I saw that this morning, too, along with some rumors that Toshiba had secret plans to release one or two Blu-ray players as soon as late summer. Toss in the announcements from Netflix and Best Buy this week, and things certainly are staying interesting. Digital Bits also mentioned rumors that Paramount might resume Blu-ray support around late March or late April. While I'd love to see a definitive resolution of some sort to the war, I'm not ready to put too much stock in anything until I see something official from Toshiba, Paramount, or Universal.

Another mention of Toshiba dropping HD DVD:

http://www.highdefdigest.com/news/show/Toshiba/Report:_Toshiba_to_Drop_HD_DVD/1468

Just my .02 cents:

The sooner this is over, the better. Not just for the movies, but also for the price of Blu-Ray software and hardware. I would love to be able to adopt Blu-Ray as an archival format over regular DVD-R discs. With the format war nonsense over, I really think we'll start seeing more uses of the discs beyond HD movies and better, competitive prices for the hardware.

While one format war (Blu-Ray vs HD-DVD) may be ending, I suspect the next one (disc vs. digital delivery) is just starting.

plus once HD DVD is gone from the market.. then the makers of Blu Ray players don't have to compete with another format... so the prices will drop more slowly.

there will still be competition from other makers of the players.. but that is way less then competeing with another format.

It took DVD player a good what 7 or 8 years before they started to bottom out on price. Of course I'd never buy a $39 dvd player and expect it to work well for several years or to even look that good.

From here on out.. players will probably get less expensive, but also the build quality will go way down. Using less and less expensive and good chip sets, components and parts.

Now that this war appears to be almost over, can someone point me to a list of the current line up of 1.3 Blu-Ray players that pass DTS HD MA and Dolby True HD?

Best,

- VD

you need a player that has HDMI or 5.1 channel analog outputs to pass along those DTS HD and True DD. If you use an optical cable or coax it will only be regular DD and regular DTS. not the high def versions of those.

Panasonic BD30 will do this and is Profile 1.1. The BD50 will also do it and will be Profile 2.0 when it is released later this year. The Pioneer BDP95 will do it, and I think it's Profile 1.1. I think the Samsung 1200 will do it (Profile 1.0). I believe that Sony's BDP-S500 will also, at least for TrueHD and DTS-HD HR (although for some reason it may not pass DTS-HD MA, if one site I looked at is correct).

Here's another report from NHK in Japan on Toshiba's exit from HD-DVD, followed by a separate Reuters story with informal confirmation from a source within Toshiba.

http://www.reuters.com/article/companyNewsAndPR/idUSL1627196120080216

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080216/bs_nm/toshiba_hd_dvd_dc_1

It looks like next week may see some interesting official announcements.