Sweet Cucumber

Death of HD DVD ?

It sure looks like it, now that Warner has decided to fully back Blu-ray, and is going to abandon the HD DVD camp completely in a few months…
Personally I feel rather good about this - for some reason unknown to myself I felt more comfortably with Blu-ray, although I am aware that both formats are nearly identical in quality and features. Maybe because Microsoft backed HD-DVD ? As everyone knows, I’m not exactly a MS fanboy.

I must admit though, I’ve seen a few movies on Jeff’s (Mr. ex-Jungle Bar, in Phnom Penh) Toshiba HD DVD player, and I was mighty impressed. Furthermore I’ve never actually had the chance to witness Blu-ray firsthand, so, what do I know ? I’m only glad that this silly format war is as good as done with, and we - the consumer-to-be-ripped-off-anyway - can go on with our daily business.

To quote The New York Times:

Hollywood’s squabble over which of two technologies will replace standard DVDs skewed in the direction of the Sony Corporation on Friday, with Warner Brothers casting the deciding vote in favor of the company’s Blu-ray discs over the rival format, HD DVD.

In some ways, the fight is a replay of the VHS versus Betamax battle of the 1980s. This time, however, the Sony product appears to have prevailed.

“The overwhelming industry opinion is that this decides the format battle in favor of Blu-ray,” said Richard Doherty, research director at the Envisioneering Group, a market research firm in Seaford, N.Y.

Behind the studio’s decision are industrywide fears about the sagging home entertainment market, which has bruised the movie industry in recent years as piracy, competition from video games and the Internet, and soaring costs have cut into profitability. Analysts predict that domestic DVD sales fell by nearly 3 percent in 2007, partly because of confusion in the marketplace over the various formats.

Link to the complete article.