Bay: 'Transformers' DVD could have been better

[nelson]

So tech geeks are up in arms over this latest interview:

http://www.usatoday.com/life/movies/...mers-bay_N.htm

Bay caused a brouhaha on his blog (michaelbay.com) by voicing his displeasure that Transformers would not be available on Blu-ray and that he was rethinking his plan to direct a sequel. The next day he backpedaled, but he is still upset about the format war.

"It's short-sighted and it has delayed consumers' moving to HD (home video)," he says. "As a director, my critical eye is that Blu-ray is where my money is. Consumers are smart, and they are going to wait it out."

Blu-ray peepz can't still get over the fact that he retracted his statement (which I think is sooooo stupid...that Bay should be a martyr for their own obsessions & sacrifice his career for Blu-ray).

http://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread.php?t=20865


and HD-DVDs peepz are losing it because Bay is banking on Blu-ray....

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=927086

[Dennis M]

Will it never stop?

I think people are forgetting what it's all about, THE MOVIE. We watch movies and not formats.

I have the HD DVD and it's one of the best looking disc's I have in my collect. Would it look just as good on Blu ray? Absolutely!
Why wait to enjoy a movie you like till a group of corporations finish fighting over future media royalties?
Don't understand the format supporters mentality in this regard.

And how does Mr. Bay factor into this? He makes movies for us to enjoy and watch. Not to support a format.

[Johnny LaPhlegm]

With all due respect to Mr. Bay, every major studio but WB is exclusive to one of the HD formats. If you think neutral content availability will speed up HD adoption, you must also convince Universal, Weinstein, Fox, Disney, MGM, and Sony to release on both (yes, I know he’s only concerned about Transformers here). Until then we’re stuck with two. Also, a recent NPD poll shows that 73% of HDTV owners are perfectly happy with the quality of upconverted DVD.
http://www.betanews.com/article/HD_D...e/1190836560/1
So regardless of a format war, people aren’t seeing a reason to upgrade. How about getting Paramount to spend some of that $150m in advertising incentives to showcase the advantages of HD- picture, sound, IME, PiP, web-enabled features, etc. Sadly, I believe these HD optical discs will languish in a somewhat-better-than-laserdisc-like niche until HD VOD is prevalent.

[Dennis M]

I agree, more resources should be spent on educating consumers on the new interactive features. Upgraded picture and sound are not going to sell these formats. DVD consumers are quite happy with the quality they get from DVD. New interactive content will. It will be seen by consumers as valued added to the product. IMO Warner, Universal, Disney, and now Paramount understand this. It's just the marketing dollars have not caught up with it yet.

[r-type]

Formats aside, what I'm curious about is why Michael had to "fight" for a disc solely for the movie/commentary.

Did the studio honestly want a single disc crammed with everything?

[nelson]

Formats aside, what I'm curious about is why Michael had to "fight" for a disc solely for the movie/commentary.

Did the studio honestly want a single disc crammed with everything?

Yes.

Bay wanted a higher bitrate on the regular DVDs.

[glenn22]

Will it never stop?

I think people are forgetting what it's all about, THE MOVIE. We watch movies and not formats.

I have the HD DVD and it's one of the best looking disc's I have in my collect. Would it look just as good on Blu ray? Absolutely!
Why wait to enjoy a movie you like till a group of corporations finish fighting over future media royalties?
Don't understand the format supporters mentality in this regard.

And how does Mr. Bay factor into this? He makes movies for us to enjoy and watch. Not to support a format.

Not everyone can afford to buy into both Hi def media formats... or want to for that matter. At this moment in time Transformers is the ONLY movie that I want to watch in hi def that is not available on Blu-ray... am I then supposed to buy an HD-DVD player just for that? That's rediculous. I don't care that Transformers is available on HD-DVD, what I care about is that it's NOT available on Blu-ray... and for what? because of corporate greed.

[pscoop]

Yes.

Bay wanted a higher bitrate on the regular DVDs.

I appreciate him fighting for that. Since there was no Blu-Ray for me to buy I went with the SD DVD. As far as SD goes it is a very good quality and looks very good upscaled on my LCD TV. The sound is great also. It will do until there is HOPEFULLY a BD release.

