Michael Bay's format war conspiracy theory: it's a Microsoft fix
By Evan Blass 
posted December 4th 2007 8:19PM
posted December 4th 2007 8:19PM
It's no secret that Michael "Transformers" Bay prefers his high definition optical discs in the Blu variety, but what we didn't know was how convinced the man is that the whole format war is nothing but a stalling tactic, with Microsoft pulling all the strings. Responding to a commenter angry over Paramount's decision to burn Optimus and friends onto HD DVD only, Bay claims to have the inside track on the "corporate politics" at play here, suggesting that "Microsoft wants both formats to fail so they can be heroes and make the world move to digital downloads." He goes on to claim that Redmond has only been financially backing HD DVD over "superior Blu-ray" to create "confusion in the market" until such time as high def digital downloading goes prime time. In other words, if you believe Bay, Microsoft is backing a known loser in order to prolong a war it doesn't want anyone to win. Pretty wild theory, if you ask us -- hey, this guy should make movies.[Thanks, Timothy and Kiwi616]
Interesting that this dude refers to Microsoft by its stock ticker symbol... do you have a vested interest in their success?
I think it's quite true. It's not Bay's own opinion though. I read about this when MS opted for HD DVD for Windows. This theory was bandied around quite a bit. I think someone at MS even confirmed it in principal at the time.
Come to think of it, George Lucas had much the same to say.
It isn't at all a crazy conspiracy theory. Just shrewd business on MS's part.
That said, I think there will always be a place for physical media. It's just nice to own it and be able to hold it... or give it to someone as a gift.
I see the future being media server devices that store all the films, TV and music you want, and still play optical media (of all formats) as well.
Bay is an investor in Ciconia & Co., LLC, a private VC firm. Cicconia recently bought Digital Domain, and installed one of its principals and founders, Carl Stork, formerly of Microsoft (I believe he was incharge of the Windows '95 release, giving him much to answer for, karmically speaking), as CEO.
So Bay actually does have a bit of an inside line to MS.
On the other hand, he has not to date shown much intellectual rigor.
Even people with fast dowload in the US still dont have the bandwidth to download HD movies.
Also I would have to have the ability to backup to disc easily without having to hack or convert it.
Most people are not going to go and buy TB's of storage to download and store movies on.
http://www.fakesportsblogs.com
As much as downloading HD movies on XBox live sounds like a grate idea. They just take to dame long. I'd rather go to the video store or sign up for netflix. And even if I did download, at least with XBox live. The movie expires after a couple of days of the initial play.
you dont mind waiting 48 hrs to send in a movie to netflix at get the next one back yet waiting a few hours is too long? the lead time is one of the big advantages of downloading (as is actually having stock of movies.... getting a hd-dvd or bluray from netflix these days takes an act of god... on a download service there is only one copy for everybody)
and hd movies on my cable connection are ready to play usually after 10 mins of buffering....
That may be true at times. And I got a cable connection as well. But if I find a movie that I really enjoy and want to keep. Downloading on live won't do me any good. But I do see your point.
and neither will netflix... you wont be keeping movies from there as well.
to me that will be my ultimate movie service when something like xbox live gives you netflix ease of use/price. so you get the advantages of both services.
I can't believe how many people bought into the Sony hype. I guess any company that is compared to MS automatically comes off looking better -- even when such a conclusion is unfair.
Seriously, how can anybody trust the company that brought us the Sony rootkit? (Google it if you don't know.) That, combined with the utterly onerous DRM associated with Blu-ray and PS3, means Sony lost me as a consumer.
This is not Michael Bay's idea. Most of you probably don't remember, but Ross Rubin called this a year and 10 months ago in his "Switched On" column:
http://www.engadget.com/2006/02/15/switched-on-all-the-presidents-discs/
i said it before and ill say it again. unless microsoft can come up with an amazing codec that will allow 1080p 3 hour movies to be downloaded in less then 5 minutes, is under 3gb, has no visual compression artifacts and can do 7.1 uncompressed audio digital downloads wont go farther then xbox live or i tunes for a long ways to come
Michael Bay is absolutely right but the real irony is that the Xbox will be dead in 5 years when movies are DD's.
In 6 months, Xbox will be third AGAIN. Since MS can;'t count on the cash cows continually producing from the OS/server division, they will need to cut back - and Xbox which is $15 billion in the hole will continue to be a billion dollar loser every year ... it will be dead in 5 years - though MS did a good personal hachet job on its own brand name by refusing to acknowledge the ring of death and to simply extend the warranty to cover that (and that only) - like that's reassuring to consumers ... but hey, it's not like they spent $6 billion and 6 years on Vista ... oops, they did.
