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Microsoft Fueling HD Wars For Own Benefit?
DaveyJJ writes "According to Transformers' director Michael Bay, in a story over on Electronista, Microsoft is deliberately feeding into the HD disc format wars to ensure that its own downloads succeed where physical copies fail, he says in a response to a question posed through his official forums. The producer contends that Microsoft is writing "$100 million dollar checks" to movie studios to ensure HD DVD exclusives that hurt the overall market regardless of the format's actual merit or its popularity, preventing any one format from gaining a clear upper hand."
...Or maybe it's because Microsoft has been a strong backer of the format since the very beginning, and doesn't want it to end up like all of Sony's other consumer device formats. (Betamax, MiniDisc, Memory Stick, SACD, UMD...)
...Or maybe it's because HD-DVD is the format that its cash cow video game console system supports, whereas they have nothing to do with Blu-ray.
Of course, I could just be grasping at straws.
At any rate, I do think he is right in that neither format will be the choice for obtaining and playing hi-def content, online distribution ultimately will win.
Because heaven knows Sony hasn't thrown around a ton of money to make sure it gets as many studios and others on the Blu Ray train.
Both Sony and MS throw money into supporting the horse that their respective wagon is tied to. That's how it is.
And I agree that in the long term on line distribution will win, but before it can the internet as we know it needs some substantial upgrading. Not to support the concept (it already does), but to support what happens when the masses start using it.
I'm a fiscal conservative, it's a pity we don't have a political party anymore
Microsoft wrote the software for the HD interactive, which means they must be getting a royalty for each machine.
What's a few $100M here and there when you have the potential to collect so many licenses from consumer boxes?
Plus, the Blu-Ray content software is written in Java. What better reason for MS to hate it?
This development appears to be consistent and predictable. Look at Vista and its license agreement, and you see M$ trying to control not only the software layer but levying requirements on hardware makers, i.e. toe the line and show commitment to DRM in every layer of hardware or M$ won't certify your drivers, and this means NOT providing any open source drivers to the Linux community. Although Peter Gutmann's essay contained some inaccuracies, it detailed these steps. Why did M$ abandon technical functionality for the end user in favor of an OS that provides a bit of eye candy to users but a whole lot of technology that is aimed at protecting content provider monopoly? Why did they release the ultra-DRM portable platform, the Zune, about the same time? Why is M$ now meddling in the media content market, apparently trying to orchestrate some sort of movement in HD media? It has looked for some time like M$ sees the revenue stream Apple has through ITunes and thought it worthwhile to put a stake in the ground for developing a media market. Which, in typical M$ fashion, they want to control absolutely. Look for M$ to either acquire or announce a media provider that offers only protected WMA and ultra-DRMed MP3 formats to compete against ITunes. M$ sees that the OS and application space has limited legs. They appear to be making a move toward becoming a content provider. Pretty savvy on their part, but I think their jack-booted super-mega-ultra-DRM approach will not be well received. They're either way out in front on the cutting edge, or a dinosaur trying to put a cap on emerging mammals in the media marketplace. Time will tell.
It also doesn't make much logical sense. Bay claims that MS is prolonging the format war until they can get downloadable video working right, then swoop in and be declared "A winner is you!" Seems to me that Bay as been watching too many of his own movies.
True, Downloadable video is nice, as is stuff like Video on demand. I can picture telling my kids that "In my day, if you wanted to watch a show? You just had to wait until it was on." However, I don't think that downloadable movies will ever overtake actually having the disk in hand. If I want to watch Army Of Darkness, I don't want to wait 20 minutes for it to stream, then hope that my connection stays steady enough to prevent it from freezing. Just pop in the disk, no problem. The more steps you take from wanting to watch a movie, and pressing play, the worse off it is, in my opinion.
Microsoft is quite obviously betting it will. In fact, they've been telling people that's the future that Microsoft will bring for years now. I went to a "Digital Home" show that was nothing more than Microsoft shilling their Digital Home products under a different name.
Throw in the added benefit of taking some of the wind out of the PS3 and it seems like a very cheap way for Microsoft to purchase marketshare in several different markets (Console, DVD Downloads, Home Electronics).
Fanatically anti-fanatical
No, the complaint isn't that Microsoft is supporting one format over another or even both at the same time. The problem is that they are allegedly encouraging "exclusives" on one format or another, i.e. you want a particular movie, you can only buy the HD-DVD version. This means consumers have less choice, not more.
I'm sorry, but at least, say, OOXML pretends to be open. Google for "OOXML Specification dowload" and the very first result has PDFs, linked to directly, not even so much as a free registration required.
I develop HD-DVD applications for a living. On my desk are four volumes of "DVD Specifications for High Definition VIDEO (HD DVD-Video)", totaling almost three inches thick. (I'd tell you how many pages, but the pages are not numbered.) There's probably another three and a half inches worth of updates, which someone else here has read and memorized, that I don't really look at.
We do not have these in electronic form. As far as I know, you cannot get them in electronic form, and they do not come with an index, which makes them a bitch to search until you start to memorize enough of it to have a vague idea of where to start randomly flipping through to find what you need.
This is because on every single page, at the bottom of the page, is the following notice:
"Open" and "public" my ass.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!