Sony Paid Warner Bros. $400 Million to Go Blu-Ray?

eldavojohn writes "How much would you pay to be the leading video media technology right now? Is $400 million too much? Sony didn't think so and this article speculates that's how they won the Hi-Def format war. 'With billions of dollars in global sales at stake, experts had predicted the Toshiba-Sony battle would go on for years - not unlike the 1980s battle of videotape formats between VHS (Matsushita) and Betamax (Sony). That war lasted a decade, leaving Sony battered and humiliated. So how did this epic battle come to such an abrupt end? The answer lies in part with the bruising Sony experienced with Betamax, which, like Blu-ray, was also the better product on paper.'"

Comments

free market?

[timmarhy]

Now all those woffling on about free market eat your own hats.

Re:free market?

[FauxPasIII]

No they won't. For that crowd, bribery, collusion and cartelism are all part of the free-market experience, and they like it just fine! Just so long as the gummint doesn't butt in on all the fun.

Re:free market?

[Captain Splendid]

Beat me to it. This is why I can't support unregulated capitalism (cue downmods from the /. libertarian brigade).

Here's a thought exercise for you guys: Wipe the slate clean, everybody starts from zero, Adam Smith's extreme younger brother is in the hizzy.

Now, exactly how many seconds pass before two or more similarly skilled people start pooling their resources to reduce cost/corner the market? You'd go from 0 to Microsoft in no time flat with this method.

Re:free market?

[nurb432]

Free-market is not without its troubles, but its still a far better solution then letting the 'state' run things.

Re:free market?

[Citizen of Earth]

This is why I can't support unregulated capitalism

Not to worry — there is no such thing.

Re:free market?

[Captain Splendid]

the 'state'

It's spelled 'we, the people', dumbass. The 'problem', such as it is, isn't the system, but your particularly shitty implementation of it.

Re:free market?

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no free market depsite what is claimed. The Tucker automobile story is just one example of how "unfree" the markets really are... and that is only one example

Re:free market?

[Anonymous Coward]

Now all those woffling on about free market eat your own hats. OK, genius, your proposed alternative is...?

Re:free market?

[nurb432]

In a perfect world, yes 'the state' would be 'the people'. However, we don't live in a perfect world by any stretch of the imagination. Any form of government by its very nature degenerates, regardless of its so called 'implementation'.

Re:free market?

[hcmtnbiker]

So you take un-cited and speculative numbers from a random journalist? Werner Bros told why it dropped TotalHD, it was they pitched their hybrid-disc to other studios and none bought it. Even saying they're real, $400 million dollar bids are virtually meaningless, Werner Bros needed to be on the winning side, not one that just gave them money, even with the 400 million they could have taken a much larger hit then that if they chose wrong, that's why they wanted the hybrid-disc in the first place. Secondly, fta...


The answer lies in part with the bruising Sony experienced with Betamax, which, like Blu-ray, was also the better product on paper.

Why do they say that? Because Blu-Ray can hold more data? How about the $/Gb ratio, which HD-DVD holds a much higher number. Second how about which is a simpler technology, remember simple can be a good thing, HD-DVD wins that hands down. HD-DVD uses concentric circles where as Blu-Ray uses an outward spiral, that's why it's able to edge out in terms of size. The problem is writing/reading a disc like that, and doing it fast is extremely hard both on the hardware and software required. That's part of why blu-ray would always be more expensive then HD-DVD.

My hope is that this format is completely destroyed by the rise of computers and the internet sales market, which I think will happen. The adoption rate is still very small, and if the movie companies have any idea what they're doing at all they're going to move into the internet distribution market. Bottom line though, both formats suck, when i think back to the IBM floppy being surpassed by the Sony Compact Disk, is see real improvement, nearly 3 orders of magnitude difference in storage capacity. Then I look to DVD possibly being ousted by this new format, the Blu-Ray disc, and it's not even a full order of magnitude between a dual-layer dvd and a Blu-Ray disc. Sure there was DVD upping CD, but everyone still uses CDs. DVDs are more of a tweener, you put on them what you cant quite fit on a CD. Blu-Ray is another tweener, but it's for DVD, which is already barely over its next competition the CD. And yes, my argument is strongly based on the disc's viability for computer usage, but just think about it, they really arn't a huge improvement over the regular DVD, they're just barely good enough to give you true high-def, locking them in to serve only one purpose really well, if that.

Re:free market?

[Sciros]

Without some regulation, what happens is the gap between the haves and the have-nots increases even further. This isn't good for the economy of a country as a whole, by the way.

There's nothing insightful about your post; it's typical anarchist rhetoric, bound to no historical precedent or foresight.

Re:free market?

[Captain Splendid]

What kind of crap is that? Of course we don't live in a perfect world, that's not the point.

The point is, when you've got retards and war profiteers running the ship, the problem isn't with the ship.

And just because you can't attract somebody for the job over the level of "drunken wretch" doesn't mean you should give up and quit like a fucking pussy.

Any form of government by its very nature degenerates,

So what you're telling me is you can't be arsed with basic maintenance? That's your problem ,not mine, you lazy bastard.

Re:free market?

[hal2814]

Why? Sony made a smart business move wooing their competitor's biggest supporter with money. Toshiba lost out but if WB was the only thing keeping them alive, then it wasn't like their planning was exactly stellar. They deserved to lose at that point. WB doesn't care one way or another as long as their content sells. They don't really have a horse in this race even though they've acted like it. They could easily abandon BluRay tomorrow. The only party that didn't get what they wanted out of this deal was relying on another company's non-binding agreement to keep their entire product line alive. If you're that upset about it, then feel free to release your content on some other format. The free market lets you do that.

Re:free market?

[mweather]

My pot dealer says othwerwise.

Re:free market?

[cHiphead]

I think a better question would be how and what can be done differently, on an specific level, not just an answer of " 'the state' is bad and we need to change it".

Cheers.

Re:free market?

[Penguinisto]

the 'state'

It's spelled 'we, the people', dumbass. The 'problem', such as it is, isn't the system, but your particularly shitty implementation of it.

...shitty implementation of which system?

We got to see at least three major (and differing) implementations of Marx' setup. The number of deaths from it climbs up into the hundreds of millions, all told, and in places like North Korea, still climbing at horrific rate. Problem is, too many people are eager to claim their actions in the name of "the people", but the reality ends up being just the opposite. I think the USSR lasted approximately three years before it stopped being about "the people" and started being about "the state" (and yes, there is a distinction).

Capitalism (as practiced) isn't exactly a perfect system either (far, far from it). Quite frankly, it can outright suck at times. OTOH, it does have a tendency to keep its body counts down to a much more acceptable level.

Socialism? Cool... now who gets to fund it all when the majority of a populace figures out that they can do just fine without actually having to work for what they get? Ayn Rand may have been a nut case, but she does have a point - even economics has an ecosystem that requires each part of it to function well enough to survive. Humans are too damned lazy in nature to be eager about providing excessively for others in a system where they objectively don't have to.

Now here's the weak link in your arguments as per the free market... Collusion only works for as long as the people are willing to fund it. If not enough people buy Blu-Ray gear to justify the costs going into it, it eventually dies. If something freer, easier, and cheaper comes along (pick at least two) Last I checked, a lack of Blu-Ray gear won't prevent me from eating tonight, nor will that lack prevent me from drinking clean water, or having a nice warm environment in which to sleep tonight. This in turn leads to apathy among the larger population, which in turns leads to...

...fact is, the problem isn't the system per se - the problem is that too few people actually give a damn enough about forcing a change in the nastier incidents within it, at least not until the impact of any aspect affects them personally.

/P

Re:free market?

[Captain Splendid]

I think a better question would be how and what can be done differently, on an specific level, not just an answer of " 'the state' is bad and we need to change it".

That's just how these rat bastards want it, though. Pilfer and pillage, exhibit the rotting remains with a triumphant smile: "See, we've been saying for ages it's a piece of shit!"

It's working, too. Maybe if Obama gets in, I'll be convinced that there is a chance for improvement, but he's as proto-capitalist as the rest of them, so I'm not holding my breath.

Re:free market?

[Blinocac]

I honestly don't see how this story in anyway says anything negative about an unregulated freemarket.

Re:free market?

[twistedsymphony]

What I'm wondering is why you aren't modded higher.... you summed up my thoughts exactly.

Re:free market?

[TheLuggage2008]

Speaking of quotes not being entirely correct...

"In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is king"
- Desiderius Erasmus

Brainy Quote

Re:free market?

[Captain Splendid]

Collusion only works for as long as the people are willing to fund it.

Not a very good argument. Using MS as a handy example, that collusion could go on for decades.

Re:free market?

[Actually, I do RTFA]

Collusion only works for as long as the people are willing to fund it. If not enough people buy Blu-Ray gear to justify the costs going into it, it eventually dies. If something freer, easier, and cheaper comes along (pick at least two)

I know this is true in theory, but hell, even communism works in theory. Capitalism holds itself to work in practice as well as theory. In practice, can you point to one example where collusion failed and a pick-2 solution arose? I can point to several where the government interveined, but not where the market forces did so.

Re:free market?

[Sancho]

The idea is that competing products weren't allowed to compete on the merits of the product--rather, they were competing based upon who could grease the most palms.

In this case, however, it could turn out to be better for the consumer. If there hadn't been these bribes, who knows how long the format war would have lasted? I bought into HD-DVD and I think that it was the superior (for the consumer) product, but without these dirty tricks, the format war could have gone on for years longer, and any customer who wanted to upgrade to HD would have to either buy two separate players (or one combo player which is much more expensive and which doesn't include all of the features of any one player) or relegate themselves to only buying movies from studios who support that format. Worse, it might be a trend that the studios realize they could push further--imagine if each studio had its own format (as you see with DRM downloads, in some cases) requiring its own player?

That doesn't mean that allowing bribery, collusion, etc. is better in the general case.

Re:free market?

[timmarhy]

"Sony made a smart business move wooing their competitor's biggest supporter with money"

and your ok with sony taking away your choice like that? sheeple.

Re:free market?

[DrSkwid]

You should read Adam Smith, he warned against unregulated capitalism.

Re:free market?

[Anonymous Coward]

Collusion only works for as long as the people are willing to fund it.

Not a very good argument. Using MS as a handy example, that collusion could go on for decades.

Ergo, people are willing to fund it (even if you're not one of them). Let me quote your trolling self...

dumbass

Re:free market?

[Abcd1234]

We got to see at least three major (and differing) implementations of Marx' setup.

I hate to break it to you, but no, we didn't. Last I checked, Marx wasn't a big advocate for totalitarianism.

Re:free market?

[DrSkwid]

> it does have a tendency to keep its body counts down to a much more acceptable level.

Or rather, it confined it's holocausts to the 18th & 19th century

they'll be back

Re:free market?

[uniquename72]

and your ok with sony taking away your choice like that? sheeple. It was a choice given to us by Sony to begin with, so why not? If they had admitted defeat and folded, they would still have been taking away the choice. Would that have been better?

And "your" is spelled "you're" when it's a contraction. fucktards.

Re:free market?

[JavaBear]

On the other hand, had MS not bought Paramount/Dreamworks last fall, the 'war' could have ended with Blu-ray as the victor anyway, after all HD DVD weren't fairing all that well before Paramount went exclusive for HD DVD.

I agree that HD DVD were the better one from the perspective of the users (Weak DRM and no region codes) but in the longer run that may also have hampered the technology with studios trying to drag their heels a bit, until even worse DRM schemes were introduced on the download services.

Re:free market?

[DragonWriter]

Free-market is not without its troubles, but its still a far better solution then letting the 'state' run things.

That's a nice bit of ideology; in practice, the policies sold as "free market" amount to letting a narrow group, backed by the coercive power of public institutions acting to protect their narrow interests under the flag of "property rights", etc. This is especially true of "deregulation" efforts, which usually are, in fact, efforts which recast regulations into the form preferred by the leading firms in the regulated industry, and serve largely to protect them from competition and protect and reinforce their dominant position.

There is a reason that the biggest advocates of so-called "free market" policies are exactly the people that the theorist to whom "free market" advocates like to pay lip service, Adam Smith, warned must always be particularly distrusted when advocating policies because they can be counted on to do so out of narrow interests that will almost invariably be opposed to the public interest, organizations of merchants and manufacturers in particular industries.

Re:free market?

[SkyWalk423]

I am still fairly libertarian.

Right now, I think 90% taxation on anyone with an income (including corporate provided "benefits") over $5 mill a year is about right.

??????????

Re:free market?

[ArikTheRed]

Any sufficiently powerful corporation becomes every bit as degenerated as a government. In a perfect world, Rand would be right - but it's not, and she isn't.

Re:free market?

[Anonymous Coward]

What's more - and what both anarchists and anarchocapitalists fail to realise, or possibly ignore - is that the government is not REALLY special in any way, either. If you wiped the slate clean and started over from zero, it wouldn't last long and you'd have a government again - one that's not restrained by such things as a "constitution" and the like anymore.

Somalia is a good example of this.

Re:free market?

[timmarhy]

there's is a world of difference between killing the competition using cash instead of defeating them on their merits, to simply withdrawing from the race. don't even PRETEND it's the same. for a start if they pulled out it might open a space for a new competitor, instead now we have nothing.

"And "your" is spelled "you're" when it's a contraction. fucktards."

seriously, no one else gives a fuck.

Re:free market?

[visionsofmcskill]

Your close to the banana, but not quite there.... theres a variety of complicating issues with this.

The first and foremost (for any system of extremely progressive taxation) is real tax havens, I dont mean illusary non-citzen ones... but the very real threat that a society that implements extreme taxation on its resource leaders will litterally suffer expatration. People would swear off their american citizenship and be gladly welcomed into ameniable nations (and would apply for citizenship there... which would be granted on account of their resources).

Remember... a really rich person would gladly pay taxes at 50% in france or where-ever over 90% in the USA... even if it meant giving up their citizienship.

Youd need to implement some pretty heavy handed anti-emmigration and/or foreign income protectionisms that would be very oppresive and likely ineffective to pull it off.

I personally have often contemplated similar methods... such as an income cap... or other such devices... where-in there is that same similar form of control... i also thought maybe instead of capping or taxing away the money we could instead force charity/non-profit for excess income.

So a person who makes over 5 million a year must invest 90% of his/her additional earnings into charitable foundations (revieed and approved by the government as being real and socially beneficial) and the like... but of their choosing. In this way a person could still spend their earnings according to what they think is best (funding charities that do the thing they believe in), but wouldnt be outright loosing all their "hard earned" cash to thrid parties who may use their money against their intrests.

Even that system would be hard to prevent flight of capitol with.

Considering everything... without a worldwide enforcement.... it would be damn hard to implement anything too aggresive... as wealth is only usefull to an individual during their lifetime... i think the path of least resistance is to slowly but surely become much more aggresive with our inheritance taxes.

Fundementally the drive to excell and suceed is almost always balenced with the reward.... which is most of the time implemented through money. We dont want to sap that drive.... so let people become as rich as they can be within our current (or somewhat modified) progresive tax system.... but lets remove inheritance... lets say that a person can give no more than a set amount to their prodigy (10x the median household income per child)... and that the rest (upon death) must be given over to the charities of their choosing.

This would be a system that once again, gives the right of choice to the earners of money... allows them to keep and have as much as they can earn post taxes... during their lifetime.... allows them to invest freely and widely and spend like crazy if they like (and may encourage it as death will part them of all).... ensures a significant but not unfair inheritance to all their children and allows them to keep their money even past their life in causes that they believe in and brings honor to their name.

Think of it as a highly incentivized philanthropy.

Re:free market?

[Emperor Cezar]

Why avoiding the cops? Sounds regulated to me.

Re:free market?

[phoenix321]

Now imagine a state-run bureaucracy had to develop an optical storage medium. Just. Imagine.

Ideas for the state-sponsored requirements:
- archival grade 100 years at room temperature
- compatible with all existing hardware sitting *somewhere* in the offices in some backwater county office
- mil-spec version available and compatible with all other equipment
- export restriction to everywhere outside North America.
- support for people with all kinds of disabilities including but not limited to complete acephalia and worse.
- complete control over privately created media or at least the ability to track yet-unspecified *offenders* (think of the children!)
- fair bidding procedure, following a strict rule involving not more than 5 different three-letter agencies
- the procedure must be rigged so that the company of a member of the currently ruling party wins
- development cycle must take less than thirty years to complete
- a 50-percent price increase by the government-licensed contractor is only allowed three times during that period
- developing contractor can employ the Army and Some Other Agency to guard their offices. Operating somewhere in the desert on a base that does not appear on any map and is blocked from Google Earth is acceptable.

The perks:
- if the product fails, you can still bill the Government
- if the product succeeds, the taxpayer will pay you, if they like or even ever heard of your product or not
- if the product succeeds, the Government will buy equipment from you for a hundred years and *then* upgrade their remaining legacy stuff anyway.

The dangers:
- if the incumbent loses the next election, you're history as well.
- your work is too good. Somehow your leading researchers are changing to Some Federal Research Agency or disappearing otherwise.

Re:free market?

[homer_s]

So two people voluntarily made a transaction and you don't like it because it goes against your morals and what you think is "correct"?.

So you agree with the crowd that wants to ban gay marriage?

Re:free market?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ooh, command line fun! I have one for you to try:

$ exit

Re:free market?

[DragonWriter]

We got to see at least three major (and differing) implementations of Marx' setup.

Well, no. What are usually characterized as implementations of Marx's setup are solely the various major derivatives of Lenin's setup, which replaced Marx's requirement for an advanced capitalist society with an active, politically mobilized, proletariat aware of and leading the restructuring of society with a narrow activist elite vanguard leading in the name of the proletariat as a shortcut, because there was no prospect of the place Lenin wanted to implement revolution meeting the prerequisites in Marx's theory anytime in Lenin's lifetime. (The major implementations here include, of course, Stalinism and Maoism and their derivatives.)

There are lots of other adaptations of the ideas that Marx laid down, incorporating elements both of Marx's critique of capitalism and his prescriptions for alternatives to address those critiques, that are usually ignored. But these other adaptations (including many of the forms of democratic socialism in place in Western Europe, and some movements that replace the state as the principal locus of worker control of the means of production so which are not principally models of government) are usually not held up by those who want to criticize the supposed essential and universal failure of "Marx's setup" even though, while they are radically different than Marx's setup, they are often no more radically different from that setup than Leninism and its descendants are. Ironically (or perhaps deliberately), the opponents of "Communism" buy into the propaganda of Leninism (that starts with the name "Marxism-Leninism") as thoroughly as do those who have claimed to adhere to Lenin's views.

Re:free market?

[FauxPasIII]

> So two people voluntarily made a transaction and you don't like it because it goes against your morals and what you think is "correct"?.

Corporations are not people.

Re:free market?

[petermgreen]

10x the median household income per child
If you mean the median annual household income then that is rather on the low side, even a normal house could easilly be worth more than that in some areas.

Also I bet people would just find ways to move thier kids and thier wealth out of your tax system.

Re:free market?

[That's Unpossible!]

What are they, buildings?

Re:free market?

[DragonWriter]

Last I checked there's a difference between economic policy and political philosophy

There really isn't; economic structure and political structure are intrinsically inseparable. There are uses, at times, for analytically pretending that there is a wall between them and that they can be examined in isolation, just as there are uses for all sorts of fundamentally inaccurate assumptions in simplifying analysis of various problems, but in reality they both fundamentally concern the same thing and they are intertwined at the most fundamental level. Economics is about the distribution of goods and services. Politics is about the distribution of power. But power is fundamentally the ability to get people to provide you the goods and services you desire: it is, precisely, the same thing as "wealth".

Now, in many systems (particularly, the kind of democratic capitalism the West aspires to), there is an effort to try to have, at the same time, virtually unlimited and unregulated concentration of "economic wealth" while maintaining an equal distribution of "political power". Inevitably, also, this effort fails because the two quantities are inseperable. Each is simply a different way of referring the capacity to get other people to do what you want.

Re:free market?

[That's Unpossible!]

Now, exactly how many seconds pass before two or more similarly skilled people start pooling their resources to reduce cost/corner the market? You'd go from 0 to Microsoft in no time flat with this method.

Yeah, well how many more seconds pass before we also get Apple, Google, Yahoo, etc...?

What exactly in your scenario is supposed to make me afraid of unregulated capitalism?

Re:free market?

[DragonWriter]

Any sufficiently powerful corporation becomes every bit as degenerated as a government.

This should be unsurprising, since corporations have no natural existence but are, instad, creatures of government and extensions and applications of the power of government.

Re:free market?

[Xonstantine]

Raich vs Gonzales says otherwise.

Re:free market?

[mOdQuArK!]

I'm really not sure what the solution is other than draconian taxes on the "winners" who get too big.

Right now, I think 90% taxation on anyone with an income (including corporate provided "benefits") over $5 mill a year is about right. Making 5 mill a year is a phenomenal income .

I think there is some historical data that indicates at the time that the U.S. economy was expanding the most, the rich WERE paying about 90% marginal tax bracket. I'm not sure about the $5mil threshhold you were mentioning, but I think at that time the rich didn't whine about how much tax they had to pay anywhere as much as they do today.

I think a lot of people wouldn't be so annoyed about paying taxes if they thought they were getting their money's worth. As an alternative to the existing tax system, I thought an interesting approach might be instead of paying your taxes directly to the government, you are required to pay the same amount in money, but you get to choose which organization(s) you pay the money to.

The government's role would be to 1) audit the various organizations to make sure they aren't running some kind of scam, and 2) make sure that the "taxpayers" are not trying to maintain control of the money somehow (by adding conditions or by being personally involved with the destination organization somehow).

Such a system should improve peoples' sense of civic involvement, and if they really want to make sure their money isn't wasted, they'll be encouraged on doing due diligence on any organization they want to donate to. I also suspect there will be a big tendency to donate to local organizations.

Unfortunately, I'm fully aware that this kind of system would be a non-starter with the current political system, since it removes control over where all the money goes from the hands of the politicians.

Re:free market?

[Captain Splendid]

What exactly in your scenario is supposed to make me afraid of unregulated capitalism?

Well, for MS fanbois, I guess it would be heaven ;)

Re:free market?

[Sancho]

Sure, no doubt. There was bribery on both sides, and it's hard to say who would have won in either case (there's speculation that studios were "bought" before the Microsoft deal, on both sides.)

Re:free market?

[Anonymous Coward]

TWO copypastas in about 5 posts? Wow, hopefully this isn't a new trend..

Re:free market?

[Anonymous Coward]

Corporations are paper "entities" that permit the pooling of resources from multiple people into a single "account" that can then own assets. In the US (and many other parts of the world), this is taken a step further by "limited liability" corporations that sever the connection between resource-provider and the corporation in one direction (the "risk"), generally founded on the idea that the result of progress is incapable of paying for the costs of progress, that is: "you have to break a few eggs to make an omelet, and I'll be damned if I'm going to pay for any eggs when I make mine".

Re:free market?

[TooMuchToDo]

Actually, in the US, corporations have all the same financial rights as people. They can own things, they can make and lose money, etc. The only things you can't do to a corporation is jail it (although you CAN jail their officers if they're within your jurisdiction).

Re:free market?

[TooMuchToDo]

Yeah, you're not the only person who took issue with his hypocritical statement.

Re:free market?

[91degrees]

Government organisations have been responsible for PAL, NTSC, mains electrical power and frequency, shipping container sizes, weights and measures and hundreds of other technical standards.

A lot of them were developed by private industry first and then adopted by the standards organisations, but many would have been one of many competing standards without government backing as the standard.

Re:free market?

[name*censored*]

I think a lot of people wouldn't be so annoyed about paying taxes if they thought they were getting their money's worth. As an alternative to the existing tax system, I thought an interesting approach might be instead of paying your taxes directly to the government, you are required to pay the same amount in money, but you get to choose which organization(s) you pay the money to. Interesting idea, but there are tonnes of necessary government organisations that are unpopular - in fact, a free-market minded person would say that there should be no popular government organisation, as anything that is wanted by the public should be on the free market. Think of how funding the police might work in such a scenario - the areas who would need the largest police presence would be the one least able or least likely to fund it, due to disillusionment or animosity people who live in high-crime areas would feel towards the police. The people from low-crime areas would say "If we're giving the most amount of money, we should have the best protection" - even if they didn't need it. And there are some government organisations, while although mildly popular, require vast amounts of money [education, health (even in the US, believe it or not), military, NSA/FBI/CIA, public works (roads/etc)] to function effectively. If this system came into being, I can quickly see America turning into the country with "the best and most football stadiums and TV stations per capita, but nothing else going for it".

Having said that, I DO like the idea, but I just don't see that people are going to donate to causes that they can't see tangible benefits from, even if there are such benefits.

Re:free market?

[Anonymous Coward]

And that is why pp wasn't modded higher

Re:free market?

[homer_s]

Corporations are not people.

Who runs them? Giant lizards?

Re:free market?

[DragonWriter]

and your ok with sony taking away your choice like that?

Well, aside from the fact that all parties involved have denied that there was a bidding war, and the only indication that there was one is the article's unnamed "analysts", even if one believes the article as absolutely accurate, you are left with Toshiba trying just as hard to take away the choice, the only difference is that Sony was able to pony up a better deal (whether that was more money, or a better combination of money and Blu-ray's existing market suceess, or whatever.)

Re:free market?

[Anonymous Coward]

Capitalism (as practiced) isn't exactly a perfect system either (far, far from it). Quite frankly, it can outright suck at times. OTOH, it does have a tendency to keep its body counts down to a much more acceptable level.

Capitalism just outsources the body count.

Re:free market?

[Penguinisto]

In practice, can you point to one example where collusion failed and a pick-2 solution arose?

Actually, yes:

The Movie Industry.

No, seriously, the movie industry. Around 1911 or so, the entire movie industry was controlled and locked by Edison and a heavy collusion with manufacturers of motion picture equipment. Every bit of movie equipment (including film(!?), cameras, lighting rigs, and projectors) was to be rented, period. In response, a group of filmmakers ran off to California, built their own equipment, and proceeded to make movies. The result is Hollywood and the MPAA. While we can all appreciate the irony of the MPAA being founded by "pirates" who were "stealing" Mr. Edison's "Intellectual Property", the point is that competitors managed to break a collusion-heavy industry to come up with cheaper, faster, and better movies... a product that the public was more than willing to pay for. Edison eventually had to simply give up trying to contain them.

Want another? How about...

The AFL/CIO, WRT the US Auto Industry.

Crazy-sounding, I know, but true... the auto unions had a dominant lock on American automobile manufacturing. By the late 1960's, they were pretty much dictating terms to every major US maker out there, and the disproportionately high salaries of auto workers were being passed on as a higher cost to the consumer. Then the Japanese came along with Nissans, Datsuns (Mitsubishi), Toyotas, and Hondas. The Germas showed up with Volkswagens and Audis. The OPEC embargo of 1974 caught the domestic big boys off-guard, while the Japanese and Germans were more than ready to take advantage of it with their existing engineering and dirt-cheap costs. It was such a powerful shift, that the gov't actually intervened to bail out Chrysler at one point. It also broke the Teamsters' back... hard. Now they are forced to play nice, with nowhere near the power they once had.

Okay, if you don't like those two, let's try...

Microsoft.

But, they're still a monopoly, you cry. Yes, for now... and in spite of a practically non-existent governmental punishment (c'mon, seriously... it wasn't jack and didn't even slow 'em down), the likes of Linux and Apple in the marketplace are now climbing at astronomical rates, as people choose to take their money elsewhere. It was certainly enough to get Dell interested in selling Linux gear (and on the business level - HP, and IBM, and...) Yep - it'll take time; exactly however long it takes for consumers to stop funding them and put the money elsewhere.

'course, there is no perfect example, because there is no perfect situation. Capitalism itself is highly imperfect. Someday, hopefully someone can come up with something better. Until they do, it's pretty much the best we got. Ain't much, but it beats everything else we've tried as a species.

Reg'ds,

/P

Re:free market?

[immcintosh]

Short answer, yes and no.

