The world has sat back and watched the developments with the battle between the next big thing in home entertainment technology for some time now.



Buying a DVD player has not been an easy task when the technology giants couldn't assure us if our HD players would be obsolete and taken over by Blu-ray technology at some point in the near future.

The battle is now over with the news that Toshiba have bowed to pressure and intend to stop making their HD DVD players and recorders. This format has lost out to the Blu-ray favoured by US film giants and which is being developed by rival company, Sony.

With no way of winning the competition, Toshiba admitted defeat and are now free to concentrate on other projects. The death blow was dealt when Warner Brothers were the last film makers to make technology news announcements that culminated in the fact that they would only be releasing films in the Blu-ray format, bringing the total film releases on Blu-ray discs to three quarters.

Walt Disney, MGM and 20th Century Fox are all major film makers whose technology news includes the fact they are only producing DVD's in Blu-ray format. This is backed by the fact that the world's largest retailer, Wal-Mart, will only be selling DVD players in the Blu-ray format.

As far as technology news in the UK goes, DSGI, who own the Currys chain of electronic stores, have also joined the crowd by saying they will only be stocking Blu-ray DVD players after the announcement by Toshiba. Panasonic are also advocates of Blu-ray technology as are Samsung, Dell and Apple, putting more weight behind the divide.

Blockbusters and Netflix video rental firms will only be offering Blu-ray films and Universal, Paramount and DreamWorks studios, although already signed up to HD DVD are expected to swap camps.

Now the uncertainty has been done away with, customers are more likely to be flocking to the stores for their latest electronic gadget in the form of a Blu-ray DVD player. It is estimated that one million people already own the HD DVD technology and they will continue to receive technical support from Toshiba after the cut off point at the end of March this year.

This technology news was not expected to go this way by many, including Microsoft, who supply their Xbox with HD DVD drives. They don't believe this will affect them as they rely mostly on games sales as opposed to the use of their machines as DVD players.

Sony, understandably, are very upbeat about this news. They expect around 600,000 players to be flying off the shelves in US stores this year and have been able to knock $100 off the price of players thanks to the decision.

In a gracious move, they concede that the win was more attributable to high profile films being released on Blu-ray and not to the competition they posed to Toshiba's HD DVD format.Of the 20 top films due for DVD release, around 15 of them were set to be on Blu-ray.