Paramount Home Entertainment

**Paramount Home Entertainment** (formerly **Paramount Home Media Distribution**, **Paramount Home Video** and **Paramount Video**) is a licensed content and home video distribution arm of Paramount Pictures, a division of ViacomCBS.

The division oversees PPC’s home entertainment and transactional digital distribution activities worldwide. The division is responsible for the sales, marketing and distribution of home entertainment content on behalf of Paramount Pictures, Paramount Players, Paramount Animation, Paramount Television Studios, CBS, Showtime, MTV, Nickelodeon, VH1, BET, Comedy Central, and applicable licensing and servicing of certain pre-2010 DreamWorks Pictures, IFC Films, Miramax, and pre-2005 Dimension Films titles. PHE additionally manages global licensing of studio content and transactional distribution across worldwide digital distribution platforms, including online, mobile and portable devices and emerging technologies.

## History

In the United Kingdom and Australia, the Paramount Pictures film library was released by CIC Video alongside Universal Pictures until 1999 before CIC turned into two separate units: Paramount Home Entertainment International and Universal Studios Home Entertainment International.

In 2008, PHMD launched a direct-to-video label, Paramount Famous Productions (with the "Famous" part of the name a throwback to the days when the company was called Famous Players).

In 2011, Paramount renamed the home entertainment division to Paramount Home Media Distribution due to a company restructure.

In October 2012, Paramount announced that PHMD and Warner Home Video had signed a distribution deal, allowing Warner to gain U.S. and Canadian DVD, Blu-ray, UltraViolet, Flixster, and DVD-manufacturing-on-demand distribution rights to over 600 Paramount titles. The agreement came into effect as of January 1, 2013. However, the deal has expired as of 2017, as evidenced by Paramount titles no longer appearing on Warner Home Video's web store. Distribution of the titles included in the Warner deal has since reverted to Paramount.

In February 2015, Paramount Home Media Distribution signed a distribution agreement with Universal Pictures Home Entertainment. The latter will distribute the former's titles overseas, particularly the territories where Paramount holds an office. The deal began on July 1, 2015, in the United Kingdom.

On May 27, 2015, IFC Films struck another home video distribution deal with Paramount Home Media Distribution.

In June 2016, Paramount started releasing Ultra HD Blu-ray discs.

In May 2019, Paramount Home Media Distribution reverted its name to Paramount Home Entertainment.

Following ViacomCBS purchasing a 49% stake in Miramax on April 3, 2020, PHE acquired distribution rights to the entire Miramax library and pre-2005 Dimension Films library.

## HD DVD and Blu-ray support

Paramount brands most of its HD content under the label 'Paramount High Definition,' which is seen on the title box cover and as an in-movie opening. Films from Paramount subsidiaries such as Nickelodeon Movies and MTV Films and former sister studio DreamWorks use no unique branding. Paramount Vantage (another subsidiary) releases only select titles under the Paramount High Definition banner.

In October 2005, Paramount announced that it would be supporting the HD video format Blu-ray in addition to rival format HD DVD, becoming the first studio to release on both forms. Its first four HD DVD releases came in July 2006, and it released four titles on Blu-ray two months later. In August 2007, Paramount (along with DreamWorks and DreamWorks Animation) announced their exclusive support for HD DVD. However, when other studios eventually dropped HD DVD, and Toshiba stopped manufacturing players for the technology, Paramount switched to Blu-ray. In May 2008, it released three Blu-ray titles and continued to release its high-definition discs in that format exclusively.