Thoughts from the Shelf

This week Blu-ray technology took a major step towards winning the format war when Warner Bros. announced that it will start to exclusively release its products on Blu-ray disks from June 1st this year.

Coupled with the announcement of exclusive backing from one of Holloywood’s major studios, a further dent was put in rival format HD DVD’s plans to become the industry standard format when both Paramont and Dreamworks studios altered their existing contracts with HD DVD makers to allow them to terminate their partnership if rival Warner Bros. supported Blu-ray.

After Microsoft and Intel gave their backing to HD DVD, and a host of European studios making the format their preferred choice, HD DVD had a larger catalogue of films and looked to be the favourite to come out as the dominant format. Since then however Walt Disney, 20th Century Fox, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and now Warner have already fixed their choice on Blu-ray, bringing 70% of Holloywood productions to Blu-ray discs.

About 60 percent of Warner’s sales of U.S. high-definition discs were Blu-ray titles and the other 40 percent were HD DVS, said Kevin Tsujihara, president of Warner Bros. Home Entertainment Group.

Outside the U.S., the divide was far wider, with Warner’s Blu-ray discs outselling titles in HD DVD in Britain and Japan, among other markets, Tsujihara said.

Warner Bros., owned by Time Warner Inc., was the only remaining studio releasing high-definition DVDs in both formats.

“The window of opportunity for high-definition DVD could be missed if format confusion continues to linger,” Warner Bros. chairman and Chief Executive Barry Meyer said in a statement.

In yet another blow to HD DVD, Microsoft has also retracted the exclusivity of to plans to make an HD DVD add on for its Xbox consoles by considering including Blu-ray technology within the consoles themselves. The rival Sony’s PlayStation 3 console already uses the Blu-ray technology.