Press reports are starting to leak out all over the place. Like yesterday an advance copy of the next E3 magazine said Universal was going format neutral. Then reports of Toshiba sourcing parts for making thier own BD player. Models starting to sell out at various retailers, not seeming to be restocked.
At this point there is absolutely nothing Toshiba can do to stop it. No purchasing manager at any retailer is going to commit to buying more HD-DVD players, they are working through the inventory they have. Unless Toshiba agrees to repurchase all unsold inventory no one is going to touch HD-DVD. Of course the retailers are going to say they support HD-DVD until the warehouse is empty, and seemingly the HD-DVD players are so popular we cannot keep them in stock until after a 30 day return period seems to have gone by then we discontinued them.
Toshiba has to discount and unload as many as possible. Getting a % of their money back on the costs is the best they can do now. They dare not say they are stopping until they have every unit unloaded. The consumer of course has a nice upconverting player and HD software will be available for a while. The deep cut in prices after the Warner announcement was not a battle to change Warner's mind -- Toshiba is not run by dummies, they are liquidating inventory while they can do it. The last thing they want to do is take back all the inventory from retailers and have to rebadge them all as upconverting DVD players and sell them for even less.