Its official: HD DVD is dead. The format was is over

[Nikos Kartalis]

Just a couple of minutes ago (and only hours after they denied the rumors) Toshiba scheduled a press conference in Japan and announced that they will drop their HD DVD business. You heard it right folks Toshiba will unplug, stop supporting and developing everything is related to HD DVD. That's it HD DVD is dead, the format war (if it was any) is officially over, Blu-ray has won with flawless victory.

Cessation of the HD DVD format is targeted for March 2008.

Answering a press question Toshiba stated they have no plans to adopt Blu Ray format at the moment.

HD DVD the short two years of it existence, manage to sell a million units worldwide. Including 300k XBOX 360 add on drives worldwide, 600k players in USA, 100k in Europe and 30k in Japan. That means a million people are currently with an expensive and worthless drive on hand.

It is only a matter of time until Universal Studios and Paramount announce their support for Sony's Blu Ray format.

Just for the stats in about the same period of time Sony manage to sell 10+ million Blu Ray players including PlayStation 3.


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