According to multiple sources around the Internet, Toshiba has officially pulled the plug on its HD-DVD disc format program.

Now, here’s my little take on the so-called “format wars.”  I’ve always been one to advocate competition in the marketplace and I personally think that the competition between team Sony and team Toshiba has helped to improve both formats.  The downside to this competition that’s been occurring for a couple years now is the pressure of choice upon the consumers.  For average entertainment consumers, its hard to decide between the two; Sony has flaunted its full high definition 1080p resolutions, whereas HD-DVD has equal resolutions itself.  Blu-ray discs themselves support 25 gigabytes per layer (50 gigabytes for a dual-layer disc, concurrently) and HD-DVD discs support 15 gigabytes per layer, 30 gigabytes maximum.  Now, the format wars aren’t simply about disc storage space although more space leads to more area to store digital media, thus less need for compression and higher resolutions, although both discs support 1080p so I would assume that the qualities would be equal when compared.

As the “war” has progressed, however, the formats have evolved in attempt to one-up each other, including Sony’s revision 2.0 of their Blu-ray format already.  Although Sony’s most recent addition to Blu-ray is their “BD-Live” system, where you can connect your player to the Internet to pull live, streaming and interactive content from the Web, adding some handy interactivity and value to the already expansive library of titles.

While its unfortunate to see Toshiba just call it quits on their program, and regardless if they’re still going to sell HD-DVD machines and support the already adapted consumers, it will definitely make it easy for the consumer in the end.  The still common DVD format will probably be supported and embraced for years to come, but I can’t imagine what the market would be like if there was more competition over simple formats.  Oh wait, we already have, and it wasn’t pretty.