I previously wrote a predictive obituary for Toshiba’s HD DVD “standard” when BlockBuster announced it would no longer carry HD DVDs. I got a good deal of flame for saying so, but it was clear that HD DVD was going nowhere. Now, a mere 6 months later, HD DVD is heading to “the land of Betamax” at quite a rate. Warner Brothers pretty much shot it dead a few days ago when it decided to standardize on Blu-Ray.

There was no really compelling need for either Blu-Ray or HD DVD until the number of HD TVs had grown large and most broadcasts were supporting high definition. However, the HD TVs are now selling at a pace. The prices collapsed in the US for the holiday season. This is creating an urgency for this issue to be resolved sooner rather than later. The big studios want to get their back-catalogs onto the new standard so that they can sell you the more popular items yet again on disk in “high definition”.

If the fight continues too long then streaming of HD TV (HD TV on demand) will eventually start to cut into the potential sales of the higher definition disks. So I’m expecting that there’s going to be a quick public funeral, with everyone turning up in black, in their best sombre mood, saying things like “What a fine fellow HD DVD was, shame really, could have had a great future, only the good die young, etc. etc.”