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High Def DVD News

I've been a bit busy over the past few days and haven't had much time to post unfortunately, but there have been some very interesting developments in the format war between HD DVD and Blu-ray.

Late last week, Warner Brothers announced that it would be dropping support for the HD DVD format in May and supporting Blu-ray exclusively.

This had a knock-on effect, causing the HD DVD Promo Group to cancel their press conference at CES, citing the "timing of Warner Brothers' announcement" as the reason. This in turn prompted Paramount to clarify its position that "Paramount's current plan is to continue to support the HD DVD format", but they have canceled any HD DVD title announcements at CES. This doesn't sound to me like Paramount is 100% confident in the success of the HD DVD format.

There was some initial confusion as to whether Warner's subsidiaries would follow suit. New Line clarified its position but said that unlike its parent which was waiting until May 2008 to shelve HD DVD, its switch to Blu-ray would take place immediately. This would make Pan's Labyrinth the only New Line movie to have been released on HD DVD.

It would appear that the studios are getting tired of the confusion caused by the format war and the fact that most people are waiting for it to end before making a purchasing decision. In my opinion, Blu-ray is a superior format so I am glad it is achieving market penetration. HD DVDs have the advantage of being cheaper to produce but if Blu-ray becomes a standard, this issue will diminish with time.