A lot of bloggers in the tech sector are writing about Warner Brothers abandoning the HD DVD format, including such notables as Gizmodo, and Robert Scoble just to name a couple. There certainly seems to be some weight to this assertion, especially with the HD DVD group canceling their press conference at the upcoming CES. Toshiba has gone so far as to say that this defection to Blu-Ray is a breach of contract, and Engadget HD is suspecting that WB was effectively bribed to make the switch, being paid something around $500 million to make the switch.

So does all this mean the format war is over as all these blogger say? Well here’s what the format wars shares looked like before WB’s switch:

and here is what they look like after:

And here is what it would look like if New Line, WB’s sister company switches as well(which seems highly likely, and what Variety is reporting here):

It would seem that most of these bloggers are right on the money.

Is it possible that Toshiba knew this was coming? Is that why there were so many deep discounts on HD DVD players during the holiday season, to soak as much profit out of them before the rats fled the sinking ship?

And what of Toshiba’s assertion that this is effective a breach of contract? If so what will happen? Will Toshiba litigate? Will they use this to soak some money out of WB to get the most out of their loss by backing the wrong horse in the HD format war race?

In the end they’ll probable settle, and make a tidy profit off of HD’s defection, and off the people they most probably duped with slashed prices this Christmas, but on the whole Blu-Ray players were more expensive(although better quality) than HD DVD players, so its probably the consumer that loses out in this ultimately, at least in the short term. Of course there are devices like the PS3 that can play Blu-Ray discs already for a reasonable price point, at least if you’re a gamer, and a winner in the HD format war will probably make it so more consumers will finally pick a side(Blu-Ray) in the battle for HD content.

It does remain to be seen how this will effect the price of these discs won’t HD DVD finally drops by the wayside, competition will still exist between the different studios, much in the way that it does in the standard DVD format, and the same can be said for the production of the Blu-Ray discs themselves, once writing becomes more widespread, so in the long term this shouldn’t have that much of an adverse effect on price points, and will ultimately be great for consumers.

Popularity: 8% [?]