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No Love For The Blu-Ray
macnificent7 writes "Market analysis firm Cymfony has combed through blogs and discussion boards, and finds online consumers aren't thrilled about Sony's Blu-ray DVD technology. Many users are still bitter about the limited availability of the PS3 because of the Blu-Ray. Also many are skeptical of the Blu-Ray because of Sony's past formats that did not succeed."
Remind people Microsoft support HD-DVD!
Yep, just made a search on Omgili about Blu ray DVD technology - and the first result was "Screw Blu-Ray"+ technology
Many other interesting discussions as well:
http://www.omgili.com/omgili.search?q=Blu+ray+DVD
BluRay is dead. We hate it. So Sony's marketing division must do something. ;)
My idea: Sony must change the technology's name to something funny like "BROD: Blu-Ray Of Death"
-- Rastignac was here.
HDVD is also a competing format and that family of companies is just as intransigent as the Blueray in refusing to compromise in the creation of a single format. So intransigence is on both sides here. Secondly I don't understand why people oppose this format because of prior format problems. Judge this one on its merits. Thirdly I try to look at what are the technological advantages of one format over another. Of course cost and availability of DVDs matter a lot too. But I never heard that mentioned as a negative yet for blue ray. Its not like there are such a plethora of movies on one format and not in the other yet. As far as betamax goes, it was the better technology. We would have been better off had it won. Bottom line: This one is way to early to call.
How many ways are there to say it? Sony is stupid.
You would think it would learn from its mistakes. It tried to push out its proprietary format with Betamax, and it failed miserably. (I know, I know, "superior format" and all that, but it doesn't change the fact that VHS won the battle of the formats in consumers' living rooms.) It tried to push out its proprietary format with the MiniDisc, and it failed miserably. It tried to push out its proprietary format with UMD, and it failed miserably. Now, it is trying to push out its proprietary format with Blu-ray.
How many miserable failures is it going to take for Sony to realize something that, at least to me, is pretty freakin' obvious and stupidly simple: people do not want to get locked into proprietary formats controlled by one company. The thing that's so maddening is that when Sony does embrace non-proprietary formats, they have wild success. Their Walkman products sold like there was no tomorrow. Their CD and DVD consumer electronics have always been well-respected.
It's more than a little ironic, I think, that while Sony is trying desperately to convince people that they should be buying a PS3 for the Blu-ray drive, in fact, people are avoiding the PS3 specifically because of the Blu-ray drive! I mean, I don't know many people who actively don't want a Blu-ray drive, but it is definitely, at least indirectly, responsible for their woes:
I could go on listing items, but you get my point. Everyone that said and signed on with, "I have an idea, let's use the PS3 as a launching platform for Blu-ray!" should be fired, because they just don't get it. People will buy a game console that happens to also play movies, but they're not going to be force-fed a whole new movie format just to own it. And I may end up eating crow for saying it if history proves me wrong, but I think that when all is said and done, people are really going to resent Sony imposing such a high premium on their gaming for something that has nothing to do with gaming. I really think that five or ten years from now, people are going to look at Sony's die-hard pushing of Blu-ray at the expense of its consoles as the thing that killed its dominance in the gaming console market.
It's too bad, too. Nintendo, while clever, just isn't set up to own the hardcore gamer market. And while I'm not big fan of Sony, I'm certainly not a big fan of Microsoft, either. Still, it looks like Sony is bound and determined to hand Microsoft the console victory crown on a silver platter with this foolishness.
wii hatessss it!
Most people are wondering how long their VHS tape player will last and if they can transfer all their tapes to DVD or hard disk.
Asking them to buy a DVD replacement when they've only just bought a boxed set of Friends DVDs is asking a bit too much of the marketplace.
