Sony's Obsession with Proprietary Formats 491
geoffrobinson writes "Jonathan Last, writing for a lay audience in the Philadelphia Inquirer, comments on Sony's push for the Blu-ray format:
'Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it. One of life's more satisfying ironies, however, is that the same fate often befalls those who fixate on history...
...Obsessed with owning proprietary formats, Sony keeps picking fights. It keeps losing. And yet it keeps coming back for more, convinced that all it needs to do is push a bigger stack of chips to the center of the table.'"
By name alone I have a feeling blu-ray will die (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course she'll pick the HD-DVD because it sounds like it will work with her system.
As for the other Sony products.. I like their hardware. The Clie I have ran circles around the Palm out at the time. I HATED memorystick.
cliche retort (Score:5, Interesting)
I bought Sony's original MiniDisc recorders for field recordings. It's a workhorse and is still performing like a champ. When I retired my Walkman (you know, the cassette kind...) after 12 or so years of continuous use, it was not for mechanical reasons.
Ok, so mod me down. I just had to respond to a knee-jerk comment with another.
Re:Those who ignore facts are doomed to look stupi (Score:5, Interesting)
For a while.
Re:does it really matter? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Recent Attempts Probably Not Fiscally Unsuccess (Score:3, Interesting)
The problem with the memory stick is that a lot of people went out of their way to avoid anything using a memory stick, simply because it tied you to expensive Sony products. And memory stick is one of the most confusing as hell "standards" out there with numerous variants. I have one device that uses a memory stick - a PSP. I certainly have no intention of buying any other Sony product because of it. The PSP's UMD bombed for movies, that's a given, but it was a worthwhile "attempt." Personally, I think it was the price that killed it, had they made it cheaper than it would have been worth it for travelling purposes (and only travelling).
Definitely the price. It should have been $10 or less per movie. Attempting to flog a movie for more than its DVD equivalent on a proprietary format that only plays on one device is sheer stupidity. It is doomed to fail. Still, Sony could salvage the situation and drive memory stick sales if after dumping UMD they opened up the PSP to play ripped movies at full res. They could still make a lot of money. Better yet (for them) if they hand out something akin iTunes for doing the ripping which also manages syncing the device and links to their own reasonably priced store. I read a rumour that there would be an 8Gb PSP soon so perhaps they are planning something like this. It has the potential to be great, but Sony is like an anti King Midas - turning gold into shit - so who knows.
Other than videos, the PSP is fairly reasonable as far as DRM goes. I can play MP3, AAC, WMA music and rip my own videos. The resolution thing is an annoyance but ripped movies look pretty fine anyway so it's not a big deal. If UMD dies, they should definitely unlock the restriction though.
I couldn't care less between Blu-Ray and HD-DVD. I feel both formats are irrelevant unless you have an HD TV, or a computer with a BD/HD-DVD ROM. All I care about is that one of them wins so this pointless pissing contest is over. Personally I feel it will be Blu-ray that wins but I guess judgement must be reserved for six months at least to see what happens with the PS3. Again, the PS3 could be an awesome device assuming Sony internal politics don't castrate the thing.
Re:Those who ignore facts are doomed to look stupi (Score:5, Interesting)
To me, it looks like a four horse race with DVD leading on the inside lane, Internet gaining ground on everyone else and HD-DVD and Blu-Ray weighed down by Big Media interested and lacking the speed to overtake DVD or outrun unfettered internet access.
Still Phillips not Sony (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:cliche retort (Score:2, Interesting)
Sony's dabbles with their own tech tend to lead to them leading the way, and no-one following. They even rename tech - iLink anyone - to make themselves sound different. At the end of the day, they release a lot of proprietary new tech when it isn't needed.
Re:Technologically superior? (Score:2, Interesting)
I gave up on my MD player after about three weeks. Slow transfer times, arcane rules about what I was allowed to do with MY music, and a trule terrible interface with both the program and the player made the entire experience worthless.
I've had friends that swear by MiniDisc (and the Japanese apparently love them), but I just couldn't ever see the point. A cheap-o portable CD player that will read MP3s seems to be a much better alternative.
Re:Why I avoid (Score:4, Interesting)
Sony used to be 'the' thing to get but for the past... I don't know, 8-10 years maybe, they've really seemed to have their heads up their asses. They are NOT Apple though they seem to think they are. What I mean by this is that in Apple's case, whatever they make is gold every time they slap their Apple logo onto anything. This is not so with Sony. There are too many competitors and Sony is not a culture all its own as Apple is at the moment.
My bad experiences with Sony started when I was selecting a laptop. I wanted to run a Japanese OS and expected that since Sony was a Japanese company, that I wouldn't have any trouble getting support. Boy was I EVER wrong on that. I should have gotten an IBM! It ha(d) WAY better Japanese language support than any other at the time. Pretty amazing considering it was an American company.
