What the Warner Move to Blu-Ray Means for HD DVD

By Devindra | Published: January 5, 2008

Blu-Ray LogoSo the news is out, and the rumors are true. Warner has officially decided to drop the HD DVD format for new releases beginning April 2008 — giving a major studio advantage to the Blu-ray camp. In lieu of this surprising announcement, the HD DVD folks canceled their upcoming CES conference and issued a press release voicing their disappointment in Warner’s move.

While I’m currently an HD DVD-only owner, I did eventually plan to get a PS3 later this year to complete my HD film experience. I figured this war was going to continue well on into 2009, and that cheap combo-players in 2009 were going to be the inevitable solution to this silly war. Now that Warner has given an amazing amount of leverage to Blu-ray, that prognosis may no longer ring true.

I don’t think the HD DVD camp is going to give up without a fight though. Toshiba still plans to include HD-DVD drives in all of their new laptops this year, and the special features implementation is still superior to Blu-ray’s fractured standard. Seriously, the fact that they still can’t get that together is downright shameful. I also expect Toshiba to throw even more money at the platform (at least until the end of this year), so we can expect more cheap player extravaganza’s.

The big problem this move brings is an even bigger lack of exclusives for HD DVD. With Warner no longer releasing titles on both platforms and Bluray with a bigger selection of studios publishing for it, exclusives are going to be pretty much the only compelling releases for the platform. It’s only a matter of time before Universal and Paramount start to look towards jumping ship from HD DVD as well.

If that occurs, then the platform will truly be dead. But for now, I’m not going to call it quits for HD DVD yet. Warner’s move doesn’t devalue the great films I already own for HD DVD–many of which can’t yet be brought to Blu-ray until it reaches parity with HD DVDs special features. Current HD DVD owners shouldn’t jump ship just yet, but those looking to step into the HD DVD club should hold off a bit and see if Toshiba can prove the platform still has life in it.

Update:

The Consumerist has a great article up titled Buyer Beware: Current Blu-ray Players Won’t Correcty Play Future Discs. They actually don’t reiterate much news, but it is interesting to hear that even Blu-Ray manufacturers were suggesting people get the PS3 as their Blu-ray player instead of a soon-to-be-crippled standalone unit. They also mention that the Profile 2.0 players won’t be coming out until October 2008, something I’m kicking myself for not mentioning in this article. Here’s an excerpt:

So here’s how it’s going to work: current players are Profile 1.0, and can play future hi-def discs but no bonus stuff. Profile 1.1 dics will include additional bonus material that won’t play on 1.0 players—these discs will have a “Bonus View” sticker. Come October, Profile 2 capability will come to the market, which includes Internet activity, but only on Profile 2.0 players—these discs will have a “BD Live” sticker.When asked why current players were released to the market when in such a primitive state, manufacturers blamed the release of HD DVD and said it forced them to come to market too soon. “We should have waited another year to introduce Blu-ray to the public, but the format war changed the situatio

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  • Dark Shroud
    dale, the main movies will always play fine as the codecs are fully supported. The profiels apply to special features. Sony reps have said this here and there, I just can remember where I read it. Either way I bought a PS3 at launch just because I knew it was upgradedable, and the games of course.
  • dale
    greg, where did you find out about these tests of compatability because i have heard that although they {the 1.0 profile} will play the movie just fine it will not now or ever be able to recognize the features of pip or for that matter the ethernet connection when that becomes available.
  • erexx
    "But for now, I’m not going to call it quits for HD DVD yet. Warner’s move doesn’t devalue the great films I already own for HD DVD–many of which can’t yet be brought to Blu-ray until it reaches parity with HD DVDs special features"

    I agree with everything accept this.
    Completely confused by this statement.

    If its BRj vs. iHD
    Who cares?
    Its a marginal feature that will be here very soon
    and most BRD players are firmware upgradeable
  • Greg
    Actually tests have been conducted extensively at Sony, and no incompatibility report have been found.
    The 1.0 profile can read the 1.1 discs Np, and they will also be able to read the 2.0, as it is only additional options.
    Blu Ray is actually more techncially advanced than HD DVD (higher capacity, higher bandwith, which means more potential for better picture with specific encodes) which is why directors (like Lasseter and Bay) have spoken outloud being pro-Blu Ray.
    The consumers have chosen in 2007 (Blu Ray outselling 2-1 in discs, and also cathcing up and outselling in haardware since-inception as of December 07.

    It is more than time to have one HD standard, as the real battle now starts (to progressively replace DVDs).
  • Kb
    Last week I brought my nephew a Playstation 3 ya know that thing with Blu ray, while I was there I looked around at the Video Players/Recorders and saw HD DVD players, I only saw 2, both were Toshiba, Over £100 pound Differences and I was told that the cheaper one wasn’t a Fully HD Player instead it was only a 1080i, and to get the best I needed to buy the higher model, I asked which one they sold more of, “They have both been sitting on the self’s for over a year, we haven’t sold any of them” he went on to say they were a waste of space and people either turn to Blu Ray or they get put off knowing at similar price they can get the next HD movie format in the ps3 included as a games console with internet and what not.
    From that I already knew PlayStation 3 was a better buy
    I went in on Saturday 5 Jan 2008 not knowing what had happened with WB and Blu Ray and I saw the same player with some saving on it, FYI: It had been on offer for a few days already (it had nothing to do with WB) I saw the same guy working there and he greeted me, he said something I didn’t fully understand till I read this article, he jokingly said, “here to buy another Ps3 ha ha” and also said that the HD DVD player’s price I was looking at was tempting even for him and mentioned it’d be a waste of money, now that they have lost... I was startled and confused and I asked what he meant by “lost”. He put it blunt “HD DVD has lost to Blu Ray as of today” he also told me a little more E.g. Warner Bros....
    After reading it fully, I understand “Blu Ray All the Way”

    I also learned that there are hardly 1 Million HD DVD players in homes Compared to over 9 Million Blu Ray Players in Homes. It doesn’t take a genius to see why Warner Bros. would stick to the higher Unit Base, I don’t except the others so last much longer... I know one of the HD DVD backing companies have a contract to stay for a year... So I’m guessing when that’s up they will jump the Sinking Ship before they sink with it.
  • Hans: I agree that this looks horribly bad for HD DVD, and their leaving the market is an obvious outcome of all of this. But still, I am interested to see what Toshiba does to recover. I'm not like some bloggers who will just give up on the platform altogether now.

