Toshiba to back out on HD-DVD?

If Toshiba is quitting the Civil War of DVD Formats and giving in to BluRay, they should let their employees know.

Hollywood Reporter says:

Toshiba is widely expected to pull the plug on its HD DVD format sometime in the coming weeks, reliable industry sources say, after a rash of retail defections that followed Warner Home Video’s announcement in early January that it would support only the rival Blu-ray Disc format after May.

Now this is still all solid speculation and nothing is set in stone, however the article does hit on some serious hints.

HD DVD North American Promotional Group canceled its Consumer Electronics Show presentation. As well, market analysis showed Blu-ray took in 93% of all hardware sales for the week that cancellation was announced. (Despite cutting the retail price of HD-DVD players in half)

I was talking to a Toshiba product rep at an electronics superstore, and he was confident that Toshiba was still in the fight and he was quoting a lot of numbers that made it sound like Toshiba was on the tipping side of that scale.

If this speculative news is true, someone should let him know.

Guess I might finally have a reason to buy a Playstation 3 afterall.

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7 thoughts on “Toshiba to back out on HD-DVD?

  1. Reasons to buy the PS3:

    Gaming ability, has everything (or almost everything) except Halo;
    Price, compared to buying a Blu-Ray player and the X-Box 360, it’s cheaper;
    Quality…from everything I’ve heard, it’s even the best Blu-Ray player out there as it is! Plus, with pretty much all the major production companies going Blu-Ray, you’re ahead of the game. I just wonder if they’ll convert the HD DVD stuff over so you can enjoy everything on one damn format finally?!

  2. last week i went out and bought a ps3 for the blu ray player……i alsso have a 360…..

    with that said – it’s sweet – no regrets……516 at costco with a bunch of otgher stuff in the bundle….and if it ever beaks – back to costco for an exchange! no questions asked…..

  3. If they are going to back out they had better announce it soon. With having both players I’d rather just have all the films come out on Blu Ray now that we know it will eventually pull ahead. Any delay in announcing defeat is just a delay in putting out the Blu Ray movies that were previously HD DVD only (Transformers, Batman Begins…)

  4. I have said it before and I will say it again: the future lies in Multiumedia boxes. In Europe, Samsung has just released an HD player that is also DIVX and XVID. It hooks right up to your TV and is smaller than a conventional DVD player.

    Imagine 1TO of movies all in one box the size of your Lord of the Rings collection. Now that they know how to do it in HD, I think that is the way to go. But then again I also thought Ron Paul might really be president one day…

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