As many of you might know, the high definition format war has ended, with Toshiba issuing the press release
, and deciding to cease all HD-DVD related developments. However, Toshiba has pledged to continue supporting the owners of their HD-DVD products.
It must have been a tough decision by Toshiba, having invested so much into the HD-DVD technology, but I believe it is a wise business decision. Although HD-DVD gained a decent market share early, as it got to the market earlier than blu-ray did, it has been losing ground since the PS3 became available.
At the end of the day, by having a standard format and platform, consumers will adopt the technology faster, and manufacturers can focus more on their products, instead of having 2 groups in a company working on different technologies.
As for me, I was a little sad when I found out that the Bourne Trilogy was not going to be available for blu-ray, since Universal Studios published high-definition contents in HD-DVDs only. With the format war ended, I should be able to get the trilogy on blu-ray discs someday. I'm certainly looking forward to that.
It must have been a tough decision by Toshiba, having invested so much into the HD-DVD technology, but I believe it is a wise business decision. Although HD-DVD gained a decent market share early, as it got to the market earlier than blu-ray did, it has been losing ground since the PS3 became available.
At the end of the day, by having a standard format and platform, consumers will adopt the technology faster, and manufacturers can focus more on their products, instead of having 2 groups in a company working on different technologies.
As for me, I was a little sad when I found out that the Bourne Trilogy was not going to be available for blu-ray, since Universal Studios published high-definition contents in HD-DVDs only. With the format war ended, I should be able to get the trilogy on blu-ray discs someday. I'm certainly looking forward to that.