    The special features issue with Bluray also means that studios simply aren't sure what hardware is in most of the players out there. They're either going to produce discs that some people can't take full advantage of, or people will be forced to upgrade their firmware constantly. This issue comes to mind. Not to say HD-DVD players don't require firmware updates sometimes, but the consistency of hardware provides a good baseline for the content producers.

    Also, I agree with you on the content end. It's certainly more important than the special features. But honestly, the Blurays inability to keep up with the HDi standard is just inexcusable. You can reason it away all you want, but in the end a big part of "next generation dvd" is "next generation special features". The HDi stuff is far more advanced than just the multi-angle DVD feature.

    But you're right, Bluray has more space to work with and this year they'll finally be able to catch up on the special features front. Too bad the platform has screwed over all of its early adopters in the process. No one will remember anyway, and just like the Betamax/VHS fiasco, having the better specs on paper doesn't always translate to success in the market.

    Bluray will probably win, but right now I'm still going to follow what the HD DVD camp does. All hope is not lost... Yet.

    Dale: The good thing about the HD DVD players is that they make really good upscaling players for about the same price as a standalone upscaling DVD player. You really don't get much benefit from the ones under $100. I would say stick with Netflix for now to enjoy HD DVD until we hear more about Toshiba's new plans.
  • dale
    i was really disappointed about the warner bros. announcement. i recently just bought a new hd-dvd player. how long do you think i will be able to buy movies for it and build some kind of library. i'm not really interested in spending 400 for a blu-ray player just yet until they get their profile to 2.0 . maybe i should just give up on hd and continue with regular dvd since my player upscales rather well. what do you think?
  • Hans Martin
    This truly is the weekend the format War ended. i don't see how you can expect toshiba to continue dumping cheap players on the market throughout 2008. What could the hope to achieve? It's time for the HD DVD-camp to cut their losses, instead of throwing good money after bad. HD DVD customers have enjoyed a year of heavily subsediced hardware and lots and lots of free software, and should be thankful for all the money the industry have spent on them. But the party is over.

    The global sales numbers just haven't been there for HD DVD, and Blu-Ray had the better strategy.

    As for Blu's "broken standard", i am extremely relaxed about the early lead in special features that HD DVD had -- by and large, people watch movies on their movie-players. How many DVD's do you have where u have actually used the special feature of "angle selection"? This standardized special feature of DVD is long forgotten, as will will most of the bells and whistles of HD DVD special features be forgotten in a year or so. People are more focused on content, not fuctions. havng said that, i really don't see BD as having any less of a potential than HD DVD in the features-department due to the implementation of Java. BD's strength is that functions can be applications on the disk and this movie-specific rather than pre-defined. And with storage capacity to burn, that should more than leverage the touted benefits of HDi.

    The movie industry acknowledge that the format war has caused consumers to hold out until there is a clear winner. In fact, recent data suggest that consumers are aso holding out on buing DVD's and are holding out to buy the titles on the winning HD-format. It's now in everybody's best interest to end the war quickly.

    With that in mind, I don't see any way HD DVD will be able to coax more support for it's format that is has at present. And if the rumor mill is to be trusted, Universal and Weinstein may at best be purple by the summer. Regardless, i don't see many informed consumers buying into HD DVD in the months to come.

    The king is dead. Long live the king.
  • Brian, contrary to popular opinion, porn may not matter at all in this format war. It matter during Beta/VHS because that was really the only way to access it, but now people have access to it online and on dvd. I'm also not sure if HD quality is really going to help given the production values of most porn ;)
  • Brian
    Wait for Ron Jeremy to decide
  • HD DVD players can do two simultaneous video streams and offer a picture-in-picture for bonus material content, a feature that's only recently come out on a couple of Blu-ray players, and in a recent firmware update for the PS3. HD DVD players also have interactivity features that will be supported on Blu-ray players later in 2008.

    It means that the best Blu-ray player to buy is a PS3 because it's practically infinitely upgradeable, whereas any of the stand-alone Blu-ray players are only upgradeable within some limits. You can read more about these Blu-ray "profiles" in this article on Gizmodo.
  • Ben, the advantage that HD DVD has is that their special features specifications were pretty much set upon the launch of the first generation players. This includes support for interactive menus and all of the HDi special features listed here. In short, these interactive special features are guaranteed across all HD DVD players, and they can also be upgraded to support features which weren't around when they launched.

    The Blu-ray special features have not been as mature, and only the Profile 1.1 and greater players (released after Oct. 31 2007) have begun to support the interactivity so common on HD DVD. You can read a good explanation on the new Blu-ray profiles here . The other issue is that many of the earlier Blu-ray players are not upgradeable to support these new features, which means those consumers are stuck with players that can't fully take advantage of special features on new discs. To me, this has always been a glaring weak point for the Blu-ray camp.
  • ben
    Could you elaborate on the advantage of hd dvds special features over blu-ray's? A lot of us on the sidelines would like to know what you mean.
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