Blu-ray ascendent, continued

Sometimes, things just start to look inevitable -- like the next-gen DVD format war. The latest news is that Netflix is phasing out HD-DVD, opting to carry Blu-ray exclusively. This article also includes the tidbit that Best Buy stores will begin to "recommend that customers choose Blu-ray," which is less impressive but still noteworthy. Certainly if they're hiding the $200 Toshiba HD-DVD players behind a massive Blu-ray display featuring the likes of Ratatouille, it's possible some consumers won't even realize they have a choice.

Then came this weak rejoinder from the HD-DVD camp:

We have long held the belief that HD DVD is the best format for consumers based on quality and value, and with more than 1 million HD DVD players on the market, it's unfortunate to see Netflix make the decision to only stock Blu-ray titles going forward. While the Best Buy announcement says they will recommend Blu-ray, at least they will continue to carry HD DVD and offer consumers a choice at retail.

Yep -- that's the whole thing. No blustery statement about future prospects, no mention of the lower cost of HD-DVD players, nothing about Paramount still hanging on as supporting HD-DVD exclusively. (Things look a little bleak on the Universal front, too.) I can't believe how sad and dejected the language is. "At least they'll continue to carry HD-DVD. Aw, shucks." You can practically see the spokesperson shoving his hands in his pockets and kicking a pebble.

It's getting hard to ignore the data as it accumulates in Blu-ray's favor. But the death blow won't come for a few months, and when it does, it's coming in the form of this movie:

Blu-ray ain't got time to bleed.

Note: Apparently it's officially formatted as "Blu-ray," so that's what I'll start doing unless somebody has a counterargument.

Blu Ray ascendent

The post-Warner Bros. announcement numbers are in, and it looks like Blu Ray is off to the races. Money quote:

The week after the announcement? Blu-ray players outsold HD DVD players more than 12 to 1.

Believe it or not, even though I'm a PS3 owner I don't feel I have a horse in this race. My setup is dedicated exclusively to games -- it would be a terrible place to watch movies. I do have one Blu Ray disc, RoboCop, but other than that I still watch movies solely on DVD (in the living room, where we still have an SDTV). If HD-DVD were to become the dominant format, I'd be happy enough to adopt it when the time comes. All the same to me.

And yet, what's interesting is that we may eventually have to admit that Sony knew what they were doing all along. This would be a paradigm shift akin to discovering that the earth revolves around the sun, but you can't argue with hard numbers, unless you're a Republican politician. Their strategy from the start was to leverage the PlayStation brand as a Trojan horse in order to establish their high-definition media format media format globally. They took a bath on the hardware. They took a drubbing from the online gaming community. And now, it seems, they're going to take us all to the cleaners.

Well good for them, I say. It was a ballsy strategy that, unbelievably, is going to pay off. That's why they're Sony, and we're not.