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.
do you know if div-ix is sill around 🙂