The HD DVD format won’t last the week, apparently. The Wall Street Journal’s web site broke the story and several other news organizations have advanced it.
Format creator Toshiba says no decision has been made to surrender, but spokeswoman Jodi Sally told the Hollywood Reporter that, “Given the market developments in the past month, Toshiba will continue to study the market impact and the value proposition for consumers, particularly in light of our recent price reductions on all HD DVD players.”
Toshiba subsidizes the price of HD DVD players, which have undercut Blu-ray machines at retail.
Wal-mart dumped HD DVD on Friday, days after Best Buy and Netflix left the format to die. The HD DVD collapse began in January, when Warner Bros. decided to go Blu-ray only — just days before CES.
In the end, the inboard Blu-ray player in Sony’s PlayStation 3 units proved the deciding factor. Outboard HD DVD players were available for the Xbox 360 machines, but they were cheap and nasty.
Quality was a more or less a tie between the warring formats, with HD DVD getting the nod in price and reliability.
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