Toshiba officially quits HD DVD business
Toshiba has said it will stop making its high definition DVDs, ending a battle with rival format Blu-ray over which would be the industry standard. Following a review of its business, Toshiba said it would stop production of HD DVD players and recorders. The HD DVD format has suffered as major US film studios backed the Blu-ray format, which is being developed by electronics firm Sony and partners. Analysts said the move would allow Toshiba to focus on other products. “We concluded that a swift decision would be best,” Toshiba president Atsutoshi Nishida said.
Toshiba said the tipping point came last month when Warner Bros’ followed a number of other film studios in deciding to release its movies only in the Blu-ray format. “If we had continued, that would have created problems for consumers, and we simply had no chance to win,” he said. Toshiba will continue to supply retailers with machines until the end of March this year. After that, Toshiba will continue to provide technical support to the estimated one million people worldwide who own HD DVD players and recorders. A number of studios, including Universal, Paramount and DreamWorks, signed up to produce movies in HD DVD, but Toshiba’s withdrawal is expected to reduce the number films available in the format. RIP HD DVD, hail the Blu-Ray, the new king!
Source: BBC
Comments(73)
first
Martin: and BANNED…
lol pwned blu ray owns all
God damn it, sucks for the 1m of us who got suckered into buying the Xbox 360 HD-DVD player
what about laptops, they should quit those too.
Blu Ray pwned HD as much as Martin will pwn the dumb ass who posted first :/
In September my friend said HD would win the war and I laughed, now I get even more chuckles.
In the Q&A session following Toshiba’s HD DVD dumping event in Japan, Atsutoshi Nishida, President and CEO of Toshiba Corporation made a bit of a surprise announcement. While it remains committed to standard DVD, they have “no plan at all at this moment” to take up the Blu-ray format. He also stated that Tosh has no plans for a next-next gen format at all. Perhaps they are just licking their wounds until HD downloads become a reality.
rofl @ m – its so true
Well that just screws anyone who has a hddvd player. time to start a high def monopoly. I have a bad feeling about this
bout time this format war ended,this is good news for everyone….that didn’t buy an hd dvd player
Ebay is going to be swamped with players and disks.
im sorry for the guys who even thought it smart to buy one format or another….we all know how dirty corporate america can me, cruel and such. also, we all should know what garbage sony is with all their proprietary connections…(cables for a Digital cam anyone)anyways… i never buy sony crap no more…i hate them. just me of course. anyways, i still dont see 30$ US a good deal for a flippin movie after paying 400$ for the player…anyone sees the price matching regular dvd’s within the next 6 months?
The unfair thing is that it is younger consumers, who weren’t around to remember the original VHS vs. Beta ‘Format War’, who were more likely to have sunk their cash into HD DVD players.
Older consumers, some who would have been burnt by buying Betamax players in the 80’s, would have been more likely to have held back until the mess was sorted.
If there is any consolation here, it is that unlike in the original format war which was won by the technically inferior VHS tape format, in this case the technically superior Blu Ray format has prevailed.
Finally there’s an end of this format-war, i personally don’t like Sony’s alternative for HD picture, but what we can do when it’s all about money?
wow. hd dvd was better
Only if MS had done a deal with Tosh and included a HD player as standard in the Xbox 360, blue ray only won thanks to the PS3.
sad news for hddvd owners…
ohh well, now at least one can really decide on which format to concentrate … i wasnt able to before, so here they made the decision for us … well to bad for the people owning hddvd lol
from my observations way back to when the ps3 came out and this format war brewed up i knew blu ray would prevail due to the fact that it has the larger capacity and the ps3 doubles as a blu ray player.. regardless of your opinions of the console it was a smart move, the 360 made u pay more for the hddvd player and most people wouldn’t bother with 200 bucks when they could buy 2 games for that!
now its time to play the waiting game to see if they drop the price of blu ray dvds, i want HD movies but i dont want to pay 40 to 50 bucks for one movie, i only have one blue ray due to the insane pricing at the moment!
guys try not to associate blue-ray only with sony please…
i’m glad its over, time to move forward
I want quality high-def audio!! Not Blu-ray crap!!
Corrupt companies shaft the consumer once again.
And governments did nothing to stop them.
No protection for the public at all.
Lots of protection for intellectual property though.
I’m just glad we got fire and the wheel before intellectual property laws. Imagine fires that go out if you don’t use the right brand of wood, or wheels that go flat if you try to drive on roads not permitted by the wheel company.
It’ll soon be time for another turn with the guillotine.
Why do they make us kill them? Stupid aristocracy…
Thank God the madness is over and consumers can finally purchase with confidence. This can only be a good thing: Blu-Ray prices will fall (both hardware and discs) as companies scramble to push out players.
