Quote:Sources close to the situation have alerted Blu-ray.com that Toshiba is expected announce at a press conference to be held at 5pm (local time) in Tokyo, Japan that they have ended their support of the HD DVD format. Toshiba will announce that effective immediately, production of HD DVD hardware, software, and authoring tools will cease, and that sales and support of existing products will end sometime in March.
As the main supporters of HD DVD, their resignation effectively ends the format war. Blu-ray has won.
Since Warner Brothers' announcement that they would exclusively support the Blu-ray format, rumors have been circulating that HD DVD's lagging sales and loss of studio support would forceToshiba to exit from the high definition format war. The weeks following were riddled with additional studios, retailers, and distributors announcing that they too would support Blu-ray exclusively, concluding with Wal-Mart's announcement last Friday that they would drop support of HD DVD in June.
This information should be considered a rumor until Toshiba makes the official announcement, but our sources have always proven accurate. Once the official announcement is released, we will update this post with any additional information.