Longer answer, there are plenty of things we don't allow people to decide to do together. For example, kill each other. Doesn't matter one bit whether it's in private, voluntary, or not, it's simply not allowed. Likewise, things like bribery and collusion are regulated against because the majority find them unacceptable and detrimental to the general public welfare. Until somebody comes up with a consistent, coherent, universal ethical system (and nobody yet has), we're stuck with "mob rules" on a case by case basis when it comes down to it. Either that or barbarism and anarchy. Unfortunately, if the majority find gay marriage unethical (I certainly find no such thing), then we're stuck with that until and unless they become more enlightened.

That is... unless you've got a Philosopher King in mind for us?

P.S. Corporations are not people anyway. Here's the difference: people are assumed to have all rights naturally, and laws are made to restrict those rights. Corporations are assumed to have no rights naturally, and laws are made to grant those rights. Big damn difference.

Re:free market?

[Penguinisto]

Or rather, it confined it's holocausts to the 18th & 19th century

I wouldn't be so sure... Mao managed to wipe out (roughly) 100+ million of his own people during the "Great Leap Forward"... over 10% (at the time) of China's entire population. The USSR comes in at a somewhat close second, and only had a peak population of ~300m during the 1980's. I'd have to go dredging numbers (population vs. deaths during a given Purge or Gulag expansion period, and esp. during the starvations in the Ukraine), but I'm fairly willing to wager that as a percentage of the whole, it was a whole lot safer (odds-wise) to live in 18th/19th century England than it was to live in 20th Century Russia.

It's one thing to get killed due to willingly working under unsafe conditions and the like. It's another entirely to get executed or sent to die in a slave labor camp, just because the neighbor down the street reported you as a 'counter-revolutionary' to the local authorities. You're still perfectly free to walk away from the latter situation with at least a reasonable chance at continued survival...

Now as to whether or not free and open Capitalism would ever get to the point where millions are killed off due to malice on the part of those at the top of said system? Remains to be seen. OTOH, it's a lot harder to pull off than if you were in, say, Stalin's boots...

/P

Re:free market?

[chris_eineke]

Here Mr Stallman, here Mr. Torvalds -- have some money to write a better Operating System for us.

Re:free market?

[Aereus]

Game companies sign deals all the time to make certain games exclusive to a certain console. I guess they are in collusion as well?

Re:free market?

[mweather]

Screw the cops. They'll just give you a slap on the wrist. It's the IRS he's worried about.

Re:free market?

[Anonymous Coward]

and your ok with sony taking away your choice like that? sheeple. wait, Sony is shutting down the pirate bay?!

Re:free market?

[Headcase88]

I guess you missed this (emphasis mine):

However, I realized in my 30's that the libertarian philosophy breaks down when anyone gets much over 100 times the resources of the average citizen

From my POV it's a close call. There are different types of checks and balances for this kind of thing and using taxes to do so, while not libertarian in itself, doesn't stop someone from being largely libertarian just because they think it's a good idea.

It's like saying someone isn't conservative just because they support gay marriage.

Re:free market?

[ckaminski]

Part of why I like the Fair Tax idea. Instead of income tax, you pay a 23% sales tax. The goal of money, after all, is to be spent. You can save it forever, tax free, but when you die, your grandkids are going to spend it, and it's going to get taxed. Why tax inheritance, savings (interest), dividends, profit taking? Just tax at point of sale.

There are, arguably, some serious issues with the implementation, but if you want to keep money flowing, tax it at Point of Sale. It will always keep flowing. It may pause during a conversion, but bills still need to be paid, people will still want their cheap foreign imports and entertainment... the economy will go on.

Re:free market?

[Maximilio]

you reference the body count of communism, but you haven't counted the external horrors US capitalism has wrought on an unprepared World.

proxy wars, exploitation, starvation, environmental devestation . . . the body count of capitalism is high enough, thank you very much. It's just that as Americans we are safely shielded from the consequences of it most of the time -- we're not ignorant, that's for sure. We know that to have oil we must prop up grotesque dictators in the middle east.

So don't get too cocky about Communism's "body count." You're standing on a thin scrim of ice over a fiery hell of consequence.

Re:free market?

[kf6auf]

Because it makes more sense to tax people according to their ability to pay taxes. Explain to me why people below the poverty line should pay more tax than they do now while the wealthiest pay less. Also explain why you should tax food at the same rate as luxury automobiles -- or maybe this "Fair Tax" which is actually a tax of about 30% (if 23/100 of what you pay goes to the government, then it's about 30% more than what it costed before tax) should have different rates for different types of goods. Or if you really want to get into a nice discussion, explain why people below the poverty line should pay tax.

Re:free market?

[Maximilio]

A national sales tax is a highly regressive tax plan that penalizes those who have essentially no savings and I could care less if the wealthy move out of the US. The hoarders of wealth aren't providing any value to the nation shipping their cash off to the caymans anyway. We don't need them. We need people who participate in the economy and contribute their fair share. So high taxes work regardless of the result.

Re:free market?

[shoemilk]

Yes, now all your neighbor has to do is report you as a terrorist and it's off to G'tmo for you!

Re:free market?

[Courageous]

Jail... well, no. Convicted of a crime? Yes.

C//

Re:free market?

[homer_s]

Your view is that the will of the majority should prevail without any concern for individual liberties. I disagree. But at least, you are consistent. What I find objectionable is the arbitrary (and in my view, entirely self-serving) manner in which people support one right (for e.g., gays marrying) while opposing another right (e.g., corporations buying each other) when the two rights are fundamentally the same.

That is... unless you've got a Philosopher King in mind for us?

All I'm saying is, "live and let live". You are the one supporting mob-rule.

P.S. Corporations are not people anyway. Here's the difference: people are assumed to have all rights naturally, and laws are made to restrict those rights. Corporations are assumed to have no rights naturally, and laws are made to grant those rights.

So, you'd have no objection if this had been a deal between two S-corps? How about Sub S Corp? LLCs? Proprietorships?
An intelligent person would look past all these artificial monikers and see that these are all people coming together in various ways to exchange goods and services. These are meaningless terms that are artificially made up.
In essence, you are saying that something is illegal because it is illegal.

Big damn difference.

Only for people with limited intellectual capacity.

Re:free market?

[Courageous]

The Fair Tax isn't really 23%. Go read up about it, carefully, as in what is the thing being taxed, and how does it differ from other sales taxes in the way it is collected. The lie will make you really angry.

Anyway, I'm with ya. Sort of. The right kind of sales tax would be better than income taxes. But before we leap off this bridge, let's think it through. Suppose we switched to sales taxes. Are you aware that the "Fair Tax" considers all services to be taxable, except for a service when it is a wage? What's the economic impact of that? How many outsourcing companies will go out of business overnight, because suddenly insourcing is so much cheaper? And before you laugh at all the evil outsourcing companies, let's think this through even further:

For the government, a government employee (wages, no tax) or a contractor (services, 30% tax)?

Not sounding so good now?

So, while the theory of sales taxes sits... moderately okay with me when I think about some of the Evils of the income tax... just take care. Massive changes to the tax system cause massive economic disruptions. Beware the consequences.

Personally, I am more in favor of the LVT (Land Value Tax), where the unimproved value of the land only is taxed. What's not to like? Very very hard to dodge this tax. Satellites, dontcha know. And the improvers are rewarded, but the speculators who hoard vast tracks... they are given incentive to not speculate, but rather improve.

Joe.

Re:free market?

[Anonymous Coward]

Who runs them? Giant lizards?

Limited liability corporations are like admitting that you're going to have to break a few eggs to make an omelet, but then insisting that you shouldn't have to pay for the eggs. When you complain about people begging the government to protect them from themselves and their choices, that's the corporation you're arguing against. When you complain about parents who can't be bothered to raise their kids right, and demand that everyone else pay for their mistakes, that's the corporation you're complaining about. When you complain about people who don't take responsibility for their own finances and wind up looking for a handout, that's the corporation you're whining about.

Enjoy your "socialism for the elite", can't wait to see the next round of bank bailouts coming up, somebody's gotta pay those executives to run the company into the ground, might as well lube the ride with my tax dollars.

Re:free market?

[bdjacobson]

Without some regulation, what happens is the gap between the haves and the have-nots increases even further. This isn't good for the economy of a country as a whole, by the way.

There's nothing insightful about your post; it's typical anarchist rhetoric, bound to no historical precedent or foresight. To mitigate that, all that needs to be done is decrease the barrier to entry to nothing but hard and smart work. IE, get rid of the financial risk (which is also a risk to your life, future family, etc). Then, ensure there is good education available.

Then if nobody rises to the top, you know it's because the people suck and not because they are afraid of taking on $100,000 in loans to get that PhD. If the people suck, well then you're SOL.

Re:free market?

[TooMuchToDo]

Coming to a conclusion of someone's guilt is useless if you can't enforce some sort of penalty.

Re:free market?

[Just Another Poster]

I hate to break it to you, but no, we didn't. Last I checked, Marx wasn't a big advocate for totalitarianism.

Yes he was. Observe his attack on what he called "bourgeois freedom"; freedom of speech, religion, and property:

http://www.gmu.edu/departments/economics/bcaplan/museum/marframe.htm

Re:free market?

[WilliamSChips]

To mitigate that, all that needs to be done is decrease the barrier to entry to nothing but hard and smart work And how do we do this again?

Re:free market?

[SanityInAnarchy]

I actually preferred the days when a player might go down to $99 at Wal-Mart.

Competition is good.

Standards are good too, but only when they are open standards, not controlled by those with a vested interest in one particular implementor.

Also, at least some studios were doing both.

The rest of your argument is pretty much sheer speculation.

Re:free market?

[bdjacobson]

Oh I'm not saying it's doable, I'm just saying I think that's definitely what needs to be done.

Re:free market?

[Courageous]

When a corporation is "convicted" of a felony, it is generally dechartered, whereby it loses its LLC standing. This is the death penalty, as far as a corporation is concerned. Tis why Arthur Anderson is gone. Is very rare. More often they go after the execs instead. Or the scape goat, if you're cynical.

C//

Re:free market?

[SanityInAnarchy]

Yeah, well how many more seconds pass before we also get Apple, Google, Yahoo, etc...?

In three seconds, they appear, and in two more, they're either dead or acquired. Remember, nothing's stopping this Microsoft from hiring hitmen.

Re:free market?

[mOdQuArK!]

I don't think it needs to be all or nothing - the approach could be applied incrementally for those services where people don't really agree that the government should be the one providing the service, such as the National Endowment for the Arts, public radio, certain types of education, a lot of public basic & applied research, roads, chamber of commerce activities, public parks & recreation areas, etc.

Other services that people can agree should be basic services, such as police, fire, basic utilities, military, etc., can still be mandated.

I think there'd still be a lot of argument about whether stuff like food & drug safety, fighting pollution, public health care & higher-level education falls into this category (a lot of people probably feel that those should be required services of a "civilized" society), but perhaps the ability to dictate where at least SOME of your tax monies goes will help ameliorate the bad feelings that you get by being forced to finance some programs that you don't agree with (versus the current situation).

There would have to be some systemic process to make sure that programs on the "mandated" list are regularly reviewed to make sure that someone hasn't slyly pushed something from the "choice" list to the "mandated" list - perhaps setting a high voting bar (2/3?) that needs to be renewed on a regular basis for items to stay on the mandated list.

Also, as far as people choosing to donate towards football stadiums & such - I don't think that is going to necessarily be the result. There might be some stupid results at the beginning of such a plan, but I think as people are able to observe the results of how their money is contributed, they will get a pretty good idea of what parts of their local organizations need to be funded by how much to get the best results.

In the case of people hating police departments, as you mentioned, I don't think it's so much a case of people hating the idea of law and order, but more of a case of people not trusting the local police department to be looking out for their best interests. If the local police department's funding depends on keeping the local population happy, somehow I don't think you'd hear quite as many stories about cops abusing citizens as you do now. With local decision-making for funding, you might also have the ability to have "competing" police departments, with the department providing the better service being awarded by the local citizenship.

Like I said, though, I think the whole idea is a non-starter from the viewpoint of the current political system, since it takes a lot of control away from the politicians about where the money gets to go.

Re:free market?

[TooMuchToDo]

Very true. But the difference is, if I get the death penalty, I'm dead (let's exclude afterlife possibilites and whatnot). With a corporation, if it's dechartered, you simply send incorporation papers in and reincorporate (possibly in another state or even country).

Re:free market?

[Wes Janson]

His police/politician customers beg to differ.

Re:free market?

[MacWiz]

In this case, however, it could turn out to be better for the consumer.

Yeah, because making a choice gives us a headache.

Re:free market?

[Courageous]

Go ahead and reincorporate. All those assets, though, they must be sold off with proceeds to the shareholders and creditors and so forth. You understand, a corporation undergoing this sort of thing is going to be having its executive leadership paralyzed as well... being a defendant does that. Anyway.... are you speculating, or did you have a specific instance in mind?

C//

Re:free market?

[TooMuchToDo]

Simply speculating. Personally, I can't stand that corporations do a large amount to protect those who do tons of bad.

Re:free market?

[Courageous]

Fair comment. Large corporations of course, are mostly owned by anonymous shareholders who haven't done any bad. It's the execs who are usually doin' the bad. Adam Smith's little invisible hand, not as originally envisioned sirrah. Smaller companies of course, plenty of "players" there, I'm sure. I've even known a few...

Anyway, I've thought about this more fully. Here's what I think. I think that a dechartered company is sold by something analogous to a bankruptcy court. I'm just guessing here, but if you were a shareholder, and a company you had shares in suddenly had its LLC status removed, meaning you as a shareholder could now be legally held liable for all acts of the company, would you not insist? You'd want an unimpeachable court to do it, you wouldn't even want a vote (your vote could get you sued!, you'd want it done quick, legally, and "judicially". I'll guess: this is the law.

You a gamblin' man? :-)

C//

Re:free market?

[Sancho]

Obviously there's a lot of speculation involved.

I never saw HD players hit $99 anywhere. The best I saw was about $130 for HD-DVD. At that price they're almost certainly taking a loss--which is another manipulation in order to gain marketshare. I did see some High Definition SD-DVD players (upscalers) for $99 about a year ago, which many people confused for HD-DVD players.

Competition is almost universally good, but I don't think that competing formats are good for the consumer. When you have to buy extra parts for your widget to work, and when parts for competing widgets are incompatible, you end up with what are essentially mini-monopolies. This is where open standards come in. Competing implementations of the same standard are good.

Also, at least some studios were doing both. I didn't say or imply otherwise.

Re:free market?

[CodeBuster]

So what is your point? That two people should not be able to enter into a private contract for the exchange of goods and services simply because you don't like what is being bought or sold or because "they would make too much money"? Who gave you or I the right to interfere with those two people? Provided that they are not trampling on the Bill of Rights by engaging in their transactions then I have no problem with that and neither should you. The world is a f***ed up place because nosey people, religious conservatives on the right and tax and spend liberals on the left, go around poking their collective noses into the personal affairs and business of other people when, frankly, it is none of their damn business. There are very few transactions that should be outright prohibited (i.e. no WMDs, slavery, contract killing, and the like) and other than those limited prohibitions, by mutual agreement of rational people everywhere, there should be no undue encumbrances or restrictions on private commerce.

Re:free market?

[AmigaMMC]

In the United States, Corporations are "people" - that has been defined by the Supreme Court a century ago.

Re:free market?

[CodeBuster]

in practice, the policies sold as "free market" amount to letting a narrow group, backed by the coercive power of public institutions acting to protect their narrow interests under the flag of "property rights", The reason that narrow groups, special interests if you will, are able to do this is because of the government NOT the free market. If there was limited government there would be no government to take over and use for purposes of coercion. I often find that when people are complaining about the free market they are in fact complaining about something which is the indirect or even the direct result of government incursion into the free market. They falsely attribute perceived wrongs to the free market or market failure because they cannot or will not believe that the root of the problem lies in poor government policy and not the marketplace.

This is especially true of "deregulation" efforts, which usually are, in fact, efforts which recast regulations into the form preferred by the leading firms in the regulated industry, and serve largely to protect them from competition and protect and reinforce their dominant position. Again, it the existence of extensive and powerful government agencies which allows this regulatory capture and rent seeking to occur. If the market place were REALLY de-regulated and private property rights actually ENFORCED by the courts then you would not have these problems.

Adam Smith, warned must always be particularly distrusted when advocating policies because they can be counted on to do so out of narrow interests that will almost invariably be opposed to the public interest, organizations of merchants and manufacturers in particular industries. Which is why government should be strictly limited in size and scope. If there is no power or right of government to step in and arbitrarily meddle in the marketplace whenever it feels like it then there will be no need to be constantly "on guard" against people taking over the apparatus of government for their own economic ends because even if they took it over it would have very limited ability to interfere in the marketplace and any takeover attempt would be easily spotted by the people due to the small size of that government.

Re:free market?

[iminplaya]

The 'problem', such as it is, isn't the system, but your particularly shitty implementation of it.

...fact is, the problem isn't the system per se - the problem is that too few people actually give a damn enough about forcing a change in the nastier incidents within it, at least not until the impact of any aspect affects them personally.

Maybe a second opinion is needed, but I think you just said exactly what he did. Though it is possible that your version is "safer" for the whole family to read.

Re:free market?

[OakLEE]

I think there is a general misunderstanding of the wealth gap and its significance. The fact that there is a widening gap is not bad per se. The decade of the 1990s saw one of the largest post-WWII increases in the wealth gap any, yet I'm pretty sure most people here that was a pretty bitchin' time.

The key lies not in the existence of the gap, but the reason for its existence. Increases in the wealth gap are totally immaterial if they are accompanied by a general rise societal welfare. For example, if the average income of a person in the top 1% increased from $1 million to $2 million, while the average income of someone in the middle 50% increased from $45,000 to $90,000, the wealth gap has increased between these two percentiles has nearly doubled, but the person in the 50th percentile has still seen his quality of life nearly double (assuming money is an adequate proxy).

If on the other hand, the increase in the gap is due to the fact that one part of society is benefiting from wealth creation and economic growth disproportionately, then that is when societal problems start to creep up, as the poorer segment of society feels cheated or taken advantage of.

Of course, the same logic also applies to attempts to decrease the wealth gap. Decreases resulting from policies that encourage the poorer segments of society to benefit from a larger portion of economic growth, are more desirable that merely confiscating wealth from the rich. For example, I would argue that policies that make it more affordable for lower income people to go to college are a much better than merely raising marginal tax rates on rich. In the 1960s, we had marginal rates that varied from 70% to 91%(!). These rates were so high that they actually encouraged high income individuals to create businesses that actually lost money (i.e., negative economic growth) to reduce their taxable income.

People must remember that economic growth and wealth generation are not zero-sum games. A widening of the wealth gap is not prima facie evidence that the inequities in society are becoming imbalanced, and merely trying to shrink it for its own sake is not sound policy. After all, there is the old Russian saying that the one thing the Soviet Union did well was making everybody equal, equally poor.

Re:free market?

[spectecjr]

No they won't. For that crowd, bribery, collusion and cartelism are all part of the free-market experience, and they like it just fine! Just so long as the gummint doesn't butt in on all the fun.

Speaking of the Gummint butting in... whatever happened to the DOJ's investigation of claims that Sony was deliberately sabotaging the HD-DVD consortium?? (In 2004, no less).

The EU also fined Sony, Fuji, and Maxwell for price fixing... a sign of things to come?

Last July, the EU started investigating why Blu-Ray was winning, wondering "whether improper tactics were used to suppress competition and persuade the studios to back [Sony's] format."

*shrugs*

Re:free market?

[Whiteox]

Sony Compact Disk It's Philips Compact Disk in partnership with Sony.

Re:free market?

[DavidShor]

Yes. These deals are bad for the general economy, and society would collectively be better off if such deals were banned.

Re:free market?

[Anonymous Coward]

Mature anarchism is the realization that the government is irrelevant. It is just another organization.

Re:free market?

[DavidShor]

"Now, exactly how many seconds pass before two or more similarly skilled people start pooling their resources to reduce cost/corner the market? You'd go from 0 to Microsoft in no time flat with this method."

Read some game theory, such agreements are heavily unstable. It's a lot like the prisoner's dilemma, each person has an individual incentive to break the monopoly.

If you only have one or two smart people, it might hold up for a while, but beyond that, it will break up near instantly.

Re:free market?

[DavidShor]

"Explain to me why people below the poverty line should pay more tax than they do now while the wealthiest pay less."

I don't care much about overall tax rates, but you can fix that by having the IRS cut a lot of checks at the end of the year. On the other hand, it is very easy to see that marginal tax rates(which actually get used for decision making) should be higher for poor people, and lower for rich people, as differing marginal tax rates creates dead-weight loss for society.

"Also explain why you should tax food at the same rate as luxury automobiles"

Why shouldn't it be? Consumption is consumption. If you want to ensure that anyone can buy food, than expand the EITC, but if we do that, can you give me a reason that we shouldn't tax the two goods at the same level?

"or maybe this "Fair Tax" which is actually a tax of about 30% (if 23/100 of what you pay goes to the government, then it's about 30% more than what it costed before tax) should have different rates for different types of goods."

No, it shouldn't. That would heavily distort the economy, as well as create administrative nightmares.

And skip quibbles about the Fair Tax. The Fair Tax is a lunatic idea dreamed up by people with a fanatic hatred of the IRS. That said, replacing the income tax with a consumption tax would be a very good idea.

We don't need a sales tax for this, or even a VAT, instead, suppose that all of your money was automatically deposited in an IRA-type account in holdings of your choosing(Stocks, bonds, CDs, whatever). This account is monitored by the IRS, and your withdrawals are automatically taxed at a flat rate. Checks are sent out in order to preserve whatever degree of progressiveness that you desire.

The effects of such a policy would be exactly the same as a national sales tax, except that enforcement would be a lot easier, and we would be able to recycle the IRS.

Why bother with such a thing?

First, there are no deductions in such a system, so the amount of time and effort currently used to prepare taxes(Estimated to be in the hundreds of billions), is drastically cut. Most people would never file anything resembling a tax return.

Second, it would cut down on dead weight loss, and encourage savings, leading to long term economic growth.

Third, we would become the cheapest first world country to do business in by far. It's not hard to imagine most of the world's corporations relocating to the US, producing a nice clip of short term growth.

Considering such a plan can be made as progressive as you wish, what do you think is wrong with such a plan?

Re:free market?

[DavidShor]

Unfortunately, an LVT would be unconstitutional.

But so you know, VAT taxes completely avoid the consolidation incentive you mentioned.

Re:free market?

[lastninja]

And how do you propose we implement a system with a controlled economy without controlling the people?
Kind of hard seeing as it is the people that make up the economy. This was Marx fallacy (and all other socialist I might add) he did not see that a free market is when free people get to choose what they want to do with their own time(of which we all have the same amount I might add, very egalitarian).

Re:free market?

[Anonymous Coward]

Touché.

And if you are pondering the feasibility of a Marxist setup (as GP appeared to do), it's fairly obvious that Russia, Cuba, and North Korea were probably the worst possible starting points for it. (Ranging from a backwards feodal system to a stone age dictatorship, in these countries nobody had any sense of working together to achieve things.)

It would be very interesting to see a laissez-faire capitalist state convert into socialism. Maybe that's the natural progression, perhaps only that basis has the missing ingredients for socialism to succeed. You know, positive "let's make this happen" activism, pride in one's work and work products, thoroughly understanding (by having actually witnessed it) that pure greed has an impossible goal, and other stuff you need kicking in the backgound to shape the system into an actually workable and beneficial socialism.

*pats armchair*

Re:free market?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you are the one with "limited intellectual capacity" who is unable to distinguish between an individual human entity and a collection. It is a very distinct line.

Re:free market?

[Anonymous Coward]

How is "the beliefs of the crowd" anyway related to "one's personal morals." One's personal morals has no direct relationship to the beliefs of a crowd.

You, unintelligent sir, fail at logic.

Re:free market?

[IrquiM]

Well - has it been confirmed that there was bribery on both sides?

Both Warner and Sony has denied any money transactions took place as far as I know. The only bribery we know of, is Toshiba/MS buying Paramount/Dreamworks, and still, consumers went for Blu-ray!

The question if Sony did pay Warner, is just speculations from a losing side!

Get real folks!

Re:free market?

[blind monkey 3]

No they won't. For that crowd, bribery, collusion and cartelism are all part of the free-market experience, and they like it just fine! Just so long as the gummint doesn't butt in on all the fun.
Correction, just so long as they win.

Re:free market?

[phoenix321]

Standards for weight, measures, electrical power and the hundred others you mention are pretty easy to define - especially when compared to developing a new ultra-high density optical medium.

"How much is in a kilogram" is an axiomatic definition that could be set to any arbitrary value of "X bazillion carbon atoms", but someone with enough power has to set one value and enforce that. A shipping container is not much different: any value for XYZ-dimensions and max weight is fine, as long as everyone is using it. These are situations, where autocratic definitions are actually beneficial for all.

And then there's the technical standards, like PAL and NTSC, that are so much more than a simple definition problem. And there we have it all again:

NTSC was developed by the US National Television Systems Committee, hence the name. PAL was developed by a German company in the 1960s and only later declared as an official standard.

And let me compare the development of NTSC to PAL, courtesy of Wikipedia:

- the NTSC was established in 1940 to consolidate conflicting standards (just like BluRay/HDDVD today, I might add)
- the requirements for the future format were jacked up, technical development began.
- 1950, TEN FULL YEARS later, the committee met again, with no result
- 1950, the FCC - the agency that originally founded the NTSC - declared another standard as THE standard.
- 1953, THREE FULL YEARS later, the committee was able to reach a decision for the NTSC Standard
- 1953, the FCC changed its decision and adopted the NTSC standard.

Result:
- every kid knows not the original name for NTSC, but the funny acronym Never The Same Color, because this technology has some serious drawbacks concerning color reproduction.

Contrasted to PAL:
- developed in 1962 by a private company to counter the bad color quality of NTSC
- first working prototypes in 1963
- between 1963 and 1967 standards for the European Union were set
- 1967, only five years later, public broadcast in this format started

Result:
- a picture quality that was accepted by most viewers until digital TV became available 40 years later.

See the difference? PAL was developed by no-one-knows today, a German company that was defunct decades ago. Accepted as-is, brought in use, end of story. NTSC was the typical governmental work, quabbling, disputing, lobbying, re-specification, re-development and has taken almost 15 years to finally be rolled out to the general public. NTSC probably cost millions of taxpayer dollars, PAL almost none, and was still technically inferior.

I'm not saying this has anything to do with Europe vs. USA; any European Official Standards Body (tm) would have made exactly the same mistakes the NTSC had made. It is just a perfect contrast between private and state funded development: the private investor will reach a conclusion some day or goes broke, and that's a good thing. A governmental body can ponder on a subject for decades without any real result and almost no one cares.

Let the government do what it can do best: placing authoritarian weight behind a decision, because at most times any decision is better than no decision. But keep the bureaucrats out of the labs that actually work on something, they would waste money there AND spoil the results.

Re:free market?

[martyros]

Money is a form of power: if you have it, you can pay people to do whatever they're willing to be paid to do. People with money decide what buildings will be built, what movies will be made, and what products will be produced.

The reason the free market works so well is that, in general, people who make wise decisions with that power (usually meanying those who create the most value to the customer & society) are rewarded with more money (and thus more power), while the people who make poor decisions (wasting money, or sticking with poor products or policies) end up losing money (and thus losing power). So there's this kind of feedback, such that people who make better decisions end up being the ones making more of the decisions.

Another reason they work is that they (frequently) promote diversity -- lots of different people trying to solve the same problem in different ways, so that (frequently) the best one wins.

The problem with governments (and I submit, any kind of government) running things is that there is very little feedback of this kind. Once people get control of some area in a government, it takes something major to actually get them out. There's also only one person, or group of people, trying to solve the problem. So if the way they're doing it is "good enough", there's nothing to force them to change. The same things happen in corporations (see Dilbert), but to a much lower degree; and because there are a diversity of corporations, there's more of a chance that someone will find a better way or make better decisions.

Personally, I think that the free market is a good system (better than a centrally planned government), but I don't believe that capitalism as it's imlemented to day is necessarily the best overall system. "Maximizing shareholder value" frequently means making more value for society as a whole, but frequently it also means short-sighted policies (environmental damage, or even the suit against Yahoo for not accepting Microsoft's buy-out offer) or even evil, destructive policies (such as labor practices in the 1800's, before unions and labor laws corrected egregious abuse of factory workers' lives and health). If there were some other way which gave more power to people who made good decisions and encouraged innovation and entrepreneurship, while distributing the resulting value fairly to everyone in the supply chain, I'd rather have that.

