Toshiba and Microsoft took a long time to realize HD DVD was doomed but there it is: Bestbuy, Wal-Mart and others are dropping HD DVD. Rumors say Toshiba will announce the death of HD DVD in the next few days.
People who bought HD DVD players will need to start using them as cup holders.
So those if you who really want a HD disk player, make sure you buy Blu-ray 
you have a link to an article by chance?
Hereâs one
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/16/technology/16toshiba.html?em&ex=1203310800&en=28bb15cf2437f6fc&ei=5087
I donât understand. There are 2 types of DVDs?
Two versions for the wide-screen high definition format, apparently.
Sony was taking a long time to come up with the Blu-Ray DVD format disks. It was known that the Blu-Ray version would be superior to other options, but some companies didnât want to wait. They thought they could get the drop on Sony by coming out with a competing, though inferior, disk format called HD DVD, and capturing the market. Sony rushed Blu-Ray into the market soon after and side-by-side comparisons convinced enough folks that Blu-Ray is the way to go.
Over the past six months various movie studios and retailers have been dropping the HD DVD format and declaring that they would only go with Blu-Ray. Wal-Mart made this announcement last week, and the press figures this is the death-knell for HD DVD.
djm
OK, thereâs HD-DVD and then thereâs Blu-Ray. Actually, thereâs not that much difference between these technologies, except that they each require their own player, one not being compatible with the other, and for a while it looked as though there would be another tech war, as what happened years ago between Beta and VHS. However, it not only turned out that Blu-Ray had a slight performance edge over HD-DVD, but the marketers found that the word âBlu-Rayâ was so much cooler, and just what else could matter more to a consumer than cool?
Fortunately, this had nothing to do with the dissing of a major promoter of HD-DVD, Microsoft, of course. 
The truth is, any side by side comparing of HD DVD vs Blu-ray would give HD DVD an edge because it was cheaper to produce, which is a major factor.
But most seem to agree that Blu-rayâs marketing strategy was much better, and also, yeah, âHD DVDâ is 1) more confusing to people and 2) not as cool.
It is well known that consumers were a bit confused when it came to âHD DVDâ. Is it DVD? Why would I pay more for a DVD player? âBlu-rayâ makes people thinks itâs more than DVD, a super duper new ray color that can do amazing things.
This, and great marketing strategies from Blu-rayâs camp lead to better sales of Blu-ray disks: Blu-ray has been outselling HD DVD pretty much 2:1 in term of disk sales in the past few months. Actual sales of HD DVD players were higher around xmas time because of big rebates on HD DVD players, but those stats didnt include the sales of PS3 which are also Blu-ray players, so overall Blu-ray players sale were still leading.
I think we need to âthankâ companies like Warner Brother, Blockbuster and Bestbuy to have decided that enough was enough and no one was going to gain from this until there was a clear winner.
I personally donât care about the actual format, although I got a PS3 which plays Blu-rays. I just wanted Microsoft to suffer a loss, and they did. They went HD DVD with their XBox 360 so people who bought the player for their XBox got sc$@%& muhahahaha!!! I also read that Microsoft was feeding the war to try to get people to use itâs digital services to download movies instead. It hasnt been proven but I like the idea of a big, bad, evil Microsoft so Iâm buying it!
PS: When I think of it, another good reason for Microsoft to support HD DVD was to lessen the value of the PS3, which has built-in Blu-ray. The death of Blu-ray format would have been a disaster for Sony I think.
Along with Sony, it wouldnât have done Apple/Mac any good, either.
Blu-Ray = cool.
Go Mac!
I think if you read a bit youâll find that Blu-Ray does have greater storage capacity and higher speed than HD DVD. However, this full potential has not yet been reached, owing to Sony rushing Blu-Ray to market the way they did. Those in industry supporting it did not back Blu-Ray merely because it sounds cool. They had solid techinical information to base their choice on. Again, some went with HD DVD simply because it was already available.
And no, you are not ahead of the game if you already bought Blu-Ray, since the full potential of Blu-Ray has not been developed yet, so you will be looking at new versions of Blu-Ray over the next few years.
Itâs similar to buying into personal computers: whatever entertainment devices you buy today will be hopelessly out of date in a couple of years. Even with HD TVs, they no sooner came out with 1080i than someone else came out with 1080p. Great, but no-one elseâs devices support 1080p yet.
Round and round and round âŚ
djm
There was an article in Wired Magazine a while ago where Sony needed to come up on top with Blue-Ray since theyâve taken a major beating with the mini disc format. The article went on saying that the perception of Sony as a technical innovator was tarnished with failed ideas, memory stick, the mini discâŚ
And, Yes, Go Mac- used one since 1985
I like Wired, too, but I donât think thatâs where I heard about the rivalry between HD-DVD and Blu-Ray, oh, last summer sometime. In terms of a winner, at that time it could have gone either way. The biggest news back then was that consumers were none too happy about the pending technology war, and many were planning to simply wait it out until a clear winner emerged, rather than gamble. Still, as has been mentioned, it could yet be some time before Blu-Ray matures, so even today the option to wait still makes sense. Of course, that seems to be typical, for manufacturers to put out Beta models, and then just when theyâve got the bugs worked out of them, they then come out with the Beta of the next model, which all too often will make their last model semi-obsolete, or worse. Iâd rather not deal with buggy headaches, so I typically am several months or more behind the leading edge. Whatâs a consumer to do?
only real reason why the memory stick and mini disc failed was the amount of effort and money sony spent putting unwanted DRM into them. Memory stick prices could have come down if Sony hadnât spent so much R&D on making a DRM compatible version. Consumers didnât want MagicGate.
Likewise, minidiscs are very popular in Japan, where they arenât saddled with the DRM issues that get in the way of the customer experience.
Well, we could go on and on about who read what, but from the articles I read, the technical advantage of Blu-ray was not enough to offset the lower production price of HD DVD. Also, beside better storage space on Blu-ray (and theorical speed, which comes down to hardware anyway), HD DVD had a few advantages like internet connectivity being part of itâs features.
One thing Iâm not sure and Iâm too lazy to look is if Blu-ray could stock 1080p movies and HD DVD could not. That could be a valid argument.
Yeah theyâve been battered on many things. You might remember the laptop battery recall they had a few years back, was a disaster for Sonyâs image, and also their failure to enter the MP3 player market, they had an ongoing project in the US to enter the MP3 market but they totally mismanaged and totally screwed up.
I personally donât really care about Sony but it seems theyâre getting on âtop of the gameâ now with this Blu-ray victory.
Iâm not worried about Apple, though. Blu-ray or not, theyâre going to be on top of the game for a while, as long as Steve Jobs lives that is
Download movies with bittorrent?
We did suffered through the Scully interregnum sure enough. SJ does seem to have the vision for hardware.
Whatâs next in the dvd wars? Death-Ray?
HD DVD death officially announced by Toshiba:
http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2008/02/19/tosh_drops_hd_dvd/
The main reason Blu Ray won is because the PS3 plays Blu Ray discs. So all the people who bought a PS3 suddenly found themselves with a high def movie player as well.
The reason why Sony needed the disc war victory:
YawnâŚ
good lord, donât let this devolve into a console wars thread⌠
BTW, for anyone interested:
Xbox360
Released Nov 2005
units sold to date- 17.2 million
PS3
Released Nov 2006
units sold to date- 8.2 million
Average units sold per day
XBOX360-aprx. 23,000
PS3- aprx. 22,000
Pricing-
XBOX360 349.99
PS3 399.99
Red Ring of Death- Priceless
Suck it up and buy a PC, console fanbois⌠ya just might larn summthin along the way 