Right. So (most) bloggers have a strong dislike for Sony and everything they do. How is this news? This is akin to having an analysis of Slashdot postings concluding that most Slashdotters dislike Microsoft. As it turns out, neither bloggers nor Slashdotters give an accurate picture of the demographics of regular consumers. And given that people with a grudge against some idea or company -- in this case Sony -- are always the ones who cry out the loudest, I'm actually surprised that the "analysis" didn't come out even more slanted in HD-DVDs favour.
And what's the deal about 21 percent of the online consumers disliking Blu-ray because Sony included it in the PlayStation 3? I can see several reasons why poeple might resent Blu-ray, but this is definitely not one of them. The only conceivable explanation I can see behind such reasoning is peoples aversion against anything that is Sony.
Betamax may have been the "superior format", but not in all ways. You could record six hours on a VHS tape long before you could do anything similar with beta. A 2 hour tape meant you could get most (but not all) movies, and very few sporting events. 6-hour tape meant you could leave that sucker in there. You could also tape a daily show for a whole week and watch it on the weekend.
Those little technical differences gave VHS an edge in the home market. Plus, Sony's excluding Porn from Betamax really screwed them.
Yeah, no love for Sony on this one. Everyone wants to bring up the M$ is teh evil argument, but come on: Sony's trying use their dominant market position as leverage into another sector. That's one of the reasons why people hate M$. Hate the game, not the players.
The Word proprietary format is a lot different.
For one thing, people didn't have a choice between the Word proprietary format and another format that was agreed upon by the rest of the word processing industry. People only had a choice between the proprietary Word format and the proprietary WordPerfect format. Picking one over the other didn't really make much difference.
Second of all, early versions of Word were rather handily compatible with opening WordPerfect documents, so if one chose the proprietary Word format, they weren't locking themselves out of other formats as well.
Third of all, it's not like there aren't other formats out there that people use. For document publication, I think that HTML and Adobe's PDF formats are way more popular. People chose the Word proprietary format mostly for using their own proprietary software.
Fourth of all, after all these years, we're finally seeing an effort to create a new non-proprietary format for documents to be saved and loaded in. It's just going to take a little while for it to catch on and get popular since other formats have had a couple of decades of head start.
... and for one simple reason: the name. As one hip youngster pointed out to me, the name "HD-DVD" definitely lacks a cool factor. And it's such an ungainly mouthful: "Aich Dee Dee Vee Dee", yech. Nopes, "Blu-ray" rolls off the tongue much nicer.
Seriously, if there is no huge gap between the two systems in terms of available titles or choice of equipment, then Sony might just win on simething as silly as the name alone.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
I'm going out on a limb here, but maybe because it's not true?
Some of the early players didn't recognize or support region coding. That doesn't mean that the format is incapable of it. And trust me on this, it is unfortunately going to be with us for a long time to come.
HD-DVD? Blue Ray? EVD? (last option chinese format)
Last time I checked, we were living in the digital age.
This means that at least I won't be buying *anything* where the bits are locked to the media, and non movable - and I'll enlighten, family, relatives .. ok, in fact anyone who wants to know - that if they do, they will be buying their media collection all over again when new formats arrive.
It will be the "Video is dead - buy movies you already own again on DVD, chuck your LP's and get the same stuff, again, e.t.c." situation again.
Better quality as an argument to upgrade? Nahh, think about it.... People will watch almost anything in bad choppy webcamquality, just think about YouTube!
"If it can be thought up, there exists at least one person trying to make it happen for real" - Phil
Isn't the decreasing cost of increased broadband bandwidth and increased hard disk space will eventually make HD disc formats obsolete?
Nobody in the non-geek world knows what they are, so nobody cares.
Sony insisted on using a proprietary format for flash memory modules: the "Memory Stick." My Vaio has a port for them. Those memory sticks are the reason I bought a Canon SLR camera instead of anything made by Sony.
Having experienced the agony of a failed flash memory module while far from home, I would gladly pay more for a module with a better track record, but the lack of interoperability is fatal, especially for flash modules. My USB memory card reader will accept half a dozen formats, but not Sony's. I do not understand why they insist on proprietary formats when they clearly affect primary hardware sales.