Re:free market?

[Anonymous Coward]

Totalitarianism is the obvious result of any Marxist system, whether it be an oligarchy (see China's leaders, led by their premier) or centered all in one tyrant. The dictates of Marx practically require it to maintain "equitable" distribution of goods and labor to everyone else. Someone has to be in control to force the plebes to work and give up all they make to the government to get back 1/20 of what they gave them.

Re:free market?

[kmac06]

How about I just tell the government to piss off, and let me keep the money I earn.

Re:free market?

[kmac06]

Sony- if they wanted to, could destroy your house, your life, and get away with it.
Bill Gates- if he wanted to, could do the same. Umm...no. That's why we have laws. Government, on the other hand, can, will and does destroy people's lives all the time.

Re:free market?

[VoltageX]

(Couldn't find the right thread to reply to) I reckon majority market share in the video disc market is worth more than $400m anyways

Re:free market?

[DrSkwid]

I can't beat 100million (though Wikipedia suggests a max estimate of 43m for TGLF).

You're right to say it was safer to be in England at that time but being in one of the colonies was a whole different story.

The British Empire brought mass starvations and wholesale murder. And starvation during periods of bumper harvest, unlike Mao who precipitated famine through mismanagement (aside from the purges).

20% of the population of Eire
12-29 million Indians in the late 1800s

This is the time that the Brits invented the concentration camp. One of which is reported to have a 94% death rate.

http://scienceblogs.com/thescian/2008/01/late_victorian_holocausts_the.php
http://books.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1674478,00.html

also 40% of the soldiers sent to India died of disease, very few saw real combat.

Re:free market?

[Maxo-Texas]

I think Headcase recognizes what I was saying.

Libertarian philosophy (and capitalism) both work when we respect the golden mean and do not allow excess.

Drugs are great-- but not to excess.
Sex is great-- but not to excess.

Being a Libertarian is great- but no to excess. You can't have a truly Libertarian society if you allow 1% of the population to control 99% of the assets. What you have is nobles and wage slaves/serfs.

The basis of libertarian philosophy is the idea that we can live our own lives as we want to as long as it doesn't affect other people. When sony (or any other company or any other individual) has multiple billions of dollars in assets, they do whatever they want and affect the rest of us negatively all the time. And there *must* be something bigger than them to control them or they will accrete power without limit.

It's not hypocrisy-- perhaps it's goofy headed-- perhaps it is the result of looking at the goofy parts of libertarianism (great basic philosophy but come on- it ignores human nature and pretty much all history of man enslaving man).

Re:free market?

[Maxo-Texas]

You miss this fact.

If I have 1,000 dollars (these days even 1,000,000 dollars) people in power will not pay attention to me.
If I have 1,000,000,000 dollars- people in power will pay a lot of attention to me even if I spend nothing and really pay attention to me if I spend a lot. So I get laws passed to lock in my position. For example- if we got a "fair tax" within a decade, the top 1% would in someway lower their rate below that rate. Probably by having certain categories of spending not counted. Or buy spending over seas. Or transferring wealth over seas and spending the wealth earned there.

Sales tax (aka fair tax) + a monstrous Estate tax might work.

We are very well along the way to developing a nobility class here in america. The dynasty like political trends we are developing concern me greatly.

Re:free market?

[Maxo-Texas]

And businesses can and do destroy people's lives all the time.

The credit bureaus for example ignore the credit laws and collect on chapter 7 bankruptcy's even tho it violates the law. Anyone *big enough* to ignore the law does so if it is profitable.

Yes- governments are a severe problem. The founders were right in that regard. But if we are going to have enormous quasi-governmental businesses and people with more wealth than some states, then we need a large government to counter them. If you start cutting them down to smaller size, then you do not need such a big government to control them.

And if you do *not* cut them down to size then they eventually do take over the government. The drug industry basically controls the FDA now.

Re:free market?

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem was the movie studios were allowed to pick sides. If they we forced to be neutral, you would have seen better competition. It as if Shell said it would only sell gas to GM cars and Exxon said it would only sell gas to Japanese cars.

Re:free market?

[Anonymous Coward]

For your statement to have any meaning, you have to show why the distinction matters to the issue at hand. You have not done that, and your opponent has done the opposite.

Re:free market?

[hey!]

So you agree with the crowd that wants to ban gay marriage?

Ah, the joys of simplistic thinking. Have you stopped beating your wife?

Of course I agree with the crowd that want to ban gay marriage. I also disagree with them. I agree that people can't just agree to do anything they like. On the other hand, I disagree that they can be stopped from doing so just because others find it repugnant.

On the third hand, repugnance is not a license to do anything you wish, any more than it is a reason why you should not be allowed to do something you wish. If your neighbors entered into a contract to kill and rob you, I would find it repugnant, but my repugnance would be neither here nor there with why I think it should be illegal.

Likewise, when two private parties collude to undermine the operation of the free market, whether by insider trading or by forming a cartel, my repugnance of this behavior has nothing to do with the fact I think it should be banned.

Re:free market?

[vijayiyer]

People below the poverty line spend very little and would thus be taxed very little. If you are talking about the tax rate being equal, why should I pay more than a poor person? I've worked harder (and/or smarter) for my money, and I should choose whether I give money to the poor or not.

Re:free market?

[sjames]

Most people against this sort of transaction believe there is a real negative impact on society that outweighs the benefits to paper people. Intrinsic moral outrage has nothing to do with their objection.

By contrast, the anti gay marriage crowd is against it specifically based on a vague sense of moral outrage.

Notably, unlike gay people, corporations have no natural rights at all and, in fact, only exist by virtue of a legal fiction. If corporations were banned tomorrow, any challenge to the new law would have to rely on the natural rights of the corporation's owners, not the right of the fictional entity to exist (since it has no such right).

Re:free market?

[hal2814]

You're calling me a sheeple? They didn't take away my choice. I like most other people chose none of the above. Last I checked, they can never take away that option. At least I'm not acting like I am forced into supporting one or the other.

Re:free market?

[SnowZero]

Because all this time, Toshiba and the HD-DVD consortium were being perfect little angels, right?

It's not called a "format war" for nothing.

Re:free market?

[jackspenn]

What is the difference between a Corporation and a Government?

I ask because many on /. love big government and hate big business.

I personally think big business is the lesser of two evils because if you do not like say Wal-Mart, you can shop at Target, Sears, the local mall, dozens of online sites or go to the mom and pop store and pay way to much for the same or different things.

However with big government you cannot shop around, you are stuck, a big socialized government would not be a linux world, it would be a monopoly. If you want a linux type world then you need a free open market with minimal government (that way you are free to do what you want not what the government decides for you), if you want a Microsoft world, then you want a centralized and powerful government.

I fear one of two things will happen with the rising US socialist movement 1). They will realize their mistakes when government is to big and to power and the economy to broken to undo it or 2). They will never realize their mistakes. (Example: Frances youth riots for reducing unemployment in French economy while protesting at same time to not change the system).

I am not saying big corporations are good, they can suck to, but what I hope some progressive thinkers take from my post is that however bad they believe big business, they must be able to see big government is far worse. That is why in the US our founders created a relatively weak federal government with strong state governments, the power that way is closer to the people it is over, different ideas can be tried in different states without breaking the entire country, and if you do not like your state's laws, you are free to move elsewhere.

Re:free market?

[jackspenn]

Why? We already have an answer, we just ignore it.

The US federal government is to strong and was not intended to do all that it does.

The US Constitution lays out the role of the federal government and they says anything not given to the Federal Government is a right that belongs to the state.

So if we want a better government all we really need to do is follow the literal interpretation of the Constitution.

States can setup healthcare plans if they want, but Hillary and Barrack are promising to deliver a national healthcare plan when the Constitution gives them not such right.

Now why is it better to do most government at the state rather then the national level?

1). It means those governing are closer to those being governed. Better representation of the people and if you mess up people will boot you out, whereas if a NM senator votes for something that hurts people in NJ there is no means for people in NJ to respond
2). Not all states are the same so what works in one may not fit another.
3). People can vote with there feet. I for example don't give a shit one way or another about gay marriage or abortion. What I do can about is making sure the state I live in locks up child abusers and executes murders. I also want lower taxes. So I could live in NV, or TX and my friends who want socialized healthcare and gay marriage can live in MA.

Having stronger states and weaker federal government is like having a linux kernel you can customize and pick with modules to load. People hate Congress and the President, yet nobody seems to think about making the President and Congress less powerful and lowering the taxes the federal government takes in and rasing the state taxes (or not) so that states control the funds and canset things like drinking age and whatnot rather then having it dictated by Federal government unconstitutionally I might add.

Re:free market?

[SanityInAnarchy]

I never saw HD players hit $99 anywhere.

It did happen.

which is another manipulation in order to gain marketshare.

Right, and those manipulations can go away as soon as the war is over. Had it continued, would they have raised prices much? I suspect they'd have tried to keep prices stable as the technology got cheaper, until they eventually made a profit.

When you have to buy extra parts for your widget to work, and when parts for competing widgets are incompatible, you end up with what are essentially mini-monopolies.

What you're missing is that they are still essentially mini-monopolies. Competing formats are nowhere near as good as a single, open format, but they are better than a single closed format. (Among closed formats, a less-DRM'd, region-free version is better, too.)

Point about some studios doing both was, had the war gone on much longer, other studios might've been forced to follow suit. What you'd eventually end up with is, consumers buy the player and disc format they like best, and in another year or two, we'd have players that play both formats anyway. Of course, all that is pure speculation...

Re:free market?

[Maxo-Texas]

The problem with property taxes is then we only rent our property from the government. We never own it.

The principle benefit of the fair tax is not the rate (because that will change) but the fact that the government no longer has an excuse to track every element of our lives extremely intrusively. They only have to track businesses intrusively (and businesses should have good records, accountants, ledgers, etc. anyway).

The problem with income tax is that as we enter a computerized, data collected society, the "grease" that made things work is being squeezed out by a very cold and grindy system.

Example- home inspectors in my city made wages a little bit low but they had a lot of freedom about how they did their day as long as they inspected a certain number of houses per week. Now with GPS, they get paid no more, but every second of their day is tracked. So they lost a lot of free time and didn't get the compensation for it (but they will eventually- they'll just quit and find jobs that pay better over time).

But for a few years, the city gets to crow about how much money it saves. Managers moving up only care about two to three year windows- after they leave everything can go to hell in a handbasket.

Re:free market?

[Penguinisto]

We got to see at least three major (and differing) implementations of Marx' setup.

I hate to break it to you, but no, we didn't. Last I checked, Marx wasn't a big advocate for totalitarianism.

...nor was Adam Smith a big advocate of cartels ;)

/P

Re:free market?

[billcopc]

People who fund terrorist groups are frequently named as accomplices and tried as heinous criminals, so why aren't shareholders held accountable for crimes perpetrated with their money ?

The system is broken beyond repair. The world needs a new and improved system, built with security and reliability from the ground up. Sarbanes-Oxley is just a beard.

Re:free market?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, Mr. Snipes, we cannot permit that!

Re:free market?

[StR0cK]

Well, actually, a corporation IS, by definition, a LEGAL person .. in fact, that's how the law is written. .. but you are of course right in the respect of it not being a human being or flesh and blood with emotions, etc.. :-) However, where some call it "enlightened", others call it "compromised" or flawed is a bit more accurate. But who isn't flawed, compromised in one way or another, right? In this case however, either way, the slow erosion of morality (due primarily to flaws and a compromise of morality) that seems to be historically far too typical in a growing & expanding free society, will ultimately cause it's doom ... which "enlightened-ly" also includes (shocker!) the wide acceptance and integration of homosexuality, its "lifestyle", and the legal right to marry within that lifestyle (side note: By definition, "marriage" is the joining together of two different things (roughly defined) is it not? A gay marriage is a bit of an oxymoron and really should have it's own definition or title or whatever you want to call it anyway ... like "domestic union" or partnership or something along those lines anyway...) But that's a different topic all-together & for a completely different website ... or at least different thread. So I digress ... :-)

Re:free market?

[Courageous]

In my opinion, income taxes cause many evils. I hate them. Sales Taxes, Value Added Taxes, or the "Fair Tax" all would be better.

I don't agree with your "rent from the government" objection though. In many ways, all property ownership in a sovereign nation is like that. The very existence of the ability to really-no-kidding "own" property is something that the government enables for you. Taxing that one thing, that one very important thing, perhaps the really-no-kidding most important economic thing, does not seem so objectionable to me personally.

Especially when I consider the other positive aspects of that particular type of tax...

C//

Re:free market?

[Courageous]

People who fund terrorist groups are frequently named as accomplices and tried as heinous criminals, so why aren't shareholders held accountable for crimes perpetrated with their money ?

The same could be said of governments and their tax payers, yes?

Anyway, there does seem to be some things sort of ill with the current system used world wide for corporations. Problem is, it's relatively easy to see that, and pick on the parts you don't like, but very very hard to define (and implement! practicality is to not be overlooked) something clearly better.

C//

Re:free market?

[Maxo-Texas]

Are you in a high property tax state or a low property tax state?

In alabama, the taxes on my house would be roughly $200 a year. Easy to scratch up.
In texas, the taxes on my house are roughly $3000.
In new jersey, the taxes are so high that they are now "allowing" seniors to work for the government (basically slavery) to cover their $9,000 property tax bills.

My only issue with sales tax systems is the point I started this thread with.

A libertarian system cannot survive when some companies and citizens have grossly more power and wealth than others. With sales tax only, I see that some people will inevitably build up huge wealth and power. Perhaps sales tax + a really nasty death tax (the real purpose of which is to break up wealth accumulation).

Re:free market?

[Maxo-Texas]

We are where we are because they tried this system with private fire companies and it had very bad results.
Some services only work if they are a required service that everyone pays for and everyone benefits from.

Re:free market?

[Courageous]

I live in a high property tax state. Although as a point of order, I was referring to land value tax, not "property tax" which is a tax on the improvements as well as the land. This is a very important distinction.

Income taxes don't impact the uber wealthy beyond their own personal willingness to be impacted by income taxes. Why? Because the uber wealthy are structurally in control of the flows of the monies. They can elect to leave the money in a corporation. They can arrange to have the income "realized" in another state, or even another country. They control the expensing. They can sell the company for a profit, which is not income, but rather a capital gain. And so on and so forth. When you make these sorts of command decisions, exercising structural control over income and expense, you have great leeway that ordinary citizens do not enjoy. All penalties are toward the upper middle class or the lower upper class at best. Which is a shame, because these classes are what the lesser classis aspire to be.

The same is true of their "death" taxes. One word: trusts.

Both wealthy individuals as well as large corporations tend to own land. They own it in disproportionately high quantities, in comparison to the poor and middle class. Dodge that! Satellites, dontcha know.

The income tax system is just plain broken, will always be just plain broken, and will never be fixed.

There's also the possibility of hybrid systems. A sales (or VAT) tax, on goods only, that excludes certain necessities. A land value tax. Taxes on wages, but only for social security and medicare...

C//

Re:free market?

[haxor.dk]

So, in your idea of the free market, no agent (company) may ever do something the customers don't like?

Methinks you miss the point of the free market.

Re:free market?

[Anonymous Coward]

The very existence of the ability to really-no-kidding "own" property is something that the government enables for you. Taxing that one thing, that one very important thing, perhaps the really-no-kidding most important economic thing, does not seem so objectionable to me personally.

I think property taxes only make sense for property that is used commercially. If you charge rent, or do manufacturing, fabrication, shipping, or some other activity that contributes to the economy, then there is a source of money for the tax to be paid out of.

If your property is simply your home, then it makes no sense to tax it. Most people don't earn money with their property, instead it's an expenditure. That means the property tax money has to come from somewhere else - typically from the owner's income. Homeowners get income tax breaks partly for this reason. So why not just call a spade a spade and tax the homeowner's income the additional amount?

Re:free market?

[Courageous]

I think property taxes only make sense for property that is used commercially. If you charge rent, or...

Beware asymmetries. There is a certain percentage of the population, at any given time, that for reasons of convenience and life circumstance, really don't want to own. Truly. I'm not kidding. Imagine a system that was asymmetric. To account for it's lack of coverage for one large half, it has to now overcompensate on the other large half. What if rent was suddenly Very Expensive (tm)? Would that impact be desirable? What if the number of rental units dropped below a certain baseline demand level? Would that put the poor, who tend to rent exclusively due to poor credit, into an even worse position?

C//

Re:free market?

[Walter Carver]

What are they, buildings? Among other things, yes. I prefer to see them was group of people. People are good, corporations are bad. Watch this documentary for more: The Corporation (2003).

Re:free market?

[DragonWriter]

The reason that narrow groups, special interests if you will, are able to do this is because of the government NOT the free market.

Well, yes, without government, most of organized society would be impossible. "Government" and the "free market" are not opposing forces; a "free market" is an abstract, unrealizable ideal that can only be approached the appropriate government policy.

If there was limited government there would be no government to take over and use for purposes of coercion.

Well, no, this is clearly wrong. If there was no government, there would be no government to take over and use to benefit narrow interests. As long as there is a government, one has to be concerned not merely with how large it is, but with the manner in which the power vested in it is applied.

I often find that when people are complaining about the free market they are in fact complaining about something which is the indirect or even the direct result of government incursion into the free market.

If you read my post, you will note that I wasn't complaining about the "free market", which doesn't (and cannot) exist, I was talking about the actually policies that are proposed by people claiming to be advancing "the free market", which mostly are about redistributing power from government bodies that are accountable to the public to government-created entities imbued with special privileges and immunities that are less accountable to the public (corporations), and making those corporations even less accountable than they already are (to the public, of course, but also often to their own stockholders, making corporate management a new self-perpetuating, unaccountable aristocracy.)

They falsely attribute perceived wrongs to the free market or market failure because they cannot or will not believe that the root of the problem lies in poor government policy and not the marketplace.

That's a nice canned generality, but perhaps you'd like to respond to what I actually wrote.

Again, it the existence of extensive and powerful government agencies which allows this regulatory capture and rent seeking to occur.

Heck, its the exercise of government power that allows corporations to exist in the first place. You aren't paying attention at all: I'm not arguing about some nonsense comparison of what can happen with government vs. what can happen without government.

If the market place were REALLY de-regulated and private property rights actually ENFORCED by the courts then you would not have these problems.

That's a nice fantasy that is only tenable because what "really de-regulated" and "property rights" and "actually enforced" mean in concrete terms are kept vague; for any concrete definition of those you care to advance, it either won't look much like anything "free market" advocates actually concretely embrace in the real world, or it won't acheive those goals, or both.

Which is why government should be strictly limited in size and scope. If there is no power or right of government to step in and arbitrarily meddle in the marketplace whenever it feels like it then there will be no need to be constantly "on guard" against people taking over the apparatus of government for their own economic ends because even if they took it over it would have very limited ability to interfere in the marketplace and any takeover attempt would be easily spotted by the people due to the small size of that government.

A government restricted in size so as to be effectively limited in that regard would not retain the power to effectively enforce property rights against violations by powerful private institutions. So I think your argument is ill-considered. Sure, you want government restricted in how it acts so that it acts onl

Re:free market?

[Anonymous Coward]

why Arthur Anderson is gone

Except that they're not:

As of 2008, Arthur Andersen LLP has not been formally dissolved nor has it declared bankruptcy. Ownership of the partnership has been ceded to four limited liability corporations named Omega Management I through IV.

I wonder who owns "Omega Management III". Couldn't they come up with more original names, like "Omega Management XVI-and-a-half"? Who owns the owners of the owners, and is it shell corporations all the way down, so to speak?

Yeah right.

[Anonymous Coward]

Next they'll be saying Sony would put rootkits on CDs or something...

Re:Yeah right.

[kerohazel]

Of course not. They'll put UNCRACKABLE rootkits on Blu-ray, and encode it with a 16-byte number that no one will ever figure out.

No more HD-DVD?

[esocid]

Third, the company sold Blu-ray to rival movie studios with the promise of superior digital copyright protection.

There you go right there.

1. Promise the movie companies that your formats are less prone to being pirated.
2. ?
3. Profit!

Re:No more HD-DVD?

[westlake]

Third, the company sold Blu-ray to rival movie studios with the promise of superior digital copyright protection.

What - precisely - makes copy protection in Blu-Ray superior to that of HD-DVD?

Re:No more HD-DVD?

[rekoil]

It took a couple months longer to develop a crack?

Re:No more HD-DVD?

[TrancePhreak]

For one, Blu allows for arbitrary code execution. So you could have some disc that phones home or something not allowing the disc to play without it. It also allows constantly changing encryption schemes. HDDVD used AACS. That's it, nothing fancy.

Market Isn't Even Ready

[milsoRgen]

I don't even think the market is ready for HD, we barely have downloads that offer DVD quality. The hardware feels a bit immature in my opinion, with perhaps the exception of the PS3. However my personal experiance with stand alone players comes to one thought, "Why the fuck am I waiting for my movie player to boot up?"

Now call me when we have the bandwidth to stream HD, and we're not paying a premium for discs and when we all have large screen hi def tvs that actually can utilized the enhanced resolution.

That being said, let Sony blow their wads.

Re:Market Isn't Even Ready

[robizzle]

I don't think the availability of high quality downloads should effect whether or not the market is ready for HD media. Instead, the limiting factor is the ubiquity of high def TVs in the household; there is no sense in getting a blue ray player if you have a 480 TV.

Conversely, I think the lack of high quality downloads would actually spur increased demand for the delivery of high quality content though other means (in this case, HD discs.) If people have high def TVs, they are going to want high def content. If they can't get high def content from the internet, they will try to get it from high def media.

Re:Market Isn't Even Ready

[PCM2]

It's definitely a few years away. The stereo industry always loves to soak the "hi-fi" consumer; but meanwhile, mainstream consumers have been going nuts over MP3s, which generally have lower sound quality than CDs.

But remember, the industry holds the strings. All they have to do is start releasing new movies on Blu-Ray before they release them on DVD, and DVD dies sooner or later. Downloading DVD images that have been reformatted to 4.7GB with DVDShrink is one thing. Downloading DVD images of movie that you could get in hi-def for $20 is another.

I think it ultimately depends on what the consumer really wants. CDs had great audio quality, but they became mainstream maybe ten years after the Walkman. Portable CD players always sort of sucked. Enter the iPod, and the die is cast. Similarly, if consumers value being able to watch a movie right now more than they value building their own home theater -- the modern equivalent of hi-fi -- then in a few years it won't really matter what format the plastic discs come in.

Re:Market Isn't Even Ready

[edwardpickman]

Why is everything about download? The primary reason people download is for file sharing sites so some how I don't think Sony is bemoaning loosing that business. I'm old enough to have spent my whole childhood preVHS. The early Betamaxs hit in my late teens but only recorded an hour and there were no prerecorded tapes. We didn't have cable in my area so unless you saw a movie the first week or so of it's release you had to hope for a cut down TV version of the film. I find it amazing how spoiled people have become in a little over a generation. Technology just isn't moving fast enough to suit their own personal needs. A hundred years ago most people still rode horses or walked, there was no radio and TV was decades away. Even movies were a rare treat and they were all shorts. These days if they can't get HD video beamed directly to their iPods they think we're still in the stone age. BluRay was never meant as a download format. Apples and oranges. When transfer rates get up to the point of supporting HiDef downloads I'm sure there will be yet another format. You might as well complain about not being able to download Hi8 movies. It was never intended as a download format.

Re:Market Isn't Even Ready

[TheRaven64]

Conversely, I think the lack of high quality downloads would actually spur increased demand for the delivery of high quality content though other means (in this case, HD discs.) And how is DVD-A doing in comparison to AACs from iTunes? In the music industry, people value convenience a huge amount more than quality (or, rather, fidelity). It will be interesting to see if the video industry is different. DVDs gave better quality and convenience than VHS and CDs gave better quality and convenience than analogue tapes. I can't think of a single instance where consumers have been forced to choose between the two and gone with quality.

Re:Market Isn't Even Ready

[morari]

I wish we could stop hearing about streaming video. I like having my content conveniently on actual media that I can access instantly whenever I want without having to go through or ask anyone else. Most of the world doesn't even have broadband at all, which I think is a far more important problem than people not being able to download and redownload gigantic movie files because they've never heard of a disc binder.

Re:Market Isn't Even Ready

[Anonymous Coward]

The primary reason people download is for file sharing sites

Bull and Shit called, they want their argument back. They sounded pretty pissed.

Re:Market Isn't Even Ready

[_xeno_]

Well, I know a lot of people with laptops that have displays capable of at least 720p. Sound quality may not be great, but they can show a high-def movie in an honestly OK quality.

I don't know quite so many people that own HDTVs. (Actually, I haven't asked in most cases, so I could be underestimating, but you get the idea.)

The penetration rate for something that can display a high-def movie via download is much higher than HDTVs. Granted the experience won't be as great, but it's a place to start. Once people have downloaded movies, things like TiVo or Apple TV can be used to display them in a home theater.

So in that aspect, I can see downloads as being much more accessible than Blu-ray.

The remaining unsolved problem being download speeds.

Re:Market Isn't Even Ready

[Anonymous Coward]

I find it amazing how spoiled people have become in a little over a generation. I don't think 'spoiled' is the right word. We have high expectations of technology precisely because we have all seen how quickly it can evolve, and how powerful it can be. Yes, we want HD content transmitted wirelessly to our iPods at high speed. And we want immediate digital access to the full catalog of content ever produced. But then again, there is nothing technically preventing us from getting those things we want. (Legal and financial limits are more immediate than any technical limit.)

So our high demands are not unrealistic. If the technology is up to the task, and we push for that functionality, how does that make us spoiled?

Re:Market Isn't Even Ready

[Anonymous Coward]

Of all the movies people are downloading right now, how many are legit? We'd have to haggle over qualifiers, but I suspect the gp is more right than not.

Re:Market Isn't Even Ready

[olliec420]

So your saying when we all had dial-up AOL we shouldn't have had VHS tapes cause we couldn't stream at that quality?

Re:Market Isn't Even Ready

[Wdomburg]

About one in four homes has at least one HDTV. I bet that's far higher than the number of people willing to watch TV on a 12-17" laptop screen. :)

Re:Market Isn't Even Ready

[garylian]

Having recently splurged over the summer for a 52" HDTV (LCD), I can agree with your comment about wanting HD content.

Verizon offers a lot of Video On Demand (VOD) that is free if you have subscriptions already to HBO, Cinemax, Showtime, etc. It makes it great that the wife and I can pick movies without having to record them. Except... None of the offerings are in HD. They are all the regular 480 version. So, if I want HD for a movie, I have to still DVR the darn thing. And that pisses me off.

If I'm going to spend about $4,000 on a HDTV, I certainly want to be gaining the advantages I can. The 480 stuff often looks fuzzy on such a large screen.

As much as HD movies cost, I'm liking that I get content through HBO and the like that is in HD. I just want more than the one channel that shows the same crap movies over and over, with only 1 new movie a week. I may actually have to bother with Netflix or Blockbuster again, after I get a PS3. (Might as well get the player and a game system in one, and the 40GB version comes with a coupon for 4 free movies if I remember correctly.)

Re:Market Isn't Even Ready

[frizop]

Jesus, stop being old and grumpy. Technology is moving and we want it to move in a direction that benefits us the most, not where the big wigs at company XYZ want it to move.

Re:Market Isn't Even Ready

[Anonymous Coward]

Abc has streaming in HD on their website for lost and few other tv shows full episodes look pretty good

Re:Market Isn't Even Ready

[Not_Wiggins]

DVDs gave better quality and convenience than VHS and CDs gave better quality and convenience than analogue tapes.

More to your point: DVD's gave better quality and convenience, too, with convenience being the driving factor.

Remember laser disc with the CLV and CAV variants? Why did DVD kick its butt? While there are differing factors from quality of video and sound to form factor, the biggest one was convenience: you could watch a whole movie on a DVD without needing to get up every 30-60 minutes (depending on CAV/CLV) to flip the disc.

Streaming would kill BluRay just as quickly IFF the infrastructure to do so could be setup because, while people enjoy owning a physical item, the convenience of streaming might be enough to override it.

