DVD format duel draws to an end

LOS ANGELES – Warner Bros. Entertainment said Friday it will release movie discs only in the Blu-ray format, becoming the latest studio to reject the rival HD DVD technology and further complicating the high-definition landscape for consumers.\nWarner Bros., owned by Time Warner Inc., was the only remaining studio releasing high-definition DVDs in both formats.\nIt is the fifth studio to back Blu-ray, developed by Sony Corp. Only two support the HD DVD format, developed by Toshiba Corp.\nBoth formats deliver crisp, clear high-definition pictures and sound. But they are incompatible with each other, and neither plays on older DVD players, which means consumers seeking top-quality playback face a dilemma.\nWarner said it decided to go with Blu-ray because consumers have shown a stronger preference for that format than HD DVD.\n“The window of opportunity for high-definition DVD could be missed if format confusion continues to linger,” Warner Bros. chairman and Chief Executive Barry Meyer said in a statement.\n“We believe that exclusively distributing in Blu-ray will further the potential for mass market success and ultimately benefit retailers, producers and, most importantly, consumers,” the statement said.\nThe company said sales of Blu-ray discs in the U.S. generated $169 million last year, while sales of discs in the HD DVD format totaled $103 million.\nAbout 60 percent of Warner’s sales of U.S. high-definition discs were Blu-ray titles and the other 40 percent were HD DVD, said Kevin Tsujihara, president of Warner Bros. Home Entertainment Group.\nOutside the U.S., the divide was far wider, with Warner’s Blu-ray discs outselling titles in HD DVD in Britain and Japan, among other markets, Tsujihara said.\nSales of set-top high-definition disc players in the fourth quarter of 2007 also factored into Warner’s decision.\nThe company saw an acceleration in sales of Blu-ray players at the end of the quarter, particularly in December, Tsujihara said.\n“We always viewed set-tops as the most significant indicator” of consumers’ format preference, he said.\nStill, one alarming trend Warner keyed on was that consumers didn’t appear motivated by price reductions on high-definition disc players.\n“When we saw that was not impacting sales in the level that it should have, and the consumer research that we did indicated that the consumers were holding back from buying either one of the two formats ... we thought it was the right time to act,” Tsujihara said, noting that even sales of standard DVDs were affected because consumers appeared unsure over which format to choose.\n“That was kind of the worst of all worlds for us,” he said.\nThere are some differences between the formats. Blu-ray discs can hold more data — 50 gigabytes compared with HD DVD’s 30 GB — but the technology’s new manufacturing techniques boosted initial costs.\nHD DVDs, on the other hand, are essentially DVDs on steroids, meaning movie studios can turn to existing assembly lines to produce them in mass.\nWarner Home Video will continue to release new titles in HD DVD until the end of May.\nPali Capital analyst Rich Greenfield said in a Web posting Friday that he expects the HD DVD format to “die a quick death, versus a prolonged format war.