UPDATED: Nikkei is reporting that Toshiba president Atsutoshi Nishida will be announcing the end of the company’s contribution to the HD-DVD format tomorrow. With this announcement comes a plan to stop producing and selling HD-DVD players, both stand-alone units and drives for PCs and laptops, by the beginning of March. This will most likely be followed by similar announcements from other HD-DVD manufacturers like Microsoft.

We reported it a month ago and now it’s pretty much official: Blu-Ray is the winner of the High Definition format war. On Saturday, Reuters reported that Toshiba – the main backer of the HD-DVD format – is backing down and “giving up the format war.” This latest breaking news comes after Netflix announced they were no longer going to rent out HD-DVD movies and Best Buy announced they were recommending Blu-Ray players and discs to customers.

Reuters reports that Toshiba will make the announcement sometime later this week, putting the final nail in the coffin of what was originally thought to be the “winner by default” in the format war.

Why are we writing about this again? Because several major electronics retailers are dumping their remaining stock of HD-DVD players on uninformed consumers. The players are now going for under $200 and come with offers of up to 7 free HD-DVD movies. Problem is that once Toshiba backs down, there won’t be any more movies in this format.

The moral of the story? DO NOT BUY AN HD-DVD PLAYER no matter how cheap it is. And if you just bought one, take it back before it’s too late! The people selling them are desperately trying to get rid of their inventory before the whole thing implodes (which apparently is going to happen tomorrow).