Screen Magazine: Vol. 29, Issue 4

Screen Magazine - Index

Screen Magazine - Screen Magazine: Vol. 29, Issue 4 - Index

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By Erik Walter
While most of us are just trying to stay warm this winter, the last thing on
anybody’s mind is the format war. The battle between rival blue-laser-based
optical discs seems like a warm weather activity anyway, but January and
February have certainly
proved to be eventful
months for the future of
high definition media.
The tantalizing and, in
most cases, confusing,
format war can be traced
back to as early as 2002
when Sony led the charge and unveiled plans for the development of the
Blu-Ray disc format. Toshiba and NEC followed suit and later that year
announced that the future of the optical disc format was in HD DVD. The
next five years gave way to a battle royal between the two successors of
the relatively young DVD format.
However, early 2008 has seen the breakdown of the HD DVD defense system
and a clear winner looks to be emerging from the rubble.
The first bombshell came on January 4, when Warner Bros. announced
that it will stop its support of the HD DVD format. The announcement
left the HD DVD camp with only two major studio supporters, Paramount
Home Entertainment and Universal Studios Home Entertainment, and due
to Universal’s shocking announcement in late February, Paramount Home
Entertainment and its sister company DreamWorks Animation are now the
only studios supporting the HD DVD format. Universal’s announcement to
cut its support came in the wake of Toshiba’s statement made on February
19 that it will no longer support the HD DVD format.
In an interview with Home Media Magazine, Universal Studios Home
Entertainment president Craig Kornblau said, “The path for widespread
adoption of the next-generation platform has finally become clear” and
believes that “the emergence of a single, high-definition format is cause for
consumers, as well as the entire entertainment industry, to celebrate.”
While Toshiba’s announcement was monumental it was far less then surprising.
In a recent interview with “The Hollywood Reporter,” media analyst Michael
Pachter pointed out that “HD DVD’s demise was inevitable” and that
“companies like Toshiba can’t compete with Sony on sales volume.” For
example, Sony’s highly anticipated Blu-Ray compatible PlayStation 3 has sold
over 3 million units in the United States alone compared to the bleak sales of
HD DVD players, which total approximately 1.03 million worldwide, according
to a Toshiba spokesman.
The news of Toshiba’s cessation of HD DVD business came on the heals of
several retail media distributers aligning with the Blu-Ray format. On February
11, DVD rental service Netflix and consumer electronics super-store Best
Buy announced that they will solely commit to the Blu-Ray format and begin
phasing out HD DVD. This announcement was followed four days later by
Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer, who said they, too, will begin to phase
out HD DVD by June of 2008, and to put the icing on the cake, Amazon.
com announced February 20th that they will now promote Blu-Ray as the
logical choice for consumers. While Amazon.com will continue to stock
both HD DVD and Blu-Ray discs, Peter Faricy, vice president of movies and
music at Amazon.com, says, “In order to best serve our customers, Amazon is
recommending Blu-ray as the preferred digital format.”
While the war appears to be over, several things still need to be addressed
before Blu-Ray can officially hop in the driver’s seat of our home entertainment
future. But until then the important thing to remember is that we will get
through this. We got through the Betamax-VHS war of the ‘80s, and that didn’t
even look or sound this good.
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