Disney - Blu-ray's Fair Weather Friend

An anonymous reader writes "One day they're out, the next day they're in. Back in March, Disney CEO Bob Iger seemed to indicate that his company (which has exclusively backed Blu-ray since the start of the high-def format war) was on the verge of supporting *both* high-def formats. What a difference a couple of months of good press for Blu-ray makes: this week, the CEO reversed his earlier position, saying 'the single greatest thing we can do right now is to not waffle, but to be very, very blunt about it, (and) to continue our support of Blu-ray because we sense a real advantage.'"

Comments

Re:Doesn't mention the little problem of broken DR

[ClosedSource]

I don't see how this qualifies as "pushing MS around". The success of the XBox360 and MS isn't really based on whether movie studios support the HDDVD's, but the PS3 and Sony's fortunes are heavily dependent on studios supporting Blu-ray since they are taking a loss on the units to promote it.

Re:I Don't Get It

[qbwiz]

Really, they should support the format they think's going to lose. Then, if that format loses before anyone really bothers to come out with dual-format players, they could sell the people who bought a copy in that format a copy in the other format as well.

Re:Doesn't mention the little problem of broken DR

[iamacat]

since they are taking a loss on the units to promote it

If they make a loss on an $600 unit which is crippled compared to a PC, it's one of the worst corporate inefficiencies in today's world. For the same price, you can buy a used car, pay a rent for a 2 bedroom apartment in many parts of the country, get a decent desktop from Dell or feed 100 children in India for a month. Don't tell me 100 parents can not assemble one playstation 3 in a month.

Re:You gotta wonder...

[donaldm]

It is usually appropropriate to market a product with a different name in a county where the English word can be misinterpreted, still that does not always stop the other country taking offence, real or imagined.

Communication is always a problem when you have different languages and cultures. This is why French became the language of Diplomacy since (I think) 1700's since the language was basically codified such that it was very difficult to misinterpret. Of course that did not stop some of the most horrendous wars in history it just made it easier to tell the other guy you did not like him and why.