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Toshiba throws in the HD DVD towel, future of HD Star Trek unknown |
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Written by Derek Kessler on
Tuesday, 19 February 2008
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 HD DVD suffered too many losses in the past few weeks. The Toshiba-backed HD disc format was dropped by Netflix and Wal-Mart and pushed to the back of the store at Best Buy. Combined with slumping sales after the loss of Warner Bros' support, HD DVD has been on its knees for some time now. Toshiba finally announced that it is shutting down its HD DVD production lines, marking the end of the HD format war that has waged for the past few years.
Unfortunately for Star Trek fans, Paramount was one of the last remaining supporters of HD DVD, going so far as to release Star Trek Remastered exclusively on HD DVD. While the HD DVD sets did come with DVD discs that will play in the dominant Blu-Ray format players, though not in true high definition, the future of Star Trek on HD is up in the air. Paramount was not returning any calls about HD DVD today, as they are understandably scrambling to get agreements into place for Blu-Ray releases.
Also in question is the future of Star Trek Remastered, as Toshiba reportedly financed the HD DVD production of TOS-R. Work on the remastering will continue and we'll still be able to see season 2 in syndication, but whether we'll see any of it on Blu-Ray is another question.
However, with the format war now over, the chances of us seeing more Star Trek in HD have risen dramatically today. Paramount would no longer be risking anything by putting them out on the official winning format. Already prepared for high definition relases are the first two seasons of Star Trek Remastered, Star Trek: Enterprise (which airs in HD on HDNet), and all ten Star Trek movies, with ST09 presumably to be released soon after. Releasing older Trek on Blu-Ray would certainly serve to promote interest in the franchise leading up to the May 2009 release of the new film.
Now it's time for the casualty report. Hung out to dry are 1.3 million customers worldwide who own HD DVD players, compared to the 10 million that own Blu-Ray (both figures include game consoles like the XBox 360 and Playstation 3), with losses approaching $1 billion when HD DVD title sales are added in.
Discuss: TrekUnited Forum
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"Jim .... your name is Jim."
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