According to this excerpt from the New York Times, HD-DVD is as good as dead:
Variety is reporting that the last two major studios backing HD DVD — NBC Universal and Paramount — are opening the door for a switch to Blu-ray....(Earlier) Warner Brothers, which had been issuing movies in both formats, decided to go exclusively with Sony’s Blu-ray format....So what appeared to be a stalemate may, with one relatively small move by Warner, now turn out to be a quick victory for Sony.
It's the death of a salesman for Toshiba and Microsoft.
So that's that. This confirms the "format war" never was going to be about PS3 or Xbox 360 sales, or even superior consumer utility -- it was about which format had more media. And now that format is Blu-Ray -- and it's not even close.
Not surprisingly, HD-DVD players can now be had for as low as $129.
This is a major blow to Microsoft and Toshiba especially. Microsoft's Xbox 360 is one of the best things they have going, but now with the PS3 and it's built in Blu-Ray drive it's hard to see how the $349 Xbox 360 is a better buy than the $399 PS3. As for Toshiba, they will be forced to slash prices to below break-even and hope to gain enough marketshare to carve out a budget niche.
From a technical perspective this is a sign that disposable media (rather than media downloaded and stored on hard drives) is here to stay. The higher capacity Blu-Ray discs, combined with the slow pace of broadband in the US is a bad sign for downloadable content. Until download speeds allow full HD quality video to be either streamed and rapidly stored discs will continue to have a convenience factor hard to beat.
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