TAG | So should I buy a HD DVD player? |
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| by Stan Beer | |
| Thursday, 10 January 2008 | |
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Despite its continued vocal support for HD DVD, Microsoft must now be getting a little concerned with the increasing depth of the hole it has dug for the Xbox 360 in the HD video space. In order to get its console on the market early and at the right price, Microsoft went with a standard DVD player instead of waiting for the arrival of HD DVD. Later, as Blu-ray player sales began to outstrip HD DVD player sales because of the PlayStation 3, Microsoft announced an add-on HD DVD player for Xbox 360. However, the add-on player is not a must have for existing Xbox 360 gamers who already have a DVD player in their console and for new buyers it is an expensive extra that pushes the price of Xbox 360 beyond that of a PS3. To make matters worse, now that Warner Bros has gone exclusively Blu-ray, the choice of HD titles that an Xbox 360 with the add-on is capable of playing is severely limited. Speaking of Warner Bros, its move to Blu-ray has now put pressure on the three remaining studios supporting HD DVD to switch to Blu-ray. According to a report in the Financial Times, Paramount is poised to switch to Blu-ray because it has an escape clause in its contract that allows it to switch if Warner goes Blu-ray. Paramount for the time being has said it will stay with HD DVD but would it surprise anyone if the movie studio was right now discussing the ramifications of switching to Blu-ray with its legal department? If Paramount does defect to Blu-ray, that would leave just Universal as the sole studio making non-animated movies for HD DVD, a situation that would clearly be untenable for the holdout studio. Even without Paramount, however, at least 75% of movies released to HD video from now on will be Blu-ray. Together with the fact that by the end of the first quarter of 2008, there will be close to 10 million PS3 plus another million or more standalone Blu-ray players in homes, that would appear to make Blu-ray a safe bet for fence sitting consumers. As for the PC vendors that currently supply HD DVD drives in their systems - there is little doubt that if they don't already do so, they'll gladly supply Blu-ray drives. So why should I buy an HD DVD player? I don't really know. Perhaps someone out there can supply me with a convincing reason.
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