Michael Bay on Warner's move to Blu-ray Options

[PS3Scene]

Michael Bay on Warner's move to Blu-ray Posted by XanTium | 6-1-2008 0:46 EST

From Michael Bay (Transformers movie director): [QUOTE] Well another studio down. Maybe I was right? Blu ray is just better. HD will die a slow death. It's what I predicted a year ago. Now with Warner's down for the count with Blu Ray. That makes it easier for Wal-Mart to push Blu Ray. And whatever Wal-Mart pushes - wins. 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. Have faith people Transformers will come out in Blu-ray one day! [/QUOTE]

[stevenalvarado]

Is it just me or it sounds like an "I told you so!" ?

Whats with this guy?

[Ranger72]

Yes it is an I Told You So.

Many people have been saying this from the start. With the studio support that they already had it was inevitable Blu-Ray was going to win anyway.

Nobody really thought that a format that would never contain a Disney or Pixar movie could win did they?

[pvwr]

For those who missed the full story: 1 year ago, Paramount and Dreamworks announced they would only suport HD DVD. Michal Bay, the Transformers director had the guts to step up and complain against the decision. Apparently, he was told to keep quiet, as his next statement was on a much lower tone. So yeah, he's basically saying "I told you so".

[Verity]

Nobody really thought that a format that would never contain a Disney or Pixar movie could win did they?

Disney originally rebuffed DVD in favor of that ill-fated DivX disc pay-per-play competitor, the one which required a permanent phone-line connected to the player and a credit card on account. DivX had to fail miserably before Disney finally gave in to DVD.

Before that, during the 1980's, Disney had very expensive VHS tapes. As in US$80 per tape. Video rental shops were popular, but the price per tape was prohibitive. When studios realized they could sell VHS tapes directly to consumers as a secondary revenue source, VHS prices dropped quickly -- except for Disney. I recall it took several years before Disney realized they were missing out on a huge opportunity. When Disney finally entered the consumer VHS market, they still cost more than most other movies.

I've also seen a number of those made-for-kids players with various incompatible media. Those audio KidClips come to mind, and there's been a couple of those video-based monstrosities as well. The dead VideoNow and the newer Mix Max come to mind.

Disney also tried those dissolving DVDs, once you open the package the disk surface oxidizes over the next few days until its unreadable. That one never made it past the first few market tests.

Disney is not about good media formats, its all about extracting the most buxx possible. More than any other studio. Just because Disney is supporting a particular format over another does not automatically make the format a winner.

This post has been edited by Verity: Jan 6 2008, 08:29 PM

[Ranger72]

Disney originally rebuffed DVD in favor of that ill-fated DivX disc pay-per-play competitor, the one which required a permanent phone-line connected to the player and a credit card on account. DivX had to fail miserably before Disney finally gave in to DVD.

Before that, during the 1980's, Disney had very expensive VHS tapes. As in US$80 per tape. Video rental shops were popular, but the price per tape was prohibitive. When studios realized they could sell VHS tapes directly to consumers as a secondary revenue source, VHS prices dropped quickly -- except for Disney. I recall it took several years before Disney realized they were missing out on a huge opportunity. When Disney finally entered the consumer VHS market, they still cost more than most other movies.

I've also seen a number of those made-for-kids players with various incompatible media. Those audio KidClips come to mind, and there's been a couple of those video-based monstrosities as well. The dead VideoNow and the newer Mix Max come to mind.

Disney also tried those dissolving DVDs, once you open the package the disk surface oxidizes over the next few days until its unreadable. That one never made it past the first few market tests.

Disney is not about good media formats, its all about extracting the most buxx possible. More than any other studio. Just because Disney is supporting a particular format over another does not automatically make the format a winner.

All that may be true but means nothing to a parent that knows their kids favorite movies wont be playable if they buy the HD-DVD player. Since Sony owns Disney there was never any chance that a Disney movie would go to HD-DVD.

[bucko]

I personally think HD-DVD still has a good chance, it still has a good couple of studios, and they sell there movies at reasonable prices. Sony gets to much royalty from Blu-Ray and they keep paying money to stores to show more Blu-Ray instead of HD-DVD.

I think this will eventually back fire on them because customers will simply complain about the price. HD-DVD are also releasing some really cheap players at the moment, and MS just released a HD-DVD emulator to publishers so that will reduce content production costs even further.

I have both players at the moment (via consoles) but I'm getting annoyed by this guy I wish someone would pay him a $1000 to shut his big gob up. My advice is to get both players, even if one fails you still have movies for the players and you could buy the movies on ebay for really cheap. I wish people would stop being so anal about it because it aint doing them any favours.

This post has been edited by bucko: Jan 6 2008, 09:14 PM

[Verity]

Since Sony owns Disney there was never any chance that a Disney movie would go to HD-DVD.

Completely false! Please don't spread such misinformation.

Sony owns the Columbia Pictures group.

Disney is its own company with its own movie and TV studios, including Buena Vista, Touchstone, and television giants (USA) ABC network and ESPN.

Disney came onboard Blu-Ray voluntarily, without all the bribery. Most likely, I suspect, because of the enhanced DRM (BD+) and region-locking crap which HD_DVD doesn't support. As I said before, Disney is all about the buckazoids as well as heavy into DRM whenever and wherever they can find it.

[shodanjr_gr]

Bay is a moron.

His first comment was more along the lines of "why cant people of ALL formats have access to ALL movies".


Now he is clearly taking sides in the format war. So his Transformers SEQUEL will be Blu only. Will he then be pestering his studio to let him publish in HDDVD as well?

[zest]

Bay: Get a fucking haircut and get a REAL job! Unbeliveble that this guy dosent have anything else to do. How about makeing a good movie for a change and dont talk trash about things you do not know anything about.

[statement]

well if HD-DVD failed they should start making Burnable HD-DVD-R more affordable
bring it down to DVD-R prices. bring on Dual layer HD-DVD-R!!

at least they can win @ costumer storage purposes ?


like backup blu-ray lol


i think all this time they been keeping prices for HD-DVD-R inflated to prevent people from making backups
and now since most the industry going blu there no more incentive to play nice with the studios time to give the storage capacity to the users and make profit the way.


there millions of HD-DVD player out there @ least we can make use of them i don't see then going any time soon if they make this a reality.

[mlmadmax]

Bay is a tool and needs to be beaten, just because he finally came out with a movie that really did well at the box office after like five big budjet flops in a row doesn't mean i care about his opinion.

This post has been edited by mlmadmax: Jan 7 2008, 07:05 PM

[HotKnife420]

well if HD-DVD failed they should start making Burnable HD-DVD-R more affordable
bring it down to DVD-R prices. bring on Dual layer HD-DVD-R!!

at least they can win @ costumer storage purposes ?
like backup blu-ray lol
i think all this time they been keeping prices for HD-DVD-R inflated to prevent people from making backups
and now since most the industry going blu there no more incentive to play nice with the studios time to give the storage capacity to the users and make profit the way.
there millions of HD-DVD player out there @ least we can make use of them i don't see then going any time soon if they make this a reality.

That's quite an observation! Considering where HD-DVD is, if the cost of HD-R's went down to prices more comparable with DVD DL, we could REALLY see a spike in sales of players and blank media, but I could guarantee that most movies watched would be bootleg...