Shane’s Drivel

The nuclear option has backfired. Toshiba surrenders. HD-DVD is officially dead.

Now I’ll be on the lookout for some decent $2.50 HD-DVD titles.

MSRP on HD-DVD players has dropped. The top-0f-the-line HD-DVD player is now the same price as the cheapest Blu-ray player, $300. Prices are also dropping on select HD-DVDs at Amazon. Half off? Bah, still not cheap enough. Wake me up when they’re $5.

There is a smaller Blu-ray movie sale at Amazon, but mostly on B-list titles.

Bill Hunt at The Digital Bits reports in his 1/9/08 11:30 PST post that his inside sources say Paramount and Universal are ditching HD-DVD in to go Blu-ray exclusive. He says an announcement is imminent. Bill’s been a Blu-ray cheerleader for quite a while, but he does have good inside scoops, so this one rumor has legs.

Bill also reports via the LA Times (registration required, so I’ll take his word for it) that the Warner Blu-ray announcement did in fact trigger an out in Paramount’s HD-DVD contract.

In other news, Universal’s HD-DVD contractual commitment ends at the end of January. Hmm..

Given a chance to comment on all the bad news for HD-DVD, Bill Gates stated that X-box Live will be a way consumers can download high def movies in the future. Keep in mind that next to Toshiba, Microsoft is (was?) HD-DVD’s biggest backer.

Oh, and HBO & New Line have pledged Blu-ray exclusivity.

By the time you read this, Blu-ray could very well have 100% market share on upcoming movie titles. Looks like game, set, match and all that. Blu-ray wins. Its over. Done. Thank goodness.

Following Warner Brothers’ announcement to cease HD-DVD support and to support Blu-ray exclusively, Paramount could do the same. Paramount says its current plan it to continue supporting HD-DVD, denying supports that they are poised to follow Warner’s footsteps. But Paramount doesn’t confirm or deny reports that their HD-DVD contract has an out in case Warner jumps to the Blu-ray side (which they did).

Come on, Paramount, make the jump. And bring your sidekick, Dreamworks, with you. Your primary HD-DVD player manufacturer (Toshiba) has already tipped its hand. Let’s get this over with.

A Toshiba respresentative states Blu-Ray will win as a movie format. But HD-DVD isn’t giving up on the computer market. Fine. Its not like computer users haven’t been able to deal with dueling drive formats:  CD-R, CD+R, CD-RW, DVD-R, DVD-ROM, DVD-RW, etc…

Following Warner’s announcement, HD-DVD canceled its planned conference at the world’s largest electronics convention, CES.

Warner Brothers announced yesterday that by June 2008, Warner will be supporting Blu-ray exclusively instead of producing movie titles on both HD-DVD and Blu-ray formats. This announcement puts 70% of movie studios exclusively in the Blu-ray camp. Only Paramount, Universal, and Dreamworks are committed exclusively to HD-DVD.

And this brings my blog full circle. I started out predicting Blu-ray’s victory based on majority share of movie studio support and superior features. Then HD-DVD comes out the the nuclear option, the $98 player sold at Walmart (which I bought). Since in my 15 year consumer electronics experience price conquers all, I predicted HD-DVD had turned the tide and would come out victorious. Fast forward today (June 2008 actually) and roughly 3 out of 4 high def movie titles out there are going to be exclusively Blu-ray.

So that’s it. The war is over. Blu-ray wins. I expect HD-DVD to go down slowly, kicking and screaming.Hopefully as the news gets out, Blu-ray player sales will skyrocket and perhaps by this fall, prices will be reasonable.

The Samsung BDP-1400 Blu-ray player has been discounted by $200 to be on sale for $300. That’s just $50 more than the cheapest HD-DVD player. Interesting.

This sale doesn’t seem to carry all the internet buzz that the $98 Toshiba A2 HD-DVD player did. Perhaps $300 is still a tad above mass market gluttony.