Don't be a fair weather supporter

[Sir Terrence]

Yesterday Paramount defection has seem to dampen the spirits of a few here. One announcement, and you start to read about doubts on blu-ray success, or begin to second guess the BDA strategy, or worse read about people considering going neutral. If you want to make the announcement worse, go neutral(I am not speaking to those who are already format neutral, but to new people considering it now). In doing so, you will just prolong the war even more, and create even more confusion in the market. I know many of us really like Transformers, but are you willing to prolong this for one title? Even though I own a HD DVD player, I am not. I will just wait for it to come to blu-ray. Sometimes you have to stand up for a principle, and this kind of attitude seems to be in short supply.

Secondly, you need to understand that you cannot be all jacked up when things are going well, and then messed up when they are not. As long as studio after studio(mostly smaller)announced support for the format, everyone was cocky and confident. Now that we have been given a glancing blow(because that is really all it is) some people are lashing out in a very illogical way. If you support blu-ray like many of you stated when things are going our way, then support it when we get tripped up. You see the HD DVD guys stubbornly and tenaciously support their format till the end. We have to support our format to victory regardless.

A deal like this could not have come to fruition unless their are other things going on. I have been in the film business all of my working life, and deals cut with this amount of money means that something was about to change, or will change in the future. I do not want to start any rumors, but something must be going on at Universal that makes Microsoft need Paramount badly, or this kind of deal would not make much sense at all.

This war will be full of up and downs. The best we can do is effect the outcome of this war is with our wallets. If you want to protest the Paramount deal, do so by not buying their media. Don't penalize the supporting bluray studios by not purchasing content our of fear and uncertainty. Bluray is going no where. In six months I went from zero to 141 discs, and that is because I am confident in the end bluray will prevail. When somebody gives me a right hook, I try and beat them down through the floor. This is what you have to do to HD DVD. You have to buy bluray, and we have to do it in mass numbers to get a complete victory.

Keep your chin up guys, even if it is a little bruised.