nathantay that comment reeks of HDDVD fanboy.

Major 7 supporters last I checked.  (may be updated):  Universal Studios Home Entertainment, Warner Home Video, Paramount Home Entertainment, HP, Intel, Microsoft and Toshiba.

I would suspect any monies of the like would come from Toshiba but I suspect everyone in the camp is ponying up dough to set up a "kitty fund" to make something like this happen.

If Dreamworks remasters their entire catalog in HD DVD, watch out -- that's a big seller over the holidays.

Well Disney is reworking their entire library in Blu-ray for Christmas so this will be a good Christmas to watch the format war.

And lets not forget that they have the DVD Forum backing HD DVD. I wouldn't be surprised if there's a nice pool of money within that organization that even Sony contributed to at one point.

So you say that selling a raw number of units is more important than the profit they get by selling them? Do you know the terms of the agreement with Toshiba? And if they are getting more money by selling 100k HD-DVD units than 200k BRs?

Yeah, Sony will be able to reduce the price of the players faster because they are selling it along with the PS3 in an attempt to make blind fanboys subsidize the HD formats war. But Toshiba, one the biggest portable computers seller in the world, is only including the possibility of having a built-in HD-DVD unit on their computers. And Microsoft supports HD-DVD too. What would happen if they decided to use HD-DVD only for future Games for Windows? Anyways Microsoft doesn't win anything if HD-DVD wins, they just want the transition to digital distribution to happen as soon as possible...

Disney also shot themselves on the foot when they commited to Blu Ray. Disney films are bought for kids by their parents and parents would surely prefer HD-DVD since they would be cheaper than BR.

So that makes the whole thing interesting.

Just when everyone thought Blu-Ray would win there comes such an anouncement.

Some people seem to missunderstand the situation: HD DVD was never out of the race. The PS3 helped Blu Ray and was the deciding factor here. Now that the PS3 doesn´t sell like crazy (and not many movies, too) the format war is open again.

3rd Party movie studios will choose HD DVD as it is much cheaper to produce.

It may sound crazy but I guess HD DVD will be the winning format in the end. And even if Blu-Ray wins the "format war" will go on for some years.

Keep in mind what happened to Beta!

True that... My daughter pretty much dislikes all of the disney movies with the exception of 1 or 2.  She's a big fan of dreamworks stuff and I often discount disney stuff because we don't watch it.  That said, the average joe consumer does buy Disney and that's a big draw.

With the Dreamworks announcement, is there any chance Disney changes their mind and starts making films for both formats?  I'd say Dworks is Disney's arch-nemesis. 

If rumors are correct and WalMart decide to go HD-DVD way, AND flood the market with cheap HD-DVD players, then Blu-ray will join Betamax real soon. Something tells me that Paramount knows about this plan.

You do know Mitt that a cheap Blu-ray at around $299 from a Chinese Manufacturer should be on shelves this Christmas.