It's Official: Toshiba Announces Discontinuation of HD-DVD Businesses

[kexodusc]

Flash back to 2004 and most of us ar.com old-timers predicted this day.
Not surprised to see Toshiba bow out gracefully, they've always been a very practical company, not afraid to take risks, but mindful of what's working and what isn't. If the situation were reversed, you could bet Sony would be fighting until the bitter end, which would be at least a few years from now.

Sony's decision to integrate BluRay into the PS3 might be the single biggest difference in this war. While not every PS3 owner bougth BluRay discs, a good portion did. I think without that factor, Toshiba might very well have been able to persuade the studios to make the switch, especially if they sold more hardware and thus more software. At the very least it would have drawn things out a lot longer. These things are always a battle of momentum. PS3 helped BluRay grab it early and never lose it. Without PS3, BluRay doesn't look so attractive to fence sitters deciding where to place their bets. When hardware sales are measured in the hundreds of thousands, having a few million Play Station owners buying a disc or two certainly skews the early-adopter standings. I wonder if any kind of analysis will be done to verify this.

I'm guessing all the Sony fanboys will be flinging out the flags and singing songs of victory today. Life goes on for the rest of us...

Now we can turn our focus back to the real format war:

Boxers vs. Briefs

Discuss.

[bfalls]

Let's make the discussion "brief".

[Woochifer]

Flash back to 2004 and most of us ar.com old-timers predicted this day.
Not surprised to see Toshiba bow out gracefully, they've always been a very practical company, not afraid to take risks, but mindful of what's working and what isn't. If the situation were reversed, you could bet Sony would be fighting until the bitter end, which would be at least a few years from now.

Sony's decision to integrate BluRay into the PS3 might be the single biggest difference in this war. While not every PS3 owner bougth BluRay discs, a good portion did. I think without that factor, Toshiba might very well have been able to persuade the studios to make the switch, especially if they sold more hardware and thus more software. At the very least it would have drawn things out a lot longer. These things are always a battle of momentum. PS3 helped BluRay grab it early and never lose it. Without PS3, BluRay doesn't look so attractive to fence sitters deciding where to place their bets. When hardware sales are measured in the hundreds of thousands, having a few million Play Station owners buying a disc or two certainly skews the early-adopter standings. I wonder if any kind of analysis will be done to verify this.

Blu-ray was playing with a very stacked deck all along. The structure of the market put Blu-ray at an advantage in every facet. They had more studios on board with a much larger share of the highest grossing movie titles, and they had more manufacturers on board, as well as a technical advantage with its larger disc capacity. The PS3 gave Blu-ray a crucial push by keeping the studios on board and creating a larger installed user base.

Toshiba tried to offset Blu-ray's inherent market advantage by lowering the price points, and later on, paying Paramount/Dreamworks to drop Blu-ray. But, they could never create a level playing field for HD-DVD. Too many forces were arrayed in Blu-ray's favor.

I'm guessing all the Sony fanboys will be flinging out the flags and singing songs of victory today. Life goes on for the rest of us...

Trek over to the smackdown forum over at High Def Digest if you want to see the meltdown in progress. Surprisingly, you still have some HD-DVD holdouts in denial, but several of the HD-DVD fanboys have now migrated over to the none-of-this-matters-because-downloads-will-win-eventually-anyway camp. It's just bizarre to me. I checked in around midnight PST, and there were over 1,500 people logged in, and the posts were flying furiously.

[kexodusc]

Trek over to the smackdown forum over at High Def Digest if you want to see the meltdown in progress. Surprisingly, you still have some HD-DVD holdouts in denial, but several of the HD-DVD fanboys have now migrated over to the none-of-this-matters-because-downloads-will-win-eventually-anyway camp. It's just bizarre to me. I checked in around midnight PST, and there were over 1,500 people logged in, and the posts were flying furiously.

HD-DVD holdouts In denial? That's fanboyism that borders on insanity.

We're 6-8 years minimum away from the infrastucture being able to support a downloading medium that could offer the equivalent performance of BluRay (the ol' bandwidth, file size argument) to a reasonable portion of the population. They can't even keep up with the demand for illegal video downloads at 1/40th the file size, and they're worried about what's going to happen as more and more HD channels enter the mix. Assuming the studios even want to support a non tangible format in that capacity (I highly doubt they will). And even if they did, tangible formats will continue to endure.

That attitude is a like the VHS camp saying they aren't going to adopt DVD because a future HD format is on the horizon. Retarded.

Maybe by 2017, in the meantime, I'm not missing out on a ton of entertainment. Now, how long do I have to wait for prices to drop on a PS3/BluRay player?

[Woochifer]

HD-DVD holdouts In denial? That's fanboyism that borders on insanity.

It's been quite amusing to see the fanboys going back and forth over the past year on that site. There are other HD-DVD fanboys who steadfastly refuse to support Blu-ray at any cost, and have vowed to stay with upconverted DVDs. Makes no sense to me at least to vehemently support a HD format, and turn around and go back to SD resolution just because the HD format someone supports becomes orphaned. Granted though, it seems the majority of HD-DVD owners on that site plan to go Blu-ray or already have. There's just a vocal minority on site that's so anti-Sony that they can't rationalize what the market trends are telling them.

We're 6-8 years minimum away from the infrastucture being able to support a downloading medium that could offer the equivalent performance of BluRay (the ol' bandwidth, file size argument) to a reasonable portion of the population. They can't even keep up with the demand for illegal video downloads at 1/40th the file size, and they're worried about what's going to happen as more and more HD channels enter the mix. Assuming the studios even want to support a non tangible format in that capacity (I highly doubt they will). And even if they did, tangible formats will continue to endure.

Totally agree. Right now, every download scheme out there has a significant limitation of some kind (excessive DRM, confusing setup procedures, hard drive capacity, etc.). And even for people willing to live with these restrictions, the bandwidth limitations are real for most households. Fiber is not widely available or affordable yet, and many rural communities don't even have basic broadband access (aside from very expensive and relatively slow satellite internet services).

With the format war over, Blu-ray's main obstacle now is overcoming the DVD format. Downloading has got a much taller task ahead, especially if the files remain as locked down as they are.