Well, that was anti-climactic. After days of widely reported rumors, Toshiba has dropped HD DVD.

The high-def disc format’s fate was sealed when Warner Home Video opted to give its exclusive support to rival format Blu-ray Disc in early January. I noted then that no matter what Toshiba and its last two movie studios (Universal and Paramount) did, it wouldn’t matter as retailers inevitably switched their allegiance, too. That’s what happened last week when Best Buy, Netflix and Wal-Mart all announced that they were going Blu-ray. So the dying process that some said would take months was finished within weeks.

Toshiba says it will pull all of its hardware from stores by March. There’s no word yet on the software, but it will surely be disappearing more quickly now, too, and be the subject of a lot of clearance sales. Toshiba did say it had no immediate plans to come out with a Blu-ray player, but given the dearth of reliable BD players — the PlayStation 3 video-game system is the sole one worth recommending — it would do well to explore that option. When the pain goes away…

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 19th, 2008 at 7:56 am and is filed under DVDs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.