[Oversoul]

Reuters is now reporting that Toshiba is finalizing plans to end HD DVD:

Originally Posted by http://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSL1637974620080216

Toshiba to give up on HD DVD, end format war: source | Technology | Reuters TOKYO (Reuters) - Toshiba Corp (6502.T: Quote, Profile, Research) is planning to give up on its HD DVD format for high-definition video, conceding defeat to the competing Blu-Ray technology backed by Sony Corp (6758.T: Quote, Profile, Research), a company source said on Saturday.

Japanese public broadcaster NHK had earlier reported that Toshiba would suffer losses in the tens of billions of yen (hundreds of millions of dollars) as it scrapped production of HD DVD players and recorders and took other steps to exit the business.

The company source told Reuters that Toshiba was in the final stages of planning to exit the HD DVD business and that an official decision would be made soon.

And an earlier report, picking up on a NHK story, noted that HD DVD was all but dead at Toshiba:

Originally Posted by http://www.reuters.com/article/companynewsandpr/idusl1627196120080216

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.

Should be interesting when Toshiba finally makes an announcement. And when will Universal and Paramount follow suit?

[analogue SPRINKLES]

What? Even with all the advantages to HD-DVD as computer storage and they aren't even trying?

[analogue SPRINKLES]

Ya more than one place is convinced it is official over:
It's Official: Toshiba Pulling the Plug on HD DVD

Anywho, guess This is the one prediction I was wrong about as I thought it would take 3 months for this point not 2.

Guess that superbowl ad didn't work as well as they hoped.

[starman]

Is it time to kill the thread?

[Brien]

Actually, if you count from the WB announcment, it's only been one month.

Starman: it'll kill itself.

[analogue SPRINKLES]

[aristotles]

The war is over woohoo! I can't wait to see other companies besides Hitachi producing BD camcorders and maybe it will push someone to make a harddrive based recorder that records in full 1920X1080 resolution instead of 1440X1080 like you see with High Def DV tape format and AVCHD.

Also, 6X BD burners should be arriving soon too with that announcement of production of 6X writing BD drive assemblies a few days ago.

I don't see a future in HD DVD burners even for the computer now.

[icruise]

Originally Posted by Brien 

If by soon, you mean two or three years, sure. I'm not entirely sure it'll happen sooner. Maybe, who knows?

Well, not in a matter of months, but I think by 2010 it's entirely possible that the only DVD-only players on sale will be super cheap models for the low end market, and maybe portables. That is, of course, unless manufacturers decide to keep the prices of BR players artificially higher than DVD because they want to keep selling both. I don't think that would be in their best interest, though. The most likely way that BR will achieve mass acceptance is not by having large numbers of consumers consciously choose it over DVD, but rather by making it so that people essentially have no choice but to buy BR.

[turtle777]

Why would anybody buy an el cheapo HD DVD player, if there is such a limited availability of titles ?

-t

[icruise]

I'm not talking about HD-DVD players. Those will be off the market in months. I'm talking about regular DVD players.

[turtle777]

Oh, sorry, I misunderstood.

-t

[Kevin Moon]

Originally Posted by turtle777 

Why would anybody buy an el cheapo HD DVD player, if there is such a limited availability of titles ?

-t

I agree with you turtle. Since Toshiba has halted production of the players it will only be a matter of time before those run out. After those run out the titles will be right behind those. I think the only reason one would buy a cheapo HD-DVD player now would be to have a decent upscaling DVD player. It wouldn't be because the future looks bright for HD-DVD.

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by Kevin Moon 

I agree with you turtle.

I appreciate you agreeing with me, but I misunderstood, and so did you.

icruise was not talking about HD DVD, but plain ole regular DVD players.

-t

[Kevin Moon]

I was just saying that because a lot of people are going to be looking at HD-DVD players with how cheap they are right now. Walmart in this area had HD-DVD players at 120 the other day marked down from $200. At that price point people that haven't been following the Blu-Ray/HD-DVD battle are going to be getting caught in the middle. I think once it became apparent that Blu-Ray was winning Toshiba should have just thrown the towel in instead of dragging this out for so long. It was clear in the middle of last year how this was going to end. I guess Toshiba wanted to try to make some of the money back from R&D on HD-DVD.

[jokell82]

It didn't become apparent until about a month ago - so how fast exactly did you want Toshiba to move???

[Kevin Moon]

It was pretty apparent what was going to happen when the share of the market they were capturing was less than 50%. Toshiba was also the only ones making the hardware as everyone else bailed. The others couldn't compete at selling for such a huge loss. That should have been a red flag to those in charge that it probably isn't going to work out. The writing has been on the wall but those that were emotionally/financially attached ignored it and continue to do so.

[jokell82]

Originally Posted by Kevin Moon 

It was pretty apparent what was going to happen when the share of the market they were capturing was less than 50%. Toshiba was also the only ones making the hardware as everyone else bailed. The others couldn't compete at selling for such a huge loss. That should have been a red flag to those in charge that it probably isn't going to work out. The writing has been on the wall but those that were emotionally/financially attached ignored it and continue to do so.

That just shows how little you know about what happened. Warner and Fox were both in talks to go HD DVD exclusive last month. Fox backing out (due to a Sony payoff) caused Warner to go Blu-Ray exclusive, which was the beginning of the end. Now if Fox hadn't backed out, we'd be in a completely different situation.

[Brien]

Originally Posted by icruise 

Well, not in a matter of months, but I think by 2010 it's entirely possible that the only DVD-only players on sale will be super cheap models for the low end market, and maybe portables. That is, of course, unless manufacturers decide to keep the prices of BR players artificially higher than DVD because they want to keep selling both. I don't think that would be in their best interest, though. The most likely way that BR will achieve mass acceptance is not by having large numbers of consumers consciously choose it over DVD, but rather by making it so that people essentially have no choice but to buy