Paramount Studios has gone and annouced suprisingly that they plan to stay with HD DVD.

This obviously means the race and battling is continuing between Blu-Ray and HD DVD. With that, Paramount also annouced they will NOT drop Toshiba’s HD DVD format that was rumored to become true just over the pass few days.

Well the war was waged, yet it seems the battle has already ended folks. Financial Times is reporting that Paramount has a clause in its HD DVD, basically meaning its allowing Paramount to raise the white flag in the case that Warner defected exclusively to Blu-ray, in which we can see in the past week or so they are more then likely to do so.

It’s really quite impressive the impact Warner Bros. has already had on Hollywood with this waged war. With Warners recent switch, it has already placed 70 percent of Hollywoods output to Blu-ray.

Now with Paramount aboard, it will increase even more. With Paramount dropping out of the HD DVD war, it leaves Universal and Dreamworks left standing. Will be interesting to see what they have planned for the future.

“Jackass 2.5″, the latest of the Jackass movies will be released online first, free to view, before following the more traditional route of pay-per-view TV, DVD and iTunes. I think this is a fantastic move by Paramount pictures, who are calling it “the first studio-backed feature film to have its premiere online.”

The above video is a preview - the actual movie will be available online from Dec 19 for two weeks.

Via TechCrunch