According to AICN (ain’t they the bestest?), Toshiba is bailing out on the HD-DVD versus Blu-Ray format war. After all the studios bouncing over to Blu-Ray’s (and Sony’s) side, this move isn’t surprising. This is almost the opposite of what happened in Betamax (Sony) versus VHS (everybody else), as that time the technologically better Beta lost out. Here the (in my opinion) technologically better HD-DVD format (everybody else) lost out to the inferior Sony-backed Blu-Ray format.
I’m hoping the real winner is us, the consumers. Now that everybody will only be making Blu-Ray players the price will finally come down as there will be more competition amongst manufacturers. Maybe in the next year or two we’ll see a $30 Blu-Ray player? Well, here’s hoping against hope ;)