The Bell Tolls For You, HD-DVD

Yes, I think it’s true. HD-DVD, my friends, is dead, or at least in the last of its death throes. Being an early adopter, I went out a few months ago and picked up a HD-DVD player, thinking that at the bare minimum both formats would exist for a year or more. It turns out my timing was rather poor.

A few of the major studios moved from HD-DVD to BluRay last month, and the move was so dramatic that the HD-DVD guys cancelled their talks at the CES show in Vegas (which actually probably did the most harm to their effort). Reuter’s is reporting that HD-DVD is basically dead, and a leak from WalMart indicates that they are no longer planning to stock HD-DVD in the future.

This is yet another example how corporate greed once again took precedence over consumer satisfaction. While nobody forced me to go out and buy a HD-DVD player, I watched the industry in a virtual stall for years (despite HD TVs being fairly prevalent now), and simply got tired of watching my TV go to waste. Had the two camps resolved their differences a long time ago, most of us would probably have cheap BluRay players in our houses already, and this sour taste in my mouth would never have occurred.

So that’s it. Happy trails HD-DVD, it was nice to know you.