Adam Balm wrote:TheAllSeeingEye wrote:OK Everyone, check this rant out from Bill Hunt over at The Digital Bits.
http://www.thedigitalbits.com/#mytwocentsYou'll obviously remember the much visited talkback where Grande Rojo promoted his HD-DVD player and Bill Hunts response to that piece by Grande Rojo.
Ordinarily I wouldn't let this get to me since people are entitled to their opinion but Bill Hunt is becoming more and more unhinged at the prospect that HD-DVD might actually do well and make him look stupid for saying it won't.
I used to love reading that site but Bill Hunt is just turning into more and more of a prize dickhead each time he talks about HD. It's one thing to have an opinion, I have no problems with that. But Bill seems to regard ANYONE who purchases or HD-DVD with the utmost contempt.
His whole article reeks of hypocrisy. How can Bill Hunt complain that Microsoft have been buying up support, (and how dare they try and support a format they've invested millions of dollars in), when he himself is guilty of being a paid Sony shill?
I used to love reading The Digital Bits, it's been a great source of information with regards to DVD news and reviews. But this whole HD debacle has, for me, ruined the site; it's like Lord of the Flies over there. Go post a positive remark about HD-DVD in the forums over there and see how quick his cronies leap on you like Winged Monkeys.
At the end of the day, real Home Theatre afficianados will tell you that it's
A) Too early to say who will win the format war
B) That while the technical differences are fairly substantial the end product for movies are nearly identical
and
C) People who are into Home Theater already own both formats
I just thought i'd get that off my chest since that article really boiled my piss.
What does everyone else think?
i read that article and basically agree with everything Bill Hunt wrote. i don't know or care who's being paid by who, i have no more or less reason to think Sony is paying digital bits or Toshiba is paying Harry and AICN. all i care about, is what Hunt said in that post -- the format war has to end, and soon, or else they'll BOTH fail. i've got hundreds of dollars that have been itching at my wallet, just waiting for something, ANYTHING, to happen so that i can go ahead and buy a player that won't be obsolete in a few years. this format war is the STUPIDEST thing hollywood has done since giving the olsen twins a movie career.
as for the three points above:
A) Too early to say who will win the format war - of course it is, and that's the problem. the format war should have been settled a long time ago, ideally it should have been settled before they even began making and selling the damn things. if anyone could say definitively that the format war was over, then we could all just shut up about it and go buy the right player. but as long as it's undecided, most of us are gonna stay here, sitting on the fence, waiting, and by the time these idiots get their heads out of their asses and work this thing out, we'll be downloading HD to our Tivos and nobody will care anymore.
B) That while the technical differences are fairly substantial the end product for movies are nearly identical - exactly, which makes the format war all the more pointless. either one will provide an excellent quality product (a point BH himself makes in the article you link to), so it's just pure stupidity and greed that is causing both sides to continue fighting over this. ironically, all that greed means that in the end they'll BOTH lose out. the only reason BH supports BluRay, according to him, is because he thinks it has the best chance of actually winning the format war from a business perspective, not because of any difference in video quality.
C) People who are into Home Theater already own both formats - wrong, there are still a lot of us out here who don't own EITHER format because of this stupid war. and furthermore, the HT enthusiasts will only ever make up a very small part of the total consumer marketplace. if every single HT enthusiast went ahead and bought players for both, we'd end up with (i hate to agree with Moriarty here, but it's true) two very expensive versions of HD LaserDisc, while the vast majority of people continue along with their DVDs.
i could care less which format wins. i don't know as much about the industry to say whether HD-DVD or Blu-Ray stands a better chance of winning. all i know is that the more it keeps swinging back and forth, the worse it gets for all of us who just want a single, reliable HD format, no matter what that format happens to be.