KEY POINTS:
I'm hanging out in Britain for a few days, where there are still HD-DVD players and discs on sale in electronics stores but the British press seems to be unanimously welcoming the DVD format's demise.
As the Times reports, around 50,000 HD-DVD players are believed to have
been sold in the United Kingdom though there will be fire sales at the likes of Woolworths in the next few weeks as the retailer phases out HD-DVD sales completely.
Stand-alone HD-DVD players have been selling for as low as around 150 quid and for a fledgling technology you can't really knock the library of films the Toshiba camp made available - 800 titles in all.
PC World has a time-line detailing the eight year battle for dominance in the high-definition DVD format war.
What brought the HD-DVD - Blu-ray war to a close so quickly was Microsoft's decision not to build the high-definition player into the Xbox 360 and Xbox Elite consoles. It instead opted to release a separate box, which plugged into the main console via USB and did a decent job of playing high-definition discs. But it made for an ugly set-up in the lounge and when the black Elite console arrived, the lack of an inbuilt player just highlighted Microsoft's lack of confidence in the technology.
While the rot really started to set in with HD-DVD when the Hollywood studios started to turn their backs on it, the real damage was done by that massive player in the home entertainment market, Microsoft, deciding not to throw everything behind HD-DVD.
Now hundreds of thousands of consumers but probably only a few hundred in New Zealand (the attach rate for HD-DVD drives to Xbox consoles is very low) are left with obsolete technology. Microsoft will need a new console this year and the HD-DVD capitulation is a good excuse to overhaul the Xbox adding Blu-ray drive and making the Xbox software interface slicker.
Sony in the meantime has a huge advantage to drive home with its PS3 console while Microsoft gets its act together. After all, who is really going to want to buy an Xbox console that doesn't have a Blu-ray player in it? It's that simple really.
No wonder the Xbox 360 HD-DVD drives on Trade Me aren't racking up the bids!
