News | Toshiba HD DVD - Sayonara

The battle over the next generation of DVD format is finally over. At last, Sony emerged as the winner in developing a new recording, rewriting and playback system for HD video.

This is not so surprising though, Toshiba’s HD-DVD knock down has been in the works for some time. We witnessed how five major movie studios decided to take the Blu-ray format: Sony, Walt Disney, Lions Gate Entertainment, Twentieth Century Fox and MGM figured out it was best to stick with Sony and Blu-ray.

A small hope appeared when Paramount and Universal decided to go with Toshiba’s HD-DVD format. At that point it seemed to be some chance Toshiba would make a comeback and continue the battle.

Alas, last month Warner Bros. decided to release movie discs in the Blu-ray format only. And that’s where the beginning of the end for HD-DVD happened. I guess there are plenty of you who didn’t saw this coming. It reminds me of VHS and Betamax battle, that wasn’t so long ago.

Blockbuster and NetFlix decided to go with Blu-ray discs, while Wal-Mart said it will sell only Blue-ray DVD’s and hardware. That was the time when Toshiba decided it is enough.
Toshiba announced today that it will not produce any HD-DVD hardware, software and other tools.

This news will make millions of people who bought Toshiba’s HD-DVD players groan. Sometimes it’s just not convenient to be an early adopter.