Toshiba has finally announced its unconditional surrender and officially embraced Blu-ray more than a year after the standard was endorsed by all four major movie studios.

Toshiba was keen on pushing HD-DVD, but Sony's Blu-ray eventually came out on top in the format war, so it was only a matter of time before it joined the winners. And Tosh definitely took its time to do so.

The company announced it would start making stand alone Blu-ray players and PC ODDs by the end of 2009, a year and a half after it had lost the battle for HD-DVD. Toshiba will also join the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA).

Sadly, the U.S.S. Missouri will not be available for the BDA signing ceremony, which will therefore not be held in Tokyo Bay.

However, Toshiba still found a way of making money on the failed format, as Nick reported here.