Another Victory For Blu-ray

Feb 15 2008

Hey Maxmaniacs,

The Maxman thought he should give you all an up date if you haven’t heard already.

It was recently announced by Wal-Mart that they would now only sell players and discs in the Blu-ray format. As we all know Wal-Mart along with their Sam’s Club stores are one of, if not the largest mass retailer around with about 4000 stores so as you can imagine this delivers a huge blow to the HD-DVD camp that is headed up by Toshiba.

Wal-Mart did say they will continue with sales of their HD-DVD inventory but once it is gone the extra shelf space will be filled with Blu-ray products.

A Bad Year for HD-DVD

It really hasn’t been a great start to 2008 for the HD-DVD format. Just last week Netflix Inc.who are an online movie rental service announced they would now be exclusive to the Blu-ray format and electronics super retailer Best Buy even got on the band wagon by saying they would actively promote the Blu-ray format also.

All this in the matter of just a few days!

In January Time Warner Inc.'s Warner Bros. Entertainment who had been known to promote both the Blu-ray and HD-DVD formats, blew everyone out of the water by announcing that they too were going to produce their high-def movies exclusively on Blu-ray discs. Because of this change of heart by Warner, Blu-ray now has about 70% of the home movie market which also includes big guns like Walt Disney, 20th Century Fox, Lions Gate Entertainment and of course Sony Pictures.

It had been common knowledge in the industry that before Warner decided to defect Toshiba was trying to secure their services along with Fox to get them to drop the Blu-ray format (This was something that Toshiba was able to achieve in the summer of 2007 with Paramount and DreamWorks.) Fox walked away.

Now Toshiba was not available for comment when the decision by Wal-Mart was announced.

Final Word From Maxman

You know folks the Maxman had been on the fence for quite some time regarding which way the format war would go.

Could this be another nail in the coffin for HD-DVD? It’s not lookin good is it?

I will keep you all posted, not if but when any more news surfaces.

Maxman Out.