And as has been said before, don’t associate Blu-Ray with Sony – sure, they had the most to lose with the PS3, but there are around 150 companies in the alliance.
blackb0×0p3rat0r wrote…
“Im sorry for the guys who even thought it smart to buy one format or another….we all know how dirty corporate america can me (sic), cruel and such.”
I believe that Sony and Toshiba Corporations are wholly owned and operated by the Japanese. Blame them.
But on the other hand the format war drove the price down on the PS3 and Blu-ray machines. Do you think for any moment that Japan’s Sony Corporation would have voluntarily lowered their price on the PS3? Not likely. You can thank Wii, HD DVD, and X-Box 360 for that. I am really surprised that anyone is happy about the quick demise of HD DVD. Completion helps to drive prices down. Now we have to wait for the Koreans and the Chinese to start mass producing Blu-ray players, recorders, and blank media, in order to see the price drop again. Sony won the battle, the consumer lost the war.
i knew that blu-ray would win out from the very start, it’s just like the old vhs-beta wars in the late 70’s/early 80’s. it was stupid to come out with 2 formats in the first place. hd-dvd was a lousy name too, that is part of the reason for it’s failure, it needed a better, more catchy name, blu-ray sounds flashy, hd-dvd just sounds like old dvd’s on roids.
YES kill them all
I just loved comment #20.
Totally true!
Quoting: “(…)
I’m just glad we got fire and the wheel before intellectual property laws. Imagine fires that go out if you don’t use the right brand of wood, or wheels that go flat if you try to drive on roads not permitted by the wheel company.(…)”
I believe High Definition is the next best thing, but NOT at 25 euros each movie. Besides, I don’t even use blank DVD’s to archive stuff… I just bought (another) 500Gb external hard drive, for so much less than the equivalent number of blank DVD’s or Blu-Rays!
I will much rather download my HD content from now on than buy really expensive blu-ray movies. And no, the Blu-Ray players and discs will NOT get cheap enough to destroy traditional DVD. I believe that another medium will arrive before that.
Lest we not forget everyone, that optical discs are 25 years old technology! Flash Memory cards are the future of “store shelf” content, aside from rentals (online or traditional) and direct downloads (sharing or the dumbass way – “paying money for Gb of information, and you don’t even get a nice box, booklet, or nothing!”).
@25
Flash cards have a limited lifespan (number of read/writes per sector) and magnetic storage is more likely to corrupt. Discs have none of the following problems, blu ray is actually quite resistant to even scratches, so I don’t think they’ll ever replace outside storage.
Blu-Ray might be the last solid state home video format out there. By the time they start getting phased out by bigger and better disc formats, both hard drive space and internet bandwith will be large enough for people to download and save movies on their DVR or similar technology. For new releases, they’ll probably employ technology similar to bittorrent and end up with consumers downloading 25-50GB files on their DVR’s in 1 hour or so. Can either be done by subscription fee or per flick download.
Direct downloads have dominated Music, it’s only a short while before video follows behind.
I think this is a big mistake letting Sony gain a monopoly on the HD movie scene. They are well known for messing people about with their propriety crap that just makes it harder for people to use the stuff in the first place! Just look at the nonsense all the people who bought non-ps3 Blu-Ray players are having to deal with regarding the updated version of the Blu-Ray standard. People should be sad that Blu-Ray has won, now we have to deal with Region Codes again, which really pisses me off. Here we go with the herd again. Damn sheep won’t let me go my own way.
so can i get a bluray addon for my 360 now?
and as for MARTIN’s response to #1 ……and PROXY
@29
i dont think ull need over 1 000 000 read write cycles anyway
@28
i dont think ull need over 1 000 000 read write cycles anyway
@ 29 lol
‘Microsoft switches to Blu-ray for Xbox360′
One of the reasons many people thought HD DVD would make a big chance to become the next blue laser format was the support of Microsoft. The company released a relative cheap external HD DVD drive as an add-on to the Xbox 360. Unfortunately Toshiba has pulled the plug on HD DVD and now American Microsoft employees have confirmed to the Australian Gaming Website Smarthouse that the company will release an external Blu-ray drive.
Before, Microsoft already noted that if it was ever need the company would introduce a Blu-ray drive to the market, but for now the company also backed the HD DVD format.
Will this also bring the Playstation 3 sale figures in danger as Blu-ray was an important reason to buy a PS3?
@32
thats good to hear, i just hope they don’t want over $200, i would be willing to pay 175 at the most.
