Engadget Japan live-blogged the official announcement by Toshiba president Nishida-san that Toshiba is discontinuing HD-DVD and ceding the format war to Blu-ray. Some interesgting tidbits from the Q&A following the announcement:
Q: Any plans to adopt Blu-ray?
A: No plans at all, not at this moment.Q: How many HD DVD players and recorders, exactly, did you sell?
A: 600,000 players in the US — 300,000 of which were Xbox 360 HD DVD drives. 100,000 units were sold in Europe. And about 10,000 players and 20,000 recorders in Japan. So about 730,000 units worldwide.
Nishida-san did say that Toshiba would stockpile HD-DVD media and sell them online for use by owners of HD-DVD recorders. Also, Toshiba will “continue to assess the position of notebook PCs with integrated HD DVD drives.”
The full press release with more details is available here.
I’e still got my eye on the Toshiba HD players at Amazon. I’m tempted to buy the 1080i player (HD-A3) right now for $117. Or should I wait until the price on the 1080p one (HD-A30) starts to drop? Any thoughts?