Warner Bros. Holds Fast on Blu-ray / HD DVD Dual Commitment
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As polarizing as the high-definition format war continues to be, Warner Home Video remains silently, but firmly, committed to its position of providing its movie titles to users of all formats on the market.
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Another Blu-ray player price cut is on the way.
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Two days after it lost an important ally in the high-definition format battle, Toshiba put on a defiant face at the Consumer Electronics Show and declared the HD DVD format is a long way from being dead.&quot;We remain firm in the belief that HD DVD is the format best suited to the wants and needs of consumers,&quot; said Akio Ozaka, head of Toshiba America Consumer Products, at a news conference. He said Toshiba was surprised by the announcement, which came on Friday, that&#160;Warner Bros. was dropping HD DVD&#160;and exclusively backing Blu-ray.&#160; &quot;We are especially surprised that this decision was made in spite of the significant momentum that HD DVD has gained in the U.S. market and other regions.&quot;Warner was the only major Hollywood studio releasing movies on both formats and the decision to go with Blu-ray Disc meant Toshiba has only two major studios, Paramount and Universal, backing its technology.The decision also left Toshiba with a potential public relations disaster as it came just days before CES, the annual North American gathering of the consumer electronics industry that kicks off officially here on Monday. In response to the Warner news the HD DVD Promotion Group canceled its news conference, leaving some to conclude that backers of the format were ready to concede defeat.&quot;As you can imagine this is a tough day for me,&quot; said Jodi Sally, vice president of marketing for digital audio and video products at Toshiba America Consumer Products. &quot;It&#39;s difficult for me to read all the pundits declare that HD DVD is dead. Clearly the events of the last few days have led you to that conclusion but we&#39;ve been declared dead before.&quot;But Toshiba might have a hard time convincing the analysts and media that follow the battle closely that HD DVD is still in the race.&quot;It&#39;s interesting the CEO said he was surprised. I think that&#39;s an understatement. Devastated would probably be more accurate,&quot; said Peter King, an analyst at U.K.-based Strategy Analytics, who attended the Toshiba news conference.&quot;They really have an uphill battle,&quot; he said. &quot;They are left with a couple of the smaller studios but there is no doubt the major studios have voted with their feet. It&#39;s hard to see now what they can do. Maybe focus on the PC market as a format, but they have a major struggle and that was very clear today.&quot;King wasn&#39;t willing to call the battle over just yet but he said a lot would depend on comments made during CES by other industry leaders, like&#160;Microsoft founder Bill Gates, who is scheduled to speak in Las Vegas Sunday evening.But if the battle is over then what&#39;s bad news for Toshiba will be good news for consumers and the consumer electronics industry, he said. &quot;Everybody in the industry can get behind one format [and] start promoting. The message will be simple and clear, prices will come down and it&#39;s a good thing for the industry.&quot;Toshiba said 1 million HD DVD players are currently in the market in North America.In a statement issued on Saturday the company also expressed surprise over Warner&#39;s move &quot;despite the fact that there are various contracts in place between our companies concerning the support of HD DVD.&quot; On Sunday it didn&#39;t elaborate on those contracts or what its next move may be in the march to make HD DVD the de facto replacement for DVD for high-definition content.
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Two days after Warner Bros. announced plans to back Blu-ray Disc -- a decision that could prove pivotal in the high-def disc format battle -- Sony CEO Howard Stringer thanked the company and other Blu-ray Disc backers for supporting the format.&quot;As you can probably guess, all of us at Sony are feeling blue today,&quot; Stringer quipped as he took to the stage at a news conference held at the International Consumer Electronics Show. &quot;But that&#39;s a good feeling.&quot;On Friday Warner Bros. said it would stop issuing its movies on HD DVD later this year and go solely with Blu-ray Disc. Warner had been the only major Hollywood studio to back both formats, and with its shift exclusively to the Blu-ray Disc camp, leaves just Paramount and Universal as backers of HD DVD.&quot;I&#39;d like to thank Warner for making the decision to release in Blu-ray their home video and to [Time Warner CEO] Jeff Bewkes and [Warner Bros. Entertainment CEO] Barry Meyer for making the decision, as they said in their press release, in the long-term interests of consumer and customer,&quot; he said. Stringer also took the opportunity to thank Blu-ray&#39;s existing backers for being &quot;true blue all the way through.&quot;The comments were Stringer&#39;s first since Warner announced its decision. He didn&#39;t say anything further on the issue, which has been the buzz of many of the news conferences held Sunday by major consumer electronics makers ahead of the show&#39;s official opening on Monday.Earlier Sunday the main backer of HD DVD, Toshiba, said it remained committed to the format and that talk of its demise was premature. &quot;We&#39;ve been declared dead before,&quot; said Jodi Sally, vice president of marketing for digital audio and video products at Toshiba America Consumer Products, at a Toshiba news conference.
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Toshiba Corp  said on Sunday  its HD DVD high-definition video format is not dead despite  being dealt a big setback by Warner Bros studio's decision to  exclusively back Sony Corp's  rival Blu-ray technology.
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Thomson said Friday that it will support both the Blu-Ray and HD DVD standards with players, apparenty hedging its bets until the content wars are settled.
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Once the backer of both high-def DVD formats, Warner Bros. is now exclusively backing Blu-ray Disc. Warner Bros. is Hollywood's biggest seller of DVDs, representing about 18% to 20% of sales in the United States.
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Blu-ray takes the lead in the battle of the high definition DVD formats after Warner backs it.
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BURBANK, CALIF: The Walt Disney Co. will back the high-definition Blu-ray disc developed by Sony over a competing HD DVD format, setting in place a high-stakes battle between Hollywoodâs leading studios with only one format likely to survive.
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The Blu-ray format has gained the upper hand in the battle for next-generation DVD supremacy, Japanese press said Sunday, after Warner Bros. said it would only support the technology developed by Sony.
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InfoWorld - The decision byÂ Warner Bros. to drop HD DVD in favor of Blu-ray DiscÂ for high-definition movies has set the electronics industry abuzz. Announced on the eve of the Consumer Electronics Show, the move put a single question in the minds of thousands of industry-insiders heading to the show in Las Vegas: Could the high-definition format wars be over?
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Several movie studios choose a side in the battle of DVD formats.
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Total HD release slides? Warner Home Video may not release dual-format HD DVD/Blu-ray Disc media - launched in January this year under the Total HD brand - until 2008 and not late 2007 as originally planned.â¦
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Fears of a recession and poor DVD sales played into Warner Bros's decision to back Blu-ray Disc over HD DVD for a high definition DVD format.
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Toshiba has hammered another nail in the Blu-Ray coffin, by announcing a dual layer HD-DVD and DVD disc. This means that studios will be able to sell discs that have the DVD version on one side and the HD-DVD
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The Blu-ray win means consumers seeking sharper movies on high-definition DVDs no longer have to choose between rival incompatible formats and run the risk of being stuck with a 21st century equivalent of Betamax.
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The HD DVD format has won a battle in its ongoing war with rival optical format Blu-ray with the announcement that Universal Pictures is backing the technology.