On Tuesday, Toshiba announced that they were pulling the plug on their HD DVD player production, and thus the high-def disc format war has ended. The remainder of the week had other companies announcing their HD DVD plans. I’ve already posted about Universal and Paramount, and here are a few more items that bubbled through in just the last couple of days.

Not that it applies to very many consumers since so few HD DVD units were ever sold in Japan, but Japanese retailer Edion has a plan where you can trade in your HD DVD player for a BD unit and pay the difference, or get back money if your trade was worth more than the BD player. Link.

Meanwhile, in Texas, Bjorn’s is giving customers who purchased HD DVD players a store credit towards purchasing a Blu-ray unit if they return the HD DVD player and any free movies it included. Link.

While we’re on the subject of trade-ins, HDScape has two deals for HD DVD owners. The maker of scenic, aquarium, and fireplace videos is offering a $40 bundle of their 8 titles. If you already own an HDScape video and are switching to Blu-ray, they have an $11.95 upgrade plan. Link.

Onkyo, who sold a souped up XA-2, will exit the HD DVD business, just as Toshiba has done. While I’m sure Onkyo only expected to sell a relatively small quantity of high-end machines in the first place, it’s gotta hurt more for Venturer who came in at the low-end only to be outpriced by Toshiba almost immediately.

Unlike the Onkyo and Venturer units, Microsoft’s Xbox 360 HD DVD add-on player was a major force in the HD DVD camp. Following a price cut to $129 just a few weeks ago, it’s strongly rumored that this player will now go on sale for as little as $50. Link.

Other items that came up in the news are the expected commentary from various corners about the end of the format war. I’m looking forward to stories from insiders who might help to explain things that what we observed from the outside, and never received good explanations for.

Many sites unfamiliar with the high-def disc formats are reporting that Amazon’s 30%-50% off sale is part of a clearance on HD DVD. The fact is that Amazon always sold HD DVD (and Blu-ray) titles for at least 30% off, and their 50% off sale has been going on since before Toshiba’s announcement about halting HD DVD production. For example, this important looking Canadian site is reporting that Amazon’s got a fire sale on movies, and I’m sure you’ve seen this kind of ignorant talk elsewhere.

Why the lack of arson on movies? Retailers aren’t in a hurry to clear out movies since there’s a renewed demand for them from people who want to get the titles before they’re completely out of print.

Also, put yourself in the retailer’s position. Why sell a $30 item for $10 when there are still people willing to pay $20 or $25 for it? The nature of liquidations is that the price only gets drastically lowered as demand for the product at a higher price fades. Consequently, we see huge discounts right now on players. It’ll be a little while before the huge discounts come to movies. The risk one takes for waiting it out is that there will be fewer movies to pick from later on.

It’s much easier to find used movies on sale. For example, stores like FYE and Hollywood Video are likely to have some appealing prices, and there are the hundreds of sellers on eBay.

Some of you are not planning on increasing your HD DVD libraries, while others want to make sure they get their copy of certain titles before those movies are gone for good. Going into this first weekend of the fall-out from Tuesday’s big HD DVD discontinuation announcement, we see that the usual places are still running many of their big sales that started earlier in the month:

• Hollywood Video rental stores should be selling their used HD DVD movies at $10 each, if they haven’t already started

Apparently, some HV stores are actually franchisees and this 2 for $20 plan may only be happening at the corporate-owned stores. Bug the store manager if the sale hasn’t started, he/she probably needs to check their email or make a phone call to confirm.

• 50% off on 98 HD DVD titles at Barnes & Noble, even more off with membership
• 50% off sale at Amazon.com on 150 titles
• 33 Warner titles for up to 57% off at Amazon.com
• Movies under $16 (some are $11 and many are $12.20) at DeepDiscount.com
• Tower has movies at around 50% off.
• Fry’s Electronics has many HD DVD titles for $15.

The specific offer may differ at the stores in your area.

