HD DVD Promotion Group Turns Out the HD DVD Lights

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.

Toshiba Has Staggering $$ HD DVD Losses

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 Tries to Ease HD DVD Pain

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.

Toshiba Conducts HD DVD Exit Interview with WSJ

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.

HD DVD Goes Fire Sale at Circuit City

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.