HD DVD Surrenders

It's notable that a format war which dragged on for years has ended so abruptly. HD DVD developer Toshiba said today that it will cease producing and marketing its high-def DVD technology, raising the white flag to rival Blu-ray. For Toshiba, the writing was on the wall after Wal-Mart, Netflix and the Warner Bros. movie studio all decided within the last two weeks to back Blu-ray over HD DVD, momentum that Toshiba could not surmount.

Most observers believed since the beginning that Blu-ray offered superior technology over HD DVD, primarily due to its higher storage capacity. This fact more than any other is what attracted most of the major Hollywood studios to Blu-ray since it offered them the ability to package additional deleted scenes, alternate endings and interactive features with their movie titles. HD DVD's main selling point was its lower pricing, which Toshiba argued would enable it to get into U.S. homes more quickly. When prices for players of each format were slashed this past holiday shopping season, HD DVD's price advantage was steadily eroded.

As the format war dragged on, it became clear that the lack of a single standard high-def DVD technology was hampering efforts to get the new machines into consumers' hands, who rightly feared that their new purchase would become obsolete if the other standard ultimately won out. This is the situation in which HD DVD adopters now find themselves. Toshiba said today that it will continue to support these customers, although it's difficult to imagine that it will devote much in the way of resources to a dead product.

This news may not be as significant as Fidel Castro stepping down as dictator of Cuba, today's other big news. However, Blu-ray's triumph over HD DVD is a positive development for the consumer electronics industry as it removes a large overhang that prevented millions of consumers from making the leap to next-gen DVD. Expect Blu-ray sales to skyrocket in the coming months, but before we close this chapter, let's give Toshiba a little credit for putting competitive pressure on Sony. HD DVD may be gone, but its presence in the market forced Blu-ray backers to sharpen their game and cut their prices far more quickly than they would have had HD DVD never existed. In the end, the market won -- and today, consumers did too.