History is usually written by those that won, but when it comes to the IT industry, there are also losers that should be remembered. For example, think about 3dfx and their innovations in the 3D graphics field - they lost, they are gone, but they won't ever be forgotten. Unfortunately, I don't think the same can be said about the HD DVD format, which finally got its last rites less than 2 days ago...


Last week, the HD DVD Promotion Group formally dissolved itself, following Toshiba's decision to end HD DVD hardware production, which was announced last month. Anyway, despite the fact that some people still have HD DVD-capable players, Microsoft, Paramount Studio or Universal Studios already announced they are pushing aside this format, so HD DVD may be forgotten earlier than expected.

The funny part of the whole story is that, while HD DVD lost the war, Blu-Ray, the winner, lost it too - the way of the future seems to lead away from "spinning storage" methods, and it's all a matter of time - while the classic HDD will be slowly replaced by SSDs, the Blu-Ray format will probably lose the battle with digital movie downloads and flash memory.