Warner Bros sides with Blu-ray

The company said on Friday that it would abandon the competing HD-DVD format in May and distribute all film and television discs in standard DVD or Blu-ray.

Warner Bros chairman and chief executive Barry Meyer said that the decision was driven by what the company sees as a greater consumer demand.

"The window of opportunity for high-definition DVD could be missed if format confusion continues to linger," he said.

"We believe that exclusively distributing in Blu-ray will further the potential for mass market success and ultimately benefit retailers, producers and, most importantly, consumers."

A fierce war has raged between the two formats and the companies that back them, most notably Sony and Toshiba. Third parties, such as Microsoft, Dell and HP have also squared off in the battle.

The Warner Bros move strikes a blow to Toshiba, as the company was preparing to showcase its latest HD-DVD products at CES in Las Vegas.

The HD-DVD Promotional Group, an advocacy organisation whose members include Intel, Lenovo and Microsoft, went so far as to cancel a special media event planned for the show.

Those in the Blu-ray camp were thrilled by the news Sun Microsystems said that it stands to benefit as its Java programming language is used to produce much of the bonus material on Blu-ray discs.

"This is great news for the Java community," said Sun spokeswoman Jacki Decoster.