TOKYO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Toshiba Corporation today announced that it has undertaken a thorough review of its overall strategy for HD DVD and has decided it will no longer develop, manufacture and market HD DVD players and recorders. This decision has been made following recent major changes in the market. Toshiba will continue, however, to provide full product support and after-sales service for all owners of Toshiba HD DVD products.

HD DVD was developed to offer consumers access at an affordable price to high-quality, high definition content and prepare them for the digital convergence of tomorrow where the fusion of consumer electronics and IT will continue to progress.

“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, President and CEO of Toshiba Corporation. "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.”

Toshiba will continue to lead innovation, in a wide range of technologies that will drive mass market access to high definition content. These include high capacity NAND flash memory, small form factor hard disk drives, next generation CPUs, visual processing, and wireless and encryption technologies. The company expects to make forthcoming announcements around strategic progress in these convergence technologies.

Toshiba will begin to reduce shipments of HD DVD players and recorders to retail channels, aiming for cessation of these businesses by the end of March 2008. Toshiba also plans to end volume production of HD DVD disk drives for such applications as PCs and games in the same timeframe, yet will continue to make efforts to meet customer requirements. The company will continue to assess the position of notebook PCs with integrated HD DVD drives within the overall PC business relative to future market demand.

This decision will not impact on Toshiba’s commitment to standard DVD, and the company will continue to market conventional DVD players and recorders. Toshiba intends to continue to contribute to the development of the DVD industry, as a member of the DVD Forum, an international organization with some 200 member companies, committed to the discussion and defining of optimum optical disc formats for the consumer and the related industries.

Toshiba also intends to maintain collaborative relations with the companies who joined with Toshiba in working to build up the HD DVD market, including Universal Studios, Paramount Pictures, and DreamWorks Animation and major Japanese and European content providers on the entertainment side, as well as leaders in the IT industry, including Microsoft, Intel, and HP. Toshiba will study possible collaboration with these companies for future business opportunities, utilizing the many assets generated through the development of HD DVD.

Didn't know DVHS had gone away. Now that is sad, what will replace it? Somehow I can't see Joe Average buying a HDCAM deck to record off air and so far the only way to record HDV into a VCR is pretty expensive.

Oh wait, some kind of HDD recorder?
Well once Joe Average has that he might discover that downloading content into that makes more sense than buying / hiring shiny disks that one day will be landfill.

Bob.

[B]Didn't know DVHS had gone away. Now that is sad, what will replace it? Somehow I can't see Joe Average buying a HDCAM deck to record off air and so far the only way to record HDV into a VCR is pretty expensive.

Oh wait, some kind of HDD recorder?
Well once Joe Average has that he might discover that downloading content into that makes more sense than buying / hiring shiny disks that one day will be landfill.[/B]

Funny

That did remind me of the only really good (or somewhat good) use of DVHS, to record off of a STB like a Cox HD cable box to archive HD movies/shows/whatever. Yeah a HDD recorder does this too, but won't m2t stream the data to your computer.

Shiny discs and their players sure seem like a throwback to old times if you can't even record the local HD newscast to them, much less a movie.

Im going to copy my HD-DVD collection over to BR in the next week (on half the quantity of discs probably(to save money)) and be done with it.
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You mean our HD DVD players will cease to function after the announcement? This is more serious than I thought!

John

pirates! All pirates! You're now equal to kids stealing all the music ever made & people who download movies off pirate bay! :p ;)

You mean our HD DVD players will cease to function after the announcement? This is more serious than I thought!

Well, Im gonna need mighty long cords to play movies from the landfill location (where the player will be) to my house.

More seriously, Im gonna take the HD-DVD player out of my AV cabinet because I don't have the room or connections and that is a really hot player. Im not going to even pretend for a week that there is a future for HD-DVD. I did that with DVHS.

I still have a second HD-DVD player in the master bedroom I can play the HD-DVDs I have in until a good Blu-Ray player sale.

And to the other poster, backing up my own movies is not pirating.

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Copying HD-DVD discs over to BluRay discs is a Federal Offence in U.S. It requires the use of a tool to circumvent copy protection which violates the DMCA.

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