Late yesterday afternoon Warner Brothers announced that starting this summer they will be releasing movies in the Blu-ray format only. I was just explaining to my dad and grandmother this last Friday that if Warner were to announce something like that, it would pretty much kill the HD-DVD format.
It’s really too bad because I think HD-DVD is actually the better format of the two, although it is mainly so because it is cheaper. Not only to purchase players and media, but it is magnitudes cheaper to refit a DVD line for HD-DVD than it is to refit for Blu-ray.
But, as I was saying, this is in my opinion the death knell of HD-DVD. Further proof of this is that the HD-DVD forum canceled their CES (Consumer Electronic Show) presentation right after the announcement by Warner. Also, during Microsoft’s speech, it was expected that Bill and company would spend about a quarter of the time allotted to talking about Microsoft’s HD-DVD initiatives.
After the announcement, I was thinking about the people that have already purchased HD-DVD (I am thankfully not one of them although I seriously thought about buying the Xbox 360 HD-DVD Drive) and it made me think of the Beta-max / VHS war. Well, apparently someone else had thought about that and actually made mention of a sort of “peace offering” that should be made from Blu-ray to the now decrepit format. Evidently, a suggestion was made that the Blu-ray consortium offer coupons to the owners of HD-DVD players for a discounted Blu-ray player and even possibly offer trade-ins for the movies…
Interesting idea.