This morning Toshiba released the following statement:
TOKYO–Toshiba Corporation today announced that it has undertaken a thorough review of its overall strategy for HD DVD and has decided it will no longer develop, manufacture and market HD DVD players and recorders. This decision has been made following recent major changes in the market. Toshiba will continue, however, to provide full product support and after-sales service for all owners of Toshiba HD DVD products.
Toshiba later mentioned that they have no current plans to transition to Blu-ray Player development. They will also be working with distributors to stockpile current HD-DVD blank media for purchase via their online store. As to future HD-DVD movie releases Toshiba stated, “it was not our business, we cannot predict their business.”
UPDATE:Universal President Craig Kornblau, today has stated, “While Universal values the close partnership we have shared with Toshiba, it is time to turn our focus to releasing new and catalog titles on Blu-ray.” Paramount is also reportedly to be immediately dedicated to switching over their HD release schedule to Blu-ray ASAP.
02/19/2008 @ 3:12 pm
Looks like the war is over! I am anxious to see when Universal and Paramount will start releasing titles on Blu-ray… now that there will be no newly produced players for them to play HD DVD’s on.
02/19/2008 @ 4:55 pm
indeed, the faster blu-ray gets cheaper the better. I still have my HD-DVD drive for my 360 so I may still pick up some rare titles here and there).