I dislike Sony because it's Japanese, we don't have many of our goods sold there but they sell a ton here.
I don't like being forced into buying a new player every time they want to update their specs. hd-dvd had those features at launch, why didn't blu-ray ? At this point I think hd-dvd is the lesser of 2 evils at the moment. The overt racism is great eh! For our information the iPod does really well as does some American cars. It's not that they hate American products. It's simply that American companies like Microsoft have no idea how to market to Japan while a company like Apple does. HD DVD is Japaneses too. You are simple asinine.
Actually I read his point to be that Blu-Ray isn't proprietary because Sony isn't the sole owner. He read it correctly, you didn't. my point was your argument is meaningless because most formats are proprietary standards.
The war is far from over. From all media/players sales indications the HDDVD vs Blu-ray war is far past over.
Prices on the media and players are high because the demand is not there, and the average AV consumer has no clue what the difference is between true HD and upscaled HD. Look at the numbers and compare it to how many upscaling DVD players were sold. Last I checked, 0 *.93 is still zero, and when ALL hd players sales are compared to DVD upscalers, that's what the number looks like. This point is also absurd. Viewing a DVD and a Blu-ray on a decent HDTV within the same week will notify you of the difference. As well, check back int he history of DVD. Check it's penetration at 1 year. It was 1% of media sales. What is HD DVD + Blu-ray at the moment? ~1% of media sales. It's just about the same. HDTV's moved like gang busters. Representing the lions share of new televisions purchases over the holiday. Player sales picked up on both sides as well. They may pick up faster now that a winner is apparent. I know it's somewhat fashionable to be a HD luddite on slashdot now but really, the facts do not support you.
Essentially the PS3 was the expected behavior from Sony, which was meant as a contrast to MS which wasn't particularly inclined to use their console to push any sort of format other then the native games for the system. That is a silly argument as well since all consoles seek to push their proprietary format. Look at it this way, to make and distribute a Blu-ray you must get approval from the Blu-ray association, pay a fee, and then you can stamp it with the BD symbol and sell it. To make a 360 games, you must get approval from Microsoft, Pay a fee, and then you stamp it with the 360 branding and sell it. To make a wii game you must get approval from Nintendo, pay a fee, then stamp it with the wii branding and sell it. Sony may be asinine in many way but the way you brought up are inane. Empty, pointless, meaningless points. You may not use a 360 game on a Wii, you may not use a BD on a HD DVD player. What exactly was your point about MS being better?
*Taken from http://merriam-webster.com/dictionary Standard [adj]: a: regularly and widely used, available, or supplied b: well-established and very familiar It's also a form of automobile transmission neither of which is relevant in this context. Go look up "technical standard" like Laser Disk, MicroSD or mini-USB. All minority technologies labeled a "standard"
Also, following your argument about putting the latest format into your equipment, assuming you're correct, it seems that MS doesn't make much sense Mircosoft only supplied some software they licensed to the HD DVD group. Toshiba is the one who led the group. Both have put the technology in a product.
I was just trying to highlight why it was that they made various decisions and to show how the latest developments mesh well with Sony's previous decisions. No you are just interjecting logically incoherent rants into the discussion.
You're missing the point here. Nearly all physical formats are proprietary in some shape. When an entire industry adopts it then it becomes a de facto standard (or at least a large enough portion that it doesn't matter) much like DVD, VHS, etc. The important thing though is that Sony made their bed with Blu-Ray, which isn't a standard yet, de facto or otherwise. All of Sony's previous formats they would also have loved to have made a standard, which is part of why they pushed them so hard. The only real difference here is that Sony had some friends this time, so we're actually seeing a decent amount of uptake. Had there been no HD-DVD to oppose Blu-Ray, we'd be arguing over whether it's actually worth it to upgrade from DVD to Blu-Ray right now. My main point was that Sony always puts whatever new format they're pushing into their latest electronics. Usually it's one that they're the sole backer of, but not always as in the case with Blu-Ray. You aren't' making much sense. Blu-ray is a consortium. Here are it's board members:
* Apple Inc.
* Dell Inc.
* Hewlett-Packard Company
* Hitachi, Ltd.
