Paramount Home Entertainment said Sunday it will join a growing list of media and technology companies endorsing Sony's Blu-ray Disc format. "We have been intrigued by the broad support of Blu-ray, especially the key advantage of including Blu-ray in PlayStation 3," said Thomas Lesinski, president of Paramount Pictures, Worldwide Home Entertainment.

Toshiba and Sony, leading rival camps, have waged a battle to have their different standards adopted for the next-generation of DVDs, which promise much greater capacity for high-definition movies reports Reuters.

Toshiba, along with NEC Corp. and Sanyo Electric Co., has been promoting HD DVD, while Sony and Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., the maker of Panasonic brand products, have been developing a technology known as Blu-ray.

Paramount will still market all its DVD movies in the HD DVD format so consumers can have a choice, company officials said.

Paramount will begin releasing its content in the Blu-ray format in North America, Japan and Europe when the hardware is available to support it.