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Home Front Economy
Toshiba to exit HD DVD, end format war-NHK
2008-02-17
Toshiba Corp is planning to stop production of equipment compatible with the HD DVD format for high-definition video, allowing the competing Blu-Ray camp a free run, public broadcaster NHK reported on Saturday.

Toshiba is expected to suffer losses amounting to tens of billions of yen (quntupilloons of Zimbabwean dollars) (hundreds of millions of dollars) to scrap production of HD DVD players and recorders and other steps to exit the business, Japan's NHK said on its website. No one at Toshiba could be reached for comment.

The format war between the Toshiba-backed HD DVD and Sony Corp's Blu-Ray, often compared to the Betamax-VHS battle in the 1980s, has slowed the development of what is expected to be a multibillion dollar high-definition DVD industry. Toshiba was dealt a blow on Friday when Wal-Mart Stores Inc said it would abandon the HD DVD format, becoming the latest in a series of top retailers and movie studios to rally behind Blu-ray technology for high definition DVDs.
Posted by:Fred

#3  Ironically, neither format has much future.

Just today, I was looking at a flash memory advert in the paper. 2GB for $13. A year ago a 2GB thumb drive cost well over $100.

A Blu-Ray disk holds about 50GB of data.

Currently available thumb drives or flash cards include 64GB, which are the new standard. The cards are about 2" by 1" in size. And because no high speed spin is needed, such cards are a lot more durable and take less storage space. The larger size even has room for data redundancy in case of an error.

They are brand new, so still prohibitively expensive. But for how long? And they have much more possibility for data expansion. Maybe 128GB, 256GB, 512GB, a terabyte or more.
Posted by: Anonymoose   2008-02-17 10:51  

#2  It's also sticking it to MicroBorg which has tied its Red Ring of Death Xbox to HD [and expensive add on] in its war with Sony's PS3 integrated Blu-Ray player.
Posted by: Procopius2k   2008-02-17 08:44  

#1  You know after they sold US sub secrets to the Soviets I just cant help but smile on my face. It's just too bad that a bunch of consumers ended up wasting money and it delayed the adoptions of BluRay.
Posted by: rjschwarz   2008-02-17 01:10  

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