The Great Blu-Ray v. HD-DVD War Is Over

And for a change, a Sony-back format technology won a format war. After losing out on the Betamax to VHS, the Blu-ray format has won. Toshiba, which backed HD-DVD, has said that it will stop producing the high capacity DVD format.

Toshiba said Tuesday it will no longer develop, make or market HD DVD players and recorders, handing a victory to rival Blu-ray disc technology in the format battle for next-generation video.

``We concluded that a swift decision would be best,'' Toshiba President Atsutoshi Nishida told reporters at his company's Tokyo offices.

The move would make Blu-ray - backed by Sony Corp., Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., which makes Panasonic brand products, and five major Hollywood movie studios - the winner in the battle over high-definition DVD formatting that began several years ago.

Nishida said last month's decision by Warner Bros. Entertainment to release movie discs only in the Blu-ray format made the move inevitable.

``That had tremendous impact,'' he said. ``If we had continued, that would have created problems for consumers, and we simply had no chance to win.''

Warner joined Sony Pictures, Walt Disney Co. and News Corp.'s Twentieth Century Fox in that move.

Well, this also means that techies and the general public will begin switching over to Blu-ray before long. Many, myself included, had held off buying either HD-DVD or Blu-ray because of the dueling formats and I didn't want to have to buy multiple formats. This will definitely help consumers, retailers, and the tech companies since they wont have to deal with dueling technologies, confusing claims and competing shelf space.

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