No Love For The Blu-Ray 303
macnificent7 writes "Market analysis firm Cymfony has combed through blogs and discussion boards, and finds online consumers aren't thrilled about Sony's Blu-ray DVD technology. Many users are still bitter about the limited availability of the PS3 because of the Blu-Ray. Also many are skeptical of the Blu-Ray because of Sony's past formats that did not succeed."
Re:Simple Solution (Score:2, Interesting)
Sony's dumb decision, with historical precedent! (Score:4, Interesting)
How many ways are there to say it? Sony is stupid.
You would think it would learn from its mistakes. It tried to push out its proprietary format with Betamax, and it failed miserably. (I know, I know, "superior format" and all that, but it doesn't change the fact that VHS won the battle of the formats in consumers' living rooms.) It tried to push out its proprietary format with the MiniDisc, and it failed miserably. It tried to push out its proprietary format with UMD, and it failed miserably. Now, it is trying to push out its proprietary format with Blu-ray.
How many miserable failures is it going to take for Sony to realize something that, at least to me, is pretty freakin' obvious and stupidly simple: people do not want to get locked into proprietary formats controlled by one company. The thing that's so maddening is that when Sony does embrace non-proprietary formats, they have wild success. Their Walkman products sold like there was no tomorrow. Their CD and DVD consumer electronics have always been well-respected.
It's more than a little ironic, I think, that while Sony is trying desperately to convince people that they should be buying a PS3 for the Blu-ray drive, in fact, people are avoiding the PS3 specifically because of the Blu-ray drive! I mean, I don't know many people who actively don't want a Blu-ray drive, but it is definitely, at least indirectly, responsible for their woes:
I could go on listing items, but you get my point. Everyone that said and signed on with, "I have an idea, let's use the PS3 as a launching platform for Blu-ray!" should be fired, because they just don't get it. People will buy a game console that happens to also play movies, but they're not going to be force-fed a whole new movie format just to own it. And I may end up eating crow for saying it if history proves me wrong, but I think that when all is said and done, people are really going to resent Sony imposing such a high premium on their gaming for something that has nothing to do with gaming. I really think that five or ten years from now, people are going to look at Sony's die-hard pushing of Blu-ray at the expense of its consoles as the thing that killed its dominance in the gaming console market.
It's too bad, too. Nintendo, while clever, just isn't set up to own the hardcore gamer market. And while I'm not big fan of Sony, I'm certainly not a big fan of Microsoft, either. Still, it looks like Sony is bound and determined to hand Microsoft the console victory crown on a silver platter with this foolishness.
Betamax vs. VHS (Score:5, Interesting)
Those little technical differences gave VHS an edge in the home market. Plus, Sony's excluding Porn from Betamax really screwed them.
Yeah, no love for Sony on this one. Everyone wants to bring up the M$ is teh evil argument, but come on: Sony's trying use their dominant market position as leverage into another sector. That's one of the reasons why people hate M$. Hate the game, not the players.
Not yet giving up on Blu-ray... (Score:5, Interesting)
Seriously, if there is no huge gap between the two systems in terms of available titles or choice of equipment, then Sony might just win on simething as silly as the name alone.
Re:Way too much blueray bashing (Score:5, Interesting)
Sounds wise, doesn't it? Until you realize it will cost you a small fortune to get a chance to judge Blu-ray. So maybe it might also be wise to remember past performance too. Minidisc, rootkits and will Blu-ray be the third strike?
Want to know why I want Blu-ray to win? It's easier to say...
Disruptive technology waiting in the wings? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Sony's dumb decision, with historical precedent (Score:5, Interesting)
Having experienced the agony of a failed flash memory module while far from home, I would gladly pay more for a module with a better track record, but the lack of interoperability is fatal, especially for flash modules. My USB memory card reader will accept half a dozen formats, but not Sony's. I do not understand why they insist on proprietary formats when they clearly affect primary hardware sales.
Re:Simple Solution (Score:5, Interesting)
When DVDs came out, you had the choice of buying DVDs and knowing that they would keep working, or buying VHS and knowing that it would become increasingly difficult to find hardware that would play them. Now, you have the choice of buying DVDs, which will keep working with your next player, or buying an HD disk that will also work, and will probably look better, but costs more. Until HD disks are close to the price of DVDs, there isn't much point in buying them.
