A scam, apparently
What does Transformers (and Pearl Harbor…) director Michael Bay think about the HD DVD/Blu-ray format war? Oh, you know, that it’s all Microsoft’s doing:
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 [to] 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.
Well, yeah, sorta. Disc-based storage is what we’re using now, but the future, in so far as we can predict the future, is in downloadable content like the Xbox 360 Marketplace. But until download speeds are sufficiently fast enough for a large enough amount of consumers, we’ll have to put up with discs.
CES is just around the corner, so I’m sure we’ll see better, cheaper hybrid high-def disc players.
DVD Formats [The Official Michael Bay Forums via Next Gen]
Betamax was also superior… How’d that work out? Cheap and available will prevail, whatever the HD format. Digital delivery will not be the industry standard until fiber is as common as copper. And that won’t happen any time soon.
Psychiatrist: So Mr. Bay, how long have you been having these paranoid delusions?
Michael Bay: It’s true, the alien robots have given me proof.
Psychiatrist: Ok, you’re done. Lock him up…
BTW: I’d gladly adopt HD-DVD as a standard for one of those $100 Million dollar checks.
Um, I don’t know. I always go with Hanlon’s Razor for these situations: “Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.” MS has tons of money and has been in the industry standards-setting offensive for a long time. I don’t see their continual backing of HD DVD as anything other than business as usual.