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Laser Shortage to Stall High-Def Disc War?
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Tue Aug 29, 2006 05:25 PM
from the supply-and-demand dept.
from the supply-and-demand dept.
An anonymous reader writes "DigiTimes reports that several major vendors, including Sony and Matsushita, have suspended shipments of the blue laser diodes that drive both high-def disc formats. The rumored laser shortage could result in shipment delays for new models of Blu-ray and HD DVD players and drives past the upcoming holiday season, cooling the next-gen DVD format war until 2007."
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Laser Shortage to Stall High-Def Disc War?
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Animal Cruelty (Score:4, Funny)
They are driving themselves insane out at sea, they were all psyched to go into battle with some kick ass frikkin laser beams on their heads now they have to continue practicing with mop-handles tied on.
Shame on you Sony.
Re:Animal Cruelty (Score:5, Funny)
Sharks! (Score:4, Funny)
(Last Journal: Saturday October 14 2006, @08:12AM)
Illegal collusion to fix the market (Score:5, Funny)
(http://slashdot.org/)
Gee, those marketing people (Score:5, Funny)
meanwhile... (Score:5, Funny)
(http://www.comparecomponents.com/ | Last Journal: Friday September 15 2006, @02:04PM)
Re:meanwhile... (Score:5, Insightful)
if they run short they are just putting salt in the wound where they shot them selves in the foot.
if they are just stopping sale to out side people so that they will have what they need for the ps3 they are going to piss their partners off even more.. because they can't stop selling to hd-dvd people and not blue-ray people... that would be anti competive
should be intresting to see how the next 6 months role out..
as for the big N - they have nothing to fear, as always
Ahh, I get it (Score:4, Funny)
(Last Journal: Wednesday February 21 2007, @08:20AM)
This just gets better all the time (Score:5, Insightful)
This is turning out to be all stuff and nonsense, and I think I'll just skip HD-DVD and Blu-ray one and wait for the next next generation, when maybe somebody with half a brain is involved. DVD is perfectly good enough for me, thank you very much.
Re:This just gets better all the time (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://janneinosaka.blogspot.com/)
Agree with the sentiment.
It is quite unlikely for there to ever be a next generation, though. The lead time is, oh, ten years or so, and by that time it seems more than likely that using a physical carrier for video is not going to be a mainstream technology anymore. There's going to be physical data carriers, of course, but not aimed at selling video.
What might happen, though, is that these two formats both end up stillborn - laser discs of the 21st century - and pushes the major manufacturers to quickly (as in within a year or two) replace them with a common format that avoids the most egregious mistakes of these two. But that would be replacement, not a generation shift.
Re:This just gets better all the time (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://www.rotten.com/ | Last Journal: Monday April 10 2006, @06:14PM)
Yes, definitely. I was working at Circuit City at the time (1998 or so, I think) and between the obvious picture quality difference, DTS/Dolby Digital sound, and not having to rewind anymore, it was a killer product. The prices on players were still a little too prohibitive for non-enthusiasts so you didn't see grandmas buying DVD, but younger folks were really into it. Another thing that helped the adoption of DVD was that prices of movies on DVD were substantially cheaper than they were on VHS. I remember "The Matrix" pretty much hovered around $9.99 ever since it came out. You used to have to pay $25 or more for a VHS tape, and many VHS titles plain didn't get stocked because they were priced at $99 for video stores. DVDs flattened the price point and made it so video stores bought the same thing regular consumers did. DVDs were definitely a big deal. I don't see anywhere near the same excitement over Blu-Ray and HD-DVD.
Re:This just gets better all the time (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:This just gets better all the time (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://kadin.sdf-us.org/ | Last Journal: Tuesday October 16, @01:46PM)
There were early adopters who went out and bought the obscenely priced first generation DVD players, but by and large the rest of the world didn't really follow suit until the players dropped below about $200 and Blockbuster started stocking a lot of new releases on DVD. And I wouldn't say that DVDs became ubiquitous until the cheap chinese ($50) "WalMart Special" DVD players came onto the scene.
Frankly, early on I think the biggest benefit to most people of DVDs versus VHS is that you didn't have to rewind it. I know my parents just thought that was the coolest damn thing; you could talk to them about digital audio until you were blue in the face, but what they liked was the ability to jump instantly to any point in a film, pause it for extended lengths of time without "wearing" the disc, and never having to worry about rewind anything.
