HD DVD vs Blu-Ray: the DVD wars may be over

Warner Bros has until now backed both horses in the DVD wars publishing its titles on HD DVD and Blu-Ray but at the Consumer Electronic Show (CES) in Las Vegas the Hollywood studio made the shock announcement that they would in future only be backing one of the DVD format contenders in the future…

[eminimalls products="blu-ray player"]

Warner Bros will from this point on publish only in the Blu-Ray format developed by Sony, Pioneer, Panasonic and Philips in a change of policy extremely embarrassing to Toshiba, developer of HD DVD who’s Marketing VP responded:

“This is a tough day for me. Over a million players are in the US market. It’s difficult for me to read people writing that HD DVD is dead. We have been declared dead before.”

The following companies have been exclusively backing Blu-Ray for some time:

• Columbia (owned by Sony)
• Disney
• Fox

While the following have backed only HD DVD

• Universal
• Paramount
• DreamWorks

Industry pundits now expect a slew of legal actions between the developer companies and from consumers who purchased players with a now much-reduced repertoire of titles.

But Toshiba’s embarrassment goes even deeper than this. The show traditionally gives away promotional back-packs and this year’s was sponsored by Toshiba and emblazoned with the strap-line “Toshiba – leading innovation – HD DVD”. The company also canceled an announcement of three new “third generation” HD DVD players and the normally extrovert “Father of HD DVD”, Yoshihide Fujii (Toshiba’s digital consumer chief) was conspicuous by his absence.

This embarrassment will inevitably be shared by companies like Samsung and LG who have produced very expensive dual-format players that now seem like white elephants in what is about to turn into a single format industry. LG quipped:

“They will be useful for people who want to watch Paramount and Universal movies”

(I think he was only half joking!)

This story on other sites

• Warner Bros. Goes Blu-ray Exclusively
• Bill Gates - CES 2008 - Comcast - Warner Bros. - Blu-ray - LG …
• Fallout Begins Over Warner Bros. Blu-ray Decision; Is the Party …
• Warner Bros. dumps HD DVD, goes solely Blu-ray
• Warner Bros. to Exclusively Release on Blu-ray Disc Format
• HD DVD Regroups at CES After Blu-ray Woos Warner Bros.
• Warner bets it all on Blu-ray
• Warner Bros sides with Blu-ray
• Blu-ray scores major victory with Warner Bros. decision
• Warner Bros. goes solely Blu-ray

Tags: blu-ray-dvd,dvd,hd-dvd,panasonic,philips,Pioneer,samsung,Sony,toshiba,