"Will future ages believe that such stupid bigotry ever existed!" -- Ivanhoe
There's always the possibility the Chinese will come in and eat everybody's lunch, and given their much greater tendency (compared to the US government and others) to tell the various IP oligopolies to go fuck themselves, I'm all for it. I'd be perfectly happy to have a Chinese EVD player/recorder for my HD material, to go along with a Chinese Dragon Dream MIPS box running linux.
Open Document format is supported by OpenOffice.org's Writer very well. They moved to it from their native format as the default a while back. KOffice and others support it too. Softie stil refuses to do so! Even a plugin for it made by someone else was made to not work from what I remember. Microsoft and Sony have a dream to lock out competition through proprietary formats. To me, learning the Open Source way follows steps like:
0) Belief in Communism (as practiced), MNC's, and Wealthy Over-lords. Here is Sony. Clearly Sony's rootkit showed they believe they operate above the law. Similar for monopolistic practices elsewhere.
1) Blind belief Sony and Microsoft are the leading creators of technology (the norm). For examples simply look at the recent discussion on Microsoft research team where many praised them despite Google's clear leadership and Microsoft's clear copy-ovation and buyout-ovation rather than innovation.
2) Thinking softie and sphoney are needed to keep the world running. This is evident in wanting to dual boot, running a doze Lose32 API layer SW, or emulate.
3) Realise the overlords are not the innovators. Once you realize this then you turn off your Windows box for good. No good can come of worshiping at the feet of the ultra-wealthy. Their interests are not those of yourself or any other commoner.
Sony is no different than the Plantation Owners of the Old South. Many slaves escaped to freedom. Softie and Sony slaves have a underground railroad to freedom as well. The greed of the English Kings allowed many indentured servants from the old world to become bona fide citizens by owning land because the King of England said serfs could become tree farmers after years of indntured servantdom as he wanted more longleaf yellow pine as needed to build his Navy. Once the serfs became citizens (voting and legal protection) then they never were to return to serfdom and, thus, won the freedom we all apprecate in the Revolutionary War. Likewise, Open Source pushed technology from the grips of the ovelords. Proprietary formats are one simple way the overlords hope to stop innovation. I personally believe they will fail. We can only hope our country will lead the innovation rather than see it happen elsewhere. The ability to look up land ownership in a ruling class stifled Europe for millenia and the ability to lock up innovation has stifled technology for a decade.
The strong legal system in the USA is a relic. The lack of international respect for copyright and patent law leave the USA at an unsurmoutable disadvantage on the world market. Either the Chinese come clean and pay up or the USA will have to eliminate such practices. Sony and others cannot both hope to run their business on illegal grounds (china et al) yet use legal grounds as foundations for their business in law abiding areas (usa etc).
Open Source is one innovation which removes the problem. Open Source is a return to before the Legalism Era when innovation was made for the sake of innovation rather than the sake of making competition impossible. The patent system of the USA is designed to disallow innovation in the USA; thus the antithesis of what it is supposed to be. Sony is so far from what is happening in the ground swell of Open Source that one can easily foresee Sony being cut down to size within a decade. Microsoft as well. The monkey business with Novell should be a nail in the coffin for the belief they had any redeeming contribution to make to innovation and technology. Seriously, does it take Billions in profits to write a Word Processor or come up with a 50G burnable disk? No. Look at OpenOffice, KOffice, GO (GnomeOffice), PlataSoft, and more. I suspect any of 1000 or so engineers and physicists in this country could come up with a 100G burnable disk within a year for under $500k. Sony's activity in the market is simply a reflection that the men who run Sony believe they are a class above those who buy their products. They are paid to innovate, not stifle innovation. Like the VHS, the cheapest and most u
Expect Freedom.
