HD-DVD Officially Dead

Although Toshiba had announced that they would discontinue the development of HD-DVD, there is no clear indication that the production of standard DVD will cease immediately. I reckon SD DVD will continue to be produced. But the question is how long will they continue to be produced? VHS video had suffered death years ago due to format changes, and time will tell when SD DVD will suffer the same fate to Blu-ray.

We can still take consolation in that HD DVD players can still play HD-DVD discs as well as SD DVD. I guess both player and HD-DVD disc will now be sold at dirt cheap prices, and maybe folks will still continue to purchase them?

Ryder: I am totally going to buy one of the newer HD-DVD players on closeout at $99 and $129 with 7 movies.... because this is one of the most impressive upscaling DVD players for regular DVD's. I think that DVD's will be around like redbook CD's for a long time... most of america only cares about cost and DVD quality is good enough for their smaller tv's. $15.95 on sale for a DVD versus $25-39 for a Bluray.... SACD had this problem... the average consumer didn't care enough for the extra quality to buy the gear to play it. Plus you factor in all the HDCP incompatibile tv's with gear and people really get frusterated... and the rip off $100 HDMI cables at your BestBuy stores.. Christmas 2008 will be interesting... streaming rental of movies or Bluray?

HD DVD is officially dead?! Who would have believed after all this started that, at this time this year, we would no longer be considering HD DVD players in our future? I mean, at the very least I figured a co-existence of the formats - but a complete dismantling of one of the formats?
LOL - the funny thing is that even though Sony FINALY got what they wanted aparently, which is total market share and monopoly of some major technology or format in the electronics world, it probably won't matter! In fact, I think the universe is conspiring against Sony, personally (lol)! I say that because I'm pretty darn certain that discs as we know them, are becoming more and more obsolute, as "hard drive media storage" is where it's all going anyway!!!
Mmmmmmmmmmuuuuuuuuuuuuuahahahahahahaha!

Yes! I just bought one yesterday, very impressed with its 1080p upscaling, and I guess I will buy some of my fave movies once the drop in price, maybe even a second player to keep in storage, at these clear out prices it's hard not to be tempted

Now:

1. companies like OPPO will be able to choose a new format to focus on and we will start to see reasonably priced high quality BluRay players on the market at about the same time as

2. the switch to all digital HD broadcasts occurs in less than 12 months and

3. many consumers are faced with buying either a set top box to control their current 4:3 set, or purchase a new HD wide screen tv that takes advantage of HD broadcasts, downloads and disks and

4. standard DVD will begin to fade to black as the cost of entering into full on HD falls and

5. land fills around the world will brim with all $50 DVD players, and cheap 5.1 non HDMI HT systems people bought and are throwing out with their perfectly good 4:3 CRT televisions and

6. both Sony AND Toshiba enjoy incredible profits as the entire world retools to go HD.

You got to love it.

PS - the dead parrot thing was too funny.