In probably one of the worst kept secrets in recent times the news that a lot of us feared has this morning come true - Toshiba have officially announced they will be dropping HD-DVD as of March 2008, thus bringing an end to the format war with Blue Ray. Their decision also covers the worldwide end to development of all HD-DVD devices for PCs and games. I for one am a little disappointed that it’s come to this.

For me, an early adopter, gamer and movie fan I think one of the main reasons behind this win for Blue Ray is the heavy backing from the likes of Sony (read a massive pay-cheque to make sure their format won) In my experience so far the whole movie experience has been better on HD-DVD, with many more extras and special features appearing on these discs than those on Blue Ray.

Of course for the general consumer the end of the format war had to come, and over the past few months it was becoming clear that there could be only one winner in truth. It was only last week that the likes of NetFlix in the United States announced they were going to be only stocking BlueRay discs with other high street stores following. Now that the format war is over I’m just hoping that the consumer will benefit by seeing a reduction in both the hardware and media costs. It was only this weekend I was a few high street stores here in the UK and was shocked to see 3rd rate movies on Blue Ray and HD-DVD still selling for around £30 - that for me is just too much.

What however this does mean is that for the next few months the price of both HD-DVD hardware and media should drop in price and for those of us who already own an HD-DVD player it could see a windfall in terms of cheap discs. I’m keeping an eye on the Matrix boxset to see if it drops in price. Of course for those who don’t own an HD-DVD player as yet you could do a whole lot worse than pick yourself up the XB360 HD-DVD add on, which is probably one of the cheapest next generation players around - and it’s a pretty cool player as well. After all you will always have something around that you can plug it into so could end up with a decent HD-DVD collection without dropping your life savings.

And don’t forget in a few years time you may be able to take it along to the Antiques Roadshow and get them to give you a price.

Goodbye HD-DVD, gone but not forgotten !

Posted on February 19th, 2008 by nigel