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Sony's Obsession with Proprietary Formats
geoffrobinson writes "Jonathan Last, writing for a lay audience in the Philadelphia Inquirer, comments on Sony's push for the Blu-ray format:
'Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it. One of life's more satisfying ironies, however, is that the same fate often befalls those who fixate on history...
...Obsessed with owning proprietary formats, Sony keeps picking fights. It keeps losing. And yet it keeps coming back for more, convinced that all it needs to do is push a bigger stack of chips to the center of the table.'"
Far from being poorly supported, Blu-Ray has wide industry support (over 90 companies) and has the following companies on the Blu-Ray Disc Association board of directors.
* Apple Computer
* Dell
* Hewlett Packard
* Hitachi
* LG Electronics
* Mitsubishi Electric
* Panasonic (Matsushita Electric)
* Pioneer Corporation
* Royal Philips Electronics
* Samsung Electronics
* Sharp Corporation
* Sony Corporation
* TDK Corporation
* Thomson
* Twentieth Century Fox
* Walt Disney Pictures
* Warner Home Video Inc.
Of the major media houses, only Universal Pictures has pledged support for HD-DVD.
HOw is it any more proprietary then Toshiba's HD-DVD (or whomever the designing company is)? This isn't a rhetorical question, I just don't know how.
Both techs seem to be upgrades with associated licensing fees for the tech. Do DVD's lack any licensing fee's to whomever originally designed it?
Hmmm... Pie...
...if it loses. If Blu-ray wins, it's Sony making an absolute killing by developing the standard for hi-def DVD content. The author ignores that, and that the situation he described with Betamax is apples and oranges with Blu-ray (i.e. Sony making deals with dozens of companies to get Blu-ray drives and discs out).
Someone like my mother will go buy a new television - HDTV. She'll upgrade her cable box to HDTV. When it comes time to buy a new DVD player which do you think she'll pick? HD-DVD or Blu-Ray?
Of course she'll pick the HD-DVD because it sounds like it will work with her system.
As for the other Sony products.. I like their hardware. The Clie I have ran circles around the Palm out at the time. I HATED memorystick.
My studio - www.graylands.ca
I bought Sony's original MiniDisc recorders for field recordings. It's a workhorse and is still performing like a champ. When I retired my Walkman (you know, the cassette kind...) after 12 or so years of continuous use, it was not for mechanical reasons.
Ok, so mod me down. I just had to respond to a knee-jerk comment with another.
It doesn't matter to me who wins in the HD-DVD vs. Blu-Ray battle. Why? Because regular DVD's look great! High definition looks better than non-HD, but not THAT much better (especially considering the costs). Sony says the ps3 will cost less than a blu-ray player... that's at $600! You can get an amazing DVD player for $150 with all the bells and whistles. When HD-DVD/Blu-Ray come to market and start to popularize, you can bet plain old DVD prices will drop. From a financial sense, DVD's trump HD-DVD and Blu-Ray DVD. ...not to mention that yargh, I'm a pirate matey, and I like to rip/burn DVD's -- something that'll be nerfed with Blu-Ray/HD-DVD.
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing.
Ya, Compact Disc - developed by Phillips, not Sony. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CD-i I heard it turned out really well.
Enjoy your Karma, after all you earned it. Feel your Karma Joe, feel it burn.
Their proprietary formats recently have probably met the first goal of proprietary formats: feeds revenue into the company. Unfortuantely, they just keep failing to be adopted as defacto standards (for good reasons).
Look at their memory stick. While they didn't succeed it making it the de facto standard for portable media, I'm sure it's worked great for them. Their cameras, PSP, etc all use it and between their manufacturing and licensing I'm sure it helps them out some.
The PSP's UMD bombed for movies, that's a given, but it was a worthwhile "attempt." Personally, I think it was the price that killed it, had they made it cheaper than it would have been worth it for travelling purposes (and only travelling).
Sure, technologically UMB is not the best for gaming because of the power/loading time associated with discs but I'm sure the licensing helps them, but it was a good effort. Storing a lot of data for personal gaming probably doesn't have too many options. Besides, if company X wants to print a game for the PSP they get a piece of the production fee one way or another.
I have a feeling Blu Ray is where it all hits the fan. Unlike it's other more recent proprietary formats which can supplement their own products, Blu Ray can only survive on its own in the wild. It must be adopted as the main video format or else there's just little point in it. Sure if it fails you can still sell Blu Ray burners for Desktops and such, and if PS3 goes Blu Ray then publishers will need to kick a few pennies to Sony.
But in the end, it needs to beat out HDDVD to win and the only way that could happen is if they beat it to market or offered it as a cheaper alternative. I guess we'll see what happens here.
It always seems to come up that Betamax was 'technologically superior' to VHS, and there's always some /.er who posts a refutation. Instead of being redundant, I'd argue that Minidisc was Sony's worst "technologically superior" failure. MD came about a few years before Zip, and had more storage capacity (177 MB versus 100 MB), a smaller form-factor, and the discs were cheaper. However, the software was terrible for audio (you had to record directly into the audio jack) and there was no way to use MD as portable storage until long after the iPod had arrived. There was a huge market for Zip as a middleware between floppy (1.44") and CD-R, and Sony could've aimed MD towards that market and done well (and provided a superior product to those damn Zip disks).
.mp3 and provides hard drive functionality...but too little, too late.
I would hope that Sony has learned the lesson of MD: superior technology without user-friendly software is worthless.
Even when the first hard-disk mp3 players started coming out, Sony 'updated' with the NetMD software. That software must've been the inspiration for the rootkits of 2005, and was one of thoe most user-unfriendly products I've ever seen. Still no data-recording, even though competing players had that function, and an annoying three-copy rule on each mp3. Add this to a proprietary format and you get a terrible experience - no wonder MD never caught on. Even so, the hardware was good - the HiMD update allows
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I think that assuming the upcoming format battle is limited to Blu-Ray and HD-DVD is too simplistic. I would add to the mix: existing DVD and the anti-format: movies via the internet. Exisiting DVD still looks quite strong since the quality improvements gained from DVD to Blu-Ray/HD-DVD arn't nearly as compelling as the gains when moving from VHS to DVD. Movies via the internet is more paletable every day with data rates improving and the cost of storage decreasing.
To me, it looks like a four horse race with DVD leading on the inside lane, Internet gaining ground on everyone else and HD-DVD and Blu-Ray weighed down by Big Media interested and lacking the speed to overtake DVD or outrun unfettered internet access.
UMD could have been successful, if Sony "opened" it up more. I think that's the heart of the matter. It's not that they have propretary formats. It''s just that they cling to them too tightly.
I would have been very interested in a UMD drive form my computer. Small, well protected. Burn my own PSP media. Very cool. It woud And a blu-ray based UMD disc later on (for PSP2) would have been the bomb. And if I could plug my PSP into my TV and watch the UMD like that would be very cool too. I actually wish Sony would retry with UMD, but this time do it right.
T.
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