It’s Over.

shootzee — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 00:58:26 +0000

Warner Bros. announced today that it’s going to drop support for HD-DVD in May of this year and support the Blu-ray format exclusively, which basically means, in my mind, that the High Definition Disc War is over, Blu-Ray won, and HD-DVD needs to pack it up. Not that I’m an HD-DVD hater or anything, I have players for both formats and my HD-DVDs have generally had more interactive features than their Blu-ray counterparts (300). But Blu-ray has caught up technically and will be putting out discs that can compete with those features (like picture-in-picture) going forward, plus a lot more information can be stored on Blu-rays than HD-DVDs, in some cases more than twice the amount of storage space – something the HD-DVD camp can’t fix with a firmware upgrade. And now that Warner Bros. has gone over to Blu-ray, that leaves Paramount (except for Spielberg flicks) and NBC as the sole studios hanging onto HD-DVD. WB, Sony, Fox and Disney (so Pixar) are all supporting Blu-ray.

Anyway, I think the faster HD-DVD gives up, the less confusing it will be for consumers looking to get a high-def disc player, and the quicker it will be for HD-DVDs to go into the bargain bins where I will gladly pick them up. Unless another drastic, unprecedented announcement is made where a few Blu-ray studios jump ship to HD-DVD, I think if you’re looking to pick up a movie player for your new HDTV, your decision has just been made for you. I’m just glad the format with the cooler logo and name won.

JEFBOT : The semi-autobiographical webcomic and blog of actor, Jeff Schuetze » high def

It’s Over.