Where We Stand Today On HD Formats

Anyone keeping up with events this week as far as HD news is concerned knows that one week ago today, Warner Bros announced exclusive support for Blu-ray Disc as of June 2008. The studio had previously been format neutral, producing content on both HD formats. It will continue to release movies on HD-DVD through the end of May. This left only Paramount (who had just switched from format neutral to HD-DVD only in August) and Universal (who has always supported only HD-DVD) as studio supporters for the HD-DVD format. If you're not keeping score, this would mean as of June, 70% of Hollywood content would be on Blu-ray only, effectively sounding the death knell for HD-DVD.
There was CES fallout from the Warner announcement. The HD-DVD promo group actually canceled their big CES kickoff press conference/party where they were going to say how cool HD-DVD was, and 'wasn't it great we sold all those players over the holidays.' Toshiba had a sad little press conference on Monday wondering why Warner decided not to support their format anymore, and saying the HD-DVD format will be fine with only 30% of Hollywood backing it. Riight. The HD-DVD booth at CES was a little lonely compared to the non-stop partying going on the Blu-ray booth next door. Whose idea was it to put those two next to each other? By mid-show the HD-DVD booth was bribing visitors with free movies if you just came by and said hi. What a year to decide to not go to CES.
The internet has been rife with rumors and analyses this week about Paramount and Universal's support of HD-DVD. Both studios have announced continued support for the HD-DVD format with no 'current' plans to change. Industry press has revealed the following, however. Universal's exclusivity agreement with HD-DVD has ended, freeing it to support either both formats or Blu-ray alone. Paramount has an 'escape clause' in it's HD-DVD exclusivity agreement that apparently was triggered by Warner's Blu-ray decision. So either studio could begin publishing content on Blu-ray at any time.
So thats where we stand up to now. What's next? Stay tuned.