Blu-ray's mountain to climb: is the format war really over?

gallery

This past weekend, Hollywood movie giant Warner Bros made perhaps the most critical decision in the ongoing HD DVD vs Blu-ray format war.

Long wooed by both sides, and the last platform-neutral major, Warner's decision to opt for Blu-ray has, most believe, called the race in favour of Sony's format. Given that Warner sells more high definition discs than anyone else, and given that its catalogue is broader and more populist than many of its rivals, the gravity of its choice simply can't be understated.

On the show floor of CES in Las Vegas, the mood has been borderline euphoric among Blu-ray supporters, while the HD DVD camp has struggled to effectively respond to what many perceive as a knockout blow. The planned HD DVD press conference was cancelled at the last minute, Microsoft's strongly-rumoured Xbox 360 games console with internal HD DVD drive wasn't mentioned at all in Bill Gates' keynote, and there was little sign of any substantive hope for the format either as a consumer video platform or as a business data platform.

Then, when the Financial Times reported on Tuesday 8 January that Paramount - one of the two big studios left that exclusively produce HD DVD discs - had an opt-out it was going to exercise to jump to the Blu-ray camp too, it seemed a war that had waged for over two years had ended in just four days.

The Paramount rumour has since been debunked by the studio - at least for the time being - but this has still undoubtedly left the HD DVD camp in a weak position. Unless it miraculously pulls something unexpected out of the fire, then the high definition format war will be over very soon indeed. Because the deck is now stacked like this: on the HD DVD side stands Paramount (along with its DreamWorks subsidiary) and Universal, while supporting Blu-ray are Fox, Disney, Sony (including its MGM subsidiary) and now Warner. Can HD DVD lure a studio such as Disney across to its side? It's all but impossible that we'll see that situation. Instead, it's more likely that Apple is set to introduce Blu-ray players in some of its Mac products next week at Macworld in San Francisco, landing another blow against HD DVD. Meanwhile Paramount - which switched to HD DVD exclusivity thanks, it's strongly rumoured, to a major financial incentive - will be announcing renewed Blu-ray support sooner rather than later.

Different picture?

Yet believe the very strong rumours, and this time last week the picture was very, very different. It's been widely reported that 20th Century Fox was believed to be on the verge of shifting over to HD DVD exclusively (where previously it had exclusively supported Blu-ray), and Warner would have followed suit had Fox done so. It took a last minute change of heart from Fox to keep it with Blu-ray, and Warner - keen for the format war to end as soon as possible - went over to that side too as a result. That's, if rumour is to be believed, how thin the dividing line was here, and perhaps displays an uncertainty from the studios themselves over which way to call the battle. It all could have ultimately been decided with one meeting in a 20th Century Fox boardroom.

What's taken many by surprise is just how unexpected and swift the announcement was, and while many continued to report rumours, there was little indication that it would take place one way or another so early in the year. Warner Bros now stops producing HD DVDs at the end of May, and it's believed that the decision was hastened not by the slow take up of high definition optical formats, rather the decline in sales of standard DVDs. Numbers were down for 2007, and there's belief that many were holding off buying standard discs for fear of having to buy them again when they upgraded to HD. Those same people were subsequently reluctant to upgrade to HD and risk being left with the proverbial Betamax player. Given that standard DVD sales account for many times the revenue of ticket sales at the box office, this was one golden goose that studios had little wish to see struggle.

Email to a friend

Print this page