Official: HD DVD dead and buried, format war is over
By Thomas Ricker 
posted February 19th 2008 2:59AM
posted February 19th 2008 2:59AM
It's official. Toshiba just made a statement saying, " it will no longer develop, manufacture and market HD DVD players and recorders." Cessation of the player and recorders are targeted for March 2008. Volume production of HD DVD disk drives for PCs and games will end in the same time frame. However, Atsutoshi Nishida, President and CEO of Toshiba Corporation did say that Toshiba will, "continue to assess the position of notebook PCs with integrated HD DVD drives." That's it folks, the format war is over, Blu-ray has won. Full press release after the break.
Update: Besides stating "no plans" to go Blu-ray during the Q&A, Toshiba committed to stockpiling HD DVD recording media for those who own HD DVD recorders. These will be sold on-line. As for future HD DVD software releases, Mr. Nishida could only say, "it was not our business, we cannot predict their business." Oh really? Is the lack of new titles on a dead platform really so hard to predict?
Update: Besides stating "no plans" to go Blu-ray during the Q&A, Toshiba committed to stockpiling HD DVD recording media for those who own HD DVD recorders. These will be sold on-line. As for future HD DVD software releases, Mr. Nishida could only say, "it was not our business, we cannot predict their business." Oh really? Is the lack of new titles on a dead platform really so hard to predict?
Toshiba Announces Discontinuation of HD DVD Businesses
19 February, 2008
Company Remains Focused on Championing Consumer Access to High Definition Content
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.
well hey if you want to watch some HD movies and don't want to go out and blow the bank on a $300 machine you can pick up an HD-DVD player on ebay for like $25. Besides it will upconvert all your current dvd's.
great if you have netflicks.
Toshiba - Make the HD DVD standard an Open Standard. Now that you've abandoned it, open it up. Put the patents under a no-royalty, free-licence arrangement. Publish the source code that runs the HD-DVD ROM drives.
This is the best reason so far to get a PS3.
HD DVD fanboys: WHO IS YOUR DADDY NOW!?
Maybe Sony can pull their awful PS3 out of the gutter with this Blu-Ray win.
The PS3 is selling at a faster rate than the Xbox 360.
Fiscal year sales:
PS3
FY1: 3.57M
FY2: 6.92M (Qtrs 1-3, projected 9-10M)
Total: 10.49M (sold)
http://www.scei.co.jp/corporate/data/bizdataps3_sale_e.html
360
FY1: 1.5M
FY2: 8.9M
FY3: 7.3M
Total: 17.7M (shipped)
Now with Blu-ray winning, the PS3 is easily going to outsell the 360.
Yay! Now we can all move on without confusion and worrying about spending money on a paperweight now.
Any educated person will see that Blu-Ray is merely a money making opportunity before broadband connections are fast enough to download HD films.
You download music and not before long you'll download films.
Get over Blu-Ray. It's old news.
It is a great time to buy Betamax then. Imagine how cheaper it is now that Sony has got an even newer format.
Not a good time for HD-DVD, rumour says it is manufactured by Toshiba.
lmao at whoever wasn't reading engadget and decided to buy an hd-dvd player today.
Ni?
I'm not going to lie. I am kind of upset. Sony bought their victory and the sales of the PS3 shoved it down everyone's throats. I understand the easy of getting the format out, but still. I didn't like it. The HD-DVD had nicer features to them and I think the OMG 50 GB STORAGE argument is complete and utter BS. Now Sony's got a huge mess on their hands. They've got their own format to focus on now but getting it out won't be easy. The majority of the public doesn't care for/need (in their minds) the additional quality bump from DVD to Blu-Ray. Sony should have taken their time getting their crap together and put out a finished technology and do without the profile upgrades, or at least players that can upgrade. I'll buy a Blu-Ray player at some point since I've come to love high definition discs, but I hate the way it ended out.
.
Remember, just because Blu-ray won this format war, doesn't mean that Blu-ray will be successful. I remember this LaserDisc thing and you know where that went.
It's up to consumers to either adopt Blu-ray or to stick with DVD until a new format comes (an ultraHD format on solid state, on-demand, downloading, etc.. who knows).
