Toshiba and other supporters of the HD DVD format suffered a major blow on Jan 4, 2008, when Hollywood studio Warner Bros announced it would release titles exclusively in Blu-ray starting in June.
Toshiba has slashed the prices of its next generaton HD DVD players int the key US market by as much as half in an apparent last-ditch effort to save the format, after the above announcement.
At least one analyst, however, said Toshiba had little chance of winning, and its bravado was more likely an attempt to save face and create a better negotiation position for when Sony would offer a pay Toshiba to drop HD DVD.
The advantage of an HD DVD model is that it can play a standard DVD at near high-definition quality, which Blu-ray players cannot do.
With the consumers preferring to wait and see, we shall see a clearer outcome comes June 2008.
