It would seem that the next-generation DVD format war is over:
Jon Francke, a buyer at the video-rental chain Potomac Video, just placed his company’s first order for Blu-ray discs.
Until now, his company avoided stocking its stores with either of the next-generation movie formats because, he said, “who wants to spend thousands of dollars on a format that’s going to be obsolete in a few years?”
But now he considers it a safe move, after the consumer electronics maker Toshiba announced yesterday that it would cease building machines to play its HD DVD video format, effectively ending a battle between two rival technologies vying to replace the DVD.
Both HD DVD and Blu-ray offer programming on DVD-size discs that deliver crisp pictures with higher resolutions than the standard DVD format, which still dominates the industry. The two formats are incompatible with each other, so it was widely assumed that one would prevail.
And Toshiba’s move was hailed as the raising of Blu-ray’s fist in the boxing ring.
“We carefully assessed the long-term impact of continuing the so-called ‘next-generation format war’ and concluded that a swift decision will best help the market develop,” Atsutoshi Nishida, president and chief executive of Toshiba Corp., said in a statement yesterday.
Well, I guess now we know what we can spend our stimulus checks on, right ?
