14 DAY TRIAL // As you might recall from our previous articles on the matter, HD DVD, the Toshiba-backed next-generation DVD format, is all but officially declared dead, after Warned has painted itself in the war colors of Blu-ray a short while back. Actually, everyone's waiting for Toshiba to finally acknowledge its defeat and finally end this conflict, but it would seem that some of major names still tied (contractually) to the dying format are making some preemptive moves of their own.
So, as the folks over at FormatWarCentral have managed to discover (after poking around various forum topics on blu-ray.com and highdefdigesrt.com), it would seem that Paramount (who, officially, is still ranked as a HD DVD supporter) has begun to make some serious steps towards Blu-ray adoption, at least in Europe. These "steps" are visible on the UK branch of Amazon, who just listed pre-orders for the Paramount titles "Trading Places", "Coming to America" and "Anchorman", which might not even be that big a news, except for the fact that these titles are all in Blu-ray.
The surprise is even bigger since the last title mentioned above ("Anchorman") has never been released on Blu-ray before. Furthermore, it seems that all of the three titles are not imports from the US, but local releases by Zone 2.
Could this be just an error from Amazon or is Paramount actually starting to make its move towards Blu-ray, but has chosen other markets in order to do so? It's still pretty difficult to tell, but the studio shouldn't be blamed for trying to get on the Blu-ray bandwagon. After all, Warner's defection (for "incentives" from Sony in the amount of around 400 million US dollars, rumors say) took everyone by surprise, so the (few) important names in the industry still backing HD DVD (at least at a formal level) are trying to cut their losses.
So, what will happen next in this format soap opera? Well, Toshiba's got a tough choice to make and very few friends left, so it's probably just a matter of time before it will decide to finally pull the plug on the money machines still keeping its format alive.