• Planet Earth HD DVD Set $50 off at $29.95 from DiscoveryStore.com!

(Add to your cart and see the discount there) This is the version that was broadcast in the USA with Sigourney Weaver narrating. It’s not as highly regarded as the original BBC version that’s closer to $55, but some people do like this one.

By the way, if you’re aware of sales at European sites or stores, please feel free to share about them in the comments or email me. I’ve heard that Amazon’s German site has a promotion on HD DVD titles which might be a little closer to the “fire sale” description if your native currency is Euros. There are many titles which were Blu-ray exclusive in the USA, but available on HD DVD over in Europe, so many people over here are interested in keeping up with this kind of information.

Paramount made a surprise announcement about their plans to stick with HD DVD. Well, not quite, but they did say they’d start up the Blu factories again. The surprise was that they waited so long to follow in Universal’s lead and declare their intentions to put movies out on Blu-ray.

While Universal’s statement came out pretty much first thing in the morning after Toshiba’s announcement, the only news out of Paramount was about their upcoming HD DVD releases of There Will Be Blood on April 8, and Sweeney Todd on April 1.

Paramount’s statement is very brief, as was Universal’s, and essentially states that, having a single format is better in the end, and “we will monitor consumer adoption and determine our release plans accordingly.” Just as it was a no brainer that all of the Warner-related companies would follow suit with Warner, DreamWorks is part of the Paramount family, so it’s safe to assume that this announcement applies to them as well.

Blu peeps are probably wondering when they can expect to see the first Universal, Paramount and DreamWorks titles, while the HD DVD bunch wonders how many more titles they can expect from these studios.

Warner has stated that they’ll be sticking to their original plans of releasing movies on HD DVD through May (actually a few weeks into June). It’s possible that Universal and Paramount might do something similar.

Considering that the release slates from these companies didn’t really extend too far out past April and May, it doesn’t sound like a major shift in planning for any of the major studios to stop putting out new or catalog titles around June.

You can read all about it at the Hollywood Reporter:

• Paramount seals Blu-ray sweep – Hollywood Reporter

Detractors have called just about any sale on HD DVD a fire sale, and their wishful thinking has finally paid off. The first day after Toshiba’s announcement about the discontinuation of HD DVD players sees a few stores begin the true fire sales on the product.

From FormatWarCentral.com, we hear that Costco is selling the HD-D3 for $79. This is the warehouse store version of the HD-A3, and includes an HDMI cable whereas the A3 does not. It still comes with two free movies in the box. Meanwhile, Circuit City is selling the HD-A3 for $99. Surprisingly, Amazon is selling the player for $109 and doesn’t seem to have the same kind of urgency in clearing their inventory, but that could always change as it has for the European Amazon stores.

Since the theme is to move the players out, it should not be as much of a surprise that GameStop is no longer accepting the 360’s HD DVD add-on drive for trade-in. They usually take in your old gear, games, and movies, but they’re not going to be doing that for the 360’s HD DVD add-on drive. The drive was recently reduced to $129, and I’m sure the pricing will get even lower pretty quickly.

Movies haven’t gone on big sales yet, and I’m thinking that’s because there’s still some kind of market for those. Whether you buy a new player cheap, a used player, or are keeping your machine around, it’s only useful if you’re watching movies on it. The movie clearances will probably come after the last of the new HD DVD players is off the shelves in March, but by that time, it’s also quite possible that all of the popular titles will be sold out. Most of the sales mentioned in last Friday’s post are still going on, and that may be your best bet to guarantee you get the movies you absolutely always wanted.

Important: If you’re buying a NEW player or bought a player recently, then don’t forget that the “5 Free Movies” mail-in rebate ends on February 28. In order to take advantage of the rebate, you simply need to have a receipt that shows a purchase made by Feb. 28. You have until March 31 to mail the paperwork in, but it’s probably a good idea to mail it in as soon as possible.