* LG Electronics
* Mitsubishi Electric
* Panasonic (Matsushita Electric)
* Pioneer Corporation
* Royal Philips Electronics
* Samsung Electronics
* Sharp Corporation
* Sony Corporation
* Sun Microsystems
* TDK Corporation
* Thomson SA
* Twentieth Century Fox
* Walt Disney Motion Pictures Group / Buena Vista Home Entertainment
* Warner Home Video Inc. That is basically every major player in consumer electronics and most of the major Hollywood studios with the exception of Toshiba. Every format is in fact a standard because a standard is:
A technical standard is an established norm or requirement. It is usually a formal document that establishes uniform engineering or technical criteria, methods, processes and practices.
A standard can be developed privately or unilaterally, for example by a corporation, regulatory body, military, etc. Standards can also be developed by groups such as trade unions, and trade associations. Standards organizations usually have more diverse input and usually develop voluntary standards: these might become mandatory if adopted by a government, business contract, etc.
The standardization process may be by edict or may involve the formal consensus of technical experts. -Wikipedia:standard
No part of that implies a standard must be the only player in it's niche or even a majority player.
Your just blathering on about some nonsensical argument. HD DVD was a standard as well. You had to conform to a technical spec and pay the consortium a fee to place a HD DVD brand on it. The two format were virtually identical in all important ways except support, region codes and capacity. Your bizzare argument over "standard" and "proprietary" applies to HD DVD as well. It also doesn't make much sense to develop a standard and then not push it into your latest electronics does it? I'm not sure of how you can really mentally contort yourself in that way. We had 2 formats. About roughly the same merits and drawbacks and then a power play via the content producers who decided the winning format. At no point was HD DVD some open format. At no point was either DRM free, non-Proprietary, backed by one company, or in some drastic way superior. It was a battle of two morally, technically, and economically equal entities.
Blu-ray is a proprietary format, it's just the rights to it are owned by a consortium instead of one corporation. No matter how you slice it if you want to put out blu-ray hardware you're going to be paying a licensing fee which Sony gets a cut of. So was CD, DVD, 3'5", Cassettes, 8 tracks, records, LPs, VHS etc... All from consortium which took licensing fees You just reduced your argument from silly to absurd.
No, HD-DVD's marketshare is more like 1% of the market. For that matter Blu-ray's marketshare is about 1% of the market. Which, I think, is the whole point: Casting this out as if it's the overall market is just ridiculous. For some perspective go look at how much penetration DVD had at 1 year into it's life(less then 1%). Yeah a bit of perspective eh..
Since then the outcome is much less certain, however. TFA says your are wrong. The outcome is nwo certain. Toshiba's efforts were in vain.
Don't write HD-DVD off quite yet. The time to write off HD DVD was when the media sales data came for last year and it was as follows:
US 2 BD : 1 HDDVD
Japan:
9 BD : 1 HDDVD
UK:
4 BD : 1 HDDVD
That was a sign the war was decided and events around the CES sealed the deal. As someone else said, It's now more nails then coffin.
Sony, as is their way, opted to use their shiny new piece of electronics to foist their proprietary format on the masses, where as MS decided it rather have higher short-term sales figures. There is more then Sony behind Blu-ray. It's like saying 3'5" is proprietary or CD or DVD. It's just a silly statement.
If you count the PS3s, then you also increase the denominator when determining the ratio of players to media purchases, the attach rate....
I know of several PS3 owners. Some of them only have the free blu-rays. Fair enough. None of them are unaware of the HD disc abilities, but some just don't watch movies. The statistics reflect this reality, so I see no reason to adjust things strangely. The war is over so it's moot. But I noticed many people using TOTAL PS3 sales while only using US attach rates/media sales. The US sales ratio were roughly 2:1 BD:HDDVD. The UK sales ratio was roughly 4:1 BD:HDDVD. The Japanese sales ratio was 9:1 BD:HDDVD. I don't know a single PS3 owner who does not also own a BD movie. Not 1.
Previously, I had heard that the total sales for blue ray players included sales of PS3 consoles. Are they included in these numbers as well? know that there are certainly people out there who bought PS3's with the intention of playing PS3 games, and didn't really care that they could play blue ray movies as well. I don't' think they usually include PS3. NPD doesn't. That is why HD DVD pundits usually stated it was a close race because US sales of stand alone HD DVD machines was close to stand alone blu-ray players. If you included PS3's it would look ridiculous. 4 BD:1 HD DVD including PS3's and 360 Attachments in the US versus 1:1 stand alones.
Incidentally the US BD : HD DVD dales ratio was 2:1 or there abouts for most of last year. The Ps3 didn't do that well in the States last year. In Japan where the PS3 did much better, the ratio was 9 BD: 1 HD DVD. The effect of the PS3 had been downplayed by HD DVD pundits but it wasn't ever close. It was only Close in the US. Even the UK had a 4 BD:1 HD DVD ration. People who buy it for games will almost always buy a movie or two. Most attach rate arguments were flawed because it used total PS3 sales but only US attach rate or media sales information.
