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.'"
They could get away with this (Score:2, Informative)
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:cliche retort (Score:3, Informative)
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:cliche retort (Score:4, Informative)
From there, is Sony better off changing it and confusing customers, or not changing it and confusing customers?
Re:cliche retort (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:cliche retort (Score:3, Insightful)
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
Re:cliche retort (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:They could get away with this (Score:2, Insightful)
KFG
Those who ignore facts are doomed to look stupid (Score:5, Informative)
* Apple Computer
* Dell
* Hewlett Packard
* Hitachi
* LG Electronics
* Mitsubishi Electric
* Panasonic (Matsushita Electric)
* Pioneer Corporation
* Royal Philips Electronics
* Samsung Electronics
* Sharp Corporation
* Sony Corporation
* TDK Corporation
* Thomson
* Twentieth Century Fox
* Walt Disney Pictures
* Warner Home Video Inc.
Of the major media houses, only Universal Pictures has pledged support for HD-DVD.
Further to your list... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Those who ignore facts are doomed to look stupi (Score:5, Interesting)
For a while.
Re:Those who ignore facts are doomed to look stupi (Score:5, Insightful)
Blu-ray Discs can be played on any BD player (when they're shortly available), and on any display. (With varying resolutions.)
Any attempt to compare the two is either misinformed or biased.
Re:Those who ignore facts are doomed to look stupi (Score:3, Insightful)
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:Those who ignore facts are doomed to look stupi (Score:5, Insightful)
I would have been very interested in a UMD drive form my computer. Small, well protected. Burn my own PSP media. Very cool. It woud And a blu-ray based UMD disc later on (for PSP2) would have been the bomb. And if I could plug my PSP into my TV and watch the UMD like that would be very cool too. I actually wish Sony would retry with UMD, but this time do it right.
T.
Re:Those who ignore facts are doomed to look stupi (Score:3, Insightful)
UMD could have been successful, if Sony "opened" it up more.
Maybe if it had been a mini dvd that played in a dvd player. UMD confronts the problem that nobody is willing to buy the same dvd twice so they can play it on a psp. I'd rather spend the cash and rip my dvd to mpegs and watch them on a laptop.
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.
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
Re:Those who ignore facts are doomed to look stupi (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Those who ignore facts are doomed to look stupi (Score:5, Informative)
You make it sound like Sony was the only company backing their technology in the past, and that was the reason they failed.
As well as Sony and Sanyo, Betamax video recorders were also sold by Toshiba, Pioneer, Aiwa and NEC. The Zenith Electronics Corporation and WEGA Corporations contracted with Sony to produce VCRs for their product lines. Department Stores like Sears in the US and Quelle in Germany sold Beta format VCRs under their house brands as did the Radio Shack chain of electronic stores.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betamax [wikipedia.org]
The HD DVD Promotion Group also has a rather long list of members, among them:
If Universal Pictures is the only media house supporting HD-DVD, it does seem a bit strange that Warner Home Video Inc. and Paramount Home Entertainment are also members of a group promoting HD-DVD...
Re:Those who ignore facts are doomed to look stupi (Score:3, Insightful)
The point was to try
Re:Those who ignore facts are doomed to look (Score:2)
Re:Those who ignore facts are doomed to look stupi (Score:2)
How is it Any more (Score:5, Insightful)
Both techs seem to be upgrades with associated licensing fees for the tech. Do DVD's lack any licensing fee's to whomever originally designed it?
Re:How is it Any more (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:How is it Any more (Score:2)
Re:How is it Any more (Score:3, Informative)
OTA means "Over the Air". You can receive both ntsc (analog) and digital (atsc) OTA. NTSC isn't worth much, though a very weak analog signal may be at least watchable.
Re:How is it Any more (Score:2)
Re:How is it Any more (Score:2)
Yes. Many times, at friends' houses. I was not so impressed by it that I felt the desire to spend several hundred dollars more on my recently-purchased 27" TV. For the same reason that I don't spend $500 on a new video card when I am perfectly happy with a $200 mid-range model. I personally don't think a few more frames a second and a few less jaggies are worth $300, and I don't think a sharper, higher-resolution version of the exact same image is worth $300+ either.
I don't bu
Re:How is it Any more (Score:3, Informative)
Re:How is it Any more (Score:3, Insightful)
Uh, have you ever watched HDTV?
No, I have a HDTV monitor from 2001, so none of the current HDTV crap will play on it. Frankly, I don't see the appeal, nor am I willing to spend $thousands on something I can't even record.
