News
Toshiba capitulates - goodbye HD DVD
In a move that only surprised the market in how fast it occured, Toshiba has bowed to the invietable and dropped out of the race for the next generation of high definition discs, leaving the market to Blu-ray. Toshiba had been the standard bearer for the consortium pushing HD DVD, but poor sales relative to Blu-ray (player sales have been dominated by Sony's Blu-ray equipped PlayStation 3), a limited number of movies titles, and an ever increasing rate of defection of movie studio's making content available on the HD DVD format quickly made the situation untenable.
In a market statement Toshiba Prsident & CEO Atsutoshi Nishida tried to put a brave face on what must have been a costly foray for the company by saying "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".
Toshiba plans to discontinue production of stand alone HD DVD players from March 2008, but has promised to continue service & support for players that have already been sold. It has left the door open for continued production of laptop HD DVD drives, but this is unlikely to be a fertile market for what is now effectively a dead format.
Blu-ray lands the killer blow?
The protracted struggle between Blu-ray and HD DVD lurched closer to a final conclusion with the defection of Warner to the Blu-ray camp in January. With over 85% of the global market in hardware sales (includes the PlayStation 3) and now six major movie studios (Disney, Fox, Lionsgate, MGM, Sony & Warner) in the Blu-ray camp, the Toshiba backed HD DVD (Paramount, Universal & DreamWorks) format is looking decidely anemic.
Sensing blood in the water, consumers appear to be deserting the HD DVD format, and both Blu-Ray players and discs are heavily out-selling their rivals. Several other commentators have already called fight in favour of Blu-ray, but the HD DVD camp (particularly Toshiba) is not conceeding defeat yet.
Panasonic launches world's largest plasma TV
Panasonic executives, convinced that the polar ice caps aren't melting quite fast enough, launched a 150 inch (381cm) Plasma TV at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2008. More resembling a wall than a TV, this giant crushes the previous record holder, a mere 108 inch (274cm) offering by Sharp.
With a resolution of 4096 x 2160 pixels, the 'Life Screen' has four times the resolution of a 1080p display, and a screen area equivalent to nine 50 inch TV's.