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Best Buy’s pushing Blu-ray to the front – Engadget HD

Ok. I’m officially done talking about the high def optical format war until hd-dvd bows out.

Best Buy’s pushing Blu-ray to the front – Engadget HD:
Posted Feb 11th 2008 4:36PM by Richard Lawler

The HD DVD camp, still reeling after losing support from Netflix this morning, may feel flattened as Best Buy has announced it will officially promote Blu-ray as the HD format of the future. Starting in early March the store will showcase Blu hardware and software on it shelves and website, and switch from its current neutral stance, to recommending Blu-ray to any customers that ask. While “an assortment of HD DVD products” will remain, a vote of confidence from major retailers, following the majority of studio support, will make it impossible for red to recover.

categories Hardware, Movies

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More Blu-Ray wins news

Can we just get on with it?

I’m almost at the point now where I don’t care, since I’ll probably just do digital downloads. Maybe Microsoft wins, after all.

Gartner: Blu-ray to Win Format War
Tue Jan 29, 2008 at 03:00 PM ET

Calling Warner’s decision to back Blu-ray exclusively “fatal” for the HD DVD format, leading tech research firm Gartner, Inc. is predicting an end to the format war by late 2008.
The comments from Gartner analyst Hiroyuki Shimizu first hit the web Monday in the Gartner Semiconductor DQ Monday Report, a newsletter sent out to clients and journalists.

In the report, Shimizu says that recent HD DVD player price cuts by Toshiba may extend the war through the end of the year, but that ultimately stronger studio support for Blu-ray will win the day.
“Warner’s shift from producing in both formats to Blu-ray alone has left HD DVD with just Paramount and Universal as its major Hollywood supporters, both of which account for only 30% of all HD movies,” wrote Shimizu.

“Gartner believes that Toshiba’s price-cutting may prolong HD DVD’s life a little, but the limited line-up of film titles will inflict fatal damage on the format. Gartner expects that, by the end of 2008, Blu-ray will be the winning format in the consumer market, and the war will be over.”

categories Hardware, Movies

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We may FINALLY see an end to the HD format wars!

The guys over at The Consumerist have a great comparison of which movie studios are on which side in the Blu-ray vs. HD DVD high def disc format war.

The comparison was brought on by yesterday’s announcement from Warner that they’re going to switch exclusively to Blu-ray in May. This is great news to me, as I’ve stopped buying any new movies because I didn’t want to end up with a stash of discs in the losing format. I know someone w/ a considerable collection of Laser Discs who’s hoping his long-discontinued disc player doesn’t break.

bluray vs hddvd

Format Wars: Where Things Stand In The Hi-Def DVD Format War:

After Time Warner Inc.’s announcement today that they’ve chosen to support Blu-ray exclusively, here’s the current breakdown of studio support for each format—and things aren’t looking good for HD DVD.

So the future is tilting more and more toward Sony’s Blu-ray format, it seems. Honestly, though, will anyone be buying movies on discs by the time this is all settled?

After seeing this chart, I feel pretty confident that Blu-ray’s going to win. Warner’s decision was based on the outcome of the Q4 sales results between the two formats, and though I haven’t seen what the results were, I do remember Blu-ray outselling HD-DVD by 2-1 for many of last year’s months.

When people ask me which of the two formats are better, I honestly admit that I can’t really tell the difference. I have a decent consumer-level plasma, but they both look great to me. Until today, I’d always told them to hold off.

categories Movies

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