Netflix Shows Blu-ray Some Love

Netflix announced last week that along with the rest of the entertainment industry, it has chosen a side in the high definition movie format war: Sony’s Blu-ray. The company will move solely to Blu-ray in the near future, leaving HD-DVD behind in the graveyard of previously ditched formats. Betamax or MiniDisc, anyone? 

Confused about the next-gen format war between HD-DVD and Blu-ray? So were most of the major studios, until just last month.  In January, Warner Bros, who previously supported both formats, took the plunge and went all-in with Blu-ray. This tipped the scales heavily in favor of Sony’s new discs, leaving only Paramount (which signed an exclusive deal in August) and Universal with Toshiba’s HD-DVD. The announcement from Warner Bros. came only days before CES, one of the year’s largest entertainment and technology expos, leading HD-DVD backers to cancel their press conferences. After that, the dominoes kept on falling.

 As Warner Bros. is the parent company to studios like New Line and HBO, they followed suit soon after and voiced their alliance with Blu-ray as well. Seeing this trend emerge, Netflix is now making its move to Blu-ray also. Just this week, in fact, there are rumblings out of Japan that Toshiba is dropping HD-DVD for good, making Blu-ray the only sensible choice for high-definition home video.

Currently, Netflix offers over 400 Blu-ray titles. The online movie rental company will not be picking up any new HD-DVD movies, but will continue to rent out HD-DVD titles that are already in stock.

For more information about the Blu-ray announcement, you can visit Netflix.