Reviews by Matt

Tuesday, Feb. 19 marked the official death of HD DVD. The end of HD also meant the end of the format war that has waged between HD and Blu-ray Disc for two years.

Toshiba announced that they would no longer make the high definition players. They hope to have completely stopped shipments of the players by the end of March.

The format war broke down to one huge difference in the formats, the storage capacity. There was a 10-gigabyte difference in storage capacity. Blu-ray can hold up to 25GB compared to 15GB for HD.

One of the leading causes for the stoppage of production was all but two of the major studios backing Blu-ray. At the end only Universal and Paramount were HD-exclusive.

“We carefully assessed the long-term impact of continuing the so-called 'next-generation format war' and concluded that a swift decision will best help the market develop," said Atsutoshi Nishida, President and CEO of Toshiba Corporation in a press release announcing the company’s decision.

"While we are disappointed for the company and more importantly, for the consumer, the real mass market opportunity for high definition content remains untapped and Toshiba is both able and determined to use our talent, technology and intellectual property to make digital convergence a reality," Nishida said.

The company will continue to manufacture standard DVD players and will maintain collaborative relationships with the companies that joined them in their HD venture including Universal Studios, Paramount Pictures and DreamWorks Animation.

The end of the high definition war means that consumers will no longer have to choose between formats. Despite the cost of HD players being about $150-$250 lower, Blu-ray has been outselling HD for months.

With HD officially dead, Sony and their Blu-ray players face competition from digital media, and with the writers’ strike over and the demand for payment for the digital media met, this could prove to be a tough task.

Internet downloads from Amazon.com and iTunes are becoming more popular and it is these sites, as well as many others that are going to make for heavy competition for the newly crowned leader in the high definition format.

DVDs ran the movie market for 10 years when it beat out VHS tapes. The same is not expected for Blu-ray discs. It will come down to how Sony deals with this new competition that will determine if Blu-ray will be the format of the future. Until then, consumers can rest easy knowing they will no longer have choose between formats when buying high definition DVD’s and DVD players.