Toshiba has finally announced its unconditional surrender and
officially embraced Blu-ray more than a year after the standard was
endorsed by all four major movie studios.
Toshiba was keen on pushing HD-DVD, but Sony's Blu-ray eventually came
out on top in the format war, so it was only a matter of time before it
joined the winners. And Tosh definitely took its time to do so.
The company announced it would start making stand alone Blu-ray players
and PC ODDs by the end of 2009, a year and a half after it had lost the
battle for HD-DVD. Toshiba will also join the Blu-ray Disc Association
(BDA).
Sadly, the U.S.S. Missouri will not be available for the BDA signing ceremony, which will therefore not be held in Tokyo Bay.
However, Toshiba still found a way of making money on the failed format, as Nick reported
here.