Friday, February 15th 2008 is the day that will live in infamy. Or maybe we'll have forgotten all about it by this time next week: Wal-Mart announced their decision to stop carrying HD DVD Players. The following has been posted on Wikipedia's HD-DVD page:
On 15 February 2008, WalMart and Sam's Club have announced that they are phasing HD DVD out completely by June 2008, thus supporting Blu-ray Disc exclusively. Customers are expected to see more pre-dominant move towards Blu-ray Disc in less than thirty days.
On 11 February 2008, Best Buy has announced that beginning March 2008, they will take a step forward in addressing consumer confusion about high-definition formats by recommending Blu-ray Disc as the customer's digital format choice, then Netflix announced they are to offer high-definition Blu-ray Disc exclusively and dropped HD DVD support. They plan to stock no more HD DVD once its lifecycle has ended.
So, what can all those people who invested up to $800 back in 2006 for a HD-DVD Player expect over the next year or so, especially considering the lost support of some of the largest movie studios in Hollywood? Not much, apparently.
I'm reminded of the old Laserdisc's. When I was a wee lad of 19, I was employed at an appliance store that sold home theater systems. I remember the day that the movie Stargate was released on Laserdisk, my boss made a round trip of 120+ miles to Memphis Tennessee to pick up a copy to display on the stores very own Laserdisk player. The disk itself was a bit larger than a phonograph record and I remember a salesperson warning me about the corrosive effects of the acid from my fingerprints on the surface of the disk itself. For some reason only the store manager was allowed to remove the disk and replace it with another. Perhaps it was not so much it's formidable price, but the scarcity of the disks that made the whole process seem more like a high priest's ritualistic homage to an electronic god than your average homeowner loading his or her favorite movie into a very large video player.
The whole point that I am trying to make here is that by the time that the kids of that generation reached the point in their lives that they were considering their own home theater systems, Laserdisk had gone the way of the betamax. Mention them to someone who is now 19 and you'll only receive a blank stare in return, followed quickly by skepticism and scorn. They are barely remembered at all. That was of course the year that the DVD was introduced to the US and within months the DVD players were stocked at our local Wal-Mart and the movies were available at Hastings. Everyone was screaming that it was the end of the VCR. VHS tapes were slowly finding themselves replaced on the shelves of video rental stores everywhere. Experts were predicting the end of VHS within a few years. All of this supposed turmoil never really killed off the VCR, however the Laserdisk was gone with barely a whimper whilst the VHS is still available more than a decade later and DVD/VCR combos are a popular option for many customers.
While the media and techno heads are often comparing the HD format wars to the BetaMax vs. VHS fiasco I prefer to think of it as the Laserdisk vs. DVD incident. I predict that in 10 years as we're looking back on the early 2000's, someone will say, "Remember those old HD DVDs?" and some young kid will turn with a blank look in his eyes and say something supremely wise and intelligent like: "Huh?"