In the past weeks HD-DVD has seen pretty much all of its opportunities and chances of success fall by the wayside. Starting with Warner’s announcement to exclusively support Blu-Ray in the future, an avalanche of announcements followed from companies such as ADV Films, Tai Seng, and others to do the same thing. Then retailers began to take sides in the fallout with Blockbuster and Netflix both announcing to drop the HD-DVD format from their offerings.

The biggest retail slap came from Walmart today in an announcement that as of June the retail chain will sell only Blu-Ray Discs and players and take HD-DVD from their shelves. This is a major catastrophe for HD-DVD, of course. With over 4000 stores, Walmart is the single largest discount retailer in terms of market share. The majority of all DVD, HD-DVD and Blu-Ray sales are being made through this one retailer and losing it is probably the last nail in the coffin of the HD-DVD format. Already rumors are spreading throughout the industry that in the next weeks Toshiba will finally concede, admit defeat and abandon its HD-DVD format as a home video platform.