Viral Marketing, that is. When done well it can be quite entertaining. And it gets fanboys like TheNorthlander all angry and shit, so you KNOW it's good.

Good day.

When there is a universal format player for 150 bucks, call me....

I don't want to buy plain ol' DVD anymore, cuz I would later have the strong urge to upgrade, and I just don't feel like buying twice. So I will wait.

...but you know what? Back in the early 80s, when I saw a laserdisc demonstration in a shop, I was completely blown away. Didn't mean shit, though, did it?

The bottom line is that anyone who thinks there's actually going to be a breakthrough hi-def format after this "war" is either delusional or a moron. Whoever "wins" this petty skirmish will appeal to no greater a market than the folks who collected laserdiscs all through the 80s and early 90s.

Sure, a hi-def format WILL eventually sell big, but we're at least ten years away from that, and I guaran-fucking-tee you it won't be either Blu-Ray or HD DVD.

Keep buying regular DVDs and don't sweat it.

Let me explain by way of a question:

What do you think will happen once one format “wins”?

Do you think all the studios backing the losing system will just laugh and shrug and say “my bad” and then pump hundreds of millions of dollars more into converting their product to the winning system? And will this simultaneously occur with the sudden rush to Circuit City by Joe Sixpack and his granny while hollering “Hot damn! The war is finally over! Gimme that hi-def player!” ?

Or will the “losing” studios just sit back a while and watch as the “winning” system slowly dies as it bleeds potential customers who won’t back a universal system for all their favorite movies? Why wouldn’t the “losing” studios then choose to invest in regular DVD releases instead of the “winning” system until a new hi-def system is developed which everyone will get behind and which will have technical advantages that can appeal even to Joe Sixpack?

Here’s the bottom line, folks: as soon as studios started lining up on opposite sides of the hi-def fence, the war was lost. Simply by being so divisive, the war was unwinnable from the get-go – even if the time had been right for the unwashed masses to abandon regular DVD, which it fucking well isn’t.

Try to get it through your heads: Nobody, I mean NOBODY, of consequence gives a shit about either Blu-Ray or HD DVD. They’re dead formats. Give it another ten years and a unified, user-friendly and affordable system will take the world by storm, but until then, DVDs will be alive and well.

Hopefully you can conceed that both formats have had exactly the same support for the same audio and video formats since the start (whether they were actually implemented or not). If you're being objective you have to say that 300 is reference quality on BOTH HD-DVD AND Blu-ray, as it's exactly the same vc-1 transfer. Your dick analogy is a bit misleading now that the Disney titles ARE going over the 30 gig point and most BDs are 50 gig, extras or not, and there's one other reason that EVERYONE on AICN seems to completely ignore every single time this war comes up.

Computers. Easily as important as the movie side, and this is where MS seem to be cutting off their own noses to spite their face (and everyone else I guess). If you're talking about storage, then the layer-for-layer thing becomes incredibly important. And why MS would back HD-DVD considering the data and storage side of things makes no sense (aside from ego) at all. Hey, 50 gigs (yes I know the 200gig ones are coming next year) isn't even enough right now!

Anyway I just wanted to raise that one. I'm not saying for a single second Sony aren't as idiotic as MS/Toshiba, just so we're clear. It just seems shortsighted to support a format that's not 'portable' the same way even the humble CD was all those years ago. Fair?

Still, at this point I wish they'd all just be done with it either way so we can move on, no matter who wins. Maybe then we can get some high-def Criterion goodness!

I wonder if they offered him 150 million as well, or are they saving that for Warners - or Spielberg?!