coolangatta

Anyone bought HD DVD lately?
Toshiba are, by all accounts, about to give up the fight.
Blue Ray (Sony) have won the battle/war of the DVD systems.

HD DVD will drop into room 101 to join the likes of Betamax.

mart360

Toshiba have ceased production with immidiate effect


come on MS....develop a blueray player for the 360,

better to concede one defeat than to cut off your nose to spite your face

Mart

PeteBrant

You can see it now


MS: Hey Sony, we want a BluRay add on for 360, what are the licensing costs?

Sony: For you? $6,000 per unit

LG John

It's a fair point. BlueRay's rise could very well put a very big nail in the coffin for MS future plans in the gaming market. This generation may not suffer but what about the next round of consols when BlueRay will no doubt be as common and popular as buying/renting a DVD is now. How could the next gen xbox compete when it cannot play something as basic and expected.

PeteBrant

I was being a bit tongue in cheek - I suspect Sony would quite happliy license MS BluRay tech at standard rates, it's all money to them.

As for the next round, I wouldn't be surprised to see MS abandon optical storage altogether to try and force the digital distribution angle.

Deep Singh

I've been waiting for this, time for me to buy a Blue Ray...

Shark Man

On the plus side, I saw a damn good deal on amazon that included a Tosh HD-DVD and 7 HD-DVDs included!

(Although ,just looked and it seems they've stopped doing that deal in favour of 2 free HDdvds for £78)

stilover

Me too. Glad one has finally won over the other.

I can now go out and buy one with confidence.

Kieran_Burns

iTrader: (1)

I took that offer through Amazon, but fortunately sent it back on the last day of the no quibble 30 day return policy! (got the full refund as well)

Bought a PS3 instead

Tidgy

from what i've been told, an upscalling dvd is by far the current best option, all the benefit of the higher res, but much cheaper option, you can get em for about 50 sheets and unless you have a tv of about 60 inches and running 1080p, you wont see any improvment over a true high def/blue ray player.

mannyo

Although this maybe the end of the format war, I can see this being bad news for the consumer.

At least when HD-DVD and Bluray were competing, there was some price competion now this has all gone, and the only way Sony and co can recoup there losses is to increase the player prices and this they can do now, knowing full well that if you want a HD disk player then it has to be bluray.

To be honest, I dont think bluray as a film medium at least will not last that long either. The future seems to be moving towards online downloads, and HD TV ala Sky HD.

TopBanana

Someone's done a good sales job on you! It's nothing like high def.

MS will bring out a Bluray add-on drive soon, and then a 360 with a built-in Bluray drive.

PeteBrant

Breaking: Universal Studios Goes Blu | High-Def Digest

Not exactly shocking news...

AndyC_772

iTrader: (2)

Whilst I'm more than happy to see Microsoft get a bloody nose from having backed the wrong format, it's a pity that the winner has to be Sony

Maybe what will actually happen is MS will pick up the baton and keep HD DVD alive? Or maybe Blu-ray will remain a niche, overpriced format just like SACD and DVD-A have for audio?

I'm sure I'll end up with a Blu-ray player eventually, but the discs will have to come down a fair bit first.

PeteBrant

HD-DVD is dead as dead. I can;t see MS picking it up - More likely they will embrace BluRay.

As for prices, they'll come down, exactly as with DVD.

davyboy

Should effect no one on here though....only a clown would have bought a HD DVD player anyway

fraser87uk

I have one, the xbox HD DVD.

Mind you i have a PS3 to boot as well. lol.

Jamz3k

i bought a toshiba hd-ep35 for £190 last month. i knew something like this would happen but my thoughts are:
A it was cheap and a good upscaler
B better picture quality than any blu-ray player i've seen
C good back catalogue of disks

I dont regret my decision as i know i wont be buying a blu-ray player for another year or 2 until they sort out the format and make it as good or better than HD-DVD is.

its a shame that the better format lost

Tidgy

wasn't a salesman that told me that.

i havn't seen either myself yet, just going on the folks i know have

CooperS

Sold my Tosh EP30 last week for £125 on fleabay. Was anticipating this, one of my best ever decisions!

*whistles great escape theme tune*

Shark Man

Now they have given up on it, I wonder if they are going to give up the licence rights too....if so, it could become an open-use format.

Like some of the codecs used for on-line media bit like Xvid.

Although I don't know what use it will be to anyone. Maybe when HD recorders become available it may see a new lease of life in the form of a writeable media (Bit like DVD-RAM, DVD-R+/- etc)