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MGM Purchase Gives Sony An Edge In Disc Format War
Grump writes "The New York Times reports: 'The purchase of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer by a group led by Sony will not only give the company an enormous film library but also considerable power in its fight to set the format for the next generation of digital video discs.' The article goes on to suggest that Sony is gearing up for another Betamax-style failure."
digital versatile disc ??
I do not like the way all of these studios suddenly get aggregated by huge multinational companies...
If they decide to prevent a movie from reaching the theaters, it begins easier and easier...
Would "Clerks" still make a success in 2004 ?
In 10 years, will Fahrenheit 911 sequels ever reach the public ?
Trolling using another account since 2005.
it seems like these format wars between companies will end up making the cu lose out, haveing to buy more players, does anyone else think that dvds are just fine? HD content would be nice, but i dont think that its fair to the cu for all of us to have to buy two players, mabye they will make dual format players, and then no one will win or finalize anything, grr
Bad News: Another Betamax like fiasco
Good News: Hopefully another courtcase that prevents damages to fairuse rights.
A man can hope can't he?
cause if they don't, there won't be businesses like: Transfer your Betamax Videos to DVD. this way, when we don't have any more IT jobs, we can convert one DVD types to another DVD types...
CB$#@#$@
free ipod and free gmail!
With Microsoft supporting the NEC and Toshiba blue ray format. And Sony, with its huge movie, and technology back up, who is more likely to win the war of the formats?
Hopefully, the consumers.
Geeks everywhere want to know!
"It further tips scales that were already tipped toward Blu-ray," said Ross Rubin, a consumer electronics analyst at the NPD Group.
I don't know about all of you, but I certainly don't favor expensive new technology to proven successes. DVD may skip a frame now and then, and yes, there's still the chance that the disc may scratch, but for the most part, it's more than value-priced technology. That is, the price is fair given the failure rate.
Oh Sony, first betamax, and your memory stick (ok it is cute).
:-0
:-) :-) :-)
I wrote you a haiku to make you feel better
lets buy MGM
why not it'll be fun, come on
hail our new disc format
ok it isn't that good but whatever.
I can imagine a new Blu-ray player with memory stick input and built in ps3!
In fact, will PS3 use the new disc format? or PS4?
I say good luck to em. As long as I can write my XVid movies to 'em
*come on that is the real need here!*
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
I guess this merger also means we'll see more films than just Columbia Tristar Home Video's limited selection on the UMD format used in Sony's PlayStation Portable handheld system.
I don't see any reason why this format would be a betamax failure. It seems pretty solid. But yeah, given Sony's record of unsuccessful and barely successful formats, this is probably right.
Betamax, minidisk, memory stick, atrac3. Arguably SACD as well.
Seriously, people just bought DVD's. Heck, most of my collection is in DVD format. Which is as good as I need and probably as good as it gets for the next 20 years. From DVD there is no real compelling reason for the consumer to upgrade. It is already high digtial, the market already enjoys the Value Added features. Making a release in another format would be like Sony Max all over again.
MGM bought UA in the 80's. Time bought Warner Brothers a while back too. Nothing sudden about media consolidation.
Best Slashdot Co
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Why not just make players that can play both competing formats? Brad
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
What killed the Betamax format was that they were not willing to share to technology with other manufacturers, and that paved the way for the VHS format to dominate the market...shame, I would have rather watched vids on Beta all these years - picture quality far superior than VHS.
Just ask Playstation (Sony), Gameboy (Nintendo)
The article goes on to suggest that Sony is gearing up for another Betamax-style failure.
Betamax was far from a failure. it was better than VHS, a overall better design from the beginning and is still pretty much near the standard today in broadcast (betacam is very much like betamax.)
They failed because of two tiny points.
Tape size - not fricking long enough.. they fixed that with a larger format but by that time the damage was done.
Adoption - VHS was far cheaper to license, so the porn industry latched onto it and ran, thus solidifying the VHS format as the defacto standard.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
... the first one used to distribute porn! The adult industry has a much greater influence on technology than the industry cares to admit.
Betamax
Mini Disc
Memory Stick
Blu-ray?
SPAM
Both formats will probably have a ton of DRM in it anyways. It's all just a money making ploy to get us to buy new "special edition" disc sets... "Now with 15 seconds of additional footage and some interview with one of the extras!" That and new players of course.
