Blu-ray could win high-def battle

I was hoping that this "fight" would extend for a few years so as to force the manufacturers to bring the price points to earth. With high definition becoming the standard, it doesn't make sense to have to sell crappy upconverting dvd players to customers so they can get a decent picture on their new HDTV. Sure, I could sell them a DCDI or better standard DVD, but those rival the price of a low end BluRay and in many cases exceed the price of a HD-DVD.
At some point on-line sales might threaten DVD sales, but I think that is a long way off. First of all, the average citizen is barely net-wise and many of those don't have an appropriate computer or connection to download movies even if they wanted to. So that fear of the downloaded movie is a bit overrated. A lot more people will not download a movie even if they have the capacity because they want to be able to touch what they pay for or play it on different televisions with ease.
If HD-DVD goes away too fast, the consumer will get screwed because the BluRay crowd won't have much incentive to make the machines or movies affordable.

Interesting post. I havn't done that bad with hd-dvd, but surely have sold many more blu-ray discs. We have sold thousands of movies to gamers too, who own the Playstation. I think, from what I have seen in my stores (2 in FL), thatSony made a very wise choice when coupling the blu-ray drive with the Playstation. We also sell hardware, and we have sold, this holiday season, about 60 hd-dvd add-ons, 174 hd-dvd players, 650 Playstations and 320 blu-ray players. Obviously we are glad to see Warner move to the format we sell most often. So my experiences reflect the stores in the first posting here. We are strongly considering putting our money in blu-ray only.

It's a shame that Universal and Paramount aren't changing sides now to end this war. They obviously don't realize that all studios promoting one format gives the HD disc format a much bigger chance against downloads and to succeed dvd. As a retailer with 8 stores in Minnesota, after Warner's decision, I have decided to sell off, at sale prices, my hd-dvd stock including all rentals and try to support one format and get this war over with.

Many people that stop in refuse to buy into hd discs because of the format war. This is hurting the consumer, the retailer and the studios. Shame on Paramount and Universal if they continue to keep this war alive, which means continuing to cut all of our throats.

We have been selling blu-ray over hd-dvd 4 to 1 this entire holiday season, and I am glad to see Warner making the right choice that obviously the consumers made. Blu-ray won every single week of 2007 in software sales, even on hd-dvd's strongest weeks (Transformers, Shrek and Bourne).