Michael Bay says HD DVD will die a slow death

We're used to Michael Bay voicing his strong Blu-ray preference, but what is new is that this post wasn't written during the wee hours of the morning. The possibility of posting under the influence aside, Bay -- like many Blu-ray supporters -- is gloating after the latest dramatic announcement from Warner. Not only does he think that HD DVD will die a slow death, but also states "Blu ray is just better." He then urges his fans to "Have faith people Transformers will come out in Blu-ray one day!" Yeah ok, Michael we get it, but we wonder how you could've left out "You're my boy blue!"

[(Unverified) Posted Jan 6th 2008 1:57AM]

http://digg.com/hardware/HD_DVD_vs_Blu_Ray_Why_nobody_will_win

[peluso72 Posted Jan 6th 2008 12:55PM]

reminder: consumers rarely if ever choose a more expensive and more restrictive format. standard DVD will remain king until DivX or some other downloadable non DRM'd file format takes over. Ben was right, Blu ray will become the new laser disc for the high end but that's it, still for those of us who have a passion for quality, we'll be ok with that.

Personally i thought the biggest news of the year was when the Xbox 360 got DivX support. To me that's much more of a harbinger of future trends than Warner's announcement.

[(Unverified) Posted Jan 7th 2008 7:58AM]

Lawyers take note:

Michael Bay Quote: "HD better start giving out those $120 million dollars checks to stay alive. Maybe they can give me some so I can give it to my Make-A-Wish charity, just to shut me up."

With this quote, Michael Bay seems to be inferring that equipment manufacturing consortiums are bribing studio executives with payola. This is illegal and could result in an Enron-sized scandal. If Sony is involved, this could trigger anti-competition investigations by the government since Sony owns a large amount of artistic content (much of it music) as well as being a technology manufacturer (this is known as vertical integration).

Many citizens were encouraged to purchase HD-DVD players over the Christmas season. If any execs received payola but delayed the announcement to drop HD-DVD in order to not hurt sales of their own media, this action could be likened to something as sinister as �insider trading�. If anyone received payola, they might be as deeply involved as the companies who paid it and could be dragged into a compensation scheme.

After the Rootkit fiasco, Sony proactively offered consumer compensation in order to avoid a public scandal. How could a Blu-ray payola scandal be put to rest? Supposedly there are 2 million Blu-ray players out there compared to 1 million HD-DVD machines. On average, Blu-ray players were sold for $100 more than HD-DVD machines even though they contain identical blue-laser diodes (405 nm) although the fixed-lens apertures are different. If this additional money was used to bribe studio execs, then all that money should be seized by the government then transferred to consumers in the form of vouchers so they can swap their HD-DVD players for Blu-ray players. Think it can�t be done? One million times $300 equals $300 million which is in the neighborhood of the inferred bribes.

[(Unverified) Posted Jan 8th 2008 9:11AM]

In the original theatrically release of Transformers, did that bus have a Paramount logo? or was this the work of some clever photoshopping?

[(Unverified) Posted Jan 9th 2008 5:38AM]

Oh, and Paramount has a clause in their contract with Toshiba. If Warner goes Blu, they can too. So i wouldn't expect them to stay HD DVD for long, regardless of what they say right now. Remember that Warner's stance as of a month ago was firmly for both formats.