Re:How is it Any more (Score:2)
If you're in the US and plan on watching broadcast after 2009, you might look into SDTV: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATSC [wikipedia.org]
Why buy the more expensive format? Well, I guess the reason a customer might buy i
Re:How is it Any more (Score:2)
Remember when the date was 2006? Know why it got pushed back? Because people aren't buying HDTV. Now why wouldn't they be doing that? Because HDTV is expensive, and they don't see a good reason to buy it.
Well, I guess the reason a customer might buy it is similar to why a customer would want their PC to display resolutions higher than 1024x768 today
To give them a "larger" working area so that more information fits on the screen at once? There's a
Re:How is it Any more (Score:2)
Re:How is it Any more (Score:5, Insightful)
Moreover, Blu-ray has unimaginable support by movie companies, because of the very same reason everyone hates Sony and everyone hates the MPAA. The Blu-ray format has more DRM and other copy-protection than HD-DVD does.
Simply put, BD-ROM is another propietary format developed by Sony, and it is screwing consumers in ways that this generation has never seen. The DVD forum was created to prevent another horrible VHS-Betamax war, and because of Sony's arrogance and greed, it was all for naught.
Re:How is it Any more (Score:5, Insightful)
One could also say:
Because Toshiba's HD-DVD format was developed in unison with the international DVD forum [wikipedia.org], whose task it was to collaborate and create the next-gen DVDs. Sony, however, saw that the new format wasn't advanced enough to meet standards 5 years from now, and created a second format war when it dismissed HD-DVDs and made their own specification with twice the storage capacity.
Re:How is it Any more (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah, because even though HD-DVD and Blueray use the exact same [wikipedia.org] content protection system, blueray's drm is far more onerous.
Re:How is it Any more (Score:3, Informative)
Re:How is it Any more (Score:3, Informative)
The "International DVD Forum" is just a coalition of the willing. It's a group of companies that came into existence when Sony's and Philips' MMCD merged into Toshiba's SD initative to create a new optical disc. There's nothing
Re:How is it Any more (Score:2)
It isn't more proprietary. Sony's blu-ray is deffinately superior in a lot of ways, the most important from Sony's perspective is that it is Sony who get's all of the royalties. That is at least a decades worth of very fat checks.
Both techs seem to be upgrades with associated licensing fees for the tech. Do DVD's lack any licensing fee's to whomever originally
Re:How is it Any more (Score:5, Informative)
1) The Blu-Ray license agreement requires that no one make a combo HD-DVD/Blu-Ray player. HD has no restriction.
2) The Blu-Ray standard allows players to be disabled when they phone home via Ethernet, should the keys of a player ever become compromised.
3) The Blu-Ray standard will not allow one to burn their own movies. Blu-Ray DVD players check for a hologram, which if it isn't present, will not play video. Say goodbye to making backup copies or putting home movies on HD.
It's only a "Sony proprietary blunder..." (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:By name alone I have a feeling blu-ray will die (Score:2)
Of course she'll pick the HD-DVD because it sounds like it will work with her system.
But for people looking for the biggest, newest thing, does the HD-DVD sound like just an extension of regular DVD? I know it's technically not just a modification or an extension of the existing DVD format, but will people think they're being tied to the past with it? Blu-Ray sounds futuristic, both in the spelling and the s
Re:By name alone I have a feeling blu-ray will die (Score:5, Funny)
Someone like my mother will go buy a new television - HDTV. She'll upgrade her cable box to HDTV.
Bet you $20 that she'll still have them hooked together with a composite cable, though.
does it really matter? (Score:5, Insightful)
Regular DVDs do not look "great" (Score:2)
Re:Regular DVDs do not look "great" (Score:2)
Why do we need it?
I need food. I need shelter. I could even say I need the Internet since that is how I get my news and most of my information but that would be a stretch.
I don't NEED HDTV or an HD DVD.
The correct term is want. Now the media companies need it so they can prevent pirating and resell you all their old content in HD format.
All too often we are told we need things that while are nice to have are not really all that important in the grand scheme of
Re:Regular DVDs do not look "great" (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, sure, higher resolution video entertainment is a pleasant luxury item, but it boggles the mind to see it described as "something we really need".
I mean, solutions to problems of social injustice, environmental degradation, resource exhaustion, those are things we really need. Prettier ways to watch movies in our livingrooms are nice, and something I'll certainly be spending money on when their available and affordable, but hardly a necessity.
