Two More Nails in the Coffin for HD-DVD

The battle between the Toshiba-backed HD-DVD and the Sony-backed Blu-Ray high definition formats is beginning to wind down as two big announcements drove two more nails in the HD-DVD camp's coffin on Monday.

First, on Monday morning, Netflix, the on-line video rental service that delivers DVD's direct to customer's homes via mail, announced it would be stocking only Blu-Ray formatted discs by the end of this year.  Although Netflix boasts over 6 million customers, the number of people who order high definition DVD's is a fraction of the total number of customers.  It is significant, however, since Blockbuster announced late last year that it would stock only Blu-Ray discs in their stores.  Industry analysts have been waiting for Netflix to pick one or the other format since that time. 

But in a more significant announcement on Monday afternoon, retail giant Best Buy, based out of Minneapolis, announced they would recommend Blu-Ray discs and video players to their customers starting March 1.  Best Buy will continue to have the more popular HD-DVD titles in stores and available on line, but will have more of a marketing emphasis on Blu-Ray products. 

Although a Blu-Ray disc can hold up to three times the amount of information than HD-DVD, some experts have found the clarity of an HD-DVD is a bit better than Blu-Ray, mainly because of a wider information track on their discs over the Blu-Ray.   HD-DVD also is a less expensive format in terms of prices for both the players and discs.  But the success of Sony's Playstation 3, which uses the larger content format of Blu-Ray for their games, drove Blu-Ray sales and convinced movie studios, video rental stores and now retailers into carrying or promoting only the Blu-Ray products. 

Also, there's been some "behind-the-scenes" stories that Sony actually paid Warner Brothers $400 million to go exclusively Blu-Ray.  Reportedly, Warner Brothers was looking to go exclusively to the HD-DVD format (after supporting both formats initially) and was pushing Toshiba to line up another studio to do so, as well.  Toshiba reportedly had Fox lined up, but they backed out at the last moment.  Toshiba supposedly offered Warner $100 million to go exclusively to HD-DVD, but Sony countered with an offer that was 4 times that of their competitor.

There is some good news and bad news throughout this deal.  The good news is that many consumers who have been holding off making a purchase of a high definition format player can now determine that one of the two formats has a considerable edge over the other one.

However, the bad news is that there is some worry within the industry that if Blu-Ray does become the only format, the consumer will be the loser in the long run.  Prices for both the players and the discs probably won't come down all that much, if at all. 

There are still going to be HD-DVD discs and players available for the time being, but it's beginning to look like Sony - and Blu-Ray - is going to be the eventual winner.  Now they'll be able to recoup all that money they lost when they came out as the losers with the Beta format versus the VHS format for VCR's.

You remember VCR's, don't you?   

Comments

[Peter Lawrence]

So tell me once again. Why do I need an HD-DVD player? Aren't regular DVD's good enough?

[Will]

If you have an HD television, you'll notice greater clarity and picture quality with a high definition DVD. There's two and a half times the resolution on an HD DVD (or Blu-Ray). If you have a regular DVD player, you're not getting the full resolution with a regular DVD player.