[Vigilanteman]

March 31 is the end of the fiscal year for most companies in Japan, including Toshiba. HD-DVD will be gone by the end of the fiscal year.

I, for one, expected this war to last a lot longer.

[RockinRight]

Blu-Ray has won.

[Lee'sGhost]

So, can somebody who knows this stuff tell me if the better format won?

[Sulsa]

Watch for Sony’s stock to skyrocket after this news.

[org.whodat]

Bet they’ll be giving away dvd players by the end of the week.

[LiberConservative]

Many of us were surprised, if not shocked. I think Toshiba just read the handwriting on the wall. I can’t remember the name of the studio, but one said it was only going to ship Blue Ray. Then another distributor came out and said “only Blue Ray”. Then Netflix came out and said: “Only Blue Ray”. This in only the last few weeks. This was a customer-industry driven decision. I see some poetic justice here. Years ago Sony’s Betamax was superior but lost out to VHS.

[Myrddin]

I have the Sony BDP-S300 (BluRay) and Toshiba HD-A30 (HD-DVD). Both are 1080p devices. I have a fair collection of movies in both formats. Toshiba has done a poor job of getting firmware updates delivered for their devices. The HD-A30 often crashes. The HD-DVD is very sensitive to any fingerprints compared to the BluRay disks played on the Sony device.

I installed a special Ethernet drop from my router to support the online firmware updates for the HD-A30 and the special internet based extensions of HD-DVD. Toshiba never delivered a firmware update beyond the 1.3 version I installed months ago. The extended internet features weren't very interesting or impressive.

The audio from the BluRay device has always been superior to what the HD-A30 produced. My receiver is capable of decoding anything the two players can produce.

I tried to select HD-DVD releases that were "dual format" i.e. standard DVD and HD-DVD on the same disk. A few of my disks are HD-DVD only. Together with the HD-A30, these disks join my other obsolete formats. My Panasonic 8-track recorder still works fine, but I can't buy media for it anymore. The same fate awaits the HD-A30...except that it will play standard DVD. The Sony BDP-S300 will play the standard DVD format of the dual format HD-DVD disks.

My local Fred Meyer store recently reorganized the BluRay and HD-DVD sections. The day after the Toshiba announcement, the HD-DVD section was removed and the BluRay display area was doubled. That's fine by me. BluRay has been the better performer for me.

[Myrddin]

I have the Sony BDP-S300 (BluRay) and Toshiba HD-A30 (HD-DVD). Both are 1080p devices. I have a fair collection of movies in both formats. Toshiba has done a poor job of getting firmware updates delivered for their devices. The HD-A30 often crashes. The HD-DVD is very sensitive to any fingerprints compared to the BluRay disks played on the Sony device.

I installed a special Ethernet drop from my router to support the online firmware updates for the HD-A30 and the special internet based extensions of HD-DVD. Toshiba never delivered a firmware update beyond the 1.3 version I installed months ago. The extended internet features weren't very interesting or impressive.

The audio from the BluRay device has always been superior to what the HD-A30 produced. My receiver is capable of decoding anything the two players can produce.

I tried to select HD-DVD releases that were "dual format" i.e. standard DVD and HD-DVD on the same disk. A few of my disks are HD-DVD only. Together with the HD-A30, these disks join my other obsolete formats. My Panasonic 8-track recorder still works fine, but I can't buy media for it anymore. The same fate awaits the HD-A30...except that it will play standard DVD. The Sony BDP-S300 will play the standard DVD format of the dual format HD-DVD disks.

My local Fred Meyer store recently reorganized the BluRay and HD-DVD sections. The day after the Toshiba announcement, the HD-DVD section was removed and the BluRay display area was doubled. That's fine by me. BluRay has been the better performer for me.

[kevinm13]

This is one war that will see many people happy for its end.

Blu-Ray has won, whether it is better or not, it will be the champ in this battle until the next technology comes along. a lot of people who had been waiting to upgrade to High Def will now know which format to buy and will contribute to significant sales through the end of the year.

[Centurion2000]

Damn shame it won ... mainly because I’ll never forget that Sony ran root kits on CD’s and other media.

[Eva]

I have a question about how this will affect the computers. I have read that some of the new computers are coming with Blu-ray. Will they have DVD writers in Blu-ray, too? This is all confusing and frustrating.

[Cobra64]

Will these new gadgets play regular old standard DVD movies?

Or do we just buy new ones, and forced to throw out the old ones?

[river rat]

Proving once again, the folly of purchasing “leading edge” technology..

They call it “leading edge” because it is a sword that cuts deeply into the pocket book...

The blood from millions of “leading edge” purchasers is left upon the sword of “leading edge” technology.

[onedoug]

Damned evolution.

[crusty old prospector]

What effect does this have on all of my old VCR tapes?

[TightyRighty]

We just went to Best Buy to look at the Magnolia Home Theatre Systems and the sales guy played Mission Impossible on Blu-Ray. Does Blu-Ray have a superior sound quality over a regular DVD? Is there that much of a difference?

[NavVet]

Word on the street is that Liberals were four times more likely to have purchased a HD DVD player than Conservatives, while conservatives were 6 times more likely than Liberals to have picked Blu-Ray as the winner of the fomrat war.

(Okay, I just made that up, but it could be true.)

[SengirV]

The war between consumer’s wallets and what the bluray manufacturers charge for their players will continue on for a long time however.

[pctech]

Does this mean my current DVD player isn't going to work anymore? If that's the case then I have to now go out and purchase a blu-ray player?

And what does this mean for those of us who like to burn movies that we record off video cameras, VCRs, tv input cards, etc, unto DVD? Will we now be able to burn our movies to blu-ray discs?