Is The Format War Realy Over Now?

Feb 19 2008

Hey, hey, hey, Maxmaniacs.

I told you there would be more news coming didn't I? Well here it is HOT and I mean "Freezing Hot" off the press today.

Toshiba Calls It Quits

Toshiba has finally come to the conclusion that it's time to concede defeat in the ongoing HD format war they have had with Sony. They will stop manufacturing and marketing their competing format "HD-DVD" effective immediately.

Toshiba has promised to continue on with their support and service to those customers that who have taken the high def leap and purchased HD-DVD products.

"We carefully assessed the long-term impact of continuing the so-called -next-generation format war' and concluded that a swift decision will best help the market develop Toshiba President and Chief Executive Atsutoshi Nishida said in a news release."

History

As I mentioned earlier it hasn't been a great start to 2008 for the HD-DVD format with many companies who were in support (Wal-Mart, Best Buy, Netflix) now choosing to defect and promote Blu-ray.

Warner Brothers as recent as last week announced they too had abandoned HD-DVD and they were probably the largest company that was releasing movies in both formats.

This battle for format superiority has been going on now for the better part of 2 years and rightly so has been compared to the video cassette battle that raged between VHS and BETA.

And we all know how that turned out don't we.

Did HD-DVD Ever Have Chance?

I would like to think that they did, and when you look at who Sony had in their camp Disney, 20th Century Fox, MGM, Dell, Panasonic, and Philips compared to Paramount, Universal Pictures, Microsoft, Sanyo, and NEC who were backing Toshiba it did look like there wasn't going to be a clear winner for some time to come.

How fast things can change

The Maxman's sixth sense was telling him that Toshiba was looking strong. Oh well so much for my intuition maybe I should zip my mouth shut right now eh?

This will also have a bit of a trickle down effect on the gaming industry also as Microsofts X-Box 360 was HD-DVD compatible and of course Sony's PS3 was Blu-ray compatible, but at the end of the day I think that even gamers couldn't realy care whether or not the winner was Sony or Toshiba.

Watch CNN Video On The Format War

"Both formats have an excellent picture quality with a large storage space. But Toshiba has lost the battle because it lacks a retail presence in many markets, said Carl Gressum, a senior analyst at Ovum, a London technology consultancy.

They didn't manage to bring on board some of the China vendors, they didn't bring (on board) the retailers, they've failed to develop in the European and Asian markets, Gressum told CNN.

Gressum said manufacturers of both formats have made things more difficult for retailers by forcing consumers to make a choice between the gradually-dominant Blu-ray and the much-cheaper HD."

Maxman's Thoughts

Well it's pretty clear now that we have a winner but I don't think all is said and done just yet. I will keep you updated on more developments as they come in.

Maxman Out