Re:does it really matter? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:does it really matter? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:does it really matter? (Score:2)
HD content on a 60" TV does look damn spectacular. Lost was especially good, found the island pans, etc, quite relaxing.
Re:does it really matter? (Score:2)
I feel sorry for all these poor fools who think these dinky TV resolutions are somehow "high." Something like 5000p would be "high!"
Re:does it really matter? (Score:3, Informative)
Your 19" monitor has a viewable screen diagonal less than 18". Let's say it's 18", and the traditional 4:3 aspect ratio. That means the display area is 10.8 by 14.4 inches. Or 274 by 365 mm. You need a
There are many monitors advertised as being able to display 1600 x 1200 that just can't.
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 pr
Re:Especially for PAL (Score:2)
Recent Attempts Probably Not Fiscally Unsuccessful (Score:5, Insightful)
Look at their memory stick. While they didn't succeed it making it the de facto standard for portable media, I'm sure it's worked great for them. Their cameras, PSP, etc all use it and between their manufacturing and licensing I'm sure it helps them out some.
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).
Sure, technologically UMB is not the best for gaming because of the power/loading time associated with discs but I'm sure the licensing helps them, but it was a good effort. Storing a lot of data for personal gaming probably doesn't have too many options. Besides, if company X wants to print a game for the PSP they get a piece of the production fee one way or another.
I have a feeling Blu Ray is where it all hits the fan. Unlike it's other more recent proprietary formats which can supplement their own products, Blu Ray can only survive on its own in the wild. It must be adopted as the main video format or else there's just little point in it. Sure if it fails you can still sell Blu Ray burners for Desktops and such, and if PS3 goes Blu Ray then publishers will need to kick a few pennies to Sony.
But in the end, it needs to beat out HDDVD to win and the only way that could happen is if they beat it to market or offered it as a cheaper alternative. I guess we'll see what happens here.
Re:Recent Attempts Probably Not Fiscally Unsuccess (Score:2, Insightful)
Wait, it's Sony...
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
Blue ray may win (Score:2)
Re:Blue ray may win (Score:2)
Too true. I remember my friend's father, years ago, when he proudly displayed his brand new DiVX player. Then two months later DVD became the standard and he was stuck with hardware quickly becoming unsupported.
Re:Blue ray may win (Score:2)
What the fuck are you talking about? 35mm film has a higher resolution than SD, and even HD-- so if studios want to release movies on bluray or hddvd, they can release discs which will be visually superior to DVD. Primetime Television has been HD for a couple of years now.
Yes.there are currently only a limited number of hd-dvd titles available. But this has nothing to do with a lack of programming, and more to do with the fact that hd-dvd is quite new.
Technologically superior? (Score:5, Informative)
Even when the first hard-disk mp3 players started coming out, Sony 'updated' with the NetMD software. That software must've been the inspiration for the rootkits of 2005, and was one of thoe most user-unfriendly products I've ever seen. Still no data-recording, even though competing players had that function, and an annoying three-copy rule on each mp3. Add this to a proprietary format and you get a terrible experience - no wonder MD never caught on. Even so, the hardware was good - the HiMD update allows
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
Re:Technologically superior? (Score:2)
I realise I'm speaking empirically here, but I didn't see the minidisc as a failure, at least not from a consumer standpoint. Everybody I knew that had a portable music player had a minidisc player at some point. Sure, you could never buy prerecorded discs, but the point was moot - you recorded your music digitally from your CDs using the optical S/PDIF port on the back of your stereo, and there always was (and still is) a plentiful supply of recordable media available in the shops.
Sure, Sony was slow t
Re:Technologically superior? (Score:2)
VHS was *never* even close to betamax in terms of image quality.
But it had 6 hour (and some 8 hour) tapes instead of 5.5 hour tapes.
Re:Technologically superior? (Score:3, Insightful)
Who told you that? There was a portable Data Minidisc drive before the iPod was even a gleam in Apple's eye. It was not available in the US and AFAIK would not let you transfer music via the data interface - you still had to use the stupid optical as your only digital interface, in real time. Before mp3 players, though, the minidisc was the best thing going. Kicked the hell out of CDs, and unlike a recordable audio CD,
Disposable media (Score:2, Insightful)
Both HD-DVD and Bluray are optical disks that will not play if scratched. If the media itself wasn't so fragile people won't need to back it all up in the first place. I won't be buying into any of this fragile DRMed media that will not play if scratched until I am able to ba
Re:Disposable media (Score:2)
This isn't another betamax (Score:3, Informative)
tirades are somewhat fun.... Go sony. (Score:2)
I wouldn't exactly call Sony's efforts dismal failures. I know dozens of people who bought Sony stuff and are locked into Sony's bullshit formats, and who pay a markup of 100%+ or more for flash memory and storage (because of Magical Fairy licensing fees, I presume, the formats aren't superi
For flexibility, for value - No Sony Products (Score:3, Insightful)
Content will decide the victor... (Score:3, Insightful)
makes sense (Score:2)
Its one thing to develop, market, manufacture, distribute etc... the next new radio/tv/gaming/remote control... to earn large profits to feed the 800lb gorilla. But how little effort would it take to earn some extra change if you controlled a widely used format?