Re:Sony's dumb decision, with historical precedent (Score:5, Interesting)
0) Belief in Communism (as practiced), MNC's, and Wealthy Over-lords. Here is Sony. Clearly Sony's rootkit showed they believe they operate above the law. Similar for monopolistic practices elsewhere.
1) Blind belief Sony and Microsoft are the leading creators of technology (the norm). For examples simply look at the recent discussion on Microsoft research team where many praised them despite Google's clear leadership and Microsoft's clear copy-ovation and buyout-ovation rather than innovation.
2) Thinking softie and sphoney are needed to keep the world running. This is evident in wanting to dual boot, running a doze Lose32 API layer SW, or emulate.
3) Realise the overlords are not the innovators. Once you realize this then you turn off your Windows box for good. No good can come of worshiping at the feet of the ultra-wealthy. Their interests are not those of yourself or any other commoner.
Sony is no different than the Plantation Owners of the Old South. Many slaves escaped to freedom. Softie and Sony slaves have a underground railroad to freedom as well. The greed of the English Kings allowed many indentured servants from the old world to become bona fide citizens by owning land because the King of England said serfs could become tree farmers after years of indntured servantdom as he wanted more longleaf yellow pine as needed to build his Navy. Once the serfs became citizens (voting and legal protection) then they never were to return to serfdom and, thus, won the freedom we all apprecate in the Revolutionary War. Likewise, Open Source pushed technology from the grips of the ovelords. Proprietary formats are one simple way the overlords hope to stop innovation. I personally believe they will fail. We can only hope our country will lead the innovation rather than see it happen elsewhere. The ability to look up land ownership in a ruling class stifled Europe for millenia and the ability to lock up innovation has stifled technology for a decade.
The strong legal system in the USA is a relic. The lack of international respect for copyright and patent law leave the USA at an unsurmoutable disadvantage on the world market. Either the Chinese come clean and pay up or the USA will have to eliminate such practices. Sony and others cannot both hope to run their business on illegal grounds (china et al) yet use legal grounds as foundations for their business in law abiding areas (usa etc).
Open Source is one innovation which removes the problem. Open Source is a return to before the Legalism Era when innovation was made for the sake of innovation rather than the sake of making competition impossible. The patent system of the USA is designed to disallow innovation in the USA; thus the antithesis of what it is supposed to be. Sony is so far from what is happening in the ground swell of Open Source that one can easily foresee Sony being cut down to size within a decade. Microsoft as well. The monkey business with Novell should be a nail in the coffin for the belief they had any redeeming contribution to make to innovation and technology. Seriously, does it take Billions in profits to write a Word Processor or come up with a 50G burnable disk? No. Look at OpenOffice, KOffice, GO (GnomeOffice), PlataSoft, and more. I suspect any of 1000 or so engineers and physicists in this country could come up with a 100G burnable disk within a year for under $500k. Sony's activity in the market is simply a reflection that the men who run Sony believe they are a class above those who buy their products. They are paid to innovate, not stifle innovation. Like the VHS, the cheapest and most u
Re:Simple Solution (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Sony's dumb decision, with historical precedent (Score:3, Interesting)
As was the DVD player in its day. So what? Prices for players will fall through the floor in the next few years. Doubtless the PS3 will sink in price too over time.
The Blu-ray drive is hard to manufacture
As I'm sure the DVD player was hard to manufacture in its day. Doesn't mean that it is hard now. The component that was (and probably no longer) makes the Blu-Ray hard to manufacture is the blue laser diode. This is a component shared with HD-DVD. So Blu-Ray's teething troubles are also HD-DVD's teething troubles.
There wouldn't be a so-called "format war" which has turned into, basically, Sony vs. the rest of the world.
Except it isn't Sony vs the rest of the world. Blu-Ray has more backers than HD-DVD. Blu-Ray also has many more players in the hands of consumers thanks to the PS3. The reality is that unless MS stick an HD-DVD into their XBox 360 or the PS3 tanks it is hard to see how HD-DVD can possibly win.
People will buy a game console that happens to also play movies, but they're not going to be force-fed a whole new movie format just to own it. And I may end up eating crow for saying it if history proves me wrong, but I think that when all is said and done, people are really going to resent Sony imposing such a high premium on their gaming for something that has nothing to do with gaming.