Apple is "backing" Blu-Ray the same way MS is backing HD-DVD. Macworld 2008 Apple will formally announce their intention to bid on the 700 MHz spectrum. Macworld 2009 Apple will release a range of devices that all connect wirelessly anywhere you are. Apple TV, iPhone, and Mac will be interconnected. The internet will not cost money anymore, everyone will have broadband, everyone will purchase all of their content on iTunes. The purpose of this "conspiracy" is to completely cut out the superior Japanese consumer electronics industry. If anyone here doesn't think the big players in the American computer industry don't know what they are doing are in for a big shock when they see what the 700 MHz spectrum is all about. With such a low frequency broadband speeds are easily achievable just think about how far away from a TV tower you can receive HD content over the air. The only thing keeping the big players in the industry from reaching their goals right now are the telecommunications providers which will quickly become obsolete. This whole turnaround will still open up the rest of the world to many options, but one thing is for sure, this was planned.
What an odd comment.
I thought this was a great article. Great way to finish it off. I laughed pretty hard.
Bay has to be one of the top 5 hacks in Hollywood. His movies suck so badly and they represent what so many people dislike about the USA in the world. He is the perfect symbol for 100% cliché style and 0% substance.
I hate Michael Bay movies. They're terrible. But I do think he is correct in why he believes certain studios would mysteriously jump ship to a losing and inferior format. I expect MS waved a virtual wad of money in front of their nose in the form of extremely favourable DLC royalties, software licences and other incentives that far outstripped any profits they could expect from Blu Ray in the short term.
He makes good movies.
Here is where MS fanboys and MS employees bashing Bay.
@ Travis Vaighey : Errrm what about Matsushita, Pioneer, Philips, Thomson, LG Electronics, Hitachi, Sharp & Samsung. All Blu-ray supporters. Making 'HD-DVD only' devices we have Toshiba and Microsoft. I can't imagine any other large CE company wanting to join Toshiba and match the losses they are making on these units.
@theefman : What are you talking about?? Blu-ray can handle much higher bit rates (audio and video) than HD-DVD, and has more space on the disc to store lossless audio. From a Pro HD-DVD site : "Indeed, I had the opportunity to attend a special 'Transformers' media event with Paramount late last week, and the question was asked almost immediately -- why no Dolby TrueHD or uncompressed PCM? The studio's answer was that due to space limitations on the disc, the decision was made to limit the audio to Dolby Digital-Plus 5.1 Surround only (here at 1.5mbps). Unfortunately, this confirms the long-held theory that the 30Gb capacity of an HD-30 dual-layer HD DVD disc has forced studios to choose between offering a robust supplements package (as they've done here) and the very best in audio quality." It seems you can't have both.
um... so what's the problem here?
I certainly hope this is what Microsoft is doing, because I'm tired of buying every new format that comes out.
I want all of my stuff stored on someone else's server, and I want them to keep a record of everything I own, that way I don't have to buy the Matrix for the fourth time in HDX eight years from now.
i'm sick of seeing good movies only coming out in bloody crap hd-dvd.. it just doesnt have the right Buzz
Wild theory, eh?
I just happens that MS have said themselves that they don't care which format wins. The x360 will not get an inbuilt HD-DVD drive because they don't want the customers to be left with a losing format and the future is digital downloads. MS currently provide a HD movie download service.
Most of the movies are XBox LIVE are not in 720p; of those that are, most are not 5.1. None offer 7.1 or uncompressed sound. Of course, this likely does not matter to those who don't have 1080p screens or HDMI receivers. But to me, I would much rather pay $20 for a disk based movie that offers both than $6 for a downloadable rental that offers neither.
Even if I wanted to, though, I don't enough space left on my drive to download any full-length movies. I'm still rocking the old 20GB 360 drive as I refuse to pay $180 for a 120GB that gives me nothing other than the ability to buy or rent more content from Microsoft. They should be trying to get those into the hands of as many people as possible, not making them cost prohibitive.
Hopefully this Christmas will mark the end of HD-DVD. The gap now is simply too wide for it to have a chance at market dominance. It lost to Blu-Ray 72-28 on the week ending 11/25. I like HD-DVD; I own a Toshiba standalone player and a stack of movies, but I'd rather see the format disappear than see it stand in the way of Blu-Ray's market acceptance. I want disk-based HD to survive for as long as DVD has. I don't my only option to be low-quality automatically expiring digital downloads.
JET
I doubt that MS is that smart... but if they are, kudos to them.
"Americans simply don't have the bandwidth to comfortably download a Blu-ray-sized film"
Yeah, and not every American has an HDtv, but yet our government is going to force HD to be a standard, right?
Technology can be improved.
Greedy corporations who can't play nice together is BAD for us, not good.
Also... to me, it seems like everyone is crossing opinions and not comparing apples to apples.
You're comparing a $30 HD/BD purchase to a $6 online rental? OF COURSE, it's a RENTAL, it's going to expire and not be of the same quality. So you can walk into Blockbuster and rent a BD disc for $6 and never have to return it???
