Well everyone knows by know that Warner Bros went Blu-ray exclusive dumping HD-DVD.I’m not going  into the history,if you have the time,Engadget have a great writeup on the war.I really felt sad for Toshiba and Microsoft.I really wanted HD-DVD to win for n no of reasons,the important ones being

1)The standard was complete
2)My hatred towards Sony
3)They are less expensive

I don’t like Microsoft either but when it comes between MS and Sony,its definitely Sony.I know that Blu-ray is not a Sony product and is by a consortium of manufacturers but Sony to me became the main backer when they shoved it down everyone’s throat by including it in the PS3.Blu-ray is not a bad format,its got massive storage and capability to go more.The problem is its various profiles,which the BDA blames on HD-DVD for launching in the market first.

It launched with profile 1.0 which was the basic necessity.The initial players did not have the on-board storage,no ethernet port,no PiP.HD-DVD being a complete format mandated all these to get the seal of approval.BDA then came up with profile 1.1 which mandated on-board storage & PiP but still didn’t have the internet connectivity.The pain here was,early adopters who went with players compatible with 1.0 were in the dark.There is no way you could upgrade the player to suit profile 1.1.The discs were playable,yes but the the extra features were unable to the older players.Profile 2.0 will launch sometime in the future with all the above features(on-board storage,PiP,Internet Connectivity)Customers will again have to upgrade to the newer players if they want to take advantage of the new features.

Now to the PS3,the reason Sony included the Blu-ray player was to negate the above effects.If you buy a PS3,you are already guaranteed a profile 2.0 player.Customers who are un-willing to upgrade everytime a new profile is released(which i guess most of them are)will just buy a PS3.PS3 is doing to Blu-ray what DVD did for the PS2.Whenever the statistics are released,Sony consider the PS3 also as a BR player which Toshiba release stats for standalone HD-DVD players and the 360 addon.Reports also suggest that customers who purchase a PS3 may not necessarily buy it for movies while those who buy the 360 addon do so for watching movies only.

The backers,well BR had this part covered.Most of Hollywood was behind BR coz’ of the BD+ Java implementation.This was difficult to hack,not like the AACS of HD-DVD(The whole Digg-AACS fiasco,look it up).Plus including it in the Ps3,the studios thought that they had this generation in the bag.This plan temporarily back-fired on Sony when the PS3 went to the last of this console generation led by the Wii and 360.Games were not that great on the PS3,360 had more exclusives and the Wii was more fun to play.On HD-DVD’s side,there were two important backers-Microsoft and Intel.Universal was HD-DVD exclusive while most of the other studios(excluding 20th Century Fox,MGM,Sony Pictures)were format neutral.

Things started heating up when Paramount and Dreamworks went HD-DVD exclusive.Just one reason:Money and a shitload of it.This happened just before the Transformers DVD release.This was a definite selling point for HD-DVD and were sure to make millions.They should have done something special,maybe including a DVD copy on the other side and reducing the price to a normal DVD would have helped.
In fact,HD-DVD had lot of thing going for it…Cheap players,dual-sided discs,Cheap Manufacturing costs,Exclusive releases but Toshiba failed to capitalize on these.Things went awry when they started charging more for the dual-sided discs when DVDs were lesser priced.It was actually a good ploy to have the HD copy on one side and DVD copy on the other.If it were sold at a lesser price say $15 I’d buy it.When they sold all those $99 players they should have included the free movies offer.That would have moved discs a lot better since they sold nearly 100K players during the holiday season.

Microsoft backed HD-DVD instead of Blu-Ray thinking it could prolong the format war until their digital download gathered steam.What they should have done to help the cause was to come out with an Ultimate version of the 360 with 250GB of storage space,HD-DVD drive,cooler running chips.This would cater exclusively to the Home theatre group.

As things stand,Blu-Ray now has 70% of Hollywood studios behind it while HD-DVD has the rest.It won’t be long before Paramount jumps ship and HD-DVD is left for dead.All Toshiba could do now is let HD-DVD die a dignified death or get Microsoft to throw some cash around!!

EDIT:Netflix,Blockbuster,Wal Mart all went BD exclusive forcing Toshiba to drop the format.Read all about it here