Netflix Dumps HD DVD For Blu-ray
There’s an alarmingly trend forming around the high-def movie format, HD DVD, which involves everyone dumping it for its rival, Blu-ray.
Online movie rental giant, Netflix, has joined Warner Bros., New Line Cinema and Woolworths in choosing to go with Blu-ray exclusively for its HD movies. And all of those desertions have occurred within the last 6 weeks. The company expects to have phased out HD DVD movies by the end of the year and no new HD DVDs will be added. Last year, Blockbuster showed HD DVD the door in the US by opting to go with Blu-ray only.
“The prolonged period of competition between two formats has prevented clear communication to the consumer regarding the richness of the high-def experience versus standard definition,” said Ted Sarandos, chief content officer for Netflix. “We’re now at the point where the industry can pursue the migration to a single format, bring clarity to the consumer and accelerate the adoption of high-def. Going forward, we expect that all of the studios will publish in the Blu-ray format and that the price points of high-def DVD players will come down significantly. These factors could well lead to another decade of disc-based movie watching as the consumer’s preferred means.”
The company said that even though HD movie rentals are a small portion of its overall business, Blu-ray rentals far outweighed those of HD DVDs. In total, Netflix ships around 1.6m movies per day.-Martin Lynch
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