The lower PS3 is only only $100 more that the premium XBox 360. For that $100 you get free online access, a blu-ray movie player, more content for your games, bluetooth, HDMI, web browsing, video playback (from disk), region free games, Linux support and a bunch of other bits and pieces. $100 is not much more for all that. Personally I don't think what the 60Gb version offers justifies another $100 expense unless you need wi-fi.
Now even if you think it is too expensive, consider Blu-Ray for what it offers games. The 360 & PS3 output in HD and need 4 times as many polygons, textures and other graphical content to cover the screen. Which means 4 times the disk storage. Then you have HD FMV at 10x NTSC, localization, sound effects and so on. Microsoft chose to constrain their device to DVD-9 discs. That means they get 2 times the disk storage capacity of the last gen for content that needs at least 4 times the space.
Obviously many games won't fill DVD-9 so it makes no difference but those that do will have to span multiple disks. Or they'll slash the content. Or they'll put episodic content up for download (for $$$). Already Blue Dragon needs THREE DVDs and it's likely that other games will need it too. What will it be like in 3 years on from now? Will "please insert disc 2" become a familiar sight half way through 360 games? Even if MS chose to put an HD-DVD into their XBox 360, they can't abandon DVD-9 for games because of the 8 million non-HD-DVD consoles out there.
Sony put themselves in a world of hurt by forcing Blu-Ray into the PS3, but that is because it has a massive potential payoff. Not only is it good for games, but every PS3 is a Blu-Ray player to boot. So Sony scores sales of BD movies, as well as sales of HDTVs to watch them on. The downside as you say is production issues and increased cost. Assuming the Sony can overcome the obstacles it will make a lot of money, most of which wouldn't have materialised if they had stuck with DVD.
Re:Simple Solution (Score:1, Interesting)
Damn I thought he'd gotten over the whole 640K thing but now he wants to ban terabytes? He's gone too far this time.
Re:EVD anyone? (Score:3, Interesting)
Video2000, betamax, minidisc (Score:3, Interesting)
Video2000: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_2000 [wikipedia.org] . Check out some of the reasons it lost out - only one was technical, slightly lower resolution.
Betamax, by the way, may have lost in the war for the consumer as well, but step into any broadcast facility and Betacam - derived from Betmax - will be all over the place. Those moving on to other formats are predominantly moving on to HDDs, not Blu-Ray OR HDDVD.
Though those not ready to move over to HDD may move over to another SONY product, the PDD, which is very closely related to Blu-Ray;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional_Disc_fo
And lastly (completing my SONY-fanboy image, I'm sure), MiniDisc was a complete failure? If that's an absolute truth, how come they're still selling brand new products all over the place, between music and data storage (1GB)? Sure, it's dying.. but complete failure? puh-lease.
All that said, it's a shame that the industry is so willing to milk the consumer. Given half a reasonable choice, I think most Slashdot users would rather skip the Blu-Ray/HD-DVD war and wait for the war between discs that store nearer to 200-500GB per disc to be decided instead.
Re:Sony's dumb decision, with historical precedent (Score:3, Interesting)
Sony arrogance has lost me as a customer for life, and all the friends and family who rely on me for tech support as well. Not that they give a crap about some random guy in Minnesota who maybe goes shopping with five or six people per year, but I can list off perhaps $10,000 in sales in the last two years that specifically did not go to Sony due simply to my opinion of them. At least four cameras, three big screen TVs and a handful of cell phones adds up to a few dollars.
Maybe that's what the web needs: a list of "lost sales". Imagine an honest (ha!) tabulation of the purchases of everyone who specifically rejected Sony products because of the company. It might surprise me to see how small the list is, or it might surprise Sony to see how badly they've judged us.
Re:Simple Solution (Score:3, Interesting)
Um.. You're comparing apples to oranges. According to Wikipedia (see the prices on PS3 [wikipedia.org] and Xbox360 [wikipedia.org]) the premium PS3 retails for $599 and the Xbox360 (not the Core, the other one) retails for $399.99 and the HD-DVD addon costs $199.99. Some math reveals that the roughly equivalent PS3 and Xbox360 are 599 and 599.98, respectfully. That's only a 2 cent difference in retail price.
Notable differences in this rought "equivalent" pricing - PS3 Premium has a 60G HD and HDMI output, XB360 is only 20G HD and component only.
An even better comparison might be to compare the PS3 Basic (which still comes with a 20G HD as does the 360 non-Core model) then the prices become $499 for the PS3 and still 599.98 for the XB360+HD-DVD. Now we've got a PS3 (Blu-Ray player, game console, 20G HD) for $200 less than the equivalently featured 360 (HD-DVD player, game console, 20G HD). This is probably a better apples to apples comparison based on the feature set of each console (360 still lacks HDMI, which even the base PS3 includes).
