In Sony's Stumble, the Ghost of Betamax 356
QuatermassX writes "In a lengthy piece in today's New York Times, Ken Belson equates Sony's troubles in bringing Blu-Ray to market with their classic fumble of Betamax technology in the early 1980's. He also discusses the influence of Microsoft in the recent advances in the adoption of the perceived underdog in this fight, HD-DVD. The article also summarises the various twists and turns in the development of the format along with some scary numbers (that we're familiar with) on the estimated cost of Playstation 3
From TFA: "There are other industry analysts who contend that Microsoft is simply propping up Toshiba to further its own aims, like countering the PlayStation and combating the spread of Sun's Java software. Nonetheless, Toshiba is happy for the backing, given that the format was written off for dead just a few months ago.
'"There's no doubt that everyone has various agendas," said Mark Knox, an adviser to the Toshiba promotion group. "But whatever their agenda, Microsoft's support has been a huge boon to HD-DVD.'""
Company types (Score:5, Insightful)
Why is Microsoft supporting hd-dvd? (Score:4, Insightful)
I wonder if MS is backing hd-dvd to please the MPAA so they maybe more willing to use MS Media Player store rather than Itunes when Vista comes out?
Re:Java and No Copy (Score:3, Insightful)
From the article, which goes on to say Blue-ray hasn't set royalty rates yet.
Yowks.
Re:Blu-Ray versus HD-DVD is stupid (Score:2, Insightful)
As for me, I'll continue not caring about slightly higher definition movies packed onto highly DRMed disks costing more and delivering little. Apart from as a medium for extra storage and backup, is any geek here really all too excited about the next-gen media?
``Marcel
Why Blu-Ray is in Trouble (Score:1, Insightful)
Big yawn w/o smaller disks (Score:5, Insightful)
Alright, I have to ask... (Score:4, Insightful)
I think this is why Nintendo is doing so well, they're focusing on new ways to involve the player (in the TV case, the viewer) and new methods of interaction as opposed to the rest of the market, which is saying "BETTER GRAPHICS!" at the top of their lungs, hoping consumers will buy it. I don't care if in Gran Turismo 9 I can see the leather pattern of my car seat or I have reflective glass in my dashboard. Or if I can see droplets of blood when I shoot someone in an FPS. FPS games have lately been linear and monotonous. Run into a room, shoot someone, run into another room, shoot some more people...repeat for 8 hours, finish.
My point is, the entertainment industry is just peddling more crap hoping they can manufacture a need for it when in reality things have pretty much capped as far as necessary graphical quality (IMHO).
Oh, and when it doesn't sell because it's hopelessly crippled by DRM and provides no new content or value, they will just blame "those damned pirates." If it does sell, they'll just say "see, DRM makes those pirates helpless! We need more DRM!"
Bastards.
Re:too much concentration of power (Score:2, Insightful)
The Formt war that never was (Score:5, Insightful)
While PS3 will natively support BlueRay (Meaning the games can store upto 50GB of high resolution textures and map data, etc.), the Xbox 360 will not support HDDVD games. This ended the war in my mind. Who the hell is going to spend several hundred dollars for a cumbersome ADDON HD-DVD player for their xbox 360, JUST to watch movies?
Thinking they could overtake a large chunk of Japanese market by rushing their product out, even a year ahead of the Sony device, was the greatest folly Microsoft could have committed. Had they REALLY supported HDDVD, they would have waited to bring their product to market, and included a HD-DVD player standard.
BlueRay has won the format wars before they even begun. Look at how profitable Sony made the completely proprietary UMD movie simply because they can profit from their own film distribution division. Neither Microsoft, nor the Toshiba consortium, have this advantange. Thus laying the final nail in the coffin.