[Johnny LaPhlegm]

Yes.

Bay wanted a higher bitrate on the regular DVDs.

I'm glad he fought for this. The HD DVD is reference quality audio and video (yes even with the DD+ track). No way to achieve that with all of the extras crammed onto one disc.

[Dennis M]

Not everyone can afford to buy into both Hi def media formats... or want to for that matter. At this moment in time Transformers is the ONLY movie that I want to watch in hi def that is not available on Blu-ray... am I then supposed to buy an HD-DVD player just for that? That's rediculous. I don't care that Transformers is available on HD-DVD, what I care about is that it's NOT available on Blu-ray... and for what? because of corporate greed.

Hi Glenn,

It's true not everyone can afford to buy both formats. But the reality is there are 2 formats and we have to deal with it. If one format was far superior than the other than it would be an easy decision. Both deliver a high quality HD experience so that's what makes it difficult.
As for greed, there is plenty of that to spread around. Toshiba is greedy because because it does not want give up the royalties it gained with DVD. Sony is greedy because it wants those royalties.
The Studios were warned not to support either format exclusively as it would lead to a format war. Did they listen, no, because they thought they could get the same type of benefits that Warner received with DVD.

So there is plenty of blame and greed to go around in this format war.

For me personally, life is to short to wait for corporations to finish fight over media royalties before I start enjoying some movies.

[DWall]

Nothing would please me more than seeing a version of Transformers released on Blu-Ray, and have it a true "Director's Cut". Take the next 17 months to create a version you are happy with, and release it on Blu-Ray only.

[Mech_1000]

Couldn't they make both types of DVD's? Why are they forced to choose one and not the other?

[Dynamo]

I wonder how the DVD production team feel about his comments.

[Supermans]

Perhaps the SD-DVD could have been better, however the real question that should be on peoples minds is wether or not the HD-DVD could have looked better. Many have debated this and I guess here in this forum, we shall see one later today. However a factual debate only leads to the conclusion that Blu-ray has the greater specs and has the greater potential as encoding and production improves. HD-DVD factually has more problems with discs and freezing which is evident in all the tech-savvy forums. Blu-ray has the harder coating which makes it scratch proof, even against a brillo pad (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5jEbZt6AIQ) When an insider like Rickard Casey, President of Rbfilms comes on AVSforum and says the same things I've said above which are all factual, he gets attacked by none other than Microsofts former employee Amirm. We then find out Amir was not being truthful in his post about how helpful Microsoft was with Richard.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...9#post11974419

As for Transformers, why wasn't lossless audio placed on the disc? This was answered by Paramount already in a special 'Transformers' media event with Paramount, (http://hddvd.highdefdigest.com/1110/transformers.html second paragraph in the "The Audio: Rating the Sound") which simply shows a lack of bandwidth and space as being the culprit since they wanted the video to look better and adding lossless would have caused the video bitrate to be on average at less than 14mbps which Richard has stated is not close to good enough (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...2#post11975192) and apparently Paramounts encoding team also agreed with that assessment since they chose to leave it out... Then the discussion can lead to Tl51 and why is that needed or important if HD-DVD is already "good enough", and will it be compatible with current players? All that this will accomplish is in showing Blu-ray's strengths far outweigh HD-DVD's...

You may ask, who is Richard Casey, President of Rbfilms and Producer of Nature's Journey and Chronos.
Below is a good interview.. (The maximum quality guy) I call him this because he strives for the best out of every release.. This in my opinion should be everyones work ethic when creating movies for any kind of media...

http://www.hidefpreview.com/Exclusive%20Interview.html


You may ask who Amir (aka The good enough guy) is.. Worked with VC-1 codec and Microsoft.. Had an insiders thread to himself on AVSforum
Why I call him the good enough guy... http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...8#post11954728

[HDFan01]

For those who are unhappy with the DVD, I would like to point them to the HD DVD version. I am a happy owner of BOTH HD formats and can honestly say that no other movie I have seen on HD DVD or Blu-ray looked and sounded better. I can honestly say that at this time Transformers is unsurpassed or even better it rocks!