Re:Market Isn't Even Ready

[Anonymous Coward]

Get with the 21st century. Bandwidth is cheap. I don't ... [buffering] ... know why ... [buffering] ... you're...[buffering] ... so d... [buffering] ... own on st... [buffering] ... reaming.

Re:Market Isn't Even Ready

[rmerry72]

More to your point: DVD's gave better quality and convenience, too, with convenience being the driving factor.

I like to apply the same logic but observation seems to invalidate extending the hypothesis. Why have video downloads still not penetrated to the average household nearly as much as DVDs?

I'm not talking about legal downloads: the cartels (RIAA and ISPs) are ensuring the commercial side of downloads fails. Torrents however are widely available and easy to use. Hell, even copying a few GB of files from a friend is easier than buying DVDs.

What can be more convenient than a hard drive full of 300 hrs of vid. Bugger getting up to change the disc every 30-60 min, or even at the end of the movie! Easy to scale up to. I have 10,000 vids - that's 6 months of TV and movies (ok, some porn too). All at the reach of a mouse from my lounge.

Why would anybody see it as "convenient" to "only" change the disc every two hours or so? WHy bother with a wall full of discs at all?

Re:Market Isn't Even Ready

[TooMuchToDo]

I was tired of Comcast and a Series 1 Tivo, so I dragged one of my 24" Dell monitors from my office into the bedroom and hooked a small HP PC up to it, with a wifi card and 360GB hard drive in the PC. The wife and I watch tons of Netflix Watch It Now content on the TV (since they just went to the unlimited model), and even though the quality isn't HD, it's pretty damn close to standard definition TV.

Re:Market Isn't Even Ready

[Charcharodon]

I find it amazing how spoiled people have become in a little over a generation.

Well a generation ago a candy bar was only a nickel and the movie industry wasn't gouging its customers while trying to tie up every piece of media indefinately.

We just want people have always wanted:

When costs drop to make a product then the customers should get a little love too.

If costs are going to stay the same then we expect to get more for our dollar. (DVD extras are not "more")

When we as customers come up with a new way of doing business we expect the corps sell us what we want, not fight us tooth and nail with lawsuits and anti-customer hardware.

And finally electronic file transfers have been around for more than 20 years, how exactly are we being impatient when we demand the industry to get off it's ass and live in the now.

Re:Market Isn't Even Ready

[rmerry72]

About one in four homes has at least one HDTV. I bet that's far higher than the number of people willing to watch TV on a 12-17" laptop screen. :)

I call bullshit. Please qualify and back up your claim. I can't believe that 80 million Americans have a TV nor 120 million Europeans. Certainly 5 million Aussies down here do not have HD capable TVs in any way shave or form. Maybe 5-10,000. I know 1 person. I know lots of people talking about it and wondering when and why, but not actually owning.

Re:Market Isn't Even Ready

[mscholin]

The convenience of streaming could be enough to override owning a physical copy; but with steaming the media companies would want to make you pay each time you decide you want to watch/stream the content. Owning the physical copy you only pay once and can use/watch it as many times as you like. Unfortunately, the way DRM is going the media companies are going to try this with physical content soon. You buy the Blu-Ray disc and can watch it a set number of times then it will be locked down by whoever the player has to contact to decode and play it unless you pay for more VIEWING RIGHTS. MS Windows is already that way, you can only activate the program so many times(re-install on the same system) before it locks you out and you have to use their customer service to get a new activation number.

Re:Market Isn't Even Ready

[pokerdad]

We didn't have cable in my area so unless you saw a movie the first week or so of it's release you had to hope for a cut down TV version of the film.

Your local theatre was far from normal if it cycled films out in week; movies stayed in theatres much longer back then than they do now.

When you think about it, its the natural economic result of adding a new source of revenue. As VCRs (then later DVD, PPV, and larger overseas sales) increased the profitability of movies it became feasable to make more and more movies. Despite the rise of the multiplex, the growth in number of films has outpaced the growth in screens, resulting in shorter and shorter runs in theatres. I remember reading an interview with George Lucas six or seven years ago where he was talking about this and how he thought it was a huge tragedy because its made it very difficult for a small film to reach notoriety by word of mouth.

Having said all that, I agree with your main point that we are all tech junkies who will do anything for our fix and often forget that things weren't always as they are. (one of my favorite things to laugh at is whenever they are talking about cell phones and driving on tv they always seem to interview someone old enough to know better who proclaims that its impossible to run a business without constant cell phone access; I find myself always yelling at the screen "how did you do it 10 years ago dumbass?")

Re:Market Isn't Even Ready

[Anonymous Coward]

I wish we could stop hearing about streaming video. I like having my content conveniently on actual media that I can access instantly whenever I want without having to go through or ask anyone else.

It's pretty simple, really - the cable and satellite providers fucked up pay-per-view, big time.

It could have been as simple as having a receiver/set-top box which is part Tivo. Pay-per-view on every available movie at a reasonable price. Just order over your telephone, computer, or set-top box. Television episodes downloadable as they premiere. Hey gang, did you see the new Simpsons last night? No? Just watch it tonight, whatever time slot you want.

Instead, we're trying to pipe video over a network that wasn't designed to handle media streams, when we should have adapted the one we already had - the one designed to handle the required bandwidth of video in the first place. Two channels of SDTV would have been fine for compressed HDTV.

It's just such a waste. No wonder so few are jumping on the bandwagon. It's a damn shame.

Re:Market Isn't Even Ready

[MadnessASAP]

Sorry sir, didn't mean to step on your lawn mister, please don't beat me with your cane.

Re:Market Isn't Even Ready

[jtownatpunk.net]

I think the limiting factor is the limited intelligence of the end user combined with the ridiculous complexity of connecting and configuring everything. Long gone are the days when you plugged the coax into the back of your TV and that was it.

"Hrm. Your cable box has a DVI port and the TV is HDMI. Best Buy will charge you $100 for that cable. Let's order it online for $15 and use component for now. Plug the component video output of the cable box into the component input of your TV. No, that's composite. The red, blue, and green ones labeled Pr, Pb, and Y. Not that red one. That's audio. the other one. I know it looks the same but it's not. The group that's together, outlined by that line. Okay, now plug in the audio. Oh. Your receiver only takes coaxial digital audio and the cable box only has optical. Well, we can get an adapter but it'll cost you a hundred bucks in the store if they even have one. Order it online for $20. We'll hook up the analog audio for now. Okay. Everything's plugged in and it's time to configure the settings. What resolution is your TV? You don't know? Where's the manual? Okay, we'll look it up on the manufacturer's website. Okay. 1366x768. That means you need to set the cable box to 720p. No, there is no 768 setting. Press setup, advanced, output formats, and select 720p. No, not 1080. You don't have a 1080 TV so programs broadcast in 720 will be scaled up to 1080 then back down to 720 and will look really bad. JUST SET THE DAMN THING FOR 720! THE GAME STARTED 10 MINUTES AGO!!!"

Now you're ready to watch some TV.

Of course, that's assuming the audio system was already set up and configured properly. Somebody should build a canonical flowchart of possible AV configurations just to show how complicated it really is.

Re:Market Isn't Even Ready

[TheRaven64]

You're solving the wrong problem. Most people want to listen to the same music over and over again, but few want to watch the same videos more than a couple of times. Having a store of 300 hours is fine, but it's fixed. People pay huge amounts of money every month not just to watch video, but to watch new video. Storing it locally to watch again doesn't give them anything.

Re:Market Isn't Even Ready

[DragonWriter]

Streaming would kill BluRay just as quickly IFF the infrastructure to do so could be setup because, while people enjoy owning a physical item, the convenience of streaming might be enough to override it.

Streaming would only be clearly more convenient if it was one-time purchase: not having to pay for each viewing is, itself, a form of convenience. Pay-per-view streaming may threaten rentals, but only download-to-own (ala iPod) with players with suitable capacity and reliability is a going to be a clear convenience winner over buying discs.

Re:Market Isn't Even Ready

[StikyPad]

I'm not sure who you're referring to when you say "we," but HD-quality downloads have been prevalent on filesharing networks for a couple of years now. I've got an HD receiver, but 4 out of 5 of the local HD channels are interlaced. The quality of downloads is outstanding and more convenient than recording.

Re:Market Isn't Even Ready

[Phil06]

Sony wasn't battered and humiliated, they went on to make a mint on VHS players. People have for years now paid a premium to see the Sony label on electronics.

Re:Market Isn't Even Ready

[that this is not und]

People pay huge amounts of money every month not just to watch video, but to watch new video. Storing it locally to watch again doesn't give them anything.

This is Slashdot, where we're all borderline autistic. We grew up watching 'Star Wars' or 'Ghostbusters' or some other movie hundreds of times.

Re:Market Isn't Even Ready

[mattack2]

Unfortunately, the way DRM is going the media companies are going to try this with physical content soon.

Umm, they already *did* try. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DIVX_(Digital_Video_Express)

(and I say this as someone who never bought it, but is not vehemently against the concept like a lot of people. The prices just have to come down by AT LEAST an order of magnitude. If I could "PPV" every TV show I watch, without ads, for something _close_ to what I pay for a cable bill, I would. I'd even pay slightly more, as I imply. Not tons more like it would be now, and you can't even get every single show. Since that doesn't exist, I just get cable with Tivos [lifetime subscriptions] and Netflix.)

Re:Market Isn't Even Ready

[Lars512]

On the Blu-Ray and downloads topic, the argument is not about the merit of the technology, but rather on the long-term value of the technology to its investors (i.e. Sony and others). If Sony has mis-predicted the near-future marketplace, and is unable to provide good reason for us to buy content on their discs (say if everything is downloadable in good enough quality), they might have paid more than it was worth to win the format war.

On the broader gripe, people's dissatisfaction (within limits) is great. It drives consumption for new things, creates marketplaces that new innovations can slot into, and basically moves things forward. I for one am extremely glad that people today aren't happy with yesterday's horse and cart. Aren't you?

Re:Market Isn't Even Ready

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey maybe blue-ray is the next laserdisk. The world was not ready for that,or the RCA videodisk players that you had to flip over in the middle of the movie for that matter.Oh and I mean the disk not the actual player you had to flip.

Re:Market Isn't Even Ready

[ZarkOmicron]

http://www.tvweek.com/news/2008/02/north_american_hd_tv_sales_gro.php

North American high-definition television sales grew about 60% to 10 million units in the fourth quarter as Samsung and Sony gained market share at the expense of Sharp and other manufacturers, NPD Group unit DisplaySearch said.

While this doesn't confirm that 25% market penetration referenced in the GP, it does point to a fairly significant level. It isn't clear from the article whether the growth is relative to the previous quarter or to the same quarter of the previous year, which would obviously make a big difference (assuming the growth has been trending). Other growth numbers in the article do explicitly compare to the previous year, but that doesn't prove anything.

What does this mean? Well, as I said, it doesn't confirm the 25% market penetration, but it might indicate a higher level of penetration than you expected.

Also, your 80 million number for America is way too high because we need to look at the number of households, not the total population. http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/00000.html gives the 2000 number of households for the US as 105,480,101 and gives a population growth from 2000 to 2006 of 6.4%, which gives us an estimate for the number of household in 2006 as 112,230,827. Throw in another couple of percent to get to 2008 as a pure guess: 114,475,444.

Back to penetration -- 25% of households is 28,618,861 -- call it 29 million. With 10 million sold in the 4th quarter of 2007, and at least another 6 million in the 3rd quarter (based on the 60% growth rate), thats 17 million HDTVs in just the last half of 2007. You decide how likely the 25% penetration is given this.

Another reference, http://www.rtoonline.com/Content/article/Oct07/Nielson_HDTV_Household_DMA_Estimates7975789103007.asp, gives the US HDTV penetration as 13% at the end of last October. Even assuming that a full third of the 10 million HDTVs sold in the 3rd quarter were sold in October, that still pushes the penetration up to almost 19%. Not 25%, but in the ballpark. Of course, this over-counts those purchases a bit since some are likely purchased as upgrades or as second (or more) HDTVs for a given household.

Re:Market Isn't Even Ready

[bdjacobson]

-snip- So, the first part of me agrees with you.

Then, the second part of me is concerned that people are so lazy and/or incapable that they can't spend an hour googling here and there to make use of that $2000 beauty they just purchased.

Re:Market Isn't Even Ready

[illumin8]

Now call me when we have the bandwidth to stream HD, and we're not paying a premium for discs and when we all have large screen hi def tvs that actually can utilized the enhanced resolution.

The AppleTV is calling... are you there? I watched a different HiDef (720p) rental every day last week with Dolby Digital 5.1 sound. I was able to rent from the comfort of my couch and watch the movie within a few minutes on my big screen HDTV.

Shiny 5" discs are so 1999...

Re:Market Isn't Even Ready

[rmerry72]

You're solving the wrong problem. Most people want to listen to the same music over and over again, but few want to watch the same videos more than a couple of times. Having a store of 300 hours is fine, but it's fixed. People pay huge amounts of money every month not just to watch video, but to watch new video. Storing it locally to watch again doesn't give them anything.

You do have a point, but most vids on commercial TV or DVDs are already reruns. Its all recycled often and people what it over and over again. They just think the are watching new stuff because they haven't seen it in a few months / years.

We do watch new video, often before its on TV or out in the rental store. And we watch it when we want not when we're told to. More than once even, if we are interrupted, distracted or just bored. Likewise, most of what is broadcast these days are reruns. Hell, only 9000 people went on strike and "new" video production ground to a halt, and it was back to prime-time "classic episodes of your favourites" Don't believe the hype.

Re:Market Isn't Even Ready

[nolesrule]

I think you're confusing population and households. There's about 2.5 people per household in the U.S. 25% of households would be closer to 30 million, not 80 million.

Re:Market Isn't Even Ready

[nolesrule]

Low bandwidth 720p. How quaint.

Re:Market Isn't Even Ready

[milsoRgen]

The AppleTV is calling... are you there? Oh I'm here, I don't particularly care for Apple hardware. I like my commodity x86 parts, and yes Apple TV is a CE device, however it just feeds the beast. Personal issues aside, 720p... You're kidding right? I don't even run my desktop any less than 1024p (vertical lines), and that is very very low end by todays standards. And since the x86 machine I just put together off newegg today came with on board 8 channel sound, not to mention my 35 dollar Wal-Mart DVD/DivX player has Dolby support (in regards to your 5.1 comment), yeah I'm not to impressed.

on my big screen HDTV. You nailed the issue right there, HD content isn't worth the effort on anything less than 42" and even then it's very questionable as to whether there is a difference. But that's in a home environment, it's still maturing. To inject 400million into such a market seems a bit absurd to me, but like I said let Sony blow their wad. I'll wait for HD content to become more than premium novelty content.

Re:Market Isn't Even Ready

[tm2b]

You obviously don't know many parents.

Kids love to watch the same damned things over and over and over. If you're going to download the Mouse's latest oeuvres, you're going to want to cache them locally for a long while so that the rug rats can keep watching them.

Re:Market Isn't Even Ready

[Swampash]

Say it with me now...

convenience
convenience
convenience

The CD became king of audio because it is more convenient than magnetic tape. Now a new format has arrived and the CD is dying, because the new format is more convenient.

The DVD became king of video because it is more convenient than magnetic tape. Now a new format has arrived, and this time no one cares. Because Blu-ray is NO MORE CONVENIENT.

Re:Market Isn't Even Ready

[Wdomburg]

Households, not individuals. And assuming people you happen to know are a representative sample is always a mistake. Assuming people you happen to know are representative of an entire nation of people over seven thousand miles away is flat out idiotic.

The 25% number is actually one of the lower estimates for overall penetration. If you look at the Consumer Electronics Association they pegged penetration at 30% back in June, with a projection of 36% by YE07.

Hell, a cursory look seems to indicate your friends aren't even representative of Australia given that this article seems to imply significant market penetration in Australia as well.

We know step 2...

[Overzeetop]

... and it involves a $400M cash payment. No need for question marks for these gnomes.

Re:We know step 2...

[esocid]

Neither side has confirmed the size of any bids or payments.

We may know, but they won't acknowledge it.

Re:We know step 2...

[Overzeetop]

I read it the same way I read "the company admits no wrongdoing, but the terms of the settlement were not disclosed."

Re:We know step 2...

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Promise the movie companies that your formats are less prone to being pirated.
2. $400M cash payment
2.5 Rape customers
3. Profit!

Guess where Sony get the $400 Millions from?

Re:We know step 2...

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you need a question mark on step three.

Re:First

[esocid]

First to sell my HD-DVD, listed as Blu-Ray, on ebay.

I hate Sony...

[Izabael_DaJinn]

But whatever gets more high-def movies onto Usenet is good news for me.

Re:I hate Sony...

[$RANDOMLUSER]

Sorry, that's a "first rule of Usenet" violation.

Re:I hate Sony...

[Anonymous Coward]

What's the second rule agai... oh yeah. Sorry to bother you.

Or...

[blhack]

Has anyone considered the remote possibility that Blu-Ray won out because it was the better of the two formats? It stores more data. From an end user perspective, isn't this pretty much the #1 thing that matters?

Granted, geeks know that the DRM on blu-ray is harsher than that on HD-DVD, but if your just joe Movie Watcher does it really matter?

Just a thought.

Re:Or...

[RightSaidFred99]

No, nobody has considered that because it's meaningless - especially to Joe Movie Watcher. Both HDDVD and BluRay have more than enough space to provide existing movie content. Look at most HDDVDs, there's usually quite a bit of free space even with extras etc...

HDDVD also had a path to higher capacities. From a movie-watcher's perspective, BluRay has absolutely 0 technical advantages. In terms of a storage medium it has some advantage, but not one HDDVD couldn't have matched easily enough.

Re:Or...

[ironwill96]

I don't really think Blu-Ray was a better format in any real sense. Yes, initially it had 5-10GB more space allowed, but Toshiba figured out how to top 50GB using HD-DVD discs as the technology got more mature. Also, HD-DVD players and discs were cheaper to produce as far as I can tell, and the HD-DVD spec was finalized long before Blu-Ray's was. This resulted in Blu-Ray players being released that only supported the 1.0 spec and could NOT be upgraded. Basically when all the fancy Blu-Rays come out a couple of years later, the people with 1.0 spec players are hosed. They can't use any of the neato features that HD-DVD had in from the very beginning. As far as I know, Blu-Ray did not have things like dynamic Picture In Picture with real-time overlays etc in the 1.0 spec. They added that stuff in 1.1 and alienated early adopters.

Also, Sony may have "won" by shoving Blu-Ray players into every PS3 and jacking their price up, but how much money are they making off of software sales on the PS3? I'd say not a lot since the software attach rate for PS3 is fairly low (Wii is also not that great - I think many of the casual players just want to play Wii Sports which comes with the console for free!). It also does sound like Sony just was willing to throw more cash into the "pay for exclusive" war. I really am torn at this point as I did not buy Blu-Ray merely because I did not want to support Sony due to their DRM-happiness. Now that i'm stuck with a mostly useless HD-DVD player I guess i'll have to pick up blu-ray eventually if I want 1080p movies for my HD TV.

Re:Or...

[blhack]

No, nobody has considered that because it's meaningless - especially to Joe Movie Watcher. Both HDDVD and BluRay have more than enough space to provide existing movie content. Look at most HDDVDs, there's usually quite a bit of free space even with extras etc... Well, yeah, there is enough space on there for the current model we have for watching, but what if we change the model? What if instead of a season of television spanning 4 DVDs it just spans 1 blu-ray disk and is all in 1080p?
If you're at best buy, and you ask the sales guy the difference between Blu Ray and HD DVD, what is he going to tell you that is relevant to your inerests?
Is the DRM model on each relevant? Well, if you need to talk to a sales guy at best buy, then chances are you don't even know what this is; so no.
Is the capacity relevant? Well, not really (of course they both have enough space to hold a movie), but if you need to decide between two (seemingly equal) players, and you're told that one of them can hold more data, which are you going to choose?

The answer is, obviously, blu ray.

Re:Or...

[PrvtBurrito]

Uh, HD-DVD's are: 1) region free 2) not a rushed to market technology (no customer screwing profile x.x limitations) 3) half the price 4) has more interactive features in contrast blu-ray store more space. Are you guys that obtuse?

Re:Or...

[BigMattyC]

Do you honestly think that Joe Movie Watcher gives a flying fig about how much data you can put on a Blu-Ray? The movies fit on either disc, and approximately 3% of the population gives even a cursory glance at the extra features. They do not care what Seth Green has to talk about over the soundtrack of Austin Powers. They. do. not. care.

Blu-Ray won by default because they were better organized, not because of any technology differences. In terms of media (A/V content) there is exactly 0 dfference. They both use VC-1 and h.264, they can both support the same advanced audio codecs (Dolby TrueHD, DD+, whatever else), and they both have more space available on disc than could be used for a movie. Hell, some movies, even long ones, can fit on a disc TWICE.

So.... nonsense.

Re:Or...

[powerlord]

From a movie-watcher's perspective, BluRay has absolutely 0 technical advantages.

Not entirely true. It had at least ONE major advantage, less market confusion with DVD.

I've seen at least two instances personally (not counting the numerous anecdotes mention here on slashdot :) ) where consumers were confused that they needed a new player to watch HD DVD discs, since they owned a DVD player and an HD TV.

With Blu-Ray, there was much more of an instinctual "This is a new format that needs a new player".

I'd also wonder if Blu-Ray's choice of using Blue for their media vs HD DVD's Red made a difference from a psychological point of view. Most people associate Red with Danger, while Blue is usually associated with Calmness.

Re:Or...

[GuyverDH]

Blu-Ray was different.. I'll give you that much...

Better? No... Won't go that far.
The fact that it uses DRM at all makes it lose at least 90 out of 100 points on scale of usability.
The fact that early adopters are out however much they spent on players that cannot be upgraded to watch current rev media, drops another 90 out of 100 points.

Right now, we're at -80 out of 100 points on usability scale.

Next we have media costs. blu-ray media costs more to manufacture, therefore raises purchase price. Drop another 50 points.

-130.

Next we have longevity. Downloadable content will soon surpass quality and availability to blu-ray, without the hassles and headaches. Drop another 90 points.

-220.

There, we have it.... On a scale of 0 to 100 on usability and viability, blu-ray comes in at -220.

Woo-hoo - we have a winner. Not!

Re:Or...

[RightSaidFred99]

Nah, I don't buy it. It was all about politics and business, not technical merit. HDDVD could have scaled capacity easily, and in fact already had. This just came down to Sony being better at playing the game.

Re:Or...

[justinlindh]

Has anyone considered the remote possibility that Blu-Ray won out because it was the better of the two formats? It stores more data. From an end user perspective, isn't this pretty much the #1 thing that matters?

Not really. Your average end user doesn't know anything about the amount of data storage available on a disc unless the sales person used it in the sales pitch. They know about as much about disc capacity as they do about DRM.

Assuming the above to be true (my personal anecdotal evidence seems to suggest it is), from an end user's perspective who DOES understand DRM effects AND storage capacities, there was no clear winner. HD-DVD had less restrictive DRM, and a bit less potential capacity. It's also worth mentioning that very few (if any) discs reach the storage cap limit on HD-DVD OR Blu-Ray, and that's with full 1080p res video.

Another benefit for HD-DVD, on paper at least, was that all players had to implement certain interactivity standards (whereas I believe some Blu-Ray players were made that won't be 'future proof' due to partially implemented Java, please correct me if I'm wrong on this). Standalone Blu-Ray players (not PS3) will apparently be obsolete circa 2010 since their spec can't be upgraded via firmware downloads (allegedly, I'm only parroting what I've read). Of course, I don't expect your average end user to understand or care about this piece of things; I'm just pointing out that Blu-Ray's superior storage doesn't necessarily make it the superior format. Ignoring the storage capacity and considering the above almost make choosing the 'superior format' a coin toss.

Understanding the above, I bought an HD-DVD player 8 months ago. I actually thought that Joe Consumer would see the 'HD' in 'HD-DVD' and logically match it up to their 'HD' in 'HD-TV' and assume it's what they needed. I honestly thought the name alone would ensure HD-DVD victory, but I was naive.

Re:Or...

[RightSaidFred99]

Not entirely true. It had at least ONE major advantage, less market confusion with DVD. But that's not a technical advantage. BluRay had many non-technical advantages, all related to Sony's market power and good decisions not BluRay's technical superiority with respect to movie watching.

Re:Or...

[Charcharodon]

The DRM is a non issue. Blu-Ray and HD-DVD DRM was sidestepped last year. Simple 1 button ripping has been available for a while now.

The only thing Blu-Ray had going for it was its data density. I would hardly call it a supperior format when it costs 2-3x as much for the media and the hardware.

Re:Or...

[evilviper]

but Toshiba figured out how to top 50GB using HD-DVD discs as the technology got more mature.

3-layer HD DVDs was just a PR stunt. None were ever produced, and I'm willing to bet that none of the existing HD DVD players could read them, so it might just as well have been a new format that nobody would have adopted.

Sony demonstrated much, much higher numbers of layers on Blu Ray discs as well.

Re:Or...

[Fezmid]

"Well, yeah, there is enough space on there for the current model we have for watching, but what if we change the model? What if instead of a season of television spanning 4 DVDs it just spans 1 blu-ray disk and is all in 1080p?"

You want to fit 13 hours of 1080p video (not to mention hi-rez audio) on one blu-ray disk? Not going to happen.

You could potentially fit an entire season at 480p on one Blu-Ray disk -- but then what's the point of the expensive player?

Re:Or...

[evilviper]

It stores more data. From an end user perspective, isn't this pretty much the #1 thing that matters?

No, I'd say capacity was the #2 thing that mattered.

#1 was: Blu-Ray discs don't get scratched.

Granted, geeks know that the DRM on blu-ray is harsher than that on HD-DVD,

"Geeks" here on /. "know" a lot of things that aren't true...

Re:Or...

[DirkGently]

Woo-hoo - we have a winner. Not!

1993 called. It wants its catch-phrase back.

Re:Or...

[BigMattyC]

Oh, and they are required to be played on a player that runs a Microsoft HDi application that uses 2x the resources of BDJ. If you consider subsidizing the DRAM industry to be a design win, then yeah, HD-DVD is great.

Re:Or...

[Bigboote66]

The model doesn't need changing. The current model is that a disk holds enough content based on the amount of time people are willing to sit on their fat asses. You're going to take a break to stretch your legs or go to the bathroom. You may as well change a disk while you're at it. Content that lasts over 4 hours is so uncommon as to be irrelevant to the issue.

I don't see a real compelling reason for something to be able to play 8 hours of uninterrupted content for the home market. Those that need that kind of play time are a insignificant minority. The only reason for increased capacity would be when the move comes to the next higher resolution format, which will involve new hardware anyway.

-BbT

Re:Or...

[Anonymous Coward]

You are a terrible businessman. For every person who buys a PS3 for Bluray is automatically a potential customer for games too. So what if not every person with a PS3 buys games? A lot will, and a lot will simply because blowing another $300 on a 360 seems dumb when they own a PS3. Sony also makes $$$ off every BD sale, so they won't even care about people using the PS3 just for movies.

So shut up with your attach rates and other crap you don't have any concept of. This isn't PS2 vs Xbox, this is a whole different playing field now. You have a competitively priced BD player that's also a PS3, a wide-audience friendly Wii, and a hard-core gamer-only 360. The 360 did well out of the blocks because of game library and time to market (failure rate obviously didn't matter to anyone). But now it's a completely different story with BD winning, now the PS3 is instantly better for the money and a ton of titles are coming out this year.

I know everyone has a hard time accepting that the PS3 is suddenly looking to be in really good position because of the nerd-rage over the pricing. But it was always a more powerful, more capable, better engineered platform. It's the Apple to Microsoft's console, I mean, just listen to which one sounds like a hair dryer and breaks all the time. It runs Linux without any modding, you /. nerds love that don't you?

Then we approach the real value of the BD capabilities, HD games. There will come a point, probably this year, when a tiny little DVD just isn't enough space for all of those textures and lossless sounds. The 360 is stuck at 9GB until the next gen in 2010 or beyond. The PS3 will outlast the 360 by a year or two based on optical storage and horsepower, then Sony can put out a technically superior platform just because they waited 2 more years than MS. Sony knows what they're doing, PSX and PS2 were huge and PS2 was no mistake, they really know how to make a good console. MS knows how to shove a bunch of hardware and a leaf blower in a case and stick games on it.

