It seems like the Toshiba’s embattled format, HD DVD, has
lost another crucial battle. Today, Best Buy decided to support Sony’s Blu Ray
as the next generation optical format.
Though, Best Buy will continue to sell HD DVD discs and
players, but the Blu Ray format will be promoted more prominently.
“Our decision to shine a spotlight on Blu-ray Disc players
and other Blu-ray products is a strong signal to our customers that we believe
Blu-ray is the right format choice for them”, said Brian Dunn, Best Buy’s
president and chief operating officer in a press statement.
Also Dunn explained that by choosing Blu Ray format Best Buy
tries to help the customers migration to a widely-accepted single format.
“Because we believe that Blu-ray is fast emerging as the
single format, we have decided to focus on Blu-ray products,” he added.
The high-definition DVD's are set to replace standard DVDs,
which account for an 18-billion-dollar market in the US alone, and the format battle is
one of the most crucial in the technology world. Its outcome could be fateful
for Sony, which famously lost the last similar confrontation when its Betamax
system lost out to the competing VHS videotape system.
Best Buy’s decision is just the latest in a series of fatal
blows received by the HD DVD format since the beginning of 2008.
Right before this year’s CES, Warner Bros Entertainment,
which previously released movies in both formats announced that starting with
May 2008 will choose Blu Ray format over HD DVD.
Warner’s officials explained that the company wants to end
consumer’s confusion over the two competing formats, a cause that lead to a
slow mainstream adoption.
One week after Warner Brothers Entertainment expressed their
full support for the Blu Ray format, the British store chain Woolworths
announced it will turn exclusively to selling Blu Ray, which means HD DVD will
no longer be available for sale.
The main reason for that: Blu Ray sales managed to outsell
HD DVD by ten times over Christmas alone, which is mainly due to the success of
the PlayStation3. The change will take effect in March, when all 820 Woolworths
stores will be HD DVD free.
In the meantime, Toshiba remains devoted to the HD DVD
format, after the company announced the Super Bowl 30 second ad it had bought
for approximately $3 million. And not only that, but Toshiba also cut down on
its HD DVD players prices in both U.S.
and Europe.
Toshiba has slashed the price of its HD DVD players in US
and in Europe. The HD-A3 is sold in US for
$149.99 from $299.99. The price for the HD-A30 was also halved, from $399.99 to
$199.99, while the price on the high-end HD-A35 went from $499.99 to $299.99. In
Europe, Toshiba said the price of the HD-EP30
player, would be reduced to just below 200 euros ($229).
Analysts however consider its efforts useless, and say Blu
Ray will be this year’s indisputable winner.
Last month in Gartner's Semiconductor DQ Report, the analyst
Hiroyuki Shimizu said that Blu Ray will be the real champion until the end of
the year.
"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”, he wrote.
Also, yesterday, Netflix announced today that it will stock
only Blu-ray discs and drop the HD DVD format.
"We’re now at the point where the industry can pursue
the migration to a single format, bring clarity to the consumer and accelerate
the adoption of high-def," Ted Sarandos, chief content officer for
Netflix, said in a company statement. Subscribers can still rent the remaining
HD DVD titles until the discs’ natural life cycles take them out of
circulation, which means the popular rental service is to fully abandon HD DVD
by the end of the year.
Basically, Toshiba now has only two powerful allies:
Paramount Home Entertainment and Universal Studios Home Entertainment,
but there were rumors that they are considering also ditching the format in the
favor of Blu Ray as well.
