It is hard to know who wrote that because there are 2 brothers and when I asked, I couldn't get a straight answer as to which one posts as HD NOW on highdefdigest or whether the 2 brothers both use the same account. But if it is the one who said just a couple of days ago that they would support whichever side Warner choose and would take down their website if Warner went to Blu-ray, then they lied.
Anybody who thinks the sales figures had nothing to do with this is confused IMO. Time Warner was offered large sums of money from both sides, from what I've heard. The key difference though is that Time Warner told Toshiba that they were not willing to switch to HD DVD exclusivity (even for money) unless Toshiba got another major studio to change. The difference was that Time Warner was willing to go to Blu-ray and get money. All the Blu-ray side had to do was keep the other studios as it was (the mix that was resulting in the current sales ratios). If HD DVD had been the one leading about 1.5:1 for disc sales in the US, with even bigger margins overseas, then Time Warner probably would have been willing to go to HD DVD exclusivity without any other big studios changing. But not with HD DVD behind like it has been.
Yes, the sums are big and would have been if Toshiba had gotten a big Blu-ray exclusive studio to change. But they failed at that, so given the current and projected sales situations, Toshiba couldn't even pay Time Warner to go to HD DVD on their own. Time Warner likely realized that a stalemate for at least a while is what would have likely resulted if they had gone that way, given the number of discs being sold for each side, and thus the number of players likely in use (counting all players in use, including PS3s used for Blu-ray movie playback).
I said I would be watching to see if HD NOW/rdjam would be true to his word. So far it is looking like he won't be. And using that there would money/incentives would just be a poor excuse, since anybody who has been following this should have known that both sides were offering money/incentives.
--Darin
