HD-DVD could be the world’s most expensive beta test.


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Seems the war of the DVD formats will be over soon, sales of the HD-DVD aren’t up to the mark. Since the beginning of the year, when Warner Bros. announced that it was pulling support for HD DVD, the prospects appeared grim. Toshiba and some of the other backers of the format put on a brave face. Throughout the battle with Blu-ray, Toshiba and the HD DVD Promotions Group had fought aggressively to defend HD DVD, even as Warner Bros. abandoned ship. But that strong support appeared to weaken perceptibly for the first time in the wake of Netflix and Best Buy’s decisions to throw their weight behind Blu-ray earlier this week, and Wal-Mart will be ditching HD DVD as well by summer. The usual forceful response from the Group was eschewed in favor of the subdued “While the Best Buy announcement says they will recommend Blu-ray, at least they will continue to carry HD DVD and offer consumers a choice at retail.”
Update – Japanese broadcaster NHK has an update on the situation. Unfortunately it is in Japanese, so in case you speak Japanese please help us out by sending a translation.


Toshiba however denies any confirmation but says that market will continue to study the market impact and the value proposition for consumers, particularly in light of their recent price reductions on all HD DVD players, tough luck to those who bought it while being in the worlds most expensive BETA testing, which suffers the same fate as the beta-MAX cassettes.
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