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Sony Fakes Blu-Ray Demo?
twasserman writes "Lance Ulanoff of PC Magazine reported on Sony's recent event showing the new VAIO AR desktop with a Blu-Ray drive, observing that Sony faked the high-def demo by using a plain old DVD+R of House of Flying Daggers. Even before the rootkit fiasco, Sony has seemed increasingly desperate, but the general consensus seems to be that Sony is looking pretty sad and pathetic." Update 03:07 GMT by SM: Many users are calling shenanigans on this one since there were two laptops side by side, one with the Blu-Ray demo and another for comparison. Independent confirmation or negation has yet to surface, so take with the requisite grain of salt required when reading any news.
It sounds like Lance Ulanoff from PC Magazine is jumping the gun. According to notebookreview.com: It sounds like Ulanoff was in too much of a rush for a scoop and didn't realize this when he ejected what was very likely the comparison DVD. Don't let the facts get in the way of a good Sony bashing, though.
Trolling is a art,
So, wait a second. We've got some guy on some site that has pictures of a DVD in a drive, and this is somehow proof that Sony faked the whole thing? Aren't there just a few holes here?
1) Sony has the tech, why on earth would they resort to a DVD?
2) Why would they use a DVD+R with no label when they distribute the actual DVDs?
3) Why would Sony use a Verbatim DVD+R?
4) How do we know that machine wasn't supposed to be running a DVD to compare to a computer next to it running Blu-Ray. (Quite coincidentally, there are no pictures of the disc from that machine.)
5) How do we know the picture wasn't staged by someone anti-Sony?
6) Howcome nobody else is reporting on this?
I know Sony's no saint, but this just doesn't make any sense at all.
Dumbass journalist alert!!!
Repeat after me: DVD is not HD.
Would Sony use a burnt DVD for display ? Possible (hey, there's idiot students everywhere), but unlikely. Would Sony use a regular DVD for comparison versus Blu-Ray ? Certainly!
It's not like they have to fake it, they have the drive. They probably have demo content too. I'm pretty sure Blu-Ray video is encoded at a much higher resolution than boring old 720x480 Mpeg-2 DVD. Now maybe if our overzealous reporter had taken a moment to actually examine the demo and see the difference, maybe even chat with the Sony media monkey, perhaps he would have come up with a more valid article. Or maybe he did all that, but decided the notoriety of his lies would be a bigger hit.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
So, I work on Blu-Ray players(not for Sony), take that for what you will.
Aside from the article submitter trolling, I would like to state that Blu-Ray is more than just a laser. It's an entire format complete with a software virtual machine.
When we test content it comes on a DVD-R, we're testing layouts of files, VM access, decoding, video quality etc.
Now I don't know what was at the booth, but it is certainly possible that they were showing off their software Blu-Ray player with the content burned onto a DVD.
Okay, I don't know why our poster thinks engaget is the "general concensus", perhaps he finds their comments section mentally stimulating (click the link in the headline and scroll down).
Regardless if this was faked or not, I don't trust all these band-wagoning fools here or there. All you have to do is read my previous posts that were modded as troll, flame, etc when I predicted a fiaso with Sony's Blu-ray and PS3 releases. People saw big numbers, wanted big numbers, and completely forgot about Sony's failures in the past.
Kind of reminds me of the idiocy supporting support for multiple wars a couple of years ago. People like to believe things and completely turn off the part of their brain that comprehends history's lessons.
I mean, really! Was the demo to show off the technology and the HiDef resolution, or was it to showcase the underlying media technology? If the former, and the story is indeed accurate, then shame on Sony. Ah hell, based on the rootkit, their membership in the RIAA and MPAA, attempted hijacking and elimination of Fair Use rights and right if first sale, it's clear that Sony has no shame.
If it is the latter and they were using a small amount of Blu-Ray-encoded/resolution files on DVD-R media with a custom build designed to recognize Blu-Ray content on a DVD due to what could be a scarcity of notebook form-factor Blu-Ray drives for the demo, then there isn't so much of a problem, except that if that were the case Sony should qualify the demo with "by the way, this is our software technology demo, using DVD-R media for this demo, blah blah blah" just to avoid the negative PR fiasco that you see here.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Amazing, women fake and then complain when their partner sucks. I bet sony will be complaining about how unfair the demo was in a few weeks. :)
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While I think it's fair to have a gut reaction against journalists, I don't think that it is ultimately a defensable position.
Technically minded people are the most arrogent people on the planet. They think that anything that doesn't capture reality in a wholly accurate manner in detail is useless. I mean clearly it should be a crime against humanity whenever someone equates copyright violation to theft.
In the real world people actually want to have current events explained to them in a way that they can understand. Journalists are trained in communication, not in your area of expertise. If the average person is incapable of understanding what a root-kit is, is it better to scoff at them and call them names, or to try to explain it (in technically inacurate terms) so that people with no desire to understand the inner-workings of an operating system can at least have an idea what it was that Sony did? So what if they call it a virus? Sure, it's not technically correct, but it gets the point across. That is after all what communication is all about.
I think that the problem stems from our education teching us that the printed word is an authority. I know I seldom questioned the accuracy of the encylopedia, my textbooks, or even the newspaper before I was in college (or at least until I was an upper-classman in high school.) Now in our particular areas of expertise we are frequently more knowlegable on a subject than the newspaper. We draw the conclusion that the newspaper is worthless as a source of information. What we (as technically minded people) fail to recognize is that the newspaper's goal isn't to be totally technically accurate, but rather to explain what is happening in the world to people who aren't experts.
Journalists have a role to play and it's not to provide technical information. If you are trying to understand AJAX by reading a Web 2.0 article in USA today, it isn't the journalist who has failed, you have failed in seeking out an appropriate source of information.