After months of watching the HD war between Blu-ray and HD-DVD, Toshiba made it official this morning and ended the war, HD-DVD is no more. Toshiba has said they plan to reduce shipments of HD DVD players and recorders to retail channels, aiming for cessation of these businesses by the end of March 2008.
After months of watching the HD war between Blu-ray and HD-DVD, Toshiba made it official this morning and ended the war, HD-DVD is no more.
The news was predicted weeks ago, solidified by the announcements recently from Wal-Mart, Best Buy, and Time Warner, each opting to shift to production or sales to Blu-ray hardware or movie titles. Now, while Toshiba is leaving the HD media game, they are still giving consumers support. Therefore, if you bought an HD-DVD drive or player Toshiba has not abandoned you. For the consumer, this announcement marks the end of the debate over which format to chose. Naturally, the debate will continue with technophiles, as some will feel slighted for picking a format that in just over thirty days will be obsolete.
“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.”
As mentioned, Toshiba will begin to reduce shipments of HD DVD players and recorders, aiming for cessation of these businesses by the end of March 2008. They also have 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 support customers. 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.
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.
Moving forward, Toshiba said they would continue to develop technologies that will drive mass-market access to high definition content. These technologies include high capacity NAND flash memory, small form factor hard disk drives, next generation CPUs, visual processing, and wireless and encryption technologies.
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