And from that point forward, my bad experiences with their stuff just kept piling up. I've been 'done' with Sony since about 5 years ago. Now I just wait for them to die.
Same as with audio (Score:5, Interesting)
Original versions of Sony's minidisc platform wouldn't allow you to digitally upload material you had recorded. You had to route the audio outout and use an analog process to get the stuff to your PC. When customers complained, they responded by providing the upload capability, but you only had one shot at it: the recording was then marked uncopyable!!! Finally, they currently support unlimited uploading, but I suspect it has other odious restrictions.
If I didn't have so much invested in Sony hardware, I'd drop them like a rock.
Re:Those who ignore facts are doomed to look stupi (Score:2, Interesting)
Any attempt to compare the two is either misinformed or biased.
You completely missed the parents point. Using studio support as a metric for determining which format to support is meaningless, as the studios listed supported UMD which was a complete failure.
Re:Why I avoid (Score:2, Interesting)
Sony said you could make Beta machines but had to pay a $25 royalty fee.
JVC said you could make VHS and had to pay a 25 cent royalty fee.
I don't know if this is true but it was what all us sales grunts were told to say by our manager. Who knows, perhaps it is even true...
Didn't find the specifics on Wikipedia -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betamax [wikipedia.org]
It really matters to me (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, I'm not a pirate. And the choice between HD-DVD and BR-DVD matters to me. Why? Capacity! I want it for a recording medium. With 15GB for HD-DVD and 25GB for BR-DVD, the latter would be the way to go if the pricing between them would be equivalent. Obviously, if BR-DVD stays at twice the price of HD-DVD, then it might not be worth it.
Of course the big market the manufacturers are looking at is the HD video media market, selling new players and licensing the manufacture of all that media being produced for it. But even there, having 25GB instead of 15GB means a better tradeoff between more content vs. less lossy compression. At the same compression, you can get 60-66% more content (or fewer disks for an entire mini-series in HD). For a fixed content, a higher quality level can be chosen for the compression.
One potential risk is that if the level of technology is really the same for both (I really don't know if it is or not) then the more dense format could be subject to more errors, given other things equal. In the end, we'll just have to see what works.
I think it will be a slower uptake. DVD's predecessor was VHS. That was a big difference. The jump from DVD to (HD/BR)-DVD requires a number of factors.
I think it will be hard enough to get a large consumer adoption even if there wasn't a format competition. I suspect that a large segment of willing buyers will put it off just to wait out the war and see who wins. Or maybe they are waiting for the less popular content that can't get shelf space in the stores while there are 2 formats of content competing for that shelf space (as well as DVDs).
Re:cliche retort (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Why won't MiniDisk die? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:How is it Any more (Score:2, Interesting)
Beta had a lot against it. (Score:3, Interesting)
My dad has always been a fan of new technology. When we got a satellite dish (no cable in rural areas) we also decided to get a VCR so we could tape movies and such (we had a fairly advanced system with a high-gain C-Band LNB that worked with an "amazingly small" 8 foot dish!). After seeing a noticeable difference in picture quality we decided to get a Sony Betamax VCR despite the slightly higher cost.
It didn't take too long to become frustrated with the short recording time--I believe it topped out at 120 minutes, and there was a LOT of stuff that we recorded that ran over that. We did find longer tapes eventially that held 180 minutes that helped quite a bit, but they were harder to find and more expensive (over 50% more expensive even though they were only 50% longer). "But wait--I'm sure Beta tapes could hold more". Yes they could--but not when it first came out. Betamax ended up with three playback/record speeds (Beta I/II/III) like VHS, however The Beta III record speed was not on our machine (it wasn't on any at the beginning IIRC).
Eventually we had problems with our Sony VCR--it would play back but when recording the video would drop out--at first for a few frames, then for seconds to minutes, always at random intervals. We replaced it with a Sanyo--another Beta because of our existing library. This VCR could record in B-III so we now had an ample amount of time even on the most common-sized tape. However, VHS had gotten a foothold by then and aside from price, I recall the REAL selling point was the much bigger recording time.
There was another issue too which affected our alliegence to the Beta format even before it became too hard to find pre-recorded content. Eventaully our second Beta VCR suffered from the EXACT SAME RECORDING PROBLEM as the older Sony did. Perhaps this is anecdotal, but the repairmen said the same thing--that these problems with recording crpooed up more often in Beta VCRs than VHS, regardless of the make or model. So Beta VCRs might've had better PICTURE quality, VHS had better HARDWARE quality (more reliable). Given the delay in Blu-Ray player releases due to last-minute "extra testing", as well as the delays in the PS3 (and speculation that it is due to problems with the Blu-Ray player) it sounds like there could be some stubborn reliability problems, and with HD-DVD players and movies already out the pressure to get to market could possibly mean Blu-Ray players might be pushed out the door before they should be.
