We refrained from posting any of the rumors which were circulating this weekend announcing what would amount to the end of the line for HD DVD, namely that Toshiba had dropped support for the format. Such a move would leave no more HD DVD hardware manufacturers, limiting the HD DVD market to what was sold and the remaing inventory.

Our patience paid off.

This morning, February 18, 2008, Toshiba announced that it was currently assessing its business strategies and that nothigng had been decided.

Toshiba has not made any announcement or decision. We are currently assessing our business strategies, but nothing has been decided at the moment

Although this is grey enough to leave some wiggle room to bail its format, it also failed to confirm the new reports and took a nice jab at NHK and Reuters for running its stories otherwise.

I know many would like to see HD DVD die - these people are very vocal on forums and in blogs. There is some belief that by having HD DVD “die”, so to speak, BD will be in a position to thrive as the sole next gen optical format. These dreams, however, are only dreams.

First off, Sony did not price its products competitively with competition, without direct on-shelf competition, Sony would be less inclined to lower prices on expensive equipment and media.

Secondly, mass-market HD movie Downloads are about 3 years away. Many say that the bandwith is not big enough to support this product. These people are referring to downloading to your PC - a cool feature to be sure. Right now, however, downloads are in the living room already. Presently, you can record an HD movie with a Tivo or other DVR device and take it with you to watch on your iPod. The only drawback is that it is not “on demand”. Setting HD quality on VOD/PPV movies to record via a DVR would not be difficult and would be easily accessible to the average consumer. Furthermore, is MS opened up its movie downloads to let users burn the images to HD DVD would be huge. Point is, movie downloads are here and now, you dont need a PC.

Those facts considered, with Blu-ray players still costing more than $300 dollars for a profile 1.1 player and the PS3 touted as the premiere Blu-ray player, BD has a long way to go to achieve success. Compared to HD DVD, which needs to overcome this horrible PR and get some studios to switch - I say the future for both formats is equivocal: death by downloads.

Source

And just to be clear:

Wal-Mart will not sell HD DVD hardware or media

Best_Buy will continue to sell HD DVD hardware and software - they will just suggest a Blu-ray preference to their customers.

Nextflix will discontinue renting HD DVDs (so what?)

Blockbuster never rented HD DVD (I thought Blockbuster was dead)

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