Got some very happy news today for those who want to buy a next generation DVD player, but were having trouble deciding between HD-DVD or Blu-Ray. Your decision just got a whole lot simpler.
The format war is finally over. The winner is...Blu-Ray!
At a press conference in Tokyo earlier this morning, Toshiba conceded defeat and announced that they'd be pulling the plug on HD-DVD.
And thus, a year-and-a-half chapter in the home theatre saga came to an end.
For those who want a re-cap, it's like this. The next generation of DVD was unleased upon us in the summer of 2006. New hardware, new software, it all meant much higher picture and sound quality.
But see, here's where they screwed up. They were smart with DVD. Wanting to avoid the ol' "Beta vs. VHS" format war, all the big electronics companies sat down and came up with a unified format for DVD. 1 player, 1 choice, 1 industry standard. Much nicer for all of us. But with the next generation, I guess they started looking at "Beta vs. VHS" as "the good old days," and decided to have a format war. In one corner, we had Toshiba with HD-DVD, and in the other, it was Sony with Blu-Ray.
Battle lines were drawn! Movie studios started choosing which format they'd back. 20th Century Fox and Disney went Blu-Ray. Universal and Paramount went HD-DVD. Warner Brothers decided to stay neutal and support both.
But then, two things happened in the past month that they say dealt the decisive blow. Warner Brothers finally decided to abandon their neutral stance and side with Blu-Ray. And Wal-Mart decided that they would start carrying only Blu-Ray.
And now comes the next task: convincing the average bloke on the street that it's time to give up their DVD player and upgrade to Blu-Ray.
And yes, your old DVDs can play on Blu-Ray players.
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