Not that this is too much of a surprise but we report today the demise of the HD DVD Promotion Group. This was the group, anchored by Toshiba, which brought together the companies which supported the HD DVD format under one trade organization umbrella. It is, as you can see from this screen shot of the group's Web site, no more.
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of HD DVD. This more or less puts the final nail in the HD DVD coffin.
Now that Toshiba has left the HD DVD format in the past, you might be wondering to yourself: what kind of financial motivation might have been behind this move? While it is hard to speculate exactly how this played into the final equation, we can tell you the Japanese consumer electronics giant took a huge hit in this area.
A recent Bloomberg story tells us exactly how bad Toshiba got slapped. The company reported it would take "a 45 billion yen charge to write down the value of its HD DVD assets, forcing Toshiba to face its first annual profit drop in six years." That works out to nearly $454 million American.
Taken into further analysis, Toshiba said specific losses in the HD DVD group almost doubled "to 65 billion yen this fiscal year, compared with the 50 billion yen deficit forecast earlier." That is $656 million American, give or take.
How ever you look at it, that's an ugly ending folks.
Best Buy is reaching out to customers who own HD-DVD players post the end of the Blu-ray war with an offer: a $50 gift card if one purchased a HD-DVD player or HD-DVD attachment before Feb. 23.
The electronics retailer said it will "proactively mail cards to all customers that the company can identify as having purchased an HD-DVD player. Members of the Best Buy Reward Zone program, customers who purchased Performance Service Plans (PSPs) or who made their purchase on BestBuy.com should look for their gift cards in the mail by May 1."
As a further HD DVD gesture, HD DVD player owners can get trade-in values on their players and movies from Best Buy. One visits a special Web site, gets information about estimated values for their collection and ships their gear free of charge to Best Buy in exchange for another gift card. This service is open to HD-DVD owners regardless of where they bought their player.
Much like a fired employee might do on his way out the door, Toshiba did an exit interview of sorts in yesterday's Wall Street Journal about its HD DVD trials and tribulations. The interview was conducted with Toshiba CEO Atsutoshi Nishida.
Nishida told the WSJ, in summary, that Toshiba realized the time was near when Warner Bros. threw in the towel and switched to Blu-ray at CES. It seriously hurt HD DVD market share and made Toshiba see the battle could not be won. The company did not, however, throw its support behind Blu-ray, but instead promised to develop standard DVD players which improve upon the "upconverting feature" as a way to remain competitive.
If you don't mind having what has unfortunately become a failed format as a new purchase, you might want to check out the HD DVD fire sale Circuit City is putting on right now to gut its inventory. This is according to an article in Video Business.
VB reports Circuit City wants to have its HD DVD stock decimated by the end of the month. To that end it has significantly cut the price of Toshiba HD DVD players. This is on top of offering deals where you purchase three HD DVD titles and get two more for free.
So, if you don't mind the fact you are shopping for a format which soon won't have any more available titles, you look to be getting some good deals. This also might be a good time for existing HD DVD player owners to stock up as well.
Well that didn't take too long. Just after we reported DreamWorks was hanging around and pondering what to do about HD DVD, word comes along it has followed parent studio Paramount out the front door.
Paramount told High-Def Digest it is scrapping a bunch of titles it had planned to release to HD DVD in the coming weeks. In addition DreamWorks, which had planned to release Bee Movie to the doomed format in mid-March, has now dropped those plans as well.
Even with the HD DVD format now dead in the water and everybody is getting off of the sinking ship, DreamWorks told Reuters earlier this week it wasn't sure whether or not it would abandon the format yet. The reason? An exclusive deal with Toshiba.
"We have a partnership with Toshiba and have an obligation to see this through," DreamWorks Chief Executive Jeffrey Katzenberg told Reuters. The studio is taking a wait and see approach to see what Toshiba's next moves are.
The studio, which is set to release "Bee Movie" on DVD shortly, wants to know how it should plan its next generation optical disc release for this title.
Just like predicted, Toshiba officially pulled the plug on HD DVD. The format was is officially over. Toshiba just made the official announcement in Tokyo.
Toshiba Corporation today announced that it has undertaken a thorough review of its overall strategy for HD DVD and has decided it will no longer develop, manufacture and market HD DVD players and recorders.
Toshiba will begin to reduce shipments of HD DVD players and recorders to retail channels, aiming for cessation of these businesses by the end of March 2008. Toshiba also plans to end volume production of HD DVD disk drives for such applications as PCs and games in the same timeframe, yet will continue to make efforts to meet customer requirements.
