HD-DVD, We Hardly Knew Ye

After Warner Brothers put the kibosh on their HD-DVD production effective this March, the final two studios backing Toshiba’s format, NBC Universal and Paramount, have dropped their exclusivity and will be producing on Blu-ray as well. This huge slant in the format war came as a surprise to nearly everyone during this years CES 2008 where Warner Brothers made their decision public. The HD-DVD group decided to sit out of the rest of the show to recoup as best they could. Apparently NBC and Paramount saw this as there way out.

But let’s be serious here, who really wins? HD-DVD was at least a policed format with high standards for the players they endorsed. The bonus features on each disc outweighed their competition on their Blu-ray equivalent too. Blu-ray players aren’t even all up to spec, meaning that early Blu-ray adopters won’t be able to enjoy all the new features of future movies, or, and this seems much more likely until HD-DVD is buried, none of that extra content will be implement as to not oust their supporters in an iPhone-like fashion. While HD-DVD offers the better content at a more reasonable price, perhaps it’s the fact that the Playstation 3 has it built in that makes Blu-ray the victor. As a word of caution however, HD-DVD is not dead yet, so although I won’t be purchasing anymore HD-DVD’s, I will accept any and all that you would like to send me.

I’d hate to say it, owning a Xbox 360 HD-DVD player and all, but the signs where on the wall when I couldn’t even rent a HD-DVD movie. What made it worse was that unless I was in Best Buy, all the other stores would spread several copies of the same Blu-ray movie over 6 rows while HD-DVD sat on 4 at tops. It will be great to pull the ‘ole HD-DVD player out when my grandchildren come over, and I can tell them all about DVD, Laser disc, and Betamax.

Now excuse me, I’m going to go watch Heroes Season 1 on HD-DVD.