Photo: ePut/Flickr After suffering from several body blows from Netflix and Best Buy earlier in the week, the fledging, wounded outfit known as the HD DVD format might have finally, mercifully, been taken out by the consumerist granddaddy of them…
Photo: ePut/Flickr
After suffering from several body blows from Netflix and Ideal Buy earlier in the week, the fledging, wounded outfit known as the HD DVD format might have finally, mercifully, been taken out by the consumerist granddaddy of them all: Wal-Mart.
Wal-Mart announced this day that it will stop selling HD DVD movies by June, and is expected to restock its shelves with ‘only Blu-ray movies, hardware machines, as well as standard definition movies and DVD players, and up converts.’ Without the support of the biggest chain of discount department stores in the world, all other brick-and-mortar retailers will likely stand down, and it might push the top on the web ones, like Amazon, to lower their investment in the area and eventually phase it out.
On Monday, Netflix decided to carry Blu-ray discs exclusively for high-definition entertainment from now on. They will keep renting out the available HD DVDs that have been compiled since 2006, but that no new releases will be purchased. That same day, retailer Ideal Purchase decided to follow the leaders and decided that they will concentrate on Blu-ray only.
So far, there’s no word that HD DVD backers Toshiba and Microsoft will stop supporting the format, despite the rumors, but it’s probably time to let go.
Yet isn’t it fascinating and hard to believe that in less than 50 days, the format war went from a white-knuckle, dead-heat brawl to an overwhelming blowout? With a fair amount of strong studio and manufacturing support on each side, many expected this fight to go on all the way through the 2008 Christmas holidays and into 2009.
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