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In Sony's Stumble, the Ghost of Betamax
QuatermassX writes "In a lengthy piece in today's New York Times, Ken Belson equates Sony's troubles in bringing Blu-Ray to market with their classic fumble of Betamax technology in the early 1980's. He also discusses the influence of Microsoft in the recent advances in the adoption of the perceived underdog in this fight, HD-DVD. The article also summarises the various twists and turns in the development of the format along with some scary numbers (that we're familiar with) on the estimated cost of Playstation 3
From TFA: "There are other industry analysts who contend that Microsoft is simply propping up Toshiba to further its own aims, like countering the PlayStation and combating the spread of Sun's Java software. Nonetheless, Toshiba is happy for the backing, given that the format was written off for dead just a few months ago.
'"There's no doubt that everyone has various agendas," said Mark Knox, an adviser to the Toshiba promotion group. "But whatever their agenda, Microsoft's support has been a huge boon to HD-DVD.'""
OK, so originally Blu-Ray and HD-DVD were going to be very different technologies. HD-DVD was supposed to be a quick and cheap evolution of the existing DVD spec -- small capacity red-laser disks that used advanced codecs such as H.264 to store HD video. Blu-Ray on the other hand was super high-tech high-capacity blue laser disks but still depended on MPEG-2.
But since the war of words has started, each format adopted each other's features. Now they *both* have Blue lasers, both have all the same advanced codecs, and even both have the same copy-protection system, all adding engineering and patent license costs. To top it off, HDDVD didn't get to market early, and thy are both likely to be on shelves this holiday consumption season. In short the differences are now pointless from the consumer's standpoint -- it doesn't really matter which one wins.
It's been speculated that Microsoft is trying to up-the-ante by backing HD-DVD heavily. Either to force a merger between the formats (and patent pools), or to stall the market until computer-based VOD can take over.
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
One analyst on NPR said that a format war ala Beta vs VHS, which causes confusion in the marketplace, can reduce the market by 90%. That is, 9 out of 10 would-be buyers stay away. So, bearing in mind that (1) both formats are copy protected, (2) to the point where the analog signal is being intentionally degraded, and that (3) a Playstation 3 is going to cost in excess of $800, thus giving the ~$250 Nintendo Revolution a huge advantage -- I can see definite positive outcomes of both formats imploding.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
Microsoft and its ally Intel have also convinced Hewlett-Packard to consider making HD-DVD drives for computers. This would give Toshiba an answer to Dell, which remains committed to the Blu-ray format.
If Vista doesn't ship with support for Blu-Ray, how is Dell going to sell these to people?
And when did Dell stop following Intel and Microsoft on technology choices?
Well, sort of. Many companies were involved in that. Looks like Philps was the primary driver for consumer products, then Sony came in.
1978 Philips releases the video disc player
Sony sells the PCM-1600 and PCM-1 (digital audio processors)
"Digital Audio Disc Convention" Held in Tokyo, Japan with 35 different manufacturers.
Philips proposes that a worldwide standard be set.
Polygram (division of Philips) determined that polycarbonate would be the best material for the CD.
Decision made for data on a CD to start on the inside and spiral towards the outer edge.
Disc diameter originally set at 115mm.
Type of laser selected for CD Players.
1979 Prototype CD System demonstrated in Europe and Japan.
Sony agrees to join in collaboration.
Sony & Philips compromise on the standard sampling rate of a CD -- 44.1 kHz (44,100 samples per second)
Philips accepts Sony's proposal for 16-bit audio.
Reed-Solomon code adopted after Sony's suggestion.
Maximum playing time decided to be slighty more that 74 minutes.
Disc diameter changed to 120mm to allow for 74 minutes of 16-bit stereo sound with a sample rate of 44.1 kHz
Interestingly the first time I ever saw a CD was on Star Trek (Original) and that was a repeat aired in the early 70s.
:T:R:A:N:S:
On PSP (available at Best Buy). I've also saw 80mm DVD versions of a few movies on sale at Sam's Club around Xmas; I haven't looked since, so I don't know whether it was just a trial balloon, or whether they're available anywhere else.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
Now Sony is a "content" company with a division that makes hardware.
A division that can't think first about how to make the hardware great but has to think about (and re-think, and think about it some more) "How can we make sure that this new piece of gear can never, ever, under any circumstances, be used to violate copyright in any conceivable way and any that aren't?".
