Sony will be launching it's first U.K TV ad promoting it's Blu-Ray disc format. This should help support Blu-Ray before the holiday season. Sony's first Blu-Ray ad will be broadcast for the first time ever on Saturday at 12:42 on the famous Sky Sports 1 channel. Basically just before the football match between Liverpool and Everton. The advert will include why Blu-Ray is the future of high definition and the Playstation 3 will also be included. So this advert is promoting both the Playstation 3 and Blu-Ray. The advert also let's everyone know that the Playstation 3 is Blu-Ray enabled, allowing people who didn't know about Blu-Ray or who did, to actually understand what Blu-Ray is and how it's different between Digital Video Disc (DVD) & High Definition Digital Video Disc (HD-DVD). "Everything is now focused on Christmas as it is the biggest time of the year for sales in the video industry," said Helen Davis Jayalath, the senior analyst for video at Screen Digest.

"For both camps it will be crucial as they need to get people aware of their format and get sales going."

Major movie studios supporting Blu-Ray are Sony Pictures (evidently), Disney & 20th Century Fox.

Major movie studios supporting HD-DVD are Paramount, Universal Pictures & Dreamworks.

The only major movie studio supporting both formats is Warner Brothers.

Other miscellaneous news is that Blu-Ray is outselling HD-DVD in Japan 9:1. View the chart attached with this news post. You can check the foreign source of which supplied the chart here.

Christmas is looking big for Sony!

Sony is to launch the first UK TV ad promoting its Blu-Ray DVD disc as the format war heats up before the critical Christmas shopping season.

ITANI via media.guardian.co.uk »