Shane Buettner

There's not much of a kind way to state our fascination with seeing how Toshiba would respond to this latest turn in the format war, Warner's move to exclusive Blu-ray support in 2008. On a primal level it feels almost like that guilty rubber-necking at a car wreck on the road. However, Toshiba's HD DVD point person Jodi Sally got up and out in front of the press straight away at Toshiba's conference and put on a very brave face in recounting HD DVD's successes.

The biggest news of CES 2008 landed yesterday with Warner's announcement that it is moving to exclusive Blu-ray support by June of 2008. Yesterday's news was that New Line and HBO (distributed by Warner) aren't yet officially attached to this strategy, but stories circulating the 'net today say New Line is already falling into line with Warner's HD strategy.

Way back when, say July of this year, the holiday shopping season seemed poised to be make or break time for the format war, and HD DVD in particular. Blu-ray was rolling along, outselling HD DVD handily in software, and looking to a holiday season with a broad number of exclusive to the format titles that would mop the floor with poor HD DVD, and leave it in the scrap heap next to the BetaMax.

If you build them (and sell them really cheap), will they come? Toshiba is sure as hell hoping so. And no, I"m not talking about consumers. We know that around 100,00 of them will show up. I'm talking about the studios.