And isn't DVD already in 480p?
There are only 10 kinds of people in this world... those who understand binary and those who don't
I don't know of any other company that has tried and failed more times to set its own monopoly in some form of media. Any discerning nerd avoids Sony products like the plague because they undoubtedly go against any set standard.
The ones I know about:
- betamax
- mini-disc (though it eventually opened up to other manufacturers after it was old technology)
- Playstation/Playstation 2 (ya, most video game systems aren't compatible with other manufacturers.. but this is still an example)
- Memory-stick (wtf.. we have compact flash, smart media, secure digital.. but Sony somehow thinks they'll be the standard)
I'm sure there's a few I'm forgetting. Sony is a damn frustrating company. If they just adopted and backed a new standard instead of always trying to monopolize, we would have standards adopted significantly faster. Sony is a huge company.
--- We need more Ron Paul!
Sony is in a much better position now than they were during the beta/VHS wars. They lost that one because they were much smaller and alone. They now have allies, the playstation is around and Sony owns more music and movies than they did. People are now are used to multiformat players and recorders. I think the trend will continue. Remember beta was a different size and shape, we are dealing with basically the same media with a different format. That being said, I agree that some of these monopolistic trends are bad for the industry. I wonder what format Microsoft will choose for the Xbox 2.
What does this mean to the Disney MGM park? Is Mickey Mouse going to have to carry a walkman now?
I assume they are going to keep the MGM branding, but has anyone heard anything else about this?
Different from Microsoft, Sony never got the underpinnings of the format wars right.
PlayStation. PlayStation 2. Compact Disc itself, co-developed with Philips.
True, Betamax the format is dead, but Betacam the format and Betamax the copyright precedent live on for now.
I would care. This marvelous (say, fictional?) DVD player would be very expensive, due to all the licensing "taxes" that would be included in the final retail price. Regular folks would be locked out of their own video library, unless they buy high-end equipment. Smells like extorsion.
The article goes on to suggest that Sony is gearing up for another Betamax-style failure...
Remember Sony and Phillips created the audio CD standard, and get a small royalty for every CD sold. I'd trade the failure of the Betmax for the success of the audio CD any day of the week.
Players that play both Blu-ray and HD-DVD would be much more expensive to build and to license from the patent pools.
.. is that no one wants them to become the standard in any format war.
Sony would like to set themselves up to be the microsoft of the entertainment world. They consistantly ignore market demands and instead produce devices they want people to have instead of devices that people want to have.
Honestly, how many people would want a portable music player that plays some format other than mp3? and takes a higher priced, sony only memory card?
I would rather have Sony.
Microsofts Codec is mandatory on both Blue Ray and HD-DVD players now.
Microsoft is happy either way, they get their tax on every Next generation DVD player whoever wins.
This is what its really about, the control ..
Remember this is sony we are talking about..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Except that memory sticks are here to stay. And so too will Blu-ray. Sony's finally figured out that they can produce their own market for their own media, and if you buy a Sony device, it uses memory sticks. If you buy a playstation 3, it will use blu-ray.
Personally I think the "war" is a stupid one. The ideal solution would be for the camps to quit balkanizing, and compromise: say, the higher capacity of the blu-ray media with the data format planned for HD-DVD.
From the article:
The studios also have a huge stake in the change to the new technology because they now make more money from DVD sales than from box office sales. They also lose millions of dollars a year from pirated DVD's.
Does this seem stupid to anyone else?....so they make billions from box office sales...they make even more from DVD sales *but* they are *losing* millions from pirated DVDs....cry me a river.
this sig is false
Sony doesn't _want_ anyone else to go out and build a PlayStation unless they liscense through Sony.
Likewise, Sony doesn't _want_ anyone else to go out and build a MiniDisc player or MemoryStick reader unless they license through Sony.
Does it have to be a Betamax-style failure? What about a Minidisk-style failure? Or a Memory-Stick-style failure? Or an Attrac3-style failure?
Sony spent the last 20 years creating redundant formats that nobody wants.
One of the things this story brings up is that independent film makers trying to get studios to make their films will have more difficulty due to there being one less studio to shop around to.
I, for one, welcome our new entertainment overlords.
