The war is on.

Only 2 days after Warner jumped ship for Blu-Ray, Jodi Sally, vice president of marketing for digital audio and video at Toshiba America Consumer Products, points out that There are 1,000,000 Million HD DVD Players in the marketplace. Yes Warner, the consumer has spoken. This represents 49.3% of the players for high definition discs sold as of December 22. Sony has 29.4% marketshare. This does not include PS3’s and Toshiba’s numbers do not include the 360 add-on (its not a standalone player) of which we know there are about 300k.

That’s alot of people out there that Warner just left in the cold. The worst thing about what Warner did was that it was so unilateral. Warner thinks that it is the Gorilla and can single handedly determine who wins this format war. Unfortunately, it may. In doing so, however, it will have stifled competition and restricted options to a spec that is incomplete. Buying a BD player right now is as big a risk as buying HD DVD player: You invest $500 in a player that has half the capabilities of the complete HD DVD spec and which won’t be able to maximize on benefits of future BD movies.

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