In a move that would heat up again the war between the next
generation DVD formats, Warner Bros. Entertainment announced it would cease its
support for HD-DVD in May this year.
Starting with this month, Warner Bros. Entertainment will sell
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.
"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," Barry Meyer said, quoted by Reuters.
Warner’s move could be a major blow for HD-DVD format,
invented and supported by Toshiba, which now has only the support of two major
movies studios: Universal Pictures and Paramount Pictures.
The Blu-Ray format promoted and created by the Japanese company
Sony is backed up by the other six major studios: Warner Bros., Sony Corp.,
Walt Disney Co., News Corp.'s Twentieth Century Fox, Lion's Gate and MGM.
Last year, Paramount Pictures, the other movie studio that
supported the both formats, has decided to favor the HD-DVD in detriment of
Sony’s Blu-Ray because it is apparently cheaper (lower manufacturing costs) and
has a market-ready technology.
Last year in December, the Blu-Ray Disc Association reported
that, according to industry sales data, Blu-Ray movie disc sales had topped 1
million units in Europe.
As Blu-Ray Disc Association said 1 million units represent
73 percent of all HD movie discs sold, which means that the HD-DVD format is
lagging far behind with only 27 percent.
In addition, the Blu-Ray Disc Association said that when
counting Blu-Ray gaming discs the total number produced for sale in Europe exceeded 21 million units.
The sales data were provided by a European research company,
Media Control Gfk International. Blu-Ray revealed the best-selling titles: 300,
Spider-Man 3 and Pirates of the Caribbean: At
World's End.
In November 2007, a study released by Home Media Research
said that Blu-Ray titles outsold competing HD DVD titles by nearly two-to-one
in the United States
during the first nine months of 2007.
Also in November, the HD DVD Promotional Group announced
that over 750,000 players have been sold to date.
The strong sales of Blu-Ray discs are heavily supported by
the PlayStation 3, the Sony’s gaming platform, which also the cheapest Blu-Ray
player available for the moment.
However, in a statement made during the same month, Howard
Stringer, Sony’s CEO, said that HD-DVD and Blu-Ray formats have reached a
stalemate point in their war to become the best customer choice over current
favorite DVD.
Also, at last year’s CES, Warner Bros unveiled its own
solution to stop the war between competing next-gen DVD formats. Called Total
HD disc, the format proposed by Warner is making a compromise by reading/writing
the HD DVD blue laser on one side, and the Blu Ray laser on the other.
The physical structure of the disc is similar to the current
DVDs, HD DVDs and Blu-ray discs found on the market today. The Total HD disc
has the ability to contain both single layer and dual layers for both formats
enabling either 15 GB or 30 GB on the HD DVD side and 25 GB or 50 GB on the
Blu-ray side.
Also, it was scheduled to be released in the second half of
2007, in July Warner Bros decided to postpone the release of Total HD until 2008.
With Warner Bros choosing Blu-Ray, it remains to be seen
what will be the fate of Total HD.
