Electronics manufacturer Toshiba announced today that it will discontinue production of its HD DVD players and recorders, prompting many to sound the end of the format war in favor of Sony's Blu-ray disc.

Rumors began circulating last week that Toshiba, one of the largest backers of the HD DVD format, would discontinue support after retail giant Wal-Mart announced its decision to only sell Blu-ray discs in its stores.

"We carefully assessed the long-term impact of continuing the so-called 'next-generation format war'," said Toshiba CEO Atsutoshi Nishida. "[We] concluded that a swift decision will best help the market develop."

Sony's PlayStation 3 is currently the only gaming console equipped to play Blu-ray movies out of the box. Microsoft recently cut the price of its Xbox 360 HD DVD player, but would not comment directly on rumors that it would release a Blu-ray player add-on as early as May.

"It is premature to speculate about Blu-ray," a Microsoft representative told Shacknews. "But we do know from market data that HD movie playback is not a primary purchase driver for consumers buying video game consoles."

Addressing rumors that Microsoft and Toshiba are prepping HD DVD-equipped Xbox 360 for late 2008 or early 2009, Toshiba has offered up two very different responses.

"It's got nothing to do with us," a Toshiba representative told Stuff. "But we know Microsoft doesn't want to include the HD DVD drive so as not to limit the user's experience."

However, the version of that story found on Stuff's official site tells a less definitive tale. "Toshiba has no comment to make on this matter," the rep said the second time around. "The Xbox 360 is not a Toshiba product."

According to Engadget, that first comment was later replaced ... Read more

CNet is reporting that Toshiba will be launching a new Pentium 4 notebook later this week. But instead of using a special notebook CPU, Toshiba will be using a regular sized desktop computer Pentium 4 CPU. It will help Toshiba bring the price of the notebook down. What this means for battery life and heat is not mentioned.

Chip maker Transmeta isn't impressing everyone with their mobile Crusoe CPU, according to The Register. Toshiba is saying they'll still be using Intel chips, because the battery life by the Crusoe isn't as impressive as Transmeta is saying. In their words, the battery life is "nothing like Transmeta's publicity is claiming".