Maybe it’s all the late nights getting to me but I feel myself becoming increasingly cynical against the big corporations out there and their marketing stunts.

The latest being Warner Bros who have very kindly come out and offered free Blu-Ray replacement movies to all their customers who purchased the HD-DVD versions before Warner Bros dumped HD-DVD.

Now while that may sound nice I see two problems with this offer.

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It’s been almost a year since Toshiba threw in the towel for ill-fated HD-DVD. While sales of the Blu-Ray format have yet to reach the levels of current home video king DVD, market penetration (*chortle*) is on an incline.

Figures show that of the almost 11 million blu-ray players sold in the US, over 70% are in the form of Sony’s black wonderbox. Despite the presence of cheaper players, many pundits still see the PS3 as good value. I heard it’s because it plays games too, but I don’t like to report on unsubstantiated rumours.

This leaves me wondering something : Is the PS3 responsible for Blu-Ray’s success, or is Blu-Ray carrying the PS3?

Source : Psu.com

The first time I heard about Holographic Versatile Discs (HVD) was about 2 years ago, I had heard that it was the sleeper technology that was going to rise above HD-DVD and Blu-Ray and win the next-gen disc war. Just to make things clear, HVD’s don’t actually project some sort of 3D holographic image, the name stems more from the technology used on the disc itself.

Well, as we all know, the battle between BR and HD-DVD is over. Blu-Ray won, HD-DVD backed off and things felt simple again. Unfortunately, this is not the case. HVD’s are making a couple of headlines again, reason being that they are offering 150GB discs as a start, with the release of 300GB discs in september and promises of up to 1TB discs by 2010.

So if all this is true and the discs become affordable in not too long, what will happen to Blu-Ray?

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Well, time will have to tell on this one. According to Engadget, The Economic Daily, a chinese written newspaper has reported that a company named Pegatron, an OEM subsidiary of ASUS has won the order to assemble Xbox 360 consoles with a Blu-ray Disc ROM drive.

They are reporting that shipments are expected in the third quarter of this year. Microsoft, in their usual fashion, have refused to comment on any of this, but it will definitely be interesting to see if something like this is true.

What interests me is that they are said to be assembling the consoles with drives, as opposed to the external HD-DVD drives that we has seen in the past. This of course, could just be something that was lost in translation. As well as adding yet another SKU to the already confusing line-up of 360’s, there will be other issues to look at as well.

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Okay I have to admit I did not know this. When it became clear that Blu-Ray was going to win this war one of the first things that went through my head, is that Sony must be over the moon with the obvious royalty money that they are going to be raking in.

However that actually doesn’t seem to be the case. The Blu-Ray alliance as over 176 companies in it, including Sony’s arch enemies Samsung and Panasonic.

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That’s it, it’s all over.

Toshiba has just announced on their official website that they are no longer going to be developing HD-DVD products

Toshiba Corporation today announced that it has undertaken a thorough review of its overall strategy for HD DVD and has decided it will no longer develop, manufacture and market HD DVD players and recorders.

There are now no longer any if’s, buts or maybe’s. The war is over and Blu-Ray has won.

I honestly think this is the best thing that could have happened, now we can all move into the HD world and look forward to some cheap Chinese Blu-Ray players in the coming months.

It seems Sony’s belief in the embedded Blu-Ray player paid off after all.

Source: Official Toshiba Website

Okay we are done.

It is being reported today by Reuters that Toshiba has given up on the HD-DVD and is going to give Blu-Ray a free run. They will continue to sell HD-DVD players until everyone stops buying them but they are no longer putting any money into research and development for HD-DVD.

This decision is estimated to cost them hundreds of millions of dollars in expected HD-DVD revenue, but after the announcement by Wal-Mart on Friday, that they will only be stocking Blu-Ray, it was only a matter of time.

Personally I am just glad the war is over. Now we can start betting on how long it will take Microsoft to release a Blu-Ray add on.

Toshiba to exit HD DVD, end format war-NHK | Industries | Consumer Goods & Retail | Reuters

So it looks like Toshiba is about to throw in the towel in the format wars and concede victory to Blu-Ray.

It really is strange how quickly things change. I fully expected HD-DVD to win this war in the run up to christmas, they had the cheapest players out, the better features and were winning over studios. Then Warner made an announcement and the rest as they is, is history.

