I mentioned Monday that things weren't looking good for HD DVD. I figured things would drag out for a few months, but apparently, if the buzz about the intertubes is to be believed, HD DVD's demise is imminent. Nothing official out of Toshiba, but Reuters and others seem to have things pretty much confirmed. Ars Technica is usually pretty on the ball; they offer some details about the accelerating death of HD DVD. Apparently Toshiba already made the decision to kill off HD DVD even before this week's bad news, but was looking to gradually exit the business and sell off excess inventory. But apparently Netflix and Wal-Mart were aware of this plan, and decided to speed things up on their own, to prevent customers from being burned, and have forced Toshiba to speed things up. So it looks like Netflix did the right thing in dropping HD DVD.

Sadly, it now looks unlikely that I'll be buying Sweeney Todd in HD DVD. Good ol' DVD will be good enough, I suppose. Besides, I managed to download an awards screener of Sweeney Todd off of BitTorrent last night (downloaded in less than an hour). Good enough quality to keep me satisfied for awhile (though again, I can't seem to make it play on my Xbox, and thus my TV).