As you might recall, Warner dropped a Blu-ray-class bomb last week, when it announced that from there on, it would support solely Sony's next-generation DVD format. This has taken pretty much the whole industry by surprise, including the rather thin ranks of HD DVD supporters, but it would seem that in the aftermath of Warner's announcement, other big names from Hollywood are changing their perspective as well.

Thus, according to a piece by Matthew Garrahan and Mariko Sanchanta for the Financial Times (who seem to have some inside information on the subject), it looks like Paramount, which became committed only to HD DVD last summer, might also decide to jump ships in the near future. This might be possible due to the fact that Paramount (a Viacom-owned company) is rumored to have a special clause in their contract with the HD DVD supporters, which allows them to go Blu-ray only in the event Warner does the same. And this has just happened.

Quite obviously, a defection by Paramount might represent the signature on HD DVD's death sentence, which will most likely follow the same road as Sony's Betamax. However, some voices in the industry say that the HD DVD might still have a very slight chance of survival.

Thus, in an interview with Gizmodo, DongSoo Jun, Executive VP and General Manager of Samsung's Digital AV Division, declared that, in his opinion, HD DVD will become the chosen format for personal content, due to the fact that the HD DVD supporters (Microsoft and Toshiba) are some of the most important names on the market of PC drives.

If these rumors really prove to be true, then the HD DVD might really be heading towards the dumpster of technological history at warp speed. Personally, I'm not really sure whether HD DVD will have bigger chances of success on the PC market, simply because most PC users employ drives especially for burning media that will be later played on standalone machines. But who knows, perhaps HD DVD will manage to survive, at least for a while longer.

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