Saturday, February 16th 2008
Toshiba to Give Up on HD DVD
Following closely on the heels of news that both Netflix and Wal-Mart plan to drop HD DVD support, it looks like Toshiba, one of the key firms behind the format, is planning to do the same. A company source is being reported as saying:
Update: Toshiba denies the reports:
"The media reported that Toshiba will discontinue its HD DVD business. Toshiba has not made any announcement concerning this. Although Toshiba is currently assessing its business strategies, no decision has been made at this moment."
Source:
Reuters
We have entered the final stage of planning to make our exit from the next generation DVD business.An official announcement is expected to come within the next few days, and it is estimated that the move could see Toshiba suffer losses of hundreds of millions of dollars. This is likely to put an end to the HD format war, with Blu-ray, backed largely by Sony, looking almost certain to overcome HD DVD, which had powerful names including Toshiba and Microsoft supporting it.
Update: Toshiba denies the reports:
"The media reported that Toshiba will discontinue its HD DVD business. Toshiba has not made any announcement concerning this. Although Toshiba is currently assessing its business strategies, no decision has been made at this moment."
81 Comments on Toshiba to Give Up on HD DVD
Where do you get off speculating that Sony will be a nice company and not try to squeeze as much as they can from the consumer? You have no basis to what you say. Why do you even reply?
Look at Sony's track record. How much do you think they would charge for their game consoles if there were no x-box of Wii?
Let’s look at it this one blue-ray disc cost $40.00au or 4 DVD @ $10.00each.
Also DVD and HD DVD (HD RIP) are cheaper to manufacture and faster.
Blue-ray is slower and more expensive to produce so will prices go up now that there’s no competition for them now..
Companies that manufacture good's, base their profit and cost on quantity per hour so how long does it take to produce 1xBlue-ray disk ????.
I will continue to buy DVD movies for now, Blue-ray movies let see if those prices start to come down.
And as far as SONY goes whatever they have had a monopoly on prices have always gone UP and UP never DOWN.
BD movies cost around $30 here too, once the players drop in price all shall be well.
I guess at least with one format chosen there isn't ambiguity, and Blu-Ray does hold more per disk in it's standard format.
Even if it were that way, it would mean Toshiba has been telling you what to buy for the past 20 years.
yea, i may pay 30-40 bucks for a blu-ray movie but i get 100 times the picture quality out of it.
Where would this world be if you and I couldnt crash our warthogs into one another lol.:laugh::laugh:
I told yall that I thought a big announcement would be coming soon whether it be good or bad for HD DVD. And here it is folks. Im saddened yes by this turn of events. I still stand by my reasons for why I chose HD DVD over Blu Ray: Cheaper players, Dual playability (i.e. Not every single room is going to have n HD player nor will a car so its nice not to have to buy 2 copies of one movie as they are essentially with Blu Ray.), Toshiba and Microsoft supported it along with Intel and many other high profile companies, better features, more completed standards versus Blu Ray, etc. the list goes on and on.
Regular DVDs can then become dual layer (not double sided) with a regular DVD on layer 1 and HDDVD on layer 2. Simple enough for 80% of the population that dont get technology-hard-ons.
ON THE FLIP SIDE.
I'm a SONY shareholder, and I'm delighted we've won the format war and now control, and can extract fat royalties and margins from, the hi-def movie industry. Whoopie. It's also a DOUBLE WHAMMY WIN... because most people will by a PS3 for their BR-player... and that means more PS3 sales... and that it also becomes the console of choice. RIP Toshiba, RIP Xbox.
sata BD-RW ftw! (just get cheaper already damnit!)