Total HD Format Bites the Dust

Remember Total HD, the Blu-ray/HD DVD combo disc format unveiled back in January that was supposed to end the HD format war? Well, now you can forget it (if you remembered at all, given that no Total HD discs were ever released)—the nascent format is apparently dead on arrival.

Ars Technica reports that Warner Brothers (the studio behind Total HD) has decided to put Total HD on ice—permanently—after doubts surfaced about whether consumers and retailers really wanted HD discs with Blu-ray content on one side and HD DVD video on the other.

Frankly, I'm not surprised. When Warner Brothers first announced Total HD at CES in January, it pitched the new discs as a way to help consumers confused by the competing HD formats—you'd just pick up your Total HD disc and you wouldn't have to worry whether you had a Blu-ray or HD DVD deck (and retailers would only have to stock one type of disc). That would work fine if all the movie studios were supporting both Blu-ray and HD DVD (as, indeed, Warner Brothers does), but they don't; even if Total HD was moving ahead, you wouldn't see a Total HD copy of "Casino Royale" from Blu-ray-only Sony anytime soon. Now, multiformat players...that's a different story (if only they were a little cheaper).

Of course, all this begs the question: will Warner Brothers—now one of the last studios to support both HD DVD and Blu-ray—stay that way, or will it pull a Paramount and drop one format or the other? Rumors were flying last week that the HD DVD camp had offered Warners a truckload of cash to dump Blu-ray, but according to Ars Technica, the studio is staying format-neutral for now.

So, how do you think the demise of Total HD affects the format war? Or do you think the format was is unwinnable (check out Chris' post)?

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Total HD disc format looks to be a total bust