yeah MS could have really sealed the deal by lauching an hd dvd drive in the 360.

the xbox was almost worth it's $399 price tag. Throw in a hd dvd drive and it would have been a sure thing. MS went cheap with an add on drive... arg.

the format war never would have started if everyone already had an hd dvd in their living room.

It is touching to see a large corporation so concerned about the destructive effect of free market competition on consumers. Think of those poor HD-DVD consumers who were cruelly lead to believe they would be able to buy HD-DVD movies from Warner Bros for a reasonable length of time.

Sure, Warner could have guaranteed they would release all their movies on HD-DVD for the next decade, and help those consumers who choose HD-DVD players; but obviously consumers shouldn't be asked to depend on a company's promises. It is better to have a monopoly, then no one has to worry about what to buy or how much they need to spend.

If I had a Blu-ray player I'd be overjoyed by this announcement. Warner is showing a huge commitment to Blu-ray, so I wouldn't worry about any future online movie distribution deals. Warner would never give up Blu-ray to sign an exclusive online distribution deal, No matter how much money Warner might be offered for an exclusive online distribution deal, they care too much about their customers for them to ever abandon Blu-ray.

Who cares anyway, both formats are dead in the water. Bittorent has shown who the real format winner is...

Well ... I was expecting this for a long time. I liked Blu-Ray more for the main reason it was designed from start to be computer friendly from start. The writeability was designed from start, and the format is designed to be upgradable. 4,6,8 layers in the future so at least 200 GB, maybe more. The computer industry adopted it from start it was allways something like 90 % Blu-ray against 10 % HD DVD. For sure I would not like to see a Blu-ray PC industry and a HD DVD CE industry.
Warner was smart I think, and maybe waiting longer than other would expected to go "Blu-ray only" was good , price of the hardware dropped faster. 
Long live Blu-ray.

Of course warner went to blu-ray, that's what happens when you throw tons of money toward a studio. Sony is a crooked company just as much as ms is and they have crampy equipment like ms has crappy software. nuff said!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

finally I purchased the right product, a PS3 and a bluray player for PC 
YEY I finally made a good decision in my life 

and besides having a conflict isnt good for your health, toshiba, give up its over

... These guys knew they needed something to boost their revenues and cut their losses, especially with PS3 (huge losses/problems with expensive and scarce games) -- which they are taking huge losses on -- so they pull this play. Allowing the public to thing their adversary is indeed incompetent/weak and the wave of the future lies in the Blue Ray Disk. Very slick, because the common man/woman would leap to believe what they want to believe that is so conceivably true to them, spoken by men of words and the "gift of gab." Very good play I might add. Notice no mention of other technologies that are on the brink?? Yes sir, there are, and they are pushing full force before it gets here and then Sony; THEY themselves are going to be obsolete. Future, ha, they don't have much of a future really with the new technology coming out. I laugh. I could go on for quite a while with more info, but will leave it at that.

Has everyone already forgotten one of the biggest problems with Blu-Ray? Sony is dictating what can and cannot be released on Blu-Ray discs. For example, they have entirely shut out the adult movie industry by banning any X rated material from ever being released on Blu-Ray. 

Isn't anyone even the tiniest bit concerned with a single company having that level of control over what we can or cannot watch in the privacy of our own homes?

I was starting to sell off my standard DVDs to exchange for HD-DVD movies a basic swap so to speak. I have a XBOX 360 and was about to start collecting movies I had and could get in HD-DVD format.

And purchase the HD-DVD drive I've seen some HD-DVD films really cheap compared to Blu-Ray. Now it seem that I either continue what I was doing or stop before I start and buy a PS3 and get all films on Blu-Ray.

I have seen a movie in each format and I am impressed with them both. Hopefully Microsoft & Toshiba will get someone else on the bandwagon.

Only last week was I down at Chester City centre where I noticed Blue-ray number HD-DVD 1:1, 2:1 and even 3:1 in some places such as Virgin. I haven't seen anywhere were high definition movies on HD-DVD outnumber Blue-Ray, so at least here Blue-Ray is significantly taking the lead. It was especially comical at HMV (I think it was there) where they had HD-DVD and Blue-Ray promo screens on display and someone had accidentally stocked the HD-DVD shelf with Blue-Rays.

I am quite frankly glad a winner is starting to emerge; this war has gone on long enough and continuing it is not in the interests of consumers, people want to be able to make a safe bet now that HD has become more widespread.

I plan on picking up a Blue-Ray disk drive for my PC sometime this month, at <£90 OEM to be able to watch HD on your PC you cannot really argue with the price.

