Blu Wins! The format war is over.
by Robert Dobes | February 19th, 2008
When I say “blu” I mean the Blu-ray Disc technology. The format war between Blu-ray and HD DVD is finally over and if you were waiting to see which format wins before you spend hundreds of dollars on this technology now you can go ahead and buy that Blu-ray player or recorder without worrying about wasting your money.
Toshiba (the main force behind the HD DVD format) announced today that it will discontinue the production of HD DVD players and recorders admitting the painful loss to blu-ray.
The scales started to tilt on the blu-ray side during the holidays thanks to great marketing efforts of Sony Corp. and Matsushita (the two main companies behind blu-ray). The final stabs the HD DVD format received were from some of the major players in the war when they decided to discontinue support for HD DVD. Amongst them are Warner Bros., Netflix Inc., Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and others.
I suppose this is not a good news for the estimated 1 million who already own HD DVD machines including the owners of Xbox 360 which is currently supporting only HD DVD. Maybe it will help them to know that Toshiba is dedicated to continue product support for the technology.
From the beginning I hoped blu-ray would win this war simply for the larger disc capacity it offers.