After a Q&A period, Toshiba said they had no plan to join Blu-ray. That could have been predicted as well. But let's give these folks a break.
Read the complete press release after the jump.
Continue reading "HD DVD is Dead. The Format War is Over." »
Could it be game over for HD DVD? We here at HDDVDFreak feel like of late it has been nothing but negative news to report. Now comes word from industry sources Toshiba could be killing the format altogether some time shortly.
The Hollywood Reporter, citing sources, said Toshiba is "widely expected to pull the plug on its HD DVD format sometime in the coming weeks...after a rash of retail defections that followed Warner Home Video's announcement in early January that it would support only the rival Blu-ray Disc format after May."
Speculation suggests substantial losses related to HD DVD hardware production, dips in HD DVD disc sales and defects from the HD DVD camp may have made Toshiba finally cash in its chips. Toshiba denied it was planning to end HD DVD, but did say it is continuing "to study the market impact."
Scratch another location where you can purchase HD DVDs: Wal-Mart announced today it will be dropping the HD DVD format from its shelves shortly in favor of carrying Blu-ray only.
Wal-Mart said this change "will take place quickly over
the next several months whereby the retailer will phase out HD DVD
offerings and reorganize shelf space." It expects to have this phase out done in its physical locations and online shopping sites by June.
"We’ve listened to our customers, who are showing a clear preference
toward Blu-ray products and movies with their purchases," said Gary
Severson, senior vice president, Home Entertainment, Wal-Mart, U.S.
"With the customers best interest in all we do, we wanted to share our
decision and timeline with them as soon as possible, knowing it will
help simplify their purchase decision, increase selection, and increase
adoption long term."
This announcement follows recent word of related changes coming from Netflix and Best Buy.
The HD DVD Promotional Group was in damage control mode again yesterday as Best Buy and Netflix separately outlined plans which put a further crimp on the HD DVD lifestyle. The group issued separate statements to Cnet over the separate incidents:
- on Netflix: "We have long held the belief that HD DVD is the best format for consumers based on quality and value, and with more than 1 million HD DVD players on the market, it's unfortunate to see Netflix make the decision to only stock Blu-ray titles going forward."
- on Best Buy: "We have long held the belief that HD DVD is the best format for consumers based on quality and value, and with more than 1 million HD DVD players on the market, it's unfortunate to see Netflix make the decision to only stock Blu-ray titles going forward. While the Best Buy announcement says they will recommend Blu-ray, at least they will continue to carry HD DVD and offer consumers a choice at retail."
Even as Toshiba marches bravely forward with very low HD DVD player prices, rival Blu-ray scored some more coups today as the post-Warner departure continues to impact the format war:
It looks as if Microsoft has shaved a little off of the price tag for its Xbox 360 HD DVD Player accessory. It was reported this morning by Major Nelson, aka Larry Hryb of Microsoft, the company was dropping the retail price from $179.99 to $129.99 and that the drop was immediately effective in the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
There was no immediate word on why the price drop was made, but one has to think with the recent Toshiba HD DVD player price drops Microsoft is just trying to stay up with the pack.
Find anything peculiar about the above photo? Try this on for size - Cnet Asia is reporting what you see is the first reported case of HD DVD movie piracy...and it heralds from China.
The particular movie of course is Michael Bay's Transformers. It is being reported this is the complete movie with "Mandarin dubbing and subtitles for mainland Chinese consumption." The movie was reportedly cut " on three HD-DVD9 format media in pristine 1080p visuals and HDi interactive features."
You have to imagine this is another unhappy moment for the HD DVD camp in 2008.
If you happened to miss the HD DVD Super Bowl ad which aired yesterday, we got word someone had put it up on YouTube to view. You can see it above. Dealerscope reports the ad reportedly cost $2.7 million dollars.
HD DVD continues to see a slow rebound in the public spotlight as new sales figures from NPD Group show a rebound in sales following a bad week immediately after CES. This is according to a news report published in Video Business.
The report shows HD DVD hardware sales totals accounted for around a third of HD set-top unit sales for the week ending Jan. 19, according to Video Business. This is a sharp upkick from the previous week, when HD DVD player sales only amounted to seven percent.
An NPD analyst told Video Business he felt the change in position was likely due to "sensitivity to pricing". This would tie in with a recent move Toshiba made to cut prices of its HD DVD players.
Toshiba, despite struggles the HD DVD format has had of late, did quite well in HD DVD player sales last year. The reason for this seems to be its aggressive pricing, which is reflected in more recent price cuts the manufacturer made.
