Audio Video News

Ontario's Paradigm loudspeakers have a well-deserved reputation for great performance at affordable prices. On March 16, the company announced a new addition to its product line, the Seismic Series subwoofers.

In one of the most bold, stunning and unforeseen moves that's occured over the entire course of the format war, it was announced early this morning that Paramount and DreamWorks Animation will support HD DVD exclusively moving forward on a worldwide basis. Next week's HD DVD release of <I>Blades of Glory</I> will be the first Paramount HD DVD exclusive, followed by this summer's hits <I>Transformers</I> and <I>Shrek the Third</I>.

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.

In a departure from conventional Blu-ray and DVD release strategy, Paramount will begin holding back DVD release-to-own titles in order to emphasize Blu-ray sales as well as rentals in either format. This could give Blu-ray sales a leg up.

Trekkers, rejoice! <A HREF="http://www.paramount.com">Paramount Home Video</A>, owner of the Star Trek franchise and Indiana Jones movies, will release open-format DVDs this year, the company announced Monday, April 27. The decision comes two weeks after <A HREF="http://www.blockbuster.com/">Blockbuster Music & Video</A> announced that it would begin a big push with DVD rentals. The growing popularity of DVD was a major factor in both decisions: Consumer-electronics industry analysts predict that there will be as many as one million DVD players in American homes by the end of 1998.

This week's long round of goodbyes continues with Paramount's announcement that it will resume releasing in Blu-ray after a brief hiatus of HD DVD exclusivity.

Until now the conventional wisdom has been that the victor in the format war between Blu-ray and HD DVD would be Blu-ray, if there were a victor at all. Well, now all bets are off. Two major studios have announced that they're dumping Sony's Blu-ray format for Toshiba's HD DVD. It looks as though both formats are likely to be around for the foreseeable future.