Microsoft screwing up format unification says Next-Gen

Bigus Dickus said:
Monopolies aren't illegal. Abuse of monopoly power is, and MS has been justly criticized for such. But name another large company that doesn't have desires to attain monopoly status? Sony sure as hell does, whether we are talking about in general or especially if we are talking about a more specific market like consoles.
Name one company that prospers for sitting on their laurels. Any company with good leadership will expand into markets when profitable, retract from markets when it diffuses their focus or has a bleak long term outlook, and do everything possible to consume as large a share of the markets they participate in.
HD-DVD was first to the table with numerous supporters. Sony wasn't happy with living with only a moderate piece of the pie... they wanted more, and once again created their own competing format. More of a gamble, more potential payback. Now the shoe is on the other foot, and BRD has more supporters, and you want to blame the HD-DVD supporters (of which MS is only a participant, hardly the leader like Sony is for BRD) for the impending format war?

Thx you just posted just what I thought this save me al lot of typing....;)
 
scooby_dooby said:
Actually it is hypocritical to bash one company for 'not staying in their own market' while supporting another that has consistently gone outside of it's market(consumer electronic hardware) and created multiple format wars in the process.

Hypocritical is too strong, IMO. After reading through the thread, I think it's just a case of personal preference plus incomplete information perhaps ?

What MS has done is to _extend_ a format war. That is expected and consumers will have to vote with their dollars now (and risk losing them should one format loses). This tends to delay adoption due to people sitting on their fences to wait for the victor.

The only thing I am trying to decide is:
* Do consumers really need a choice of format ? I mean do I want to choose between TCP/IP and OSI stack (as a consumer) ? Probably not. I'd prefer just 1 standard for format.

However, the immediate benefit of the format war now is that HD-DVD brought down the reference price (Because they announced a cheaper drive for a start). The low and mid tier BluRay offerings will have to match (and I believe they can).

It should be good news for consumers, but it may also put the future of BluRay and HD-DVD at risk (if none of the vendors earn enough from this segment to be worhwhile). If the accounting numbers come up short for an extended period, then companies may look elsewhere for $$$ and won't spend that much resources pushing for adoption.

I reckon I don't want to switch DVDs in the middle of a movie or game. And I'll be getting HD TVs since I want to get rid of my 8-year-old TV. So I hope things work out for the vendors. If Sony stays true to its course, then perhaps I will have a glimpse of BluRay future in PS3 (I don't watch TV/movie on my PC, so HD-DVD support on Windows will have lesser impact for me personally).
 
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HAHAHA ,Sony fans are against monopolies except:
For the home videogames' industry where they were celebrating all over the net when sega became 3rd party,theywant nintendo to ALSO go third party and they hate the fact that MS entered this industry.

For the home-movies' industry where they want only the sony format to exist(despite sony being the company that caused this format war) and they are offended and enraged because other companies don't bow down to sony.

Personally i hope that HD-DVD is the winner.Oh and it's funny how this article mentions disney as a blue ray exclusive but doesn't mention Universal as a HD-DVD exclusive.I really like how MS is putting the heat on a,in a really bad financial situation,Sony.
 
fulcizombie said:
HAHAHA ,Sony fans are against monopolies except:
For the home videogames' industry where they were celebrating all over the net when sega became 3rd party,theywant nintendo to ALSO go third party and they hate the fact that MS entered this industry.

For the home-movies' industry where they want only the sony format to exist(despite sony being the company that caused this format war) and they are offended and enraged because other companies don't bow down to sony.

Personally i hope that HD-DVD is the winner.Oh and it's funny how this article mentions disney as a blue ray exclusive but doesn't mention Universal as a HD-DVD exclusive.I really like how MS is putting the heat on a,in a really bad financial situation,Sony.

Qualify 'Sony fan'? ;)
 
ihamoitc2005 said:
I am sorry my friend I must disagree on this. Sony is promoting superior technology it has developed but MS is promoting inferior technology that is owned by other companies. Very different. Blame is always for company promoting inferior technology for this is not so good for consumers.

Sony isn't promoting superior technology, it is promoting a more expensive technology which it makes a greater amount of money on via royalty licensing. They expect to make so much money that they are willing to pay cost differentials for certain studios to get them to release content on their proprietary format. Sony is the reason there is a format war. End. Stop.

HD-DVD and BRD are different. And both are inferior technologies that are at most a point solution as neither has enough data capacity nor bandwidth to support where we really need to be to distribute high quality 1080P motion video content. The industry, and consumers would be better off if both failed until they have a disc format that can deliver 100GB per disc cheaply and reliably.

Aaron Spink
speaking for myself.
 
ROG27 said:
Sony is in the business of delivering entertainment content...which has traditionally been delivered on removable media...this media takes all shapes and sizes depending on need for portability, size, access speed etc.

Sony moved into the content business relatively recently. In fact, I'm pretty sure that MS has been in the content biz for longer than sony.

Aaron Spink
speaking for myself inc.
 
drpepper said:
Y
One word, conjecture. This statement is truley folley. Those extra spaces will be used. Whether its to include multiple episodes in SD of a TV show or something else. I'd like to have all the Seinfeld episodes on 1 disc, probably not going to happen, but the less discs I have to have the better.

They won't put extra episodes on a disc. They already have the capability to due this with many TV shows and purposely choose to distribute the movie across more discs instead. The primary reason being is that consumers don't like paying $100 for 2 discs.

Aaron Spink
speaking for myself inc.
 
Alpha_Spartan said:
QFT.