While they were doing that instead of designing cool new hardware Apple came out with the MP3 version of the Walkman.
Because of that the Mini-Disc never became what it could have been.
Because of the content side worrying about copyright instead of cool hardware they screwed up a bunch of people's computers and convinced many of them and many others to avoid any future purchases of Sony hardware.
I suspect a hadware only company that worried about copyright about as much as the creators of Betamax did could have already had a DRM-free Blu-Ray product on the market by now.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Every. Single. Time. that Sony has introduced a proprietary piece of hardware, it has failed miserably. The only exception, to a certain extent, was the PSX... except that by comparison to its competition at the time, it was the open format, with incredibly loose requirements for developers. (as compared to Nintendo's lingering draconian measures, and Sega's general insanity at the time)
Every other device they've put out there, they've tried to lock people in to their format, and make sure they pay at both ends, and have fallen on their faces.
Bush: He's Liberal in all the wrong ways.
Who gives a flying crap about what they want to sell you, go buy a external or external kit and join the future now. Put what ever you want on it now. Do some drive swapping with friends or mail it to your buddy in South Dakota now and enjoy a "upload" rate faster than anything you could afford.
People have become too focussed on the smoke and mirrors that they ignore the useable more logical option right in front of them.
Same DRM? Sony plans to include self-destruct of hacked players. I haven't heard that for HD-DVD.
We've all been waiting for one format to fail (which probably won't happen for another few years or so), so we will be able to go out and get a player and media without fear it would be useless a year later. This strikes me as a small (as in still very possible and practically equally likely for Sony to take the lead without some miracle taking place) push into HD-DVD's direction as the future format. I hope Blu-Ray will come out on top though, since their capacity would probably be more 1080p friendly (Although I am not sure an HD-DVD cannot hold two hours of 1080p footage). I'm more curious about what the generation after that will push as the reason for upgrading (since Blu-Ray and HD-DVD max out the HDTV/ATSC picture quality, and any more then 7.1 speakers would be too many physical speakers).
In undeveloped countries, the consumer controls the market. In capitalist America, the market controls you.
Playing movies on PCs isn't that useful. PC play of HDTV movies will be so locked down that it won't be worth doing. The MPAA would prefer it if you couldn't play movies on PCs at all. Microsoft's position thus really doesn't matter all that much.
Interesting theory, but wrong on its face. All the codecs in question (MPEG-2, VC-1, H.264) are fully and publically documented. Picking one over the other wouldn't help or hurt piracy.
Well, it has been suggested that one of the reasons that Blu-ray used MPEG-2 is that they were assuming they'd get the 50 GB dual-layer format working much easier than they had, so they could use the least efficient codec, meaning any rip from the disc would be unweildy in size. Which is really Sony shooting themselves in the foot, since they don't have 50 GB out of the lab yet, nor non-MPEG-2 authoring tools, so they're going to struggle to get long movies onto single discs.
In practice, AACS DRM is very well designed. I wouldn't assume any deCSS like solution for it will happen. On the flip side, there is Mandatory Managed Copy, so there will be a legal way to rip for Media Center use.
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I mean, how hard is it to add the e at the end, geniuses.
Perhaps if you researched a bit you'd discover that "Blue Ray" is a generic term with respect to trademarks. The original name was to be "Blue Ray" until they discovered you can't trademark it. Thus the removal of the "e" to make a term that can't be pilfered by competitors like Intel's 386, 486, etc.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Yes, they take up considerable more space. You're getting disks that are 1080p. This is around 3X the space required today. So your typical movie will take around 20-25GB or more. Not to mention the extras will be 1080p so you'll likely have the same amount of disks.
Of course, the subset of people that can actually benefit from 1080p is marginal right now and probably for the next 7+ years. Mainly because hardly anyone actually has a TV that can handle 1080p. Hell, most people still don't have a TV that can handle HD.
If I was a betting man I would argue that our current DVD format has at least 10 years of market dominance; it will hold more than 80% of the market for the next 10 years.
It's cheap, has evolved and people understand it.
"If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer
The industry joke about Sony since they decided to get into content after losing the Betamax war is that:
"Sony is less than the sum of its parts"
What's the opposite of synergy? disynergy? The stuff the hardware division does to help the content division hurts hardware more than it helps content, and vise versa.
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