The future of high-def DVDs became a lot clearer Tuesday after Toshiba said that by March it will stop making players for its HD DVD format, leaving Sony’s Blu-ray as the champion of the three-year format war.

But while that eliminates a big source of confusion for some consumers, others will still struggle to see how the change benefits them. “Consumers are the losers in the short term,” ABI Research said in a report. Reasons include:

*Price cuts for Blu-ray players may become less frequent and steep without competition from HD DVD. The cheapest Blu-ray player costs more than $300.

*Different kinds of Blu-ray players will confuse some. For example, only upcoming models have the World Wide Web ports needed for interactive bonus features on some new discs.

*Limited capacity to produce Blu-ray discs could frustrate consumers who expect to see a flood of titles from all studios.

“We definitely need to see more manufacturing capacity out there whether we’re really going

to manufacture a go of that,” says Lionsgate President Steve Beeks.

Universal and Paramount, which supported HD DVD, may have the hardest duration. Their disc orders likely would come behind those of Blu-ray supporters Disney, Fox, Lionsgate, Sony and Warner Bros.

Warner’s decision last month to stop offering HD DVD led Best Buy, Netflix and Wal-Mart to follow suit, effectively making it unviable.

“It wasn’t consumers who chose Blu-ray by HD DVD. It was the industry,” says Toshiba’s Jodi Sally.

Even without these problems, retailers might find it hard to persuade consumers to buy Blu-ray.

Toshiba said it might try to offer high-def videos without discs, for example on flash memory and wireless technologies.

Meanwhile, “A lot of consumers are still satisfied with their current DVD player and plan to continue using it until it breaks,” says Ross Rubin, director of industry analysis for The NPD Group.

That’s one reason Blu-ray backers…

Orginal post by Top Tech News