I’ll quote my friend’s opinion:

It really has not near as much to do with end users’ choices as it has to do with the decisions of corporate executives.

Is it? Lets do some research to find out and look at some history of format’s war.

With original offering about the same number of DVD titles a year ago, it is consumer demand which is changing balance between formats.

An estimated 1.97 million HD DVD discs have been sold between spring of 2006 and September 2007, compared to 3.01 million Blu-ray discs (source)

Was it consumers choose PS3 with BR over XBox360 with HD?
Toshiba originally won by introduction DVD format and succeed of marketing it, but Toshiba was not quick and aggressive to push their HD-DVD enough to consumers to secure market place (they were first to present a DVD player by 3 months originally, so they have had an advantage of the first place).

With 750,000 HD DVD by November 2007, but PS3 did it all

Buoyed by a rush of titles this year, Blu-ray has racked up a slight lead in unit sales — 100 units to every 98.71 units of HD DVD — since the inception of both formats, according to First Alert data. (Source)

We see that the consumer is voting with their dollars with a clear preference for Blu-ray,” Chapek said. “This clear, objective measure shows the writing is on the wall.”
“Seeing HD DVD in our rear-view mirror is no surprise to us,” added David Bishop, worldwide home entertainment president, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment. “Blu-ray’s success is something that we have predicted since we first started promoting the new format. It has always been Sony’s position that there would be an inevitable migration from HD DVD to Blu-ray because of several factors, including the technical superiority of Blu-ray, the successful launch of PlayStation 3, the growing availability of BD playback machines and BD-enabled computers from the best consumer electronic brands in the world, as well as the growing number of hit titles being made available on the BD format.” (Source)

There is long article on wikipedia about both formats and history behind it HD_DVD versus Blu-ray_Disc.

As I have said here and mentioned earlier, history of the HD-BR battle is about marketing and not much about technology or executive’s decisions. Original supporter list was very close in numbers, but marketing and bundling with PS did it all.


2 Comments

Captain Jake · Jan 9, 2008 at 14:35

Actually your quotes there prove that consumers had NOT chosen to have only one format.

Serge Dosyukov · Jan 9, 2008 at 14:42

It is a result of the marketing that consumers chosen to buy more actively a BR based products – if one has PS3 with BR then it is not an executive decision about not using HD but competition in market offerings and popularity. Can you buy HD today? yes. Can you buy BR? yes. It is your choice to do so and by doing it you are promoting one standard over another. If Warner Brothers sees that sales of their dual offerings are in favor of BR, then it is not business viable to continue with HD at this point. It is still very close race and with effort Toshiba put into promoting a new version of upcoming HD standard, it might just turn back once again. But at this point market is saying otherwise.

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