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Electronista: Kingston and Paramount unveiled an unusual deal today that will see the latter’s movies made available on SD cards and USB flash drives.

The partners haven’t detailed the formats involved but say the movies will be available both in bundles as well as individually. Neither company has committed to a release date.

The gesture is one of the few commitments to providing movies on non-optical storage and is considered a means of spreading video to systems that don’t have Blu-ray or DVD drives, such as netbooks or handhelds. S

tandard definition movies are most likely as these can usually fit into 2GB or less of storage.

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EngadgetHD: Promising the finest picture and sound, Paramount is launching its Sapphire Series, two disc high definition releases of some of its greatest films, starting with Gladiator and Braveheart September 1 followed by Forrest Gump in November.

That means a Dolby TrueHD 5.1 audio track for Braveheart and DTS-HD MA for Gladiator, while both will have a slew of exclusive new extras. For Gladiator that includes the ability to tag elements while watching the main disc, which will then automatically queue up more information once the second supplemental disc is loaded into the player, while Braveheart’s extras focus mostly on the history of the Scottish Rebellion with 3D models and interactive timelines.

Paramount didn’t mention how much viewers would be paying for these new feature packed editions but they both show a $39.99 (€28,34)MSRP / $27.99 (€19,83) preorder price on Amazon. The press release runs down the extras, though we suspect you’ll have to be a pretty big fan (of which there should be plenty for these multiple Oscar winning flicks) to pay the premium over typical catalog releases instead of waiting for them to hit the bargain bin.

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Engadget HD: We don’t know if Jeffrey Katzenberg got a text message, fax, e-mail or smoke signal indicating the format war was over, but Video Business has confirmed Paramount and Dreamworks Animation will to stop releasing HD DVDs after next week. If you were looking forward to Bee Movie on March 11, Sweeney Todd on April 1 or the just announced There Will Be Blood, those are cancelled. Into the Wild and the appropriately-named Things We Lost in the Fire will be Paramount’s last reminders of its exclusive agreement.

Not specifically mentioned was Star Trek: TOS Season 2, but don’t hold your breath. Blu-ray release plans are still up in the air but we wouldn’t be surprised to hear something soon. As far as HD DVD movies still scheduled, that leaves two from Universal and twelve from Warner Bros, who may have been the first to leave red, but will apparently be the last major studio out the door.

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ihotdesk: The battle for Blu-ray to succeed the DVD will depend on movie giants Paramount and Universal, say industry experts.

Screen Digest, a source of business intelligence, research and analysis on global audiovisual media, claims that after Warner Brothers’ decision to publish its films solely on Blu-ray discs it will now be down to Paramount and Universal to decide whether or not to follow suit.

Helen Davis Jayalath, a senior analyst with Screen Digest, said: “We could see that for Warner to make a decision one way or the other would be a way of persuading consumers that they should in turn make their own decision.

“[This] obviously hasn’t increased Blu-ray’s share of the market, but it will have substantially decreased HD-DVD’s share, in terms of the content available.”

She added that Toshiba is HD-DVD’s main backer and noted that the firm is unlikely to “simply walk away from this battle”.