The format war is officially over as Blu-ray is announced the winner and Toshiba has openly announced that the HD-DVD format will be no more.

This isn't a rumour or an inside source this time, in fact the announcement comes from the President of Toshiba. This is final.

Louise sent me the story from the BBC that has the announcement from the President of Toshiba, Atsutoshi Nishida:

"We concluded that a swift decision would be best… If we had continued, that would have created problems for consumers, and we simply had no chance to win."

I actually wonder what planet he's been living on recently. I mean let's forget that studios and major retail outlets have been dropping the HD-DVD format and aligning with Blu-ray, this format war has not been swift, and it has been creating problems for customers.

Toshiba are trying to make themselves sound like they are doing the customer a favour when in fact both sides have been doing quite the opposite for sometime. They have been at the negotiating table a number of times early on in the battle to discuss how to make it easier for the customer, and yet they still decided to go their separate ways and force us to make expensive decisions either way.

Neither side have helped the consumer, they've hindered us and marketed us to try and get them on their side in order to win the war and earn hard cash. So don't try and make yourselves out to be heroes because you're backing out of the battle.

The good thing is that the war is over for high definition. Now the next war will be for Blu-ray to win over all the existing DVD consumer base. Once that's done we can await the next format battle. For now, consumers can start looking to the next format for the home with full confidence, Blu-ray.