I am waiting patiently to find out which Hi-Def format will come out on top so I spend my money ONCE! I was around when VHS and Beta were on the same shelf at my local video rental shop, and didn't really pay much attention when the Beta section began to shrink as I already had a VHS machine...

You've got to hand it to Toshiba. Even now, when faced with overwhelming evidence that Sony's Blu-ray has won the high def format war, the mortally wounded HD DVD backer just keeps on prolonging the inevitable.

First, Toshiba decides to dramatically cut prices on its HD DVD players in the U.S. following Warner Bros. Blu-ray defection earlier this month. Now, for reasons that also escape us, the company has decided to buy a 30-second Super Bowl spot for $2.7 million to advertise its desperation for those marked down HD DVD players.

Of course, none of this is really convincing consumers. As Ars Technica recently noted, in the week following the Warner Bros. defection, weekly HD DVD player sales tanked big time, falling from 14,558 the week previous to a measly 1,758.

Meanwhile, Blu-ray saw a reverse trend, climbing from 15,257 to 21,770. In fact, the format ended up capturing approximately 93 percent of the market that week, according to NDP.

On Monday, Toshiba received another blow, this time from the U.K.'s Woolworths chain. The retail store announced it will be switching exclusively to Blu-ray after it discovered that the latter titles outsold HD DVD 10-to-1 during the holiday season. Woolsworths will be the first major retailer to solely back one of the new high definition DVD formats, but I'm guessing we'll see plenty more when Warner Bros. goes Blu-ray exclusively in May.

Gartner also decided to weigh in on those HD DVD player price cuts on Monday -- yup, the ones that Toshiba is going to spend 2.7 million advertising -- and concluded that they amount to nothing more than "useless resistance" in the battle against Blu-ray, at best prolonging the format's life by a few months.

So why, after the market has clearly spoken (in a loud and deliberate tone), is Toshiba still pretending like it has a chance to win this war? We've already wasted close to two years waiting for this HD mess to resolve itself, and it seems more than a little insulting to have to endure Toshiba's prolonged death scene for another year.

So to the HD DVD camp I say this: You've put up a good fight, guys, but seriously, what are you going to do, bleed on Blu-ray? Let's move on with our lives.

Thanks to Wired.com