Toshiba Vacillates, Then Kills HD DVD - A Protest is Needed
I am not usually a fan of organized protest, I prefer to do it individually. However, in the case of HD DVD (which I never purchased, and have waited on the sidelines watching), I think an organized form of protest is what is called for.
Whoops, they did it again!
The turnaround this whole story took was ridiculous, and in such a short period of time that one wonders if the ‘fix was in’ well in advance of the pre-holiday blitz last year. I truly feel sorry for the many people who purchased, thinking that the very blitz they participated in was assurance of the survival of the medium. To illustrate further the short time frame here, I know people who received the HD players for Christmas, and are still awaiting their ‘free’ promotional discs!
The real stupidity is the fact that so much R&D was done on the format, and then production ramped up, etc. What a colossal waste! Toshiba should at least continue the standard as a data medium, and give computers a really dense medium for storage. Not one good reason has been given to discontinue the format entirely - it’s just that the ‘big kids’ have taken the ball so the rest can’t play.
LG backed the wrong horse as well!
I have looked at some other sites abroad, and no one seems to be bemoaning the loss. I wonder if the ‘gullible Americans’ were the target of the holiday ‘pump and dump’ alone.
People make the comparison to the demise of Beta format VCRs. The comparison doesn’t hold, however, as Beta was around for years, and even when pre-recorded tapes stopped coming in that format, blank tapes were still available, and so the value of the machine was not lost.
Now Xbox users are getting the flying-fickle-finger-of-fate from Microsoft - Darth Ballmer’s revenge indeed.
Packing all the players on pallets and sending them back to Toshiba Japan would send quite a message, wouldn’t it?
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February 20th, 2008 at 9:11 pm
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