We're talking about... (insert music here) THE FUTURE!
An iTunes-esque service for high-def movies. So you drop $20 - $30 for a downloadable HD movie, that you can in turn burn to disc (oh wait... The FUTURE... so no discs... flash memory drives that plug directly into your HDtv!). There would be some DRM restrictions of course... just like itunes. Xbox Live and current iTunes is not going to squash any disc formats anytime soon and it's shortsighted to use that as a comparison.
And sometimes quality isn't enough. BETA has a far superior quality to VHS... which is why the broadcast industry continued to use it. But commercially, it failed. The 1st Xbox was far superior hardware-wise to the PS2. But the PS2 killed in sales.
I know none of us really believe this conspiracy-crap, but if you did... you'd have to realize the conspiracy is perpuated by ALL corporations. Sony knew that a format war was not going be good for business, and went ahead anyway. Ditto for M$.
And I just love mentioning SACD, DVD-Audio, MiniDisc, UMD and Digital VHS.
I won't buy in to the new formats... the moment I build up a collection, they're gonna have some new format. I hope all companies, whether they support BD or HD-DVD, loses so much money it hurts. It would serve them right for putting us consumers in the middle of their ego-war.
two words.
Crack-Pot
I could care less about michael bay.
High capacity optical storage will never been abandoned. I want to buy my physical disk PORN in CASH because I don't want the government tracking down my squirt fetishes. If everything goes online, big brother gets too much knowledge.
Michael Bay = Pearl Harbour, need I say more
Yes you do. Just this time make you run your sentence through Spell Check.
This absolutely makes sence and downloads are the future. I also could see Microsfot having such a master plan of sorts for another arena they wish to dominate. But BRD is far from being superior over HD DVD. That's the crack talking there Mr. Bay.
Gotta hand it to Bay. He put a lot a thought into that theory. Much better than most conspiracy theories.
I agree that digital downloads ARE the future, but I'm not sure that the format war could be called a "conspiracy." Yes, I'm sure the execs at MS were smart enough to see that future, but I don't see how purposely jamming up the HD disc market would benefit them in the future digital download industry...
As for the format war itself, HDDVD will win on name-recognition alone. The name of the tech itself is the obvious HD solution for the AVERAGE consumer. period. "HD"+"DVD"=no brainer.
Either one winning works for me...
Yeah not an original conspiracy, since it is the truth that everyone knows. MS put money behind HD-DVD to pollute the market and keep the PS3 from being the living room entertainment hub.
Microsoft wants every house to have a Microsoft OS central server, a Microsoft living room hub, and Microsoft OS terminals all connected to a central Microsoft service that you pay a monthly fee to access. You'll even have to pay money to access the internet because you'll do it through devices that require a sign in to the central service. You'll then have to pay for the movie download.
This is all in addition to the $70 a month 10mb FIOS service with 3GB monthly download limits. Want higher speeds or unlimited downloads well that'll cost you $149 a month. If there is a way to rip people off and squeeze more money out of them US telecommunication companies will find it. Anyone that thinks you are going to have a cheap real high speed internet connection with unlimitied download bandwidth in the USA from the current telcos is a complete idiot that should be put in a rubber room.
If thats the future you want then go ahead and side with Microsoft. I for one do not want a Micrsoft logo on anythign other than the operating system on my compter that I am forced to have. I'll give that one to Microsoft, hell they should be happy with that. They should be happy with the billions of dollars they bring in every year. They don't need any more. Microsoft executives should be happy with having the 2nd, 5th, 13th and whatever else largest yachts in the world, but they aren't. They want total domination of anything that uses a line of software code to work.
"hey, this guy should make movies"
- no he really shouldn't!
Pearl Harbor sucked.... A little more than I miss you...
Wild theory?
i thought this was brought up a long time ago (when MS announced backing HDDVD) and is a pretty obvious move.... Didn't Sir Gates even mention that he doesn't care who wins because he has other plans... or something to that effect?
I wouldn't call this a crazy conspiracy...
I love conspiracy theories and if it were true Microsoft would be seriously be a winner. Invest in the format you are backing, to profit from it as long as possible while offering IPTV and digital downloads. This way IF people ditch High Definition disc they have their opening.
Cable has had PPV for years, on-Demand works pretty much as a digital download it's just that they don't have the quality and pricing right, yet.
Not only could you say this is a sensible assertion, I say it is *obviously* one of their motives, absolutely no question! MS gets nothing out HD-DVD that that don't out of BluRay, they lobbied hard to get their tech in both. Why would MS push for inferior tech to become a standard physical medium to come (the winning movie standard will automatically become the winning data standard)? Because having no high-capacity standard is in their greater interest. Note that is in Apple's greater interest too, yet they don't play these games (as much). Stark contrast between a company that focusses on products vs. one that focusses on industry politics.
