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Looking for the next video format war?  It might be in the last place you want it: movie theaters.  Sony announced Thursday that has teamed up with Twentieth Century Fox and Paramount Pictures to promote the new Sony-developed digital projection setup.  This came only a day after five major studios including Twentieth Century Fox and Paramount Pictures as well as Walt Disney Motion Pictures, Universal Studios and Lionsgate Films were announced to be part of a deal with Digital Cinema Implementation Partners ("DCIP") to expand digital screens.  The DCIP deal would try to upgrade 20,000 screens across the U.S. and Canada, while the Sony deal has plans to use put its system into 9,000 screen across North America, Europe and Asia.

According the to most recent MPAA numbers from 2007, just under 5,000 screens across the U.S. use digital systems, with 6,455 screens worldwide.  Both deals want to increase that number, but it might get a bit tough if there are multiple proprietary formats.  The last thing we need is another format war.  More after the break.

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Trying to lure in customers to replace their DVDs or HD DVDs with Blu-rays, Paramount is offering ten bucks per title to do just that. Although Paramount and Dreamwork titles are involved in the offer, it isn’t good for just any Paramount movie.

According to HighDefDigest, the promotion will start with the release of Transformers on Blu-ray coming in just a few days on September 2nd. Hopefully you won’t mind messing up those boxes a bit though, since you need to include the proof-of-purchase tabs from both the DVD and the Blu-ray disk, along with the promotional certificate from inside eligible Blu-ray movies.  You also have to buy your Blu-rays before December 31, 2009 and have your rebate envelope postmarked before January 31, 2010.

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Dreamworks, who had been standing strong with their contract to Toshiba and their commitment to HD DVD have announced their exit plan. Their HD DVD movie shipments will end next week, but the exact release of upcoming titles on Blu-ray has not yet been announced.

A few titles that were set for release such as the Bee Movie, Sweeney Todd and There Will Be Blood have all been canceled, and will be released only as standard DVD’s. The last and final HD DVD titles will include next weeks release of Things We Lost in Fire and Into the Wild, somehow I cannot imagine either of them selling that well.

Via [EngadgetHD]

Its now official, all six major studios are now supporting Blu-ray. In a statement, Paramount said they “are pleased that the industry is moving to a single high-definition format, as we believe it is in the best interest of the consumer.” Paramount has not given any details on any release schedule, as of now they will simply “monitor consumer adoption and determine our release plans accordingly.”

The format war is over, and all of the studios have now pledged their support to Blu-ray. Now its just a matter of time before we have any movie we may want available on Blu-ray.

Via [Hollywood Reporter]

In a move that truly does not come as much of a surprise, Universal has followed in the path of Toshiba and announced they plan to drop HD DVD and pick up Blu-ray as their next generation format of choice.

“The path for widespread adoption of the next-generation platform has finally become clear,” stated Craig Kornblau, President, Universal Studios Home Entertainment and Universal Pictures Digital Platforms.

No word on when we will begin to see the Universal Blu-ray discs to hit the store shelves. Currently it seems HD DVD is all but a format of the past, Paramount is the sole remaining studio without a Blu-ray announcement, which is rumored to be coming before the week is over.

Read [Hollywood in HiDef]

This may be the definite death of the HD DVD format. Financial Times is reporting that Paramount may switch over to Blu-ray thanks to a clause in their contract with HD DVD that states that they will be able to make this move if and when Warner Bros. goes exclusively with Blu-ray, which is now a done deal.

As it stands, Blu-ray has 70% of Hollywood’s output, and if Paramount Studios makes the switch to Blu ray, that would leave HD DVD solely with Universal Studios. The question is, does Universal Studios have the same clause in their contract with the HD DVD camp?

Read [Financial Times]

In an effort to drive their movie sales and maintain a hold on the market, Wal-Mart has partnered up with the “Big Six” film studios for their new “Video Downloads Store.” If you’re not familiar with the Big Six, it includes Walt Disney, Warner Brothers, Paramount, Sony, 20th Century Fox and Universal - the power-houses of the industry.  By launching this service, Wal-Mart has not only beat iTunes to the punch, but services like Netflix as well (in that they’re launching 3,000 titles compared to Netflix’s 1,000).  The main issue here is that *for now*, the movies are only being distributed in WMV, so it can be locked down with DRM.  The videos will only be viewable on up to 3 PCs running Windows XP and IE6 or greater.

According to Gizmodo, the videos will be downloadable in both a PC format and portable format.  The PC format is “near DVD quality” - with a bit rate of around 1.3-1.6 Mbps, and the portable quality hasn’t been specified.  Wal-Mart also mentioned that the Video Downloads Store is not meant to cannibalize in-store purchases.  This is very evident through their pricing scheme.

Movies will run you from $12.88 to $19.88 at the time a DVD is released, and older movies will start at $7.50.  Also, the downloadable versions will be offered as a supplement to in-store purchases similar to what they did with Superman Returns back at launch.  When you buy a DVD in a Wal-Mart store, it will come with a code to download the portable version for a discounted price of $1.97, PC version for $2.97, and both for $3.97.

Since its glorious appearance earlier today, it rid itself of a stylesheet and is all jacked up.  Hopefully when you take a look it will be back up for good.

Update: The service works in IE, silly me for using Firefox.  Apparently they want Firefox users to be completely confused when a page of jumble comes up instead of giving a message that says “IE Only.”

Wal-Mart Video Downloads Store

Read, Read [Gizmodo]