Today's announcement by Paramount and DreamWorks that they will support the HD-DVD format in the high-def wars means a longer wait for fans who want to adopt one format without another in the market. The superiority of Blu-Ray in the marketplace (and in most critics' opinions) didn't stop Microsoft from throwing around 
$150 million to Paramount and DreamWorks for "promotional considerations" -- which is just doubletalk for a bribe.Bill Hunt of The Digital Bits has summed up this development better than we can and we encourage everyone to read Bill's piece from today.
A few months ago, a friend asked me what the deal was with the high-def format war. I did my best to tell him and to explain why I thought Blu-Ray was the better of the two, and why market forces seemed to be favoring Blu-Ray, making HD-DVD the next BetaMax. But my friend said something interesting: He said "Which one does Microsoft support? Because whichever one Microsoft supports will win."I don't think HD-DVD will end up winning, unless Microsoft can afford to buy off every movie studio in the world. Everyone is in this game to make money, but there's doubt that Microsoft is supporting HD-DVD because they believe in that product. Their interest is in the XBox Live download service, so it's logical that they want to keep the high-def market in flux as long as they can.
Tellingly, the announcement today from Paramount and DreamWorks does not include films by Steven Speilberg, whose film Close Encounters of the Third Kind was recently announced as coming to high-definition DVD -- on Blu-Ray. Perhaps Speilberg is just staying out of this ugly mess, or perhaps he doesn't believe in the format Paramount is adopting. 
It's entirely possible Paramount doesn't believe in it either, but $150 million is a lot of money to pass up when waved under your nose.The losers in all this are the fans of movies and high-definition technology. As high-def widescreen televisions keep coming down in price, more and more people are able to enjoy them. But for the time being, it looks like they're going to get their high-def content from HD channels. Could this spell the eventual demise of the DVD format - high-def, standard or otherwise? Time will tell, of course, but killing the most popular consumer product ever is going to end up as blood on someone's shoes - and today Microsoft is holding the smoking gun.
