[lazy, mildly impressed tone] Wow, who'd have thought. [/lazy, mildly impressed tone]

"Director of Obvious Decisions at Samsung"
Good one.

I loved HD DVD better (it was better), but at this point, they should really just pull the plug, and focus on making BD as good or better than HD DVD was / could be. This "scaling back" crap will just hinder progress and continue to confuse consumers. I feel bad for the ignorant consumer who buys a steeply discounted HD DVD player now.

Are you serious? The execs over at Samsung has pretty huge balls to pull this off!

he he, "morans"

Damn it, HD DVD! Why won't you die already!?!
[beats HD DVD rack at Best Buy with Blu-Ray whiffle bat]

The guy holding the sign is a big "moran". :p

So, uh... When do you think this Blu-Ray/HD DVD thing will sort itself out so I can finally go out and buy a player? I'd have purchased one before now, but if I had it would have meant that whatever unit I purchased was the technology that lost.

I didn't want to have that kind of thing looming over my head ya know?

Isn't Toshiba supposed to announce it pretty darn soon??

Well, glad it's over.

I realized when Sony lost with Betamax; it was thru referee, consumer decision; took a long time before Sony give up. They had the better format yet couldn't even record a full lenght movie. HD DVD lost with a KO in the first round.

amazing pic btw

@Xavoc: Welcome to the conversation. Go buy yourself a BD player.

Bold? Or Smart?

KO in the first round my a$$. HD-DVD just couldn't keep up with the back-alley deals and big-money of the BR Group.

I want this to be over too but for the love of all that is holy, please change the name. I absolutely hate the name Blu-Ray. Oh you dropped an "e" there, you're so hip and cool....

@Mr. Frucci

I think tag "Teh Obvious" would be appropriate for this kind of news, as it will trickle in over the next few weeks/months until the last company subdues itself to the bright blue beam of light.

@mangochutney: I would like to buy an "A" and insert it after "I think" in the first sentence.

@med: So you're saying you want Toshiba to have a mysterious resurgance of popularity in regards to their HD-DVD format? Do you own their stock or something?

The last time I bought a piece of technology during a format war, I ended up w/ a betamax vcr... So, I think I'll wait a bit longer until it's really really dead, not just mostly dead and waiting for Miracle Max to take on the job.

I can't wait for the Bluray piracy to commence! Burner prices drop, AnyBR-DVD updates its methodology, blank-BR discs get cheaper...cyclical like CD-R. Gimmee 50GB BR data...

Bet Apple includes BluRay reading in next-gen Macs.

Now, dumb-consumers, go out and start replacing your old and tired DVDs with new, feature packed, BluRay!

WOW... I'm seriously getting so tired of the sarcasm on this site with regards to this subject.

If you were probably one of the many many employees that exist in HD-DVD departments around the world, then you probably wouldn't want them to fire you the second Gizmodo declares a winner would you? I mean we're talking January 5th 2008 as the turning point.. thats not even 2 months ago.

I know I'm not the only one who figured out that guy in the picture is protesting outside Erin Moran's family home. Presumably over some Joanie Loves Chachi related slight.

Maybe this is about the familys's insistence that the series be released on HDDVD exclusively. Point taken gentle sage. Count me in on this little protest.

Come ON Morans! Get with the friggin program already!

Hmm... I wonder how I could get a job being the Director of Obvious Decisions at a big name company. Sounds like the job of my dreams right there.

@Xavoc: I would still wait for BluRay 2.0 players to come out if you want PIP and ethernet or get one that can do firmware updates(*ahem PS3).
As for Toshiba, of course they're not going to throw their hands up and say "Oh well no more HDDVD." Remember there's still plenty of HD-DVD players and movies out there that they hope will still sell. They're not just gonna take a loss on them if they can avoid it.

I think it's official as it's going to get. "Cutting production" has a pretty strong tone of finality to me.

So instead of waiting for a press release from Toshiba where they announce their demise with giant banners and a Monty Python skit, (We regret to inform everyone that the HD-DVD format is being discont-AAAAAAAAAARrrrrrggg...) let's just say it's "officially official" and move on.

@kahri: With HD DVD out of the picture, what incentive do manufacturers have to make 2.0 players?

@Optimus-Prime: So they can sell you the same format player twice.

People, people, people...forget this physical format junk and download your HD movies. Physical format's are for moran's (see picture)...and it'll teach the hardware manufacturers to quit messing with our minds.

@Optimus-Prime: It will allow them to embed secret links to their Transformers/LOTR crossover site.