Re:Or...

[Anonymous Coward]

True geeks use their Blu-Ray disks once to copy to their storage server and don't have to worry about scratches.

Re:Or...

[0xABADC0DA]

HDDVD also had a path to higher capacities. From a movie-watcher's perspective, BluRay has absolutely 0 technical advantages. In terms of a storage medium it has some advantage, but not one HDDVD couldn't have matched easily enough. Bluray uses Java, so the menus and scripting can be more more advanced than that of HDDVD -- in fact most of the reason for HDDVD to even exist as a serious contender in the first place was to kill Java (see MS backing of). Compared to some xml/javascript hackery for HDDVD.

As for Bluray having more space... if that is not a technical advantage then you might as well say regular dvd's with a couple minutes of high def content are 'just as good'. The difference between say 180 and 185 minutes might not be an advantage in the market, but it's still a technical one.

Re:Or...

[XeresRazor]

Actually there's one very large technical difference between the formats that does come into play when you start getting discs with one or more uncompressed audio tracks on board (which is a good thing by the way since most standalones have independent analog outs and PS3 will transcode on the fly to whatever your sound system supports). Blu-ray has a significantly higher maximum bitrate cap, 48Mbit/s for blu-ray versus only 30.24 for HD-DVD (those are complete audio+video+subtitle streamrates, the video itself is limited to 40mbit on blu-ray and 29.4 on HD-DVD). The biggest reason these are important isn't for higher overall movie bitrates, it's so the overhead's there to allow more bits to be thrown at more complicated scenes or audio segments. Scenes with large amounts of random motion (explosions for both of you Michael Bay fans out there or any of you fans of the matrix lobby shootout) get a definite advantage from being able to throw more bits at the video when needed, as does audio (VBR MP3 is popular for a reason afterall and the lossless codecs supported on the HD formats are true VBR codecs).

Re:Or...

[samkass]

Blu-ray media was already outselling HD DVD by more than 2 to 1 in the US and much greater margins overseas by the time Warner cut HD DVD. The only two major studios to back HD DVD had to be bribed, as well. I don't see this as quite the precipitating event that the article summary seems to imply... consumers appeared to have already chosen Blu-ray by the time of Warner's action. If Warner hadn't made their decision now, it just would have been a slightly slower death, but not by a lot.

Re:Or...

[Sir_Lewk]

Technically, nothing matters but the money, not even technical merit.

Re:Or...

[dreamt]

The price thing was artificial. It was because Toshiba, the only (real) HD-DVD manufacturer cut prices and was taking huge losses on selling the things. The prices on BluRay will come down naturally as technology improves and because of real competition between hardware vendors.

Re:Or...

[The-Bus]

This explains why set-top Blu-ray players were less expensive.

Wait, no it doesn't. Because they were consistently twice the price.

Re:Or...

[Sir_Lewk]

Arbitrary scorings are arbitrary.

Re:Or...

[Actually, I do RTFA]

but if you need to decide between two (seemingly equal) players, and you're told that one of them can hold more data, which are you going to choose?

The one that costs less? The one that has the content you want to watch? The one that also plays PS3 games? Neither, becuase you're not happy pushing shittons (metric, not imperial) of money down the throat of content producers?

Re:Or...

[blhack]

You assume anybody watching clips on a DVD wants to do so linearly. What if i want episode 1 of family guy from season 6, then episode 8?

Re:Or...

[xhrit]

HD-DVD lost because it contains proprietary Microsoft technology. Big content don't like vendor lock in.

Re:Or...

[Actually, I do RTFA]

Bluray uses Java, so the menus and scripting can be more more advanced than that of HDDVD

Bullshit thrice over.

1. The Java menus broke when they came out, even on the PS3, so that was a nonstarter (in the future it may work, but they don't now.)
2. It's a damn movie, I don't want content that can crash (see above).
3. The original DVD format had assembly. It had registers. You could (and I have seen individuals) do far more amazing things with menus than studios did. The studios didn't use all that power because it was already overkill.

Re:Or...

[RightSaidFred99]

Unfortunately for your point, laser wavelength isn't the only factor. A rather large factor is this thing called "layers". Kind of how a DVD has, you know, two layers?

Re:Or...

[mzs]

No BD-ROM and HD-DVD both use 'blue' (really closer to violet) lasers. BD uses a different data encoding to achieve more data density and uses a more scratch resistant coating on the disk itself to counteract it's lesser ability at handling read errors.

Re:Or...

[EvilIdler]

8 hours of uninterrupted content = half a season of most TV shows,
or a whole series of a UK show. I think it'll be useful.

Re:Or...

[Gojira Shipi-Taro]

Next we have longevity. Downloadable content will soon surpass quality and availability to blu-ray, without the hassles and headaches. Drop another 90 points.

I don't know about you, but DRM on downloadable content (and you can't possibly be naive enough to think the studios will allow real, useful, desirable HD content without DRM) troubles me a hell of a lot more than DRM on physical media that I can put my hands on.

It's far far easier for content to "accidentally" be deleted when you won't have any tangible proof with which to do anything about it.

Sony knows full well that if they actually USE any of the hypothetical destructive DRM in blu-ray, their format can die as quickly as it was born (see Divx).

Also, truly useful downloadable content requires available and USABLE bandwidth. With ISPs all over the place jumping on the "bill higher for people who actually use the bandwidth" train, people aren't going to want to pay for content AND pay per-gigabyte for the pipes to get it. That's liable to be a far bigger headache than going to the store (which generally takes less time than downloading an HD movie) or ordering on line.

I'll stick with physical media, thanks.

Re:Or...

[simontek2]

The only reason i cared about the format war was for backups. i am not in the mood to back up a 500G-1TB drive on dvd's. I try to do triple backups. Hard drives, DVD's, and tape.

Re:Or...

[Anonymous Coward]

Was that the same argument you used for Laserdisc?

Re:Or...

[asc99c]

> HDDVD also had a path to higher capacities

Huh?!? Both types of disc can in theory be made with more layers. Both standards for discs and players supported single or dual layer. Blu-Ray has 40% higher capacity. I think Toshiba pulled a bit of a PR stunt with their 3 layer 51GB disc, just trumping Blu-Ray's 50GB, but didn't TDK just turn around and produce an 8-layer prototype supporting 200GB?

On which point, for all the Sony-haters out there it is worth remembering that this isn't Sony's format, although they were a major contributor. TDK at least provided several key technologies without which the format isn't possible, and I'm sure the other members also had significant input. Blu-Ray is way less proprietary than HD-DVD.

Also it's fairly open java-based interactive system always seemed like a much better alternative to HD-DVDs Microsoft-based system.

Re:Or...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd also wonder if Blu-Ray's choice of using Blue for their media vs HD DVD's Red made a difference from a psychological point of view. Most people associate Red with Danger, while Blue is usually associated with Calmness. Market research indicates that it's actually the other way around. People associate red with deals and sales. Blue doesn't stand out much since it's highly subdued and cool in mood. This is why the latest BRD's have got much more colorful and vibrant blue colors to them than the older varieties. Red and green in particular tend to get peoples' attention as your eye is more sensitive to those colors. BRD's are still too expensive for my tastes. I have an HDTV, but you're nuts if you think I'm going to pay more than $15 for a movie. Asking me to pay $35 to $50 is absurd especially when a lot of the content on BRD's is not significantly better than DVD's due to filming or archive limitations of the original footage.

Re:Or...

[BrerBear]

Blu-Ray was different.. I'll give you that much...
Better? No... Won't go that far.
The fact that it uses DRM at all makes it lose at least 90 out of 100 points on scale of usability. Wow, the last 10 years of DVD must have been rough on you, seeing as DVDs have DRM.

The fact that early adopters are out however much they spent on players that cannot be upgraded to watch current rev media, drops another 90 out of 100 points. Original profile 1.0 Blu-ray players can watch all movies and all special features on current and future discs, except for picture in picture. Kinda like how original DVD players didn't have access to all current DVD player features, and how my DVD players can't play the "enhanced multimedia content" that requires a PC drive. Curses!

Next we have media costs. blu-ray media costs more to manufacture, therefore raises purchase price. Drop another 50 points. Strange that the extra few pennies per disk (and dropping) hasn't lead to Blu-ray discs costing more than HD-DVDs, seeing how price was supposed to be a big benefit of that format.

Next we have longevity. Downloadable content will soon surpass quality and availability to blu-ray, without the hassles and headaches. Drop another 90 points. You mean the downloadable content with all that horrible DRM? And with even less special feature extras than regular DVD, let alone Blu-ray? And with worse video and audio quality? I suggest you invest heavily in this, right away!

Woo-hoo - we have a winner. Not! Not?! Ummm... ok... "You are the weakest link, goodbye!"

Re:Or...

[Anonymous Coward]

So Sony isn't subsidizing the cost of the PS3 anymore? That was quick.

Re:Or...

[theonetruekeebler]

I've seen at least two instances personally (not counting the numerous anecdotes mention here on slashdot :) ) where consumers were confused that they needed a new player to watch HD DVD discs, since they owned a DVD player and an HD TV.
So it's big advantage is that people are dumbasses?

Yay, business. Sony learned a long time ago that technical merits have nothing to do with market success.

Re:Or...

[Anonymous Coward]

Also it's fairly open java-based interactive system always seemed like a much better alternative to HD-DVDs Microsoft-based system. Then why was it so broken and hard to use?

Re:Or...

[Wdomburg]

Most mainstream consumers couldn't give a flying fig what the raw capacity of the disc is. They might care if a movie had to be split onto two sides of a disc or two seperate discs (like some early DVD5 titles) but that wasn't a concern with either format. In most cases Blu-ray didn't even make any practical use of the space. Half the released titles used MPEG-2 instead of the more space efficient AVC and VC-1 codecs and most of the lossless audio tracks out there are uncompressed because the BDA didn't mandate lossless compression as part of the base specification.

There are plenty of other things that most consumers would care about, though. Personally I refuse to buy Blu-ray until they actually release a finished product. When questioned memebers of the BDA have admitted they rushed the product to market to stifle adoption of HD DVD. Some people say they don't care because it should be only secondary content that won't be available on older players, but I'll be damned if I'm going to pay $400 for a player and $20-30 per disc and not get the full experience.

Price is another major factor for most consumers, especially with the recent economic downturn. Price on BD players may start dropping as consumer confidence in the longevity of the format increases sales. On the other hand the Playstation still represents the majority of sales (unsuprisingly, since BDA representatives have stated publicaly that it's the only player they would recommend) which may retard sales of standalone players.

It's not all that hard to see why they won. The PS3 allowed them to establish a large install base in a relatively short time period without regard to whether the people buying them were interested in buying an HD player. They literally own several studios (Sony Entertainment, MGM) which gave them a guaranteed early advantage in content, and the inclusion of extensible DRM (BD+) attracted the loyatly of several others (Fox, Disney).

Pretty simple: install base advantage + content advantage = winz0rz, regardless of whether the advantage was necessarily fair.

Is it the best outcome for the consumer? I don't personally think so, but there are plenty of people who would disagree.

Re:Or...

[BrerBear]

Uh, HD-DVD's are: 1) region free As are many Blu-rays, although it was up to the studio publishing whether or not to region encode. Many of the biggest titles had no region encoding on Blu-ray. Other studios stayed away from HD DVD because of the lack of region encoding, and as a result, HD DVD was working on adding it in to appease those studios.

2) not a rushed to market technology (no customer screwing profile x.x limitations) Except for the whole new HD DVD 51 spec (bigger discs!) which thankfully died out with the format before the early HD DVD owners got screwed by it.

3) half the price Yeah, Toshiba sold those players for a substantial loss hoping to make up the money on HD DVD patent royalties. How'd that work out for them? Maybe that's why Toshiba was the only one producing those players, as other hardware vendors weren't willing to take a bath on them.

4) has more interactive features in contrast blu-ray store more space. Are you guys that obtuse? Yeah, so many people missed out on the occasional HD DVD-only web features, like going online to buy ringtones or Evan Almighty toilet paper. No matter, though, b/c they will be coming to Blu-ray eventually, like it or not.

P.S. You forgot the extra data bandwidth for Blu-ray, but you weren't really trying, I think.

Re:Or...

[Anonymous Coward]

> #1 was: Blu-Ray discs don't get scratched.

You must be kidding, right?

BluRay-Discs were at the beginning so vulnerable to scratches that they were considered impossible to market. TDK then presented improvement over improvement over improvement on scratch resistant surfaces, but still they wouldn't even get nearby close to HDDVD, which already were as resistant as CDROMs (which survive a pot of hot coffee as well as carriage in your trousers).

Actually HDDVDs are technically more advanced: They show that you cannot just solve a problem by throwing more storage space at it. Better invest $10 in a better decoder chip and you'll get away with half of the bitrate, and with 1$ per disc savings it will amortize after 10 discs; and is more resistant to scratches.

Additionally, what has already been told: They scale better. If you need higher bitrates, simply offer more storage space, which might as most require upgrading the drive. BluRay, on the other hand, is maxed out, and would require better codecs with better decoder chips, and thus a full replacement of the entire decoder hardware.

Re:Or...

[0xABADC0DA]

1. Bluray discs have menus, usually done with standardized scripts running on top of Java.
2. Content that looks good > content that may crash sometimes
3. Java > assembly for a consumer product

So many fanboys.

Re:Or...

[Keeper]

It would also explain why BluRay players using BDJ boot much faster than HD-DVD players ...

Wait, no it doesn't. Because BluRay boot times are 2-3 times longer (8 minutes!) than HD-DVD drives.

Re:Or...

[mmcguigan]

#1 was: Blu-Ray discs don't get scratched. Blu-ray discs do scratch and it is debatable whether the harder surface of the Blu-ray disc is a benefit to the consumer.

HD-DVD media is made of the same material used in standard DVD media. It is pretty cheap and easy for the average person to resurface a DVD. When a Blu-ray disc does get scratched, it is far more difficult to fix. If you try to use a DVD-doctor on a Blu-ray disc it doesn't help. The only fix I've heard for a scratched BD is to trash it and purchase a new one.

Does anyone know of a cheap, easy and reliable way for consumers to resurface scratched Blu-ray discs?

Re:Or...

[lightversusdark]

Blu-Ray discs don't get scratched.

+5 Interesting, eh? Is it true?

Re:Or...

[GuyverDH]

Did someone see some blurry anoying text? I didn't get a chance to read it as it was so full of inane gibberish...

Go Sony fan-boy, go...

Two product lines I refuse to buy into.

Sony..
Apple..

Both rely on selling glitzy craptastic products at diamond prices...

Mac - crap
ipod - crap
ps3 - crap
blu-ray - crap

Hey, it's my opinion, I'm entitled to it.

You're entitled to yours. I just am not going to bother to read it. =)

Re:Or...

[Fallen Kell]

Look at most HDDVDs, there's usually quite a bit of free space even with extras etc...

Too bad on most of those there wasn't enough room to fit a TrueHD or DD+ audio track and instead a DTS or DD track was used.

Re:Or...

[epine]

It stores more data. From an end user perspective, isn't this pretty much the #1 thing that matters? Back in the day when 4GB disk drives were considered large, there was a meme floating around that no drive would ever be large enough to contain the next version of Windows.

When the 8GB drives arrived, the clueless continued to repeat this meme. When the 30GB generation showed up, even the clueless drifted off and found other things to become clueless about.

It's been established by the movie industry for decades that the attention span of your average movie watcher ranges somewhere between 90m and 3h, if the upper bound avoids water scenes.

How many movies are released theatrically with a running time longer than 3h? Gone with the Wind, Lawrence of Arabia, Ghandi, Titanic, Schindler's List, ROTK, King Kong. Just the trivial productions. Any one of those movies would fit on a single HD disk plus features.

Those among us determined to watch the entire Godfather series in a single sitting without flipping a disk are probably also equiped with a condom catheter and a leg flask.

3h was always the sensible target. If a movie hasn't entered the 3rd act by the 2h mark, I'm going to get up and make popcorn anyway. How long does a movie have to be to start the 3rd act after the 2h mark? 2h45 at a minimum.

If you can cram three 3h movies onto a single disk, that's great too, fewer disks for the landfill, but it was never essential to the sales model.

In psychology they talk about "confirmation bias". Well, there's a similar effect with "capacity bias". We pay a lot of attention when the shoe pinches, but then when it doesn't we're quick to forget it once mattered.

Now that I think about it, I'm actually talking about "availability bias", where we recall the situations where the shoe pinched more readily than the cases where the shoe didn't pinch, so we assert "not pinching" as the dominant controlling variable across all scenarios.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Availability_heuristic

Of course, if a person is conditioned to think that playing length is a problem with the current DVD format, they might not realize that playing length has been reduced to irrelevancy as a purchasing criteria in the next technology generation.

Too bad ethics prohibits running a mass experiment on HD consumers. We could corroborate an amazingly broad range of psychological effects.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases

IMHO, the unbiased opinion of HD is "I'll wait".

Re:Or...

[TrancePhreak]

See 300 HDDVD vs 300 Blu-Ray.

Re:Or...

[Malc]

What interactive features exactly does HD DVD have that Blu-ray doesn't? Oh, none.

Re:Or...

[TrancePhreak]

The Blu-Ray spec allows for arbitrary code execution for an extra layer of DRM. Maybe you should do some research first?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blu-Ray#Digital_rights_management_.28DRM.29

Re:Or...

[91degrees]

So what exactly are the resource requirements of HDi and BDJ? Are we talking gigabytes or terabytes here?

Re:Or...

[Actually, I do RTFA]

Why would I want Java on a device that has specialty hardware? Why not a language that just works. Why would I want a movie that can fucking crash. It's content. And the movies that tried to use custom Java failed in the PS3 and other players.

Re:Or...

[TooMuchToDo]

In the consumer electronics market, yes. But try fooling mother nature with a wad of cash. I don't care how many dollars you plow into a heavy lifter, if the technical merit isn't there, that damn rocket is going to fall right off the launch pad.

Re:Or...

[Hadlock]

They are offering a new scratch resistant coating on some discs. BD-RWs with this coating cost an extra $5/pack (of 3?). I haven't seen a demonstration myself, but all reports point to !snake oil.

Re:Or...

[Charcharodon]

Yawn,

DRM of any type has about the shelf time of milk these days, and what ever they are currently using isn't stopping anyone from ripping the movies.

Re:Or...

[NothingMore]

Ummm how is BD+ less harsh than just plain AACS (the only thing HD-DVD was capable of doing)??

Re:Or...

[tepples]

The prices on BluRay will come down To the point where the masses can afford to buy two players, one for each BD region?

Re:Or...

[achenaar]

I'm not sure that the colour "blue" and the product "movie" get associated with calmness all that often ;)

Re:Or...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, HD DVD was actually the superior product in this case. The was a final rev. from day one, as opposed to the profile nonsense that current bluray players suffer from. When the less mature, more expensive product wins (coincidentally the one with more DRM) then the consumer loses. Of course the reality is that bluray will likely lose the war to plain DVDs and downloads.

Re:Or...

[dreamt]

Well, cheap DVD players can be had for under $50 today, and started out above the $500 range, so there is no reason to believe it won't (yes, I'm ignoring your region code issue).

Check out someone's comment at EngadgetHD where someone went back into internet archives and compared prices for DVD+2years to BluRay+2 years, which is about where we are, and both priced up about equally.

Re:Or...

[that this is not und]

Do you realize how dated "xxxx called. It wants its xxxx back." has become???!!

Re:Or...

[that this is not und]

I haven't seen the apps for ripping BluRay or HD-DVD disks. Can you point me to a URL?

(actually, I am either 'just asking' or it's a rhetorical question, since I don't know the answer)

Re:Or...

[Ahnteis]

You forgot mandatory managed copy.

Re:Or...

[2ms]

Quite the opposite. HD-DVDs could be manufactured using mostly the same equipment as DVDs and didn't have the unplanned ridiculously expensive coating added to the design to try and reduce the extreme scratching problem Blu-Ray had. HD-DVDs were always much less expensive to make both in terms of the media and the hardware.

Re:Or...

[Anonymous Coward]

Too bad on most of those there wasn't enough room to fit a TrueHD or DD+ audio track and instead a DTS or DD track was used.

That's funny, because DD+ is a REQUIRED codec for every HD DVD disc, and every single disc I have has at least a DD+ audio track (about a third also have TrueHD). OTOH, DD+ isn't required for BD discs, so the manufacturers tend to include a standard DD track for the alternate languages (this is in addition to PCM tracks for the main audio). But don't let the facts get in the way of your argument.

Re:Or...

[bdjacobson]

#1 was: Blu-Ray discs don't get scratched. Blu-ray discs do scratch and it is debatable whether the harder surface of the Blu-ray disc is a benefit to the consumer.

HD-DVD media is made of the same material used in standard DVD media. It is pretty cheap and easy for the average person to resurface a DVD. When a Blu-ray disc does get scratched, it is far more difficult to fix. If you try to use a DVD-doctor on a Blu-ray disc it doesn't help. The only fix I've heard for a scratched BD is to trash it and purchase a new one.

Does anyone know of a cheap, easy and reliable way for consumers to resurface scratched Blu-ray discs? While I cannot say for sure how effective the anti-scratch material will be for media, I do know that my Sony Ericsson cellphone had that material on the screen, and in spite of dropping it, having it scratch around inside my pocket for 2 years, etc; it hardly had any real scratches-- only minor scuffs like you would see perhaps with sandpaper. If their anti-scratch coating works as well as this did for the cellphone screen, I doubt it will be much a problem.

Re:Or...

[stephen70]

Manufacturing cost of optical disks is almost directly related to number of layers - single layer is cheapest 2 layer is more 3 layer huge increase - each layer adds greater posibility for defects and longer manufacturing processes etc. Blu-ray is ultimatly cheaper to produce. Also more reliable, greater storage and faster streaming rates.

We know last year toshiba bribed paramount 150-180Million to drop blu-ray and constantly sold their inferior 1080i players at a loss to keep their inferior product alive.

Warner actually said before Xmas they would go with which format sold the most copies. Well over Xmas2008 blu-ray was over 2* more popular - Warner published both formats they decided to go with the most popular one.!

The article does NOT have any mention of payouts to warner from sony at all i think untill there is an actual annocuncemnt from either about a payout this is pure bad loosing tactics propogated from HD-DVD fans.!

HD-DVD fans never supported their own format by buying disks even though they claimed to have the highest number of standalone players. HD-DVD fans killed their own format by not supporting it and then complain about bribery as the cause of warner droping HD-DVD - THEY are the ones who killed their own format NOT warner bros !.

Paramounts HD-DVD's constantly undersold and many made losses - even the best selling HD-DVD transformers movie was outsold by many less popular movies on blu-ray.

Warner own patents on certain blu-ray technologies. HD-DVD fans should have been thankfull that warner even published HD-DVD at all as warner had finantial incentive to drop HD-DVD due to their ownership and royalties from their blu-ray patents !.

IMHO Warner has a very even handed and fair play policy in their decision. - Which includes continuing to publish on HD-DVD for another few months (unlike paramount who were bribed and droped Blu-ray immediatly to drag out the format war to mid 2008).

Re:Or...

[evilviper]

Ummm how is BD+ less harsh than just plain AACS

On the contrary. I would ask you to try and explain how BD+ is any harsher than AACS.

Re:Or...

[evilviper]

You must be kidding, right?

You must work for Toshiba, right?

Absolutely every single thing you've said is precisely the OPPOSITE of reality.

BluRay-Discs were at the beginning so vulnerable to scratches that they were considered impossible to market.

No, actually they were vulnerable to scratches, so they were put in caddies. A system I greatly wish was adopted. Having used both, I can tell you, handling bare discs requires an order of magnitude more time, care and effort.

Instead of going to market with caddies, they opted for an extremely durable hard coating on the discs. They've demonstrated attacking Blu Ray discs with a screwdriver, all still without causing any scratching of the discs.

but still they wouldn't even get nearby close to HDDVD, which already were as resistant as CDROMs

Blu-ray is FAR more scratch resistant than HD DVD... which isn't really a big challenge...

With HD DVD, Toshiba is packing data on the discs far more densely, which means far, far smaller scratches cause far, far more damage. Given a similar situation, Sony chose a couple ways to make it harder to damage the discs before releasing them. Toshiba, however, did nothing to mitigate this, and HD DVDs must be handled like precious antiques to prevent inadvertently causing errors.

It's a much fairer comparison to say that Blu-ray discs are more durable than all previous (bare/non-caddied) optical discs.

They show that you cannot just solve a problem by throwing more storage space at it. Better invest $10 in a better decoder chip and you'll get away with half of the bitrate,

HD DVD SUPPORTS EXACTLY THE SAME VIDEO CODECS AS BLU-RAY.

If you need higher bitrates, simply offer more storage space, which might as most require upgrading the drive.

Nobody is going to take apart their Toshiba HD DVD players, pull out the drive, and replace it with a new one.

BluRay, on the other hand, is maxed out

Sony has demonstrated Blu-Ray discs with a ridiculously large number of layers. It is far, far LESS "maxed out" than HD DVD ever was.

Re:Or...

[Headcase88]

The big advantage is that Sony knows most people are dumbasses while Toshiba doesn't (or didn't). In an executive corporate environment, over-estimating the intelligence of the average consumer is probably the top cause of failure.

See also: Psychological pricing.

Re:Or...

[spectecjr]

To the point where the masses can afford to buy two players, one for each BD region?

Exactly. The last Sony DVD player I bought - quite a nice, upscaling, progressive output one - wouldn't play region 0 disks.

That's region 0. As in region free.

I contacted support. They said "Yep."

Grrr.

Re:Or...

[DrXym]

Uh, HD-DVD's are: 1) region free 2) not a rushed to market technology (no customer screwing profile x.x limitations) 3) half the price 4) has more interactive features in contrast blu-ray store more space. Are you guys that obtuse?

To answer your points:

1. True. Sadly for HD DVD studios such as Disney LIKE region encoding. Titles like Ratatouille and No Country for Old Men were/are still showing in cinemas in Europe when they were/are released on Blu Ray in US. Studios also like stronger copy protection which is another strike against HD DVD.
2. Profiles are confusing, but I don't see how you can say customers are being screwed. You buy a box on what it does, not on what future boxes will do. Doubly true for early adopters who I assume are not stupid and read the box. You certainly don't bitch and moan that your box doesn't magically grow local storage and an ethernet port to support a new profile's requirements. All discs will be backwards compatible so even if you got a 1.0 disc it's not the end of the world - you still get to play the main content. Anyway cutting peripheral features is a pragmatic and sensible thing to do when you have many manufacturers trying to implement the same spec.
3. Half the price because Toshiba took a massive financial hit on its players. It's probably one of the few things it could do to make its players more attractive but its still a fact that they cost far more to make than they sold for. On the other hand members of the BDA were out to make a profit so their boxes are priced accordingly. From a technical standpoint HD DVD and Blu Ray players would have virtually identical hardware and software requirements.
4. Not entirely true. All profiles support BD-J which is capable of things that you couldn't do in HDi without extreme difficulty. e.g. arcade games. HDi is probably far easier to work with for content authors though. Perhaps what you meant to say is HD DVDs can fetch content from the internet whereas Blu Ray 1.x players cannot. Is this really a big deal? Perhaps you can cite a HD DVD where the network features were so compelling that it justified hooking up the player? Anyway if you want network connectivity in Blu Ray buy a PS3 and wait for the firmware update or wait for standalone players that do the same. Personally I really couldn't give a damn if some disc embeds a generic studio portal / store or other fringe features and frankly I find it quite scary that studios know when I'm watching their content.

5. On that last point I mentioned BD-J is more powerful but would be great merit Blu Ray offering something like HDi to bridge HDMV (simple DVD-like menus) and raw BD-J. I doubt the BDA would ever incorporate HDi but MS should seriously consider reworking their tools so authors can write away with HDi like they do now and the tool spits out the equivalent BD-J classes. It would mean the best of both worlds for authors and might keep MS in the game.

Re:Or...

[Criffer]

Blurrydisc is still a stupid name. HD DVD is clear - it's a High Definition DVD, and people know what a DVD is. A blurry disc? What's High def about that?

Re:Or...

