Toshiba Corp. will abandon its HD DVD format, likely resulting in the victory of Sony Corp. and Matsushita Electric Industrial Co.'s competing Blu-ray, in the duel between the new high-definition DVD formats, it was learned Saturday.
Wal-Mart Stores Inc., operator of 4,000 outlets in the United States and the world's largest retailer, announced Friday that it would stop selling HD DVD players and recorders.
According to sources close to Toshiba, the firm will hold a board meeting in the near future to formally decide to abandon production of HD DVD recorders and players and other related accessories.
Toshiba is likely to maintain sales of HD DVD recorders and players for a while, but is expected to stop producing players for personal computers and recorders for televisions, and drop the development of new products.
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The format competition was
The format competition was pointless from the beginning. In a few years, everything will be on a hard drive or some other form of mass storage anyway. Although DVDs will doubtless be around for decades to come, like VHS tapes, they're a very inefficient way of delivering and storing data.
The format war was about
The format war was about DRM...HD-DVD's encryption has already been broken so it was doomed.