HD For Indies

Not impressed with Bill Hunt at all. An editorial opinion is just that and opinion but when someones preference is so blatant yet they don't even see or recognize the slant I have to jettison then from the bookmarks.

For instance of a "Hunt'ism" check this from a meeting with Kevin Collins of Microsoft and Richard Doherty of Universal I believe

"Their key point was that Microsoft's interest in HD-DVD has everything to do with HDi and the advanced interactive features it's capable of offering, some of which they wanted to show me. Richard and Kevin seem to feel that the home video industry can support two competing disc formats, in much the same way that the gaming industry supports three (Xbox, PS3 and Wii). As you can probably guess, I disagree with this. They also believe that if everything else about HD-DVD and Blu-ray Disc were equal, that people would naturally chose HD-DVD because of the more advanced interactivity. The flaw in this argument, of course, is that aside from audio and video quality, things are NOT equal. It remains my belief that Blu-ray's greater studio and industry support has been, and will continue to be, the deal-breaker in this format war. "

My emphasis added. They told him "if all things were equal" and he has the gall to call their argument flawed and then launches into some counter offensive sidebar. I guess a person isn't allowed shift their viewpoint and view a subject from another angle or possibility with Hunt. He'll just drag to reality so that he can proselytize some more.

Bill Hunt has destroyed his credibility within the enthusiast community. Whether you like Blu-ray or HD DVD or both the consensus amongst many is that he's a Blu leaner that won't look at something for what it is.

In this game of online Blogs or websites you can have ANY opinion you want but if you show people that your opinion is not necessarily grounded in the seeking of truth or that you appear so inflexible that your opinion becomes your personal dogma people tune out. If I wanted that action I'd follow Government politics more.
 

I think Hunt's logic is sound.

Blu-Ray is outselling HD DVD content by a considerable margin. That's a fact. When Sony cuts the price of the PS3 by $100, which will come sometime this year (probably sooner than later), then Blu-Ray content sales will get a further boost.

Eventually, I think studios will slowly stop supporting HD DVD. They don't want 2 formats either. At some point, they're going to throw their weight behind the one with the most momentum. And that's Sony.
 

Mike,

What you see in the first post is classic hmurchison HDDVD spin. A standard attack piece filled with cheap shots. Even before I opened the "comments" section, I knew hmurchison would put his .02 cents in and trash the article. Notice how he systematically besmirches Hunt’s reputation while offering very little in the form of evidence to support his poisonous claims.

hmurchison mentions that Hunt has “destroyed his credibility within the enthusiast community.” Where? I’ve seen lots of discussion regarding this article, from several different websites, and most of the comments have been overwhelmingly positive. The only people that seem to reject his argument are the HDDVD “brown shirts” on AVS.

And as far as Hunt being a “blu leaner”, he goes on record and publicly states “Blu-ray Disc is now officially the high-def format of choice for The Digital Bits.” No big secret there. So what is wrong with that? The man gave his professional opinion based on his extensive experience in the home video market. As a consumer, I want professionals willing to come out and give me the straight dope. There is already a significant amount of evidence to support his decision. Why should Hunt be politically correct and sit on the fence simply because he chose a format that many others do not support? I would bet a year’s paycheck that if things had been the other way around in favor of HDDVD, hmurchison would be singing Hunt’s praises from Mount Kilimanjaro.

Personally, I think Bill Hunt did an excellent job in articulating his position, but then again I support blu. My point is, if you are going to crap over someone’s name; then at least have the decency to back it up.
 

I agree with the conditional "if either format wins". I personally don't care for either because of the DRM issues involved. I'm tired of buying discs. I don't want another closet full of discs. I'm going to rent via NetFlix, rip to H.264, and store on my cheap RAIDed hard drives.

I wish that I could pay for DRM-free HD content in my preferred codec available via download, but until that happens, I don't feel bad about pirating and I don't feel bad about not buying into either format.

The post-production house where I work has been sending projects out to clients for review on Apple TVs with a return FedEx label. The clients love it.

As a web developer, there are no "extras" (interactive or not) that could possibly be included that would interest me in developing for either proprietary interactive layer over doing it online with the full capabilities of a computer.

Both formats are ridiculous and it's just a matter of picking an evil... or not picking either.

-jeremiah