If Ars Technica is right, I think I understand why we saw the rash of announcements last week from Netflix, Best Buy, and Wal-Mart. Toshiba's senior management could recognize the repercussions of Warner's January announcement as well as anyone, and it appears that they started looking at exit strategies back in early January. This Ars article says that Netflix and Wal-Mart knew that Toshiba was working on an exit strategy that minimized their financial losses and was as graceful as possible. They may have chosen to make their announcements to avoid having to wait longer for the format war to end - Netflix would presumably be happy to simplify their disc inventory sooner rather than later, while Wal-Mart (like all retailers) would be happy to reclaim shelf space from a soon-to-be-discontinued format as quickly as possible. And if the endless parade of reports pan out, it looks like their announcements were enough to push Toshiba into faster action.

Even though I've had an HD-DVD player since last June, I'll be happy to see this format war come to a truly definitive conclusion. The alternative (mutual market stagnation, a la DVD-Audio/SACD) isn't really appealing...