAD included an HD DVD drive in every Xbox360 when it first came out. Would that have saved HD DVD or, today, would we be talking about the end of the Xbox 360 as well as HD DVD? MS has covered itself in the format wars by offering an external HD DVD drive...as we know...it can just as easily offer a Blu-ray external drive for the 360 if people want it.

[Eric @ Feb 16th 2008 12:12PM]

I'm surprised no one has noticed that HD-DVD has been cracked, and Blu-Ray has not. Maybe that has something to do with the studios abandoning it.

[Matt @ Feb 16th 2008 12:46PM]

Are you living under a rock?

BD+ has been hacked. Successfuly.

[giedrys @ Feb 16th 2008 12:22PM]

What do they mean by "netflix dumped HD DVD already"? I still have every HD DVD in my queue. Is there a deadline or something?

[hemmy @ Feb 16th 2008 12:35PM]

Netflix is not replenishing HD DVDs, and will phase out support before the year is through, or till stock runs out, whatever comes first.

http://www.engadget.com/2008/02/11/netflix-picks-blu-ray-good-luck-renting-an-hd-dvd-soon/

[Seminole @ Feb 16th 2008 12:23PM]

Where is Nfinity now? Hellloooo? You out there?

[willyboy @ Feb 16th 2008 12:26PM]

In 3 more years, Blue-Ray will be dead too.

[hemmy @ Feb 16th 2008 12:36PM]

wishful thinking.

[Jay @ Feb 16th 2008 12:38PM]

Saying it in two blogs doesn't make any more true.

[willyboy @ Feb 16th 2008 12:48PM]

@ Jay You may not reply until my three years are up.

[Geoffrey Sperl @ Feb 16th 2008 2:27PM]

You might want to back yourself up, and that means looking at the trends in the market:

1) Bandwidth is the 800lb gorilla in the room no one likes to talk about. Let's say you want to watch The Godfather Part II, which is probably a candidate for 40-50GB of space in HD. Are you going to download that movie in the amount of time it takes to watch it? The movie is 3 hours and 20 minutes long. I can't see bandwidth, even using some sort of pimped-out version of BitTorrent, allowing for 40GB in 200 minutes in the next three years. Maybe ten, but not three.

2) Storage space is another concern. You need to store the movies somewhere if you buy them as opposed to renting them (though even rentals need to sit somewhere). Let's say you buy the Godfather trilogy, the original Star Wars trilogy, and maybe the four Indiana Jones movies and then another ten flicks you just have to have. I roughly estimate (conservatively) that those will be about 500GB of space for 20 HD movies. Let's even say that you can squeeze 50 titles into a terabyte. Is that really worth it? Really? Even in a decade when we're seeing multiple terabyte drives as standards, do you really think you will want to dedicate an entire terabyte to just 50 movies?

3) There's always streaming, but that falls back to the issue about bandwidth again. And not just your bandwidth with your ISP, but the bandwidth inside your own house.

Three years seems awfully optimistic. Plus, I can say that I prefer having a portable disc that I can move from room to room and not tax my network with transferring or streaming.

[minimalist @ Feb 16th 2008 4:26PM]

I agree with Geoffrey.

The physical-media-is-irrelevant advocates always seem to ignore the nagging little details of HD downloads. And the nagging details are exactly what will hinder mainstream adoption of HD downloads as an alternative to buying discs.

Downloading is part is the easy part (and even it is really slow and hence a problem). Its the multiple forms of DRM with all their difficult to understand rules, the dozen or so proprietary formats that may or may not work with varying pieces of hardware, and the cost of storage and backup space that will keep the mainstream from adopting downloads as a replacement for purchased physical media. It needs to be dead simple and work reliably across a variety of manufacturers equipment to become an industry standard. Right now we have a rats nest of formats and rules and hardware compatibility. They may be fun for geeks to play with but these half baked solutions are not a recipe for success in the mainstream.

Downloadable rentals will happen fairly quickly because most of these nagging details don't matter when you aren't keeping the file (although no rental service can come anywhere near the selection of Netflix and Blockbuster and that will take a few years to rectify) . It will take a good 8-10 years however, until all the annoying kinks are worked out of purchased downloads (downloadable music is just finally hitting its stride now that DRM has been dropped and we are a good 6 or 7 years into that business model). Movie studios are not hurting like the record companies... yet. So I wouldn't be holding my breath for them to agree to a universal un-DRM'd standard like mp3's anytime soon.

In the meantime, it will be so easy for people to pick up a Blu-ray player at Bet Buy and pop a disc in and watch it. They will be 150 bucks by next year, maybe sooner.