Well, actually, the plan was the other way around, the US, UK and France all appeased the Nazis because they planned to use the Nazis to eliminate the USSR. Fascist ideas of course being no threat to capitalism, were seen by the upper classes as preferable to communism. A little from column A, a little from column B. Towards the middle and end of the war they discussed abandoning the Russians because they hated both of them.
You do realize that the people who are leading this war are the same people who consider trolling Slashdot a professional sport? And the Communists were used to defeat the Nazi's. Just because you are evil, doesn't mean you can't be used to fight greater evil.
The value of a reputation is difficult to quantify. Blizzard has a great reputation because all of its games have been solid. But what is the value? A Blizzard title may sell just as many as many other titles that year. So suits may look at that and say that the reputation itself has no value. They they calculate the profits from a cheap spinoff title, and release Starcraft:Ghost. Reputation has a great deal of value. They operate in a market that usually sells titles in the hundreds of thousands on average. They sell millions. They release a small 30s snippet from a game and get more free advertising then most titles receive in paid advertising. They have a user base that will buy the game first and then look for reviews only to re-affirm the value of their purchase. I know that if Diablo 3 comes out, I will first check into a rehab isolation clinic.. then check out 15 min later check out and buy it. For SC2, I have 2 weeks vacation I rolled from last year and all my vacation this year reserved so I can use it to take a month off when it comes out. etc...
I'm just a clueless American, but as the blurb says "£24bn", I would guess reads "24 billion pounds". Is that billion as in "million million" or billion as in "thousand million"? I always wondered how that verbal discrepancy got started, seems that accountants on either side would get a bit huffy about a potential 1:1000 error. In regards to currency I think it means a thousand million. Having it mean a million million is rare these days. Long scale being mostly replaced in all official capacity by short scale. Although I may be mistaken because I'm Canadian not British. Also, it'll probably be a million million USD soon.
How's the PS3 doing? I've not heard much in the way of failures there. Just stuff on slow sales due to pricing and the Blue-ray/HD-DVD wars. Any of those PS3 clusters showing signs of over heating? I ran folding at home for 2 days just to see. MY house didn't burn down so I'd say it's alright.
PS. it's in a under ventilated wood/glass cabinet along with my digital cable box. Ironically the cable box gets hotter. I probably should remove the back to allow better air flow.
The RROD makes me wonder if it would be cheaper to pick up a broken Xbox360 from ebay and fix it myself. I have read that a lot of repairs breaking out the soldering iron, and reapplying heating compound. I'd also like to know if anyone has purchased an xbox 360, and before using it, rebuilt/replaced the cooling infra structure. One common solution I have read about is using an antec usb laptop cooler underneath the unit as a precautionary measure. I'm not sure I want to spend $300 when I can fix xomeone elses with a dremel tool, some silver compound, and a soldering iron.
Part of the RROD problem is that the motherboard actually physically warps and destroys itself. So unless you have cheap access to good 360 boards or have some auto magical silicon repair kit/re-lithographer I'd stick to just buying a 360 new.
What sort of things would cause those different parts to fail? Luck. Where I live my circle of friends have a cluster of 17 dead and warranty replaced 360's. Mostly RROD. 15 different people, 17 dead 360's. It might be the locality, the shipping route etc... but it's extremely high failure rates none the less.
Actually, Microsofts' hardware is top notch, or atleast it used to be - it's been quite a few years since i bought something from them. Mice, trackballs and keyboards were particularly good. Their mice keyboards and joysticks. consoles are a separate kettle of fish.
You could easily just manually change emotions (erm. . state values) and the algorithms that define them, etc. Think of it as putting your robot on anti-depressants. People are like this as well. If you want to set the "batshit crazy" value in your GF just say "hey honey, I'm going for coffee with my Ex-GF."
Except one format has region-encoding which prevents imports and allow artificial market-segregation. Guess which format that is? As i said, not a single significant difference to consumers. Region coding matters to vanishingly few people. The regions are huge, only 3 and th ekey diff in US-japan vs europe otherwise no one gives a shit. HD DVD pushers are a sad bunch. It's dead move on. It's been dead for about a year since blu-rays have consistently outsold them. There is more nails then coffin at this point. Move on.
