In early January, Warner Bros. Entertainment announced it would cease its support for HD-DVD in May this year. Already, Warner Bros. Entertainment sells high-definition movies exclusively in Blu-ray format. In a press statement, Warner Bros Chairman and Chief Executive Barry Meyer explained that the customer confusion over two competing formats as the main reason of the company’s decision to support only one format.

Just days later, Toshiba had fired a new salvo in the Blu-ray versus HD DVD war. The company had slashed the price of its cheapest HD DVD player, the HD-A3, with 50 percent, from $299.99 to $149.99. During the CES 2008, Toshiba remained defiant, saying that it would continue to back its embattled format.

After a few more days, a study released by Japan's Business Computer News revealed that Blu-ray is dominating the sales in Japan. During a three-month period, from October to December 2007 the Blu-ray format, created and promoted by Sony, accounted a 90 percent of next-generation DVD recorder sales.

Now, the Toshiba-endorsed HD DVD received another blow: Netflix announced today that it will stock only Blu-ray discs and drop the HD DVD format.

"We’re now at the point where the industry can pursue the migration to a single format, bring clarity to the consumer and accelerate the adoption of high-def," Ted Sarandos, chief content officer for Netflix, said in a company statement. Subscribers can still rent the remaining HD DVD titles until the discs’ natural life cycles take them out of circulation, which means the popular rental service is to fully abandon HD DVD by the end of the year.

"The prolonged period of competition between two formats has prevented clear communication to the consumer regarding the richness of the high-def experience versus standard definition," said Ted Sarandos.

Basically, Toshiba now has only two powerful allies: Paramount Home Entertainment and Universal Studios Home Entertainment. It remains to be seen for how long.

Blu-ray is similar to the DVD format but uses a blue-violet laser with a shorter wavelength (405 nm), which means that substantially more data can be stored on a Blu-ray Disc than on the DVD format. It comes in 25 GB (single layer) or 50 GB (dual layer) capacities. The Sony Playstation 3 is also a Blu-ray player.