Downloading and massive hard-drives…… why can’t anyone comprehend that that’s the future……
Once again, Look To The Porn. They dumped HDDVD and everyone followed. It was even more apparent in the betamax/vhs war where porn ultimately announced VHS the winner. Too bad though betamax was better and is STILL used in broadcasting ^^
Bought a HDDVD Player. Shame it’s gone, but it plays and upconverts standard DVD’s just fine! “Downloading and massive hard-drives” Problem I see there is that looks like more and more ISP are introducing D/L limits. I’ve had to change ISP’s already due to this. Speed is increasing, and companies are paying more for Bandwith. “betamax” is not and never was the Betacam Broadcast format.
One word for this new development, balls!!!!!!!!
There is only one certainty about this outcome and that is we consumers will be harassed and bullied into paying way more than what is reasonable by Sony and their cronies.
Such is the nature of the breast that a Sony win means a loss for us consumers.
HDDVD owners are no more losers than BlueRay 1.0 owners so calm down.
“what about laptops, they should quit those too.”
lmao
they wouldn’t fix mine, though they put the graphics processor (with poorly soldered chips) right next to the cpu. screw toshiba. i hope this is just the beginning of their problems
oh, and screw sony too, i don’t buy dvds
they should have given one of these with each qualifying HD DVD purchase.
http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/j/ap/844341b9-7347-4c28-9620-9f65eab9696a.rp350×350.jpg
I have the Xbox 360 addon HD-DVD player. Picked it up on the cheap, and with movies as low as £8 floating about, I’m still gonna keep a few by. I’ll upgrade to Blu-Ray eventually too mind you, but the cheap HD movies is too much to resist!
WTH?? How is this a monopoly? Sony isn’t the only one creating Blu-Ray players…that’s not a monopoly people. And the players are not overpriced. Most of them are sold at a loss anyways, just like the 360 and PS3, the only way companies make their money back is by overcharging on games/movies/etc.
Hooray for bluray!!
You can use your hd dvd player to build cool laser pointers and burn your sister with it.
I don’t understand why people would rent a movie for 5-10 dollars online and watch it once within the given time. Rather then pay 20-25 dollars for a blu-ray and watch it now and then a year from now or 2 years from now. Doesn’t make any sense to me. I would much rather own a hard copy of something im paying for then a digital download that can get wiped due to a corrupted hard drive. Unless they make it where you open an account and buy movies online that you can download anytime and have your own list of movies bought and never have to pay for again. But then piracy will be even easier and how are they going to make it accessible and easy to watch it on your HDTV?
THANK YOU Legion! I’ve been saying that forever. Why people think downloads are the way of the future baffles me. Why do we all download on this site and others? Because it is FREE! You get an “unlimited use” copy for the price of free. Just like I’ll never understand the people who “rent” $6 HD movies on DirecTV or cable, I scratch my head when I see people talking about downloaded media being the wave of the future. For starters, I want something tangible if I’m shelling out my money. And if I as a 25 year old want that, you can bet that the people with money (older folks) want that as much or more.
And downloading takes a while. Your mommy or daddy might pay for your T1 line, but the vast majority of Americans don’t have super high bandwidth. Sure, select cities have FIOS that might make it possible to get HD movies in a reasonable period of time, but none of the “HDDVD” or “BluRay” downloads on this site or others match the quality of an ACTUAL HD-DVD or Blu-Ray disc. Downloading is acceptable to us because it’s free. Watch how quickly sites like Rlslog and others would dry up if downloads cost $5-6/movie. It is in everyone’s best interest to continue with tangible media.
I was thinking of getting an HD Player during the holidays, thankfully I didn’t pull the trigger. IMHO, HD DVD sounded better but BluRay’s picture was superior. Anyway, no skin off my back, if/when Blu Ray player’s prices drop, I’ll be in for one since the format war is over.
lol….I wanted both formats to fail because they had too many syllables. (Blue-Ray,H-D-D-V-D) I like the simple stuff like iPod and DVD lol.
Now just sony’s PS3 to pwn the competition, and we will all be happy…although i fear that day will never come…at least not soon.
I don’t know if HD-DVD is gonna be able to recover from this news.
To those who have bought HD-DVD players, please remember they can also be used to hold down papers on a desk so the papers do not blow away.
Another use for the player is to force a door to remain open by propping the player up against the door.
@44
good sugestion
now i dont have to throw away the player anymore
muehehe
Lots of people complaining about Blu-ray’s demolition of HD DVD or Sony’s monopoly of the HD market when ALL OF YOU HAVE ALREADY BEEN USING SONY’S FORMATS WITHOUT COMPLAININGN.
CD and DVD are both Sony formats. Why?
