February 21, 2008
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"Toshiba quits HD-DVD business"
...and with that, the high-definition video disc war is officially and finally over. The step needed to make HD video discs more acceptible to the public has been made, and we can all thank Toshiba for raising the white flag. It was an unwanted format war to begin with, so I'm glad things have ended. Most of the "HD-DVD only" titles will be migrating to Blu-ray pretty soon, and by then we will finally have a single source for our high definition video disc needs.I am admitedly a little surprise at the fact that the cheaper more consumer friendly HD-DVD would painfully lose out to Blu-ray, which is a more expensive entry point to high definition video discs. I figured that the price difference would drag out this "war" a lot longer than it actually turned out. Such is the strength of the Sony brand I suppose, which helped them get a lot of support from the industry itself. I'm sure the Blu-ray compatible PlayStation 3 helped the cause as well, probably more so than some people would think.
All we have now to choose for our video disc needs are Blu-ray and the good old DVD formats. Ofcourse first you have to ask yourself if you even want to own high definition titles, which still aren't as cheap to purchase like where DVD prices are at now. It may be worthwhile to own a price friendly upconverting DVD player first for the time being, which gives you the best quality you'll be able to get from the standard DVD format when viewed on an HDTV. In some cases, an upconverted DVD video can make you question if you really need Blu-ray at all. There are also digital HD video downloads to consider as a possible alternative, although it's still up in the air right now whether people would go for that over something like Blu-ray in the long run.
An important victory has been achieved by the Blu-ray video disc format, but it's not home free just yet. I'm still waiting for that day when a title is released "on Blu-ray only, not DVD."
Comments (2)
that last bit will probably take longer. people would probably stop bothering if they need to upgrade altogether rather than having a choice. look at cds when cassettes became obsolete, once people figure out how to make it all digital, we'll probably just end up with streaming online options rather than having to rent a disc at all.
uggg... I'm so disappointed. I was betting on HD-dvds coming thru based on my utter despise of Sony's evil evil empire. I was suppose to get 5 free HD-dvds from Toshiba's rebate plan but they screwed me over on that too. Is there no one we can turn to? What a terrible world we live in....
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