Toshiba will cease developing and marketing HD DVD players and recorders, and their HD DVD business will be over by the end of March — that’s the announcement that Toshiba’s president Atsutoshi Nishida made at a press conference that HD DVD fans were hoping would only come in around 10 years or more.

A press release (listed below) came out at about the same time as the announcement, and thanks to Engadget’s live blogging from Tokyo, we know at least the following was also discussed at Q&A session after the announcement:

• Sales numbers going into December were strong, and they were extremely surprised by Warner’s CES announcement
• No immediate plans to make Blu-ray machines
• Nothing to announce about any other next-gen optical discs at this time
• About 730,000 units were sold worldwide, 600K of them in the US and 100K in Europe

This number was corrected after the press conference to 1.3 million: 600K standalones and 300K Xbox 360 add-ons in the USA, and 300K PCs worldwide with HD DVD.

You can read more of the Q&A directly at Engadget’s report.

Here’s the official press release:

Toshiba Announces Discontinuation of HD DVD Businesses

19 February, 2008

Company Remains Focused on Championing Consumer Access to High Definition Content

TOKYO–Toshiba Corporation today announced that it has undertaken a thorough review of its overall strategy for HD DVD and has decided it will no longer develop, manufacture and market HD DVD players and recorders. This decision has been made following recent major changes in the market. Toshiba will continue, however, to provide full product support and after-sales service for all owners of Toshiba HD DVD products.

HD DVD was developed to offer consumers access at an affordable price to high-quality, high definition content and prepare them for the digital convergence of tomorrow where the fusion of consumer electronics and IT will continue to progress.

“We carefully assessed the long-term impact of continuing the so-called ‘next-generation format war’ and concluded that a swift decision will best help the market develop,” said Atsutoshi Nishida, President and CEO of Toshiba Corporation. “While we are disappointed for the company and more importantly, for the consumer, the real mass market opportunity for high definition content remains untapped and Toshiba is both able and determined to use our talent, technology and intellectual property to make digital convergence a reality.”

Toshiba will continue to lead innovation, in a wide range of technologies that will drive mass market access to high definition content. These include high capacity NAND flash memory, small form factor hard disk drives, next generation CPUs, visual processing, and wireless and encryption technologies. The company expects to make forthcoming announcements around strategic progress in these convergence technologies.

Toshiba will begin to reduce shipments of HD DVD players and recorders to retail channels, aiming for cessation of these businesses by the end of March 2008. Toshiba also plans to end volume production of HD DVD disk drives for such applications as PCs and games in the same timeframe, yet will continue to make efforts to meet customer requirements. The company will continue to assess the position of notebook PCs with integrated HD DVD drives within the overall PC business relative to future market demand.

This decision will not impact on Toshiba’s commitment to standard DVD, and the company will continue to market conventional DVD players and recorders. Toshiba intends to continue to contribute to the development of the DVD industry, as a member of the DVD Forum, an international organization with some 200 member companies, committed to the discussion and defining of optimum optical disc formats for the consumer and the related industries.

Toshiba also intends to maintain collaborative relations with the companies who joined with Toshiba in working to build up the HD DVD market, including Universal Studios, Paramount Pictures, and DreamWorks Animation and major Japanese and European content providers on the entertainment side, as well as leaders in the IT industry, including Microsoft, Intel, and HP. Toshiba will study possible collaboration with these companies for future business opportunities, utilizing the many assets generated through the development of HD DVD.

It’s likely that we’ll be hearing from the other HD DVD related companies pretty quickly. I’m sure we all want to know how Universal, Paramount, and DreamWorks movies will be released or phased out, and Blu-ray owners are probably interested in finding out when they can look forward to movies from these studios on their format.

Microsoft already made a statement about the exit of HD DVD not necessarily being significant for the Xbox since no games ever relied on the technology, but I’m sure people will be curious about what to expect in the immediate future for the 360’s HD DVD add-on drive.

