How Sony Won the HD-DVD war

The Oscars were a non-event this year for Sony - the studio took home only one gold statue - but Sir Howard Stringer was in town with plenty to celebrate.

The globe-trotting Sony Corporation chief was fresh off his company's triumph in the high-stakes, high-definition video player wars. On February 19, Stringer was en route from Tokyo to London, to attend a movie premiere and then a party for his 66th birthday, when Toshiba held a press conference announcing it would stop producing less expensive, Microsoft (MSFT, Fortune 500)-backed HD DVD players and would cede the battle to Sony-led Blu-ray.

It was somehow fitting that Sir Howard's next stop on his world tour would be Hollywood, because it was here that the Blu-ray battle was ultimately won. Toshiba only threw in the towel after the Warner Brothers studio decided last month to stop releasing its DVDs in both formats and go exclusively with Blu Ray. The victory was not only crucial to proving Stringer's strategy of showing that Sony's entertainment, electronics and games businesses could work together but - perhaps more critically - helped exorcise the ghosts of its failed Betamax video tape format that has haunted Sony for two decades.