Toshiba announced today that they are pulling out of the race to win the HD format war. They will no longer be developing the HD-DVD format.
Toshiba’s president admitted that Warner Bros. decision to exclusively back the Blu-Ray format was basically the nail in the coffin for Toshiba.
Fortunately or unfortunately, that means that Sony’s Blu-Ray technology is the out-and-out winner in the format war. What will this mean for us as consumers? I really can’t say. There still seem to be rumors floating around that Sony is burdened by the cost of producing Blu-Ray compatible players and discs, even selling them at nearly 10 times the price of a standard DVD equipment. I’m hoping that the production costs will drop significantly now that they have no competition. Otherwise, it will most likely be a very long time before Blu-Ray overtakes the standard digital video disc.
At this point, will we begin to see more and more Blu-Ray drives being packaged with new computers? I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.