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

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the beats-having-to-say-hd-dvd-all-the-time dept.

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.'"

3 of 487 comments (clear)

  1. Re:free market? by timmarhy · · Score: 1, Troll
    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.

    --
    If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
  2. Re:free market? by homer_s · · Score: 0, Troll

    Corporations are not people.

    Who runs them? Giant lizards?

  3. blue ray thumbs down by easyemail · · Score: 0, Troll

    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.