Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Saturday, 16 February 2008 17:56
Opinion and Analysis
Page 1 of 2
Japanese news website Akihabara News is reporting that
Japanese TV network NHK has run a report saying HD DVD is ‘officially’
dead, although Toshiba are still yet to make their own official
announcement.
Well, the end of HD DVD is now far closer to being 100% official than ever before, despite Toshiba’s Japanese HQ still yet to make a final official announcement.
Both
Akihabara News and
Reuters are reporting that Japanese TV network NHK has reported on a Saturday morning (Japan time) news broadcast that Toshiba is about to declare HD DVD dead.
Toshiba are expected to lose hundreds of millions of dollars from the entire venture, with the final nail in the coffin having been the defection of Wal-Mart, the world’s biggest retailer, to the Blu-ray format.
Wal-Mart’s action followed NetFlix and Best Buy deciding to also ditch the HD DVD format, which comes barely a month after the move by Warner Bros. to exclusive back the Blu-ray system after having originally supported both formats.
Toshiba have been involved in a fire sale, trying to offload remaining stocks of HD DVD players at up to 50% off, while movie prices have also been plummeting, with online retailer Amazon having all their HD DVD titles on special.
Even Microsoft dropped the price of their HD DVD XBox 360 add on by 50% in an attempt to shift remaining stock.
HD DVD player owners now have an opportunity to buy up remaining movie titles on the cheap, thereby extended the usefulness of their players a bit longer, otherwise forced to use them as upscaling DVD players for their existing DVD collections.
So, will Sony now push Blu-ray for all it’s worth – and how soon before we start seeing Blu-ray drives in more computers, instead of the now old fashioned DVD burner? Please read onto page 2.
