Although it's all water under the bridge now, we still find it interesting that Viacom's recent earnings statement confirmed that Paramount received compensation for dumping Blu-ray. But contrary to the New York Times article, Variety is reporting that it was only $29 Million, instead of $150 Million. This is of course only cash, and it is still entirely possible that the other $121 Million included future revenues that didn't materialize once things fell apart, but we have a hard time believing Paramount received that much in promotional services or free replication. And while the Warner payoff rumors weren't from a source as sound as the NYT, we'll still be keeping an eye on revenue statements from Engadget and Warner's shared parent company all the same.

[Via Format War Central]

The last HD DVD exclusive studio to announce Blu-ray titles won't be the last to release, as Paramount has announced its first Blu-ray movies will hit the street starting on May 20th with Face/Off, Next, and Bee Movie. But the fun really starts in June, as the long awaited award winning There Will Be Blood and Cloverfield are both due on June 3rd. Then a few weeks later, the first day and date title will come with The Spiderwick Chronicles on June 24th. So with the last studio finally lined up, it won't be long until we really get to see DVD and Blu-ray go head to head and once and for all find out if the new Blu format can make a run at the defending champ.

[Via Blu-ray.com]

Don't worry about Showtime, the network insists the threat of a Viacom-MGM-Paramount-Lionsgate premium movie channel is not going to hurt it, and in fact it's "in a better position as a free agent", according to VP Stu Zakim. Multichannel News has word from the corporate PR exec that only two movies ranked among the 20 top rated programs on the network in 2007, and considering the license fees the studios asked, it was better served investing in series development and marketing. We can expect fresh movies on Showtime through 2010-11, but after that it'll be up to remaining partner CBS Films to keep serving up the flicks, but for lovers of Weeds, Californication and Dexter there should be plenty more where that came from.

Hope you like your movies served fresh on-demand, as Viacom, Paramount, Lionsgate and MGM have just announced plans for a new "premium" channel launching fall 2009. Other than having access to Paramount and Paramount Vintage titles released to theaters on or after January 1, 2008, and MGM, United Artist and Lionsgate flicks released after January 1, 2009, the service plans a "robust" VOD component. According to Variety, the big loser here is Showtime, which loses access to several theaters it's depended on for content, and also faces competition for shows like Weeds and Dexter. We're sure no premium movie channel would launch in this day and age without an HD offering, so tell your provider to keep a slot open for this latest addition.

Things have been quiet in the ex-Red camp recently, and James from FWC brings up a good point, what's the deal with Paramount and Universal? Although it's too early to get concerned, it is only three weeks until the Oscar Winning, There Will Be Blood is set to be released on DVD. The Hollywood Reporter did say it expected both studios to release titles by late spring/early summer, but April 8th is more like mid-spring. The other title we'd miss is Cloverfield, which is due to release on April 22nd. We can kinda understand it taking Universal a little while to get up to speed on Blu-ray, but certainly Paramount hasn't forgotten how to make Blu-ray Discs between now and last August.

We don't know if Jeffrey Katzenberg got a text message, fax, e-mail or smoke signal indicating the format war was over, but Video Business has confirmed Paramount and Dreamworks Animation will (rather abruptly) to stop releasing HD DVDs after next week. If you were looking forward to Bee Movie on March 11, Sweeney Todd on April 1 or the just announced There Will Be Blood, those are cancelled. Into the Wild and the appropriately-named Things We Lost in the Fire will be Paramount's last reminders of its exclusive agreement. Not specifically mentioned was Star Trek: TOS Season 2, but don't hold your breath. Blu-ray release plans are still up in the air but we wouldn't be surprised to hear something soon. As far as HD DVD movies still scheduled, that leaves two from Universal (for now) and twelve from Warner Bros, who may have been the first to leave red, but will apparently be the last major studio out the door.

Read - Video Business
Read - High-Def Digest

Way back when Paramount dropped Blu-ray for HD DVD, we saw something very odd happen as some titles were snatched from shelves and within a few months Paramount Blu-ray titles were going for a premium via 2nd hand services like Amazon and eBay. Now just as quickly as they disappeared about half of the 32 titles are back in stock on Amazon.com. No one really knows what the deal is, but we'd bet that these discs have been in a warehouse all along -- just in case. If this is in fact how it went down, Paramount certainly did play its cards right on this one.

Michael Bay can breathe easy, Paramount (Dreamworks included) has officially gone Blu-ray. Two and a half years after announcing itself purple, and exactly five months after becoming HD DVD exclusive, this move makes all six major Hollywood studios Blu. Don't make space for that Blu edition of Transformers in your DVD rack just yet, as the company plans to "monitor consumer adoption and determine our release plans accordingly", but with PS3 sales up and BD Live on the way, we can't imagine it will take very long. The Hollywood Reporter expects to see Universal and Paramount new releases hitting Blu-ray and DVD at the same time by late spring or early summer, when we can forget this whole thing ever happened -- unless of course you picked up an HD DVD player for Shrek, in which case we have a few ideas on what to do next.

