Microsoft to stop supporting HD-DVD

And the dominoes continue to fall...

Microsoft has announced that, since Toshiba has given up on HD-DVD, they are also planning on doing so.

If anyone was considering moving to high definition DVDs, this is the last big company that was standing in the way of Blu-ray taking over the world. Heck, it's on Wikipedia, so it must be true, right?

Microsoft stopping HD-DVD support article

DVD Wars: HD DVD

Reuters is reporting Toshiba is dropping the HD DVD format, which would basically be the end of the competing high definition DVD formats (or DVD Wars). Toshiba was one of the companies that backed this format from the beginning, and is generally considered to be the largest producer of these devices.

It looks like the competing Blu-Ray has just about won this war. There will be days when kids will say "What the heck was HD-DVD" just like many of you may say "What the heck was BetaMax".

For those of you a little less technically savvy, note that this doesn't have anything to do with HDTV, that's an entirely different issue.

Link-a-rama

HD DVD may lose another studio

The largest company still committed to HD DVD, Paramount (which owns DreamWorks as well) is planning on dropping the HD DVD format. This is the sort of thing that was to be expected after Warner dropped the format. The only big name still creating HD DVDs will be Universal. Now that Warner did this, Paramount seems ready to follow, and if Paramount leaves, Universal probably will give in too.

Note that Microsoft - in their XBox 360 video game console - has also supported HD DVD. Even Microsoft doesn't always back a winner.

Once one format becomes "the standard", expect prices on Blu-Ray DVDs to fall.

Financial Times article

HD DVD vs. Blu-Ray

There have been two different formats for the high capacity DVD: HD DVD and Blu-Ray. The problem for most home users is that no one wants to invest money in a technology that disappears.

Apple has already decided to exclusively support Blu-Ray, and Warner (one of the big movie studios), has decided to no longer support HD DVD, throwing their support behind Blu-Ray for new releases starting later this year. A lot of analysts feel this is the death of HD-DVD, but Toshiba (the company behind HD DVD format), of course, feels that this is not a problem.

Is HD DVD dead?

Either way, this is good news for consumers, because no one wants to buy a technology that's going to become obsolete quickly.