“Microsoft is deliberately feeding into the HD disc format wars to ensure that its own downloads succeed where physical copies fail, says movie director Michael Bay in a response to a question posed through his official forums. The producer contends that Microsoft is writing “$100 million dollar checks” to movie studios to ensure HD DVD exclusives that hurt the overall market regardless of the format’s actual merit or its popularity, preventing any one format from gaining a clear upper hand. Bay’s own Transformers is available on disc only in the less popular HD DVD format despite his stated preference for Blu-ray. To the director, this is primarily a stalling tactic while Microsoft refines its own online-only technology,” Electronista reports.
“‘What you don’t understand is corporate politics,’ he says in the response,” Electronista reports. “‘Microsoft [officials] want both formats to fail so they can be heroes and make the world move to digital downloads.'”
More in the full article, including link to Bay’s post in which he describes Blu-ray as the “leading, superior” format, here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “RadDoc” for the heads up.]
I have to say I agree with Bay on this one.
Officially, I’m not a fan of Bay’s movies and don’t like his directing style… but not I have a reason to like the guy or not hate him as much, for speaking the truth. Go Bay!
I like both Formats. HDDVD is cheaper for data that is 30 gigs or less, if you need more space use Blu-ray.
What, MS doing something underhanded and sneaky???? never….. (batting eyelashes)
If MDN had a word it would be “sarcasm”
So if Michael were an environmentalist AND worked for Hormel, would that make him a Green Bay Packer?
Let the good slimes roll!
TowerTone–
Normally your comments bring a smile to my face. Most of the time I understand your humor, and appreciate your wit… Most of the time… You lost me on this one though. Hormel? WTF?
All the more reason to buy Blu Ray. Ok?
Ah, whatever. Let them duke it out. Wake me up and let me know who won. I could care less.
Micros**t totally sucks no matter what.
Confuzed, if you need that explained to you, trust me, you don’t want to know . . !
My, you are the confuzed1.
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http://www.amazon.com/Hormel-Meat-Packers-Strike-Halstead/dp/0873484894
It is how the team got its name (so I heard).
Not necessarily Hormel. Just that my uncle worked for them.
And no, it was not a gay reference to that whore, Mel, the meat packer……
So to sum it up, Gates is Darth Sidius/Palpatine, Universal is Count Dookoo, Paramount/Dreamworks is Anakin/Darth Vader, HD-DVD is the Trade Federation, Microsoft HDI is the Death Star, Blu-Ray is the Jedi Army, Steve Jobs is Yoda, and iTunes is the Rebel Alliance…
Sounds like a hokey conspiracy theory to me. “On-line” offerings to compete with hardware media disks? That’s comparing apples & oranges. Is MS thinking people are going to get Internet2 speeds for their on-line buys? Even at 10 Mb/sec, downloading a 20-30 GB movie could take over six hours.
Some things never ever change – Microsoft upto it’s usual tactics.
That company has got to be the most hated company in the world.
The question you have to ask yourself is why are they doing this and have been doing this sort of thing since the company was formed?
Well the answer is simply Microsoft cannot compete with the competition on a level playing field.
When it does history has proved time and time again that whatever product or software it produces is far inferior to smaller, more efficient and talented companies.
Microsoft will then write a blank cheque to payoff or buy up the company, which is then absorbed into Microsoft and all the talent in that company is lost.
I wont go into the extremley long history of documented illegal and unprofessional business tactics Microsoft constantly does, but regardless to say, after 20 years of knowing how Microsoft operate I can say that I am not at all surprised they are doing this at all.
This is a said day for the movie industry.
This will only make them look dumber when Apple pulls there sneak attack secret weapon. (Apple you do have a sneak attack secret weapon don’t you)
@ Greg L
Microsoft doesn’t want you to download movies.
Thats the whole point, what they want you to do is be permanently connected to their servers streaming the video, which they will charge you by per megabyte.
The last thing M$ want is people to own content, they want people to rely on their technology for their entertainment.
Looking into he future Microsoft are going to be a very big problem for the TV and broadcasting companies as I think the markets will merge (tv broadcasting and web streaming) and whoever controls that data servers and format will win.
People like Rupert Murdoch, who owns the sky satellite/cable network or Richard Branson, who own the Virgin Corporation are going to be going head-to-head with Microsoft in the future.
There are going to be some big battles fought between multi-billion dollar corporations over this market.
By M$ paying movie corporation cheques to determine the format war M$ is laying the groundwork for the fight.
How are we supposed to download a movie thats 40-50gigs? lets face it, HD digital is going to be huge (i don’t mean as in ‘good’ i mean as in ‘big’) my monthly download limit is 40gigs a month on (ahem) australian ADSL2 which is about the same as Korean modem speeds. So I should be able to download around 1 and a half movies a month. And it will take about that long too.
Quite happy with 700meg avi’s myself. When viewed on a snall screen i.e laptop you can’t beat em on file size (the mp3 of movies).
I too am on Aussie adsl2 it dosn’t seem that slow for me, but I pay through the nose for it 90 bucks per month. I have better things to blow my bandwidth on than one or two movies a month (which 7 times out of 10 will be shite anyway)
M$ is doomed… but it tries to get a max $ before sinking….
Microsoft wins either way, because their VC-1 codec is heavily used in both Blu-ray and HD DVD.
When you look at the two formats – there really is very little difference between the two formats. Similar video bitrates, the same video codecs. Both have the ability to display 1080p signals at the native framerate of the source material.
Much is made of the PCM audio used by blu-ray, but it’s made by the ignorant making a fuss over something they don’t even understand. (For more info, see http://hddvd.highdefdigest.com/news/show/Joshua_Zyber/High-Def_FAQ:_Blu-ray_and_HD_DVD_Audio_Explained/1064)
When all is said & done, it comes down to one disc that is 30 GB, and is enough to store about 4 1/2 hours of HD video & perceptually transparent audio, versus a disc that is 50 GB, stores about 8 hours of video, and typically uses PCM audio because lossless compression isn’t a sure option.
In both cases, you end up with a disc that has audio that’s a higher quality than you can get in a movie theatre, and more than double the runtime of nearly every movie released.
Yet another article on audio being misunderstood:
http://www.highdefdigest.com/tags/show/Joshua_Zyber
Pariah, I think you meant to point out the second link’s content — WAY down the page, under “Commentary: Specs vs. Reality”
“So if Michael were an environmentalist AND worked for Hormel, would that make him a Green Bay Packer?”
If he owned a Mac would that make him a Fudge Packer?
sounds like ms is trying to cover it all. Vc1 in both discs AND for downloads. They get royalties from all three.
Ms also has patents used in h.264. So they get money from video iPods and apple tv. How can ms lose in this case?
So MS is pissing away more money? That’s a pretty believable theory.
I don’t care about microsoft at this stage.
What I’m super angry about, is transformers being in only HD-DVD format.
I have a PS3 and I can’t play it in blue-ray.
Transformers being one super awesome movie, and limited because of stupid toshiba making crazy deals to make me buy HD-DVD… hell no.
I’m going out to buy the DVD version, screw HD-DVD.
HD-DVD isn’t even taking the Australian market seriously. I hope they topple over and just give up…