In another salvo in the format war between Blu Ray and HD-DVD, Warner Bros. appears to have changed camps fully.  Warner Bros. just announced they will start releasing films only in the Blu Ray format.  They will phase out all HD-DVD by May of 2008.  The reason?  More disc sales with Blu Ray. Since it’s inception Blu Ray has sold about 2x as many discs as HD-DVD.  It’s hard to argue with those numbers.  There are also rumors that Apple will be endorsing Blu Ray over HD-DVD in their new systems come Macworld.  While not as large an impact as the Warner Bros. announcement, it will have an effect.

I own a PS3, and a number of Blu Ray discs so this news makes me a happy technophile.  This format war is proving something that is very important in the technical world though.  It’s not about which technology is better, it is about which technology is available and gives the consumer what they want.  Beta vs. VHS is the seminal example of this truism.  It proved without any doubt that it’s about availability, ease of use, and price in combination. It seems Sony has finally learned this lesson.

In this case Blu Ray is the better format so it’s appearing to be winning is a nice change.  Blu Ray offers more storage capacity and better overall quality.  That is not why it is winning though.  It is winning because of 3 things - studio support, retailer support, and player availability.  So far the majority of the studios support the format, Blcokbuster only rents Blu Ray, and Target only sells Blu Ray players.  Combine that with the fact that the PS3 has it bundled in by default and it gives Blu Ray a nice foundation.

A lot of people, myself included, has thought the PS3 launch was horribly botched.  And I think it has mostly been botched, except for one thing.  The PS3 BD support.  This is probably the smartest thing that Sony could have done.  By doing this they gave a large incentive to get a PS3.  It plays movies, and games too.  No extra parts are needed for full high definition support.  It’s interface is also HDMI so you can just plug the one cable in and then play your movies in their high def glory.  Contrast this with HD-DVD where you need either a stand-alone disc player or an external attachment to the XBox 360.  For me, I like that I now have one device to do games, dvd and BD together.  Plus the fact I can get more movies is better.

It’s this combo that is important.  It seems Sony may have learned some things in their loss with Betamax.

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