Warner Brothers Ditches HD-DVD; Goes Blu-ray Exclusive

Posted by Maggie Van Ostrand (maggie@filmschoolrejects.com) on January 4, 2008

By the end of May, Warner Bros. Entertainment will no longer distribute movies in the HD-DVD format, but will instead back Sony’s Blu-ray. This is a turn-about from Warners’ previous philosophy of releasing films in both formats.

This decision is great news for Sony, whose PlayStation 3 video game console has Blue-ray built in. It will also help consumers who don’t particularly wish to invest in separate HD DVD units.

The one-format decision is meant to help the majors fight back at a time the writers’ strike will be seriously felt in the release of DVDs.

“We expect HD DVD to ‘die’ a quick death,” Rich Greenfield, an analyst at Pali Capital in New York, wrote on his blog today, reports Bloomberg News. “While we still expect overall consumer spending on DVDs to decline at least 3 percent in 2008, the risk of an even worse 2008 DVD environment has most likely been avoided by Warner’s early 2008 decision.”

“The battle between the two technologies,” says Bloomberg, “has left studios scrambling to predict which format might prevail. Warner Bros., the second-largest studio in 2007 U.S. box-office receipts, joins Walt Disney Co. and News Corp.’s Fox in backing Blu-ray exclusively. The top studio, Viacom Inc.’s Paramount Pictures, uses HD DVD, along with DreamWorks Animation SKG Inc. and General Electric Co.’s Universal Pictures.

“Movie discs using Blu-ray’s high-definition format outsold HD DVD by 2-to-1 in the first half of last year, according to Home Media Research.”

Viacom and DreamWorks announced in August they would back the HD DVD format. At the time, Greenfield wrote on his blog that Viacom will receive $50 million and DreamWorks Animation will get $100 million from a group including Toshiba. He didn’t name his sources.

Read more articles by Maggie Van Ostrand