Toshiba announced today that it is discontinuing the manufacture of HD DVD players. Toshiba Discontinues HD DVD
This is really too bad…Personally I felt the the HD-DVD spec was better than the Blu-Ray Spec,it offered better menu features, Internet connectivity from day 1 (unlike waiting for the Blu-Ray V2.0 spec). As well many of the HD-DVD disks were available as combo format so that they could be played in regular DVD drives or in HD DVD players. You could also create mini HD DVD disks on standard DVD-R media to play in HD-DVD players (albeit only about 20 minutes of video). This was something that I felt was very important to owners of HD Camcorders and one of the reasons I bought one of the Toshiba players.
But Toshiba pulling the plug today is definitely the end of the war, although they will continue to support owners of HD-DVD players (like me).
The cheapest Blu-Ray players available today are about 350.00, but you can get a 40 GB PS3 for 399.00 and for the extra 50 bucks have the ability to play games as well (except this model is not backwards compatible with PS2 games).
It’s too bad but the HD format war is finally over and Sony finally won one!
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