Return of the DVD wars
Don't buy that new DVD player yet. Just when you thought Sony had won the hi-def home movie war and established Blu-ray as the dominant format, two major movie studios yesterday helped HD-DVD strike back. Jill Barshay has more.
A wall of movie titles available on Blu-ray. (Toru Yamanaka/AFP/Getty Images)
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Scott Jagow: This summer, it appeared the high definition DVD format war was over. Blockbuster chose Blu-ray, a major blow to HD-DVD. I heard the HD-DVD people had a meeting. And lo and behold, there's good news this morning for HD-DVD. Here's Jill Barshay:
Jill Barshay: Paramount Pictures and DreamWorks Animation said yesterday they're dropping Blu-ray and using HD-DVD only.
Paul Erickson researches the market at Display Search. He says movie studios and retailers are now split between one format backed by Sony and another backed by Microsoft and Toshiba.
Paul Erickson: For a lot of people, they were bordering on calling the format war close to over. And I think now with this announcement, HD-DVD is in the fight and that this format war is going to continue.
Wondering how this affects you? Chris Crotty is a senior analyst at iSuppli. He says confused shoppers aren't buying many players or disks in either format.
Chris Crotty: The smart consumers are waiting until we see more equipment this holiday season that is format agnostic. It can play both HD-DVD and Blu-ray.
But, Crotty says, online downloading may eventually make both technologies obsolete.
In New York, I'm Jill Barshay for Marketplace.