I think there really should only be one 'format':
The file. We should be moving to a future where all our music and films live on media with a filesystem.
So many DVD players today read CD/DVD-ROMs with MP3 files and there are even some now that can read DivX files.
Of course it won't happen because the big companies want us to keep buying our films and music again and again in new formats. But a file created today can be with us forever. I actually think that's the main reason behind DRM. Not to prevent illegal copying but to wring revenue far into the future by licencing the decoder to hardware manufacturers.
Because the ps3 will have blue-ray.
Assuming the ps3 follows the popularity of the ps1 and the ps2, a high percentage of households will already have a blue-ray player. (over 50 million ps2s have been sold)
Frankly, I dont see much advantage of these disks over DVDs, and Ive _got_ an hdtv.
no
It might not have captured the home market but every edit suite and camera in every tv station everywhere almost certainly had the "Sony Betamax" and later "Sony Betamax SP" logo on it.
Nowadays it is being displaced by digital formats but for at least 15 years it was the leader in it's market.
I'm sure they would be very pleased to undergo such another failure.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
The PlayStations do not count, because there is no non-proprietary competition.
PC. If you claim that Windows is just as proprietary as PlayStation, then aren't the other video tape formats and flash memory formats also patented and thus just as proprietary?
Blu is stating larger storage space and better pic quality. HD is more likely to work with existing DVD players and has more space also according to the article.
.....
Hmmmm. My opinion is that the pic quality is good enough already, and I would dump larger storage space for something that is more likely to work. Blu is also backed by Sony who constantly tries to monopolize everything they get their hands on. They are a typical multinational corporation like the one I used to work for. I wont mention their name but their policy between the lines was: Were big, were the only choice, proprietary is money, sales is all important, customer service costs us money, never improve only patch, blah blah
So why are we dumping dvd again? Its proven and it works fine... but tech advances so I would say HD then, cause we know Sony is ass.
---
My sig was stolen - the insurance company replaced it with this one.
Now with Sony owning, what is going to happen next?
:)
Probably nothing
Will they negotiate with TW to work something out that should be quite a lucrative venture?
Highly unlikely
Or will they dig in their heels?
Even more unlikely
Geeks everywhere want to know!
This may be the only definitely "YES" to your questions
"Sony also announced yesterday that it had reached an agreement with Comcast to offer Sony and MGM movies over Comcast's video-on-demand systems and on new cable channels that it would form with the Sony group."
From an article here.
I don't know about you, but i hardly ever go to the movie store anymore (unless i want to own a DVD). I rent most of my titles from Time Warner's video-on-demand. This agreement opens up that whole distribution channel (no pun intended) for all of those classic MGM titles.
There are 01 types of people in this world. Those that understand binary, and me.
If you go and buy a library of media that you can't read, well you're a dumbass. People don't rush out and buy vinyl and then return home and face the disappointment of their CD player not being compatible with vinyl records.
If at the end the player is too expensive for whatever reason (>USD150?), the MPAA *will* subsidize it. They want to sell DVDs.
And to clarify further, in either case scenario, MS will win because both Next-gen DVD formats will most likely use MS codec.
At this point, I think HD DVD (by NEC/Toshiba) is a history. And I wouldn't be surprised even if Sony has a second thought on the codec they will use for distribution. I want to see Sony leaving MS or coming up with something other than MS codec.
Sony does have SACD in it's favor.
I find I prefer SACD releases over DVD-A (based on available artists). The Hybrid SACD idea is much cooler than a "hybrid" DVD-A disc: I can play a Hybrid SACD in my car. Can't do that with DVD-A.
SACD is also supposed to be better quality than DVD-A.
I'd also like to see universal high def DVD players (HD-DVD + Blu-Ray).
The fact that this means more consolidation of media in the hands of fewer and fewer companies, however, is very, very distressing. http://www.pbs.org/now/politics/mediaconsol.html
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
I would estimate DVD quality to be about 3x VHS (about 2x more pixels, and a much better color space).
HDTV has 6x as many pixels as DVD, at 2 Mega pixels.
From my experience with a 10-foot wide projection system (NEC LX135 QXGA) I have at home, anything below DVD is almost unwatchable. DVD looks glorious until you pump a true HDTV signal into the system and then what you have is in many ways better than going to the theater (at least the crappy cineplexes in this town).
