I think what Bay was _trying_ to say was

"As a director whose best work was all released by Blu-Ray exclusive studios, my critical eye is that Blu-ray is where my money is,"

Apart from Transformers, the only other Michael Bay film owned by a HD-DVD-supporting studio is the execrable flop "The Island". Which, as a Warner-distributed title could come to both formats, should they see a point in bothering. Everything else is either Disney or Sony.

This was reported well over a month ago.

And reportedly, he turned down the role of directing Transformers 2 as he's so pissed.

Now with a sub-£300 PS3 any refusal to release on BD seems far more silly than it did last month.

"As a director, my critical eye is that Blu-ray is where my money is,"

If Blu is outselling HD-DVD 2:1 as reported they could have had 400,000 sales by now...

Errr if you're so annoyed about the format war caused by two incompatible formats why aren't you demanding that Blu-Ray is abandoned? The DVD Consortium named HD-DVD as the official follow-on to DVD *before* Blu-Ray was even demonstrated. HD-DVD finalised a standard and shipped players before the rival camp had even decided what should go into a Blu-Ray spec (and by the state of recent events even the specification is still up for grabs).

Blu-Ray was nothing more than an attempt by Sony to own the entire media production cycle from content creation through to encoding, licencing, disk manufacture and playback devices. It's also incredibly customer unfriendly. If Blu-Ray wins, we all lose.

As for Microsoft, they were a founder member of the HD-DVD group so they are hardly meddling in the market.

But I do agree with you on one point, Microsoft definitely sees XBox Live as the way of delivering high definition content to the home. The market is theirs to take and they'd be foolish to lose the download market to Apple for a second time.

I'm actually starting to think that this bluray/HD battle is becoming increasingly irrelevant. Comparisons with the VHS/Betamax thing are really not valid because now we have many other methods of recording, storing, and delivering. OK, no chance of fibre-to-the-door anytime soon, so I suppose we'll be buying hi-def pre-recorded films on them for a while. But other applications? Writeable disks? Absolutely no way, with flash memory getting so cheap and reliable. RW disks were always a complete shambles, and not compatible between different readers. CDR and DVDR are just as bad: they take ages to write with a low success rate. Quite a few people have DVD-RAM recorders for their TV now, but the hard-disk recorders are now cheaper and far more clever.

I have to take a 300MB database file home this evening, and I've just given up after five attempts to burn it to a CDR and have bluetoothed it to the flash card in my phone.

This was reported SO long ago its not even funny. This article should have dust on it by now.

Bay feels that it should be out on all formats as that is where his work will get the most exposure - and fair play to him for wanting that.

@Anon

He IS directing Transformers 2, and played a part in resigning the screenwriters from the first movie.

@Frank Bough,

OFC! I should have known! Something isn't going the way someone wants so lets BLAME MICROSOFT!! Obviously you have no idea what the hell you are talking about. HDDVD is doing perfectly well without MS 360 addon sales, and more HDDVD's are being sold per player owner than BD's.

Yes I own a 360 Elite. Guess what? I run Linux on my laptop which sits next to my PS3 and 40" Sony Bravia.

Stop being such a sheep.

@Jason The Saj: You are wrong, instead. DVD can hold a maximum of 8.2GB of data approx. 16GB since when, in you dreams perhaps !?

Exactly, CDs maximum capacity was/is 700MB which means that they are roughly 6 times smaller than DVD-5 and 12 times smaller than DVD-9. This ratio holds with Blu-Ray discs Vs DVDs since a BD-25 is roughly 6 times bigger than a DVD-5 and a BD-50 is roughly 12 times bigger than a DVD-5.

So, what is your point ? DVD weren't needed as well, uh ?

What do people need, DRM downloadable content on Microsoft servers playable only on Microsoft trusted devices which gives no rights to customers other than keep paying and never own a copy of the content ? Do you work for Microsoft, perhaps ?

I think he's referring to the hundreds of millions of dollars Microsoft paid out to get the studios HD-DVD exclusive. You know, bribing them.

Hardly Different. I won't be shelling out any cash for this slightly-upgraded crap until they make something more like The Matrix.

But honestly, it doesn't matter to me who wins between HD-DVD and Bluray. Whoever wins, we lose.

cause I'm not a lemming that I should follow every new thing on the shelf. My dvds work fine and have the content I want and I can sit 2 feet away from the screen and be immersed in it. of course I don't have that big screen for parties, but that's what some of my friends are for ;-)

besides... my place wouldn't do well for a party anyhow (too small).

once the format wars are over... or the next big format comes out that really makes a big difference... then maybe I'll "upgrade"

..as has already been stated this was first reported in early September, it then followed up by a very hasty retreat from Michael Bay stating that wasn't what he intended etc etc and that he would do Transformers 2.... is it really that hard to get facts right?

As for the MS paying for the deal, that too was rubbish

As is the fact that BR is better, they use the same codecs, they're identical.... one presently has a pointlessly larger disc as you can't get the advanced content on to take advantage of it and equally the advanced content available for BR is so complex it takes up eons more space on a disk than the stuff on HD DVD and as such the disc size advantage summounts to nothing!

If you like either buy them (or even both!), if you don't, don't... it really is that simple.

Yes, there were reports back in September. Then, if you were actually paying any attention, Paramount had a little chat with him and brought him back on message.

This is NEW news that he's gone back to his BluRay loving ways. Not entirely unconnected with discussions going on with Jerry Bruckheimer and Buena Vista, I suspect.

The Paramount "bribery" money did not come from Microsoft, but Toshiba, so you can all stop blaming Ballmer. And start explaining how this is any different to the way Sony have paid all mastering and pressing costs for Fox and Paramount until that announcement.