Transformers and why I am not buying HD-DVD or Blu-ray
22 August 2007
Autobots Roll Out
I was a subscriber to the British version of the Transformers comic as a child. It gets worse, in the original 1980s movie, the scene when Opitmus Prime died, I burst out into tears (I was 7 or 8 at the time) and I was not the only one by any means. Prime, the personification of good and courage, led the decisive final push that won the battle but he was mortally wounded in the process.
So I went out to see the new Transformers movie tonight. It has been on for a while, I know you all have seen it already but I have been busy, the film was already in the basement screen! However, it was well worth watching, the balance between fidelity to the Transformers canon and the required retcon was really good.
It was the best Hollywood film that I have seen for a long while, however I haven't decided yet if the new one was better than the 1980s film, and I will need to see this new one more times to form an opinion. It was a very different movie indeed, being live action it was less ambitious than the cartoon version, and the cartoon had a better soundtrack; however the use of humans as active characters really brought the movie to life. This solves a critical problem with the cartoons, that the robots were too anthromorphised, they were too human, too jungle book. Having humans around meant that their dialogue and body language could keep the film going and the robots could keep their mystique.
HD-DVD Vs Blu-ray
The director, Michael Bay, has threatened to pull out of making Transformers 2 unless the current film is released with format neutrality, i.e. not just on HD-DVD. I have to agree with him, punishing the fans for the greed of the electronics industry is ridiculous, and will just push people into unauthorised copies. If you bought a Blu-ray drive, you are never going to out and spend another few hundred quid on HD-DVD, or vice versa. It is really stupid and a big waste of lasers, plastic and the environment in general. People in the world are staving yet we need an HD-DVD and a Blue-ray drive? This is market failure and the government should take the technology and open it up to the free market.
I have an Economics degree, but I don't think I need to provide a complete market analysis for you to accept that the golden rule of business is to accept people's money. If Blue-ray drive owners want to buy Transformers, then sell it to them. This is primary school stuff. Next time you see the Hollywood movie industry moaning about not having any money, do not feel sorry for them.
If the movie industry want to mess about, they should have done that at the beginning, they should have said no to both formats and stuck with DVDs until the electronics industry could agree a single standard. Making people buy two drives is stupid. I am sticking to VHS and DVD for now, you can get some really good deals in VHS, like one quid for a firm.
HD-DVD and Blue-ray VS SATA
As for HD-DVD and Blue-ray, I think the future is in neither of these formats. I think the future is hard drives. Eventually they are going to make a legal film download service that is both cross platform and works as well as DVDs, i.e. is not broken by DRM. Hard drives get twice as cheap every year.
I looked at the price of HD-DVD players, and you could get an okay one for £250. You can get a decent 500 GB SATA hard-drive for about £60, so four of those is 2000 GB.
In ten years time, how big will consumer hard-drives be? I would guess at least one thousand times more. I don't care how high quality movies get, with several million GB as standard, storing them won't be a problem.
1 Ian Monroe says...
I don't have an economics degree, but you don't need one to see the current situation of a standards war creates confusion so people avoid the confusion by avoiding the new formats entirely. I don't know why Paramount decided on HD-DVD, but I imagine it was mostly them wanting to decide on something.
Getting government involved seems silly though, they have better things to do then support a new digital format, especially when the one we have works fine.
Bandwidth is still an issue though, bigger hard drives solve nothing.
Posted at 1:57 a.m. on August 22, 2007
2 dbr says...
With harddrives as storage, you still need to get the data to paying customers. Online downloads are a nice idea, but there are problems: Internet connections nearly all suck, unless you live in Finland or Sweden, downloading anything reaching a blue-ray disc is extremly time consuming, and verges on a lot of peoples bandwidth limits. And, people like having DVD/Blu-ray/HD-DVD boxes around, for what ever reason. Having stuff on harddrives is great (Until I moved to Australia for a year, I downloaded most of the TV I watched - thanks to the lack of satellite/cable TV where I lived), but it's just not the same as having physical DVD's.
Another possible idea would be a "Plug your harddrive in here and we'll transfer the film on to it", but drives aren't strong enough to survive such a thing. Until solid-state, >250GB become common place, that'd be a silly idea.
Physical media isn't going anywhere quickly. It's extremely annoying both HD- DVD and Blu-Ray have sort of taken of, are sort of holding each other back, and are both kind of the same.. But both totaly incompatible with each other.. Personally I'd say HD-DVD would be a better format, since it's easier to make (so would be cheaper). Still, personally I don't really care enough about HD footage to bother - regular TV, DVD's and online content looks fine, even on a fairly large screen. My brother has a small, er, cinema in his house, with a reasonably large screen - On such a setup, yes, HD footage looks great. But even on a 52" TV, regular DVD's look.... fine. Without a side-by-side comparison, most people could not tell HD footage from regular footage..
Posted at 2:32 a.m. on August 22, 2007
3 numerodix says...
"It is really stupid and a big waste of lasers, plastic and the environment in general."
That is correct. And tell me, what the hell do you need with a piece of round plastic after you've installed a program or seen a movie, or listened to an album? Harddrive storage is much more convenient. Even more so, what do you need with a stack of plastic discs at your house? It's just a huge waste. Also for those who still haven't figured out rw media, I'm looking at you.
Posted at 6:46 a.m. on August 22, 2007
4 CIaran says...
We got dual formats, we got two different players. They won't ever win.
But the guys who are in the process of making a dual-format player will be the winners. When its a toss-up between a blu-ray player (£500), HD-DVD (£500) and a dual format player (£600). Where do you think the smart money goes?
This has happened before with DVD regions, eventually people got fed up with being Region 1 or 2 or 3, and just bought a multi-region player.
Posted at 9:24 a.m. on August 22, 2007