In a sign of things to come, retailers are preparing to lower the visibility of HD DVD on their shelves, putting a larger emphasis on the rival format, Blu-ray.

With a number of studios such as Warner Brothers, New Line Cinema, and HBO leaving HD DVD for the Sony-backed Blu-ray format, it was inevitable that HD DVD would lose the all-important shelf space at retail.

While consumers will more-than-likely not notice anything at online retailers, in the brick and mortar stores, shelf space is still the best indicator of how any given product is doing; Video Business magazine is finally confirming this is coming to be.  With the departure of the afore mentioned studios from HD DVD, several retailers are looking to decrease the space they devote to the flailing format.

Trans World Entertainment (owners of FYE, Suncoast, Coconouts and Wherehouse), Newbury Comics, Video Buyers Group (representing over 800 retailers) and Hastings Entertainment will all begin shifting their shelf space in the coming weeks. 

Some shifts will be more gradual as Trans World plans to still bring in key new releases for HD DVD, but not everything that is released.  Newbury Comics will decrease their copy-depth and will only leave copies in stores that have moved a lot of HD product.  As only 200 of the 800 stores in the Video Buyers Group have carried any HD titles up until now, they will be preparing a Blu-ray starter package to help them get started selling high definition in their stores.

For a long time now, analysts have said part of the problem with consumers adopting either format was confusion in the marketplace.  With the seeming end of the war, it would appear retailers are wasting no time removing that factor from the consumers decision making process.

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Entry was posted on Monday, January 21st, 2008 at 2:46 pm under High Definition Formats, Opinion.

Read more entries by Sean P. Aune.
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