A Toshiba company source, who does not want to be identified, has confirmed an earlier report that it is ready to pull the plug on HD DVD, which would include the scraping of HD DVD players and recorders. Going by this PC World report, Toshiba has now halted production of HD DVD players and recorders. This plan concedes defeat to the competing Sony-backed Blu-ray technology and will likely put an end to the format battle that has been on-going for the past couple of years.
This has been the result of Toshiba suffering several set backs in recent weeks as a result of retailers abandoning the HD DVD format. Warner's move in January to abandon HD DVD quickly resulted in consumers losing confidence in the HD DVD format, which in turn led to falling HD DVD hardware and disc sales. Toshiba's response by slashing HD DVD player prices did little to recover, particularly with the chain reaction of events by the retailers to drop HD DVD together.
According to the Toshiba source, Toshiba has entered the final stage of planning to make its exit from the next generation DVD business and is expected to make an official announcement as early as next week. The move would also result in Toshiba suffering losses of hundreds of millions of dollars between scraping its production of HD DVD players & recorders and the steps involved in withdrawing from this business.
Further info can be read in this source Reuters report.