I think whichever HD-disc format wins, it'll end up being like that. Mainstream consumers aren't going to buy it, until there are movies down at Blockbuster that they can rent, and they can buy the player at Walmart for under $200-250. Normal people just don't spend much more than that on what's effectively a fancy videocassette player (even if it's not really a cassette player...in most people's minds, the function is exactly the same, to play movies).
Re:This just gets better all the time (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually, Blu-Ray sucks worse in the protection department than HD-DVD. I believe HD-DVD has eliminated the region coding as everyone disliked it and it never worked that well anyhow. HD-DVD players still have a region, but that's for DVDs. I believe the box of the HD-DVD player I saw said "DVD only region" with the region mark, and I don't recall any mark on the HD-DVD discs themselves. Even the HD-DVD/DVD combo discs have a region code marked with "DVD Only". So it looks like HD-DVD has no region coding at all.
At the very least, the DVD Forum learned something for their next-gen format. Too bad Sony didn't, and not only kept region coding, but added additional protections over what HD-DVD has (they both have ICT and AACS, and Blu-Ray adds to that, too).
Those who do not learn from their OWN history.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Those who do not learn from their OWN history.. (Score:4, Funny)
(Last Journal: Tuesday July 11 2006, @04:01AM)
That does it! (Score:3, Insightful)
(http://www.creimer.ws/ | Last Journal: Friday January 26 2007, @12:40PM)
Bad enough that Sony is shoving an over-priced PS3 down consumers throats. Now they're throttling the market for other players. The Sony monopoly must die!
Or, at least, cut the damn prices on the PS3.
Obligatory comment (Score:1)
Clearly this is bad news for Sony. (Score:3, Funny)
Because... you know, everything is, somehow.
Are the sharks (or snakes) missing? (Score:1, Redundant)
(Last Journal: Sunday October 14, @10:49PM)
The blues (Score:1, Redundant)
I think "war" might not be the right word.... (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.bynumbers.com/)
just in time (Score:5, Funny)
(http://www.atomjax.com/)
Great! That's just in time for me to NOT BUY ONE.
In a related move (Score:2, Funny)
Wrong Joke for "Blue Laser" (Score:2, Funny)
(http://hutnick.com/ | Last Journal: Monday March 12 2007, @09:15PM)
Does this mean I can no longer buy all their playsets and toys?!
-Peter
Re:Wrong Joke for "Blue Laser" (Score:4, Funny)
Sony's strategy (Score:5, Funny)
2. Declare ultimate hardware DRM system (no lasers) ensuring that drives cannot read or write any discs.
3. Openly fret that prices are too low.
4. ???
5. Profit!
Format wars ... when will people learn? (Score:2, Funny)
(http://www.unlimitedfx.com.au/)
Pricing Ploy (Score:1)
(http://snicks.bravehost.com/)
hmmm (Score:2, Interesting)
They're doing it all wrong (Score:1)
Buy and Torrent (Score:4, Interesting)
(http://www.qotile.net/ | Last Journal: Tuesday October 16, @02:05PM)
Who's got the lasers? (Score:1)
PS3 (Score:2)
(http://blog.mzzt.net/)
30% yield? (Score:3, Interesting)
Could some knowledgable person briefly explain why a 30% yield for blue laser diodes is something to crow about? What, exactly, keeps yields so low for such a "fundamental" device? They fab chips with millions of elements and get better yields...
-k
Re:30% yield? (Score:4, Informative)
Pretty much declares Blu-Ray the winner (Score:2)
Except one system, Blu-Ray, gets millions of players out thanks to the PS3 (who Sony is holding the diodes in reserve for). What happens when you have two sides and one of them has a few orders of magnitude more consumers buying media for it?
Re:PS3? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Won't anyone think of the poor PS3? (Score:4, Insightful)
Plus, the artificial shortage they are creating will likely increase the prices for whatever lasers they do decide to sell to others, while the shortage of lasers means less competition for Sony players.
How is Sony losing, here?
Re:There is *NO SHORTAGE* (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://integramod.tripod.com/)