James Delahunty
20 Oct 2005 23:05
We reported two weeks ago that Warner Brothers was getting ready to put support behind the Blu-Ray disc format, while still release movies on the HD-DVD format also and on Thursday, Warner finally made the official announcement. The company will now join the board of the Blu-Ray Disc Association. The pledge to still release movies using HD-DVD makes Warner the second major movie studio to support both formats.
Paramount was the first earlier this month to say that it will release content for both formats to give consumers a choice. Now NBC Universal remains the only movie company that supports only the HD-DVD format and not Blu-Ray at all. None of the studios that originally backed Blu-Ray, including The Walt Disney Co., have announced plans to release movies using the HD-DVD format as well as Blu-Ray. Warner's official announcement comes just a day after Hewlett-Packard urged the Blu-Ray camp to implement more consumer friendly features such as Mandatory Managed Copy.
Now it seems that everyone is accepting that a costly format war is coming, which is why two major movie studios have already decided to use both formats. Hollywood is seeing DVD sales slow down and since major movie studios make the majority of profits from home video sales, they are very eager to start releasing high definition movies. A format war however will most likely set back demand for high definition material by a few years.
Disney and Twentieth Century Fox applauded the announcement by Warner saying that strengthening Blu-Ray's advantage could avoid the costly competition between two formats. "The continued dramatic momentum toward Blu-ray makes us more optimistic than ever that a format war can be avoided," said Bob Chapek, president of Buena Vista Home Entertainment.
Source:
MercuryNews.com