With today’s announcements by Best Buy recommending Blu-ray as the “format of choice” and Netflix stating that they would no longer stock the format, it’s just too much for the infant HD DVD platform to take. The rats are leaving the sinking ship, and it’s every man, woman and child for themselves.

As recently as the 2007 holiday season, it looked like both formats still had a decent shot at dominating the market. But back in January, Warner announced it was going exclusively Blu, and I think that was truly the beginning of the end for HD DVD. Since that time, retailers started to aggressively cut the price of HD DVD players, in a desperate maneuver to keep the format alive (or at least recoup their inventory investments).

I really think we reached the tipping point today, and the momentum has shifted so far away from the HD DVD format, that we’ve gone past the point of no return. And while I generally don’t think that any decrease in competition is good for consumers, the speedy demise of the HD DVD format is likely to produce an increase in the production of high definition content (since studios won’t have to worry about which format will survive), as well as less risk for buyers going forward.

As for current HD DVD owners, there are still titles out there, and they’re likely to be produced for quite some time. Toshiba and Microsoft haven’t officially pulled the plug here, but the format is no longer a viable choice for new buyers. Without the support of most major movie studios, major retailers and rental outlets, you might as well consider it six feet under.

In addition to the LG player that hit shelves this week, Samsung and other vendors are expected to release combination HD DVD / Blu-Ray players in the coming months. Initially, such players are expected to remain costly, with prices around $1000 to $1200. However, fully integrated chipsets will bring prices down over time. That all said ABI doesn’t think that widespread adoption will take off until street prices drop to around $200 (which ABI predicts will happen by 2009). Guess it’s time to sell that PS3 for scrap value.

[via DigiTimes]

Here are some excerpts from today’s overly self-congratulatory press release from the Blu-ray Disc Association, titled Consumers Overwhelmingly Choose “Blu”:

The Blu-ray Disc Association today declared its victory as the premiere high definition DVD format of choice… The success of Blu-ray Disc is unprecedented… consumers have voted with their wallets for the format that offers the widest array of hardware and content on the market.

Apparently, the fact that Sony shipped over 1 million Playstation 3 consoles means victory in their minds. Now first off, how many of those PS3s are getting used to play movies? According to the Blu-ray folks, plenty:

Driving demand for high definition content, more than one million Sony PlayStation 3 (PS3) units, each featuring a Blu-ray Disc drive, were shipped to the United States in 2006, …according to a recent SCEA survey of over 10,000 PS3 owners, 80 percent indicated they will buy Blu-ray movies and 75 percent said they use the PS3 as a primary device for viewing movies.

While Sony may have sampled about 10,000 PS3 owners, you have to wonder how many of those 1 million PS3s are still floating around, looking for an owner. I’m sure that Blu-ray has increased its presence now that the PS3 is out, but to declare a unanimous victory over HD DVD is a little silly this early in the game. Perhaps somebody told the folks at the Blu-ray Disc Asssociation that if you say something enough times, it eventually becomes true.

Frankly, I wouldn’t count either format down and out for a long time. While HD DVD sales figures are hard to come by, there are likely hundreds of thousands of HD DVD players out there as well. With over 10 million Xbox 360s able to add on a player for just $200, and computer add-on HD DVD drives running as little as $100, HD DVD still has a clear price advantage over Blu-ray.

Bottom line, only time will tell who’s victorious, or if both formats will ultimately become irrelevant with combination players on the market, such as the one just announced by LG this week.

On the hardware front, LG is expected to announce a combo player that can play both formats. Conversely, Warner is planning on rolling out dual-sided discs that feature Blu-ray on one side and HD DVD on the other. While I think the Warner idea is kind of a nice short-term solution for movie studios that otherwise would have released on both formats, the LG approach of a universal player that can handle both formats seems like a better choice for consumers.

[via Engadget]