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Japanese corporation Toshiba
surrendered to Sony’s Blu-Ray technology and released a statement announcing
the end of the road for the HD DVD. Toshiba says however that HD DVD consumers
will continue to have full product support despite the decision not to develop
and manufacture HD DVD players anymore.
Toshiba Corp. will put an end to
the HD DVD business by the end of March 2008, which includes besides players
and recorders, HD DVD disk drives for PC applications and games. However, the
company will continue to support and develop the standard DVD format,
regardless of what is going to happen to the HD DVD market.
“We carefully assessed the
long-term impact of continuing the so-called ‘next-generation format war’ and
concluded that a swift decision will be best help the market develop,” Atsutoshi
Nishida, President and CEO of Toshiba Corporation, said according to the
company’s press release. “While we are disappointed … Toshiba is both able and
determined to use our talent, technology and intellectual property to make
digital convergence a reality.”
Since the beginning of this
year, several retailers took the decision to swear allegiance to the Blu-Ray,
including Woolworths and Wal-Mart, and despite Toshiba’s announcement that it
will stay devoted to the HD DVD format, the inevitable happened. Analysts expected
Toshiba’s move sooner or later, as Blu-Ray became a market’s favorite.
Several attempts to find a
common solution and promote a single format brought Sony and Toshiba to
absolutely no agreement, and Blu-Ray continued to make its way to the top. Despite
several announcements in the past few months of companies such as Warner Bros.
Entertainment or China Film Group that they’ve decided to turn exclusively to
Blu-Ray format, Toshiba said it will continue the collaboration with Universal
Studios, Paramount Pictures, DreamWorks Animation, Intel, Microsoft and HP in
the future, “utilizing the many assets generated through the development of HD
DVD.”
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