HD-DVD Death Official: Toshiba Announces Defeat
Toshiba have officially thrown in the HD-DVD towel, announcing today that they will no longer develop, manufacture, or market the HD-DVD format.
After rumours of the company’s withdrawal from broadcaster NHK, this outcome comes as little surprise. Though the Toshiba Corporation denied such rumours over the past couple of days, they were clearly waiting for the right time and manner with which to give the news.
Atsutoshi Nishida, President and CEO of Toshiba Corporation had this to say:
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.
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.
What they mean by this support for high definition content does not appear to be in support of Blu-ray (yet at least), but in the creation of high capacity NAND flash memory, small form factor hard disk drives, next generation CPUs, visual processing, and wireless and encryption technologies.
Toshiba will begin to reduce shipments of HD-DVD players and recorders to retail channels, aiming for cessation of these businesses by the end of March 2008. The company also plans to end volume production of HD-DVD disk drives for such applications as PCs and games in the same time frame.
With the high-definition format war officially over, Sony’s Blu-ray format has been given free reign of the marketplace, with only downloadable HD content to hold them back. Such a conclusion to the “war” may have positive results for sales of the company’s Playstation 3, the piece of kit that ultimately put Sony ahead of their rival in HD disc sales. Ironically, Toshiba had a hand in the PS3′s CPU, the Cell – a technology that they intend to ingrate into their HDTV’s.
The smug Blu-ray Assossiaction had this to say about Toshiba’s decision:
We in the Blu-ray Disc Association are very happy that this long format war is officially over. Now the task ahead for our member companies is to promote the Blu-ray Disc format as the best way to bring premier quality high definition content into consumers’ lives.
Though Toshiba will lose a lot of money from ending their format, as well as stretching their relationship with partnered companies/studios (Microsoft, Intel, HP, Universal Studios and Paramount Studios), the potential savings made from ending the battle now rather than later, greatly outweigh the losses.
Source: Toshiba Corporation
