Now that the war is over, you may be wondering what the future will hold for Toshiba. You may not, too, but yesterday at the local press event for HD DVD’s demise, Toshiba’s Australian General Manager Mark Whittard dropped some pretty big hints as to which direction Toshiba will be looking to move post-HD DVD. And as you could imagine, it isn’t Blu-ray.
He cited that one of the major influences in Toshiba’s decision to pull the plug, outside of Warner and Walmart’s decision to turn their backs on the format, was the rapidly growing demand for downloadable entertainment. The market for online content was growing faster than Toshiba had expected, and had severely reduced the lifespan of both next-gen disc formats.