Formats: The Other Shoe Drops, Both of Them

A few weeks ago I mentioned waiting for the other shoe to drop with regard to Warner Brothers announcing their exclusive support of Blu-ray. Well it dropped, both of them to be exact. Best Buy was up to bat first with their announcement that the company would recommend consumers choose “Sony Corp’s” Blu-ray high-definition video format over Toshiba’s HD DVD format. In retrospect this really didn’t come as a huge shock but perhaps a bit sooner than many of us were expecting. That wouldn’t be the only blow for Toshiba this week however. Later that same day Netflix announced that it would begin phasing out HD DVD by not adding any new HD DVD titles to the company’s catalog, and by year’s end, the complete removal of all HD DVD titles from their rental system. Folks in my estimation, that’s it for HD DVD. Blockbuster already announced their intention to…