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It has been rumored for the last couple of weeks but now its official: Warner Bros., the only movie studio that until now was releasing movies in both formats, has decided to go exclusively with Blu-ray, starting in May of this year. This means that the score is now 6 for Blu-ray (Sony, MGM, Disney, Fox, Lion’s Gate, Warner)  and 2 for HD DVD (Universal, Paramount). So, is this the end for the HD DVD camp? Will all those cheap HD DVD players that were bought over the holiday season become obsolete in the near future? Will this be Sony’s only triumphant proprietary media format you know, after being not so successful with Betamax, UMD, MemoryStick and Minidisc?

For some reason I’ve been supporting HD DVD since the beginning, for various reasons: they seem to be the underdog, I dislike Sony and their proprietary formats, the name is catchier, and finally, they offer cheaper players. But I still don’t think HD DVD is going the way of the dodo, the consumer still has the final word and what drives consumption is only one thing: price. HD DVD disks are cheaper to manufacture than Blu-ray disks and HD DVD players are cheaper than their Blu-ray counterparts. I believe we are going to start seeing even cheaper HD DVD players and HD DVD movies as a counterstrike.

A battle has been won, but the war is not over yet.

Via [Ars Technica]