HD DVD promo body dissolves itself
Format's life-support facility unplugged
High Definition DVD is officially dead. The HD DVD Promotion Group this week formally dissolved itself, marking the termination of the format.
Toshiba's decision to end HD DVD hardware production, announced last month, put the format on life-support. The signals began to slow and fade as the likes of Microsoft, Universal Studios and Paramount Studios said they were abandoning HD DVD in the light of Toshiba's move.
However, the plug was finally pulled yesterday, when the organisation charged with persuading World+Dog to adopt HD DVD finally called it quits, and voted itself out of existence, gone without even a whimper, let alone a bang.
For now, HD DVD exists in a kind of format purgatory. The specification remains under the guardianship of the DVD Forum, along with all the branding, but it seems unlikely the Forum will do much with it now. Eventually, the DVD format will fade too, as VHS has, and the DVD Forum will have come to its natural end.
Leaving the world coloured Blu - unless, of course, even that's failed to prevail against movie downloads and memory cards.
Obituary: HD DVD 2002-2008
COMMENTS
@ Danny
Danny, the only way a 'ship' is going to cut the transatlantic is if it's either a submarine or a sinking surface ship.
@Dave
You said: "Downloads and Files for me please. I like the box sets, but ultimately they just take up space."
But won't your shelves eventually stack up with rows of hard drives? Each one filled with not only your movies but also precious data.
Just waiting to crash one day losing not just one movie, but loads of them.
The point I'm making is that even downloads need to be stored somewhere.
You haven't really thought this one through, have you.
128gb flash is just around the corner
Blu-ray is offering far too little far too late.
They simply will not get to a mass-market friendly final spec (yeah right) product at the right price (sub $150-$100), in time.
Meanwhile HD TV services with DVR are filling the HD gap in homes & they are more than happy (at the price) to stick with upscaled DVD.
Blu-ray is a 'dead' format too, they just refuse to admit it or haven't realised it yet.
optical media for me
Personally, I don't want to have to be reliant on my ISP working as it should, every route between me and hollywoods servers being super efficient and not being cut off should a ship accidentally cut the transatlantic cable so I will never go download only. I would take a flash based system for rental only, but I like having a disk that will still be the same in 10 years time without worrying about having to back it up, transfer it to a new faster memory type as my old one gets made obsolete, doesn't require me to delete things from it because it ran out of space, will never suddenly die on me with no warning, does not have a limited lifespan of read/writes as it will never be written to, I can drop it in a big pool of water without damaging it, will still play with some scratches even though it may stutter in places. Try dropping flash memory in water and see how robust it is or put a big scratch on the contact pins and watch as it is never recognised as a device again. If I buy a film it is because I want a physical product, mine to keep and watch whenever I like, take to a friends, give to someone else if I choose, not to restrict the number of times I can watch it, how long I can keep it, what brand device I can watch it on. Somebody above said about HMV allowing you to put the film back on if you lose it, what if they go out of business, who do I get my legitmately purchased film from then? What if I cannot prove I bought it unless you are happy with retailers keeping your personal shopping list for your entire life. Flash takes away far more than it gives.
DVD is the only disc-based format with a mass-market future
Sorry, but Blu-Ray is going to be the Laserdisc of this generation and, I predict, the last optical media format of any significance, unless the hardware and software suppliers do as they did with Vinyl and force the obsolescence by ceasing manufacture of media in DVD format and go Blu-Ray only. Maybe that would finally be the push needed to wean people off of packaged media altogether?