Research firm DisplaySearch recently unveiled a report in which it stated, among other next generation DVD information, that Toshiba "was the leading vendor of standalone devices worldwide during the Q1-Q3’07 period, cumulatively accounting for nearly 64% more standalone units than all Blu-ray brands combined."
Toshiba was also in the top three for cumulative sales of next generation DVD hardware when game console hardware was factored in. It, Microsoft and Sony combined for a 98 percent share of the world's hardware shipments.
A recent interview published by BetaNews focuses in on thoughts of executive vice president for Universal Studios and co-president of the HD DVD Promotional Group Ken Graffeo about the recent turbulence in the HD DVD camp. It provides HD DVD fans some interesting insights into how things are looking for the disc format.
Graffeo talks openly about how Warner's abrupt move to jump ship impacted the planned flow of the annual HD DVD CES press event, resulting in its cancellation. He also states firmly that Universal continues to back HD DVD, backing up earlier statements, and, perhaps most interestingly, the door is never closed to the possibility of HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc coming together to unify under one standard.
[via High-Def Digest]
If you have not yet purchased a HD DVD player and are waiting for the right deal to lure you in Best Buy is currently offering a very sweet promotion. It nets you a player + nine free HD DVDs.
This special limited time promotion, according to Best Buy, has you first select any two HD DVD titles under $35. You then choose from a sales list of Toshiba HD DVD players. From there you can follow rebate instructions to get five more HD DVD titles by mail for free.
The first two titles chosen become free when you pick which player you want. This is in addition to getting two free HD DVDs which come packaged with the chosen player.
[via Punch Jump]
Panasonic Home Entertainment has detailed its HD DVD line up for the first quarter of this year. 10 titles are expected to be released over the next few months.
Highlights of upcoming releases include Zodiac, Beowulf and The Kite Runner. You can get the full details via Panasonic's press release after the jump.
Continue reading "Paramount Announces 1st Quarter 08 HD DVD Titles" »
Toshiba revealed some new HD DVD marketing initiatives today to help bolster sales of the HD DVD format. These moves come as the company declares "record-breaking unit sales in the fourth quarter of 2007."
Toshiba says it had "#1 sales volume in the next generation DVD category with an approximately 50 percent market share in 2007" as well as having an 80 percent plus market share in next generation DVD notebook computers.
In order to entice consumers more into HD DVD, Toshiba dropped prices on some of its players. The entry-model HD-A3 will be $149.99, the HD-A30, with 1080p output, $199.99, and the high-end HD-A35, $299.99. The company will also be conducting "an extended advertising campaign" across multiple media channels.
HD DVD players, like any other optical disc playback device,
need to be cleaned sometimes to provide you optimum performance. Maxell unveiled
at CES this week a new cleaning device with which to do that. It's
called the Blu-Ray/HD DVD Lens Cleaner and it should be available in
March for around $25.
The Blu-Ray/HD DVD Lens Cleaner uses something Maxell calls a "Wind Funnel Cleaning System." This system kicks in when the cleaning disc is put into the player. It "rotates and generates an air stream in a spiral motion and that air stream then changes to air shower on the lens when it passes through the holes. The power of the air shower removes dust particles on the lens without damaging the surface of the product."
A post we put up earlier today over at BluRayFreak reported how the last two major studios backing HD DVD, Universal and Paramount, might be thinking about departing for the Blu-ray camp. Breaking news and further digging has in fact revealed those two studios will not be departing the HD DVD side anytime soon:
There you have it - no more defections from the HD DVD camp. Those cries of happiness in Japan just got louder.
Samsung is betting not everyone is ready to go one next generation optical disc format over the other yet so it is showing off at CES a new dual format disc player called the BD-UP5500. It is slated to be available sometime in the latter part of the year.
This disc player is noted by Samsung for its ability to support "the latest BD-Java and HD DVD interactivity available." You'll find the BD-UP5500 is HDMI 1.3 compliant, looks pretty sharp and is quite slim (2.3 inches).
Get more details on this dual format playback Samsung player after the jump.
Toshiba must surely have a headache by this time today. First Warner Brothers announces plans to end HD DVD support. Microsoft next comes along and indicates it might begin offering Blu-ray Disc support. Things smoothed out later however for the HD DVD camp as Microsoft backpedaled on the comments.
A Reuters interview earlier this week quoted a Microsoft marketing manager as saying his company would consider a Blu-ray option for the Xbox 360 if there was consumer demand for it. The company changed its tune quickly though after these comments were published, indicating that "HD DVD remains the only format to deliver quality experiences at affordable prices."
You can hear the sighs of relief right now coming from Japan.
