Eighteen months after abandoning the HD DVD format, Toshiba has finally ceded to the inevitable and joined the Blu-ray camp.
According to the Daily Yomiuri newspaper, Toshiba will release a BD player later this year somewhere in the world, also planning a BD recorder for its home market of Japan.
Nothing official
The move comes after it rejected the notion of getting into online media distribution and developing a new generation of television technology. Instead, it saw the rapid growth of Blu-ray in Japan as leaving it with little choice.
Beyond those bare points, there's nothing in way of detail and, of course, no confirmation at all from the company itself.
After all, when it spent all that time and money insisting HD DVD was the better format, it's gotta be painful admitting it was all a hideous waste of effort.
Your comments (6) Click to add a new comment
dee
July 24th
6. Well the benefits of the death of HD-DVD were that if u had an xbox u culd get the drive extension for under £35 with 5 discs.
This is great if ur still waiting for blu-rays to come down further...just get the films which arn't on HD-DVD on normal DVD. High Def at bargain price lol!
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gyanendra.singh
July 20th
5. Blu ray quality is very good as well as the disc capacity is too high i.e around 50GB.
It had excellent security implementation which is making it more studio friendly against piracy.
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watcherzero
July 20th
4. 5 of the big 7 picked Blu-Ray, 4 exclusively. I would say that was picking sides.
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optimaximal
July 19th
3. Blu Ray only really gained traction because of its anti-piracy properties - none of the studios really wanted to pick a side due to the possibility of a highly fractured consumer base, but the possibility of more revenue since more people would have had to buy the disc was too big to pass over.
HD-DVD's similarities too DVD were its benefits, but also its downfall.
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darren_mccoy
July 19th
2. They were capable of the same sound and audio quality but Blu ray has almost twice the capacity. Its seems a pretty simple choice.
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asd
July 19th
1. hd dvd was so much better than blu ray - it WAS the better format. its a shame that sony had the money to bribe all the movie industries into using blu ray. the rest was inevitable.
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