Audio Video News

In a surprising about-face Paramount Home Entertainment announced early this week that it intends to release its films on Blu-ray Disc. As confusing as this announcement makes the current format war in general, what's perhaps more confusing is that the studio ostensibly still plans to release films in the HD DVD format as well as Blu-ray in spite of the fact that all parties involved seem to agree that two formats will simply confuse consumers, perhaps to the point that they won't buy into either format.

Although there is obvious equivocation in Paramount officially playing both sides of the fence in the format war, now four of the six major studios are supporting Blu-Ray: Sony-owned Columbia Tristar (which now owns the MGM library as well), Disney, Fox and now Paramount. Warner and Universal are the only studios solely in the HD DVD camp, and both Video Business and Hollywood Reporter cited sources claiming that at least Warner is also considering announcing support for both formats soon.

Paramount's Thomas Lesinski stated that Paramount's decision was spurred by the "broad support of Blu-ray, especially the key advantage of including Blu-ray in PlayStation 3," adding, "After more detailed assessment and new data on cost, manufacturability, and copy protection solutions, we have now made the decision to move ahead with the Blu-ray format."

These statements are peculiar as it's been known since well before Paramount announced its HD DVD support at the CES 2005 launch party that PlayStation3 would support Blu-ray Disc, which will undoubtedly give the Sony-backed format a substantial install base of Blu-ray players worldwide on that basis alone. And in spite of Intel and Microsoft's announcement last week of support for HD DVD (a stance Intel is already backing away from), Blu-ray has been more popular with computer makers from the beginning, with major companies such as Apple, HP, Dell, and Sun Microsystems committed to Sony's format.

Paramount and Warner have been regarded as HD DVD's staunchest supporters among the Hollywood studios. Although neither studio has withdrawn support for HD DVD, as UAV reported in an earlier News Story both studios had begun by late Summer to scale back their involvement in HD DVD's planned 2005launch, which prompted Toshiba to delay the splashy holiday season launch that was intended to be a pre-emptive strike against Blu-ray. In this light, any announcement by Warner to support both formats would appear to be very bad news indeed for the Toshiba-backed format.

All the studios are concerned about the declining growth in the DVD market and anxious for the next generation HD optical discs to provide a big shot in the arm. But it's also believed that such rejuvenation will only occur if there's a single format. Sony's Ben Feingold noted that while the Paramount announcement is significant, "being on both formats will confuse the consumer."

Video Business reports that executives from studios supporting each format now believe that announcing support for both formats "is simply a face-saving strategy and that ultimately all studios will shift completely to Blu-ray by launch time."