misunderestimation

It looks like the HD DVD vs. Blu-ray war may be nearly over.

In a sign of things to come, retailers are preparing to lower the visibility of HD DVD on their shelves, putting a larger emphasis on the rival format, Blu-ray.

With a number of studios such as Warner Brothers, New Line Cinema, and HBO leaving HD DVD for the Sony-backed Blu-ray format, it was inevitable that HD DVD would lose the all-important shelf space at retail.

Of course, Toshiba is not letting this go without a fight:

Toshiba America Consumer Products, L.L.C. has announced that it is stepping up its successful marketing campaign for HD DVD as it experienced record-breaking unit sales in the fourth quarter of 2007. Major initiatives, including joint advertising campaigns with studios and extended pricing strategies will begin in mid-January and are designed to spotlight the superior benefits of HD DVD as well as the benefits HD DVD brings to a consumer’s current DVD library by upconverting standard DVDs via the HDMI output to near high definition picture quality.

ZDNet‘s Adrian Kingsley-Hughes sees it this way:

Dropping the price might make HD DVD seem attractive in the short term, especially for those looking to complement an HD TV with an HD player. But the sudden and dramatic price drops so soon after the announcement by Warner that it was backing Blu-ray and the canceled press conferences at CES, it’s hard to look at this move as anything other than Toshiba trying to offload existing inventory.

All I can say is, I’m glad I waited.

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