For a few moments there this format war seemed to resemble the Civil War. Though lets be honest, the format war isn't nearly as important.
In a story from The Digital Bits, it looked like Toshiba recently offered Warner Bros. a lot of money to go "HD-DVD exclusive."
At first it seemed like Warner might actually be considering this move which really would have swung the pendulum in HD-DVD's favor. There was talk of "mid-August deadlines" on the part of Wal-Mart to decide which format would in fact line the shelves of its stores and that Toshiba had promised the chain "a large cooperative promotional budget to support HD-DVD sales."
Then it turns out that the facts in this story were actually somewhat dated and that Warner Bros. had already "rejected that offer," and that it would continue to put out and support HD-DVD and Blu-ray discs.
It seems that the longer this war drags out the more entrenched HD-DVD and Blu-ray will become with their respective users. While this is bad in the sense that people might hesitate to buy players and content for fear that they could be on the losing team, it does create a lot of situations in which consumers get wooed with the best prices and offers. On top of that, the longer they both stick around the more it seems like one format may win but not ultimately wipe the other out.
The only problem is that whoever is on the side of the format that has less market share, they can expect less titles and content for their players.
Maybe which ever format dominates will allow users to trade in their old players and get new ones at a discount?
Stay tuned...
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