Samsung -- Not Toshiba -- Killed HD DVD

[Anthony P]

While Toshiba by many accounts wanted to give it more time, they couldn't possibly have been so blind that they didn't see that unless there was a big turnaround they'd have to cut their losses at some point.

I also didn't say that Samsung was the only one who could decide. It just appears from what we're hearing that they decided they wanted out of HD DVD, and that suddenly made Toshiba's position much worse if they wanted to continue, so that ended up being the catalyst to Toshiba deciding to discontinue HD DVD before they had planned to consider doing so.

Despite finding this news interesting enough to highlight in this thread, the bottom line is I actually don't really care all that much who made the final decision to kill HD DVD, as long as someone did. I don't know why I've allowed myself to get pulled into this debate, so feel free to have the final word if you'd like.

and I did not say that 51% makes you the master. All I said is that the article you quoted (and your title) makes no sense in the real world and that there is no way Samsung could pull the plug. You are saying it would be too expensive to buy the drive elsewhere, why should it be cheaper from TSST. TSST needs to make a profit just like anyone else. Now if Toshiba wanted to pay <cost of manufacturing and TSST and Samsung said no, that could be true, but then it was not Samsung that killed HD DVD but them not bowing to something stupid. In the end I think the decision had much more to do with the total collapse of HD DVD from the beginning of the year and Toshiba wanting to sop the haemorrhaging of money (payoffs to studios, players sold way below cost) before the end of the year results (their fiscal year ends in March) and a way to "hide" the real cost of this war because I am more or less willing to bet there won’t be a HD DVD line item on the balance sheet and the cost will fall under other different catch all operational headings. The same way that they said they only sold 1G players below cost but not the rest, but then again from day1 the 2G players had a promotional rebate to the retailers to be passed on to consumers.