"I refuse to support any format where the playback device ever has to tell me "Operation not possible". Skipping an ad or just getting to the bloody movie, for example."
Agreed: I'm so tired of sitting through several minutes of bloody trailers and anti-piracy ads _ON A DVD I'VE BOUGHT AND PAID FOR_ every time I put it in the damn player. At least on my PC I can skip over that crap.
As was the DVD player in its day. So what? Prices for players will fall through the floor in the next few years. Doubtless the PS3 will sink in price too over time.
The Blu-ray drive is hard to manufacture
As I'm sure the DVD player was hard to manufacture in its day. Doesn't mean that it is hard now. The component that was (and probably no longer) makes the Blu-Ray hard to manufacture is the blue laser diode. This is a component shared with HD-DVD. So Blu-Ray's teething troubles are also HD-DVD's teething troubles.
There wouldn't be a so-called "format war" which has turned into, basically, Sony vs. the rest of the world.
Except it isn't Sony vs the rest of the world. Blu-Ray has more backers than HD-DVD. Blu-Ray also has many more players in the hands of consumers thanks to the PS3. The reality is that unless MS stick an HD-DVD into their XBox 360 or the PS3 tanks it is hard to see how HD-DVD can possibly win.
People will buy a game console that happens to also play movies, but they're not going to be force-fed a whole new movie format just to own it. And I may end up eating crow for saying it if history proves me wrong, but I think that when all is said and done, people are really going to resent Sony imposing such a high premium on their gaming for something that has nothing to do with gaming.
The lower PS3 is only only $100 more that the premium XBox 360. For that $100 you get free online access, a blu-ray movie player, more content for your games, bluetooth, HDMI, web browsing, video playback (from disk), region free games, Linux support and a bunch of other bits and pieces. $100 is not much more for all that. Personally I don't think what the 60Gb version offers justifies another $100 expense unless you need wi-fi.
Now even if you think it is too expensive, consider Blu-Ray for what it offers games. The 360 & PS3 output in HD and need 4 times as many polygons, textures and other graphical content to cover the screen. Which means 4 times the disk storage. Then you have HD FMV at 10x NTSC, localization, sound effects and so on. Microsoft chose to constrain their device to DVD-9 discs. That means they get 2 times the disk storage capacity of the last gen for content that needs at least 4 times the space.
Obviously many games won't fill DVD-9 so it makes no difference but those that do will have to span multiple disks. Or they'll slash the content. Or they'll put episodic content up for download (for $$$). Already Blue Dragon needs THREE DVDs and it's likely that other games will need it too. What will it be like in 3 years on from now? Will "please insert disc 2" become a familiar sight half way through 360 games? Even if MS chose to put an HD-DVD into their XBox 360, they can't abandon DVD-9 for games because of the 8 million non-HD-DVD consoles out there.
Sony put themselves in a world of hurt by forcing Blu-Ray into the PS3, but that is because it has a massive potential payoff. Not only is it good for games, but every PS3 is a Blu-Ray player to boot. So Sony scores sales of BD movies, as well as sales of HDTVs to watch them on. The downside as you say is production issues and increased cost. Assuming the Sony can overcome the obstacles it will make a lot of money, most of which wouldn't have materialised if they had stuck with DVD.
Video2000 was even better anyway. 8 hours, 4 hours per side (yes, it had two sides) in standard recording quality. Woot. Later Philips even made a 16 hour tape.
r _DATA
Video2000: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_2000 . Check out some of the reasons it lost out - only one was technical, slightly lower resolution.
Betamax, by the way, may have lost in the war for the consumer as well, but step into any broadcast facility and Betacam - derived from Betmax - will be all over the place. Those moving on to other formats are predominantly moving on to HDDs, not Blu-Ray OR HDDVD.
Though those not ready to move over to HDD may move over to another SONY product, the PDD, which is very closely related to Blu-Ray;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional_Disc_fo
And lastly (completing my SONY-fanboy image, I'm sure), MiniDisc was a complete failure? If that's an absolute truth, how come they're still selling brand new products all over the place, between music and data storage (1GB)? Sure, it's dying.. but complete failure? puh-lease.
