Comments

PeterWright wrote on 8/23/2005, 5:40 PM
Interesting article.

According to an item on the radio this morning, manufacturers are gearing up to produce multi format players that will play both the Sony and Toshiba products, which may be a good solution for a while.

DGates wrote on 8/23/2005, 8:46 PM
It's like the whole -R, +R bullshit.
Edin1 wrote on 8/23/2005, 11:34 PM
I hope another 10 formats come into play, and the whole business gets flushed down the toilet, together with the companies involved!
I am tired of this $#%@*# with the formats all the time! The greedy snobs can never share the ideas and technologies, and they slow down the progress and implementation of compatible technologies!
Not to mention the confusion and reduced productivity because of so much incompatibility among systems! And Sony is one of those companies that, eventhough it sometimes makes good products, strives to make something different and incompatible not only from other companies, but even from its own products. Way to go, Sony! Straight down the toilet!
Steve Mann wrote on 8/23/2005, 11:48 PM
The "disagreement" is that the disk manufacturers like HD-DVD because it is a reasonably small investment to retool their existing lines. The "Hollywood" industry likes Blu-Ray for it's superior copy control in the protocol.

The real winners will be the Korean DVD player manufacturers who are now shipping players with WMV and DIVX codecs built in. (Expect a bunch to hit the market at Christmas). People will be able record HD on 4.7Gb DVD-R's. By the time the two protocol camps finally agree on a standard, most of their market will be using DIVX for a fraction of the price.

Steve Mann
Spot|DSE wrote on 8/23/2005, 11:51 PM
While mis-matched formats, codecs, etc are never fun, I'd recommend you research what BD is all about before trashing Sony over it.
It's an acquisition format, it's a delivery format, it's a storage format, with compression technologies that will soon allow up to nearly 200 GB per disk, with 70ms seek times already available in the 110GB layer levels.
Sony has made it an open standard, with exceptionally low costs to join the "club". Somewhere, someone has to propose the standard. The only thing (IMO) that Sony has taken a hard line on is licensing their movies/content to Toshiba-driven HD-DVD markets. HD-DVD is a short term, non-expandable product that while matches some aspects of current technology, won't reach far into the future like BD will.
So, while it might be some short term pain, it's the right way to go, and most journo's have seen this, as have most people that aren't looking at the short haul. There is no other long-term option available, or rather that has been proposed on a mass scale, that has any reasonable expectation of support. BD is close, it's nothing short of amazing, and flexible.
Edin1 wrote on 8/24/2005, 12:03 AM
It just angers me that the customers have to be the guinea pigs, and the market is the testing grounds, where the companies fight for adoption of their formats.
I stand by my opinion that most, if not all, of the disagreements amongst companies are caused by greed, be it about formats, or anything else!
Spot|DSE wrote on 8/24/2005, 1:10 AM
How is it that customers are guinea pigs? The format is developed, and when it releases, there are players, DVDs, and support in place. BD has been in dev for a long, long time. It's not fresh by any means. Nothing "testing" about it any longer. Saying customers are like guinea pigs is like saying that DVD was being tested on consumers. It wasn't. It's not like +R or -R was, I think the world learned a lesson about that one. BD is standardized in terms of the way it delivers and records. What's shifting, is the compression mechanisms, but if it's a BD technology, it MUST be readable on a BD-compatible player.

I would also have to disagree that it's about greed. It's about revenues and payback for the risk involved in creating and manufacturing the format.
Would you consider it greed that you get paid for your employment/work you do as an employee, editor, or whatever you do? How would you pay your rent or home payment, otherwise? Think of the research, development, manufacturing costs that every single manufacturer has...I don't think I'd call it greed, it's more like protecting your investment. Except in the case of Sony, they've opened it up in hopes that others will jump on the bandwagon (they have) so that:
1. Sony indeed owns the massive format, and has licensing rights to disk manufacturers, replicators, camcorder manufacturers, etc.
2. The format becomes ubiquitous. (everyone has it, and has access to it.

Sony has vested interest more than anyone. BD is going to be used for movie distribution, camcorder media (XDCAM) data storage, game distribution, and other uses.

No one else has put forth the effort of Sony and Toshiba, both of them should enjoy the fruits of their labors, just like you and I do. Innovation is rewarded by first recovering costs. If for some reason Sony doesn't reward ubiquity by lowering cost of goods once they've made a sizeable chunk of their investment back (which is why drug companies are sometimes considered evil, they don't lower costs once they've recovered) then in my opinion, you can call it greed.
You'd agree that BD didn't just occur to the president of Sony one night and it existed without dev cost the next morning, wouldn't you?

Bottom line is this:
BD is coming, it's going to be the standard just like DVD is now, and like CD once was. Everyone will be able to create on it, and Sony will make money from licensing the manufacture of the blank disks, players, and camcorder technologies. Sony will have additional advantage of being able to distribute movies from Sony Pictures/Columbia, and additional benefit from distribution of PlayStation games, and related peripherals.
Just like you get a paycheck for your labors, Sony should get a paycheck for their efforts. The big difference is, when Sony gets a paycheck, it employs thousands of people around the world.