Quick Take: HD-DVD, the Headless Chicken

By Anders Bylund
January 15, 2008
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Time Warner's (NYSE: TWX) Warner Brothers effectively killed Toshiba's (TOSBF.PK) HD-DVD next-generation digital disc format last week, when it threw support behind Sony's (NYSE: SNE) competing Blu-ray format. Together with Walt Disney (NYSE: DIS), News Corp.'s (NYSE: NWS) 20th Century Fox, and others, Blu-ray now commands about 70% of the high-definition DVD market, and it's only a matter of time before Viacom's (NYSE: VIA) Paramount and General Electric's (NYSE: GE) NBC Universal leave the HD-DVD camp, too.

So Motley Fool CAPS four-star company Toshiba is slashing prices on its nearly obsolescent players by 50%, and bundling five movies with every player. At $30 per disc, that means you basically get a low-end, $150 player for free if you want the movies. The company probably just wants to get rid of all those nice doorstops and bookends without starting a landfill.

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Disney and Time Warner are two of our Motley Fool Stock Advisor recommendations.

Fool contributor Anders Bylund is a Disney shareholder, but holds no other position in any of the companies discussed here. You can check out Anders' holdings if you like, and Foolish disclosure would rather be quick than dead.

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