Re:Blu-Ray versus HD-DVD is stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
(2-4) Possibly true, but the hype circa 2002-2003 didn't reflect this. (eg http://tokyopia.com/tk/archives/000094.php [tokyopia.com])
(5) True. But what the IT industry really needs is another Syquest or Iomega to come along and define a storage-centric format -- without all the bullshit politics surrounding Hollywood and video game consoles, and the enormous license royalties involved.
I'm voting HD-DVD ... (Score:5, Insightful)
I mean, how hard is it to add the e at the end, geniuses. A 2 year old could come up with a better marketing plan.
Just..never mind.
Re:The Formt war that never was (Score:3, Insightful)
But, from Microsoft's perspective, the disk battle isn't really that important. In fact it barely makes a difference to them -- they're just involved to fuck shit up.
For MS, having the XBox360 succeed is much more important than having HD-DVD succeed. And now it looks like XBox360 will be on the market 1.5 years eariler than PS3 and be substantially cheaper to build. That might not be the decisive factor in the video game wars, but it certainly helps them. So, I think they made the right decision to not wait for HD-DVD and just sell video games while Hollywood&Japan has their idiotic format war.
(Note, I don't play console games [made after 1988], I don't really care who "wins", and I'm going to avoid any fanboy arguments. Just stating what MS's strategy seems to be.)
Re:Here we go (Score:1, Insightful)
In Sony's Stumble, the Ghost of Betamax (Score:2, Insightful)
The market has room for many levels, from high-end to junk. Sony limited itself to good-to-excellent hardware, while most buyers wanted mid-to-low end. Sony got buried. True, it was mostly in manure, but the important thing is that it got buried.
If Blu-ray is kept proprietary, it's doomed, for exactly the same reasons.
(2) Also, the market will quickly want recordable HD. Blu-ray-R will need a major technology change. I don't know about HD-DVD-R, but it will at least have the head start that it can be read (and perhaps written) by red lasers and development of existing technology.
(3) IMHO, the entire market will be stillborn if copy protection is part of it. Regardless of what's legal, people buy recorders and blank disks to make copies, for the buyer at other locations, and for friends and Napster-type sharing. Comparatively few people will buy a disk simply to have a pre-recorded movie or game, without the ability to copy it. (Not to mention that any copy prevention system is a sitting target that can be quickly broken.)
Pre-recorded disks can't be written to. Therefore, any pre-recorded disk will have to install copy prevention software on the user's computer -- at least a counter, to permit the backup copy, and a copy-prevention system to prevent further copies. We've seen what happened when Sony tried to do this with its rootkit. (4) Finally, HDTV sets are still uncommon and expensive. Cable broadcasters are sending out HDTV, but until home sets have good distribution, there's no market for either Blu-ray or HD-DVD players or recorders. HDTV seems to be ready for a surge, so I think we can look for an increasing demand for HD disks. We live in interesting times.
Blu-ray doa? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Blu-Ray versus HD-DVD is stupid (Score:3, Insightful)
This is a misreading of what happened with Betamax. IIRC, the marketshare figures went something like this:
Year 1: 40% VHS 60% Beta (Beta was out first)
Year 2: 50% VHS 50% Beta (Tie -- either format could win!)
Year 3: 90% VHS 10% Beta (Cheap VHS players destroy Beta quickly)
So, it's not that consumers waited. Once VHS was established, they all just went and bought it because it was cheaper.
(Also, Hollywood was also "neutral" in the VHS/Betamax war, which they certainly aren't in this format war.)
Re:Prediction (Score:1, Insightful)
The copy protection can be defeated by decoding the HDCP output and recompressing it to a more useful form. This can already be done. Blue-Ray and HD-DVD are going to get pirated no matter what. And the availability of hi-def torrents isn't exactly going to encourage the average consumer to buy a HDCP-encumbered player.
Both formats are going to fail.
Re:Wars over a piece of plastic (Score:3, Insightful)
What's Christ got to do with it? If you believe in the guy why are you mentioning his name so inappropriately, and if you don't then why is it for his sake? In anycase perhaps you might consider leaving him out of such irrelevant issues in future, and thereby not so unnecessarily offend the ears of those who worship him.
