Paramount and Dreamworks Paid $150 Million for HD DVD Support

So what?! 

I guess the gist is that someone (Toshiba?) is paying Paramount (aka Viacom) for exclusivity.  The implication is that HD DVD really isn’t worth supporting by itself, only by being paid off to do it.

Umm… HD DVD was developed by Toshiba and NEC, right?  Both are hardware companies and neither are in the motion picture business.  Blu-ray was developed by Sony Corporation, which has a hardware division (Sony Electronics) and also a motion picture division (Sony Pictures Entertainment and MGM).  So how much is Sony Electronics paying Sony Pictures Entertainment and MGM to only put their movies on Blu-ray (where “paying” = how much is it costing Sony Pictures to be exclusive to Blu-ray)? 

Isn’t it the same thing?  Just because it’s internal to Sony Corporation, the software company is still has a deal with the hardware company to support one format.  Yet there are no eyebrows being raised over that, like there are over the Paramount deal.

So… HD DVD is supported exclusively by Universal, Paramount and Dreamworks.  Blu-ray is supported exclusively by Sony Pictures and MGM (suprise suprise), Disney and Fox.  Sounds like no clear winner there!

In the rental market, Blockbuster is only going to rent Blu-ray in its stores (except the stores that already have both).  I’m not sure what impact that has though.  What percentage of  discs rented at the retail outlets were high-def ones?  My gut feel is that consumers who care right now about high-def discs, having high-def TVs and so forth are probably heavy online rental subscribers.  And both Blockbuster and Neflix rent both Blu-ray and HD DVD online.  So is the “retail rental” factor a big one?

Blockbuster, interestingly enough, is owned by Viacom, who owns Paramount, who just made the HD DVD deal.  So Viacom’s company Paramount won’t have discs for rent in Viacom’s rental store Blockbuster.  Hmmm.  Wonder if Blockbuster will change it’s tune because of this new deal…

I’m just not seeing a clear winner anytime soon.  The big winner, I think, will be the company that mass-produces the best, cheapest dual-format player.