By Joel Hruska
Published: December 11, 2007 - 01:25PM CT

With Christmas fast approaching, movie studios, other HD content providers, and consumer electronics manufacturers are all focused on the performance of HD DVD and Blu-ray. As we've previously discussed, total sales of both HD DVD and Blu-ray movies since both standards launched in 2006 are only a tiny fraction of DVD sales. Samsung is hoping to tilt the scales in favor of Blu-ray; as of right now, Samsung's BD-P1400 Blu-ray player is selling for $279 on Amazon, down from a $499 MSRP.

That's not so much a discount as it is a steal, and it drops the BD-P1400 squarely within the price range for an HD DVD box. Unless Samsung is sitting on a mammoth heap of these things that it wants to move, I'd be surprised if the units stay in stock anywhere very long. If you've been waiting for a Blu-ray player, this definitely looks like one deal to jump on.

Earlier this year, Forrester Research predicted that the battle between HD DVD and Blu-ray would continue until at least 2009. Even then, we observed that Forrester's time frame seemed a bit optimistic, and current trends today have only reinforced that opinion. Up until now, Warner Brothers has backed both formats and released titles on each format, but that may be about to change. The New York Times reports that Warner will choose which format to back based on which sells more movies through the Christmas season. If that's true, the studio is almost certainly headed for Blu-ray land—Toshiba may have sold more standalone HD players, but Blu-ray continues to dominate total disc sales. Losing WB would be a significant loss for HD DVD.

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