Its official: HD-DVD is DEAD

[BogieV]

OK guys let me jump in from Japan and just add few details right on the topic.

Check out this links to local media news in English:

http://www.japantoday.com/jp/news/428382

A company official, speaking on condition of anonymity because she isn't authorized to speak on the matter, said a board meeting could be held as soon as Tuesday, where a decision is likely.

was said in this article: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/A/AS_TEC_JAPAN_TOSHIBA_ASOL-?SITE=YOMIURI&SECTION..._national.html

Yomiuri newspaper: http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/business/20080217TDY01305.htm

And finally most interesting statement for me made in Asahi news:

But they also suggested the possibility Toshiba would continue part of its HD-DVD business, such as the installation of drives in personal computers.

http://www.asahi.com/english/Herald-asahi/TKY200802180061.html

Personally I think remaining for PC use is feasible for HD-DVD especially if prices of drives and media are lower.
After all MS and Intel are also in the HD-DVD camp.
On the positive side now it is easier for the end AV user as the choice for the living room is only one.

[MozartMan]

And finally most interesting statement for me made in Asahi news:

But they also suggested the possibility Toshiba would continue part of its HD-DVD business, such as the installation of drives in personal computers.

http://www.asahi.com/english/Herald-asahi/TKY200802180061.html

Personally I think remaining for PC use is feasible for HD-DVD especially if prices of drives and media are lower.
After all MS and Intel are also in the HD-DVD camp.
On the positive side now it is easier for the end AV user as the choice for the living room is only one.

Toshiba doesn't have a chance in PC industry with HD DVD drives and disks for PCs.

15GB HD DVD vs 25GB Blu-ray

30GB HD DVD vs 50GB Blu-ray

[SatStorm]

My personal advice to Toshiba:
Start selling burners for 40€ and 30GB HD DVD discs for half €. If you do that today, you might have a market to hope so.

(We can dream, can't we? )

[MozartMan]

(We can dream, can't we? )

Sure!

[RickA]

Quoted from lordsmurf:

"I'm always speechless when "loss" is used by Wall Street, as a way to discuss money desired (planned) but not made..."

It is not just Wall Street, goverments and politicians do that all the time in the tax dollars they wish to take from us. If their pork barrel project is denied the extra the revenue they wish to grab they call it a loss. Even if they get more then they did the year before!

Not ragging on ya, I respect your video know how and have learned alot from you on these forums.

Cheers,
Rick

[marvel2020]

OFFICAL STATMENT FROM TOSH

It's official. It's over. At a press conference with reporters just moments ago at the company's Tokyo office, Toshiba president Atsutoshi Nishida waved the white flag, confirming that his company is shutting down its HD-DVD operations. Here's the official press release:

Toshiba Announces Discontinuation of HD DVD Businesses

Company Remains Focused on Championing Consumer Access to High Definition Content

TOKYO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--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.

[raffie]

Yea, well...

[mats.hogberg]

Thank God for that! Finally I can see an end to all these HD format war threads.

/Mats

[DundeeDave]

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/afp/20080219/tbs-entertainment-it-electronics-consume-5268574_2.html

2 and a half hours ago

[gadgetguy]

Thank God for that! Finally I can see an end to all these HD format war threads.

/Mats

We can hope...

[Midzuki]

I see. It's 100% OK to discuss religion outside of the Off-Topic forum. :P

[jagabo]

The whole BD vs HD-DVD war is a religion for some.

[SingSing]

Will Blue-Ray becomes another SVHS or SACD ?

[jagabo]

And by the way, it's officially official now. Toshiba made a public announcement today. HD-DVD is dead (except maybe for laptop drives).

http://www.toshiba.co.jp/about/press/2008_02/pr1903.htm

[SingSing]

Can someone posts the cell phone numbers of these two young ladies ? They need counseling tonite.

[raffie]

A pic that says more than a 1000 words:

[JohnnyMalaria]

Can someone posts the cell phone numbers of these two young ladies ? They need counseling tonite.

They probably counsel themselves, if you get my drift....

[Midzuki]

SingSing wrote:

Can someone posts the cell phone numbers of these two young ladies?
They need counseling tonite.

They are not ladies, they are female robots
( and "very-good" ones, BTW )

[MJA]

Toshiba HD-A2 HD-DVD went down to $85 at Circuit City

http://www.circuitcity.com/ccd/Search.do?c=1&searchType=user&keyword=+HD-A2&searchSect...go.x=17&go.y=6

[stiltman]

Can we lock all the HD-DVD threads now?

http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/080219/20080219005651.html

TOKYO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--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....continued

[DereX888]

Can we lock all the HD-DVD threads now?

why lock'em?
No one is making Beta, LD or VHS for years, yet there are people who still use and discuss them in many of our threads - and we don't lock them either

[stiltman]

Can we lock all the HD-DVD threads now?

why lock'em?
No one is making Beta, LD or VHS for years, yet there are people who still use and discuss them in many of our threads - and we don't lock them either

I was talking about threads like these
Its official: HD-DVD is DEAD
Format war over. Checkmate HD-DVD
Nail Meet Coffin - HD-DVD
HD DVD finished
NetFlix Drops HD DVD
Driving the HD DVD Juggernaut

[CubDukat]

Toshiba to exit HD DVD, end format war-NHK
Sat Feb 16, 2008 6:50am EST


TOKYO (Reuters) - Toshiba Corp is planning to stop production of equipment compatible with the HD DVD format for high-definition video, allowing the competing Blu-Ray camp a free run, public broadcaster NHK reported on Saturday.

