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HD DVD Concedes To Blue-Ray, But Consumers May Want To Wait

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By PETER SVENSSON, The Associated Press

Published: February 20, 2008

NEW YORK - The HD DVD is now the Highly Dead DVD.

On Tuesday, Toshiba Corp., creator of the high-definition DVD, dropped out of the battle over the next generation of movie-disc technology and conceded to Sony's rival Blu-ray format.

It was the biggest battle between two video formats since Betamax lost out to VHS in the 1980s.

In the long run, the end of the latest format war is expected to be good for consumers, who will no longer have to agonize over which technology to choose for high-definition movies, and won't have to go to the trouble and expense of buying two players.

But in the short term, Toshiba's defeat not only leaves 1 million HD DVD customers worldwide with dead-end hardware but also ends a rivalry that kept down prices for players and pushed the Blu-ray group to match the features available on HD DVD players.

Analysts say people interested in getting a Blu-ray player would do well to wait. For one thing, it will take 12 to 18 months for Blu-ray players to become as cheap and full-featured as HD DVD players, which have been selling for just more than $100, according to ABI Research.

Both HD DVD and Blu-ray discs deliver crisp, clear pictures and sound, a perfect match for the high-definition TV sets Americans have been rushing to buy for the past two years.

But HD DVD players are also able to connect to the Internet to download trailers and other bonus content for discs, and can have a director or actor provide commentary in a small window while the movie plays.

Blu-ray players capable of showing picture-in-picture - a feature called "Bonus View" - have only just started to appear. So-called BD-Live players, which can take advantage of Internet content, are expected on the market this spring.

The fact that the PlayStation 3 console included a Blu-ray drive is one reason the format eventually won out. Sony Corp. sold 10.5 million PS3 machines since its 2006 debut.

But the real death knell for HD DVD was the last month's decision by Warner Bros. Entertainment to drop the format and release only Blu-ray discs and DVDs.

"That had tremendous impact," Toshiba President Atsutoshi Nishida said Tuesday in Tokyo. "If we had continued, that would have created problems for consumers, and we simply had no chance to win."

Warner joined Sony Pictures, The Walt Disney Co. and News Corp.'s Twentieth Century Fox in shunning the HD DVD, leaving Universal and Paramount Studios in the HD DVD camp. Universal on Tuesday said it would "focus" on releasing Blu-ray discs, but did not say whether it would cease putting out HD DVDs.

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