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Format Wars: Director Michael Bay changes his tune on HD-DVDAugust 23rd, 2007 at 11:57 amSource:Valleywag AllThingsD’s Kara Swisher, tired of playing ambush journalist with her handheld videocamera, tries her hand at pretending to be Dan Lyons, the fabulous Forbes fabulist behind “The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs.” Sort of. Except here, she’s Fake Jerry Yang, a faux version of Yahoo’s CEO, not Fake Steve Jobs The best bit comes when Swisher imagines Yang’s reaction to Brad Garlinghouse, the controversial Yahoo executive who called for major changes in what’s now called “The Peanut Butter Memo.”
Bay later explained that his rant was spurred by a dinner conversation with a few “Blu-ray owners” who were upset over the announcement. He “over reacted [sic].” He then sat down and watched 300 on HD-DVD and declared himself a convert. Good news. He’s back on the Paramount bandwagon, spouting something about $200 HD players and that he “liked what he heard.” Was it the sound of money? Cause he’s reconsidering his rash decision about Transformers 2 as well. Money was definitely a motivator for the Viacom-owned studio, Paramount’s CTO has confessed. Though perhaps not in the way some think. Alan Bell praised HD-DVD’s cheapness, which he attributes to the fact that the HD-DVD standard is more settled, making it less expensive to produce both discs and players. He also claimed Paramount liked various technical features in HD-DVD. Of course, the $150 million in marketing dollars Paramount received from a consortium of HD-DVD supporters doesn’t look that cheap.
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In an effort to prove he’s as fickle as he is talented, Transformers director 
