NetFlix on MS......Weird?

[jasonnc80]

theprof00 said:
"People seem to be very confused about MS's stake in HD-DVD. They owned the rights to a few codecs and would have profited somewhat from those had the format succeeded... Other than that, they were just looking to be a thorn in Sony's (and Blu-ray's) side. They had very little financial stake in the format, nor would they have profited much from its success."

ok rP i'm sorry, you're a nice guy, but try not being so sure about a subject like this one. It makes you look bad.

MS helped finance toshiba's sub 100$ HDdvd players, MS accepted responsibility for selling a now defunct player to it's customers on toshibas behalf.

Right there I see more than enough investment to be called "invested". Putting your name on the line is a big thing, and ms has taken a lot of brush about the HDDVD player and their marketing "techniques".

MS desperately wanted Sony out of the race with an extinct console.
They would have profited by income from codecs, from increased sales of 360, from developers who would have switched to 360, found a great start on the next console generation, and many other benefits.

MS lost a great potential "gamble". On one hand they really didn't want HDDVD to win either, but they let their competitor stay in the game. And you know what, they really couldn't do anything about it short of having literal "dumping" sales of 360 players and financing the sometimes free HDDVD players.

You're right on some fronts but Microsoft isn't just the X360 division and there were reasons much larger reaching then a home video game console that fueled their "support".  At the time there was many a post on the AVS forum about why Microsoft sided with HD DVD during the format war.  And from the MS VP in charge of that division no less.  If you want to educate yourself it's all there for you to read. 

Regardless of Bluray's victory and extraordinare video specs when it lauched it was an incomplete buggy mess.  It was obviously rushed to market and a far cry from what it is today.  It's funny how quick history fades from people's preception of things.