CES – is HD-DVD dead?

Possibly the biggest story of CES has happened before the show has even begun. Warner Bros has announced that it will no longer support HD-DVD, leaving Blu-Ray as the leading hi-def movie format, with the exclusive support of all the major film studios except for Paramount and Dreamworks.

Warners had previously supported both hi-def disc formats, but is citing consumer demand as the reason for its move to exclusively support Blu-Ray – joining Disney, Sony and Fox.

The announcement is a huge result for Sony, and particularly a massive boost to the beleaguered PlayStation 3 console, which – despite disappointing sales – is still one of the cheapest Blu-Ray disc players on the market.

The HD-DVD group has now cancelled its press conference at the Consumer Electronics Show, leading to much speculation that the format war is all but over.

The news is a massive blow to Toshiba – which has been promoting the HD-DVD format with a cheap players – and to Microsoft, the other significant backer of the HD-DVD format.

Of course, there is still plenty of life in Microsoft’s Xbox 360 console, because the software giant cannily offers a HD-DVD player as an addition to the main Xbox unit, rather than opting to build a next-generation DVD format into the console. That means that if HD-DVD does disappear, Microsoft could simply release a new external Blu-Ray drive for its console,  and only risk alientating a small proportion of its users. Nonetheless, PlayStation 3 owners will be gloating.

And if the war is truly over, it’s good news for consumers – because it’ll finally be worth investing in a hi-def video player without the fear of being stuck with the next Betamax.

The battle isn’t quite over yet, however – we’ll be at the Toshiba press conference tomorrow to cover events as they unfold.

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Dan Grabham Editor-in-Chief

About

Dan is Editor-in-chief of Stuff, working across the magazine and the Stuff.tv website.  Our Editor-in-Chief is a regular at tech shows such as CES in Las Vegas, IFA in Berlin and Mobile World Congress in Barcelona as well as at other launches and events. He has been a CES Innovation Awards judge. Dan is completely platform agnostic and very at home using and writing about Windows, macOS, Android and iOS/iPadOS plus lots and lots of gadgets including audio and smart home gear, laptops and smartphones. He's also been interviewed and quoted in a wide variety of places including The Sun, BBC World Service, BBC News Online, BBC Radio 5Live, BBC Radio 4, Sky News Radio and BBC Local Radio.

Areas of expertise

Computing, mobile, audio, smart home