Toshiba is planning to give up on its HD DVD format for high definition DVDs, conceding defeat to the competing Blu-Ray technology backed by Sony.
The move will likely put an end to a battle that has gone on for several years between consortiums led by Toshiba and Sony vying to set the standard for the next-generation DVD and compatible video equipment.
The format war, often compared to the Betamax-VHS battle in the 1980s, has confused consumers unsure of which DVD or player to buy, slowing the development what is expected to be a multibillion dollar high definition DVD industry.
Toshiba’s cause has suffered several setbacks in recent weeks including Friday’s announcement by U.S. retailing giant Wal-Mart that it would abandon the HD DVD format and only stock its shelves with Blu-ray movies.
Well, that’s the end of that.
At least, until the next leap in technology which pits two Japanese companies against each other.
Good thing I didn’t get HD on my HP last year, when I ditched buying Toshiba due to slow 5400rpm hard drives in their laptops.
Doesn’t matter.
The cable companies are already pushing HD content on demand and that is the signal that discs will be fading fast.
Sony may have well one the right to sell what will be the 2.88 floppy drive of video.
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Pity. Now that sony can control the HD format from start to finish its us, the poor consumers, that are going to get ass-raped here.
My biggest concern is the complete incompatability to play back new movies in older bluray players, and the astoundingly thin 0.2mm from the data layer to the bottom surface of the bluray disks.
Just think how many movies are going to need to be repurchased when ANYONE under the age of 30 gets hold of the disks and smears dust, fingerprints and blackcurrant jam onto them!
thats inaccurate,
old players WILL play new movies
you just wont get new features
Basically nothing changes for old players
How long will it take for a Bluray player’s price to hit below the hundred dollar mark?
I am thinking that another year will go by before seeing a hundred dollar Bluray player.
Glad it’s finally over!
I think upscaled DVD’s look just fine.
I’ll buy a Blue Ray player when it can ALSO access Youtube content and play stuff from my PC sent wirelessly.
Hello Apple? Does that describe anything in your pipeline?
Actually that exists and is called a PS3.
I can play youtube and Divx via the PS3, along with blu-ray… All for the magical price of $300
@#2 It is not the cable companies who are a threat. (Actually they are potential spoilers). Problem is cable company business model. New generations are moving away from forced purchase of a pile of … just to be able to get content one wants, which is the cable company model. Good content is on the Internet and the Apple is moving in right direction there. However, that’s where the cable companies have chance to kill the process, being one of major Internet providers (see recent hints and tests of pay-per-amount used Internet and traffic meddling). If market defeats Internet meddling schemes, Apple model (not neccesseraly by Apple or Apple alone) will kill the need for physical copies very quickly (as fast as BR-HDDVD battle took, starting about now). Real killer would be non-proprietary Internet delivery model, but DRM is likely to keep that from us (well, if we are not bothered by it and ready for hacking).
#2. have you seen the crazy poor choices of HD movies on demand. I have Time Warner HD and maybe 1 in 20 movies that go on their standard format movies on demand channel make it to HD on demand. Terrible.
It is my understanding that it is the distributors that are holding back due to the analog gap.
I’m still waiting for Sony to screw it up somehow. Maybe when more competitors come out with Blu-ray players, Sony will add some distinct, special features to it’s own players.
Now from Sony: Blu-Ray with extra-DRM !
was i the only one who thought the whole”The format war, often compared to the Betamax-VHS battle in the 1980s, has confused consumers unsure of which DVD or player to buy” was really arrogant? it seems to me that the general buying public was smart enough to wait to see who won. i know i was.
also i don’t see hard copy going away anytime soon. there are plenty of people who like owning a copy of what they buy. i do. i like the art work, i like going to the store and browsing the titles. i like the idea that if something really awful happens to my digital copys i got the original.
i also have very slow “broadband” at my house and i don’t see that changing anytime soon. hd ondemand won’t work around here
Optical disk technology is dead. Once broadband prices drop, any inexpensive media center box will be able to cheaply download HD content. This whole HD-Bluray conflict has achieved nothing other than to guarantee that neither will eventually win.
i’ve heard vinyl is dead too yet i still buy it.
This will be on all of the year-end top 10 stories, but in reality it only impacts early adopters who picked the side with fewer movies.
Big picture, movie prices need to go below $15 for this segment to grow. Player prices are meaningless until then.
Cable’s on-demand isn’t the game changer they thought it would be, and cable control enough broadband connections to impact downloadable content (for a while). Big picture, the “future” is standard definition downloads online. If this segment grows over the next year it will impact BluRay much more than anyone can grasp.
The problem with downloaded HD is the price. I still refuse to pay $5.00 to watch a movie. NetFlix is going to make a fortune… you can’t beat the price.
I got an early beta-max and it was much better than vhs. I have never understood why Sony simply did not come out with BetaII and a larger cassette==seems to me they could have kept their market.
As to Blu-Ray==I will never buy it. Instead, I will record HD off the cable and covert to DivX and record on DvD. At 30 cents a disk I can store 5-6 High Def movies. The 2-4% coasters I get and the storage quantity will be hard to beat with Blu-Ray.
#14: The advantage of hard media, whether it be DVDs of various kinds, CDs, or other such (my old LPs), is that they’re permanent copies. If someone has a humongous storage disk (like the big iPods or the external drives that are popular), but that disk goes bad, you have a real problem as all your music or movies are gone. DRM presumably makes it hard to do backups and restores. Now, if you don’t have the hard media, you have to buy all those movies, songs, TV, (and whatever) again.