Once you've GOT a 360, you've already shelled out 400 bucks, and once you've got the HD-DVD addon, now you've got something that takes up twice the shelf space of the PS3.
Re:Simple Solution (Score:3, Interesting)
From the HD-DVD Best Seller List at Amazon:
$42
Forbidden Planet - Ultimate Collector's Edition
$28
Suoerman Returns - Std and HD Combo Disk
$20
V for Vendetta
Serenity
Superman - The Movie
Casablanca
Forbidden Planet
Tim Burton's Corpse Bride
The Searchers
The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938)
You want a taste of what HD projection has to offer, Robin Hood or The Searchers would be a good place to begin.
Why they did not push a unified standard (Score:3, Interesting)
After all, consider that apaprt from the menuing system all the other software is identical - same copy protection (AACS), same codec support (including the Microsoft codec).
Re:Simple Solution (Score:3, Interesting)
Again, it's not true that your old software "is worthless". Your old copy of Office 95 didn't stop working when Office 97, Office 2000 or Office XP came out. They didn't become worthless. You volunteered to stop using it.
Microsoft is a corporation that lives almost entirely on churn. Think about their cash flow, and where it comes from. Sales of new products is the bulk of their money, with a relative trickle from their professional services. Microsoft.com isn't a pay-as-you-go web site. They're not like IBM who licenses mainframe software on an annual basis. Your copy of XP stopped generating them revenue the moment after you bought it; you don't pay a subscription fee for it. Same with Office. Think about Word -- what features did they add to Word to make you need to buy the latest version? I promise you that "Now with advanced Tabs and Rulers!" isn't a slogan designed to drive Office fanbois into the stores.
Microsoft is somewhat afraid of the near future because their biggest cash cow, Office, doesn't require upgrades at the same rate as their operating systems do. The only reason I upgraded my home version of Office 97 was I needed to add Powerpoint, not because I needed "adjustable margins" or whatever they had added to Word in the previous 8 years. And that's why their long term plan is .net and Vista. With Trusted Computing, [cam.ac.uk] they'll be able to move you to a subscription model. Just think of it: an OS that can enforce licensing. No more selling Office licenses that are good forever. With no new features, they can "give" the software away, but cripple things like printing or saving unless you pay them per month, or even on a by-usage basis. Want to create a Powerpoint slideshow? That'll be $10, please. Now there's a revenue stream to bet your future on.
Eventually Microsoft will encourage people to not run unsigned code. "Ooo, it might contain a virus, don't run it or your Windows Warranty will be voided!" How much do you think Microsoft will charge to sign a copy of Open Office or Ghostscript? And do you honestly think they'd ever sign Exact Audio Copy? Hell, they'll probably put it in their "Pirate Tools" list of binaries that will never run.
Re:Simple Solution (Score:5, Interesting)
Your average consumer still don't know the difference between Blu-Ray or HD-DVD. A DVD is still a DVD.
Just observing what comes out of Wal*Mart and Best Buy, I'm still seeing your regular 27" CRT coming out over anything flat.
-Note: just watching what is in the back of pickup trucks and SUVs around town. May not account for delivery merchandise which is what your average large screen purchase would require.
People I know who bought flat televisions and wanted 4:3 content at full frame at 16:9 finally realized after weeks that it looks goofy.
The price for Hi-Def players is still cost prohibitive for discretionary income. By the time it becomes affordable, HVD will appear on the horizon and I will wait for that.
There really isn't that much difference between a 9Gig disc and a 50Gig disc besides 41Gigs. There's plenty of difference between a 9Gig disc and a 1TB disc for it to make a difference.
Re:Simple Solution (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, many monitors qualify, so...
"Personally I think this whole thing is a gimmick."
No shit. At a viewing distance of ten feet, on a 32" TV, with a moving picture, I can barely tell the difference between a DVD and a good rip which is encoded to half that resolution. To see any non-imaginary difference between HD and SD I'd need a cybernetic eye upgrade.
On a 64" TV at the same distance it would be different. But that isnt on the purchasing plan for the foreseeable future.
Re:Simple Solution (Score:2, Interesting)
I wont sell people sony... (Score:3, Interesting)