DVD War Update

A couple of days ago, I told you the war between Blu-Ray and HD-DVD was only a few days away from truly being over. As of today, it is officially over. Toshiba, inventors and makers of HD-DVD, officially announced it will make no more HD-DVD players. The world of high definition DVD players now belongs to Blu-Ray.

Some writers have dubbed this announcement by Toshiba as their "BetaMax Address," referring of course, to that day many years ago when Sony announced they would cease production of BetaMax video tape recorders. On that day, sales of VHS machines started to take off. Expect the same for Blu-Ray machine sales. It is ironic that Sony lost the BetaMax/VHS war, but won this one.

Another loser of this war, although probably only in the short term, is Microsoft. They supported HD-DVD as a plug-in to their X-Box game machine. As of right now, their sales have dropped below that of Sony's PlayStation for the first quarter of this year, putting them in last place in game box sales (Nintendo is still in first place). The PlayStation, of course, supports Blu-Ray.

Shortly after, the Toshiba announcement, Universal Studios announced their support for Blu-Ray, leaving only Paramount still officially supporting HD-DVD. Expect that to change very shortly.

Now that you know who won the war, you may be tempted to run right out and get a Blu-Ray player for your Hi Definition television. If so, you might be interested in this recent article on the CNET website, "5 Blu-Ray Players for Less than $500." As I said the other day, Blu-Ray players are still on the pricey side, but that will change as it inevitably does.