[Thanks to Robert and everyone who sent this in]

It's hard to believe it's actually over, but for more than two years we've followed what has come to be one of our favorite topics as Blu has faced Red in a battle to be the next physical home media format. In the end it came down to studio and consumer electronic industry support -- not to mention the PS3 -- but it was by no means an easy victory, and just because it was more popular than HD DVD, doesn't mean Blu-ray can win over the hearts of millions of DVD fans. But while we wait to see how well Blu-ray is adopted by the masses, we wanted to take a second to look back at how it all ended up working out.

We'll start this story way back in the Summer of '05 where the talks to create a unified format broke down: this is the moment most of us realized we were in for some fun. Sure, this thing got started way before that, but we have to start somewhere and this is when it really began to get interesting. As HD DVD approached the BDA to join forces and demanded too many changes to the Blu-ray disc format, the BDA told them to pound sand.

Not a whole lot to go on right now, but German site HDTV Praxis has it that both Paramount and Universal will now make the obvious choice and publish their films on Blu-ray. Notably, this follows hints seen in certain Circuit City databases as well as word that we've received noting that both studios would indeed make things easy on everyone and simply support the one format still standing. Interestingly, DreamWorks isn't mentioned in the linked article per se, but we've all ideas it'll be following suit shortly.

[Thanks, Khattab]

Update: Universal's president Craig Kornblau had this to say: "While Universal values the close partnership we have shared with Toshiba, it is time to turn our focus to releasing new and catalog titles on Blu-ray." Thanks, Kiwi616!

While we all wait for Toshiba to make things official, we're starting to wonder if everyone is the HD DVD camp already has a plan that they haven't shared with us. We can't say we blame them, but just reviewing the series of events since Warner went Blu, it has us convinced that everything that's happened since, is according to schedule. Sure Netflix and the Wal-Mart aren't inside the circle, but it's reasonable to believe that when they got wind of the demise of HD DVD, it seemed like a great time to make an announcement for some shameless free press. If we were to guess, we'd say that Universal and Paramount feel like they're left holding the bag and we'd think that as far as they're concerned Toshiba can't call it fast enough. To add credence to this, the good old WSJ is reporting that both will be in the clear to announce titles for Blu-ray -- as well as for Warner to cease HD DVD production-- as soon as it goes official. We can certainly understand Toshiba's desire to string it out though, cause no doubt as soon as it's official many of the remaining HD DVD players will end up in a landfill somewhere and that's not good for anybody.

[Via CEpro.com]

While Australian rumors of integrated HD DVD drives and Blu-ray add-ons continue to swirl, Microsoft continues to expand the other way to get HD movies on its console, adding Paramount movies to Xbox Live Video Marketplace in the UK. Coming nearly a year after Paramount jumped onboard the U.S. version, licensing complications continue to delay service rollout in other countries. No word about Canada or other European Xbox 360 owners left with their faces pressed against the glass, waiting for Transformers downloads to their HDTV, but UK gamers can rejoice in 380 Microsoft Point (3.23 GBP) rentals hitting February 19.

As has become quite the norm for Amazon, it seems that the trio of flicks it proudly listed as Blu-ray titles just two days back were in fact listed erroneously. A new report over at Heise -- and a quick click back over to the exact same Amazon links -- shows that the films are indeed HD DVDs. So yeah, we wouldn't take any of Amazon's listings from here on out as a sign of the format war getting even crazier, but who knows, try clicking back tomorrow and see if they're scheduled to debut on HD VMD.

[Via FormatWarCentral, thanks Blake]

In what could just as easily be an honest mistake but is causing lots of discussion among Blu-ray fans -- Amazon.co.uk has three Paramount titles available for pre-order. All three titles have a expected ship date of March 10th and all those hopeful for a single format to get behind, want to believe this is another slip by our friends at Amazon that would confirm the rumor that Paramount is using its exit clause to go Blu. We're sure if we asked Paramount it'd be denied 'til the cows come home, but even though these titles were previously available on Blu-ray, we'd still put our money on this being just like the third generation HD DVD player situation.

[Via FormatWarCentral]

Read - Trading Spaces
Read - Coming to America
Read - Anchorman

The hard times for HD DVD just keep continuing. Last week was absolutely brutal, and the ensuing "quiet period" among the remaining HD DVD players didn't help in either the eyes of consumers or the media. The result? After floating around the 30-40% mark for most of 2007's weekly sales figures, last week saw that figure knocked down to a paltry 15%, with absolutely zero HD DVD titles in the top ten. Battered, but not beaten, the HD DVD group is hoping to turn things around with announcements of upcoming releases. Warner's release of "Twister" on Blu-ray 3-weeks ahead of HD DVD is salt in the wound, but Paramount and Universal are committing to the fight with title like "The Jack Ryan Collection" and "American Gangster." It's looking pretty grim for the red team right now, so keep an eye on the VideoScan death watch numbers.

[Thanks, David and ag23!]