Well, it's official. HD-DVD is dead. Toshiba is announcing that it will be pulling the strings on the manufacturing end.
I must say that Microsoft really f'ed themselves by not making this an internal component of its Xbox 360 console systems, at a minimum included it in the Elite console or created a higher-end variety of the white Premium/Pro 20 GB console, which I probably would have bought.
As you may recall, Warner Brothers, with the biggest movie library in Hollywood announced a few weeks back that they would no longer be participating in the HD-DVD format, thus precipitating the rest of the rats fleeing the ship.
This final death blow comes on the heels of a rough week for HD-DVD, and me personally, as the likes of Netflix, Walmart, Bestbuy, and others all announced that they won't be supporting the HD-DVD format any further. Rough week in so much as I made the choice to invest in the Xbox 360 add-on player feeling utterly convinced that HD-DVD had a chance to compete, largely because of the comical bumbling and stumbling of Sony trying to launch Playstation 3 starting backin November of 2006.
While Blu-Ray had superior technical specs, you would have thought that it was "dead in the water" seeing the constant stream of monthly sales reports, all of which pretty much portrayed Sony being taken out back of the proverbial "woodshed" by Nintendo and to a lesser extent Microsoft.
Oh, and for those of you who have Netflix accounts, I too received one of the handy-dandy "your pretty much screwed" emails from Netflix. That's what I call some "touchy-feely" customer service. The corporate communications people at Netflix might want to tone it down next time.
-Jeremy
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