How Toshiba Could Exit with Class

[TheRealBob]

Here's how Toshiba can get out of this mess without looking like a villain:

They should announce that they will continue to support HD DVD plackback on a new, cheap dual-format player they will be releasing, so people will not need to lose the investment in their investments. Also announce they will find ways to license HD DVD playback technology cheaply to third parties so they can add it to their players.

Simultaneously with that, they make it unambiguously clear that HD DVD is done as a living format. Release Paramount, Universal, and anyone else from their contracts and outright ask people to stop making HD DVDs.

This way the format war is over, there are no more victims buying the wrong format, but there is a way for people to preserve their existing HD DVD collections. Some Blu-ray players supporting HD DVD playback would be similar to the way that some DVD players support Video CD playback since that format had some popularity in some areas.

While people have stated "there is no dual-format future" and hinted that the powers-that-be didn't want to see it go that route and put up obstacles to production of cheap combo players, I think a lot of the objections go away once it's bundled with Toshiba killing the HD DVD format. Would Sony or anyone else in the BDA care if Toshiba released a BD player with HD DVD playback capability in that scenario? I can't see why they would.

As for patents, etc., these would essentially be Blu-ray Disc players, so all the normal patents would apply there, and for the HD DVD playback option if the patent holders on that technology were smart they would get a smaller amount of money out of those patents rather than the nothing they'd get otherwise.