Michael Bay Sounds Off About HD. Again
A little while ago Michael Bay made some comments about the fact that Transformers was only going to be released on HD-DVD and not Blu-ray as well, which was Bay’s personal choice. Now, while he did retract those statements the next day, with a comment of him being “swept up in the moment”, he’s returned to the subject with a reply to a comment left on his blog. What happened was that someone made a comment about being “disappointed” in the fact that Mr Bay had decided to only release Transformers on HD, as the comment writer owns a PS3 and HD players are expensive here in the UK. And you just knew that that was going to prompt Bay to sound off again didn’t you? And boy did he ever! This is what he said on the subject:
What you don’t understand is corporate politics. Microsoft wants both formats to fail so they can be heroes and make the world move to digital downloads. That is the dirty secret no one is talking about. That is why Microsoft is handing out $100 million dollar checks to studios just embrace the HD DVD and not the leading, and superior Blu Ray. They want confusion in the market until they perfect the digital downloads. Time will tell and you will see the truth.
Ouch. So Microsoft have paid movie studios to not support Blu Ray so that they can move everyone onto digital download? Gee, there’s a surprise!
Actually, this does make sense as Bill Gates has gone on record before as saying that he wants to move into the realm of digital downloads for movies etc but I can’t see it taking off, not any time soon anyway. Apart from anything else you’d need to have a superfast broadband connection and some serious storage space to make it worthwhile to download the content in a size to get the benefit for HD and that is just not possible for most, ordinary, people.
But seriously, props to Bay for speaking out so plainly about this situation. Whether he’s right or wrong you have to admire him somewhat for speaking like this about the “political situation” as it does have the potential to back fire on him in a big way!
But what’s your opinions on the whole “format” war & Bay’s comments? Do you support HD-DVD or are you for Blu Ray? Or do you want to go for digital downloads and stream your movie content from your PC/media centre server to your TV? Or are you just going to stick to our friendly DVD?
Me? Well, to be honest with you I’m quite happy with DVD for the time being. I don’t have a HDTV so there’s no real point in me buying Blu Ray discs for my PS3 when my TV isn’t going to show me any benefit and the DVD’s are cheaper. Maybe when I have upgraded my TV I might well start buying Blu Rays for some releases but until they are the same price as DVD then I seriously doubt that Blu Ray is going to become my main format for watching movies on. And I also doubt that I will buy a HD-DVD player, for the simple fact that I don’t need yet another piece of hardware to play movies on under my TV! There’s no sign of DVD’s disappearing from the shelves any time soon and I am not going to fork out the money on yet another player when there isn’t a “winner” in the so-called “format war”. And as for digital downloads, I work with computers all day long. I know how fragile and flakey hard disks can be and how easy it is to lose data so the thought of buying a movie as a download and not actually having a physical copy on my shelf doesn’t interest me at all. And I have a habit of just standing and looking at my DVD collection when I have nothing in particular I want to watch and end up picking out a movie I haven’t watched in ages. I just don’t think I’d do the same if my entire collection was on my PC.
[Source - Michael Bay's Blog]
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One Response to “Michael Bay Sounds Off About HD. Again”
I literally just walked in the door from the pooring snow attempting to buy an HD-DVD attachment for the Xbox 360 (On sale at Toys R Us for $129.00 US. Unfortunately, they were sold out). I hate the stupid format war because I’ve already been burned by the DVD-Audio/SACD war. NO ONE wins. Sure, the prices of HD players are dropping due to competition but they would drop faster if there was a standard format so production costs could decrease. In my book, Michael Bay isn’t exactly an authority on anything except raping history in every conceivable manner be it Pearl Harbor or my childhood memories of ass-kicking robots.
Having tested both formats, HD-DVD is the more complete format at this stage and has been gaining ground but it is still way too early to be sure of either succeeding in market share. Sure, you have Microsoft paying off companies to support the HD-DVD format, but you also have Sony paying off everyone else to support Blu-Ray (including their display deals with Best Buy and Target). Both sides are guilty of capitalism so I can’t exactly feel sorry for Mr. Bad Boys II. Every day I tell myself to just wait it out but with the low prices for HD-DVD players (recently the Toshiba HD-A2 was on sale for $98.00 US at Walmart), I’m willing to take the plunge for a player that even if the format fails, is still an amazing upscaling DVD player. Combine that with Netflix and you have the magic combination for viewing HD content with minimal investment. If Blu-Ray had players for the same price, I would be willing to try them out as well (the cheapest Blu-Ray players are still around $300-$400). Other alternatives are out there for downloaded HD content including the Xbox Marketplace that provides 720p content and hopefully Apple TV/iTunes in the near future, but they are lower quality at this point.
I would equate the relationship to buying a CD or an MP3. The MP3 is instantly accessible on line and sounds good enough but the CD is an archival copy of higher quality. Movies could use the same formula but the prices NEED to be lower for downloads. Currently, you can get a DVD for the same price or less than the digital version. One could argue that CDs are dying because of the downloading revolution and that DVDs will follow suit. The recent trend in music is that customers are willing to settle for lower quality fidelity but I would argue the reason CD sales are dropping is because 99.9% of the music released by major music labels sucks. The a-la-carte formula for purchasing music has been a mixed blessing: it provides only the music we want at a low price point but in turn, the market has shifted to exploit this by cranking out one-hit wonders to make as much money as possible with 2-3 singles and leaving the talented musicians out to dry. The movie industry is moving in this direction as well: Make as much as you can on opening weekend with total crap and then rake in the cash through DVD sales to the mouth-breathers. You would think the big players in both industries would realize that Dark Side of the Moon is still on the charts after 34 years and Star Wars IV is still raking in Millions for a reason. Artistic expression resonates with an audience much more than a reality TV show winner or an animated bee that sounds like Jerry Seinfeld.
And the line “piracy is killing the industry? Please…DRM will always be secondary to a good product. Business 101: A product will not sell if it sucks. CDs allow for legal transfer to digital audio files but DVDs do not yet both industries claim equal losses. What does this tell you? People are always going to steal. Last time I checked there was no movie industry in the time of Moses but he still managed to document thievery in the 10 commandments. If you make a good product, it will find its audience and people will be willing to pay for it! Case in point: How many of you have own one of the Star Wars or Lord of the Rings movies on DVD? How many of you have a “borrowed” copy of Ice Ice Baby on your MP3 player? Come on, you know you do…
And television? Don’t get get me started!!!
What does the future hold? Who knows?!? Personally? I want one of the HD formats to win out and include the Managed Copy spec for putting a copy on a home server. That way, I get my viewing pleasure in 1080p, Dolby TruHD, director’s commentaries, and documentaries in the home theater room, a 720p or 480p movie-only version available in the bedroom, and a copy on my iPod for the daily commute and other family members. In this day and age, anything less is the man trying to get us down!
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