The war is over. The nearly three-year conflict between the two competing high-definition DVD formats, Blu-ray and HD DVD, concluded Tuesday with Toshibas announcement that it is dropping its HD DVD format.
Tokyo-based Toshiba said that after "a thorough review of its overall strategy," it has decided it will "no longer develop, manufacture and market HD DVD players and recorders." Shipments of players and recorders to retail channels will be reduced, with a goal of stopping them completely by the end of March.
The company will, however, continue to provide support and after-sales service for Toshiba HD products for an unspecified amount of time. It also said it will continue to assess if market demand exists for HD DVD drives in notebooks.
NOT A BIG SURPRISE
President and CEO Atsutoshi Nishida said Toshiba had "assessed the long-term impact of continuing the next-generation format war" and decided that "a swift decision will best help the market develop."
He added that the opportunity for high-definition content remains, and the company said it will continue to develop other technologies that can drive high-def use. These include high-capacity NAND flash memory, small-form-factor hard drives, next-generation CPUs, and wireless and encryption technologies.
The announcement "wasnt a big surprise," said Gartner analyst Van Baker, given the "serious case of piling on" recently against the HD DVD format. The "real killer," he said, was Wal-Marts decision Friday to back Blu-ray exclusively. On the same day, a report in the Hollywood Reporter quoted "reliable industry sources" as saying that Toshiba would abandon the format within a few weeks.
FROM BAD TO WORSE
Other news last week went from bad to worse for the HD DVD camp. Major retailer Best Buy said it was "addressing consumer confusion" and would be "prominently showcasing Blu-ray" as its preferred format, beginning in March.
Online movie renter NetFlix also said the industry had "picked a winner" in Blu-ray, and it would stock that high-definition format exclusively. Previously, NetFlix had backed both formats. NetFlix said its decision was based on four of the six major film studios backing Blu-ray.
Many industry observers had predicted the end was near when Warner Bros. announced in January that it would sell high-def movies only in Blu-ray, joining Disney, Fox, Lionsgate and Blu-rays main backer, Sony. Officially, Universal, Paramount, DreamWorks Animation and Microsoft still back HD DVD.
Some industry observers have noted that Blu-rays defeat of HD DVD does not mean that format will triumph, since consumers might also choose inexpensive upscaling, regular DVD players or online delivery of high-definition content.
But JupiterResearch analyst Bobby Tulsiani said "were still pretty far away in the U.S." from enough high-speed bandwidth for online delivery to pose a challenge. The other not-yet-solved factor, he noted, is delivering online content to the TV screen, not just to a computer.
No comments:
Post a Comment