AfterTek

For two years we have wondered who would win the battle between Blu-ray and HD DVD. It was touch and go for awhile and it was hard to tell who would make it to the top and who would fall down hard. This week Toshiba has made the decision and the answer stands before us. They have officially stated that they will cease production of all their HD DVD products.

Toshiba has been selling and supporting HD DVD since 2006 when they released the HD-A1 player. However, they have, “decided it was not right to keep going with such a small presence,” said chief executive Atsutoshi Nishida. The Blu-ray format is now the definitive winner in the war and stands unopposed as the optical media replacement for DVD.

Toshiba’s news release goes into a bit more detail: “Toshiba will begin to reduce shipments of HD DVD players and recorders to retail channels, aiming for cessation of these businesses by the end of March 2008. Toshiba also plans to end volume production of HD DVD disk drives for such applications as PCs and games in the same timeframe, yet will continue to make efforts to meet customer requirements. The company will continue to assess the position of notebook PCs with integrated HD DVD drives within the overall PC business relative to future market demand.”

With Blu-ray support announced by industry heavyweights Netflix, Wal-mart and Best Buy, speculation ran rampant before the weekend that Toshiba would end the war, and the company deserves credit for pulling out as soon as it did. The two incompatible formats have led to plenty of confusion among prospective buyers of next-generation hardware and software, although some have opined that the war was a good thing–at least it led to price drops.