Just when it looked like the HD optical disc format war was all but over, Paramount and Dreamworks announced that they will drop their support for Blu-ray and go exclusively to HD-DVD. I've been saying all along that HD-DVD was pretty much a dead format walking unless something dramatically shifts the market structure. This clearly qualifies as a major change to the market structure.

Basically, Warner is now the only officially neutral studio left releasing titles in both Blu-ray and HD-DVD. But, given Warner's HD-DVD bias and clear motivation towards steering the market towards its hybrid TotalHD disc format, this puts the studio support on both sides nearly even, with Blu-ray still holding an advantage because of Sony/Fox/Disney's collective market share.

Obviously, there's a lot going on behind the scenes here, but it looks like now the format war will drag on indefinitely, which is not necessarily a good news for HD optical media in general. While the format war has pushed hardware prices down at a rapid rate, it has also kept consumers on the sidelines. And now it very well could wind up costing consumers more in the long run since the necessity for dual format players and/or dual format hybrid discs is more likely.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...=entertainment