Re:Blu-Ray/HD-DVD DRM vs DVD DRM (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The Formt war that never was (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Blu-Ray versus HD-DVD is stupid (Score:4, Insightful)
1. The cost to make the disc is completely irrelevant to the format war. Everyone's going to do both formats, and everyone's going to price them the same to make the consumers happy. In fact, it's likely that any extra profits from HD DVD being cheaper to manufacture will be used to subsidize Blu-Ray ramp-up.
2. The video codecs are irrelevant to the format war. There's nothing that's fundamentally easier or harder about decoding VC-1 or MPEG4 (which both formats require support for) whether it's coming from either hardware source. Neither has an advantage here.
3. Java vs. iHD is a point-- it means Blu-Ray is more flexible and HD DVD is easier for beginners to develop for. It will probably remain relevant for 6-12 months until the production studio apps abstract the differences away. In the meantime, you may get some special features in one format but not the other.
4. PS3 means Blu-Ray wins. Mass production brings down costs faster than anything, and despite HD DVD being released a few months earlier, Blu-Ray will probably hit mass production a year earlier, while HD DVD is still in the early-adopter phase, because of the Playstation 3. Thus, Blu-Ray is likelier to be much cheaper, much faster.
5. The thinner substrate... I'm not sure how much this matters. The whole "in the lab" argument is pretty facetious, since both formats are still 100% "in the lab" until you can actually buy them. It will be interesting to see what happens with the first-generation writable discs and how they hold up under real-world conditions.
I think... (Score:3, Insightful)
In other words, until drives are available that read and write both Blu-Ray and HD DVD for less than $100, I'll pass, thanks.
Of course, I expect dual format drives are 'impossible', but then I seem to remember a lot of bleating about that from manufacturers about DVD+R/W vs DVD-R/W too, and yet dual-layer multi-format burners are like $40 now, so forgive me if I don't believe it this time either.
If it takes a couple of years that's fine - I certainly don't intend buying any movies in these formats until I know which one has 'won' anyway.
the darkhorse you're looking for.. (Score:3, Insightful)
is 300 GB per disc using RED lasers (1 or 2 tb using blue lasers) enough for you?
yeah, the technology is write once, read many, and not rewritable, but if you look at the cd and dvd market rewritable is more 'niche' use than write once. write once is what is cheap, so it's what people like.
inphase is definitely the darkhorse for completely usurping both blu-ray and hd-dvd. With 300 GB to play with, you have over 40 MB/second bitrates to play with for video streams. Lossless video compression, anyone? you can easily fit 720p using a 2:1 losseless compression, and leave plenty of room for a 5.1 audio stream or two.
Re:BLU-RAY AND HD-DVD have denial of service issue (Score:3, Insightful)
Plus about 2X more expensive per GB. Plus having a much higher chance of all your data being destroyed suddenly.
Each of the individual "incoveniences" you gloss over are show-stoppers on their own.
Netflix isn't going to ship you hard drives.
You can't loan/sell individual movies to friends
Trivially easy to destroy via heat, electricity, magnets, G-forces, etc.
Discs made by studios will have DRM on them, but there's no reason to believe Blu-ray/HD-DVD burners will have some embedded DRM. Home-made DVDs don't have CSS on them, do they?
Pray every day that he'll eventually return your entire movie collection... Discs are much less fragile, much more flexible, very high bandwidth, and much lower latency, in this case.
Plus, with discs, it's usually practical to make this a one-way transaction (no return).
Re: In Sony's Stumble, the Ghost of Betamax (Score:3, Insightful)
What most people don't realize is that the new formats won't be in high demand for several more years if then. Until inexpensive HD TVs become available and have had time to end up in most homes there won't be a real need for these new formats. The old formats provide a good enough picture for most people.
The real battle will be over DVRs and DRM.
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)