[willyboy @ Feb 16th 2008 6:34PM]

That's cool. I Just feel most people will not notice the difference between 1080 and 720.....720 is fairly easy to download now as we speak... My sat interweb connection does fine with it.....For true video fans, it may be a while longer. In terms of DRM....3 years and this will be a non-issue. I do have to be honest here though. I am a mac fanboy. I tend to see things through apple lenses. So I do carry a bit of a biased opinion on the matter.

[Allen @ Feb 16th 2008 12:59PM]

Why is it that whenever someone puts lots of "!" in their shouts (ala "In Your Face Suckers) that they let some 1's get in there? Honestly, just hold down the shift button the whole time. Like this:

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

See? No '1's

As far as this goes, I am snatching up cheap HD DVDs right now as fast as I can. I've seen some selling for $9.99! I'll have to buy a BD player eventually, but considering I can still get 1080p/24 playback with DTS HD and Dolby TruHD right now so easily. I do not see any reason to buy them all again on Blu-Ray, unless BD offers some superior movie playback with better audio (9.1 channel surround, anyone?). I hope to god no one goes beyond 1080p though. For one its questionable if you'd even notice it until beyond 100 inches, second I will have oodles of customers bitching, whining, and screaming about wanting 1440p and that we gipped them selling them on 1080p.

Shudder.

[ben @ Feb 16th 2008 4:07PM]

No one let you in on the joke.

http://www.encyclopediadramatica.com/index.php/Oneoneone

[Drew @ Feb 16th 2008 1:04PM]

I think the real winners are the people that have the dual format players. Now they can pick up all the HD movies for super cheap! Microsoft went on record to say that they will offer a blu-ray add on for the 360 if the public wanted it. So, let see if they live up to their word!

[omegajp @ Feb 16th 2008 1:05PM]

A majority of us can probably admit this same thing: feeling like it was a gamble purchasing a PS3 because if Blu-ray didn't win, we had visions of UMD running through our heads all over again.
Perhaps PS3 sales will increase now that there is a clear winner. I have all 3 next-gen systems and I've been drifting towards my PS3 a lot more lately, which I am surprised to say considering how I felt when I bought it.

A sense of relief, now I can just buy movies and not have to worry if it's going to HD-DVD or Blu-ray; also knowing that PS3 games are safe being within the same media is awesome as well.

[John @ Feb 16th 2008 1:15PM]

Bring on BD-R at a reasonable price already, and please start integrating them into systems (laptops, desktops).

[Dominic @ Feb 16th 2008 1:19PM]

cr*p! What a way for me to wake up. My birthday is in 8 days and I was at least hoping HD-DVD would pull out through then. I really cared less about Wal*Mart (like I shop there anyway), BestBuy, (hate the store..but ironically that's where I got my HD-DVD player from, from a deal too good to pass up), were going to stop..but NetFlix..well there was still Blockbuster online I suppose? But I knew it was going to die, but Toshiba pulled out real fast in my opinion. And as far as I was concerned..I saw BestBuy adverting HD-DVD, and Wal*MART as well..but not one wink of a Blu-Ray Player, as far as I was concerned Sony had to do their own advertising with their multiple advertisements about the PS3. Wal*Mart, Sears, BestBuy...almost all of the consumer electronic stores had some kind of HD-DVD deal last Christmas/BlackFriday. Anyway, I guess if Tosh isn't going to make them anymore..then I can't really get them anywhere else anymore..sigh..well at least I'll own a piece of histoy..and I haven't even watched 5 of my HD-DVD movies I got last X'mas yet and I'm still waiting for the 5 Free HD-DVD rebate to come. Well maybe I should start saving up for a PS3..since all the other blu-ray players they currently have are cr*p and won't work with "Blu-Ray Live" or whatever it was that HD-DVD already had...HD-DVD could update itself with new features when they first came out..sigh..Sony..you know what? I'm just planning on skipping this generation of Blu-ray..I'm just so sick of your DRM on everything...

[David @ Feb 16th 2008 1:52PM]

It's a good thing there's nothing wrong with plain, old DVDs! I'll move to Blu-Ray or whatever succeeds it when the format is mature. There's no way I'm going to spend a few hundred dollars on a player that may not even play all future movies of the same format. The PS3 may be the answer, but I'm going to wait at least until they start selling the 45nm cell processor version.

[z20let @ Feb 16th 2008 2:39PM]

I always thought nobody would win, but I was wrong. I got the XBox HD DVD drive, but only got 2 HD DVDs for it, so no great loss. I'll be using the HD DVD drive to enable me to play DVDs through my XBox which is behind the wall in the garage (Yes, I'll have my TV on the wall with all the wires going through the wall into the garage. The HD DVD drive will enable me to play DVDs without having to go into the garage, as it is small enough to mount on the back of the TV).

