I know that a while back Universal went ahead and announced Jaws on HD and the Speilberg clan went ape****. Now I know that Micheal Bay was also pissed when Paramount announced exclusivity and that Transformers would only be on one format. The day after his blog post declaring his anger he retracted his statement. Obviously Paramount had a word with him. In the end who the heck has the final say in putting studio movies on a format. Universal should do whatever Paramount did to Bay.

With the exception of Star Wars (which Lucas owns 100% rights to) it is to my knowledge up to the studios thmselves as to what and when what gets released.

That being said, Some directors may have a clause that says that they get fina say over home distribution rights. That is not to say that Spielburg can say "release Raiders in Blu Ray only and do it now" bt that if Paramount wants to release it they have to get his approval to actually release it on HD DVD. If he says no then they can say "Fine we won't release it at all then."

Over all I think it is more of the studios saying "don't piss of the directors with th golden touch" than anything else. universal and Paramount don't want to piss off Spielburg so they don't release (or he has a clause in his contract per film that he has to give approval to release) it when he says no so that he will continue to work with them.

There is one thing I am curious about, and I am NOT suggesting ANYTHING!!!

If Transformers sells like people think it will (11:27pm on 9/8 it's sitting at #4 on Amazon DVD Bestsellers), would Spielburg look at the sales and decide to give approval to Universal for an HD DVD to release?

At some point too I think Universal needs to step up and say enough is enough, we know you're not coming back to us anyway. So we're releasing these movies anyway.

Again, I think any objection of Spielberg's is about nothing else than installed-base. He simply doesn't want his films released on any immature medium, for financial reasons. When HD DVD has a player-base in the tens of millions, we'll start seeing Spielberg blockbusters show up.

Exactly what spectator said. It's about maximising their income from movie re-releases.

Is it just me?... I find it interesting that certain people in the Hollywood community have been so outspoken about Blu-ray.

First Spielberg, then Bay, Ebert... who's next? I don't mean to start rumors, but if I were the BDA and couldn't get certain studios to change over, then I'd persuade their talent.

Is it just me?... I find it interesting that certain people in the Hollywood community have been so outspoken about Blu-ray.

First Spielberg, then Bay, Ebert... who's next? I don't mean to start rumors, but if I were the BDA and couldn't get certain studios to change over, then I'd persuade their talent.

You don't understand..all these directors are basically promised that Blu-Ray offers better copyright protection and that they will make more money from movies because HD DVD can be "hacked".

Trust me, this has nothing to do with any director personally liking Blu-Ray because it has higher bit rate or size...it's all about DRM...

but once BD+ gets hacked and Blu-ray gets shown in the real light and the fact that you can't really fight piracy with layers and layers of protection but actually with original content that can't be replicated..it will always happen.

Trust me, this has nothing to do with any director personally liking Blu-Ray because it has higher bit rate or size...it's all about DRM...


Exactly. If they were so concerned about not using all 50Gb of a BD-disc over the 30Gb on the HD DVD they should pop the DVD's of their movies in a PC and see how many of them actually a) Use all of the 8GiB of space, b) Using the maximum bitrate that DVD can (around 9.5mbps if I'm not misaken, probably I am) and see what 98% of all moviebuyers are looking at right now when watching their movies.

There's no way in hell Universal would even think of scolding Spielberg for his apparent preference to Blu Ray. Why would they jeopardize their relationship with the world's most popular director(and possibly all time?). It's bad business and it'll never, ever, ever happen.

And I don't think it was Paramount who told Bay to back off. It was most likely Bay's agent who woke up and choked on his bagel when he read Bay's comments. Would you want your client giving up a potential GOLD MINE pay day with directing Transformers 2? Didn't think so.

AACS and lack of space seems to be the concern areas for the directors.

everybody give to much credit to spielberg,he is a great director but look what does clint eastwood has a director.i will give more credit to eastwood than spielberg.spielberg and other director have to much ego.

AACS and lack of space seems to be the concern areas for the directors.