Let me clarify some things for some of you:
Sony was 1 of 9 companies who developed Blu-ray.
Sony was 1 of 10 companies who developed DVD.
Sony was 1 of 2 companies who developed CD.
If Blu-ray = Sony,
Then DVD = Sony,
And CD = Sony
Stop crying and deal with it.
I never trusted Toshiba anyway.
If there is one thing I can’t stand, it is having my electronics made by the Japanese.
@54 lmao
But i guess some people DO really think Sony is an US compagny !
Anyway, cheap HD-DVDs’ always a good thing
@41
TrojanBJ
February 19th, 2008 | 16:06
they should have given one of these with each qualifying HD DVD purchase.
http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/j/ap/844341b9-7347-4c28-9620-9f65eab9696a.rp350×350.jpg
——————-
I’ll take the cute one holding the disc, you can have the other one.
finally the world has made up there choice, i like
@56 image dead
Everyone here seems to be blaming corrupt corporations and greed for the failure of blu-ray. This is misplaced blame. The consumer chose Blu-ray overwhelming according to all sales data. The big movie corporations and retailers (walmart, warner, etc.) made the smart choice of backing the most purchased format.
Could care less. All hail bittorrent, Usenet and the Pirates!
I am so happy the format war is over. Now companies can start mass producing Blu-Ray players driving the price down for consumers and ultimately driving the price down of the PS3 as well.
man.. i wonder what this means for laserdisc
Remember that CD and DVD didn’t really take off until the licensing (intellectual property) agreements allowed for real competition in the marketplace to happen and Sony has a history of being very poor in this regard.
If Sony is true to form it will charge and arm and a leg to anyone wanting to manufacture its products leading to overly expensive equipment and movies at the expense of the consumer.
This is why a win for Sony is a loss for us.
And the winner is… Sony! And the people! (and those who have a PS3 of course)
And the losers are… Microsoft, Toshiba and everyone who bought the HDDVD player for their XBOX 360’s!
meh, its not like i will use either format thanks to HD-Rips, LOL! ahahahahha!
While I don’t prefer any particular format, this will decrease the number of HD movie rips on the internet. I don’t think there is a hd-dvd that can’t be ripped (and encoded), but all of Fox’s releases (Blu-Ray only) in the last few months have been un-encodable due to BD+. But if BD+ is circumvented, then I don’t think the demise of hd-dvd is a major loss for pirates (apart from more oss support for hd-dvd audio codecs).
I got the Toshiba HD-A35 (the latest)DVD player the first week in Dec.07. Now if HD-DVD is going out of business… then what does this means for me. I still have another $400.00 to pay. Will they stop copying movies to HD-DVD’s.
IMO one of the major reasons Blu-Ray won the format war so quickly is because of BD+ content protection. The fact that Blu-Ray has WAY more installed units than HD-DVD isn’t that big of a deal because most PS3 blu-ray owners were NOT purchasing movies. Not very long after BD+ was unveiled you have Warner Bros. and other studios switching over to Blu-Ray. It doesn’t really matter THAT much though because BD+ will be cracked before too long anyway. There is already a HD rip of Die Hard 4 floating around on Usenet. It seems as if that rip was made by capping each and every frame individually though. So it took 1.5 months or so to even come out and it cuts off immediately as the credits begin to roll.
Now wainting for the pc blu-ray recorders rpoduce and get cheaper…
#alt.binaries.hdtv.x264 wtf!!!
thank you Peter Parker.
I’ve been saying that for ages but the fanboys just wont listen.
You also have Sony to thank for all your portable media players, the grandaddy of them all was the original walkman.
Sony do NOT own the rights to BluRay, they are held by the BluRay Association now of which Sony is a founder member. Companies who want to produce BluRay hardware pay a license fee to the BluRay Association not to Sony. LG and Samsung already have licenses and now the format war is over, they will start to produce cheaper and cheaper BluRay players instead of their overpriced multiformat players. I can go to my local superstore and buy BluRay movies for the same price as, or a couple of pounds more than the equivalent DVD. Hardly double the price, at least not here in the UK.
BD+ has already been broken.
http://www.trustedreviews.com/tvs/news/2007/10/31/Blu-rays-BD-Encryption-Cracked/p1
@ captainkremmen
No problem. Someone should add FAIL to that HD DVD image at the top of the page. ROFLCAKES!
Even Michael bay is gloating as he knew that Blu-ray would win but was told to hush up and retract his statement about not doing Transformers 2 (which will be getting a Blu-ray release) if Paramount went HD DVD only:
http://www.michaelbay.com/blog/files/61fd346897dded38096a8c664bb3c03f-197.html