Game over. Toshiba, the Japanese conglomerate, on Tuesday bowed out of the battle for supremacy in high-definition DVD formats. The writing appeared on the wall last month, when Warner Bros withdrew its support for the HD-DVD technology promoted by Toshiba and Microsoft. That leaves the field clear for Blu-ray, the technology championed by Sony and the vast bulk of Hollywood studios.

For Sony, whose Betamax standard was famously trounced in the 1980s video wars, this looks like a long-overdue cause for celebration. It is not. Promoting new technologies in consumer electronics can be a thankless game. The reward is, perhaps, a couple of years of profits and operating margins somewhere below 5 per cent. After that, the same boxes are knocked out by a rash of Taiwanese and other factories and prices fall. In the case of DVD players, obsolescence may come sooner, courtesy of online offerings delivered to set-top boxes. Royalties are thinly spread. Toshiba’s own earnings illustrate the point. Digital products, including DVD players and PCs, accounted for 37 per cent of sales in the first nine months of the year but just 5 per cent of operating profits.