The Libertine sold 5 million

The Libertine

sold 5 million PS3 machines since its 2006 debut. But the real death knell for HD DVD was the last months decision by Warner Bros. Entertainment to drop the format and release only Blu-ray The Libertine and DVDs. That had tremendous impact, Toshiba President Atsutoshi Nishida said Tuesday in Tokyo. If we had continued, that would have created problems for consumers, and we simply had no chance to win. Warner joined Sony Pictures, Walt Disney Co. and News Corp. s Twentieth Century Fox in shunning the HD DVD, leaving Universal and Paramount Studios in the HD DVD camp. Universal on Tuesday said it would focus on releasing Blu-ray discs, but did not say if it would cease putting out HD DVDs. After Warners announcement, Toshiba was initially defiant. It cut player prices and kept touting the formats benefits. But the bad news kept rolling in. Last week, Netflix Inc. said it would cease carrying rentals in HD DVD. On Friday, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. said it would stop selling HD DVD players and discs. Even with the HD DVD out of its way, Blu-ray isnt likely to be the success that the DVD was, given the many viewing options consumers have. The big advantage of the DVD over broadcast and cable has been that the viewer can choose when to watch what. But that advantage has been eroded by video-on-demand from cable companies, many of which are now in high definition. Comcast Corp. , the countrys largest cable company, plans to offer more than 1, 000 high-def movies this year. Just last week, Apple Inc. upgraded its Apple TV set-top device to enable downloads of high-definition rental movies from the Internet. Microsoft Corp. s Xbox 360 game console also shows downloaded HD rentals. Blu-ray Disc has passed its first real test by beating HD-DVD, wrote David Mercer, an analyst at Strategy Analytics in London. But a much bigger challenge now lies ahead if BD is to become as successful as DVD, and content owners, retailers and manufacturers must now demonstrate that they can work together to promote BD effectively. I think Im going to finally break down and buy the PS3 with a blu-ray player. Game on! Oregon Business News stories with the most comments in the last 7 days. Whats this? The frequent commenter joined the site two years ago and has an eye-catching avatar. Whats this? Whats this? 2011 Oregon Live LLC. All Rights Reserved. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement. Please read our Privacy Policy. by Bill Hunt, Filed under: DVD/Blu-ray, Feature Films TMP-NEM, TOS, TOS Remastered, trackback As reported on Thursday at Digital Bits, select release details and cover art images of Star Trek sets on Blu-ray have leaked from European studio sources, but there s been conflicting information as to what exactly the release will entail here in the USA. We ve checked in repeatedly with Digital Bits and TrekMovie industry sources and we re now able to bring you accurate, updated details. Keep in mind that none of this is official until actual studio announcements are made, and these details are still subject to change. But here s the latest As originally reported back in November on The Digital Bits and TrekMovie, the first six Star Trek feature films will be released on Blu-ray in the USA in May in a six-film Kirk/Spock or Original Series film era box set, each with remastered picture and sound.