HD DVD

~ the obit ~

hd dvd never reached turkey at any meaningful scale. it was a us-and-japan-coded format that fought blu-ray on american and japanese shelves while the rest of us were already past physical media for movies. by 2007 the standard turkish living room was watching downloaded.mkv files on a samsung lcd. neither hd disc was going to change that.

toshiba and nec started the format in the early 2000s as the dvd forum's official high-definition successor. blu-ray came from a sony-led consortium that included most of the rest of the consumer-electronics industry. when both formats hit retail in 2006, microsoft backed hd dvd with an external xbox 360 add-on while sony built blu-ray straight into the ps3, which is the kind of decision that decides format wars before consumers vote.

warner bros. announced on january 4, 2008 that it would stop supporting hd dvd by june and go blu-ray exclusive. that was the moment the war ended. toshiba held a press conference on february 19 to announce the company would discontinue development of hd dvd players and discs entirely. the format had run twenty-three months at retail.

~ the rap sheet ~

~ the rise ~

at the launch peak in 2007, hd dvd had real momentum. it had a lower manufacturing cost than blu-ray and microsoft cash behind a 199-dollar add-on for the world's most popular console.

universal and paramount both backed it heavily at the start, with warner bros. neutral on both formats. universal stayed exclusive longest, while paramount took a reported 150 million dollar deal in august 2007 to defect from neutral status to hd-dvd-exclusive. for about six months, you could pick the toshiba box over the sony one in a us electronics store and feel like you had picked the winner.

~ what really happened ~

the warner bros. defection on january 4, 2008 was the actual death blow, but the underlying loss had already happened. the ps3 was outselling the xbox 360 hd dvd add-on by a wide margin, and the average consumer reading shelves at best buy did not want to pick a side. when warner walked, the holdouts looked at the math and knew the war was over. toshiba called the press conference six weeks later.

~ what got buried with it ~

hd dvd was the last optical-format fight before streaming made the whole question moot. blu-ray won 2008 and then proceeded to lose every year after, as netflix and cheap broadband moved every casual consumer past the disc entirely. toshiba's reported 986 million dollar hd dvd loss was the price of finishing first in a race that nobody important was running anymore. the only place hd dvd really lives now is in the broken xbox 360 add-ons gathering dust on european flea markets.

@}-->--

              )
             (_)
            .-'-.
            |   |
            |   |
            |   |
            |   |
          __|   |__   .-.
       .-'  |   |  `-:   :
      :     `---'     :-'
       `-._       _.-'
           '""""""

« previous  ·  random  ·  next »