It fixes compatability issues, adds features, improves security of the disc content. Disc manufacturers will bastardize and twist the format any way they can to protect their information and add new gimmicks. As an example, I think The Matrix discs had issues in some older DVD players when it was released.

@aceface: For one, it takes too long to download 50+gb of info. Secondly, many of your primary carriers are going to have a fit about this.

I prefer physical copies that I can choose to convert to being stored on other devices. Physical backup (that isn't an external rotational drive) is something I appreciate.

This asshat makes all St. Louis Cardinals fans look like idiots!! IT'S NOT TRUE!!!!

@aceface: I still prefer to own physical copies of media... Yes, I still buy CD's...

Both Best Buy and Circuit City had a full page of Blu-ray titles on sale in their Sunday newspaper flyers yesterday with absolutely no mention of HD-DVD at all. It's clues like this that let the general public know HD-DVD is a dead format. They now only have to choose between DVD and Blu-ray.

I think the bizarre part is that they are just scaling back.

"From now on we will only spend 10% of our energies manufacturing dead technologies that people will not buy."

Thank God Samsung going pure Blu ray cause their players and customer service sucks.

@Optimus-Prime: incentives? umm..money, sales, it's what they do. Not only that, but (with the ethernet port) you would (in theory) be able to do a firmware update (3.0?) without actually purchasing a new player.

@aceface: tell me where you're downloading HD feature films from (yes legally)? Right now the only HD content I've found for download has been podcasts. We need more bandwidth (& bigger HDD)

@aceface: I agree eventually physical format will die, but not any time soon. You can stream an HD movie no problem, OnDemand does it now, but if you want a hard copy of an HD movie how big is that? 50-60 gigs? fine. I have a couple hundred DVDs, who has that much storage sitting around their house now. Physical formats wont die before they put out cheap multi terabyte drives. And with a $3000 60 gig AirMac I don't see that happening anytime soon. Just go buy a PS3. It's great.

Hey is that what you call a J6P the one holding the sign.No wonder HD is in trouble

@aceface: Who is going to download HD movies? Unless I'm mistaken, people with cable are overall a minority as far as internet users go. Your not going to download 50-60 gigs without a cable internet either (unless your very very very determined I guess you could maybe). Anyway, even for cable 50-60 gigs will take forever to download (of course I'm talking about your standard cable, not top tier stuff).

Also what KAHRI said about cable companies having a fit. I know that if I downloaded two HD movies, Comcast would probably drop me as a customer. So until bandwidth gets faster, and until people have that kind of storage your going to have a very very small minority. Thus less people pirating the film, for a short time at least. Or true HD anyway, because I'm sure they'll somehow compress it down to some sane level but then again it wont be HD anymore will it?

I wonder if they'll also be dropping Betamax soon!! Jeez I hope not.

@bbfreak: preach it, brotha!
i was begining to believe that i was the only one here that realized that people with internet speeds capable of downloading movies (much less HD movies) are BY FAR the minority......

@codykniffen: Ever been to downtown St Louis? The city developers are total 'morans' for not developing the area around New Busch and the Arch. No decent bar district, restaurants, or shopping. It's a complete joke.

...no wonder St Louis tops the "Most Dangerous City" list every year. People are dieing to leave.

[www.cbsnews.com]

@Johnny Chimpo: Hello ::taps johnny's head:: You must not even live close to my great city-St. Louis, but the builders of the stadium tried to develop the area around it and the Arch, but it was voted down by the people that were dieing to leave. And we don't top the list every year, get your facts right.
And thank god you didn't find Shannon's restaurant, more Bloody Mary's for me.

Now that the war is over, is there going to be another baby boom?

Blu-Ray endorsement or no, I shall NOT, by thor's hammer, have idiotic pilsner-swilling red-necks besmirching the intellectual reputation of my poor defenseless girlfriend, Moran Atias.



USA bandanna or not sir, I shall be travelling to your location posthaste to give you What For!! -you ignorant, be-mulletted, man-baggage!

@kendra68: It's great you have pride in your city. In fact one of my good friends from grad school moved back to St Louis after graduation and she loves it. I'm just saying the area is, in my opinion, a missed opportunity.

@spaceman7: thanks.

"movie_title" DVD $9.99
"movie_title" blu $38.99

@lionelbob: dude are you seriously comparing the lowend DVDs to the high end blu-rays? What excactly are you trying to accomplish with that? The real world prices are $15-20 for DVDs to $25-30 for BD....
and I still don't see were you're trying to go with this......