Toshiba to Make Official Statement Soon?
Posted by Dave Cowl on February 17, 2008
Filed Under: Blu-ray, Format War, HD DVD, Retailers, Studios
Over at Ars Technica they are reporting a few interesting things in this article about Toshiba.
The article claims that Toshiba had planned to stop HD DVD production soon after the Warner announcement, following the attempt to re-jump-start HD DVD with the ‘half price’ players, which did not really go as planned.
Apparently while their intention was to phase things out, Netflix, Best Buy and Wal-mart didn’t want it to go that way, and so publicly announced that they would side with Blu-ray moving forward. This lends some credence to my thought that perhaps Netflix new more than we do, considering statements in their call to shareholders.
The last point of interest in the article is that an announcement could come as early as Tuesday, and will be most certainly made by the end of the week.
Certainly if Toshiba makes this official, the timing of announcements from Universal and/or Paramount becomes unimportant – except that they might seem a little out of the loop if the format has been discontinued and their intentions have not been made publicly clear…
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Having Toshiba throw in the towel now (monday or Tues) gives the other studios a day or so to say their peace rather than wait over the weekend.
Toshiba bowing out now will save face of the two remaining big studios.
It is the LEAST amount of insult for all sides concerned. If Paramount folded, Universal would have been days behind. visa-versa.
Toshiba is best to put the poor HD-DVD out of its misery than anyone else.
How about a three party press conference where they all bow out at the same time?
Engadget is saying tomorrow based on a Nikkei report.
http://www.engadgethd.com/2008/02/18/toshiba-expected-to-announce-death-of-hd-dvd-tomorrow-stop-sale/