[Charcharodon]

www.slysoft.com

AnyDVD HD I think the latest version of BR is causing some difficulties, but generally these guys respond with a patch within a month and everyone is good to go once again.

Software has two modes, play and rip. For play it sidesteps the HDCP requirements so you can play it on non-compliant hardware (what I mostly use it for), or rip which will copy the whole movie with or without menues onto your machine. This is of limited value since they are around 25gb each. I think once we get up to double digit TB sized harddrives it won't take such a painful bite out of my server space.

If I could crop them down to 720p they'd still look good and be of a more manageable size. This is what I don't understand about the whole HD thing. 720p is a very nice resoultion and look pretty damn good, but they just stampeded right on past it and went for 1080p. Kind goes against their standard planned obsolecence. 720p would have just fit on a DVD, unless of course the whole point was to jump to a "secure" format.

Heh, the laugh is on them now isn't it.

The software is also a very straight forward DVD ripper as well.

Re:Or...

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe he was referring to the color of the packaging. All the HD-DVD packages I've seen use a red plastic around the HD-DVD logo area.

Re:Or...

[gblfxt]

i generally like having a background tv show/movie going while doing other things like gaming. an entire season of a tv show i like on random works best. switching out disks would be too much of an inconvenience for this....

Re:Or...

[Dextrously]

Thats not true. I own tons of series on DVD, one of the more annoying thing is only having a few episodes on a disc usually 5-6 if they are in good format. So when you have a series of 100-200 episodes on DVD, for multiple series' the amount of DVD's you have to keep becomes kinda ridiculous. None of these are High Def either, they're just standard DVD quality.

Re:Or...

[mycroft822]

You underestimated the power of the dark side... and $400 million.

Re:Or...

[Anonymous Coward]

Triple layer discs are part of the official HD DVD specification, and thus readable by all HD DVD players made with a simple firmware update. Layers equal or above three for Blu-ray and above three for HD DVD are the PR stunt.

Re:Or...

[Anonymous Coward]

HD DVD is clear - it's a High Definition DVD, and people know what a DVD is.

Oh, so its a DVD that has High Definition content on it. I've got a DVD player, and an HD TV, should work great, right?

Clear to Technophiles != Clear to Average Consumer

oddly enough, the fact that you can play CDs, DVDs, and other media all in the same drive is probably part of where they get this confusion.

Holy rumor mill, Batman

[bconway]

What remains a mystery is just how big a push Warner needed to pick sides. Analysts say Sony only prevailed following a heated bidding war against Toshiba, with the reward reaching as much as $400-million (U.S.). Neither side has confirmed the size of any bids or payments.

Other than analysts' speculation of payoffs, there's nothing that could be considered fact in this article. Pass.

Re:Holy rumor mill, Batman

[TubeSteak]

Other than analysts' speculation of payoffs, there's nothing that could be considered fact in this article. Pass. I think you misread.
I understood that the analysts are speculating about the size of the payment, not its existence.

Re:Holy rumor mill, Batman

[sponga]

Well when you have an agenda against Sony and want to throw some FUD up, there is nothing like throwing a question mark at the end of your title.

As far as I am concerned I don't think Sony did enough to market the Bluray during the war against HD-DVD; they should have thrown loads of money to get them to switch instead of dicking around.
Sony wanted Microsoft's HDi as part of the BD spec but were outvoted by the rest of the BDA, who chose Java. Stupid MS decided to start developing HD-DVD as Blu-Ray was already being developed and the rest is history.

Since the article is pretty much speculation lets get some real facts rolling, although I am sure that there are a thousand posts below me which re chant the same thing every Sony/BluRay thread.

1. DVD recordables were just as expensive in the beginning. And guess what? Prices fell. BD media started out at around $20, and now it's below $10.
2. It's been posted elsewhere (Google the links yourself, learn to do research and not listen to the FUD) that Sony does not lose money on PS3 production anymore, and Toshiba was bleeding millions on their firesales.
3. BD is THREE regions. DVD is SEVEN. Same, eh? Not to mention that it's OPTIONAL, unlike DVD (example Warner BD discs are region free, Sony & Disney discs catalog titles are as well).

Everything that people claim HD-DVD is good for, Blu-ray can eventually do. If they had wanted to, they could've made it region free, and implement whatever software layer HD-DVD had, and you have a great format. The fact that the goal could be achieved with either format, makes the whole war unnecessary. HD-DVD was unnecessary, simply because Blu-ray was already there. The companies behind HD-DVD should've pushed for Blu-ray to include all those features they wanted, and avoid the war. But HD-DVD was 'juicier' choice for them.

Toshiba and Microsoft have hurt HD media adoption in catastrophic proportions. IMO, Blu-ray was the most future proof, but meh, their half-assed efforts at promoting the format, only prolonged the war and screwed many consumers. And all the FUD being spread now about how upconverting is just fine, it's making me sick.

I guess free market means bribes

[mlwmohawk]

A couple points:

(1) The betamax people like to claim that betamax was "better" than VHS. This is simply not true. It had some features that were better than VHS, but VHS had features that were better than Betamax. It all came down to the fact that VHS was cheaper and allowed for longer record times.

(2) The amount of money Sony just sent is proof that Blue-Ray sucks.

Re:I guess free market means bribes

[eviloverlordx]

(2) The amount of money Sony just sent is proof that Blue-Ray sucks.

BS.

The HD-DVD camp did the very same thing, yet where is the moral outrage? Hypocrisy is alive and well on /.

Re:I guess free market means bribes

[KirkH]

There was plenty of outrage. How could you have missed it?

Lots of people here said similar things about Toshiba: that they could only prop up their losing format with a cash payout to Paramount.

It was everywhere, so no hypocrisy that I can see.

Re:I guess free market means bribes

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not just alive and well, it's the core of Sony-hater (usually also Microsoft fanboy) M.O. On another board someone said they're doing this because "nobody's buying the PS3". Then the actual figures came out:

NPD Group: Hardware Sales (in units sold), January 2008

Wii: 274,000
PlayStation 3: 269,000
Nintendo DS: 251,000
PlayStation Portable: 230,000
Xbox 360: 230,000

Oops. OK, haters, any other BS you care to toss out?

Re:I guess free market means bribes

[Anonymous Coward]

There was plenty of outrage. What everyone seems to ignore is that in that instance it was more of a "leveling the playing field" move on Toshiba's part as Sony owns one of the studios that was Blu-ray exclusive. The other major Blu-ray exclusive participant was Disney and it's various ventures. You can count on them to always support whatever has the most restrictive usage rights, which in this case is Blu-ray (copy protection and region encoding).

Re:I guess free market means bribes

[Malc]

(2) The amount of money Sony just sent is proof that Blue-Ray sucks.

1) It's "Blu-ray".

2) Paramount were paid $150M to switch to HD DVD only. Based on the number of titles being put out (or market share), Paramount were paid far more relatively than this rumoured amount for Warner.

Re:I guess free market means bribes

[surrealestate]

The big difference I saw was that Toshiba tried to bribe the consumer directly with cheap players, while Sony went to Warner Bros. Now that HD-DVD is out of the game, Blu-Ray players are going to be stuck at around $300 apiece for a long time instead of dropping down to the inevitable $100-$150 range to compete with HD-DVD. Sony would have to sell 2-2.7 million players at this higher price to recoup that $400 million through higher player prices, so I'm not sure I believe it at all.

Re:I guess free market means bribes

[Mordaximus]

Insightful? I have not spoken to one professional, or one enthusiast, who would even dare to make such a silly claim. Technologically Beta was far superior to VHS, hands down. Better resolution, less noise, less crosstalk. This is something that has never been in dispute. Please though, feel free to list these 'features.'

Re:I guess free market means bribes

[mlwmohawk]

Beta was far superior to VHS, hands down. Better resolution, less noise, less crosstalk.
At the time, the average TV was less than 19 inches. The average TV set had a single speaker with almost no audio range. So what advantage did Betamax have?

VHS may have been less at the time, but the average equipment of the time couldn't tell the difference.

VHS did, however, have longer tapes and was cheaper.

Re:I guess free market means bribes

[smitth1276]

People on /. are idiots. Imagine the outrage if Microsoft paid somebody $400M to ditch all formats other than their own. But when you are a simpleton, "Sony good, Microsoft bad" passes for solid, intelligent logic.

Betamax wasn't better.

[RightSaidFred99]

VHS had longer recording times, and that is what the customers wanted. This is proved by the fact that VHS "won", and ergo VHS was "better". Betamax did have better video quality, but it was not "better" in every dimension.

Re:Betamax wasn't better.

[provigilman]

Well, that, and VHS had porn.

Re:Betamax wasn't better.

[Dunbal]

Well, that, and VHS had porn.

      Betamax had porn too. My dad's collection was all betamax... uhh, don't ask me how I know.

Re:Betamax wasn't better.

[ashridah]

The odd thing is, most of the *cough* porn I've seen in high-def has had the HD-DVD label at the top, not Blu-ray.

And here's me thinking the porn industry was going to decide this battle.

Re:Betamax wasn't better.

[flimflam]

The odd thing is, most of the *cough* porn I've seen in high-def has had the HD-DVD label at the top, not Blu-ray.

And here's me thinking the porn industry was going to decide this battle. What's *cough* porn? Some sort of wierd fetish I don't know about?

Re:Betamax wasn't better.

[thtrgremlin]

This really seems to be the common theory across the web (and theory like theory of gravity). Sony had a great format that was higher quality, and more compact... but they wanted to be big brother. "We got the big movie format, so we're going to 'fix' the morality of the world". Sony with BetaMax, and originally with Blu-Ray, they said "no porn on OUR format"... but they didn't really consider that despite how much people may talk about loving their favorite big screen movie, there is a market for porn flicks 10x the size of "normal" films. So when your format is out sold 10/1 by people that are a little more quiet about their movie buying experiences... well the rest is history. Oddly enough this time, the big players in porn knew Blu-Ray was better, and they wern't going to settle for less (I think this was on slashdot last year). Likely money had something to do with it again, as Sony quietly gave in to the Adult Industries request.
 
As far as disruptive DRM and rootkits, as much as people complain, this has virtually no influence on people's buying habbits. Just look at the number of people that use Windows.

Re:Betamax wasn't better.

[Bigboote66]

The "porn drives the technology" argument was irrelevant to the HD wars anyway. Nobody wants to see their porn in HD, unless they have a fetish for bad skin and razor burn.

-BbT

Re:Betamax wasn't better.

[ashridah]

Looks like i was misinformed anyway. Someone i know has mentioned that many major pornographic studios have switched to blu-ray recently as well.

Re:Betamax wasn't better.

[Anonymous Coward]

It only takes 20 minutes for a liberal to become a conservative thanks to our new outpatient surgical procedure! A frontal lobotomy?

Re:Betamax wasn't better.

[tweek]

It's actually *turn your head and cough* porn. It's a medical fetish. Something about old men with cold hands. I dunno.

Re:Betamax wasn't better.

[Junior Samples]

VHS had longer recording times, and that is what the customers wanted. This is proved by the fact that VHS "won", and ergo VHS was "better". Betamax did have better video quality, but it was not "better" in every dimension.

The Betamax was a good design, but the public chose quantity over quality.

I still need a VCR that will record HD - Sony can still make a comeback and revive the Betamax product line with a digital HD version. They could call it "Betamax HD" or perhaps "HD Beta".

Re:Betamax wasn't better.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sorry, but the porn arguement is just incorrect. There was huge amounts of porn on beta. My friends dad still has a huge collection of it, along with the player.

He was a truck driver, so being that he was gone for a few days at time, there was plenty of time to watch porn.

Either way, the whole idea that porn decides a format is just not right and even it was, it won't be the deciding factor in HD. There is little market for HD porn, despite what slashdotters want to believe.

Re:Betamax wasn't better.

[westlake]

VHS had longer recording times, and that is what the customers wanted.

When Betamax was introduced, how many home TV sets had any external audio or video inputs? How many had comb filtering of the broadcast signal? Betamax predates MTS stereo audio almost by almost ten years.

The HDTV set at entry level has multichannel digital sound and high resolution digital video inputs as standard.

Re:Betamax wasn't better.

[Constantine XVI]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDCAM

It's a professional format, be expected to pay out the ass for it.

Re:Betamax wasn't better.

[Anonymous Coward]

Beta had plenty of porn too. Not that I would know!

Re:Betamax wasn't better.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a professional format, be expected to pay out the ass for it. That's the way it is with all of Sony's equipment. Not just this particular format. And why there are always others that seem to be able to compete in the market with Sony on price.

Re:Betamax wasn't better.

[Kanasta]

The 1st version of VHS had longer recording times
The 1st version of Betamax had better video quality

Both evolved, and the winning version of VHS had longer recording times AND Betamax video quality, and that is what the customers wanted. Betamax had introduced longer recording times which reduced their video quality, thus lost. So in the end, VHS was "better" in every dimension.

Re:Betamax wasn't better.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah I saw those betamax tapes of your mom too and I wouldn't tell anyone about seeing them either... yikes.

kidding!! ;p

Re:Betamax wasn't better.

[Zey]

Both evolved, and the winning version of VHS had longer recording times AND Betamax video quality

This could only be said by someone who's never seen a Beta recording compared with VHS on a PAL screen ;-).

Yes, SVHS came out later and that can be compared in quality to Beta. However, that's not what was sold in the ordinary consumer market. VHS won because it was cheaper and more movies were available for it. It's really that simple.

Re:Betamax wasn't better.

[Anonymous Coward]

That is true but the recording time issue was soon addressed with Betamax. Today we can record 9hours on standard VHS tapes.

The real reason VHS won was as it was an inferior technology it was cheaper to produce the hardware to play them.

Re:Betamax wasn't better.

[Anonymous Coward]

Did V2000 also have a longer recording time?

PS3

[quibbs0]

I for one can admit that I was much more likely to purchase a PS3 after hearing of Warner Brother's move to Blu. And I love being able to make fun of my co-worker that bought an HD-DVD player and now says he bought it simply as an up-converter...hahaha yeah right!

Re:PS3

[Anonymous Coward]

And I love being able to make fun of my co-worker that bought an HD-DVD player and now says he bought it simply as an up-converter...hahaha yeah right!

And that right there is the aspect that I've hated most about this whole format war - small people who have to stroke their egos to make themselves feel superior to others around them. It's just plain sad really. And for the record, I have no preference with regards to the two formats. They both have (had?) their plusses and minuses.

Re:PS3

[SargentDU]

Well, at least the GP will waist his money on buying a PS3 while being so little toward the thrifty co-worker. It just won't see the irony.

Re:PS3

[SanityInAnarchy]

I didn't buy one, but most of them do have a better upscaler than the upscaling DVD players, for less money.

So that is actually a legitimate reason for buying one, although it doesn't make it suck any less for those of us who were invested in the losing side.

Blu-Ray was the better product?

[Anonymous Coward]

Lets see Blu-Ray has the following

1. Costs more to create players
2. Worse DRM scheme in the spec
3. More capacity for the stuff you don't watch

What exactly did I miss about Blu-Ray that made it better?

Re:Blu-Ray was the better product?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not a dead format. So that is pretty high on the list there Shecky!!

Re:Blu-Ray was the better product?

[Lained]

According to TFA, you're missing about 400 million reasons on why it is better.

Re:First

[andphi]

Why even send the HD-DVD? Just send a bobcat.

Even for /., bad summary and headline

[DragonWriter]

The article does not say that Sony paid Warner $400 million. It merely states that there was a bidding war between Sony and Toshiba and that unnamed "analysts" have suggested that payout may have been "as much as $400 million", though no one who knows anything is saying anything. Actually, the summary could have been good with a small change:

Is $400 million too much? Sony didn't think so and this article speculates that's how they won the Hi-Def format war.

Should read:

Is $400 million too much? This article speculates that Sony may not have thought so and goes on to speculate that's how they won the Hi-Def format war.

Really, other than the really obvious things we all know (Sony won the format war), there aren't any facts in the article, just speculation and some rather weird ideas from a variety of sources. Like Professor Xavier Dreze and his suggestion that "PlayStation buyers ... unwittingly embraced Blu-ray and undermined HD DVD." As if PS3 buyers were shelling out the high price of the console without realizing that it was a Blu-ray player, and just started purchasing Blu-ray discs without any consciousness of their actions. To the extent that PS3 owners embraced Blu-ray at all, they didn't do it "unwittingly".

Re:Even for /., bad summary and headline

[vux984]

As if PS3 buyers were shelling out the high price of the console without realizing that it was a Blu-ray player, and just started purchasing Blu-ray discs without any consciousness of their actions. To the extent that PS3 owners embraced Blu-ray at all, they didn't do it "unwittingly".

Yes, they supported blu-ray over hddvd incidentally. Ie if the PS3 had been hddvd they would have bought it all the same. The market skew toward blu-ray by way of ps3 sales was NOT on blu-ray's merits over HDDVD, it was simply by virtue of the fact that that is what the PS3 came with.

Everyone picking a stand alone player had to agonize over whether to go bluray or hddvd.

If the PS3 had somehow been available in two flavors ... one blu-ray and one HDDVD and customers were actually selecting the hi-def format they were going to gamble on you could argue they were 'wittingly' involved in the choice, but as it stands, no, they were not.

It came with hidef (which they wanted or at least saw value in), it happened to be bluray which they mostly didn't care about, so that's what they got. People buying a ps3 wanted a ps3 and took whatever hidef player it came with.

Re:Even for /., bad summary and headline

[Jeff DeMaagd]

But most PS3 owners have never used it to play a Blu-Ray movie. The last survey showed that half of them weren't even aware PS3 was HD capable (similar for XBox360). About a quarter of the PS3 owners actually used it as a Blu-Ray drive. That said, a quarter of PS3s still dwarfed HD DVD's total numbers (computer + X360 addon + standalone players).

So maybe most owners unwittingly bought a Blu-Ray player, but that didn't mean much unless those owners actually used them as such. What those figures are, whether that quarter bought them intending to use a lot as Blu-Ray, or whether they would have preferred the other format or at least a choice, we don't know.

Re:Even for /., bad summary and headline

[DragonWriter]

Yes, they supported blu-ray over hddvd incidentally. Ie if the PS3 had been hddvd they would have bought it all the same.

"Incidentally" is not "unwittingly", though. I tend to agree that most probably did so "incidentally" (it may have been important to buyers that it was an HD player, but which format probably wasn't important), but "unwittingly" suggests that not merely unconcerned with the fact that buy buying the PS3 and media to play on it they were supporting Blu-ray, but unaware that they were doing so.

Everyone picking a stand alone player had to agonize over whether to go bluray or hddvd.

And anyone buying a PS3 that was motivated to do so based, in whole or in part, by its HD playback capacity had to consider the prospect of Blu-ray being a dead-end format and how to discount the value of the HD playback capacity based on that--and whether to go with a different gaming console, particularly an Xbox 360 with optional HD-DVD playback, instead. How many posts on Slashdot or anti-PS3 articles various media were there over the last several years (right up until last Christmas) talking about how likely it was that Sony was going to lose the format war as it did with Betamax, and that the PS3 would consequently be a long-term flop for which gaming content would never match its competitors, either?

Sure, PS3 purchasers may have also weighed the current and expected future gaming content of the PS3 in its favor, or the Linux capacity, or other non-Blu-ray features, but to say that PS3 purchasers, particularly those who were likely to be significantly interested in using it as a movie player, were totally insulated from concern over the format war whereas purchasers of standalone players were not is simply wrong.

Re:Even for /., bad summary and headline

[vux984]

, but to say that PS3 purchasers, particularly those who were likely to be significantly interested in using it as a movie player, were totally insulated from concern over the format war whereas purchasers of standalone players were not is simply wrong.

I disagree. People buying a PS3 with an eye towards using it as a hidef player knew there was risk bluray wouldn't win, and that weighed into their decision whether or not a PS3 was worth buying at all. But its not like they really had a choice... if they wanted a PS3 but thought HDDVD would win, they still went home with a PS3.

Re:Even for /., bad summary and headline

[WhyMeWorry]

I guess that I have been reading /. too long. This flip flop on the ps3 using blu-ray is making me laugh. Not long ago, /. was claiming that the inclusion of blu-ray in the ps3 would be the reason for the death of the ps3. Now it is viewed as the reason for the victory of blu-ray. When do we start hearing the argument that the ps3 is going to win over xbox precisely because it included blu-ray?

Well there's an explanation I didn't see coming

[idontgno]

I mean, after "Never get involved in a land war in Asia" and "Never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line", the most famous rule is "Never back Sony in a format war." And here they are, winning one!

So yeah, throwing flagrant amounts of money at potential customers kinda changes the calculus a bit. Sony media format marketing without bribery* is like the getting the dog to play with the ugly kid without the steak tied around his neck.

*Well, to be perfectly fair, Sony's 3.5" floppy diskette format did win. Maybe there was some bribery involved there too?

$ony?

[krazycraft]

So we should starting calling them $ony?

Re:$ony?

[bdcrazy]

$on¥

Re:$ony?

[Anonymous Coward]

They haven't done it already? My, I'm shocked

Umm... no.

[Anonymous Coward]

Almost no one cares about which format is "better", only which one will become the popular one that everybody supports (network effect). And most people don't even care about that, having no need or desire for higher resolutions than DVD already provides. Face it, HD is still niche technology that fewer than 10% of households are equipped to take advantage of (with multi-thousand-dollar HDTVs and multi-hundred-dollar players, etc).

Most people simply don't care. And the two formats were neck-and-neck for the past year for mindshare (some studios supporting this one, some studios supporting that one) until the Blu-ray camp staged a series of PR stunts to make HD-DVD look bad, and simultaneously did the backroom wheeling-and-dealing and forked over hundreds of millions in cash to certain movie studios, to make them switch sides from HD-DVD to Blu-ray. Perception is reality. Once news outlets started to crow that HD-DVD was dead, in effect it was dead. And the studios were happy to take the money and switch camps, because they see how much the format war is hurting the (small to begin with) market for HD movies.

Sony won by playing dirty, but who really cares -- most of us don't want or need HD anyway, and those who do mostly just want one format to be the clear winner and don't especially care which one it is (unless they were stupid enough to be early adopters of the losing format while the format war was still going on).

in other words

[circletimessquare]

sony = john mccain

the globe and mail = the new york times

paying warner $400 million = giving a female lobbyist romantic influence

complete speculation = front page news

Re:in other words

[Galactic Dominator]

format war over = priceless

Re:in other words

[zonker]

Annoying use of a commercial as metaphor = My 2 cents.

Better for who exactly?

[Xest]

Bluray wasn't better for me, more storage space for what exactly? HD-DVD was capable of upto 51gb which is fine for any movie even with high quality audio (higher than will make a noticeable difference over most people's sound setups anyway). Of course you could argue that something like Planet Earth might fit on less discs, but it's not the sort of thing I'd watch back to back anyway so I'm only going to be changing discs between sessions in the same way I would for any film. What did matter for me however was a format that was finished, that wasn't going to require me to buy a new player to get access to new features. Also what mattered was being able to get films as cheap as they are in the US/Canada and without having to wait 6months+, something I'm not going to be able to do with Bluray's region locking. Sure Bluray was slightly better technically, but the slight improvement technically was negligible compared to the areas it was weaker in for me as a consumer - that of an unfinished spec, region locking and even DRM that can (and already has) cause issues with viewing the film that I've paid to view. I'd argue Bluray may be better as a generic data format, but for a simple HD video format that the average consumer wants in their living room? HD-DVD really did seem the better, more consumer friendly choice. With Bluray particularly, I, as a British consumer am going to continue to get ripped off whilst having to wait an additional 6 months to get ripped off in the first place or even face the possibility of never getting to watch some films in high def if they simply aren't released in Britain.

So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not like the HD-DVD camp didn't do the exact same thing.

Plus and Minus

[TheSync]

VHS won the consumer war over Betamax, but Betacam (that used the same tape cassette) went on to become the dominant professional video format.

Now BluRay won the consumer war, but it is unclear if the professional disk version called XDCAM will win the professional format, as pro video folks moving beyond tapes are also looking at flash-based systems like DVCPRO P2 , and even Sony now offers professional XDCAM EX on SxS flash memory.

Re:First

[theeddie55]

the world's strange enough as it is, and the bobcat's probably worth more, not to mention the postage.

Just Sony?

[hansamurai]

A lot of people don't realize that Blu-Ray is more than just Sony, there are three levels of membership in the Blu-Ray Association. Currently there are 18 board members (top level), 65 contributers, and over 200 members. Sony is the obvious front company for the association because of their reliance on the technology for the PlayStation 3, but there are a lot of groups that have a big stake in the project too.

Maybe Sony did pay Warner the big bucks for the commitment, but I'd be surprised if they're the only ones making deals like this.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blu-ray_Disc_Association

I'm not sure what you think you've proven

[Anonymous Coward]

Company A has a resource. Companies B and C bid for said resource, company B wins. That's what happened here, Sony outbid Toshiba.

Sounds exactly like the free market at work, so I'm not sure what your point is.

I mean all you did was say "fuck you free marketeers!!!" (paraphrasing) without any real substantive argument.

Payola?

[voss]

Doesnt this seem like payola to anyone here?

If electronics companies are paying off companies to not support their competitors products and selling their
products below cost isnt there an antitrust issue???

And when MS invents PURPLE RAY (tm)

[Ralph Spoilsport]

they will spend BILLIONS and simply buy the entire media industry. Technology quality has nothing to do with anything. Capitalism is NOT a meritocracy. It's a Dollarocracy. And if you're an idiot with craptacular technology (like MS) or an asshole with superior technology (like Sony) it doesn't matter if you ain't got the green and They Do.

yay. let's hear it for watching re-runs of "Friends" on bleeding edge video technology.

clap.clap.clap.

RS

Re:And when MS invents PURPLE RAY (tm)

[BSDetector]

You sir - are a typical Slashdot IDIOT! Where was Microsoft mentioned? You are so obsessed!!!

Re:And when MS invents PURPLE RAY (tm)

[statusbar]

But then prince would sue them for copyright infringement on his song....

--jeffk++

Re:And when MS invents PURPLE RAY (tm)

[Ralph Spoilsport]

aaah- sheddep and go back to suckin' Bill's dick ya maroon.

RS

Rehash of rumor from HD-DVD fan blog

[guidryp]

Ummm old and unsubstantiated/busted rumor:

The Original source is Dan Lindich, he has since edited the story to remove all references to money changing hands. Read some of his blog, he hates Blu-Ray with a passion and has always recommended HD-DVD, still doesn't recommend Blu-ray, even it won the format war, here is his now eidited story:
http://www.soundadviceblog.com/?p=758

From Digital bits:
"As it happens, I've actually spoken about this today with Fox's senior VP of corporate and marketing communications, Steve Feldstein, who echoed something Warner's Ron Sanders has also said in recent days: "The kind of money they're talking about [in these stories] isn't worth jeopardizing a multi-billion dollar business." In other words, payoffs would not have impacted Fox and Warner's decisions. Feldstein also told me that when The Pittsburgh Post Gazette piece broke, he contacted Lindich immediately to let him know that he was being misled by someone. When Don posted the same piece on his own blog, it was edited to reflect this. Specifically, the references to $120 million and $500 million payoffs were gone - something that's worthy of note."
http://www.thedigitalbits.com/mytwocentsa149.html

Basically bitter Fan can't see writing on wall, sees conspiracy instead.

The facts were Blu Ray disks outsold HD-DVD disks for every single week of 2007, by the last weeks of 2007 there were more standalone Blu Ray players sold than HD-DVD players sold, despite HD-DVD being massively cheaper. HD-DVD was toast before Warner announced.

Slashdot, all the quality of Digg, without the quantity.

Re:Rehash of rumor from HD-DVD fan blog

[bdjacobson]

Slashdot, all the quality of Digg, without the quantity. At least we have a wonderful moderation system and users with the brains to catch this stuff (thank you).

Oh, and also some of the most insightful and informative discussion on the web.

I wonder if Nintendo and Microsoft see...

[YojimboJango]

I wonder if Nintendo and Microsoft see the opportunity for a semi-proprietary disc format here. They've got a stable and cheap format that's already gone through all it's development phases and is proven to hold 50 gigs. Five years from now getting a hold of a consumer level HD-DVD burner will be a real rarity, so piracy would be really hard. Blue-Ray may have won the movie format war, but there's still a lot of potential in this format by virtue of it's soon to be obscurity.

