5:43 PM Mon, Jan 07, 2008 | Permalink |
On Friday, Warner Brothers announced it was going to stop offering movies in the HD-DVD format and go exclusively with Sony's Blu-Ray.
They are the 5th major studio to do so.
Some of the key hold-outs include Paramount, Universal and Dreamworks, which will continue to offer high-definition movies in both formats as far as we can tell.
Microsoft is also a big backer for HD-DVD and you can, for between $100 and $150, buy an attachment that will play HD-DVDs on an X-Box 360 consol.
This format war is often characterized as a re-run of the old Betamax vs. VHS battle from the 1980s... but there are key differences.
First and foremost, there's still the dominance of "old-fashioned" DVDs.
According to the Consumer Electronics Association, Americans will buy $859 million worth of new-fangled disk players including the Blu-ray, but will also buy $1.4 billion worth of traditional DVD players. That second number is down from 2007, but considering that DVD players can sell for as little as $30 vs. $399 for a Blu-Ray, that is a TON of new DVD machines.
Now, combine this with Netflix, Amazon, Microsoft and even the studios themselves offering direct downloads of movies. Is all this fighting over formats just a proverbial "tempest in a teapot?"
What do you think?
Bluray has more support by studios. I have read that retailers support and are pushing Bluray more than HD-DVD. More people have Bluray players. 1.2 million PS3 systems were sold over the holidays all with bluray players built in.
Bluray has a higher capacity.
Don't forget that Blockbuster will only be renting out Bluray discs.
I think we can see who the winner is.
I originally thought that the movie format would ultimatly come down to the better game system. Yeah...there are BluRay and HD players...but most folkx are using their Xbox or PS3. The demand for 360 games is much higher than PS3 - and therefor I thought HD would win. But there is something to be said for the PS3 with a built in player as opposed to the xbox with the externam drive. Solution, purchase one of the combo player that plays HD, BluRay, and upscales regular DVDs. Then you wont have to worry about it.