Might be a good time to get rid of those HD-DVD players and HD-DVD’s if you own them. The final nail in the coffin was given to the next generation DVD format this weekend when Toshiba Corp announced their plans to stop all production on the players and discs.
Blu-Ray DVD now has a clear run, but it’s not wholly unchallenged yet. It still has to convince the average joe to once again adopt a new player and replace all their current DVD’s having spent the last decade already upgrading them from VHS. Not an easy task, though if they lower the prices and now with a hopeful lack of consumer confusion, they should be ok.
Scraping production will cost Toshiba hundreds of millions of dollars but after so many studio’s (Warner Brothers in Jan was a killer) and stores (Best Buy, Netflix & Blockbuster in recent weeks) have turned their backs on HD-DVD, it would be futile to continue.
Of course this is brilliant news for all of us, though I can’t really say I’m looking forward to re-buying my movie collection AGAIN on another format so soon after I did it the last time.
I think I will be ok for a while because at the moment the new discs aren’t really offering anything new apart from a better resolution (though from some of the ones I’ve seen, not all the Blu-Ray/HD-DVD discs are perfect just yet). But I just know when George Lucas, or some other son of a bitch releases a 24 disc special box set of something I love… with brand new extras only available on Blu-Ray… that’s when I will adopt.
Though for the next few years I think I will be totally fine.
YOU CAN READ THE FULL REUTERS ARTICLE BY CLICKING HERE
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5 Comments
For the time being I am more than happy to stand by DVD (and HD-DVD) format. I have absolutely no intention of buying a PS3 at the moment as I more than happy with my combination of XBox 360 accompanied by a HD-DVD drive addon for some £55 extra. Not only does it play HD format movies (which look fantastic), it makes my standard DVD collection look sharper too.
I read the article at Reuters and it doesn’t actually state they have announced to ’stop production’. Though, yes, it does suggest they will in the next few months.
It´s ok to stick a little while with our DVDs.. but the next gen format is definitely Blu-Ray. And because HD DVD is now dead and having nothing to do with either DVD or BluRay we can forget about it. So no more HD DVD then.
Forget both formats, upcovert is all I need. I’m not buying a fourth copy of Bladerunner.
Eh????I just started buying DVD’s!
Well it has been a long time coming! HD-DVD has basically been dead on its feet for over a year with Blu-Ray consistingly outselling it in every major territory.
Warner Bros. going Blu-Ray exclusive last month, along with several retailers opting to back only the Blu-Ray format, was really the final nail in HD-DVD’s coffin, now Toshiba has finally let the format go.