Competition from HD DVD

The DVD Forum (by Toshiba) is deeply divided development of blue laser technology or not. In March 2002, the forum in voting to support a bill approved and other Warner Brothers film studios, content involves dual-layer DVD-9 compression HD discs. Despite this decision, the DVD Forum's Steering Committee declared that it was pursuing its own blue-laser high-definition solution. In August, Toshiba, NEC announced their competitive level of advanced Optical Disc.

It was finally adopted by the DVD Forum and renamed HD DVD the next year, after being voted down twice by DVD Forum members who were also Blu-ray Disc Association members, prompting the U.S. Department of Justice to make preliminary investigations into the situation.

HD DVD had a head start in the high definition video market as Blu-ray Disc sales were slow to gain market share. The first Blu-ray disc is regarded as the expensive carriage, and there are only a few titles available. This changed when PlayStation 3 launched, since every PS3 also supports Blu-ray Disc. In 2007, CES 2007 Warner proposed Total Hi Def which was a hybrid disc containing Blu-ray on one side and HD DVD on the other but it was never released. By January 2007, Blu-ray discs had outsold HD DVDs, and during the first three quarters of 2007, BD outsold HD DVDs by about two to one. In a June 28, 2007 press release Twentieth Century Fox cited Blu-ray Disc's adoption of the BD+ anti-copying system as a key factor in their decision to support the Blu-ray Disc format. In February 2008, Toshiba company withdrew its support HD DVD format, blue for the winner.

Some analysts believe that Sony's PlayStation 3 video game console played an important role in the format war, believing it acted as a catalyst for Blu-ray Disc, as the PlayStation 3 used a Blu-ray Disc drive as its primary information storage medium. They also credited Sony's more thorough and influential marketing campaign.