If you haven't already, watch this hilarious video regardign the HD format war!
http://mivadika.com/forum/other/1911-its-official-hd-dvd-dead-format-over.html
"This is the best reason so far to get a PS3"
It's the ONLY reason to get a PS3.
The Format Wars isn't going to impact the console market. People want to PLAY GAMES on their consoles. Meanwhile, Nintendo is killing them all with the wii... a console using last gen tech and just now adopting a full-size DVD format.
"But what's 360 gonna do?" some of the Sony fanboys ask. Wow. Um. Let's think about this... maybe build a BD add-on? Whoooaa! No way! MIND BLOWING EVEN. Toshiba is being very 'Japanese' and a sore-loser by saying it's staying out of the HD market. US companies aren't that stupid. Where there's money to be made, they will go. If BD becomes a widespread format, MS will jump on bandwagon and not a single 360 fanboy is going to whine about it. It was the genius of their design. If HD-DVD failed... oh well. No sweat for a 360 owner (except those who bought the add-on, cest la vie). But had BD failed... yikes. Imagine the synchronized whine of a million Sony fanboys at once. It would probably have knocked the Earth out of rotation.
None of my friends or family... I mean NONE of them, give a flying rat's @ss about HD-DVD or Blu-ray. I know people w/ a PS3 who own maybe one BD disc, unless they got the other 5 for free with one of those special offers. I don't know ANYONE w/ a 360 HD-DVD add-on. Point being: Us dumb geeks arguing on the net don't mean jack. The true test is with the mom & pop consumer. If your momma don't care about Blu-ray, then it's not going to do much better than HD-DVD.
I've said this before: Every successful format is a REVOLUTION upon the prior format. Records begat tapes, tapes begat CD, and CD is giving way to MP3/digital. VHS begat DVD. Digital VHS, MiniCD, SACD, DVD-audio, and UMD weren't revolutionary, they were just an improved or different variation of something that already existed. Consumers want innovation, not variation.
I really don't care which side won, I'm not down for either.
If BD becomes prevalent as DVD, then I will buy into it. But I will adopt it as fast I did DVD. It still has a lot to prove. And if I'm wrong... hey, so I come to the party late and buy all the BDs from the bargain bin 5 years from now that you paid $35 for today.
AMAZING - I got screwed! The funny thing is that our generation is getting nipped by this, but those of us who were around in the 80's may have expensive door stops considering BETAMAX. Well, Sony didn't lose this time. My uncle, who is an 88 year old man has been duped TWICE:
http://www.socoolaz.com/article.cfm?articleID=30121
I hate that I can't edit my own reply. Serves me right for being long winded. In the last line, I meants I would NOT adopt BD as fast as I did w/ DVD.
Glad war is over. (like so many others)
I bought an HD-DVD X-Box 360 drive and oh, about 23-25 movies.
Next year? They'll still work in my HD-DVD drive and I'll still get to watch them.
It'll be like the nice big platter Laser Discs of yesteryear.
While the format war was going on, I got to enjoy Heroes Season 1 in HD, Hot Fuzz in HD, and quite a few others.
Now it's over? Still get to enjoy them.
Maybe some day there'll be a dual-player that's worth buying (and won't break/lock up within days).
If not? I'll buy a BR player and start buying BR movies.
When it comes down to it, I don't care what format it's in as long as my movies keep coming in high def.
--Joe
WTS [HD-DVD 360 Drive]
Okay, exactly how many times does engadget have to post HD-DVD is dead? I'm done coming here, it's just the same thing over and over and over now.
HD DVD:I'm invincible!!
Wow, I almost began to care.
sony rules but i wish we could have both formats. I have a PS3 and a ton of bluray movies but irecently (friday) purchased a hd-dvd drive for my laptop.
now we need sony to release a ps3 umd drive to watch our original psp movies on!!!!!!!!!
Really.. I can't believe that an educated source like engadget is acting so nonchalant about its demise. I think its a horrible thing that HD-DVD is not the winner. It's just movie companies picking the format that best fits their greed, the one with the tightest DRM.