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I don't like being forced into buying a new player every time they want to update their specs. hd-dvd had those features at launch, why didn't blu-ray ? At this point I think hd-dvd is the lesser of 2 evils at the moment. The overt racism is great eh! For our information the iPod does really well as does some American cars. It's not that they hate American products. It's simply that American companies like Microsoft have no idea how to market to Japan while a company like Apple does. HD DVD is Japaneses too. You are simple asinine.
Standard [adj]: a: regularly and widely used, available, or supplied b: well-established and very familiar It's also a form of automobile transmission neither of which is relevant in this context. Go look up "technical standard" like Laser Disk, MicroSD or mini-USB. All minority technologies labeled a "standard" Also, following your argument about putting the latest format into your equipment, assuming you're correct, it seems that MS doesn't make much sense Mircosoft only supplied some software they licensed to the HD DVD group. Toshiba is the one who led the group. Both have put the technology in a product. I was just trying to highlight why it was that they made various decisions and to show how the latest developments mesh well with Sony's previous decisions. No you are just interjecting logically incoherent rants into the discussion.
* Apple Inc.
* Dell Inc.
* Hewlett-Packard Company
* Hitachi, Ltd.
* LG Electronics
* Mitsubishi Electric
* Panasonic (Matsushita Electric)
* Pioneer Corporation
* Royal Philips Electronics
* Samsung Electronics
* Sharp Corporation
* Sony Corporation
* Sun Microsystems
* TDK Corporation
* Thomson SA
* Twentieth Century Fox
* Walt Disney Motion Pictures Group / Buena Vista Home Entertainment
* Warner Home Video Inc.
That is basically every major player in consumer electronics and most of the major Hollywood studios with the exception of Toshiba. Every format is in fact a standard because a standard is: A technical standard is an established norm or requirement. It is usually a formal document that establishes uniform engineering or technical criteria, methods, processes and practices.
A standard can be developed privately or unilaterally, for example by a corporation, regulatory body, military, etc. Standards can also be developed by groups such as trade unions, and trade associations. Standards organizations usually have more diverse input and usually develop voluntary standards: these might become mandatory if adopted by a government, business contract, etc.
The standardization process may be by edict or may involve the formal consensus of technical experts. -Wikipedia:standard
No part of that implies a standard must be the only player in it's niche or even a majority player.
Your just blathering on about some nonsensical argument. HD DVD was a standard as well. You had to conform to a technical spec and pay the consortium a fee to place a HD DVD brand on it. The two format were virtually identical in all important ways except support, region codes and capacity. Your bizzare argument over "standard" and "proprietary" applies to HD DVD as well. It also doesn't make much sense to develop a standard and then not push it into your latest electronics does it? I'm not sure of how you can really mentally contort yourself in that way. We had 2 formats. About roughly the same merits and drawbacks and then a power play via the content producers who decided the winning format. At no point was HD DVD some open format. At no point was either DRM free, non-Proprietary, backed by one company, or in some drastic way superior. It was a battle of two morally, technically, and economically equal entities.
US
2 BD : 1 HDDVD
Japan:
9 BD : 1 HDDVD
UK:
4 BD : 1 HDDVD
That was a sign the war was decided and events around the CES sealed the deal. As someone else said, It's now more nails then coffin.
I know of several PS3 owners. Some of them only have the free blu-rays. Fair enough. None of them are unaware of the HD disc abilities, but some just don't watch movies. The statistics reflect this reality, so I see no reason to adjust things strangely. The war is over so it's moot. But I noticed many people using TOTAL PS3 sales while only using US attach rates/media sales. The US sales ratio were roughly 2:1 BD:HDDVD. The UK sales ratio was roughly 4:1 BD:HDDVD. The Japanese sales ratio was 9:1 BD:HDDVD. I don't know a single PS3 owner who does not also own a BD movie. Not 1.
Incidentally the US BD : HD DVD dales ratio was 2:1 or there abouts for most of last year. The Ps3 didn't do that well in the States last year. In Japan where the PS3 did much better, the ratio was 9 BD: 1 HD DVD. The effect of the PS3 had been downplayed by HD DVD pundits but it wasn't ever close. It was only Close in the US. Even the UK had a 4 BD
weyland yutani Biotech division.
PS. it's in a under ventilated wood/glass cabinet along with my digital cable box. Ironically the cable box gets hotter. I probably should remove the back to allow better air flow.
With SCO Stocks!
I actually have. On total recall. was fairly difficult to scratch.