The Format War Is Over, Blu-Ray Wins!

Toshiba announced this morning that:

[I]t will no longer develop, manufacture and market HD DVD players and recorders.

So that’s it, after years of fighting, untold sums of money and strong consumer apathy, the HD format war is over. Toshiba also said they have no plans to support Blu-Ray, but will continue to support the existing HD-DVD players.

The end came swiftly for HD-DVD with the recent defection of several big-name retailers and distributors.

I’m sure there will be plenty of speculation about whether the “best” format won or not. In the end, they were actually pretty similar in quality and functionality and it was only because of the stubbornness and egos of the participants that a compromise couldn’t be reached in the early stages of this battle.

This battle was a major factor in the slow adoption of HD. Consumers were afraid of making the wrong choice, and neither format was mature enough to offer all it promised; so they did nothing. Hopefully this will finally get reluctant consumers off the fence and purchasing Blu-Ray players, which will encourage studios and other content producers to ramp-up their creation and production of all types of HD content.

It would also be great if the Blu-Ray camp now worked hard on getting their players to be fully compatible and support all the features and functions they promoted the format with.