We've all been saying it for over a month now, but today it became official. Today Toshiba officially announced it's surrender in the Blu-ray vs. HD-DVD high-definition disc format war. HD-DVD is dead, Blu-ray emerges victorious.
To be honest it has surprised me that they've given up so soon, but in the end it was a wise choice. There was no way they could possibly win, so they've saved themselves from wasting a lot of money by continuing to pursue a futile course of action.
This is great news for us consumers though, it means that now we have a definite and anointed next-generation technology to move onto. The manufacturers can now start cranking up production of Blu-ray players, recorders and disks, which of course means that with the higher production volumes and higher demand, also comes lower prices.
I'd probably give it another 1-2 years before the stuff becomes mainstream affordable, but now that the war is over, peace and unambiguous high-definition entertainment can prevail.
Hey, whaddya know - in my desire to say that VHS superseded, rather than defeated, Betamax, I learnt something today (that it was a competition) and reinforced something else (checking with Wikipedia can stop you looking stupid).
I'm aware that posting this also makes me somewhat ignorant, but I post this as a warning - always, always do your research! (especially if it's with a quality research source like Wiki)
hehe yeah. Although it's not surprising that Blu-ray won this, many are pointing out that for once Sony actually won with a format!
It's long line of failures/underachievers include Betamax, MiniDisc, Memory Stick, UMD, etc.
From what i've read, In many ways Betamax was actually better than VHS, i recall that VHS won mainly because it made itself cheaper and more available to a wider audience more quickly.