Now you might carp who the hell has 10' wide projection systems to really enjoy this kind of experience. The percentage is small today, but I predict that DLP will cause hi-res projection prices to plummet in the next 2-3 years. Mostly because DLP will experience the same kind of Moore's law improvement as any other type of chip type process, while other methods rely more on bulk size improvements.
In fact while it has been long to make it out of the Labs, Hi-Res displays will probably be common and affordable in Ultra-HD resolutions in 5 to 10 years time. (over 8 mega pixels) in large sizes.
I suspect U-HD will be overkill for home, and in most ways exceeds 35mm film quality when you factor in film speed (grainer for faster) and editing and reprocessing (loosing quality at each step). Sure, theoretically 35mm film has 16 Meg pixel, but in practice it is more like 3-6 (not much more than HD). And that's only if you can find a theater that knows how to keep a critical focus, and whose machines don't jitter uncontrollably because they are trying to squeeze the last penny out the damn things before going digital, which they desperately want to avoid as long a possible because first generation equipment is expensive and will suck compared to equipment available in 2-3 years time.
Even without 10' screens, in 2 or 3 years, WUXGA screens (1920-1200) will be common and affordable in laptops with Blu-Ray and/or HD-DVD built in. The near photographic look will motivate people to upgrade their home viewing experience. One of the biggest reasons for HDTV slow acceptance has been the failure of early systems to actually display the full quality that the standard supports (most systems today advertised as HDTV still don't). That and of course the lack of actual HDTV content to be viewed.
I suspect I will be one of the ones to say HD is good enough once we really get there. My father has trouble seeing the detail of DVD. So many people don't have the visually acuity to really appreciate the difference. Beyond HD I suspect the majority of people won't really be able to see much of a difference. I'm speaking of REAL HD. 1080p at 60 frames a second is really sweet, but over the air stops just short of this with p at only 24 and 30 fps. My prediction is that eventually 1080p at 60fps will become a standard, one that holds for a couple of decades or more, but we could get stuck at 1080i or 720p, which is a shame because the difference is quite noticeable up to this. Digital photography might still motivate people to buy U-HD projection systems for displaying stills.
As for me -- GIVE ME BLU-RAY AS SOON AS POSSIBLE!!!
(while the CRTs hold out on my current system)
Letter To Iran
Hmmmm...
The major issue I had with a lot of this is "marketing". They are generally the problem. Marketing is entirely the reason behind the VHS vs Beta war, and to this day, are behind much of the current day issues of products. Quality of an item or service anymore means absolutely nothing. It's all in how you market, and how hard you do it. You can be selling crap-on-a-stick, and people will buy the heck out of it all day long if you market it in the right way.
The current bit with Sony buying all this is much ado about nothing. Fact is that when DVD's started becoming favor over VHS for rentals and purchase, many companies licensed the material and migrated a good percentage of it to the "current" format(s), such as DVD. We even saw this with Laserdisc's.
This stuff will more or less be around for quite some time. Maybe not in a format you'd particularly want, but it'll be here.
Cheers
All content in this message is copyright (c) 2008. All rights reserved. RIAA is prohibited here.
Why should we be so worried about what hardware format movies will be released on in the future? I still have pR0n on Quasar's old "Alpha Wrap" home video system, the VR-1000, AND Sony's U-Matic format. Hardware will continue to change and evolve. My biggest concern will be what content we are actually allowed to see. If AOL and Sony own the biggest movie production & release houses, what is to prevent movies from being controlled like radio is currently being controlled by Clear Channel and Cumulus? Have YOU heard any GOOD music on the radio lately? Will we see any GOOD movies in the future?
Mini Disc was/is pretty popular in asia and europe
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Being a Florida resident with a six-year old daughter, I have more knowledge of the Disney parks than I would prefer to admit. I really doubt this acquisition will change anything - last I heard, Sony isn't in the theme park business, and it would seem to be in their interest for their films to continue to be promoted at Disney-MGM.
Star Wars is all set to go in HD. I wonder which format will be backed? It could provide a lot of oomph for one format or another... In fact it could really drive a tremendous number of early adoptors to one format or another, giving a real marketshare boost.
