When it comes to movie studios and the format war the times are constantly changing. For recap purposes the big 5 in the movie studio biz have been 20th Century-Fox, MGM, Paramount, RKO, and Warner Bros. The other noteable studios are the “little 3″ Universal Pictures, Columbia Pictures, and United Artists. With the announcement by Warner Bros to go exclusive to Blu-ray and now the rumors that Paramount Pictures will do the same the Blu-ray death blow seems near.

Currently Warner Bros represents approximately 14 percent of the market share with Paramount trailing behind at 11 percent. The combination of these studios market share is very sizeable at 25% and only adds fuel to the fire behind the Blu-ray format domination. This leaves the format war with nearly 75% of the market share heading towards Blu-ray and only 25% siding with HD DVD. The icing on the cake of HD DVD cancelling their CES announcements really puts things into perspective and makes me very thankful I did no take advantage of the $99 HD DVD players at Walmart last month on their secret Friday Sale.

This news is exciting, but at the same time it makes me think about Moore’s Law which tells us that technology doubles every two years. If Amazon, Netflix and Apple are able to capitalize on streaming HD content in 1080p with the highly popular 10 Megabit cable modems and Verizon’s FIOS service maybe this whole format war won’t really mean much in a year from now. Personally I would always prefer to have instant streaming of full HD quality video rather than renting movies through Netflix or Blockbuster, but at the same time a Playstation 3 can be had for less than 400 dollars. With stand alone Blu-ray players selling for 299 or higher for full 1080p playback, I think the smart move is to buy the PS3 if you must have high def video playback and if the Blu-ray format does not survive you still have a next generation gaming console.