[The Aggie CEO @ Feb 16th 2008 2:46PM]

I wonder how much longer Blu-ray Association will run the Free 5 BD Movies promotion........lol.....

Glad I got my PS3 months ago......

[dkrift @ Feb 16th 2008 2:54PM]

I wonder how nifty and truthteller will spin an official announcement from Toshiba.

[Michael @ Feb 16th 2008 3:24PM]

Would Microsoft actually integrate Blu-ray anytime soon? Sure, they may make an add-on like they did for HD-DVD, but wouldn't it be another all together to now have games run off of Blu-ray discs? So, if they don't, even though 360 user can watch Blu-ray movies, they still couldn't take advantage of it for games.

[Nate the Prophet @ Feb 16th 2008 3:25PM]

I love being right :)

[xkyolx @ Feb 16th 2008 3:27PM]

hahahaha the picture is excellent.

[guerilla779 @ Feb 16th 2008 5:28PM]

chill guys...its over .BLU-RAY is the next format whether u like it or not. Download movies r still too far off with the current speeds and with the future of the current INTERNET INFRASTRUCTURE i really dont think that for the next 5-10 years it will really challege BD.

one thing people forget is that physical media is also used in OFFICES for clients etc for posting......pen drives arnt really allowed cuz of the security issues.


WITH EVERY movie,game,optical drive and god knows wat all BLUE RAY ...sony will make some % of the money.


even if the 360 puts a BD player best part will be that sony will still make money of it, with enought power in the 360 MS just needs more space which is more or less blue ray and even their reps are up for it...just go to 1up or any other gaming site to confirm this.

[Rodney @ Feb 16th 2008 5:58PM]

so... when is transformers coming to blu-ray?

[Andrew @ Feb 16th 2008 6:17PM]

LOLz at all of you Blue-Ray fanbois, I hope your prepared to pay Top dollar for Region Locked Movies. You watch now EVERY SINGLE COMPANY will Region Lock their Blue-Ray movies, The only reason Blue-Ray movies have been region free is because of HD-DVD, now that HD-DVD is pretty much dead, companies will region lock all their Movies.

Just look at Warner Brothers, they only moved over to Blue-Ray so they could Rip-off Non-US consumers because everyone outside the US were purchasing Region Free movies for half the price than what they are being sold in their own country.

Yet most of you morons are to Narrow-minded to actually see what the real intentions are of these big companies.

[mikey d @ Feb 16th 2008 6:38PM]

Can I just make a comment about Sony continuing to sell betamax for 20 years post death-beta?

Although Betamax may have lost the Videotape wars of the 80's on the consumer side, beta was commercially adopted and still used late into the 90's as the premiere choice for television and news studio's due to it's superior quality and improving technology (super betamax).

I would likely attribute this to the reason why sony continued to support the beta decks for years after it lost the consumer's battle.

I don't think this scenario will be duplicated for those HD-DVD early adopters and they will likely suffer the same fate as those who heavily invested in LaserDisc.

Don't be silly, even though you can get clearence HD-DVD's now, in years to come you will regret having incompatible discs in the future.

Even if you keep your HD-DVD player or buy a BLU/HD hybrid, the day will come when you want to watch the HD-DVD title in the bedroom, basement, or a friends house... and because your hybrid player is in the home theatre room... you won't be able too!



No one forced this on us... the playstaion 3 is the sole reason this format one.
If no one bought the ps3 ... HD DVD would have won.

If MS had put a HD-DVD drive in the 360 from the start and used the same pricing strategy... HD DVD would have won, before the PS3 was even launched.

Good job Sony for putting your money where you mouth was... now how about some games and an IR port for the ps3... then Ill pick one up.

For now ill keep playing my 360.

[btrain @ Feb 16th 2008 6:51PM]

this bothers me, all that money wasted on research and development, when they could have first really collaborated, (and i mean really try to work together) and create something maybe even better. Stupid corporations wasting resources and consumer's time.

[Zeus.:God @ Feb 16th 2008 8:25PM]

LOL!

I love all the people thinking they are "victorious" because they backed Blu-Ray... Really, you guys should be feeling ashamed, because now we're going to get butt-raped up and down the place in home media.

Thank you for fucking us over with the more expensive format.

[sunflower @ Feb 16th 2008 8:40PM]

Worldwide, there will always be more of a demand for HD-DVD hardware, as countries with populations larger than the US and Europe combined have standardized on an almost identical standard. The idea they are shutting down manufacturing is just wrong. Perhaps for units designed for the US?