Re:I wonder if Nintendo and Microsoft see...

[Chris Burke]

Naw. Nintendo is too price-sensitive these days to use an obscure tech like that. They'll just take BluRay, make the discs half the diameter, and make them spin backwards.

Re:I wonder if Nintendo and Microsoft see...

[DigiShaman]

Oh hell, why not do away with media all togeather?

Just make your console have an online connection a *requirement*. This way, you can setup an iTunes like system to purchase and download the game to your console's harddrive. Should your console die or be re-sold, you simply call a customer support rep to rebind your online account with the new console's serial number. This would prevent casual copying via your friends.

Going medialess solves many issues.

1. Zero cost in the creation of media (making ROM chips or pressing CDs)
2. Kill the 3rd party rental stores (block buster..etc) and direct the revenue stream directly to you.
3. Kill the 3rd party resellers (EB games...etc) and direct the revenue stream directly to you.
4. Parental control being the parents will be the one in charge of the Credit Cards (and will see GTA on the next billing cycle statement)
5. Purchase and downloading is easy. As such, it will be much easer to create and sell game "add on" modules.

Really, I should be getting *PAID* by Nintendo and Microsoft for coming up with this!

Re:I wonder if Nintendo and Microsoft see...

[Headcase88]

... and they could give a catchy title, like "XBox Live", "Wii Ware" or "Steam".

They don't use it for all games (yet) because you would need to buy a huge HD, and need an internet connection with lots of bandwidth, etc.

$400 million USD is nothing to Warner Brothers

[david_craig]

I find it unlikely that the $400 million USD that Sony may have paid would have been a major factor for Warner Brothers. While a substantial sum of money (enough to fund two or possibly three big budget films), I'm not convinced that it is enough to sway their decision of format for the next twenty years.

It's much more probable that Warner Brothers had already made their format decision (by waiting to see where the rest of the market was going) and tried to time it right to the maximum payout they could get from Sony.

The major film studios had much more to gain from ensuring that there was only one high definition format than from backing any particular format. I would argue that if Toshiba had offered $500 million USD then Warner Brothers would have rejected that as an extended format war could have cost them more in the long run.

Stores more ... per layer

[bkaul]

Blu-Ray does store more per layer, but HD-DVDs can be manufactured with more layers; there's a 3 layer spec there that's comparable to Blu-Ray's 2-layer spec (51 GB vs BR's 50 GB).

But HD-DVD players were full-featured from the get-go, while Blu-Ray rolled out with a limited subset. HD-DVD players could typically upconvert existing DVDs. HDi offered more interactivity "features" than Blu-Ray's Java-based alternative. HD-DVD was inherently region-free. The video and audio resolutions are basically identical between the two formats. And HD-DVD players were much less expensive. So, from a consumer feature perspective, HD-DVD had the early advantage, and "should" have won.

Blu-Ray had two major advantages:

1. Number of studios offering titles
2. Better marketing

Getting Warner to jump ship was what gave Sony the victory, plain and simple. From an end-user perspective, Blu-Ray did not offer material advantages, and if anything had a few disadvantages. From the studios' perspective, Sony was offering "more secure" DRM features, and more money to side with them.

Re:Stores more ... per layer

[RoboRay]

Actually, 200GB EIGHT layer BluRay discs have been produced in the testing lab (which is the only place where those 3-layer HD-DVDs ever existed. The 8-layer BDs wasn't in response to competition, either. BR was designed from the beginning to support that many layers, which is why the first data layer is close to the surface instead of being sandwiched in the middle like HD-DVD.

Of course, neither the 3-layer HD-DVDs or the 8-layer BDs are relevant to the format war, because there were never any plans to use either for movies and set-top players can't read them, anyway.

Re:Stores more ... per layer

[petermgreen]

Blu-Ray had two major advantages:

      1. Number of studios offering titles
      2. Better marketing
      3. Supported as standard on a major game console.

are people actually buying Blu-Ray players/discs?

[bball99]

- anyone with a linky to some sales figures?

(as for me (a sample of one), i'm definitely not going to invest in a whole new set of hardware/video formats - i think the future is in portable players and high-capacity flash drives, not optical media) :-)

Not MATSUSHITA/PANASONIC

[FlyingRon]

The proponent of VHS was JVC (Victor Company of Japan). You did get the proponent of the slightly less popular beta format right though.

I'm waiting (and not long) for downloads,

[crovira]

the winning (and/or losing) of the DVD format war won't amount to much.

Was it worth $400,000,000?

Probably not.

Sony loses the format wars again, because in a very very short time we won't care.

!freemarket

[0p7imu5_P2im3]

Exactly. HD-DVD was the better format. It was inexpensive, could store more data (51 GB at 3 layers), and HD-DVDs could be produced with only small changes to existing DVD product lines. (The manufacturers would prefer HD-DVD to have won.) The players were made with common x86 PC parts and thus were cheaper to make. There were no plans for obsoleting in HD-DVD like Blu-Ray (Look it up; current Blu-Ray players can't play the new format they're releasing this year). In fact, the HD-DVD spec was finalized before the first player was ever released. Blu-Ray spec still hasn't been finalized.

So it all basically comes down to Sony forcing the free market in it's direction. Sony has the less consumer friendly format, so it naturally wins.

Sony - A bazillion
Consumers - zilch (since their current crop of Blu-Rays and HD-DVDs now need replacing)

Re:!freemarket

[DECS]

HD-DVD discs were not significantly cheaper, and "storing more data" requires comparing fewer layers of Blu-Ray against HD-DVD (asshat!). If manufacturers were so excited about HD-DVD, why was Toshiba the only one making them?

The reality was that industry collectively got behind Blu-Ray back in 2005 long before consumers even had a choice in the matter. Microsoft and Intel hoped to keep HD-DVD going, influenced Toshiba to stay in the race despite its interests in backing Blu-Ray itself, and later pushed Paramount/DreamWorks to sign up as exclusive HD-DVD studios. That was entirely because Microsoft hoped to monopolize the HD video market with Windows Media/VC-1, WinCE-based HDi interactivity, and the Windows-only Managed Copy DRM.

The rest of the industry fought Microsoft on HD-DVD, and the PS3's Blu-Ray pushed the critical mass to bury HD-DVD. Any amount of money paid to Warner Bros. to pull out of the HD-DVD fiasco and kill the format war prior to Microsoft's marketing push at CES was in the interests of consumers, manufacturers, and studios. It also helps rid the world of Microsoft's domination of video codecs and development, and further helps tank Microsoft's plan to tie HD-DVD into Vista and the 360.

Since no significant number of Blu-Ray players have really sold outside of the PS3, your boo-hooing about consumers needing to buy new BR players in order to play the newest spec discs is as retarded as the rest of your HD-DVD talking points.

Lessons from the Death of HD-DVD

In other words...

[Sir_Lewk]

Stay off my lawn!

Re:In other words...

[edwardpickman]

Not everyone is in high school and life doesn't end after it. Mid 40s isn't 80s. People have gotten really spoiled. People used to think the sun revolved around the Earth and now they think it revolves around them. The whole point is BluRay isn't a download format. Here's a shocker for you neither is DVD. Everyone is already converting when they do downloads legal and otherwise. If you don't know what formats and codecs are what are you doing on a geek site? Not every product and format is going to be a swiss army knife and do everything you want it to do. I hear some of the most rediculous arguments against products and formats. Another FYI there are dozens of video formats out there that aren't designed for the internet either. Neither was 35mm film for some bizarre reason. I guess they were being shortsighted. Hey it's only lasted a 100 years so I guess it was living on borrowed time. What are the odds of a digital format lasting 100 years? At present a decade would be impressive. Why? Expectations change for one. Most claim its a marketing scam when new standards come out but generally there are technical advances involved. Ones that come out simply to compete with the established standard tend to die young so the market determines what standards survive not the companies. The fact you want it yesterday and the companies are just being mean for not giving it to you isn't a reasonable position. Most of us woulld like to see fusion power, I've been following it since the 70s, yes I know I'm old and I wasn't born after the Teletubbies so I'm not cool. The power companies would much rather go to fusion than solar because it would make them money where as solar costs them business. The problem is no one has proven it's possible to sustain a reaction and produce more power than it takes. And yes a few have passed break even but it isn't sustained and powering a light bulb with a billion dollar plant isn't practical. The point being wanting it doesn't make it so. Development costs a lot and products have to appeal to enough people to make them practical to make. You can't send a letter to Apple and give them the specs for your personal iPod. Why? Because they aren't going to spend a 100 million gearing up a factory to make one for you just to hear you complain that it costs $400. You've got a 100 friends that would like the same configuration? Still not impressed. Come back when you have 10 million that want one configured that way. It's life and economics 101. FYI I want you to stay off my lawn so I don't get stuck changing your diaper. Grow up and make a legitimate argument the next time. If you're on a geek site I assume you have the brains to form an opinion. Maybe I'm wrong on that one.

Re:In other words...

[Sir_Lewk]

*WOOSH*

huh?

[NewAndFresh]

and what if it's not a Star Wars quote?

This is like

[qzak]

Lance Armstrong. Go with me here a moment. Nobody but Lance knows whether he took drugs to win the Tour so many times. But there's a certain logic out there that says, "We know he won, and to win you have to take the drugs, so he must have taken them."

Same sort of argument applies here. Without any proof, we're free to speculate, though.

The PS3 cost Sony even more.

[graymocker]

Even if this specific rumor turns out to be false, the broader implication that Sony was willing to sacrifice to ensure the success of Blu-Ray is undeniable. For a while Sony's use of a Blu-Ray player in PS3s was considered a blunder. The fact is, Blu-Ray is more important to Sony than the PS3 was. If coming in behind their competitors in this video game generation is what it cost to make Blu-Ray the HD standard, Sony is perfectly happy with that. Of course, there remains the possibility that Blu-Ray will turn out to be a competitive advantage for the PS3, in which case it would be so much the better. The point is, from Sony's perspective, it didn't matter if the Blu-Ray turns out to be good for the PS3 or not, because they consider it a win either way. If it is, they're obviously happy, but even if it isn't, they're still happy because they still win by massively inflating Blu-Ray's install base. For Sony, Blu Ray>PS3.

In contrast, to MS the 360 was a much higher priority than Toshiba's HD-DVD. MS has been trying to get into our living rooms for over 10 years now. (Bill Gates was already obsessing about it in The Road Ahead and that book was written 13 years ago.) All things being equal they'd prefer Toshiba to win and Sony to lose, of course, but it wasn't important enough to them for them to risk 360's success on.

Re:The PS3 cost Sony even more.

[ivan256]

In contrast, to MS the 360 was a much higher priority than Toshiba's HD-DVD. MS has been trying to get into our living rooms for over 10 years now. (Bill Gates was already obsessing about it in The Road Ahead and that book was written 13 years ago.) All things being equal they'd prefer Toshiba to win and Sony to lose, of course, but it wasn't important enough to them for them to risk 360's success on.

The only reason Microsoft didn't put HD-DVD in the 360 is because Microsoft collects format royalties. They don't pay them. Their focus is collecting cash every time an American consumer sits down in their living room. The 360 was their most recent attempt, and it failed. They'll give it a last push through Live downloads, and when only a few percent of 360 owners pay for those downloads it will be replaced by the next attempt. In the meantime, they had a year on top of the current-generation console market share list before Nintendo passed them, and maybe another 10 months before they find their rightful spot back at the bottom.

When will companies learn that the American consumer doesn't like pay per use entertainment?

Re:The PS3 cost Sony even more.

[TrancePhreak]

You will find it had more to do with the untested new formats, as well as a shortage of blue laser diodes. Not to mention the cost.

Re:The PS3 cost Sony even more.

[james_gnz]

For a while Sony's use of a Blu-Ray player in PS3s was considered a blunder. The fact is, Blu-Ray is more important to Sony than the PS3 was. If coming in behind their competitors in this video game generation is what it cost to make Blu-Ray the HD standard, Sony is perfectly happy with that.

Ah, that would explain it. IMHO Blu-ray Disc adds little to the PS3 as a gaming machine, while substantially increasing the price. I am not anti-Sony, I have a PS1 and PS2. And I might have considered a PS3, if it didn't have Blu-ray.

Re:The PS3 cost Sony even more.

[Anonymous Coward]

No. Sony wants blu-ray to win (and it has) and Sony wants the PS3 to win (pending). They reason that each can help the other and they are correct. If things were different I'm sure Microsoft would have launched the 360 with HD DVD as their game format. But HD DVD wasn't ready for when Microsoft needed to launch the 360. Microsoft had to have at least a year on Sony to stand a chance in this console generation. As it is, despite launching early, the 360 is still destined for third place. This is, of course, for many reasons but the PS3's blu-ray drive is part of the equation. More multi-disc games are going to be released for the 360 over its lifetime. Lost Odyssey is the poster child for games that would be better on PS3 purely because of storage constraints. In the case of multi-platform multi-disc releases people will favour the blu-ray version. The XBox 720 will be what the PS3 is today - a system with blu-ray drive and hard drive installed as standard.

Re:The PS3 cost Sony even more.

[Anonymous Coward]

look kids, it's a sony fanboy! no tommy, dont put your fingers through the bars, he probably has rabies

Welcome to Sony

[nsanders]

I used to work for an unnamed Pro Audio company that was licensed by Sony to push DSD/SACD & A-TRAC products out the door. Sony pays vendors to create products for their technology so that the end consumer will make the assumption that if the vendors are making product, it must be a good technology. I can't say I'm surprised one bit by this move from Sony.

Re:Welcome to Sony

[bdjacobson]

I used to work for an unnamed Pro Audio company that was licensed by Sony to push DSD/SACD & A-TRAC products out the door. Sony pays vendors to create products for their technology so that the end consumer will make the assumption that if the vendors are making product, it must be a good technology. I can't say I'm surprised one bit by this move from Sony. You know, I don't feel so bad about this as long as it is the superior product. As is SACD, and Betamax was (don't know about A-TRAC). Sony made the decision to invest in plasma screen TVs (quality) over LCDs (cost); and they did the same with ensuring we adopt Blu-ray. They even had the first (and probably still the best) HD home camcorder at an affordable price (first one to market was only $1000. $1000 and anybody could film beautiful, 1080P home movies.

I, for one, welcome our Pro-Technology overlords.

I call possible bullshit

[el cisne]

"Analysts say Sony only prevailed following a heated bidding war against Toshiba, with the reward reaching as much as $400-million (U.S.). Neither side has confirmed the size of any bids or payments."

That's all they got??? Some "analysts say" ??? While at the same time admitting "Neither side has confirmed the size of any bids or payments." So how the hell do they get to claim it as fact. I could pull something out of my ass and "say" it. Don't worry about the "analysts get paid to analyze", yeah, right, we all know how too much of what "analysts say" is total fiction or FUD.

Sony, a Blu-Ray disc rights holder, pays ...

[Anonymous Coward]

... Time Warner, a Blu-Ray disc rights holder, to favour the format they both receive royalties on? Sounds like someone didn't do even the most basic of research.

Re:Or... Better disk sales 52 weeks in a row.

[guidryp]

Better disk sales for every single week of 2007 might have a little something to do with. Blu Ray was winning in every measurable way before CES/Warner announcement against HD-DVDs legless and armless black knight.

Warner going Blu-ray ended war quickly (what they wanted to accomplish).
Warner going HD-DVD would have dragged it out for years (what no one wanted).

It is hard to imagine that they even considered going HD-DVD, if they had the goal of ending the war quickly, it would have taken something less than 1 second to recognize the only choice leading to that outcome.

That's the second payoff.

[tr_sandiego]

Sony paid out a large amount to another company a few months ago to go blu-ray. If you were an early buyer of blu-ray your player won't have all the features needed to perform even the most basic functions that all hd-dvd units had. Features like a lan port for dvds to access online content from the menu and a chip set that accepts firmware updates. Those consumers will be buying a new player.

Re:That's the second payoff.

[DragonWriter]

If you were an early buyer of blu-ray your player won't have all the features needed to perform even the most basic functions that all hd-dvd units had.

Unless, of course, like most early buyers of Blu-ray, your Blu-ray player happens to be a PS3.

absolutely

[Archangel Michael]

Cheap wins over quality most times.

PC v Mac
McD's v any other hamburger
Walmart v any other store
two buck chuck v Bordeaux

I could list a thousand examples of where "cheap" wins over quality in the majority of cases. This is because cheap is consistent, and often of known "quality". You know what you're getting at McD's, even if it is barely tolerable.

Re:absolutely

[that this is not und]

You know what you're getting at McD's, even if it is barely tolerable.

McDonalds isn't 'barely tolerable.' It's 'baseline acceptable' and that is their secret.

If you want 'barely tolerable' you need to get out into the sticks in flyover country. Find a little mom & pop diner. You'll sometimes wish you were at a McDonalds, but little greasy spoons operate in markets that couldn't support a McDonalds. The local populace would really rather have a McD's than the greasy spoon run by the 'rich people in town.'

I hate that point.

[hudsonhawk]

Every time there's an article about Blu-Ray someone always trots out the point that Blu-ray is not, in fact, Sony's, but is actually from a larger group of manufacturers and media companies.

Well, yes, there are a lot of members, but Blu-ray is still Sony's. They not only have the most invested in Blu-ray, they have the most to gain:

1) They developed the hardware platform entirely on their own and gain royalties from the format's sales
2) The success or failure of their gaming console is tied inexorably to the success or failure of the format
3) The decision to splinter off from the DVD Consortium, following the DVD Consortium's choice of HD-DVD as the next format (supposedly chosen because it would be ready sooner), was entirely theirs. Broader industry support came after that decision, and was reportedly driven by studio fear of Microsoft. Without Sony, there's no format war.

There's a very very good reason that people associate this format with Sony - it's their format, it's just supported by other people. Lots of people support the CD format but that doesn't make it any less Sony / Phillips' format.

Re:I hate that point.

[zonker]

You forgot the fourth point...

4) Sony owns a movie studio and they bet early on to use BD as their format of choice.

BTW, I would say CD is more of a Phillips / Sony format than a Sony / Phillips format. Phillips did the vast majority of the R&D on the disc technology and red book audio. Sony's major contribution was the error correction technology used in red book audio in addition to advertising the hell out of CD.

Re:I hate that point.

[cjb110]

I thought the actual problem was Blu-Ray was originally a data storage format.
Which meant that durability was important, but you could sacrifice ease of use for it...hence the first blu-ray had clunky cartridges.
The DVD consortium knew that wouldn't fly with consumers and so started the HD-DVD spec (or at least took an existing fledgling spec and pushed it on).
It was only when TDK came up with the durability layer, that the Blu-Ray as a dvd replacement really took off...and probly was the first time it was even considered for the PS3.
But it took too long for it to arrive so HD-DVD was now in a more finished position than Blu-Ray was (and still is! ;-) so it had to be released to have any hope of making back some of the money spent by Toshiba, MicroSoft etc.

Re:I hate that point.

[LordKronos]

They developed the hardware platform entirely on their own and gain royalties from the format's sales

Well, not quite. According to the Wiki entry for Bluray, Sony and Pioneer teemed up to create DVR Blue, which eventually turned into Bluray.

Ho Ho

[SargentDU]

Ha Ha!

Re:Ho Ho

[xhrit]

being locked in. they like it when they get to lock YOU in.

Kinda like in quake wars - spawnraping the other team is fun. but its not so much fun when you are getting spawnraped.

In other words... In Soviet Russia, big content vendor locks YOU!

At last!

[dysonlu]

I was wondering when the bribing speculation was going to come out. Thanks for making my day -- I can sleep well tonight.

Cheaper than dropping PS3 prices worldwide

[WillAffleckUW]

When you look at the kickback rate for patent licensing, the payoff for this is fairly minimal, if they can kill off the competition.

Total Speculation

[feepness]

From the article:

Neither side has confirmed the size of any bids or payments. It's not like Warner or Sony would be able to keep the payment off their books. These are completely unsubstantiated sour-grapes rumors.

Re:Total Speculation

[DragonWriter]

It's not like Warner or Sony would be able to keep the payment off their books.

Well, if they wanted to conceal the exact figure, it would have been, on paper, a complicated nest of deals on various subjects, etc., that all tied into the Blu-ray exclusivity, and from which the exact value of the Blu-ray exclusivity apart from the other components would be hard to infer (or even impossible for any concrete figure to ever be defined for), rather than a simple deal to give $400 million in cash in exchange for Blu-ray exclusivity. That being said, though, the next bit...

These are completely unsubstantiated sour-grapes rumors.

...is entirely correct.

Re:Total Speculation

[Buelldozer]

Thanks for the laugh! This is Hollywood man! These people have accountants that can make a BILLION dollar movie like Titanic show a loss on the books! Do you really think that they can't hide a mere $400 Million?

Chuckle.

Re:Total Speculation

[zonker]

Well... You are talking about Warner Bros here. A large movie studio.

Cooking books in Hollywood is everyday practice for the simple reason of appearing to run in the red means the studio takes more of the money for themselves rather than paying out to "talent". They get away with it by keeping their industry purposefully obfuscated. It's called "Hollywood Accounting", and yes it is a real term.

Old & Incorrect

[doctor_no]

Honestly, Slashdot posts more old regurgitated FUD then Engaget and Gizmodo.

The "analyst" rumor that Slashdot links to in the OP was started by Business Week back in January, but was quickly denied in the next sentence by Barry Meyer, CEO of Warner Brothers.

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/jan2008/tc2008014_928006.htm?chan=top+news_top+news+index_top+story

"One source reported that Toshiba had offered to pay more than $100 million, while Sony bid closer to $400 million. But Meyer denied there was a bidding war and said Warner instead looked solely at global sales of both formats in making its decision."

Re:First

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't send only bobcats, you'll kill your seller rating. You've still got to send mostly actual units or pretty girls on trains will steal your hat.

re: irrelevant comment ... but thanks for playing

[King_TJ]

These "format wars" aren't even really about competition, in the traditional sense of "multiple companies battling it out to see who has the product offering most favored by the consumer".
The fact is, the general public barely bought into EITHER HD-DVD or Blu-Ray disc. They're still buying regular old DVDs!

This was merely a case of some businesses getting behind a potential future "standard" for a media format, while others went with another concept. 95%+ of the public rejected BOTH options as too costly and unnecessary at this time (or simply out of ignorance of what "value" such a thing would add for them).

The only way EITHER of these DVD replacements would get off the ground was with enough of a financial backing, coupled with a continuing trend of the consumer purchasing new HD-compatible television sets (which is underway, but nowhere near "mass adoption" yet). Quite a few people out there made a big investment in a large-screen projection TV that wasn't HD capable, not all THAT long ago. Those are the ones who will hesitate to buy again, until their existing set dies.

It's only common sense that to become a worthwhile "standard" for the general public, the vast majority of manufacturers have to AGREE on implementing it. I see nothing wrong with Sony's "let's just pay someone to go with the one we'd like" approach. The public will STILL be able to buy Blu-Ray players AND discs from a number of manufacturers. It's not like we're ALL stuck with Sony as our only option now. Standards adoption is ALWAYS a lengthy, expensive process for manufacturers to undergo. The money is going to either be spent on A) flooding the market with low-cost product using the standard, to encourage widespread adoption, B) advertising campaigns educating the consumer that the product exists. and then convincing them that they really do want it, or C) working deals with the competition to get everyone on the same page. Looks to me like choice "C" made a lot of sense here -- since there simply weren't a lot of differentiating factors between the 2 formats that the general consumer would care about. (Either way they go, they get to watch their movies in high-definition in a device that works just like their old DVD player did.)

VHS won because of ...

[Anonymous Coward]

... porn movies. Betamax and Video 2000 (from Philips) did not release any significant amount of porn.

(no intended as a joke!)

Re:Just Sony? OMG!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

there are three levels of membership
Sony = Triads? OMG!

Antitrust anyone??

[sufferpuppet]

They shelled out 400 mill to secure a monopoly on HD disks. How the hell is this not an antitrust issue? Toshiba should be all over them on that.

Re:Antitrust anyone??

[SomeJoel]

It's not an anti-trust issue because it didn't happen.

What's the problem?

[Anonymous Coward]

I see nothing wrong with this. It's called free enterprise. If Warner didn't like blu-ray, they wouldn't have accepted the money. All the "moral outrage" is just an excuse to bash companies for the hell of it. Still the same old Slashdot.

You are obviously not a collector

[westlake]

Content that lasts over 4 hours is so uncommon as to be irrelevant to the issue.

There is almost no significant film or video series you could name that hasn't been released as a boxed set. These sets have grown enormously in size and sophistication - and they do have an audience. In a single rental from Netflix you could spend a month with directors like Hawks and Ford and Hitchcock, a new movie every day, in pristine HD restoration, and - for an appetizer - perhaps load an episode of "Maverick," "Alfred Hitchcock Presents," "Perry Mason." or "The Untouchables."

Sad

[Ertik]

I was hoping that Sony would lose,or that The HD people would stay in the running. In my experience with Sony has shown them to be uncaring what so ever about their customers. Bought a product from them(along with appox. 80,000 other people) only to have them state two days later that it was obsolete and would be non-functional in less than two weeks.They offered a refund (to some people) only after a class action law suit was threatened.This product was offered with them knowing full well that it was useless.. Bad day for consumers here.

If it's true, Blu-Ray followed HD's steps

[saikou]

I mean, after all, Toshiba paid 150 million bucks to studios for "Promotion Consideration" in August of 2007 -- 50 million bucks to Paramount and 100 to Dreamworks. So, why not do the same, and pay some (proportionally big amount) of money to buy competitor's supporter? The winners are movie studios anyways, be it Paramount/Dreamworks (who won't have to be HD-DVD only now) or Warner...

Funny how HD-DVD was "dying the slow death" in August, but thanks in part to transfusion it lived up to, well, 2008 :)

$400 million isn't much

[heroine]

Only 4 Euros.

Re:200 GB, to be precise

[drhamad]

BD was demonstrated (by Pioneer, I want to say, but I don't feel like searching right now) at 200 GB. So you can talk about 3-layer, 45 GB HD-DVD all you want, but it was no more real than 200 GB BD's.

"The Consumers Have Chosen..."

[Anonymous Coward]

PR at it's finest. I also remember reading an article similar to this [http://www.betanews.com/article/Warner_Rising_gas_prices_drove_its_Bluray_decision/1199808329].

I'm a little bitter, partially because I had an HD DVD drive for the 360, but really more because they really thought about what they were doing when coming up with the standards for the HD DVD format.

Here's some highlights of both formats and their functionality (aside from playing movies):

HD DVD 1.0
a) dual decoders for PIP commentaries
b) interactive menus THAT ACTUALLY WORK
c) ethernet connection mandatory

Blu-ray 1.0
a) MORE CAPACITY THAN HD DVD!!!!! BIGGER IS BETTER!!!!!
b) 2 LAYERS OF ENCRYPTION!!!!! NOBODY WILL EVER CRACK THAT!!!!!

Blu-ray 1.1
a) MORE CAPACITY THAN HD DVD!!!!! BIGGER IS BETTER!!!!!
b) 2 LAYERS OF ENCRYPTION!!!!! NOBODY WILL EVER CRACK THAT!!!!!

Blu-ray 2.0
a) MORE CAPACITY THAN HD DVD!!!!! BIGGER IS BETTER!!!!!
b) 2 LAYERS OF ENCRYPTION!!!!! NOBODY WILL EVER CRACK THAT!!!!!
c) dual decoders for PIP commentaries (AND NOT BECAUSE IT WAS A GOOD IDEA WHEN HD DVD DID IT FIRST!!!!)
d) interactive menus THAT ACTUALLY WORK (AND NOT BECAUSE IT WAS A GOOD IDEA WHEN HD DVD DID IT FIRST!!!!)
e) ethernet connection mandatory (AND NOT BECAUSE IT WAS A GOOD IDEA WHEN HD DVD DID IT FIRST!!!!)

Convenience vs. quality in music vs. video

[tepples]

In the music industry, people value convenience a huge amount more than quality (or, rather, fidelity). The video industry is different. Unlike music, video isn't used as background stimulation. It's hard to watch video while you are driving a car. (In much of the United States, commuting by car is much more common than commuting by bus or train.) It's also hard to watch video while you are jogging, cooking, cleaning house, etc. So when you are already suffering the inconvenience of watching video itself, your mind is likely to be more focused on the video, and quality counts.

