Toshiba, one of the primary supporters of a new high definition media format (known as HD-DVD) has pulled its troops from the front line leaving Microsoft alone as the single corporate power defying, well, everybody in the Blu-Ray vs. HD-DVD format war.
Movie studio Warner Brothers was the most recent adopter of Blu-Ray as its next generation standard, which in turn prompted hardware manufacturer Samsung to focus upon Blu-Ray. With not only Wal-Mart, Target, Netflix and even pornography production companies pledging support exclusively to Blu-Ray, HD-DVD was already in a losing battle. The two competing standards both offer higher capacity storage than existing DVDs, high-definition pictures and sounds. HD-DVD is marked by its lower cost in production while Blu-Ray has a higher recording capacity.
Microsoft sells an external HD-DVD drive which connects to their Xbox 360 console that allows viewing of HD-DVDs, which explains their investment in the format. So what does the last remaining champion of the format have to offer the 1 million people who have already invested in the standard?
“We do not believe the recent reports about HD DVD will have any material impact on the Xbox 360 platform or our position in the marketplace,” the company said. “We will wait until we hear from Toshiba before announcing any specific plans around the Xbox 360 HD DVD player.” Reuters UK
Thankfully, I only bought one HD-DVD, and it has a standard DVD on the flip side. There are over 500 HD-DVD titles available at Amazon.com as of today. I’m wondering when they all go on sale?
Hey Jeremy,
I wrote about this too- I was under the impression that the Xbox 360 had an HD-DVD drive built into the system? and that Microsoft was attempting to bank off selling the drives as “plug in to your HD-TV and watch” drives?
(also forgot to add the bit about pornography in, though I remember discussing it in Rob Prince’s Digital Video Editing course last semester.
(nice graphic, you should check mine out, I’m rather proud of it and doubt anyone has so much as glimpsed it)
-nate
Microsoft has an HD-DVD drive you can buy for about $129 now that connects to the XBox 360. Sony’s PS3 on the other hand has a built-in Blu-Ray reader… that also happens to play games I hear. 🙂