In the war of next-gen DVD formats, the executives at Sony Corp. have secured another victory in the shape of Paramount Home Entertainment now announcing their dedicated support for Blu-ray and HD-DVD. Making Paramount the first ever movie studio to back 2 formats for the race of DVD’s successor.
This news comes as a heavy blow to Toshiba, the leader of HD-DVD camp, as one of its strongest supporters now jump shipped over to its rival format. Further adding salt to Toshiba’s wounds, Paramount’s president Thomas Lesisnki explained the reason behind their support for Blu-ray.
He said,"We have been intrigued by the broad support of Blu-ray, especially the key advantage of including Blu-ray in Playstation3. After more detailed assessment and new data on cost, manufacture-ability and copy protection solutions, we have now made the decision to move ahead with the Blu-ray format."
This news appeared shortly after Intel backed out from a recent joint statement it made with partner Microsoft. In which they both claimed that Blu-ray is far behind the competition and suggested that it may not be worth the trouble of the Hollywood studios to support Blu-ray. As of today, Intel is back to a neutral stance and trying to make a positive comeback by offering both camps a chance at a unified architecture.
Right after Paramount Studios joining the Blu-ray association. Speculation has begun about Warner Bros. following in its footsteps sooner rather than later. Such a move by Warner Bros. would most probably cripple the HD-DVD support.
Toshiba has been pretty aggressive with HD-DVD’s promotion but lately their stance has taken a slight turn from the norm. A few weeks ago Toshiba’s president said that the company is not willing to give up on creating a single format. How would this effect the drive in Blu-ray is out of the question since most of the specs for Playstation 3 are probably finalized by now.
Stay tuned, we’ll bring you more as the story develops.