Netflix has been offering movies to rent on both high definition media formats, HD DVD and Blu-ray, will now be exclusively supporting just one technology: Blu-ray.

Citing the decision by four of the six major movie studios to publish high-def DVD titles only in the Sony-developed Blu-ray format, Netflix said that as of now it will purchase only Blu-ray discs and will phase out by roughly year’s end the alternative high-def format, HD DVD, developed by Toshiba.

Paramount and Universal are left as the only major film studios supporting HD DVD.

While I think Blu-ray is the superior medium in terms of capacity and encoding, its hardware isn’t priced competitively with HD DVD and the player technology is about a year behind HD DVD’s advancements. The film industry, rather than the consumers, has made the decision to support Blu-ray.

Netflix, Citing a Clear Signal From the Industry, Will Carry High-Def DVDs Only in Blu-ray Format [Netflix Press Release]

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