Blu-ray poised to win DVD war

They were dubbed the ‘DVD wars,’ recalling the format rivalries in the video cassette business in the 1970s that finally saw VHS prevail over Betamax, but not before millions of customers had lost money by backing the losing standard.

For over a year now, the market place for high density digital versatile disks (DVDs) has seen two incompatible formats — Blu-ray and HD DVD — battle it out for consumers’ hearts, minds and wallets. Both high density formats kicked up the storage capacity of the DVD almost five fold, from 4.7 gigabytes (GB) to between 20 GB and 25 GB.

Blu-ray’s godfathers were Sony and Philips. HD DVD had Toshiba and Hitachi in its corner. And while consumers needed high density disks, if they were to enjoy the new high-definition movie formats, they were hassled by leading Hollywood studios supporting one or the other standard — Fox, Warner and Sony for Blu-ray; Paramount and Universal for HD DVD. This meant that some movies were issued in one format, others in another... and they needed different players to watch.

Now it seems the end of the confusion is in sight. Toshiba is reported to have decided on exiting the high density DVD business. This will leave the field open for Blu-ray — which might end up as Last Man Standing in the format battle over high density removable optical storage.

The withdrawal of Toshiba (which remains to be formally announced) may have been forced by the recent decision of one of its supporters, Warner Brothers to stop issuing films on HD DVD; as well as the announcement by large American retailers like WalMart and video rental players like NetFlix, to stock only one format — Blu-ray — in future.