Category Archives: HD-DVD

According to this, Toshiba is expected to formally announce the demise of the HD-DVD format “within the next few days – not weeks.”

Japanese publication NHK confirmed the decision on Saturday, with Reuters subsequently backing up the story.

“The company source told Reuters that Toshiba was in the final stages of planning to exit the HD DVD business and that an official decision would be made soon,” said the news agency on Saturday.

Toshiba said this morning that, “We are considering our future business policies and plans, and studying the market response [to recent developments].”

Following Wal-Mart’s decision to cease stocking HD-DVD films and players in favour of Blu-ray, Toshiba is to pull out of the next-gen disc race, according to this.

Blu-ray has already flooded the Japanese market, assuming 90 percent of sales. With Wal-Mart offside for US sales, the game was finally lost.

The news ends what has been a humiliating decline in HD-DVD’s fortunes since Waner Bros. very publicly dropped the format just before CES last month. PS3 is now the only console on the market to include Blu-ray support, Sony’s massive gamble sure to now pay-off at large odds.

It also means we don’t have to keep on writing about which logo’s going to be on your movie discs for the next five years, so thanks for not prolonging the agony, Toshiba.

There’s nothing noble about this. Following yesterday’s decision by Wal-Mart to drop HD-DVD completely as of June this year, the Blu-ray Association has issued a cringeworthy response.

“Retailers have a tremendous impact on consumer preferences, and as the world’s largest retailer, Wal-Mart’s reach and leadership are unparalleled,” said the body’s chairman, Andy Parson. “Their decision to support only Blu-ray, particularly in light of the string of similar announcements from the content and retail communities over the last six weeks, seems to us to be a very clear statement that Blu-ray Disc has emerged as the format of choice for high definition home entertainment.”

Good for you, Andy. Good for you.

Surely this means the end? Wal-Mart is to completely drop HD-DVD players and movies by June. You can’t get much more final than that. The company officially announced its intentions today, saying, “By June Wal-Mart will only be carrying Blu-ray movies and hardware machines, and of course standard-def movies, DVD players, and up-convert players.”

If HD-DVD manages to survive after this, we’ll eat our hats. And we don’t have hats, so that tells you how final this is.

Major Nelson just confirmed that the Xbox 360 HD-DVD player has dropped in price to $129.99 from $179.99 in the US. “This new price is effective immediately in the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand,” said the Major.

We’re trying to get word from Microsoft as to whether we can expect to see something similar in Europe.

Sony is offering 150 euro off the price of a Sony BDP-S300 Blu-ray player to any German customer that hands over their used HD-DVD player. This points out that HD-DVD adoption if far higher in the States, so a replication of the offer in the US isn’t likely, and there’s no word of anything similar happening in the rest of Europe either. So far, German retailer Saturn is the only partner for Sony’s grand plan to demolish HD-DVD, one player at a time.

We wish it’d hurry up.

Well, it was hardly going to be particulalrly pleased about it, was it? UK retailer Woolworths dumped HD-DVD today, meaning Blu-ray will be the only next generation disc movie format stocked in its 800-plus high street stores. In a statement issued to GI this afternoon, HD-DVD player manufacturer Toshiba was less than thrilled, but managed to spin the situation all the same.

“While we’re disappointed by Woolworths’ decision, it is extremely early to spot which format will eventually win,” commented Oliver Van Wynendaele, euro assistant general manager of Toshiba’s Consumer Products Division. “We have been hugely successful in expanding the number of consumers owning HD-DVD players. UK consumers can now pick-up an HD-DVD player for less than GBP 150, around half the cost of other HD formats. Even before pricing reached this level, HD-DVD represented more than 60 per cent of the overall standalone high definition market.”

Woolworths noted that PlayStation 3′s inclusion of Blu-ray was a driving factor in making its decision to dump HD-DVD.

Another nail for HD-DVD’s already groaning coffin arrives in news that major UK high street retailer Woolworths has dropped the format following slow Christmas sales. Blu-ray will be the only HD disc format now stocked in the store.

“Sales figures clearly show that the market is moving towards one format of high definition DVD,” said Woolworths DVD buyer Steven McGunigel. “The main reason is the success of Sony’s PlayStation 3 machine. Because it plays Blu-Ray discs, there are over three quarters of a million homes in the UK that can view the new high definition format. There is nowhere near that number of HD-DVD players around. Switching to Blu-Ray only will provide one clear offer to customers in the format they want to watch high definition movies in.”

There’s no hope for HD-DVD, says this. Recent price cuts on HD-DVD players from Toshiba are “useless resistance” against Blu-ray HD movie format domination, reckons market research firm Gartner.

“Gartner believes that Toshiba’s price-cutting may prolong HD DVD’s life a little, but the limited line-up of film titles will inflict fatal damage on the format. Gartner expects that, by the end of 2008, Blu-ray will be the winning format in the consumer market, and the war will be over,” wrote analyst Hiroyuki Shimizu in Gartner’s Semiconductor DQ Monday Report.

Starting to see a pattern in all this, yet?

1080living.com’s claiming that ubiquitous US electronics retailer Circuit City is dropping HD-DVD completely in favour of Blu-Ray.

“This move is for business reasons only as Circuit City is committed to the next generation of Hi Def DVD viewing,” one store manager told the site. “Based on company sales of the two formats which consisted of 87 percent for Blu-Disc and 13 percent for HD the company felt that now should be the time to fully commit our resources to one format. Circuit City is the leader of technology and this move again reinforces out commitment to offering out customers the very best available. We expect our competitors to follow suit shortly.”

There’s no official confirmation of this as yet, but hopefully everyone else will follow suit sooner rather than later and we can stop thinking about the entire sorry issue.