Warner drops HD DVD
This came as quite a surprise, but it is official. Warner Home Video has announced they are dropping support of HD DVD to focus exclusively on Blu-ray. High Def Digest broke the news today.
Although rumors abounded for months, I didn’t really expect it to happen. It’s not as surprising as Paramount’s move because that didn’t have rumors around it before hand.
“Warner Bros.’ move to exclusively release in the Blu-ray disc format is a strategic decision focused on the long term and the most direct way to give consumers what they want,” said Barry Meyer, Chairman & CEO of Warner Bros.. As the second prediction of mine to come true in two days, Warner’s reasoning is similar to mine, “The window of opportunity for high-definition DVD could be missed if format confusion continues to linger. We believe that exclusively distributing in Blu-ray will further the potential for mass market success and ultimately benefit retailers, producers, and most importantly, consumers.”
Sounding a lot like one of the Iowa caucus winners, Jeff Bewkes, President and Chief Executive Officer of Time Warner Inc., the parent company of Warner Brothers is claiming to be the hero of the format war, claiming it was they who brought down hardware prices. “Warner Bros. has produced in both high-definition formats in an effort to provide consumer choice, foster mainstream adoption and drive down hardware prices,†he said.
Does this mean the format war is over? With Dreamworks, Paramount and Universal still in the HD DVD camp it’s not quite over, but it certainly seems inevitable. So what is Toshiba’s next move?
Well it sucks for HD-DVD Camp but something needed to happen to stop this suppose “War”
yeah it sucks, but this guy saw it coming!
and even predicted it ON YOUR predictions page…..
man, you guys should have me writting for you 🙂
Yeah, I had my Toshiba HD-A3 for only three days before Warner Bros. decided to stab HD DVD in the back. Now I was prompted to pick up the PS3 because of that. I’m hoping that an expensive mistake can be a lesson learned. Here I was, a big believer in HD DVD, only to learn that Hollywood wants us to believe that Blu-ray is the better format. Well, I would say that Blu-ray is better in some cases, but I believe that HD DVD gives you far more features under its hood, which made that format better in the long haul. One can only hope that Toshiba will look at other avenues, such as solid state flash card movies, possibly?
How can you say hd dvd is better than blu-ray man
did you look at the difference in the 2 of them
its not hard to see that blu-ray is the best.