Warner HD DVD only?

[atdm71]

For what it's worth (likely not much), I'll throw a prediction into the ring. Warner indeed stays format neutral for the remainder of the year. Why? Simple. They are the ones that own 300, and there has been quite a bit of media coverage around the splits between the formats, all to which they publicly and repeatedly attributed their unique success to their strategy of supporting both formats. With their being the only format neutral studio remaining, they not only gain from maintaining their dominance in the high definition media sales category, their growth rate will likely accelerate which will continue to reinforce their brand and collect some better PR and IR in the process. One could speculate their 'delay' of dual format discs influenced by a renewed intent to commit to a single format, but it could also be the logistics of manufacturing and general project managing its execution and delivery.

As for Warner going BD exclusive, you never know what's happening behind the scenes. They've seen better volume and market promise from Blu-ray in their own sales to date. Hard to ignore that trajectory, and it's hard to deny its influence on loyalties over time. If they were that biased toward HD DVD, they never would have gone neutral in the first place, so as unprobable as a BD exclusive arrangement might be, it wouldn't surprise me now given the surprising precedent setting events of late. They could certainly come up with better reasons than Paramount given their publicly stated sales experience with Blu-ray.

But my bets are on nothing changing on the studio front for the balance of the year.