We’ll also want to hear from retailers about how they’re going to be phasing out HD DVD from their shelves. It will be especially important to learn about how the movies will be handled. Will they continue to be stocked and sold (at least online) until everything runs out, and beyond this end-of-March date that Toshiba has set for their own HD DVD cessation?

The weeks ahead will probably bring out more stories (or theories) about how things really went down behind the scenes with the various companies inside and outside the HD DVD camp, and some of those will be interesting to read.

We’re still planning on being around at this site for a while, though there’s obviously going to be less to cover in the HD DVD world. There’ll be those insider stories, for example, and probably some useful information about different kinds of sales.

UPDATE: The first of Toshiba responses from outside of Tokyo comes from Olivier van Wynendaele in Europe. Nothing significantly new in his remarks, but you might want to read them over at WHAT HI*FI. He mentions that Toshiba will continue to support their existing customers in terms of servicing the players both in hardware and firmware. He also spoke to Pocket-Lint.co.uk, and you might want to read that just to get van Wynendaele’s whole story for the day.

UPDATE: As people start getting to their offices in the US, we now have a little report from UPI about Toshiba’s Yoshi Uchiyama, group VP of the digital A/V marketing group reiterating the news from Japan, “recent market developments have led us to the decision to choose new and different paths.”

UPDATE: It’s starting to be time for people in Hollywood to get to their offices this morning, and we now have quick word via High-Def Digest that Universal has announced that they will be releasing titles on Blu-ray. Craig Kornblau, President of Universal Studios Home Entertainment said, “While Universal values the close partnership we have shared with Toshiba, it is time to turn our focus to releasing new and catalog titles on Blu-ray.”

UPDATE: British site, Pocket-Lint is reporting that LG wants to continue their dual-format efforts, despite Toshiba’s exit from the HD DVD scene. I’m sure they’ll reconsider in another month, but you can read more about it over at Pocket-Lint.co.uk.

UPDATE: In an unexpected act of compassion, Warner says they have no change in plans after Toshiba’s announcement. This means they’ll go right on ahead with their scheduled releases including I Am Legend and Twister. The same article over at Video Business also quotes a Blockbuster spokeswoman saying they’ll keep carrying HD DVD titles “so long as there’s demand.” I’m not sure if that really means much considering they only carried them in a few stores, but it might be good news if it carries over to the online operation since we already know Netflix is bailing.

There is no big news for Monday in terms of HD DVD developments. Toshiba mainly put out a terse statement indicating that they’re evaluating their options, but not confirming any news that came out of Japan on Friday.

I’m sure fans and detractors alike would much rather that Toshiba come out with a comprehensive statement that answers as many questions as possible about what’s happening next. But if you think about it, it’s pretty logical that an explanation this big doesn’t just come out in the matter of a few hours.

Toshiba’s decision has an impact on several business partners, and I bet that delays in any formal announcements are probably waiting on getting some sort of coordination between all of those companies.

It’s not like all of these companies combined only spent $10 over the last few years on the effort (although it might feel that way now). They put a ton more than that into it, and you don’t just walk away in an instant. There are lots of matters that need to be resolved.

Perhaps there will a joint announcement involving multiple companies. Or maybe each one will make separate statements on the same day. Who knows? I’m sure something more substantial is coming along, we just have to be patient.

Meanwhile, the slower parts of the web are only now getting their first dose of news about various events that happened last week. Unfortunately, your quest for real news is going to be muddled by these slowpokes.

A good way to get the very latest news is to visit the major gadget sites like Engadget.com and Gizmodo.com. These guys are big enough that they probably get direct phone calls when news like this goes down. Another way is to track messages at forums like the AVS Forum or at High-Def Digest (and numerous others), but this can be tedious.

One way to make it more convenient is to subscribe via an RSS feed. Most sites, even the forums, have an RSS feed of some sort. This means that you don’t have to visit the site when it has a new article, instead that article will get delivered into your RSS reader’s equivalent of an inbox. It’s like email, but for websites. You just check this “inbox” instead of all of those individual sites, what could be easier?

