HD DVD has lost

HD DVD has lost the format war. There have been reports all over the web that Toshiba is pulling the plug on HD DVD. It will no longer manufacture HD DVD players.

The format war is over according to Ain’t It Cool News, now go buy a Blu-ray DVD player. Thanks to Ryan for the link.

The final nail in the coffin came on Friday when Wal-Mart Stores Inc announced they were dropping support for HD DVD.

Update: Reuters published a confirming that Toshiba will halt production of future HD DVD players. They’re expected to lose hundreds of millions of dollars from their HD DVD efforts.

Sony lost the Betamax/VHS format war in the 80s so winning the Blu-ray/HD DVD format war is a really big deal (not to mention that high-definition DVD will be billion dollar industry). Wired magazine thinks that downloads will kill Blu-ray but that’s just nonsense. Bandwidth isn’t exactly increasing exponentially or getting a lot cheaper. Until that happens, then Blu-ray has nothing to worry about.

Posted in Technology at 2:15 PM