Paramount, Dreamworks plays bad guys and side with HD-DVD and against Blu-Ray

The HD-DVD exclusive group got bigger and triple it's major studio membership. With Universal only the last major hold up, now comes Paramount and Dreamworks to further confuse consumers. The format war is already a big mess like it is but when 2 major studios does this now when Blu-Ray was almost winning, you wonder who would benefit. The Digital Bits has it's finger pointed at Microsoft. If Universal would had switched, those 2 would not had a choice to side with the consumer and the war would now be over.

To be or not be happy

I'm sure that some, HD-DVD fanboys, are happy about that news but prolonging the war will cost more in the end to consumers(HD-DVD and Blu-Ray users alike). If Microsoft is able to scare the mainstream consumers to go online(XBox 360 Live) and bypass the physical media, they both will pay more because the demand of such a disk will be less thus costing more to produce. Also, a dual player will cost more to produce unless both camps cut the license fee.

I looked at my collection and I only had The Godfather and Indiana Jones, both Paramount Boxset, that I would had consider buying again but in HD. I did wrote consider. Not that they made the choice for me but I may not anymore.

I don't care, Steve, I will stream it

The streaming consumer will not be happy when they receive their monthly bill from their Internet provider because they will pay more for the extra bandwidth. In Canada, Videotron(cable modem) will limit the combined monthly bandwidth to 100Gig(up and down). That's about 20 HD movies(5 Gig/movie).

Also, if the movie is bought, it will need to be copied elsewhere to make some place on the local hard drive. Another a $100+ to buy the second hard drive, that's if this is possible. Otherwise the consumer will pay another fee(less) to download it again to the Xbox 360. What will happen if they want to see it at a friend's home? Bring the Xbox of course. I'm sure copy protection will not allow a secondary hard drive to play on another box. Someone may correct me on this last part.

And with the current fiaco concerning the Xbox 360 lack of quality, I would not liek to be in their shoes if they lost the console for weeks.

Conclusion

Again, the big loser is the consumer here!