I don't care enough about dead celebrities to read those creepy "touching last moments" articles in the supermarket tabloids, but for a tech nerd like myself, recounting the rise and fall of an entire media format is like a trip to Six Flags with a backpack full of fireworks. So, enjoy this trip down memory lane…unless you're Toshiba, in which case you should probably just have a beer or something.
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February 2002, the Blu-ray Disc Association is formed and the Blu-ray format is announced to the public. Early adopters get psyched.
April 2002 The DVD Forum, which is led by Toshiba,announces that it wants no part of BD and will be pursuing its own blue-laser high-definition solution.
August 2002 Toshiba and NEC announce the Advanced Optical Disc which would later be named HD-DVD. The format war officially begins.
February 2005 In an attempt to avoid a costly format war, the Blu-ray Disc Association and DVD Forum started peace talks to see if they could avoid a lengthy mud-slinging contest.
April 2005 The peace talks fail miserably and Sony says GFY.
May 2005 Toshiba president Tadashi Okamura says "the market would not allow" two types of HD media to exist on the market. Boy was he right.
September 2005 Toshiba delays the release of their first stand-alone HD-DVD players for the first of many times. HD movie junkies start saying "uh oh."
January 2006 The HD-DVD player for the Xbox 360 is unofficially let out of the bag during a CES keynote. Rumors fly around the internet like naked pictures of a girl from High School Musical.
March 2006 Toshiba delays their HD-A1 and HD-XA1 because there are no movies available to watch on them. Gadget nerds slap their heads in disgust, continue watchint their old DVDs.
March 31, 2006 Toshiba finally releases their first HD DVD player in Japan for about $1,000.
April 18, 2006 HD-DVD officially comes to the states with two players priced at $500 and $800. They don't exactly fly off the shelves.
April 18, 2006 The first HD DVD titles are released. They include The Last Samurai, Million Dollar Baby, The Phantom of the Opera and Serenity. Meh.
May 8, 2006 The Xbox 360 HD-DVD add-on gets official at E3. Lots of internet big-mouths claim that they know for a fact that there will eventually be a built-in HD-DVD drive for the 360.
May 9, 2006 - The first SD/HD-DVD hybrid disc is Warner's ultra-crappy chick flick, Rumor Has It. It won't be the last time Warner drops a huge crappy bomb on HD-DVD.
November 7, 2006 The HD-DVD drive for Xbox 360 hits store shelves with a copy of the Peter Jackson suckfest, King Kong in tow.
November 11, 2006 The PS3 hits, cramming Blu-ray down the throats of gamers everywhere. Since there are no decent PS3 games yet, many people try out Blu-ray movies to justify their huge console purchase.
December 2006 The second generation Toshiba HD-A2 goes on sale in the US for $500. That also sits on shelves.
January 2007 By now most porn companies have chosen HD-DVD. Many people declare HD-DVD the immediate winner because many people have never heard of Internet porn.
Feb 2007 Sony makes an official statement declaring themselves the winners of the format war. Everyone ignores it. Maybe they saved it, though. It could come in handy now.
Feb 28, 2007 The 51 GB, triple layer HD-DVD disc finalized. Too bad it never actually materialized to save the format like it was supposed to.
Apr 18, 2007 Toshiba announces that 100,000 stand alone players have been sold in North America. Regular old DVD sits back and snickers.
May 1, 2007 Someone cracks the AACS processiong key number, which would potentially allow people to make copies of HD-DVD movies. It gets posted on Digg.com, then removed causing the Internets to explode and Digg.com to break into a full scale internet riot.
October 2007 HD-DVD players hit $200 and sometimes even $100 at big box retailers. Finally, something is flying off of a freakin' shelf.
November 7, 2007 90,000 HD-DVD players are sold in one weekend making things look a heck of a lot brighter in Toshibaland.
January 4, 2008 Just before the kick off of CES 2008, Warner Bros. announces that it's dropping HD-DVD for Blu-ray. It hits the red format like a kick in the balls. Many people declare the war finally over. They're right.
January 7, 2008 Toshiba Cancels their press conference at CES to pout in their booth.
February 11, 2008 Netflix and Best Buy jump on board the Bluray express, leaving little room for nails in HD-DVD's coffin.
February 15, 2008 Walmart says buh-bye to HD-DVD. Ouch.
February 19, 2008 Toshiba kills HD-DVD at a press conference in Japan.
The future: Some people will continue buying HD-DVD players because they don't keep up on technology. They will be extremely mad. After next month there will be no more titles and no more players released. Sony will never shut the hell up about it until someone reminds them of Minidisc. Now we're never getting rid of the stupid UMD. So, this has been your life HD-DVD. There have been some ups and some downs, but you made a good run. To be honest, I was kind of rooting for you, but it wasn't meant to be. Now if you'll excuse me, I think it's finally time for me to go out and buy a PS3.
P.S. Thanks to Wikipedia, Gizmodo, Engadget, ArsTechnica and all the other blogs that have kept us painfully informed about this whole silly ordeal. Without you guys, I would've had to do some real research to put this thing together.
