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ITPro: With HD DVD on the verge of being dropped, we chart the battle between it and Blu-ray as the two formats battled for market share.

Ultimately, the installed user community of Sony’s Blu ray-based PlayStation 3, and potential future sales, coupled with the backing of Sony’s own content businesses, non video content partners such as games developers and music labels, subsidised hardware, not to mention broad Hollywood support was just too much for the HD DVD camp to compete with. Nonetheless, Toshiba and its partners fought hard to try and establish the format.

August 2006: A report suggests the battle between Blu-ray and HD DVD is harming sales of both platforms. Consumers are confused about standards, and many wait to see which format will win out before investing in a product.

September 2006: A blow for Sony as the European launch of the Blu-ray PlayStation 3 is delayed. Sony has high hopes that the machine will allow Blu-ray to win out over HD DVD in the next-generation DVD format war.

October 2006: Customers are able to buy the first 50 GB dual-layer Blu-ray discs. Meanwhile, US media manufacturers opt for HD DVD.

December 2006: Dell backs Blu-ray with the launch of a notebook product containing a Blu-ray drive, cementing its long established support for the format. A year before it had backed Blu-ray with HP, while Microsoft and Intel came out in support of Toshiba’s HD-DVD.

January 2007: Although drives come out that support both Blu-ray and HD DVD formats, industry experts say the format battle is definitely not over.

March 2007: Industry group claims that Blu-ray will successfully replace standard DVD within three years. The HD DVD camp concedes the format is being outsold, mainly due to the PS3.

April 2007: Blu-ray grabs 70 per cent of the high-definition movie market due to the popularity of the PS3 and widespread Hollywood support. Around this time three out of four discs sold are Blu-ray.

June 2007: Toshiba tries to gain ground in the format war as it equips all its laptops with HD DVD drives.

July 2007: The European commission is to investigate why so many content providers went for Blu-ray rather than HD DVD, suggesting possible anti-competitive business moves.

August 2007: One of Hollywood’s biggest studios Paramount drops Blu-ray in favour of HD DVD.

September 2007: Analysts predict at least another year of battle before one format emerges as winner.

January 2008: Warner Brothers delivering a near knock-out blow as it says that it will only deliver content for the Blu-ray platform. Toshiba slashes HD DVD prices in response to the setback.

February 2008: Toshiba defeat over HD DVD.

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Sky News: National Geographic has revealed that it too will drop HD DVD support in favour of Blu-ray releases from now on.

Distributed under the Warner umbrella along with New Line Home Entertainment, HBO Home Video and BBC Home Video, National Geographic has released only one high-def film so far, the aptly titled “Relentless Enemies”, on both Blu-ray and HD DVD.

The Blu-ray version of “Relentless Enemies” is currently number 2411 in Amazon’s Movies & TV rank whereas the HD DVD disc is a more lowly number 25,756.

A company spokesperson confirmed to HighDefDigest that they are not making an official press announcement, but that they will no longer release titles in the HD DVD format.

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Electronista: British store chain Woolworths yesterday revealed that it will switch exclusively to selling Blu-ray for its movie discs, becoming the first large-scale retailer to drop HD DVD entirely from its shelves. The decision comes after holiday sales where Blu-ray titles outsold HD DVD by a factor of ten to one at the UK chain and is credited largely to the Sony PlayStation 3, which Woolworths says gives Blu-ray a major advantage in terms of a viewer base. As many as 750,000 homes in the country own at least one device that can play the discs, far eclipsing the statistics for HD DVD, according to the retailer’s estimates.

The change takes effect in March and will see all of Woolworth’s 820 stores offer at least the top-ranked Blu-ray titles in their stores. Larger outlets are also expected to carry a significant number of extra titles. No American retailers already carrying HD DVD have said they would drop the format themselves, though some chains have said they would shift towards Blu-ray or start offering HD movies solely in that standard after Warner Bros. announced that it would switch to offering movies solely in Blu-ray versions by June.

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Electronista: The move by Warner Bros. to produce only Blu-ray movies is already beginning to push HD DVD out of stores, says a report from Video Business. Several retail chain owners, including Trans World Entertainment and Video Buyers Group, have revealed that they will either emphasize or introduce Blu-ray in their stores in response to the larger library of movies that will be available for the format.

Video Buyers Group in particular notes the lack of confusion makes it “safe” to bring an HD movie format to as many as 800 of its roughly 1,600 stores for the first time, according to chain president Ted Engen.

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ihotdesk: The battle for Blu-ray to succeed the DVD will depend on movie giants Paramount and Universal, say industry experts.

Screen Digest, a source of business intelligence, research and analysis on global audiovisual media, claims that after Warner Brothers’ decision to publish its films solely on Blu-ray discs it will now be down to Paramount and Universal to decide whether or not to follow suit.

Helen Davis Jayalath, a senior analyst with Screen Digest, said: “We could see that for Warner to make a decision one way or the other would be a way of persuading consumers that they should in turn make their own decision.

“[This] obviously hasn’t increased Blu-ray’s share of the market, but it will have substantially decreased HD-DVD’s share, in terms of the content available.”

She added that Toshiba is HD-DVD’s main backer and noted that the firm is unlikely to “simply walk away from this battle”.