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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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]

> 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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[That's Unpossible!]

What are they, buildings?

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?

[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?

[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*

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!

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.

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...

[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...

[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...

[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...

[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...

[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...

[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...

[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...

[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...

[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...

[NothingMore]

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

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.

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

[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:Betamax wasn't better.

[provigilman]

Well, that, and VHS had porn.

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: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

!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: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.

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: 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.)

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.

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: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.