I am sure you will read lots of post from biased fans of both formats that have hidden agendas. I say please just ignore them and see for yourself. Buy or rent a copy, or go to a buddies house who has it, and check it out!

I guess I should also point out that when you watch the film the first time, please don't bother trying to analyze pixels and sound frequencies, but instead get immersed in the film and ENJOY it. Save the analyzing for later.

[Johnny LaPhlegm]

Excellent post HDFan01. The HD DVD version is a reference level disc. The home video experience is not about specs and bitrate meters, it's about implementation and final results. This disc delivers the goods and many pro reviewers agree.

[nelson]

I went to a friend's house the other day, and he's got about $100k of A/V equipment.

He's got a Blu-ray and HD-DVD console set up to the same plasma HD tv.

He popped in a copy of 300 on both consoles.

They looked the same. Even the gradients and halations where IDENTICAL.

[Tobi]

I went to a friend's house the other day, and he's got about $100k of A/V equipment.

He's got a Blu-ray and HD-DVD console set up to the same plasma HD tv.

He popped in a copy of 300 on both consoles.

They looked the same. Even the gradients and halations where IDENTICAL.

Warner uses the same encode for both the HD DVD and Blu-Ray releases. Paramount on the other hand, before going exclusive, used to get different encodes for each format.

[Supermans]

The video on the HD-DVD version of Transformers looks great even though it may have been able to look even better at a higher average bitrate. My main pet-peeves with the HD-DVD are in the the sound quality which seemed to have too low an LFE/Bass to it and the fact it wasn't DTS-HDMA, True-HD, or LPCM which is lossless audio. The third pet-peeve is in the HD-DVD package presentation. It was not as good as the SD-DVD's and featured a not so cool looking white cover art on the disc.. Black disc art with Optimus Prime on Disc one and Bumblebee or Megatron on Disc two would have been so much better.. Some type of pamphlet with movie art perhaps instead of the one sided insert.. It looked like no care was put into the HD-DVD version of the case and disc art. However when push comes to shove, the movie looks great even though I wish it sounded more High Def. It would have been even better had it been encoded completely for Blu-ray's higher standards and include a lossless audio track and include all the extra's all on one disc.. That would have rocked even more... Hopefully by Transformers two release, Paramount has gone format neutral once more, or Blu-ray wins the format war...

[HDFan01]

The video on the HD-DVD version of Transformers looks great even though it may have been able to look even better at a higher average bitrate. My main pet-peeves with the HD-DVD are in the the sound quality which seemed to have too low an LFE/Bass to it and the fact it wasn't DTS-HDMA, True-HD, or LPCM which is lossless audio. The third pet-peeve is in the HD-DVD package presentation. It was not as good as the SD-DVD's and featured a not so cool looking white cover art on the disc.. Black disc art with Optimus Prime on Disc one and Bumblebee or Megatron on Disc two would have been so much better.. Some type of pamphlet with movie art perhaps instead of the one sided insert.. It looked like no care was put into the HD-DVD version of the case and disc art. However when push comes to shove, the movie looks great even though I wish it sounded more High Def. It would have been even better had it been encoded completely for Blu-ray's higher standards and include a lossless audio track and include all the extra's all on one disc.. That would have rocked even more... Hopefully by Transformers two release, Paramount has gone format neutral once more, or Blu-ray wins the format war...

As I mentioned in my previous post, there are people (many paid, many who work for cetain companies) who come to these forums to push their agenda. You will see identical posts by these people who cut and paste their responses on as many forums as possible.

As for Transformers, it was "100 times cooler than Armageddon"! The LFE/Bass ROCKED my house (yes, there is a reported problem with one old player if you used a certain type of cable) and I thought the soundtrack was awesome – I loved the arrival of the Autobots! My kids stood-up, yelled and cheered during that scene. Even the Paramount/Dreamworks screens sounded amazing!

Again, if you love action flix, this needs to be watched in HD on a big screen, and there is no better looking/sounding film on HD DVD or Blu-ray or any other format – period (even the Blu-Ray fans are admitting that!).