Of course it is much too early to predict a winner in this format war, and they may coexist for so long that both will be supplanted by an even newer technology before one camp wins. In any case there are a few uncomfortable signs that Blu-Ray has lost its edge from a market-competitveness advantage.
Ehh stufff.... (Score:2, Interesting)
PSP = UMD, PSP + Sony Phones (thats alot) + Sony Professional stuff = Memory Sticks. Professional Broadcast still uses Beta.
Why use and pay royalties when you can create your own?
And minidisc actually won the format battle, they beat the DCC tape (you do remember that), only to be beaten to a bloody pulp by Napster and MP3 players.
Blu-Ray was proposed to the DVD forum but rejected over the Toshiba format, because HD-DVD is cheaper to make. The interesting question is, how much cheaper will it be when there is 25 million PS3s out there with games on Blu-Ray discs?
And why pick Blu-Ray over plain DVD for a next gen console? well consider this:
The PS-ONE was a 4MB machine with a 640MB media format, storage factor 160
The PS2 was 32MB machine with a 9GB media format, storage factor 280
The XBOX was a 64MB machine with a 9GB media format, storage factor 140
The 360 is a 512MB machine with a 9GB media, storage factor 18
The PS3 is a 512MB machine with a 50GB media, storage factor 94
Lets just for arguments sake say that most XBOX games took up 2GB space, most of that would be used for graphic assets i would guess.
This is on a machine with only 64MB memory, the 360 has 8 times the memory & 7 times less storage, and the need for higher res textures and more assets is evident.
Sony clearly chose the right format, its just damn expensive right now, but everyone knows that the best price for a product is where the production line can follow the demand, and in the PS3 case it will sell out at launch, it will be hard to get one for quite some time. After that period it will drop in price, Capitalism 101
And about the Betamax vs VHS war, give this a read.
"Read this, and the next time someone tells you that, of course, Betamax was superior to VHS, you can tell them that they are wrong. It's an urban myth."
http://technology.guardian.co.uk/online/comment/s
Basicly the VHS won because... it had more storage
Re:Who says DVD-HD DVD? (Score:3, Interesting)
ugh, stupid html. It should read like this:
Exisiting DVD still looks quite strong since the quality improvements gained from DVD to Blu-Ray/HD-DVD arn't nearly as compelling as the gains when moving from VHS to DVD. We'll see. I'm no videophile, but I can see some pretty nasty digital artifacts from compression on DVDs, especially in dark scenes. The resolution may be better than VHS, but I'm not convinced the overall picture is.
The resolution isn't better then VHS. They are both 480i. The only quality improvement in DVD over VHS is that DVD is digital so the signal quality is better. There are fewer artifacts, but they are still plenty visible, especially on a big screen.
It's true that DVD was a big technological improvement over VHS, but the improvements were mainly convenience factors--menus and chapters so you didn't have to rewind and fast forward, small, durable form factor, multiple languages and subtitles, etc. High-def DVD will be a much, much larger improvement in quality over DVD then DVD was over VHS. Instead of just going from analog to digital (which gets converted back to analog on 99% of DVD player/tv setups anyway), you will get a true, 100% digital signal with an order of magnitude more pixels (1080p compared to 480i). I'll take that any day over those stupid chapter menus.
Re:cliche retort (Score:3, Interesting)
There is also a huge difference between what Sony calls 'PC' products and 'Consumer' products. PC products are vaio computers and anything else that talks to a computer. Consumer products are pretty much everything else that isn't designed to be used by businesses.
Consumer products fall under the old sony support ideas. They are supported forever, even if the warranty is up. If you are upset they will give you something to make you happy. They have fairly short wait times and are permitted to stay on calls for a good length of time. Most calls for this group involve explains the features of a product or how to set it up.
PC products are a whole different ballgame. Sony is sick of providing quality customer service and they don't believe consumers expect good service from pc product vendors. So they stick to the letter on warranty agreements. They will not you comp you ANYTHING. The support reps have timers for calls and the call wait is often over 45 minutes. Telling the customer 'no' is not only allowed, it is preferred. Most calls for this group is trying to explain to the customer why they paid as much as $3000 for a computer using IDENTICAL components used in a $700 gateway with the same specifications. In fact, gateway probably builds them. Sony computers don't even have Sony Recordable disc drives (CDRW/DVDRW,etc) in them. Know why? Because sony recordable drives are really just LG drives with a sony label on them.