The last month and a half has not been good to the HD-DVD format. On January 4, Warner announced that it would support Blu-ray exclusively beginning June. Its sister companies, New Line and HBO, soon followed suit. Despite reports to the contrary, Paramount and Universal, the last two major studios supporting HD-DVD, held fast, or at least did very well at keeping their lips sealed. However, problems have only continued to snowball. Since then, minor film studios in Europe have been dropping like flies. This week, the issue seems to have come to a head. On Monday, Netflix announced it too would support Blu-ray exclusively, and Best Buy, the nation's premier consumer electronics retailer, announced it would be promoting Blu-ray over HD-DVD. Finally, today Wal-Mart, the largest retailer in the country, announced that it will drop HD-DVD as well.
There are also many rumors floating around. One rumor says that Toshiba, basically the only producer of HD-DVD players and the number one supporter of the format, will drop it as well. Other rumors say that Paramount and Universal will drop the format before the beginning of April. In light of this week's news, however, it would not be at all surprising if the studios jumped ship before then.
Before November, I could have cared less which format survived. In the end, I am very glad that I picked Blu-ray in November. It already looked like the winner then, and things have only gotten better from there. I'm just hoping that I will be able to pick up There Will Be Blood, a movie distributed by Paramount in the U.S., on Blu-ray before long. I'm already signed up for the Amazon pre-order of No Country for Old Men.