Toshiba is expected to suffer losses amounting to tens of billions of yen (hundreds of millions of dollars) to scrap production of HD DVD players and recorders and other steps to exit the business, Japan's NHK said on its website.

No one at Toshiba could be reached for comment.

The format war between the Toshiba-backed HD DVD and Sony Corp's Blu-Ray, often compared to the Betamax-VHS battle in the 1980s, has slowed the development of what is expected to be a multibillion dollar high-definition DVD industry.

Toshiba was dealt a blow on Friday when Wal-Mart Stores Inc said it would abandon the HD DVD format, becoming the latest in a series of top retailers and movie studios to rally behind Blu-ray technology for high definition DVDs.

Toshiba plans to continue selling HD DVD equipment at stores for the time being but will not put resources into developing new devices, NHK said.



http://www.reuters.com/article/wtMostRead/idUSL1627196120080216

Well, there's the other shoe now. It's officially over.

Personally I have nothing against the Blu-ray format per se. There are a lot of places where they really shot themselves in the foot (MPEG-2 encoding, early production issues, massive copy protection, etc.) But they managed to come back from all of that even stronger, and any format that could do that I take my hat off to.

I really have to wonder just how much strong-arming went on behind the scenes. I suspect it was substantial.

Now all I want to know is this: Does this mean Warner's moving up the release date for "V For Vendetta" on Blu-Ray? Or Paramount's going to release a Blu-Ray version of the "Star Trek TOS" box set?

[DereX888]

/.../There are a lot of places where they really shot themselves in the foot (MPEG-2 encoding, early production issues, massive copy protection, etc.) But they managed to come back from all of that even stronger, and any format that could do that I take my hat off to.

I really have to wonder just how much strong-arming went on behind the scenes. I suspect it was substantial.
/.../

It wasn't difficult for a company who already hold ownership of about 1/3 of all the english-language movies, and owns, partially owns or has more or less binding ties with about half of the major moviemakers in the world (some say well more than half if we include french and british).
I take my hat off to Toshiba for actually lasting that long against such unfair competitor.
Come to think of it now, Im surprised how come I could not see it before. BR-DVD was "to be or not to be" for Sony Corp, since it is a delivery device for their more important product (if not main product) - the movies and tv series. Allowing someone else (like HD DVD camp) to gain licencing fees from each sold high-def disc would be a huge loss of potential income in a long term. Obviously Sony had to do anything it takes to prevail. I wouldn't be surprised to learn in a future that they paid off Toshiba just to f*ck off and get rid of competition. Whats a billion bucks to entire Sony Corp - thats just a chump change, but probably more than enough for Toshiba to close the HD-DVD shop and promise not to stick their noses into movie business for next decade or so

[jagabo]

Microsoft Xbox 360 to go Blu-ray in May?

http://www.smarthouse.com.au/Gaming/Console/J7L7H2R4

[Nilfennasion]

This is the point where I just stand in front of all the "Sony = evil incarnate, Toshiba (makers of CSS, RCE, and "three step zoom to get rid of the black lines on your screen") = angels of love" folk, point, and say "ha HA!". I knew this day was coming (amazing what a few phone calls to old contacts in the industry can dig up in terms of what the companies are really thinking), but that does not make it any sweeter. This is like sneaking up on that kid who cries to the authority figure that you hurt them at a time when you were in another building and gets automatically believed, and bashing his brains out with a shovel. Too sweet for English words.

People used to talk about extending an olive branch to the HD-DVD camp. Toshiba has just given persons of my alignment permission to fling turds at them.

Oh yeah, and piss off, gadgetguy.

[SingSing]

It wasn't difficult for a company who already hold ownership of about 1/3 of all the english-language movies, and owns, partially owns or has more or less binding ties with about half of the major moviemakers in the world (some say well more than half if we include french and british).
I take my hat off to Toshiba for actually lasting that long

That was how VHS beat Beta, because video rental bussines decided to put their movies on VHS instead of Beta. The exception were porn movies that went out on Beta first, then switched to VHS, when the war is decided.

Ha. Toshiba was not successful in getting support from "the most innovtaive video technologies users", and thus lost the war on this round.

Let's start the downloaded movie format war on Mpeg5 vs Youtube3.

[SingSing]

Toshiba HD-A2 HD-DVD went down to $85 at Circuit City
http://www.circuitcity.com/ccd/Search.do?c=1&searchType=user&keyword=+HD-A2&searchSect...go.x=17&go.y=6

Sold out , try HD-A3, at $99.00.
http://www.circuitcity.com/ssm/Toshiba-HD-A3-HD-DVD-Player-HDA3/sem/rpsm/oid/191903/ca...oductDetail.do

[hanugro]

Seems the deal include the factory Sony will sell to Toshiba this April (in other thread). Seems it is related.

[MJA]

Toshiba HD-A2 HD-DVD went down to $85 at Circuit City
http://www.circuitcity.com/ccd/Search.do?c=1&searchType=user&keyword=+HD-A2&searchSect...go.x=17&go.y=6

Sold out , try HD-A3, at $99.00.
http://www.circuitcity.com/ssm/Toshiba-HD-A3-HD-DVD-Player-HDA3/sem/rpsm/oid/191903/ca...oductDetail.do

it gets better.the A30 is $129 now