While AV Enthusiast announced the death of HD DVD on January 4, 2008 the rest of the internet has just caught on and is reporting the demise of the HD optical format.

 

Early this morning Toshiba officially declared they were cutting their losses and discontinuing their HD DVD business. Toshiba president and CEO Atsutoshi Nishida offered “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. 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.”

 

While a lot of us weren't very happy about Warner Bros. abandoning HD DVD, after that we all knew this was coming sooner or later. It's official, HD DVD is now a footnote.