Toshiba Officially Drops HD DVD!

Following several days of rumors, Toshiba has confirmed that it will no longer develop, manufacture and market HD DVD players and recorders, effectively ending the high-def format war.What are your views on this?

I don't think so. Blu ray is a much better opinion.

it's sad, because the format had much more potential than blu-ray. blu-ray required a firmware update that older players wouldn't be capable of to replicate the features hd-dvd was capable of - but i think the killer was a lack of advertising. i haven't seen a single hd-dvd advert on tv.it sucks, because i was looking to hd-dvd as the sucessor for the pc dvd, but now that doesn't look like it'll happen, sony will most likely restrict use of blu-ray games for pc or charge a major premium and make up some cock and bull story about its reasons. and it had a silly name.what i think will happen is that the lack of competition plus the ownership rights belonging to the "lacking in common sense sony" will mean some bad business decisions, i doubt any pc games will be released on blu-ray anytime soon, as it's sony's "propiorety format", like the memory stick and UMD and minidisc. they'll charge some premium and the only real benefit will be for high-def movies, at the moment it's still too expensive to backup on, with it's slow write and read speeds. and i cant see the speeds going up either if the function of blu-ray remains as a movie formatbut the thing i hate most is that i was wrong, i honestly thought hd-dvd would win, and i remain adamant that it was definatly the superior format i think it would have been a lot more flexible, too.

This is gonna be wayyyy expensive, i just know it :s)

how is blu-ray a silly name? it uses a blue light laser. I'm fine with blu-ray winning anyhow, it has a much larger storage capacity than HD-DVD, thus will have more uses.

they only use Blu-ray is because "Blue" cant be register as a copywrite because its a common word.......and i dont care if blu-ray won....standard DVD is enough for me right now....

Loonylion · #5how is blu-ray a silly name? it uses a blue light laser. I'm fine with blu-ray winning anyhow, it has a much larger storage capacity than HD-DVD, thus will have more uses.

so how come other laser disc formats dont name them by teh colour of the laser?actually i was on about the Motorola-esque way of not spelling things right. sorry for the confusionand capacity doesn't necessarily mean more uses... (puts up flame shield)

Replying to #7

:P in this business, it does.

sir spamalot · #3i think it would have been a lot more flexible, too.

how more flexible? blu ray does everything the hd dvd does.anyway, i'm happy the blu ray won, not that i care a lot about it, i still could get the blu ray things i wanted, even if it didn't win, but i preferred it since the beginning of the format war.

I always went with blu-ray. Simply because i love PS3 :D

sir spamalot · #7so how come other laser disc formats dont name them by teh colour of the laser?

Because Blu-Ray is the first laser disc that uses a blue laser. All the others are red, so I think it's impractical to call them Red-Ray because none of them are unique.

hd-dvd uses a blue laser, too, while many CD's employed infra-red lasers. laser colour depends on the densitiy of the data, hence the reason for the colour. blue has a shorter wavelenght so can be focused onto a smaller area, the reason behind the capacity of the discs.

Personally I dont care, DVD is fine enough quality for me. Ive got a 360 and I never intended to get the HD DVD drive, and if I get my PS3 I doubt ill ever use it for bluray movies anyway (mostly because I dont have the bandwidth to download HD movies lol).

I never thought HD DVD was gonna win anyways, its not as good as blu ray and people generally jump to the higher quality product....panasonic 3DO excluded...

betamax was superior quality to VHS, what killed Sony there was VHS making commercial release first.

N3M351S · #1What are your views on this?

I'm glad I bought a blu-ray player? ;DI'm glad it won. Blu-ray is easier on the ears compaired to HD-DVD if you ask me.

it's not like it'll bother toshiba much, anyway, they own the sony ps3 CELL production factories ;)

its a shame for Toshiba and for the many thousands of people with HD DVD players but I think an end to the pointless format war is in everyone's best interests.
Can you imagine if M$ had included a HD DVD drive as standard in the 360? The format war would go on into the next generation of consoles.

I say good riddance! Standard DVD is good enough for me. HD DVD and Blu-ray is just so expensive.

Replying to #18

Blu-ray won...And it's amazing if you have the cash!Planet Earth in 1080p is stunning!