Google has a great RSS reader, and you can also subscribe to RSS feeds via the latest Outlook and many other programs.

• What Is RSS?
• More about RSS and Google Reader
• RSS feed for HDDVD.com

Regarding advice about your HD future, it’s one thing when someone is speaking from their own experience, and a whole other matter when people are just pulling ideas out of their butts. It’s quite common for the advice from this latter group to completely disregard your actual investment in an HD DVD player and movies. Since it’s not their money, they’ll offer advice such as “Sell it all on eBay.”

You should do what you’re most comfortable with, but I want to present an explanation why selling it all off may not be your best option. I’m not saying it makes absolutely zero sense, but just that you should consider a few things about this course of action. (more…)

Second-guessers are defined as people who come up with explanations based totally on the benefit of hindsight. In other words, they already know what the outcome is, and they have a field day coming up with lots of theories and explanations as to how that outcome could have been avoided.

“Monday morning quarterbacks” (named after people who talk about the football games played on Sunday) can take comfort in the fact that their theories will never get to be tested. In fact, this lack of accountability probably allows many of the theories to get as wacky as possible.

We can usually put up with reasonable theories, but the second-guessers with the most complicated or outlandish theories tend to get annoying. Even more so if theories are based on just the tiniest bit of ignorance about the subject matter.

This theory talk reminds me of Occam’s Razor, a principle stating that the most plausible explanation is the least complicated one — the one that asks you to make the fewest assumptions. For example, if only two factors are required for a certain thing to occur, then that’s all a theory needs to contain. While a third or fourth factor might contribute, if they’re not essential, then you leave them out. I’m sure someone might have another way to put it, but I hope you get the general idea.

We’re heading into a period where at least half or more of the population of high-def format war participants are about to offer their explanations about the current state of affairs for HD DVD. Some will attribute it all to one company like Microsoft, Toshiba, or Sony, while other theories may implicate a group, or an entire industry.

I’m not much for second-guessing. Sure, I might have a few ideas and could talk up a storm about who could have done what, but we have no choice but to live in the present and deal with situations as they come up. Each one of has our own capacity to deal with various challenges, and we react accordingly.

Having said all that…

The latest news from Japanese broadcaster NHK is that the Toshiba HD DVD mothership is suspending production. Conveniently, or not, this news came out on a Friday which means that there’s unlikely to be any official word from either the Japanese or other offices until Monday.

That leaves all weekend for plenty of speculation and second guessing of the highest quality.

I’m going to redirect your discussion desire to the forums at High-Def Digest:

• High-Def Digest forums

While this week has had its share of bad news from some corners, it turns out that the last few weeks have been a really wonderful time for many HD DVD owners looking to build their libraries.

It had been reported in a few places that Planet Earth was out of print, which led some people to entertain discussions about Warner (who distributes the title for the BBC here) and format support. Checking this morning, it’s back in stock at Amazon for $55, right through Amazon itself and not one of their associated vendors.

Here’s a look at some of the deals that are currently available. Many of these are continuations from earlier in the week. The anti people will say some of these are fire sales. In truth, Amazon’s “Buy 2 Get a Third” sale, for example, is happening on both high-def formats, with a few more titles on Blu.

Without further ado, here’s what you can look forward to over this weekend:

• 50% off HD DVD at Barnes & Noble, even more off with membership.

A little birdie tells me that using code Y4R4K7D might save an additional 25% on a single item

• 50% off sale at Amazon.com

Don’t forget to also see if something interests you in the buy-2-get-1 free offer

• Amazon Buy 2 Get the Third Free

This one can get confusing because of the 50% off sale that’s also going on. Your cart might become a confusing mess of discounts, consider placing separate orders.

• Buy One Get One Free at Best Buy from Feb 10 to Feb 16

The trick appears to be to have them ring up the cheaper movie first

• Movies under $16 (some are $11 and many are $12.20) at DeepDiscount.com
• Tower has 52% off too, but the movies are not listed in any friendly order