Blu-ray prevails in high definition disc war
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
The battle between the two high definition optical disc formats, Blu-ray and HD DVD has ended after sole HD DVD manufacturer Toshiba has announced it will no longer produce HD DVD players.
In a press conference yesterday, Toshiba president Atsutoshi Nishida announced and confirmed that Toshiba will terminate the R&D plan on HD-DVD products. The key issue to force Toshiba terminating their HD-DVD R&D plan was Warner Bros., who changed their R&D plan from HD-DVD to Blu-ray on January 4.
In what is a reverse of the VHS vs Betamax format war, Sony's Blu-ray has come out on top with the backing of major studios and retailers such as Warner Bros. but also Wal-Mart, Best Buy, Netflix, and Blockbuster who announced they would only support Blu-ray exclusively this past month.
Even though Toshiba is currently about to change their R&D plan from HD-DVD to NAND flash drives and micro drives and plan to build two factories in Iwate, Japan, the company will provide the maintenance service on discs and players in the future 8 years.
Sony bundled Blu-ray into their PlayStation 3 game system. Microsoft's competing Xbox 360, comes with a $200 HD DVD add-on player, whose fate is now undetermined with the demise of HD DVD. Microsoft has said they will wait for what Toshiba has to say.
Sources
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This is a complete or partial translation of the article "東芝公司宣佈終止HD DVD開發", from the Chinese language Wikinews. |
This is a complete or partial translation of the article "東芝公司宣佈終止HD DVD開發", from the Chinese language Wikinews. |
- Press Release: "HD DVD事業の終息について" — Toshiba, February 19, 2008(Japanese)
- 東芝「HD DVD 事業」說明會 <broken link> — Engadget.com, February 19, 2008
- Toshiba officially discontinues HD DVD <broken link> — Heise Online, February 19, 2008
- Chris Tribbey. "Analysts react to HD DVD demise" — The Hollywood Reporter, February 20, 2008
- Bruce Kirkland. "So long HD DVD" — Edmonton Sun, February 19, 2008
- Dan Nystedt. Toshiba Abandons HD DVD <broken link> — PC World (magazine), February 19, 2008
- "Toshiba to announce HD-DVD pull-out Tuesday" — MarketWatch, February 18, 2008
- Microsoft: X360 HD DVD's fate hangs on Toshiba <broken link> — Electronista, February 18, 2008