I think Blu-Ray will win out though, because of the storage advantage.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
oh look, Sony is the only brand of TV that offers a memory stick reader, so I can take the stick out of my camera, stick it in the TV and get a nice slide show. hooray.
Then ask your TV maker to license Memory Stick.
I am not going to re-buy my collection just because there is a new format available. Whatever comes about, I plan on sticking with DVD for next 20 years.
The only replacement I will ever consider are tinier storage media that I can view unlimited times and get it to run on Free UNIX type OS's.
If the media conglomerates change standards too often, it only encourages people to burn their own media standard for personal use.
Hopefully the winning format has a disc jacket, like the 3.5" floppy disc.
Sony is developing OLEDs. But Sony is also trying to infest the market with DRM technologies. So I bring back an ad hoc poll from a few years ago:
Today, Sony is
a) Good
b) Bad
c) CowboyNeal
I choose CowboyNeal.
Sony's Blu-ray machine will be able to play red-laser discs using the DVD-R and DVD-RW formats, but not those using the DVD-RAM or DVD+RW formats.
Don't forget DVD-RAM...
So MGM bought UA, Time bought WB, Sony buys MGM.
Only a few more and we'll have one big company claiming they are not a monopoly because of the few independants owning a mere few per-cent of the market share.
Ahhh that'll be the day... It's not like the movies coming out now are worth watching anyway. There's a few a year... and the rest are... well...
when you see the word 'Linux', drink!
Yes that is why the lost the battle. The content that the people wanted (p0rn) was not avaiable on the better format Betamax. Hence why Sony is trying to make sure that they can supply the content that people want (they hope) on the format that they can control.
You would think the pr0n industry would run kicking and screaming in the opposite direction from HD. Skin defects (moles, acne, etc.) are easy to hide in low-res, and the babes seem perfect. Put them in HD, and it becomes a lot harder to make the skin blemishes disappear while maintaining that natural look. I'm not even sure modern cosmetics is capable of this, and you probably need some combination of cosmetics + video-editing to make it work well. This is probably too much for most low-budget pr0n shops.
I'll never understand why they didn't go with the memory stick for the PS2 memory card. They'd have an instant user base of millions, who would then feel comfortable buying a memory stick mp3 player or digital camera or whatever. And I'm sure Sony could've flogged some overpriced PS1 memory card adapter in order to keep the backwards compatibility with the original playstation.
Vino, gyno, and techno -Bruce Sterling
more and more homes than ever are networked and if wireless bandwidth or fiber to the curb ever reach the /. crowds desires i don't think we'll be getting our lazy selves over to bl0ckbuster to rent pieces of worthless plastic that need to be brought back the next day...
if sony is smart they will think more in terms of codecs and compression than plastic (actually paper) and blue rays..
All the torrents you could want.
People keep on commenting on blu-ray as a sony product. blu-ray has a founders group like dvd forum. http://www.blu-raydisc.com/ which includes
Dell
Hewlett Packard
Hitachi, Ltd.
LG Electronics Inc.
Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd. (Panasonic)
Mitsubishi Electric Corporation
Pioneer Corporation
Royal Philips Electronics
Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.
Sharp Corporation
Sony Corporation
TDK Corporation
Thomson Multimedia (RCA)
That's a majority of electronics manufactures. Who is going to make HD-DVD players? Adding MGM to CTHV increases the amount of studio support for the BD format while the rest of the studios are on the fence. As of now the BD Codec supports MPEG-4 AVC (FRExt), Microsoft's VC-1 WMV9 and MPEG2. So that extra space provided by BD-ROM and the use or MPEG-4 AVC or VC-1 will provide much more efficient amount of video storage. It sounds like Blu-Ray! is the winner so far, but things could change!
the RCA VBT-100 (the original $999 VTR) was able to record 4 hours. However, the LP mode wasn't something JVC (source of VHS system) wanted to do, so their machines avoided LP mode...
RCA had considered going with Sony, but Sony's machine of the day couldn't record an entire football game on one tape.
Or so the story goes...RCA was thinking tape was a hold until they got CED working...
But isn't this why they came up with Magic Gate encryption? Memory sticks would lock customers in just as much as the current cards do, as long as Sony insisted on the Magic Gate version. They could even make a PS2 branded Magic Gate stick and charge an extra five bucks for it.
Vino, gyno, and techno -Bruce Sterling