All that said, it's a shame that the industry is so willing to milk the consumer. Given half a reasonable choice, I think most Slashdot users would rather skip the Blu-Ray/HD-DVD war and wait for the war between discs that store nearer to 200-500GB per disc to be decided instead.
Sony arrogance has lost me as a customer for life, and all the friends and family who rely on me for tech support as well. Not that they give a crap about some random guy in Minnesota who maybe goes shopping with five or six people per year, but I can list off perhaps $10,000 in sales in the last two years that specifically did not go to Sony due simply to my opinion of them. At least four cameras, three big screen TVs and a handful of cell phones adds up to a few dollars.
Maybe that's what the web needs: a list of "lost sales". Imagine an honest (ha!) tabulation of the purchases of everyone who specifically rejected Sony products because of the company. It might surprise me to see how small the list is, or it might surprise Sony to see how badly they've judged us.
John
Many users are still bitter about the limited availability of the PS3 because of the Blu-Ray. Also many are skeptical of the Blu-Ray because of Sony's past formats that did not succeed.
And many think that Sony is run by a bunch of arrogant asshats that treat their customers like idiots and theives. Let's not forget that one.
We are all just people.
Any discussion about liking one format more than the other because of managed copy, or region coding, or pretty much anything is silly because both formats:
1) Support the same codecs
2) Use the same copy protection system (AACS).
The ONLY difference between the formats is physical, as in space availiable or in the electronics neeed to play the disc.
Well that's not quite true, there is one software difference - HD-DVD uses a menu system specificaiton sponsored by Microsoft (and thus requires paying Microsoft a per-player fee) vs. a different format for Blu-Ray. If you enjoy giving Microsoft money for every player you buy, then HD-DVD's your format of choice.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Blu-Ray and HD-DVD did try to come together on a compromise at one point - but the sticking point is that Microsoft demanded the standard include the Microsoft menuing language - every HD-DVD player has to may Microsoft a fee for it's use. Most of the companies on the Blu-Ray side did not want to have to do that.
After all, consider that apaprt from the menuing system all the other software is identical - same copy protection (AACS), same codec support (including the Microsoft codec).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Not that i could if i tried. I work in a photo center and the only time i sell a Sony camera is when someone comes in and asks for it specifically, and thats only if i cant talk them out of it. Most people will ask general questions about the brands and simply on technical merits i cant reccomend Sonys. Between their CCD issues and LCD issues in the past and then the fact that their cameras arent even competitively priced with what i consider the lower spectrum of cameras. Regarding the price range they are in, i feel that you pay a bit of a premium for the Canon brand name (as well as nikon, but both are quality) i'll reccomend them over sony if someone wants something a bit more powerful than a Kodak. It also doesnt help when people ask about what kind of memory cards they'd need for the cameras they're considering and i tell them that every camera we have except for the 3 Sony models (we dont cary fuji or olympus, but i still hate them too, XD cards are pefect at getting stuck in the SD card slots on the kiosks by idiot customers) take one type of card. Then i point over to the memory card display and we have 1GB SD cards for $20 and the cheapest (non sony brand) 1GB memory stick is $45. Then the sony brand memory sticks cost $.10 less for half the space of the lexar and san-disk ones... God we spend all day at work bitching about sony and now im at home bitching about them. Sony can DIAF, im gonna go play with my Wii.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
I always thought those anti piracy ads were moronic. You bought the disc, which surely means that you haven't pirated it. The pirates would definitely strip those shit out of the pirated version, which also means that the real pirates won't be seeing those ads. There must be a higher meaning to their logic, but I guess I'm just too limited in my reasoning to understand.
However I do feel warm and fuzzy inside that people with mental disabilities can actually find a job in the entertainment industry.