With the departure of Warner Brothers from the HD-DVD camp, HD-DVD was put on life support. However, the war still didn’t officially end. There was/is much speculation that Universal & Paramount (the only major studios left) will pull out, but that hasn’t happened yet.
However, there are a couple of recent announcements that make it clear that these companies are tired of waiting. Rather than watch the continued slow agonizing death of HD-DVD. Best Buy and Netflix are moving (pulling the plug) to either push Blu-ray hard or eliminate HD-DVD altogether. Best Buy announced that while they will still continue to carry HD-DVD players, they will be recommending Blu-ray to all their customers. Netflix on the other hand sent out this email to all their users who had the HD-DVD format in their profiles:
Dear Terry,
You’re receiving this email because you have asked to receive high-definition movies in the HD DVD format. As you may have heard, most of the major movie studios have recently decided to release their high-definition movies exclusively in the Blu-ray format. In order to provide the best selection of high-definition titles for our members, we have decided to go exclusively with Blu-ray as well.
While we will continue to make our current selection of HD DVD titles available to you for the next several months, we will not be adding additional HD DVD titles or reordering replacements.
Toward the end of February, HD DVDs in your Saved Queue will automatically be changed to standard definition DVDs. Then toward the end of this year, all HD DVDs in your Queue will be changed to standard definition DVDs. Don’t worry, we will contact you before this happens.
We’re sorry for any inconvenience. If you have any questions or need further assistance, please call us at 1 (888) 638-3549.
-The Netflix Team
Even though I have players for both formats, I applaud these efforts. I have no problem seeing HD-DVD going away so that we can get on with our entertainment purchases. Once there is only ONE format, we’ll see more adoption which will drive the costs down. Let HD-DVD die! It’s over!
Paramount didn’t pull out (yet) Warner Brothers did.
Sam,
You’re right! Corrected it.
We can only hope that both Paramount and Universal pull out very soon. I want a High Definition DVD experience to go with my 46″ 1080P LCD system but I refuse to buy a player and DVD’s until there is only one standard. This delay has got to be costing Hollywood a lot of money as most of the people I know feel the exact same way. The only people I know who can watch these titles own a PS3 that came with the ability to play Blu-Ray discs.
Hi Terry!
It’s about time you picked a side (:
…I was a bit awestruck during your review of that dual-format player you got a few months ago because at that point I was already on the Blu-Ray side of the house. Here’s a great video on the whole “war is over” thing lol http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywWfmRdOmJ0
Take care!
~Issac
Issac,
I never got a dual format player. I simply added a cheap HD-DVD player to my setup. Like I said then and will say now, I was always hoping/predicting Blu-ray would win. I just didn’t pass up a great deal on a cheap HD-DVD player.
Thanks for the video link. It was hilarious!
Long live blu-ray š
Sadly, it is over and I chose the losing side.
As long as dual-format players exist, I will be happy knowing that my HD DVD purchases did not go to waste. I think all players should go dual-format now, but I recognize that probably few companies will add support for HD DVD moving foward. For the ones that do or have already done so, thank you! Its now time to lower the prices on your dual-format players.