If you have a state-of-the-art computer based entertainment system then relax, don't worry, because I understand that when the pirates make copies of these disks for distribution they will be able to recode them to MPEG4. Sony might not give us the technology but that little Mexican guy who stands on the corner of Cesar Chavez and Union Street Saturday morning will.

(Legal Notice: The above is sarcasm)

The author of that article is seriously ill-informed.
First, while Sony is sticking with MPEG 2 for now, (as are most content providers for the short term) MPEG 4 is totally BD compliant, and totally ready for BD. It's Sony's delivery mechanism for their blockbuster movies that will be in MPEG 2.
Second, there is no cost savings in 9 gig BD vs 25gig BD, so no "cost savings" to be passed on to the consumer. Silly statement, according to the folks at Evatone (replicator) and DiscMakers. Both indicated the costs remain identical, other than mastering costs, which Sony (and most other authors) do in-house.
The article suggests Sony is deliberately staying behind the times...I guess that's so...when there are billions of $$ at stake, why be on the bleeding edge, when you can convert to the bleeding edge overnight?
Additionally, the article talks about VC1, which has not yet been accepted by SMPTE, even though it was originally expected to be accepted 3 years ago under a different name. Why talk about "standardizing" on a non-standard? Sorta misleading, IMO.
Regardless of anything else, I'm confident Sony, Warner, Apple, and everyone else on the BD wagon will eventually go to the same format. Who goes there first gets to deal with the costs. Tech support calls, encoding hell, authoring problems...I'm a fan of being on the bleeding edge because for me to fall isn't that far. But for a big company like Sony that has a lot of responsibility? Shifting in the middle of a stream isn't usually a good idea. Sony and Thomson both have huge stakes in the MPEG 4 game. Neither is jumping from MPEG 2 right now. (Thomson/Grass Valley is shipping an MPEG 4 camera, but still MPEG 2 for all their high end delivery tools like the Turbo DDR, etc.)

Dense moment here, but what does BD stand for? I can't seem to remember. I guess in my case it stands for "Brain Dead". ;)

Bio Degradable?

Jack

I think it stands for Blu-ray Disc.

Sadly enough, both camps (HD-DVD/Blu Ray) are missing the big picture right now and that is the major delay which misses the Christmas shopping season. Coudl you imagine how many players would have been sold this holiday with an appropriate marketing campaign and products on the shelves?

Furthermore, this just seems to not have been Sony's year with the rookit fiasco, the delay of Blu Ray, the higher than expected costs and imminent delay of PS3. I would not want to be a Sony shareholder.

I dont see the need to use Mpeg-2 as the storage codec and it makes it seem senseless to use it when you have better compression formats out there (VC-1 and H.264 AVC). The consumer doesnt care about the storage codecs or formats, they just want thier HD content and want it now.

For all of the talk we have heard about HD this year, it has amounted to absolutely nothing at this point. Without players, there will not be an onslaught on HD content by producers or filmmakers. I personally love the HD format but I am not your average Joe customer. Joe customer wont take 24 hours to encode an HD capture to VC-1 or H.264 AVC to maximize their use of disc space.

The longer these delays take, the more money those in those camps will lose out on. Not only them, but hi def content producers as well. M$ has really missed the boat as they could have developed a HD capable player when they released WM9 and started to capture market share and had a major head start. They did it for the XBox, they could have definitely done it for WM9 HD.

Sorry Patrick but I don't get your shot at uStuff, we now watch all our movies on PCs, well I guess uStuff didn't make them but given that they'd never beat the Asians at building cheap PCs it makes sense for them not to try to compete anyway.
Someone explain to me why we need any STB HD shiny disk player, there's an upwardly mobile generation out there who just don't get the idea.
Bob.

BD=BluRay Disk

As far as delay...BD isn't delayed. It never was slated to ship before Jan 2007. At CES next month, we'll certainly see several BD players, no doubt. HD-DVD is who delayed, and they delayed back to the schedule they originally announced before attempting to accelerate the announced schedule.

It would have been nice to see BD before Christmas, but they've got to put the displays into market first, so that people can see/buy the displays they need for HD content, right? Releasing both of them at the same time would be a huge burden on the marketplace, possibly/probably weakening sales of both devices. But that's just my .02.

Here's a similar article titled "New high-definition DVDs to use old video technology?" at ZD Net.

With Sony's recent blunders, and based on what I've read around the web, I think many people (not necessarily the majority, but who knows) are very leary of Sony right now. Even if BD were ready for Christmas, I doubt sales would be anything near what they would be hoping for, right now.