Four studios support HD DVD, Toshiba says

Toshiba said Monday that it has won support for the HD DVD optical disc standard from Warner Bros., Paramount Pictures, Universal Pictures and New Line Cinema, advancing its cause in the battle for the next-generation DVD.

Unfortunately, if this holds, it looks like we’re in for a real format war. I still think BD will win with the backing they have, since it looks like they’ll just about split the studio backing. If the studio backing is split, the side with more HW support should win in the end. Especially if the studios backing BD take advantage of the additional space to provide higher quality movies, more extras, etc. On the other hand, maybe this will push both sides to the negotiating table and/or encourage multi-format system development as happened with DVD-R/DVD+R.