The battle for Blu-ray to succeed the DVD will depend on movie giants Paramount and Universal, say industry experts.

Screen Digest, a source of business intelligence, research and analysis on global audiovisual media, claims that after Warner Brothers' decision to publish its films solely on Blu-ray discs it will now be down to Paramount and Universal to decide whether or not to follow suit.

Helen Davis Jayalath, a senior analyst with Screen Digest, said: "We could see that for Warner to make a decision one way or the other would be a way of persuading consumers that they should in turn make their own decision.

"[This] obviously hasn't increased Blu-ray's share of the market, but it will have substantially decreased HD-DVD's share, in terms of the content available."

She added that Toshiba is HD-DVD's main backer and noted that the firm is unlikely to "simply walk away from this battle".

Furthermore, Helen claimed that both formats were "equally good" with Blu-ray discs holding more content while HD-DVDs are further advanced in terms of offering "interactive options for the consumer".

In Britain last year 250 million DVDs were sold while film sales were up 13.2 per cent.

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