Not long after Toshiba officially pulled the plug on HD DVD yesterday, Universal Pictures announced that they would be making the jump to the newly-crowned winner of the HD format war, Sony backed Blu-Ray.

Craig Kornblau, President of Universal Studios Home Video, was quoted in an article from Wired as saying:

The emergence of a single, high-definition format is cause for consumers, as well as the entire entertainment industry, to celebrate.

While we agree, mainly because the “Format War” was starting to get really annoying. However, knowing which format to buy with certainty can only benefit most consumers now, and we’re thankful for that. No one wants a repeat of the VHS versus BetaMax war, once was enough and this squabble was no picnic either.

Older geeks still remember the fight between the two tape formats and I, for one, think Sony would’ve ridden this war as long as it took to win because they were still a bit sore over losing out to VHS in the early days of home video. Thankfully Toshiba bowed out before we were all old and gray.

In the press release issued Tuesday, Toshiba stated that they aim to fully withdrawl the HD DVD format by the end of next month. This will not interfere with current standard definition DVD production either. Here’s what they had to say on the matter themselves:

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.

Meanwhile, it looks like I’m in the market for a Blu-Ray player at some point in the future. I wonder what sort of things I can do with my HD DVD player components. Because, as every good geek knows, all old hardware can be used for new purposes.

You put up a good fight, Toshiba, but standing up to an industry juggernaut like Sony is no small feat. Who knows, since you lost out this time, maybe you’ll win on the next format war. It seems to be the trend, so just keep reaching for those stars.

If you liked that, try...

1. Toshiba Expected to Pull Plug on HD-DVD
2. Paramount, Dreamworks back HD-DVD, drop Blu-Ray
3. Netflix Goes Exclusively Blu-ray
4. Blu-ray wins…or does it?
5. Warner Bros backs Blu-Ray, HD format war continues to annoy

3 Comments »

1. 
   Devin de Gruyl
   February 20, 2008 at 8:43 pm

   Well, on the positive side, the PS3 looks to be gearing up for a price drop in the next few months, so there’s your Blu-Ray player right there…

   And I absolutely agree. Competition is good, but when it comes to home video formats, sometimes standardization can be a good thing - as long as the format being chosen as the “standard” is a good one. That’s what always bugged me about VHS; technologically, it was an inferior product to Beta (especially the later SuperBeta format) in every meaningful way save two. Unfortunately, those two areas where VHS was superior were the two most important ones from a consumer standpoint - namely, a lower price point (by virtue of VHS being a more “open” platform than Sony’s proprietary Beta technology) and longer tapes (the L-750 Beta tapes only held up to 4½ hours per, while the standard T-120 could go as high as six). At least this time, it appears the “right” format won out, since Blu-Ray appears to be slightly superior to HD-DVD in both quality and capacity. The fact that the winning tech came from the Rootkit Company is a downer, but there’s always a dark side, I suppose.

   Now here’s the question for the ages - did Sony win this format war, or did Toshiba lose it? Seems there’s a case to be made both ways.

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2. 
   Migo
   February 21, 2008 at 12:06 am

   I may need new hardware, but at least I didn’t buy any videos for it, the ones I got were free. However, if you did buy movies for your HD DVD drive, you can still convert them into Blu-Ray. Of course you’ll still need an HD-DVD drive and a Blu-Ray burner. That’s the price of victory, big cash for the victor as everyone has to shell out money to replace what they already have.

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3. 
   CMorrison
   February 24, 2008 at 6:09 am

   Irrelevant to me either way; $30-$35 for a movie is no value to me when i can get the same DVD for under $20. The day I start paying half again as much as a video game for a movie is the day I’ve likely been struck on the head by a falling piano.

   [Reply]

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