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."

Comments

Never mind that, what about The Hobbit?

[FunWithHeadlines]

The sale of MGM was of interest to fans of LOTR since if Time Warner had bought MGM it would have meant a fast track for filming of The Hobbit with Peter Jackson et al. MGM has the filming rights for the story, and New Line (owned by Time Warner) has been trying to negotiate to get the rights to do the film. Had TW bought MGM, presumably this would have smoothed the way for the film to proceed. Now with Sony owning, what is going to happen next? Will they negotiate with TW to work something out that should be quite a lucrative venture? Or will they dig in their heels?

Geeks everywhere want to know!

Re:should that be...

[sifi]

DVD officially stands for nothing.

From wikipedia

"DVD" was originally an acronym for "digital versatile disc"; some members of the DVD Forum believe that it should stand for "digital video disc", due to the fact that most members of the public believe that DVD does stand for that. Toshiba, which maintains the official DVD Forum site, adheres to the interpretation of "digital versatile disc." The DVD Forum never reached a consensus on the matter, however, and so today the official name of the format is simply "DVD"; the letters do not 'officially' stand for anything.

So now we know...

suddenly?

[wiredog]

MGM bought UA in the 80's. Time bought Warner Brothers a while back too. Nothing sudden about media consolidation.

Re:Bad news

[Portigui]

Crap like this wouldn't happen under a Democratic President.

You're right, major mergers would never happen under a Democratic president. In case those four don't fit your build because they are not entertainment driven, try this one.

These happen regardless of the president in the office at the time.

What bad track record?

[tepples]

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.

Dear Poor Eyesight

[DumbSwede]

Anyone that thinks DVD is "good enough" is terribly short sighted.

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)