Warner Home Video, a division of Warner Bros, may decide to exclusively support Blu-ray over HD DVD and, perhaps, even announce the intention already next month. The rumour is currently being spread by a highly-ranked official from Lionsgate, which is a strong backer of Blu-ray, and if it is correct, it will be hard, if possible at all, for HD DVD to win the battle against the rival format.

“The rumor is that Warner is coming aboard soon. That will make it awfully tough for HD DVD to stay in this game,” said Michael Burns, vice-chairman of studio Lionsgate, in an interview with BusinessWeek.

Currently Warner Home Video releases movies both on Blu-ray and HD DVD, thus, making them available to a wider audience of people. But a problem for Warner could be the fact that despite of the rise of sales via the Internet many people still get their digital video discs from retail stores. Since shelf space is limited in conventional “brick and mortar” stores and Warner is interested in offering the widest choice of movies possible, it may eventually make certain decisions that would limit the number of supported formats.

For some time both Warner and some other backers of HD DVD, namely, Universal Pictures, have sold so-called combo versions of their HD DVDs, which also featured a DVD layer. Even though the price of such “combo movies” was higher compared to usual DVDs or HD DVDs, such discs could solve the shelf space problem, especially provided that the price would go down. For some reason, many of such releases were discontinued several months ago.

According to BusinessWeek, Blu-ray camp can account for 49% of current DVD market share with 20^th Century Fox, Disney and Sony onboard. Warner is a prolific film factory, releasing as many as 30 pictures a year, including those produced by sister studio New Line Cinema. Persuading it to sign an exclusive deal would give the Sony-led Blu-ray camp about 70% of DVD market share, which could prompt the other studios to abandon HD DVD.

While the details about possible drop of HD DVD are not available now, it would be logical for Warner to reveal it early next year at Consumer Electronics Show, where the studio unveiled its Total HD format this year. Meanwhile, according to HighDefDigest web-site, Warner has already announced HD DVD release timeframes until mid-2008 and also intends to release those movies on Blu-ray by the end of 2008.

Officials from Warner did not comment on the news-report.

Blu-ray and HD DVD formats compete for replacing the DVD standard. HD DVD discs can store up to 15GB on a single layer and up to 30GB on two layers. Its competitor, Blu-ray, can store up to 25GB per single layer and up to 50GB on two layers, but Blu-ray discs are more expensive to produce. The HD DVD is pushed aggressively by Toshiba, NEC, Intel and Microsoft, as well as being standardized at the DVD Forum, which represents over 230 consumer electronics, information technology, and content companies worldwide. Blu-ray is backed by Sony and Panasonic, which are among the world’s largest makers of electronics. Among Hollywood studios HD DVD is supported by New Line Cinema, Paramount Pictures, Universal Pictures and Warner Bros. Studios, meanwhile New Line Cinema, Sony Pictures, Walt Disney, Warner Bros. and Twentieth Century Fox release movies on Blu-ray.