Hopefully I won't have to rely on HD DVD for my new media..though I have to admit I dislike the idea of not having hard copies of all my media in the future.. but I guess thats what I get for living in a country where technology is controlled the greedy companies who pay to have them developed to fit their agendas and not the best interest of the consumer.
Reading these comments has really made me laugh. DRM is evil, Nobody will buy Blu-ray because of the nasty DRM. Hmmm....let's ask Apple about how they did with DRM. Oh, wait wasn't it something like over one BILLION DRM'd song sold to date. Yup, huge negative impact on iTunes; they might have sold 1.1 billion otherwise.
Oh, and let's see. Region coding. That's going to be what keeps Blu-ray from mass market adoption. Just look at DVD, having twice the region codes as Blu-ray made sure that NOBODY bought DVD players.
But surely what makes Blu-ray the inferior format was the fact it's max video bitrate was 40% higher than HD-DVD. That's what I bought my HDTV for, so I can clearly see all the macroblocking.
C'mon people, get a reality check will you. Honestly what's the problem with DRM ? You can watch the movie in any player you put it into. You can't copy it onto your computer ? SO WHAT ? At 25 - 50 Gigs a movie, why would you want to eat up hard drive space like that ? Guess what, my $20 movie rack holds 4 times as many movies as your 1TB hard drive. Fox has a great idea going with their digital copy; but how many people are actually going to use that ? Us technogeeks, that's who and we account for maybe 2% at most of all potential customers.
BTW, Sony is NOT Blu-ray. the BDA is Blu-ray. Sony (along with Pioneer) invented the blue laser diode the made HD-DVD and Blu-ray possible and was one of the founding members of the BDA. But they are NOT Blu-ray.
As much as some of you nitwits complain about Blu-ray in the PS3, don't forget; Prety much, if not all PS3 games have been released on blu-ray discs. Why ? Simple - more storage means bigger and better games. Of course, it had a huge impact on pushing the Blu-ray video format to a win. But plain and simple a next-gen console deserves a next gen storage medium.
And as for digital downloads and Apple tv rentals in HD. Sure, I'll agree with anyone that says that 720p is HD; hell my living room tv is 720. But where do you draw the line on bit rate is HD. Does Apple provide high enough bitrate to beat a DVD in terms of PQ, Yeah, I would think so. Would it get close to even just the quality of broadcast OTA 720p ? I HIGHLY doubt it.
Maybe if they hadn't taken so long to get out some HD burners. Maybe if HD had the potential capacity of Blu Ray. Toshiba fucked up.
This is smart on Toshiba's part. Any further investment into HD-DVD was just a money sink. Sure, like an also-ran political candidate, they would have been free to spend all their money in a futile effort to "go down swinging" but there's no way it would have paid off.
Don't forget, Toshiba has a huge stake in HD -- it's called televisions. Many folk are holding on the whole shift to HD gear because of the lack of an end-to-end video solution. Now that Blu-ray is "it", folks who've been holding out can go out shopping for that dream display -- and hopefully a good chunk of those purchased will be Toshibas (I've liked quite a few of their sets.)
So I tip my propeller beanie to Toshiba for doing the right thing at the right time.
This was coming because sony "bundled" a blu-ray player with playstation and , microsoft did not "bundle" a hddvd player with the xbox 360; wanted extra money for it.
Simple deal, it's too bad too, hddvd was cheaper and better.
Microsoft dodged a bullet... Damn good thing they made those optional on the 360's... Sony would have been screwed if it was blu-ray bite'n the dust...
wonder why toshiba let sony get away with bundling a blu-ray player with the playstation ? they have a strong case.
Actually, why waste ur time downloading ur movies to ur pc?
my friend hooked me up w/ this awesome site:
www.free-tv-video-online.info
it has links to a TON of shows and MOVIES that you just watch online!
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"sticks and stones may break my bones, but hollow points expand on impact" -Chris Patterson
I threw back a bottle of Jack Daniels the day before yesterday, stumbled into Walmart for a DVD player and found out a Blu-Ray player was $400 big ones. So I bought the PS3. The only reason I bought it was because the clerk told me that Blu-Ray won, and now I know. Thanks Endgadget.