Rob Moore, president of Paramount Worldwide Distribution, said market data shows that people who own gaming consoles buy fewer movies than those who invest in a movie-only player.

Next, I talked with Alan Bell, the Chief Technology officer for Paramount. He's been in charge of the technological decisions and realities for Paramount, since the advent of DVD. I asked Alan if he was happy with this decision, or if this was something that was being forced upon them.

Alan then went into a very complicated series of statements about how HD DVD was the format that makes sense for Paramount. It's not just a matter of the amount of space that one format has over another. That's a gross simplification between the two formats. You see, HD DVD was built upon... not just the technology of DVD, but the programming software and other aspects. When we began talking about the cost issues - Alan stated it's very very complex, but that the replication facilities that have been built for the mass production of DVD - it's much cheaper and simpler to convert for HD DVD mass production.

For those of us consuming these products - it's easy to simply believe decisions are made due to just advertising incentives, but when you speak to the technology guys inside these studios - you hear that HD DVD is cheaper, serves the technological needs of the High Definition format, that the programming languages are an extension of the established DVD format - so it is easier for them to work with. This decision is about more than an intial Toshiba advertising incentive - the decision was made at a tech level, an economic level and about a cost delivery level to the public. Paramount made this decision from the tech guys up.