Toshiba Announces Discontinuation of HD DVD Businesses

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.

So now the HD-DVD/Blu-Ray format war is "officially" over, since Toshiba was the loudest cheerleader for the HD-DVD format. I must say I'm a bit surprised that the conflict collapsed as quickly and as neatly as it did; the VHS/Betamax war apparently lasted over a decade, and the high-def DVD clash has only been going since 2005. I suppose we can chalk it up to the pressure-cooker of public opinion that is the Internet and some smart lawyering on the parts of the studios. Warner Bros' decision to jump ship and support Blu-Ray exclusively was, undeniably, the crucial piece that brought the HD-DVD consortium's corporate Jenga game crashing down. Impressively, the industry saw the writing on the wall along with the rest of us and the losing format closed shop in under six weeks.

So ends what could posibly the last of the major format wars. Since it's likely that movies will be delivered by online means in the near future, I wonder if another physical format will ever gain traction. Will we carry our favorite movies around on thumb drives?

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