Toshiba officially discontinues HD-DVD

There you have it folks. From the end of March, the HD-DVD format will be discontinued.

The decision was made in a board meeting in Japan earlier today, with "major changes in the market" - referring to the Hollywood studios and retailers siding with Blu-ray - the reason for its change of heart. "We carefully assessed the long-term impact of continuing the so-called 'next-generation format war' and concluded that a swift decision will best help the market develop," said Atsutoshi Nishida, big boss at Toshiba. "While we are disappointed for the company and more importantly, for the consumer, the real mass market opportunity for high definition content remains untapped and Toshiba is both able and determined to use our talent, technology and intellectual property to make digital convergence a reality."

http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=92955

Just for those that don't know, the event that probably started this was the announcement by Warner Bros., just before CES, that after the end of May they would no longer release films in the HD-DVD format, but instead release them exclusively on Blu-ray (and carry on with DVD). WB have a 20% market share in all films sold, and their move to Blu-ray gave the BR camp a 70% market share of all films. WB's children companies (HBO and New Line... BBC haven't made an announcement yet) quickly followed suit. Throughout January and the first half of February, many retailers jumped off the HD-DVD bandwagon and went Blu-ray exclusive - Blockbuster (no HD-DVD in store), Best Buy (no HD-DVD in store), Netflix (no HD-DVD at all) and finally Wal*Mart (4000 stores and chains owned by WM across America, and every single one of them are to stock only Blu-ray). Rumours over the past few days said that Toshiba would discontinue HD-DVD, and they've come out to be true.