Toshiba has announced after a major review that the development and manufacture of Toshiba HD DVD products will be discontinued by the end of March 2008. This decision has followed Warner home video back in January to cancel the production of HD DVD and move exclusively to Blu-ray disc for all High Definition content. Toshiba will still continue to provide full product support and after sales support to customers who have invested in Toshiba's HD DVD products.

In a press release yesterday, Atsutoshi Nishida, President and CEO of Toshiba Corporation said “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”. Nishida was disappointed for the company and the impact it will have on consumers but also said “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.”

Toshiba are now developing a new wide range of technologies to fill the hole HD DVD has left that will drive the market to high definition content.These include high capacity NAND flash memory, small form factor hard drives, next-gen CPUs.

This annoucement has delt another major blow to HD DVD in the High Definition format war against Blu-ray, but will this sliding decline for HD DVD leave the door wide open for Blu-ray disc to take the market? Only time will tell.