Toshiba Announces Discontinuation of HD DVD Businesses Options

[Xbox-Scene]

Toshiba Announces Discontinuation of HD DVD Businesses Posted by XanTium | February 19 11:22 EST | News Category: Xbox360

We already kinda knew it, but here's the official announcement from Toshiba: [QUOTE] 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. [/QUOTE]

[atomiX]

Finally...

[mksoftware]

It will not be missed

[sabbath_dude]

Roll on the heavily discounted HD DVD movies!!. My 360 HD DVD add-on just arrived in the post today . Looking forward to some sweet bargains!.

[Ranger72]

I wonder how soon we can expect Universal movies to show up on Blu-Ray? I will need to hang on to this HD-DVD crap until Serenity comes out for Blu-Ray.

[nightwulf28]

Well all I can say is one word.....eBay. Funny thing is even if I unload my HD-DVD attachment and my 9 movies I will be lucky to get $100. Sad indeed. I mainly bought that add on for Netflix so I am going to get a Blu Player but what kind and when are still up in the air....

[bucko]

This was what I was looking for, confirmation, not crappy new site posts (no offense to X-S but some of the articles to the build up of this were awfully written and shouldn't of been posted at all until this).

I'm glad I got both players, yes I lose out on one but at least my HD-DVD drive is USB. Hope to see some hacking on this drive soon. And I got my 5 free HD-DVDs and bought one movie, I would really like to get Heros and Matrix collection really cheap.

Least I can switch to my PS3 once supplies dry out of movies.

[apexad]

Well all I can say is one word.....eBay. Funny thing is even if I unload my HD-DVD attachment and my 9 movies I will be lucky to get $100. Sad indeed. I mainly bought that add on for Netflix so I am going to get a Blu Player but what kind and when are still up in the air....

You'll get much more than that. Many people will be buying HD-DVD now since they know it will be CHEAP! I would not sell if I were you. Buy a Blu-Ray player, that's fine. There is no reason to re-buy all your HD-DVDs though. There is also no reason to start paying full price for Blu-Ray movies when the HD-DVDs will be sold at discount.

[Landlocked]

This sucks royally. People CHOSE VHS over Betamax. Consumers didn't choose here...the Blu camp bought the studios off and made the decisions for the consumer. Tsk, tsk.

I full 1080p video downloads are years off...but I hope Blu falls on its tush and that Indian 300 GB DVD format wins. Woohoo. I could finally clear the pr0n off my PC.

[jaynigs]

This sucks royally. People CHOSE VHS over Betamax. Consumers didn't choose here...the Blu camp bought the studios off and made the decisions for the consumer. Tsk, tsk.

Thats not true at all

These comments make me laugh

HD-DVD made the first move with the pay offs! and still failed! if HD-DVD was "consumer choice" they would not have needed to pay anyone off!
One thing people forget, this is an xbox website, the majority here support HD-DVD since they have the xbox 360 addon, its not a complete true reflection of consumers choice!

Blu Ray was winning and was still winning after HD-DVD camp bought out paramounts exclusivity!


So its ok for them to pay off paramount? but when sony follow suit, it's wrong?

This post has been edited by jaynigs: Feb 19 2008, 08:52 PM

[slappynutz]

This sucks royally. People CHOSE VHS over Betamax. Consumers didn't choose here...the Blu camp bought the studios off and made the decisions for the consumer. Tsk, tsk.

I full 1080p video downloads are years off...but I hope Blu falls on its tush and that Indian 300 GB DVD format wins. Woohoo. I could finally clear the pr0n off my PC.

I love this awesome argument. Like somehow the 52+ weeks of Blu-Ray outselling HD DVD, back when there were more neutral studios and a much more even playing field, doesn't constitute the people choosing Blu-Ray. Or forgetting that HD DVD paid big bucks to Paramount and Dreamworks to switch despite the fact both were selling fewer HD DVDs than Blu-Rays.

Awesome sour grapes. I love these posts. "I chose the wrong side despite all the obvious indicators Blu-Ray would win and now I'm taking my toys and going home! And some mystery other format will beat Blu! So there!"

Awesome. Keep them coming.

[afortaleza]

!! GAME OVER !!

[Nutstool]

Well the fact is that HD DVD has sold more stand alone players. Blu-ray got their leg up because Sony forced the public to support their format by putting in the PS3 (very sad). Had it not been for the PS3, Blu-ray would have flunked big time, HD DVD is the superior format, it has better audio and visual quality than Blu-ray, Blu-ray only has the advantage in capacity.

It's another classic example of greedy corporations using unscrupulous tactics to get what they want. They're all the same, it doesn't matter if it's Sony or Microsoft. They don't give a toss about the consumer.

[Andronicus]

Well the fact is that HD DVD has sold more stand alone players. Blu-ray got their leg up because Sony forced the public to support their format by putting in the PS3 (very sad). Had it not been for the PS3, Blu-ray would have flunked big time, HD DVD is the superior format, it has better audio and visual quality than Blu-ray, Blu-ray only has the advantage in capacity.

Way off base there pal. Sony putting blue ray in the PS3 is called "Going All In". MS was not willing to do that, and they lost. You are the first person I have ever heard claim HD is better. All the profesional reviewers state that there is no preseptible difference, so capacity wins. You lost, get over it.

This post has been edited by Andronicus: Feb 19 2008, 09:49 PM

[nightwulf28]

Well the fact is that HD DVD has sold more stand alone players. Blu-ray got their leg up because Sony forced the public to support their format by putting in the PS3 (very sad). Had it not been for the PS3, Blu-ray would have flunked big time, HD DVD is the superior format, it has better audio and visual quality than Blu-ray, Blu-ray only has the advantage in capacity.

It's another classic example of greedy corporations using unscrupulous tactics to get what they want. They're all the same, it doesn't matter if it's Sony or Microsoft. They don't give a toss about the consumer.

I am an xbox fan tried and true but if you say something then make sure you know what you are saying. First, there is no visual difference in terms of video quality at this point for Blu-Ray or HD-DVD. At one point I would have agreed but with the newer profiles and better decoding its now tomato / tomato as they say. Blu Ray also has the superior Audio format not to mention more storage (although not being used yet).

This post has been edited by nightwulf28: Feb 19 2008, 10:04 PM