At first the format war seemed pretty easy and straight forward. You have two formats that compete and studios that support either one, the other or both. Well, it's not that simple anymore. Apart from the fact that some studios are entirely clueless about their high def approach, such as Fox who use replication delays as a cheap excuse, other studios look at the market and make their own decisions, some of which are downright weird. One such decision came down the wire this morning affecting titles. From a press release this morning can be read that Paramount and will begin providing of their titles as of the end of August. But things are not as clear cut as just that. The announcement affects only part of the library, as the films of one Steven Spielberg are not exclusive to either format, and I wouldn't be surprised to hear that there will be other exceptions in the future. As you can see the battle lines are not so clear any more and I would not be surprised to see many studios handle format support , especially as the filmmakers become more and more engaged in the process and will have their own say on these decisions. I certainly can't follow the thought process that would lead any studio to support HD-DVD exclusively at this point of the game because . Dual-format support struck me as the best possible option – and still does – and to see Paramount voluntarily limiting their options and customer base simply makes me scratch my head. But hey, who am I to say such a thing?
