In spite of the recent announcements by Warner Bros., high-ranking executives of leading retail chains in the USA do not think that the war between Blu-ray disc (BD) and HD DVD is over. Moreover, as high-definition video equipment is still not installed into every household, DVD will still be useful for the vast majority of consumers.

“Probably [the decision] moves things a little bit. [But] by no means do we think we are ready to declare a winner,” said consumer electronics merchandise coordinator at Target Corp., reports Cnet News.com.

Other executives from the retail companies whose sales are usually constrained by available shelf-space claim that the potential win of Blu-ray disc over HD DVD due to Warner Bros.’ decision to release movies exclusively on Blu-ray in future is a good news for them.

“We’re very excited to see progress of any type. We see this as progress,” said Circuit City chief executive Philip J. Schoonover.

“It makes it easier for us as a retailer to push it to one format. But it’s still a tough sell as long as retailers can’t promise a customer that the next hit release will play on their pricey new player,” said Brad Anderson, chief exec of Best Buy.

Blu-ray and HD DVD formats compete for replacing the DVD standard. Even though both types of media, which are generally called high-definition media (HDM), use similar technologies, they are incompatible between each other. 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. But despite of the higher cost Blu-ray disc has a lot of chances to win the format war thanks to support of many major Hollywood studios.

Both BD and HD DVD can be played only in rather expensive players, which makes both barely popular among end-users. The cost and popularity of DVD are major obstacles for both new HDM formats to become the technology of choice. If both Blu-ray and HD DVD fail to become standard in the next couple of years, neither is likely to be adopted at all, as consumers may prefer more affordable content downloaded from the Internet.