I can't think of a single instance where consumers have been forced to choose between the two and gone with quality. I can think of several: vinyl after the introduction of compact cassette; set-top video game consoles after the introduction of Nintendo's Game Boy compact video game system; DVD for those people who had only an RF input on their TV and needed to buy an inconvenient RF modulator; HDTV for those people who have a small SDTV in the bedroom and a large HDTV in the family room.

Re:Convenience vs. quality in music vs. video

[Chris Burke]

I can think of several: vinyl after the introduction of compact cassette; set-top video game consoles after the introduction of Nintendo's Game Boy compact video game system; DVD for those people who had only an RF input on their TV and needed to buy an inconvenient RF modulator; HDTV for those people who have a small SDTV in the bedroom and a large HDTV in the family room.

You have a point about vinyl though old cassette players without auto-reverse weren't all that convenient and extremely crap quality.

Set-top game consoles are more convenient/usable if you're at home than staring a tiny screen. Game Boy is only convenient if you're on the move.

The RF modulator was less of an inconvenience than continuing to use VHS vs DVD, because DVDs are that much more convenient to use.

And it sounds like people with a small SDTV in the bedroom chose convenience when it was an issue.

Re:Convenience vs. quality in music vs. video

[tepples]

Set-top game consoles are more convenient/usable if you're at home than staring a tiny screen. Tell that to anybody who lives in a house with more than one gamer, or with one gamer and one movie buff. It's inconvenient to wait your turn for the big TV.

And it sounds like people with a small SDTV in the bedroom chose convenience when it was an issue. They bought a small SDTV for the bedroom, so they chose convenience at least once. I'll grant you that. But they later bought a large HDTV for the living room, so they chose quality over convenience for at least one setting.

Re:Convenience vs. quality in music vs. video

[Chris Burke]

Tell that to anybody who lives in a house with more than one gamer, or with one gamer and one movie buff. It's inconvenient to wait your turn for the big TV.

Okay, so you have a game console for its convenience, and a portable for the convenience of someone who wants to play while the TV is in use.

But they later bought a large HDTV for the living room, so they chose quality over convenience for at least one setting.

The primary display seems to be the main area where people care about quality. Though I'll note that other than the getting it into the house part, you're not really choosing quality *over* convenience here.

Re:Convenience vs. quality in music vs. video

[mattack2]

It's also hard to watch video while you are jogging

Not while jogging _outside_, but the way I force myself to exercise on a treadmill is because I can veg and watch TV while doing it. (At home, where I control what I watch.)

A second PC

[tepples]

Why have [pirated] video downloads still not penetrated to the average household nearly as much as DVDs? For one thing, most people prefer not to sit back and watch a movie on a 17 inch screen, and they can't afford to buy a second PC for the room with a larger TV.

All at the reach of a mouse from my lounge. Who else do you know who has a lounge with a mouse?

Why would anybody see it as "convenient" to "only" change the disc every two hours or so? Because people have moved on from chamber pots to indoor plumbing, and this indoor plumbing is generally kept in a separate room from the home theater. People are getting up anyway to go drain their waste water; why not change the DVD at the same time?

Re:A second PC

[russotto]

Why have [pirated] video downloads still not penetrated to the average household nearly as much as DVDs?
For one thing, most people prefer not to sit back and watch a movie on a 17 inch screen, and they can't afford to buy a second PC for the room with a larger TV.

If you can afford a Blu-Ray player, you can afford a HTPC; they aren't that far apart in price. Actually, sans tuner I could build a "pirated download player" for cheaper than a Blu-Ray player; the ATSC tuners in my Myth DVR were a large part of the expense.

The big reason pirated movies haven't caught on as much as pirated music is probably rentals. Rentals are cheaper and easier than downloading for most people, and not illegal which is a nice bonus.

Re:A second PC

[that this is not und]

Who else do you know who has a lounge with a mouse?

We have 11 cats. Occasionally in the morning I will find a VERY beat up dead mouse in the 'lounge' (living room). Why a mouse would be insane enough to try to live in this house I do not understand.

Re:A second PC

[that this is not und]

If you can afford a Blu-Ray player, you can afford a HTPC;

You're talking about today. In two years a BluRay player will be as cheap as an optical drive to install in your 'home theatre pee cee.'

Also, it won't need to run anti-virus software.

Re:A second PC

[ckaminski]

I think the big reason is that the difference in quality between a CD and an AAC from iTunes is FAR more subjective than a compressed MP4/Divx and an HD movie.

Significantly.

Re:A second PC

[russotto]

Also, it won't need to run anti-virus software.

Give me some credit, both the theoretical "Pirate Video Player" and my real HTPC run Linux.

Re:A second PC

[that this is not und]

Two years from now you might need to run anti-virus software on your Linux-based HTPC.

Almost certainly you would need to, if Linux-based HTPCs became mainstream enough to be part of this whole discussion in the way some people imply.

Re:A second PC

[zonker]

Yeah hopefully we won't have to run Rootkit Revealer on it either...

Re:A second PC

[WilliamSChips]

There are structural reasons that Linux will be less vulnerable than Windows even if it has larger marketshare. I say less vulnerable because there's still password problems. Unfortunately, there's no even vaguely mainstream capability OS.

Re:A second PC

[MikeBabcock]

Personally I watch my downloads / rips with my PS3 using its network media player. I'd still rather purchase a BD movie if I like it more than a rental than purchase a downloaded movie.

The only way I'd purchase downloadable movies is if I can back them up in a generic format that can be played back easily with open standards based software.

Re:A second PC

[mgblst]

I think you could have replied to his comment with:

For all the obvious reasons.

You took what he said far too seriously. Imagine a lounge room without a computer, where you can't watch 24 hours of movies in a row, without haveing to, shock, get up every two hours.

Visual acuity?

[tepples]

Well, I know a lot of people with laptops that have displays capable of at least 720p. How far away can they sit from the laptop and still see an advantage of 720p over 480p? Not on the sofa, I'm guessing. Where do you expect this to be used?

The die is cast

[Anonymous Coward]

I have no complaints about the substance of your message; I agree.

"The die is cast" references back to a famous saying by Julius Caesar. His original statement meant something like "I am now committed to a gamble and must wait to see how it comes out." The "die" in question would be the singular of "dice", and "cast" in this context means "thrown"; "the dice have been rolled" would be a similar statement.

For years I thought it meant something to do with manufacturing a tool for a machine shop, or something.

Oh wups I just checked and there is a FAQ about this: http://www.yaelf.com/aueFAQ/mifdiecast.shtml

Anyway a better phrase would have been "Enter the iPod, and game over." Or "...and their fate was sealed."

Have a great weekend, and keep slashdotting.

Four times as efficient as MPEG-2?

[tepples]

What if instead of a season of television spanning 4 DVDs it just spans 1 blu-ray disk and is all in 1080p? You'd still probably need multiple discs. DVD operates at ITU-R BT.601 resolution, which has 0.34 Mpx/frame. A BD encoded at 1080p has 2.07 Mpx/frame, which is roughly six times as many. But a dual-layer BD has only six times the capacity of a DVD-9, canceling this out. So in order to fit four times as much video onto a single disc, you need a codec that is four times as efficient as the MPEG-2 that DVD uses. What video codec are you thinking of?

If you're at best buy, and you ask the sales guy the difference between Blu Ray and HD DVD, what is he going to tell you that is relevant to your inerests? Is the DRM model on each relevant? If the DRM model makes it significantly more expensive for smaller publishers to release works in BD than in HD DVD, then it's relevant to indie selection.

Re:Four times as efficient as MPEG-2?

[bdjacobson]

How about Mpeg-4?
I don't know about 4x as efficient but it's a heck of a lot more efficient than Mpeg-2.

Illegal and anti-competitive behaviour

[MrSteveSD]

Isn't it?

Re:Illegal and anti-competitive behaviour

[aristotle-dude]

Isn't it? If you are referring to Toshiba paying off Paramount to dump Blu-ray last summer, then I would agree with you but Warner denied there being a payoff. Toshiba and Paramount did not deny that money was exchanged to dump blu-ray despite there being a 2:1 sales lead for movie sales over HD DVD.

Re:First

[Chris Burke]

Why even send the HD-DVD? Just send a bobcat.

Ooh I want a bobcat! What's your e-bay user name so I can bid on your HD-DVD?

Toshiba should have trumped Sony's offer

[wshwe]

Toshiba should have offered Warner Brothers more money than Sony. If Toshiba couldn't come up with the money they had no business going up against Sony.

So Europe is dying?

[Anonymous Coward]

> Socialism? Cool... now who gets to fund it all when the majority of a populace figures out that they can do just fine without actually having to work for what they get?

Funny, I didn't realize that Europe was dying? Actually, I thought the story was that they were out-competing us somehow with the Euro that strong.

Or don't they count as Socialist for some reason? Because I had this crazy notion that they were doing better than us right now, Socialism or not...

Where are the 4-player PC games without 4 PCs?

[tepples]

Why have [pirated] video downloads still not penetrated to the average household nearly as much as DVDs? For one thing, most people prefer not to sit back and watch a movie on a 17 inch screen, and they can't afford to buy a second PC for the room with a larger TV.
If you can afford a Blu-Ray player, you can afford a HTPC; they aren't that far apart in price. If you buy a Blu-ray Disc player, you get a video game system at no extra charge. The same is true of an HTPC in theory, but unlike games that run on an HTPC, games that run on this Blu-ray Disc player are designed to allow multiple players to plug in controllers and play on the same screen.

Re:Where are the 4-player PC games without 4 PCs?

[WilliamSChips]

But does it run Linux?

I am the market

[rossjudson]

..and the only blue ray player I've even vaguely considered is the PS3. Looks like most blue ray discs cost around $30 or so, and that's just too high for an incremental increase in quality. I agree that player prices will likely come down, but the big uptake in HD media sales will only occur when the price drops below $20 on average, just like with DVDs. $20 is the magic number.

So congrats to Sony on spending $400 million to push Toshiba out of the business. Your $30 product is now competing with $15 DVDs. Good luck!

Re:I am the market

[laffer1]

That was solved by raising the price of new releases. I've noticed that when a movie appears on DVD in stores, it's often $20 instead of 10-15. At one point, one only saw that for special editions, but since high def came out they are more expensive. I think it's to close the gap between blueray and DVD prices. I'm sure the cost of shipping the damn things to retailers is up with gas prices, but we shouldn't just be seeing that in the last 6 months.

I've been waiting on new films and buying older movies and Tv shows on DVD at the $7-15 price range lately.

This could very well be a local thing. I would love to know if this is widespread.

How is it legal?

[Anonymous Coward]

Assuming it's true - how is a deal like this legal?

Remember that Sony owns a movie studio

[tepples]

Also, Sony may have "won" by shoving Blu-Ray players into every PS3 and jacking their price up, but how much money are they making off of software sales on the PS3? By "software" do you mean games, or do you also mean Columbia Pictures?

Missed the point

[Gr8Apes]

...fact is, the problem isn't the system per se - the problem is that too few people actually give a damn enough about forcing a change in the nastier incidents within it, at least not until the impact of any aspect affects them personally. While Sony buying BD's victory over HD DVD is certainly despicable, it is actually a very small issue for now. Sony only bought HD DVD's demise. They have yet to mandate anything on the masses. Not only that, BD could very likely still fail, despite it's "victory". That is why I despise Sony, primarily because I think the first time BD+ is actually really used and borks a decent percentage of BD players, BD itself will die. BD is not really a convincing improvement for the current displays owned by 90+ percent of the populace. DVD is still very compelling, and that combined with the emerging download market may very well spell the doom of BD.

Actually, I hope it does. If BD had not included region encoding and BD+, it would have been my favorite due to the superior technical specs for PC use. But, since BD insists on making players that won't play home recorded content, has Rom Mark, and BD+, and region encoding, you won't find a BD player in my house. You might find a burner for data though, but that won't help the media companies.

Ban corporate gay marriage!

[fugue]

I'm sick of same-sex corporations mating with each other. It's wrong, it's paganism, it's not what we believe in!

Hmmm. From now on, no more corporations telling each other to "bend over"?

Dunno.

HD DVD in circles?

[tepples]

HD-DVD uses concentric circles where as Blu-Ray uses an outward spiral CD uses a spiral track. DVD uses a spiral track. Citation needed that HD DVD uses circular tracks.

Not so much a payout

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not like Sony is going to cut a check to Warner for $400 million. It's going to be things like "marketing support" and "oh when we promote Blu-Ray we'll be featuring Warner titles." Each of these things has an (inflated) cost associated to it, and it will all add up to $400 million. Warner will get lots of free publicity and Sony will be able to deduct it as an expense.

blue ray thumbs down

[easyemail]

LOL. what is this, 400million of freecash. First of all I aint paying 500 bucks for a blue ray writter. So what if it is 50 gigs. Games and applications havent even reach a level to need such storage capacity. Now sony should be watching its shoulders as an Israel company is making a 1000 gig dvd. Whos going need a 1000gig dvd? Massive global consolidation of data onto a couple of dvds? maybe. I have a copy of the world in my pocket dvd. lol.
The blue ray dvd can be an external hardrive? well- correct me if i am wrong but dont cd/dvd speed copy rate to hard drive is just under 2mbs max? I can do a 16-20mbs on usb 2 and soon usb 3 would bump up to like 60-80mbs. Who would want a dvd player? who can still only pull 2mbps.
Also flash drives are much much smaller than a dvd. When that 64 gig flash drive come down in price, which i hope soon, man can we run operating systems on it fast with usb3. So i wont even purchase a blue ray.

length times wasn't much of an issue...

[Anonymous Coward]

the bigger issue involved was that the licensing was incredibly strict for Beta...VHS machines were abundant and cheap (much bigger issue to the public than video tape length, especially considering BII) because JVC made a fortune selling tape and didn't care so much about making a mint off of every unit sold by every 3rd party manufacturer.

I chose the PS3 because of Bluray

[wfolta]

I chose the PS3 because it is the fastest, most future-proof Bluray player on the market. It's reasonably priced and includes wireless internet connectivity (and a browser), media center (video, audio, photo files) capabilities, and oh yeah it also plays games if I decide I like one, and it's all in a sleek, quiet package costing $400.

I don't think I'm alone on that. The HD-DVD camp didn't really have an equivalent, unless you got the XBOX plus accessories which didn't come in the box. I'd be willing to bet that many more people bought the PS3 as a media machine than XBOX's.

Re:I chose the PS3 because of Bluray

[vux984]

I chose the PS3 because it is the fastest, most future-proof Bluray player on the market.

And you would be the exception. The sort that really only wanted a blu-ray player and chose a ps3 to get it. But seriously, most people bought a ps3 for the games alone. A chunk bought it for the games and because it was a hidef player (but not because it was specifically a blu-ray player), and a few like you bought it as a bluray player, that happens to play games.

The HD-DVD camp didn't really have an equivalent, unless you got the XBOX plus accessories which didn't come in the box.

If you were that informed a customer and in the hddvd camp, then an xbox+accessory was an easy equivalent alternative at an equivalent price. I doubt the 'sleekness' of the ps3 would have played into the equation much for someone who was in one camp or the other.

Re:I chose the PS3 because of Bluray

[wfolta]

If you were that informed a customer and in the hddvd camp, then an xbox+accessory was an easy equivalent alternative at an equivalent price. I doubt the 'sleekness' of the ps3 would have played into the equation much for someone who was in one camp or the other.

Your analysis is flawed as it assumes that either you're an uninformed customer and therefore choose at random or don't even consider a game machine for playback (though it is a good value and has exceptional quality), or you're deeply in one or the other camp and superbly informed.

Go to Amazon. The second PS3 choice in the list is the $400 PS3 40GB (bundled with Blu-ray Spiderman). Note that it emphasizes Blu-ray playback and mentions things like 802.11g connectivity. Notice that everything is included in one box.

Now look at the XBOX machines. See any mention of HDDVD? How about 802.11 connectivity? Prices? Hmm, looks like for the $400 I spent on my PS3 I get no HD-DVD and no 802.11 connectivity. Certainly it's not clear.

Oh yeah, if I look on the second page, I find an external HD-DVD player and an external 802.11 adapter, which raises the package's price well out of the "equivalent" range. Not to mention this is an entertainment center going into my living room so two boxes and a dongle off the back is most definitely not attractive. The PS3 has everything bundled into a sleek package and yes, that DOES matter for someone who is not deep into one camp or the other. In fact, it's probably a large consideration for someone who is not a gamer-first and not a raving HD-DVD or Blu-ray fanatic.

And it's not just Amazon. Go to Microsoft's XBOX page. See any mention in their model table about HD-DVD? Wireless connectivity? Nope. Perhaps it was yanked yesterday or last week or... But the bottom line is the prices are NOT competitive with the PS3 once you factor in the extras you have to buy.

No, I'm not the exception. I'm a smart consumer who got a GREAT deal for the same amount of money that would have gotten me a slow Blu-ray player, or (on the XBOX side) a game machine with a cable running into the back.

Re:I chose the PS3 because of Bluray

[vux984]

Your analysis is flawed as it assumes that either you're an uninformed customer and therefore choose at random or don't even consider a game machine for playback (though it is a good value and has exceptional quality), or you're deeply in one or the other camp and superbly informed.

You say my analysis is flawed, because it assumes that your either A, B, or C. You are asserting then, that there is this 4th group that of people who are:

informed customers, who are considering a game machine for playback, and NOT in one HD camp or the other

Am I reading that right?

So what would those customers above buy? A PS3, of course.

But that's my point, and we agree... these people are buying the PS3 because its a great value proposition for an HD format player, NOT because its a great value proposition for a bluray player. If the PS3 had been HDDVD, it would be the same value proposition to them.

So these people cannot be said to be 'selecting bluray' for any perceived merit of bluray over hddvd. They are simply selecting the best HD format player value propisition (in terms of price, features, and aesthetics), and incidentally it the HD format it happens to support is bluray.

Re:I chose the PS3 because of Bluray

[wfolta]

So these people cannot be said to be 'selecting bluray' for any perceived merit of bluray over hddvd. They are simply selecting the best HD format player value propisition (in terms of price, features, and aesthetics), and incidentally it the HD format it happens to support is bluray.

That's what I originally said. The PS3 is an exceptional value and has everything in a single, attractive box, which makes it very appealing to NON-GAMERS who are looking for a HD player or media center that looks good and works well with their brand-new 40" LCD on the wall. And in that case, people have bought Blu-ray not because they consider it the better alternative -- personally I was technically rooting for HD-DVD -- but because of the PS3 itself. (And not just the PS3 in isolation, of course, but in the environment of alternatives like standalone players or the XBOX.)

And as I said, I don't think I'm an abberation -- as you claimed. Certainly anyone considering Blu-ray in the first place -- perhaps only slightly leaning in that direction because of a friend, or an article they read somewhere, or whatever -- that read any reviews would find that many different sources recommend a game machine as the best Blu-ray player out there, and one at the low end of the Blu-ray player price spectrum. Huh? I'm not a console gamer... but as they investigate they are persuaded. On the other hand, someone who was perhaps leaning HD-DVD or neutral but investigating both camps would also see the PS3 mentioned and would naturally look at its perceived counterpart, the XBOX, and find a solution that isn't really comparable from a price, simplicity, or esthetics viewpoint.

Of course, someone determined to play Halo would get the XBOX, and would also consider getting the accessories to bring it up to PS3 standards. Or more likely they would have gotten the XBOX with the idea that they would SOMEDAY get the other accesories. Look at the number of HD-DVD drives bought for the XBOX: it's not a large percentage. Indicating that it was not primarily bought as a HD-DVD player with lots of extra features.

So, I repeat: the PS3 has been, IMO, a powerful draw for people who are not hardcore in one camp or the other, and particularly people who are not console gamers and who look at other things like the esthetics and one-stop-shopping of the PS3. In my case, as a geek I preferred HD-DVD on technical merit, but I also felt that Blu-ray was winning the war, so I was somewhat neutral. Even if I had waited until now to purchase, so I could clearly see that Blu-ray won, I would not have bought a non-PS3 Blu-ray player. From what I've read, standalone Blu-ray players basically suck in terms of reliability (in terms of being able to play any Blu-ray disc), future-proofing (1.1, 2.0 profile), and performance (20-seconds or more to start playing a disc?) The PS3 made the difference for me, and I don't think I'm the exception.

I believe a relatively small number of HD-DVD drives were sold for the XBOX. It'd be interesting to know how many DVD-player-style controllers were sold for the PS3 (a pretty sure indicator that it was being used as a Blu-ray player, and by people who didn't want to use a game-style controller).

Why beta lost

[tgibbs]

VHS had longer recording times, and that is what the customers wanted. This is proved by the fact that VHS "won", and ergo VHS was "better". Betamax did have better video quality, but it was not "better" in every dimension.

I bought my first VCR at the height of the VHS/beta wars. VHS supported slightly longer tapes, but both were easily long enough to record most movies. I ended up buying a beta because the sound was better (beta had hifi at the time, VHS did not, although it came a few months later) and the stop frame and slow motion were dramatically better. Also, the beta transport was noticeably faster in switching from fast forward to play (actually, I initially bought VHS, but was dissatisfied with the performance and returned it to get a beta). But I had to pay a premium, because the beta players were substantially more expensive than VHS players. Of course, Sony products traditionally cost more, as Sony's time-tested business strategy was to sell top-quality components to discriminating buyers at a high margin. Sony TVs weren't the top sellers, but they were among the best, and Sony did very well selling them at a premium price.

What Sony didn't anticipate was the emergence of a rental market for videotapes. Sony expected that most people would use their VCRs the way people now use TiVos, for time-shifting broadcast TV. Only extreme enthusiasts were expected to buy prerecorded videotapes, which sold at an exorbitant price ($80-90, which was real money back in those days). But rental shops changed everything. Initially the shops carried both formats, but it was expensive to support two different formats, and since the cheaper VHS machines had (at the time) a modestly larger user base, shops tended to buy more VHS copies than beta. Consumers noticed that it was easier to find the movies they wanted to rent in VHS than beta, which influenced their buying decision in favor of VHS machines. Which led the rental shops to buy even more VHS tapes and fewer beta tapes. Once the ball started rolling, it went very quickly, and within a few years rental shops were starting to drop their beta sections. An initially modest userbase advantage of VHS, due to a lower price, had amplified into a dominant advantage in the marketplace.

What a load

[non-Euclidean]

I haven't seen such poor research since the last time Dan Rather did a hatchet job on Dubyas Air National Guard Service. From the start, Toshiba made multi million dollar payments to studios (Universal and Paramount) to go HD-DVD only. Warner announced before Christmas they would be making a decision depending upon sales figures. The sales figures (which can be seen at www.thedigitalbits.com) show that at the end of last year, there were more BD sales than HD sales. Yes, Sony did stick a BD drive in the PS3 to get market share. That would account for the pathetic sales numbers (in comparison to X-Box 360 and WII). However, that PS3 is the best BD platform out there. Good for Sony. Toshiba went the cheaper route with a reduced capacity 2nd generation DVD format. They got it to market quicker. Sony was behind in finished product until recently, but gave us a better format overall.

anti-competitive

[nguy]

If this is true, then Sony behaved anti-competitively and should be punished severely.

And Betamax may well not have been the "better format": it may have had higher quality, but that came at a price... the Sony connection, for example, and probably higher device and tape prices.

Warner says it's not true

[YesIAmAScript]

They denied it over 6 weeks ago.

http://www.highdefdigest.com/news/show//1327

Now, I know lying isn't impossible for CEOs. But they don't have any financial incentive to lie about this, and in general a company will just give no comment instead of lying because it's safer, you can't get sued for saying no comment while you can for lying.

It's a very sad state of journalism that a story like this can be printed with unsubstantiated allegations weeks after it was already cleared up.

Sony!

[Anonymous Coward]

Beta is superior to VHS technology in every possible way. I am glad that Sony, even with all their silly past mistakes in trying to be proprietary, is taking control of their future with the Blu-Ray battle aggressively.

Cheers!

I Predict

[N8F8]

Any feelings of guilt over ripping movies and putting up torrents just evaporated.

Blu-Ray is vital

[Tony]

With increased game capabilities, you get increased storage requirements. The Blu-Ray is important in that a standard DVD will no longer hold all the game data for many modern games. So, to squeeze things down to fit onto a DVD, game makers are *already* sacrificing texture quality, number/complexity of levels, and amount of cinematics.

A high-density storage format is a necessity for large high-def games. This is why the PS3 will win over the 360 in the long run (but the Wii will still kick both their asses, because Nintendo is more concerned with gameplay than purty pictures).

Re:Blu-Ray is vital

[james_gnz]

With increased game capabilities, you get increased storage requirements. The Blu-Ray is important in that a standard DVD will no longer hold all the game data for many modern games. So, to squeeze things down to fit onto a DVD, game makers are *already* sacrificing texture quality, number/complexity of levels, and amount of cinematics.

If cinematics are removed from the equation, I don't think this still holds. AFAIK, the capacity of PS3 and XBox 360 graphics engines to render scenes in real-time at decent frame rates for a decent sized game is well matched to what can be stored on a DVD using decent compression. Increasing storage space means the graphics engine becomes the limiting factor.

For cinematics, you're right, I admit. I guess I didn't really think about this, because I hate cinematics with a passion. By being rendered better than in-game graphics, they merely serve to make in-game graphics look bad by comparison (no matter how good in-game graphics might be), making the game seem fake, so destroying suspension of disbelief. In my opinion, anyway. The mark of good special effects in a movie, IMHO, is that they blend seamlessly into the movie, so they don't destroy suspension of disbelief. Cinematics never do this.

corporations

[Anonymous Coward]

Corporations are not people.

In a legal sense, yes, they are (IANAL).

Legal Entities

[phorm]

They aren't people, though people may be part of them, and direct them, but they are different. There are laws that govern them that don't apply to actual persons, and vice-versa. Corps have a responsibility, for example, to their shareholders. In many cases this means that even if a route is less ethical, they are bound to take it if it is more profitable (so long as it is legal).

In an overall sense, corps are governed by groups of people. You could also quote a once-famous movie in that "a person is smart; people are dumb panicky dangerous animals", but it's more than that. Often enough the corps have the "power of the group" (the money of many) without the accountability that would fall on a given individual.

WB said support would be based on Christmas sales

[HannethCom]

Warner Brothers was saying going into the Christmas season that they would see if Blu-ray or HD DVD sold more.
http://www.nytimes.com/paidcontent/PCORG_317734.html?ex=1355029200&en=aeecb2e8108fe379&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

At FutureShop when the 5 pack Harry Potter set came out there were about 3 times the number of Blu-ray packs. The next day when I went in, they were out of the Blu-ray packs only having a few HD DVD and DVD packs left. I also noticed this trend for a few other WB titles that came out in both formats. This speculation about money changing hands is just that speculation. WB already stated publically why they choose the format they did.

I say it didn't happen, show a shred of evidence.

[guidryp]

As I posted in another comment. This rumor was started by a disgruntled HD-DVD fan Don Lindich. As far as I can tell he is the only source and has since removed all reference to it on his blog. No collaborating information has ever been found. This looks much more like a bitter HD-DVD fan seeing conspiracies instead of reality.

There was complete flat denial by a company officer of Warner (President of home entertainment division). That is the kind of thing that would be criminally actionable if he were lying. Why would he lie. Absolutely everything points to them doing this.

There were several stories before Christmas saying that Warner would likely go Sony based on disk sales leadership.

In many ways the defection doesn't come as a surprise and accomplished exactly what Warner stated as goals, a quick end to the format war and the confusion it brought:

Tsujihara says the studio took no pay-offs to exclusively back Blu-ray. He emphatically denied reports that the studio had received anywhere from $250 to $500 million in exchange for dropping its HD DVD format support in a post-announcement conference call. Warner's only incentive to drop its HD DVD format, according to the exec, was to ensure growth of the "category" and the long-term health of the industry. Now against flat clear denial by the company officer involved in the decision, what shred of evidence is there that these payments happened for just doing the logical thing in their own best interest.

The net has turned into a cesspool of swirling conspiracy theories base on rumor. Find something more than a bitter HD-DVD fan rumor and there might be something to talk about.