Bay said he then watched 300 on HD DVD and thought it was great so O.K. he'd now do Transformers 2! Lack of space - I don't think so; however, I guess Toshiba is smart to have a 51 gb disk (about 7 gb more than Sony's 50gb disk that can only actually use 44 gb or yields fall way below 50%). Even though the 51 gb aren't necessary it helps in the PR war. So I say to Toshiba - go ahead and make it so! Now what will the BDA have left in the PR war? Nothing!

Cheers,

Grant

Couldn't it be the rich person's stance against HD DVD, more than anything? After all, we've seen that kind of snobbery in this forum, as people refuse to lower themselves to buy a Toshiba player. Some people automatically assume that certain brands and $1,000 players are indicative of a much better format.

I think a lot of the Hollywood types were snowed in by the Sony spiel awhile ago so they haven't really considered the issues. Some of them may not be the most technical so they may have blindly believed the bigger space/PS3 is better routine Sony was peddling. Now we know that you really don't need 50 gigs for the majority of space and the PS3 is finishing 3rd in the console battle.

Once they start to realize that all those claims are not what they are cracked up to be their opinions will change.

You don't understand..all these directors are basically promised that Blu-Ray offers better copyright protection and that they will make more money from movies because HD DVD can be "hacked".

Trust me, this has nothing to do with any director personally liking Blu-Ray because it has higher bit rate or size...it's all about DRM...

but once BD+ gets hacked and Blu-ray gets shown in the real light and the fact that you can't really fight piracy with layers and layers of protection but actually with original content that can't be replicated..it will always happen.

I agree that this is definately a part of it. But not as big a part as the money that they recieve from software sales. There is nothing going on other than this, Speilberg wants to walk into the bank with a fat royalty check, nothing more than this. At present with the "players" in the market for the blu-side he can get a bigger check. Note, I use the term player loosely. So my suggestion is everyone go out and buy an A2 for someone you love;)

Kaz Hirai finally came out this week under a ton of pressure from the game development companies and said "The PS3 is a GAME CONSOLE."Unfortunately for Sony and the hollywood types they suckered into exclusively backing BRD, the 3rd place game console is really the only thing keeping BRD going right now.Truth is, unless Sony starts convincing some game developers to start making a boat load of big money making GAMES for the PS3, BlueRAY will start suffereing because of the PS3 simply because it can't live up to it's primary function succesfully.As it is right now, in the consumer's eyes the PS3 has something of a identity crises, one which only now is Sony trying to clear up.

PS3 is an awesome gaming as well as Blu-ray machine. However it still remains as the primary BLU ray of hope for BLU-RAY.

You don't understand..all these directors are basically promised that Blu-Ray offers better copyright protection and that they will make more money from movies because HD DVD can be "hacked".

Trust me, this has nothing to do with any director personally liking Blu-Ray because it has higher bit rate or size...it's all about DRM...

but once BD+ gets hacked and Blu-ray gets shown in the real light and the fact that you can't really fight piracy with layers and layers of protection but actually with original content that can't be replicated..it will always happen.

I heard somebody suggest that the purpose of BD+ was to slow down the pirates for a month or two so the studios could make some $ on the big titles before the inevitable cracking. It made sense to me......

I heard somebody suggest that the purpose of BD+ was to slow down the pirates for a month or two so the studios could make some $ on the big titles before the inevitable cracking. It made sense to me......

It could be possible!

Unfortunately AACS (which was the only copy protection HD-DVD had, but Blu-Ray also uses) has been hacked. It probably will not take long for them to hack BD+. I would probably give it up to 6 months and that's being generous.
A good thing you could think of in terms of Blu-Ray vs HD-DVD, is that people would go the "lesser" of two evils. Right now it's probably easier to copy HD-DVD, as the copy protection is already broken, and the disc sizes are smaller. This would be easier for posting it on newsgroups, as alot of people don't have the bandwith to download the larger Blu-Ray files, when you can get the HD-DVD files easier.

I know that a while back Universal went ahead and announced Jaws on HD and the Speilberg clan went ape****.

We know that Universal removed the titles from the list and apologized. We do not know the reasons, nor do we know that Spielberg went "apeshit".

everybody give to much credit to spielberg,he is a great director but look what does clint eastwood has a director.i will give more credit to eastwood than spielberg.spielberg and other director have to much ego.

agreed 100%

thank you.