All of these exclusive deals involve studios being paid by the already money losing Sony in order to obtain this exclusivity, whether it's Toshiba/M$ or Sony that give these studios the money, it all ends up coming out of our pockets in the end in high cost of content.

If HD-DVDs want to be viable again, launch every title in Combo Format, that was their ace in the hole and they never exploited it, it should've been the easy choice for anyone waiting on a format in that they could buy it for their current player and then keep it for their future player.

While BR may 'win' this battle, they both $crewed themselves out of billions by making everyone second guess the point of Disks at all just on the eve of better content delivered in other ways (sattelite, pay-per-view, OTA, etc.). Right now many if not most regular DVD titles/launches sell more in a single day or weekend than an entire run for either HD disk format. 
If we had 1 single standard from the start or far more combo titles, you would've seen many more sales, most of my 'luddite' friends tell me that everytime they watch titles at my place (I have both formats). If North America every catches up with parts of Europe and Asia for very fast internet connections, then there is a very real possibility that HD pay per download content will knock-off any pretender to the throne from this failed war.

How many people stung by losing their format are going to bother with another than may also be replaced?

To be honest, this writing has been on the wall for a while.
From the moment Sony put it's money where it's mouth is, and shipped Blu Ray with the PS3 and Microsoft (an HD DVD backer) didn't with the XBox 360 and shipped with an "old" DVD drive, HD has been doomed.

I can appreciate this has reduced the price of the XBox, but it's also produced a huge consumer base of Blu Ray players already sitting in front rooms.

Barring back handers and associated sweeteners, the choice of format from the studio's point of view is a no brainer.

Returning that HD-DVD player in that case ;) Politics and formats aside, Blu Ray has it, so unless you want to be the last buyer of Betamax, head back to the store with that HD DVD player.

At the CES presentation Toshiba had a graph showing HD-DVD sales. The Toshiba sales of the stand alone players was 49.3%. Even with the bargain prices they were selling less than Blu-ray. If you add on the PS3's that can also play Blu-ray movies then their share of the market was less than 20%. It appears Microsoft abandoned them since Bill Gates did not mention HD-DVD at all at his CES presentation. Good old Microsoft uses a company to promote its own agenda and then gets rid of them, gee it sounds like SCO!

What matters here is politics. And money. The specs don't matter the least!

PS: sorry about your parents...

All Toshiba needs to do now is dump the DRM, make the hardware dirt cheap and let Sony do the Betamax dance again!

If I was the guy above I would return that HD-DVD ASAP. HD-DVD will be done by the end of 2008.

Microsoft wanted to try estabilishing a monopoly. They got full control over the DVD-Forum thru Toshiba/Universal. Despite the fact that practically no other 3rd party manufacturers have invested money into R&D to produce HD-DVD hardware players and burners, Toshiba kept pushing the format against Sony and the BDA Alliance which is far from a monopoly, in fact the BDA is formed by the majority of manufacturers worldwide. 
On the contrary is the HD-DVD format which looks like and is a monopoly of just Toshiba and still Toshiba with its own hardware, its own software titles from its own Universal/NBC Companies, and all thanks to Microsoft that used the HD-DVD mainly to promote the pretty low quality WMV9Pro which they made the specs public in order to achieve VC-1 standard with some added functionalities, despite the fact that it still remains nothing more than an hack of MPEG-4 ASP, which is still inferior to the MPEG-4 AVC H.264 standard the majority of manufacturers and producers are switching to. 

If Sony's history is any guide, Blu-ray has one foot in the grave and another on a banana peel.

My crystal ball indicates that HD DVD will live on as a favored storage medium for PCs while neither Blu-ray nor HD DVD will gain sufficient steam in entertainment before they get replaced in a year or two by internet download boxes.

This is great news, Blu Ray won 52 weeks straight in software sales.

And according to toshibas press event at CES (not the big one that got canceled) Bly Ray standalones are now 50:50 with HDDVD standalone players. (not including the PS3).

That means blu ray has started to out sell HDDVD standalones as well, add in the PS3, a whole year of higher software sales, is it any surprise Warner went BD.

BDlive players (finale spec) are at CES so that ends that concern as well.

The best format won. could not be more happy at this news

By the way, New line has also gone exclusive. Lord of the rings is now BD only.....

the blu ray spec isn't even complete, how can anyone want to go exclusive with it?

I bought my parents an HD-DVD player this christmas because the BD camp can't even get their house in order. 

http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/the-state-of-blu_ray/the-state-of-blu+ray-320077.php