I've been watching this develop over the last couple of weeks, and finally it is official - HD DVD is gone.
The battle for market share between Sony's Blu-Ray and Toshiba's HD DVD versions of next-gen DVDs, has resulted in Blu-Ray being victorious, thanks to their players being more easily available through the PS3 games console. It was essentially an added feature to the games console, but the result was that thousands of people were already geared to use next-gen (Blu-Ray) DVDs without having the added expense of buying a next-gen DVD player. The competition on the other hand (HD DVD) required a new (expensive) player. Paramount tried to throw their weight behind HD DVD with exclusive releases through it, but without enough people buying HD DVD players, the demand just wasn't there for HD DVDs. It was more economical having a 2 in 1 games console and next-gen player (PS3) than just buying a next-gen player (HD DVD).
The nail in the coffin was apparently Wal-Mart (America's largest retailer) deciding yesterday to only stock Blu-Ray now, which forced Toshiba to announce today that they would stop producing HD DVD players and technology.
http://crave.cnet.com/8301-1_105-987...?tag=cnetfd.mt
http://www.aintitcool.com/node/35643
So Sony lost the Beta-VHS battle, but won the Blu-Ray/HD DVD battle.
And what does this have to do with the Transformers Movie, since it was only released in HD DVD? It is already being expected to have a Blu-Ray release in America, and probably here as well.
http://www.tfw2005.com/transformers-...t-city-164267/
I feel bad for those who already bought an expensive HD DVD player and DVDs, but for the rest of us, there is no need to worry about which camp to invest into, or worry about which movies we wouldn't be able to buy because of exclusive releases (until a player was released to play both that is - which no longer matters).
I was actually planning to buy a HD DVD version of Transformers, to have ready for the eventual purchase of a next-gen player and hi-def TV, but now I'll wait until a Blu-Ray version comes out, and a cheaper player than the PS3 is available.