It acutally makes sense what michael bay is saying, I don't think thats acutally what is happening, but it makes sense.
As for the guy who says "the internets are running out of room in 10 years oil in 15, ocean levels 10 feet in 20" the Oil thing is bullshit, the ocean thing is probabbly bullshit. the internets running out of room is true, ipv4 is running out of numbers, pretty soon we have to switch over to ipv6 which has like 2x10+ (128 zeros)appearntly thats enough for every person on the planet currently to have 50,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 ip adresses.
You know for someone who made a crud film to begin with he has a lot of balls to be throwing around these claims. His movie was the biggest sellout I have ever seen, hell he even had an Xbox Robot in the movie! He should just curl up in the corner, suck his thumb, and wait to make the new Rocky and Bullwinkle Movie
@ ALL THE IDIOTS COMPARING THE IRAQ WAR TO THE FORMAT WAR
I think you all missed the boat here. We're talking about Michael Bay's views on the format war. How the hell did you all get on the topic of the Iraq war?
It can't hardly be a Microsoft conspiracy; they make money off of every HD-DVD _and_ Blu-ray player sold because of their VC-1 codec used on both platforms.
Just as a bit of information for anyone who might be sitting on the fence trying to pick a player in either format, here's some interesting info for you, based on information from www.blu-raystats.com.
HD-DVDs are nearly all released on its higher capacity 30GB format. As of this writing, 51.97% of Blu-Ray discs are released in the lower capacity 25GB BD25 format. Thus the apparent size advantage of Blu-Ray isn't currently being utilized by slightly approximately half of the currently published BR discs. The HD-DVD specification was recently updated to support 17GB per layer, up to three layers (or 51GB) per disc. Blu-Ray officially supports one or two data layers up to 50GB total.
38.11% of Blu-Ray discs are released in the MPEG-2 format. This is the older format that has been blamed for poor video quality on early Blu-ray discs. While the 50GB BD50 discs with MPEG-2 are certainly better than the 25GB BD25 discs, AVC and VC-1 encoded discs offer much better image quality, even comparing these formats in a 25GB format to a 50GB MPEG-2 disc.
Before buying a Blu-Ray disc, check the www.blu-raystats.com site to make sure it isn't a 25GB MPEG-2 disc, as these are the ones with image quality problems. A 50GB MPEG-2 disc will look fine for movies of average (or shorter) length as long as there isn't much bonus material on the disc. I am not aware of any general image quality issues with HD-DVD discs.
Other format differences: HD-DVD supports Managed Copy which allows you to copy your movies to a home theater PC, though I'm not aware of any implementations of this just yet. Blu-ray does not have any such capability.
HD-DVD has more interactivity features than the BD 1.0 specification, though BD 1.1 attempts to address this. In the real world, this means that HD-DVD discs currently tend to offer more visually appealing menus and more disc features. This is likely to change slowly with the adoption of the BD 1.1 and 2.0 specification.
Both formats support the same video formats. Audio format capabilities are effectively about the same, with some variation on which competing formats are utilized for different levels of compression.
Both formats support full 1080p resolution at regular TV refresh rates as well as 24p. The implementation on the discs is slightly different, but the data is the same. Some HD-DVD players only output up to 1080i, but many 1080p TVs are fully able to reproduce the original 1080p signal for display. To take advantage of a smooth 24p-based cadence, players in either format must be connected to a 72 or 120Hz television via HDMI. Connecting to any other type of television or using any other type of connection will result in 3:2 pulldown being added to output video at 60 Hz.
Movie studio support for the two formats is pretty much a toss-up, with current offerings in both camps having almost exactly equal numbers of titles available.
HD-DVD does not have any region coding requirement, so you are always free to import discs from overseas and play them on any player. Blu-Ray uses three region codes (A,B,C) to make sure that encoded discs are not played in regions other than those they are intended for, similar to the way that DVDs are region coded now. This in some cases is a disdvantage for HD-DVD, as sometimes a disc release for a short time is delayed while the movie continues to show in theaters elsewhere in the world.
In several cases if you are not able to obtain a movie title on the format of choice in your home country, it might be available on the other format elsewhere. If you have elected to use Blu-ray as your format of choice you need to make sure that the disc you are purchasing from overseas will play in your region, however.
Some/many HD-DVD discs are available in a "combo" format (usually at a higher cost) which contains the high definition version of a disc on one side, with a standard DVD version available on the opposite side for playback in regular DVD equipment. Blu-ray does not offer a similar capability.
Discs prices are pretty similar between the two formats, with both being significantly more expensive than DVDs.
well Japan is the only place where digital downloads can make haste as they are one of the very very few companies inthe world that have a really really REALLY high bandwidth which mind you as stated before will not be comiong to america anytime soon