Toshiba announced today that it is officially pulling the plug on their HD-DVD format. Citing "recent major changes in the market"--specifically announcements from Wal-Mart, Netflix, and Best Buy last week in support of Blu-ray--Toshiba has chosen to stop manufacturing and selling HD-DVD players.

From an article in TWICE magazine:

"We carefully assessed the long-term impact of
continuing the so-called 'next-generation format war' and concluded
that a swift decision will best help the market develop," stated
Atsutoshi Nishida, Toshiba president and CEO. "While we are disappointed for the company and more importantly, for
the consumer, the real mass market opportunity for high definition
content remains untapped and Toshiba is both able and determined to use our talent, technology and intellectual property to make digital convergence a reality."

Nishida said that Toshiba will continue to produce some HD-DVD drives for laptops and PC according to customer demand and will provide support for existing units, but will now focus largely on computer hardware and peripherals such as "flash memory, small form factor hard disk drives, next
generation CPUs, visual processing, and wireless and encryption
technologies.”

So Sony's Blu-ray has come out on top, and we can all breathe a sigh of relief that the format war is over.

(EDIT:  Looks like Amazon Screening Room beat me by a few minutes...)

--Aric A.

Browse these movies and more at Movies Online. >>>