Considering they al
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.
Good strategy ... for making money (Score:2)
Propriatory formats are a good example of a good strategy for making money that clashes with the requirements of customers.
If you force people to buy only your memory sticks (for example) then they are less likely to move to something else which doesn't support them as they'll end up with a format that is useless.
In addition, the markup on these items can generate a healthy revenue. The higher cost of the sticks is only partially due to volumes but also due to the large profit tacked on the top.
Howeve
I've got good news and bad news.. (Score:4, Funny)
To: Howard Stringer, CEO, Sony Corporation
From: Djinns'R'Us, Wish Granting Department
Re: Recent requests after bottle opening
Dear Mr. Stringer,
We are pleased to announce that we have fulfilled your latest request: to make Sony "the next Apple". Although we had to steal resources from projects in our Monkey's Paw Department, we have managed to complete this task up to your specifications.
We hope you enjoy the restructuring. Sony now resembles Apple, circa 1996.
Sincerely,
"Writing for a lay audience"???? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:all failures - Phillips not Sony (Score:5, Informative)
Re:all failures - Phillips not Sony (Score:2, Informative)
Still Phillips not Sony (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:all failures - Phillips not Sony (Score:2)
While the link to info on CD-I (interactive CD) is interesting, maybe you were looking for the article on the CD [wikipedia.org]?
From the all-knowing Wikipedia article:
At the end of the 1970s, Philips, Sony, and other companies presented prototypes of digital audio discs.
According to Philips, the Compact Disc was thus "invented collectively by a large group of people working as a team."
Re:all failures - Phillips not Sony (Score:2)
Re:all failures (Score:2)
Re:all failures (Score:2)
CD's Successors (Score:5, Funny)
It was made obsolete by Sony's other great experiments like Digital Audio Tape (DAT) [wikipedia.org], MiniDisc (MD) [wikipedia.org], Super Audio CD (SACD) [wikipedia.org] and of course RootKit Enabled CD (RECD) [wikipedia.org].
Re:all failures (Score:2)
Hey ! Don't go dissing 3.5" I still have my school projects on them and i STILL have a Floppy Drive that works. (Yeah buying it was a pain as my dealer kept shaking his head when i requested the drive).
Re:$ony is the electronics world M$ (Score:2, Insightful)
I wasn't bothered by the UMD format because it was specific to the PSP; sending out PSP games on SD cards or other compatible media was a waste of time because the games wouldn't run on any other system in the
Re:Why I avoid (Score:2, Insightful)
I still have yet to shell out of a true MP3 player or iPod rather opting to burn CD's of anything I want to listen to. I will still, from time to time pull it out and load some songs onto it. But it just
Re:Why I avoid (Score:2, Insightful)
Sony had a better product, it was smaller and had a higher quality then VHS.
It wasn't that it was inferior, their mistake was that they didn't license it.
It was shortsightedness that brought them down, much like what happened to the Amiga. If the opened up to other manufacturers, they probably would have taken Apples place, if not along side them. They were an awesome thing.
Sony lost out, only because of price, not quality. Same reason I wai
Re:Why I avoid (Score:3, Informative)
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]
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 s
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.
Re:Why I avoid (Score:3, Insightful)
You're going to wait a long time. I have a Sony radio on my shelf, it was built in 1962. Sony is not going anywhere.
Unless you are some kind of console fanboy, why on earth would you want them to die rather than simply improve?
Re:Why I avoid (Score:3, Insightful)
Because they keep influencing the industry with their methods. By this I mean prop formats that lock you in -- Sony is most famous for it, but others have tried to do the same thing. And with their quality going down but their prices continually going up they make all of us look even more like suckers than we are (which is saying a lot because so many are suckers) and that negatively influences th
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Why won't MiniDisk die? (Score:3, Interesting)