Looks like Warner Brothers has dropped their neutral stance on the format war. They have now chose to head completely to the Blu-Ray ship after their contract runs dry at the end of 2008. Could this be the final nail in the HD-DVD coffin?
January 4, 2008 - After nearly a year of intense speculation, Warner Bros. this afternoon officially announced their complete support for the Blu-ray format.
"The window of opportunity for high-definition DVD could be missed if format confusion continues to linger," stated Barry Meyer, Chairman & CEO of Warner Bros. "We believe that exclusively distributing in Blu-ray will further the potential for mass market success and ultimately benefit retailers, producers, and most importantly, consumers."
The company will continue to release its titles in both standard DVD format and Blu-ray. After a short window following their standard DVD and Blu-ray releases, all new titles will continue to be released in HD DVD until the end of May 2008. Following that date, it is believed that all high-def titles will be released in Blu-ray format exclusively.
"Warner Bros. has produced in both high-definition formats in an effort to provide consumer choice, foster mainstream adoption and drive down hardware prices," said Jeff Bewkes, President and Chief Executive Officer, Time Warner Inc., the parent company of Warner Bros. Entertainment. "Today's decision by Warner Bros. to distribute in a single format comes at the right time and is the best decision both for consumers and Time Warner."
With Paramount, DreamWorks and Universal still firmly in the HD DVD camp, this announcement doesn't yet represent a definitive deathblow, but it does hold significant ramifications for the HD DVD format.
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I am genuinely shocked
Now consumers have to shell out enough cash to get a blu-ray player. $1,000 aprox give or take a few $100 is not appealing to those who do not possess beds made out of cash. At the very least couldn't they wait till like August or September as to give some more time for people to jump ship? Well...least they have no movies or anything coming out that'll interest me this year...at least as far as I know.
Blu-ray players are $400.
It's like thinking why would you put good money into porting a game to a different console when you know it will hardly sell?
It would be utterly MORONIC of them to stop DVD copies of the movies....way more people to buy DVDs than Blu Ray copies >_>
So WB will keep making HD-DVDs until March 08, after that, it is Blu-ray all the way >_>
Anyways, another blow to HD-DVD, before time, paramount will see the errors in there ways.
If I was a HD-DVD owner, I would start selling that thing fast while they still have a chance to get money for it.
I am on of those people who refuse to buy one of these HD players until one of them wins.
Sad to say this means nothing. I bet you we will see another article in the next days stating its just a rumor and never was official or happening. Its just wishful thinking.