Toshiba conceded the Hi-Def format war earlier today. Rumours of their forthcoming announcement had circulated the net for some days already, so one can’t claim surprise.
After the almost lethal blow that was Warner going Blu-ray exclusive, Toshiba and the HD DVD camp were left reeling. Their last gasp came in two parts: 1) an expensive TV ad during the Super Bowl and 2) further price reductions on all HD DVD players. Neither managed to excite the masses, however. The final blow came in the form of Best Buy, Netflix and Wal-Mart all announcing their exclusive support for Blu-ray. The jig was well and truly up, fat lady was spotted waddling towards the stage, and Microsoft was making noises that could be construed as faintly positive towards a Blu-ray drive for the Xbox 360.
It will be very interesting to see what Paramount, Dreamworks and Universal do now. I’m fairly certain all have clauses in their contracts, freeing them from any and all obligations towards HD DVD if Toshiba throws in the towel. Paramount will probably dig up their already-authored Blu-ray masters and have Transformers BD in stores quick as a flash. Dreamworks will surely follow suit.
Universal, however… now that’s tricky. There’s been a lot of bad blood between Sony and Universal in the past. To be honest, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Universal announced they would take a break from Hi-Def altogether. That’s right: no HD DVDs, no Blu-rays. They could quite easily claim that releasing on Blu-ray is not commercially viable at the moment, thus thumbing their noses at Sony. They’d naturally anger a couple of million consumers at the same time, and that’s something they probably wish to avoid.
Universal will more than likely announce that they will start releasing Blu-ray titles, but it will take them a while to gear up production. 6-12 months, maybe. We’ll see.
I happened to be in Japan when Toshiba launched their first HD DVD player and naturally, being a purebred technowanker, I had to buy one. It’s kinda hard to believe that was ~22 months ago. HD DVD, we hardly knew ye.
{ 3 } Comments
Oh poor you – when are you going to lament that DVHS player you’ve got laying around there somewhere?
Cos things are even worse for me! I’m a 2nd gen adopter, a cheapo bastard if there ever was one, and now I’ve got these beautiful red coasters lying everywhere.
Also: http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9874320-7.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20
Red coasters? Are you saying all your HD DVD discs stopped playing the very second Toshiba made its announcement? That’s odd, since all my HD DVDs are still working perfectly… :)
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