It is a bit ironic that, after the ‘death’ of the format’, the HD DVD studios have released some of the formats strongest titles ever. This has boosted HD DVD’s market share in its final weeks. For the week ended 3/3, HD DVD took a 25% share, with Blu-ray holding the other 75%. This puts them at 76:24 for the year, and 66:34 since inception. HD DVD didn’t manage to take the top selling spot this time around, that went to 30 Days of Night on BD, but it did grab the second and third spots - with the new release Beowulf, and American Gangster, in its second week of release. Beowulf was close, selling 82.52% of 30 Days of Night’s sales. After this, there aren’t really any Blockbuster HD DVD releases left. So I expect their percentage to start falling off again.

This issue of Home Media Magazine also includes an article which states Sony and Microsoft are in talks to bring Blu-ray to the Xbox 360. President of Sony Electronics U.S., Stan Glasgow, said that a Blu-ray drive could be incorporated in the Xbox Elite model, or as an add-on, as originally reported in the Financial Times online edition. Glasgow also said that Sony is in talks with Apple about the use of Blu-ray in Macs.

High-Def Digest contacted Paramount and reports that Paramount is continuing to support HD DVD, which is good news for that camp. However, any new HD DVD announcements they might have planned for CES are off. They will not be making any title announcements at CES. That’s not so good.

But then, the Financial Times, a very respected source, has something different to say:

Paramount is poised to drop its support of HD-DVD following Warner Brothers’ recent backing of Sony’s Blu-ray technology, in a move that could sound the death knell of HD-DVD and bring the home entertainment format war to a definitive end.

They claim that Paramount has an escape clause in their HD DVD exclusivity contract which would allow them to resume releasing Blu-ray Discs should Warner go Blu-ray exclusive - which, of course, they have. Even if Paramount were to only return to neutrality, and not dump HD DVD completely, it would be another hard blow to HD DVD as it would leave Universal the only HD DVD exclusive studio.

And that’s if Universal remains in the HD DVD camp - they’ve declined to comment on their future plans since the Warner announcement, not even to confirm a commitment to HD DVD.

FT news picked up from EngadgetHD.