The announcement by Time Warner Inc. (TWX) that it would stop supporting both HD DVD and Blu-Ray formats, and go with only Blu-Ray, caused the promoters of HD DVD to cancel a press conference on Sunday.
With the International CES exhibition in Las Vegas being the venue they were going to hold the press conference, this has to be considered a hard blow to the HD DVD format going forward. Minimally, Time Warner may have been part of their press conference, and they may have had to cancel to regroup.
Already Walt Disney (DIS) and News Corp. (NWS-A) exclusively back Blu-Ray, so this is potentially a death blow to the product.
Those who do back HD DVD at this time are Dreamworks Animation SKG, Universal Pictures (GE) and Paramount (VIA-B).
Representatives of the North American HD DVD Promotion Group said in a statement: "We are currently discussing the potential impact of this announcement with other HD DVD partner companies and evaluating next steps. We believe the consumer continues to benefit from HD DVD's commitment to quality and affordability - a bar that is critical for the mainstream success of any format."
What they're saying here is they were hoping to market to the lower income demographic, creating a niche for themselves there. The exclusion of Time Warner now makes it difficult to market their product, which wouln't include a huge number of DVDs, making the reason for buying their product less desirable, even if it was to be less expensive.
HD DVD doesn't process the data as quickly as Blu-ray discs in general.
This is a big win for Sony Corp. (SNE), and will create a lot of buzz at the CES exhibition. It takes a lot of thunder out of Toshiba Corp. and their strategy.
It seems the major reason for this is the cash hog DVD market, which has carried Hollywood in terms of profits, and has declined this year. They evidently feel they can't afford to wait for the market to work things out, so the decision to move toward a single DVD strategy makes sense, and probably had to be made.
Time Warner will stop using the HD DVD by the end of May 2008.
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