RealTechNews reports that MS is dropping the HD-DVD as well:

Took ‘em long enough. They didn’t file a press release, but Microsoft did use its Gamerscore blog, which it says is the “inside scoop from Microsoft Xbox and Games employees.” Saturday Microsoft announced they would halt production of HD-DVD drives for the Xbox 360.

The dominos dropped pretty quickly on this, and for once Sony did not end up on the short end of the format war stick. IMHO, it's still a meagre victory - I think HD downloads will end up overtaking Blu-Ray sooner rather than later.

And while that's not the case? I was at Best Buy a couple weeks ago, and they had a Blu-Ray player running side by side with a traditional DVD, running the same video. IMHO, it was a bad ad, because the standard def DVD looked pretty good - I had to look carefully to tell the difference.

Here's where I think things will really end up - rentals, which is what Apple just went to with iTunes. With music, I like listening to familiar stuff over and over again over time, but I don't go out of my way to watch the same movie over and over. I think NetFlix shows that movie rental is what people really want; once it's convenient by wire, DVD buying will likely drop the same way CDs have.

Technorati Tags: DVD, HD-DVD, Blu-Ray