Interview with Amir Majidimehr (Microsoft HD DVD / VC-1)

[Dave Baumann]

In case you're interested there's an interview posted with Amir Majidimehr from MS's Microsoft's Consumer Media Technology Group. Gives some background as to MS's stance and where they are going:

For a while, we were neutral. Both of the formats had been testing with our codec technology. But for us, there were two technologies in particular we cared about for a next-gen format: interactivity, and content security. In terms of interactivity, Blu-ray looked for a while as if they were going to adopt the same technology as HD DVD, which is called HDi. And on security, it looked like Blu-ray was also going to use the same encryption technology, which is AACS.
Unfortunately, in both of those areas Blu-ray deviated from those plans. Which meant that if we wanted to support Blu-ray, we had to implement two completely different authoring systems to support both. And that, combined with the manufacturing issues we saw with Blu-ray versus HD DVD, pushed us over the edge to side with HD DVD. This was about, a little over a year ago.

 

[nelg]

Where?

 

[Dave Baumann]

Good point!

http://hddvd.highdefdigest.com/feature_microsofthddvdinterview.html

 

[Mintmaster]

From the interview:

The question is, what do you do when you start adding more and more extras? I say add a second disc. People used to say, "Oh, no, that's what 50 gigabyte BD-50 is for." Well, look at 'Mission: Impossible III' or 'World Trade Center.' On both HD DVD and Blu-ray, it is two discs anyway. The marketing value of two discs is higher than one. The consumer does not associate more value because you sell them less. They won't feel they've gotten more just because it is all on one disc. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent by the studios on advertising to train audiences that box sets are better, five discs are better, two discs are better than one. So from that point of view, the market is already trained -- the extras on a second disc are perfectly fine.

I never thought of this before. I can certainly imagine the average Joe would smile at the sight of two discs as opposed to one as long as it doesn't interrupt the movie experience. And Amir is certainly right about how the studios market bonus sets.

 

[AlNom]

I agree with that bit about marketing too.

Personally, I'd like to think they would not compress the main film as much to fit everything on the one disc, and I'd also like to think that the menus are less cluttered with separate special features discs.

They'd be able to have two SKUs for movies too as they sometimes have now: one with the movie and special features disc, one without the special features disc. Ultimately it plays up the multi-disc SKU moreso....or something like that.

 

[RobertR1]

Double dipping is a huge incentive for studios. One attachment of double dipping is providing additional content whether it be extra's, extended version or what ever. The bonus content is then marketed to be needing additional disc(s) which draws in the consumer, from the years of conditioning.