Blu-Ray About To Win
TechCrunch is reporting that Paramount, one of the last major studios on the HD-DVD side, will be announcing that it is switching to Blu-ray. This leaves Universal as the sole studio in the HD-DVD camp. I haven't been keeping up with the details of the format war, but I imagine the PS3 might have had something to do with it. Knowingly or not, people bringing home PlayStation 3's this holiday season were also bringing home Blu-ray players. With a much larger installed base of Blu-ray players, Sony had more leverage in negotiations with the last hold-out studios. I wonder how different things would be if the XBox 360 had HD-DVD built-in instead of as an optional add-on, given that it had a year (and effectively a two-year) head start.
I personally wouldn't go out and buy a PS3 just for Blu-ray support, and in fact was thinking about buying an XBox 360 because I like more of the games and because of the XBox Live (and Arcade) experience. That said, I wouldn't go out and buy any other Blu-ray player either. I doubt I would buy any Blu-ray movies since Netflix has been working wonders for me and on top of that, I would favor digital distribution over physical distribution at this point. I think many others do too, which makes me wonder if this was a war worth fighting over.
Technorati Tags: Sony, Blu-ray, HD-DVD, PlayStation 3, XBox 360, digital, high-definition, movie studios
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