DVDs HD - DVD in High Definition

There was a fair bit of controversy after a Reuters article claimed that Microsoft would be supporting Blu-ray in future versions of the Xbox, however, Microsoft has now quashed these claims.

A Microsoft spokesperson has made a statement confirming “There was a critical element of our comments missing from the story — Microsoft currently has no plans at this time to consider Blu-ray as an option. We continue to believe that HD DVD is the best optical solution for consumers, since it’s the only format today that delivers quality experiences at affordable prices.”

The spokesman also stated “While the article states that Microsoft might possibly look into Blu-ray, we just want to emphasize that there are no current plans to consider Blu-ray as an option. Microsoft continues to be dedicated to the HD DVD format and we don’t want the Reuters article to mislead or suggest otherwise.”

Blu-ray did well at the High-Def 2.0 conference. The conference was a one day event sponsored by Home Media Magazine in cooperation with The Hollywood Reporter and the Entertainment Merchants Association.

Awards were given out for the best High Definition discs, the Blu-ray title Casino Royale got the Live Action Title of the Year, while ‘300′ was awarded the best overall HD Disc. In all Blu-ray picked up 7 or the 11 awards on offer.

Toshiba reportedly sold approximately 90,000 HD-A2 players last weekend, fueled by the drop in price to under $100.00. This shows that there is a thriving market for the High Definition formats and the only thing holding consumers back is the high cost involved with the TVs and players.

Personally I cant wait for the cuts seen in the US markets to be replicated here in the UK, the market is there, it just needs to be made available to the average person.

Speculation arose last week that Warner Home Video would be choosing sides in the Dual Format war, however, this has today been dismissed by Jim Noonan, SVP of Strategic Promotion and Communication. He said that they are still on board with both formats, and will continue in 2008 with a strong line-up of new releases and catalog titles in both HD DVD and Blu-ray formats.

The statement made last week were probably not what Warner would have wanted to be released and speculated about, no matter what the truth is regarding the future for Blu-ray and HD DVD with Warner.

Toshiba’s entry-level HD-A2 HD DVD was the first to be under the $200.00 mark in the US, but ‘Best Buy’ & Wal-Mart have just announced that they will now be selling the unit for under $100.00. Unfortunately there is not yet any sign of consumers in the UK being able to pick up players at these prices, but its a good sign that prices are dropping making HD technology more available to the paying public.

Warner Home Video is considering the change from being one of the leading dual format studios to featuring Blu-ray exclusively. VP Dan Silverberg at the Blu-ray Festival press event in Los Angeles was quoted as saying:

“One thing that may be changing is our strategy, when both formats launched and hardware prices were high, we made a decision to support both formats and let the consumer decide. But now that hardware pricing is affordable for both Blu-ray and HD DVD, it appears consumers no longer want to decide — so the notion of staying in two formats for the duration is something we are re-evaluating now that we are in the fourth quarter.”

The decision to favour Blu-ray rather than HD DVD is down to sales and it was noted by Silverberg that the firms Blu-ray sales of ‘300′ was its top seller.

Research just released by Home Media Research shows that Blu-ray has out sold HD DVD up to the 3rd quarter of the year. The research was carried out in the US only but shows that approximately 2.6 million Blu-ray discs were sold against just 1.4 million HD DVD discs during this period.

Analysts believe the HD DVD format will make a comeback in the last quarter of the year, especially after movie releases such as ‘Transformers’ which sold over 100,000 HD-DVDs on its first day of release (16th October).