Michael Bay throws Microsoft into the HD Format Wars

As if the the back and forth arguments between the two opposing fields (HD DVD and Blu Ray) weren't enough, Hollywood star director Michael Bay has thrown Microsoft right into the middle of it. In his official forum, Bay said:

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.

Bay

Well, I don't know if that's true or not - but it doesn't take a mega-famous director to realize that the future of High-Def movies is indeed digital downloads.

As for his preference for the Blu ray "superiority", maybe he should check what's happening with the Blu Ray profiles causing a lot of headaches for those with older players. Would you accept buying a DVD that requires you to buy a new DVD player as well? That's what's happening with bluray right now.
All the new "stuff" that Blu-ray is trying to implement, is on the HD-DVD right from the start.

Stripped from those features, HD-DVD and Bluray are basically just a storage medium, and both are enough to store a high quality MPEG4 H264 High definition movie. (Not even considering their newer mutiple layer improvements, allowing 51Gb on triple layer HD-DVDs and even more on Blu-ray discs.)

Blu-ray surpasses HD-DVD in Europe

And the numbers keep coming in, after recent reports from the HD_DVD group showing it as the preferred format, it's time for the Blu-ray camp, once again, to come forth.

According to the independent firm Media Control Gfk International, Blu-ray has sold over 1 million discs this year, which represents 73% of the total number of HD discs sold.

These number do not include Blu-ray games, which according to them represents 21 million discs.

As this war is far from over, it would be safe to assume that the opposite side will soon come forth showing new numbers and reports showing it isn't so...

And while both HD camps keep fighting a silly war no one asked for - the rest of the world realizes: why don't I just download the HD movies directly into my Media Center and forget about this entire disc nonsense?

via [Reuters]

Bluray profiles strike back

Just like I wrote before in a previous post (in portuguese) where I mentioned the burden Bluray had to endure due to its changing specifications, HD-DVD side is now shouting it loud and clear.

Considering that, only now Bluray movies are starting to use the 1.1 Profile (mainly the Picture in Picture feature), it's sad for thousands of people around the world to find out that their $1000 plus Bluray players are unable to play those discs.

Even worse, even though a few select players and the PS3 can be upgraded as soon as its manufacturer decides to release a firmware update, the vast majority will never be able to update their players. You'll end up with a $1000 paper weight! Is this the Ultimate HD experience Bluray wants their customers to have?

The HD-DVD camp is a lot happier when it comes to that, their specs have been set in stone since the very beginning, meaning any player can play any HD-DVD disc without problems.
This also means upgrade capability (with internal flash memory) and internet connectivity, something that will only be mandatory in the upcoming Bluray 2.0 Profile - to add to the confusion.

It's only safe to assume that most studios will prefer to keep their Bluray editions to the bare minimum, to prevent possible law suits from angry customers unable to play their discs - favoring HD-DVD with their enhanced HD editions.

With this in mind - If you had to choose between a Bluray or HD-DVD standalone player, which one would you choose?

via [Tech.co.uk]

BD+ Bluray protection cracked

According to this thread on HighDefDigest, the lastest protection scheme on Bluray discs, the BD+ has been cracked and will show up on the next version of Slysoft's AnyDVD.

Touted as the protection that would last 10 years (who in his right mind would ever say that in the first place?), it once again shows how far consumers are willing to go to enforce their rights.

If some next-gen media comes along, I hope they realize just how futile these DRM schemes are, and just concentrate on giving the consumer the best experience ever, as cheaply as possible.

Save the millions you spend on developing these protection schemes!

Via [EngadgetHD]

Transformers HD-DVD breaks record

Paramout has recently announced that the Transformers HD-DVD has sold 190,000 copies on its first week (100,000 of which were sold on the very first day!)

This makes it the most successful HD-DVD movie launch ever.

Warner has also experienced a nice boost when it launched the movie 300 in July, selling 250,000 copies on its first week - but those were the sum of both HD formats: 83,000 HD-DVD discs, and 167,000 Bluray discs (still shy of the 190 thousands copies achieved by Transformers).

Let's wait and see how Sony spins these numbers, to make it look like Bluray is winning the "format war".

For now, Transformers is an HD-DVD exclusive, and with cheap HD-DVD players on the horizon, things are looking good for consumers.

Nevertheless, to put things in perspective, Transformers has sold nearly 4.5 million copies on the first day alone. This should help them understand that media format wars are not good for anyone, and everybody loses! Maybe this will help teach them a lesson.

I, for once, am rooting for HD-DVD, as I can't ever support a company that tells me that ripping my own CDs is stealing!