Japanese public TV broadcaster NHK says Toshiba to declare HD DVD dead

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Saturday, 16 February 2008 16:56

Opinion and Analysis

Sony can now push Blu-ray hard in an attempt to generate more sales of high definition discs which are still vastly outsold by their standard definition regular DVD brethren.

One question for Toshiba now is how long it will be before they start including Blu-ray drives in their venerable and popular line of notebook computers, which up until now have either featured DVD or HD DVD drives.

Other companies such as Apple, who have until now still not launched any Mac computers with Blu-ray drives, despite being part of the Blu-ray consortium, may also now decide to bite the bullet and back Blu-ray properly with the threat of HD DVD gone for good.

It has also been previously reported that Microsoft themselves could consider launching a Blu-ray drive add-on for the Xbox 360 instead, giving consumers who already own the Xbox 360 a cheap way of getting Blu-ray playback without needing to buy a much more expensive standalone player.
Although Toshiba’s announcement was predicted by the Hollywood Reporter to come within weeks, if NHK’s news report is to be believed, it could happen within the next 24 hours.

Naturally we will have a report on Toshiba's announcement when, and whenever, it comes through.