MAXCONSOLE – MaxConsole – Toshiba to drop HD DVD in coming weeks?

Doobiwan has kindly given me permission to reproduce his ramblings wonderful thoughts on the Blu-Ray – HD-DVD war.

So the writing is on the wall for the beleaguered Toshiba and it’s HD-DVD allies. The Warner move was a bitter pill and it is most likely going to be the end of them unless they pull a seriously ‘leet Ninja Rabbit out of a hat. While I abhorr dragging out this “format war”, and will be happy just to see it over, I really would prefer the format that puts control in the consumers hands win over the corporate rights abuse machine that is Blu-Ray.

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So last week I posted about how since the Warner announcement Blu-Ray sales had shot through the roof and HD-DVD sales had died.

Well many were quick to ask how the sales had been affected so quickly as the main stream buying public had not heard the news yet. Well one week later and now things are looking even more suspicious.

The same company that ran the last research has published their latest research and it seems like HD-DVD has made an impressive come back, and here I was thinking I wouldn’t be able to post about this war anymore.

So now the conspiracy theory can start, did the Blu-Ray group go on a mass buying spree just after the announcement to attempt to push home the gravity of the situation?

I wonder if we can find out what titles it was that were sold and whether or not the HD-DVD sales stayed level and the Blu-Ray sales sky rocketed?

Latest NPD report shows Blu-ray sales were no trend – Engadget HD

I am sure it’s just a glitch in the matrix but it seems that Warner’s promise of no longer releasing HD-DVD’s after May is not entirely correct.

According to their release schedule they are publishing HD-DVD titles for at least 3 weeks after that date, these releases include some blockbusters like I Am Legend and Justice League.

So is this a sign that Warner is not entirely sure about it’s decision or just a logistical nightmare?

Source: Tom’s Hardware

The graph above shows the market split between HD-DVD and Blu-Ray in the week leading up to CES.

The graph on the right is the market split after Warner Bros broke the news they were going Blu-Ray exclusive…. I think we can see a winner emerging here.

The only question remaining is how on earth did the mass market hear about this so quickly and act on it?

Format War: Blu-ray Domination Pushes Hardware Sales to 93% After CES

[Thanks to Dale for the tip and apologies to Gizmodo for the hotlink]

This is a bit of a shot in the dark here because my Internet won’t play the CNN video. However it is being reported that the video through the link is an official CNN report about the fact that Wal-Mart have now officially stopped selling HD-DVD players.

They have gone exclusively to Blu-Ray and being the largest retail chain in the US (World?) this is a killer blow for HD-DVD.

Hopefully now Toshiba and Sony can kiss and make up and we can move forward with one high definition format.

CNN Video Report

This has been reported by numerous different online websites and is either a rumour that won’t go away (MGS on 360) or based on fact.

It appears that Toshiba dropped of an envelope stuffed with 1 million $100 bills to try and get Warner Bros to become HD-DVD exclusive.  $100 million is a huge number and it is quite suprising that Warner didn’t go for it.

However it appears that they were very smart not to do that because Sony then arrived and dropped $400 million on the table to become Blu-Ray exclusive.

To me this is just more proof that Microsoft were not heavily backing HD-DVD as they could easily beat Sony in a bribery war and there is no mention of them even being part of it.

globeandmail.com: With Warner in its corner, Sony has Toshiba on ropes

Well, news coming out of CES 2008 seems to hint that Microsoft could jump ship over to Blu-Ray. Not to get your feathers ruffled up or anything here’s the exact quote from Albert Penello, group marketing manager for Xbox hardware in the US:

It should be consumer choice; and if that’s the way they vote, that’s something we’ll have to consider

Nothing concrete but at least it shows that MS won’t stick with a format that’s in danger of losing. I really hate all this HD wars nonsense and wish it would end, to me it all seems like a money game, whoever gets the biggest bribe wins. There’s been rumours of $500m deals being made to sway studios to go one way or the other and it’s blatantly obvious that the consumer is not very high up on the priority list when it comes to HD.

And why would Blu-Ray winning make a difference to XBox 360 sales, the vast majority of people buy a gaming console for…you guessed it…gaming! Sure there’s home entertainment buffs out there that need a console to satisfy their personal home cinema needs  but really now. I’m sure glad I’m not the one that has to answer all the questions regarding this ridiculous war.

Source: Reuters