I'm sure there are people in the HD-DVD camp that believes Sony is the one "screwing up" format unification.
I do not claim to have any insight into which of these formats is better, but I do wonder when has Sony not screwed up format unification? All sony does is come out with proprietary crap that makes other people pay them liscencing fees and then they wonder why they lost money for the first time. They were afraid of MP3 players b/c oh no someone might copy a song so they ceded to market to Apple, and the list goes on. Their management is run by girly men apparently :) Afraid to take risks, they really should remember they made some awesome hardware and they should continue to do so instead of infecting computers with spyware and going crazy wasting money on DRM and developing new standards that are uneeded such as Atrac...
 
Bigus Dickus said:
HD-DVD was first to the table with numerous supporters. Sony wasn't happy with living with only a moderate piece of the pie... they wanted more, and once again created their own competing format. More of a gamble, more potential payback. Now the shoe is on the other foot, and BRD has more supporters, and you want to blame the HD-DVD supporters (of which MS is only a participant, hardly the leader like Sony is for BRD) for the impending format war?

Bigus, is this the objective and commonly accepted reason for Sony to push BluRay and for so many others to follow suit ? What do other supporters see in BluRay independent of Sony ? I don't track the format war that closely...

The initial BluRay mantra was "The best consumer experience [to entice adoption], more room for storage [longer future]". I'm guessing also more room for hi-end players like Sony to innovate rather than cookie cutter low cost manufacturing.

While HD-DVD was "cheaper to start mass manufacturing [driving cost down quickly], lesser pricing pressure and hence lower risk". Longer future is less relevant because starting investment is minimal. After various iterations of fights and improvements, the boundary is blurer now.

If we can have the best consumer experiences at lower price, then I'm really glad the HD-DVD camp introduced the low cost players to set the consumer reference price. If BRA plays by the book, they will most likely match the HD-DVD price (with a slight premium probably) for low and mid-level players and content. Afterall, Sony *must* deliver BR drive at very low cost to prevent losing too much money selling PS3.

The flip side of this "skirmish" is both HD-DVD and BluRay have become stronger since their inceptions. What's left is the marketing message to the consumers: How to attract, differentiate and prevent confusion. May be it's not such a bad thing afterall.
 
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This topic makes no sense. Toshiba, LG, Sanyo, NEC, Samsung, etc. will all be selling HD-DVD players and drives sans Microsofts involvement. How did Microsoft end up as the culprit behind the high definition format war? Microsoft feels they need a next generation media player to be competitive with the PS3. What other option do they have besides HD-DVD? Blu-Ray for the 360? I shouldn't have to elaborate on why that's not a smart move.

Sony dropped out of the DVD forum without even submitting the Blu-Ray spec as a candidate for the next generation of optical media. There whole business strategy for developing Blu-Ray was "format war". Just as with Betamax, UMD, Minidisc, etc. they want to be the sole distributor of their proprietary format with all the royalties that entails going directly into their pocket. I don't necessarily blame them for trying to get that marketshare, but putting the blame for this on Microsofts shoulders is really, really reaching. Sony should just change their name to FormatWar Inc. and be done with it.
 
Sis said:
No, people have agreed on how to cut market lines. You either misspoke earlier when you said Sony was always an entertainment company or do not understand what it means to be an entertainment company. Perhaps you really meant they were always an electronics company, in which case they have a vested interest in standards for consumer electronic devices. They were surely not always an entertainment company, but that is not really important in any regards...

Why you insist on debating a point that is obviously wrong I don't know. Just concede that you were wrong--it doesn't really detract from your point that MS has little to no vested interest in the HD disc format...

.Sis


(*just arguing for arguments sake) show me the definitive market line...I have explained to you what has made Sony an entertainment company all along...and you say no based on your own definitions--no where is it outlined that they are not. Nintendo has always been an entertainment company...have they produced movies or music?...no...but they've always made games...not even videogames...just games in general...is a board game not a form of entertainment? Entertainment industry is defined as the following...products and services with the intention to provide customer with the means to be entertained.

Why should I concede that I am wrong on a point just because you say to. That is ridiculous. That's like if you told me to say the color black was white because you said so.
 
aaronspink said:
Sony moved into the content business relatively recently. In fact, I'm pretty sure that MS has been in the content biz for longer than sony.

Aaron Spink
speaking for myself inc.

Aaron...I'm not speaking about just content...I'm speaking about the entertainment industry as whole--an industry Sony has always had a vested interest in...while MS has recently just come aboard.
 
aaronspink said:
HD-DVD and BRD are different. And both are inferior technologies that are at most a point solution as neither has enough data capacity nor bandwidth to support where we really need to be to distribute high quality 1080P motion video content. The industry, and consumers would be better off if both failed until they have a disc format that can deliver 100GB per disc cheaply and reliably.

Aaron Spink
speaking for myself.

Man, if you knew how much I agree with you. I really really wouldn't mind seing both those formats crash and burn badly...
 
Gibson said:
This topic makes no sense. Toshiba, LG, Sanyo, NEC, Samsung, etc. will all be selling HD-DVD players and drives sans Microsofts involvement. How did Microsoft end up as the culprit behind the high definition format war? Microsoft feels they need a next generation media player to be competitive with the PS3. What other option do they have besides HD-DVD? Blu-Ray for the 360? I shouldn't have to elaborate on why that's not a smart move.

Sony dropped out of the DVD forum without even submitting the Blu-Ray spec as a candidate for the next generation of optical media. There whole business strategy for developing Blu-Ray was "format war". Just as with Betamax, UMD, Minidisc, etc. they want to be the sole distributor of their proprietary format with all the royalties that entails going directly into their pocket. I don't necessarily blame them for trying to get that marketshare, but putting the blame for this on Microsofts shoulders is really, really reaching. Sony should just change their name to FormatWar Inc. and be done with it.

Gibson - first, welcome to the forum.

Second, Sony *couldn't* submit the blu-ray spec to the DVD Forum because it's format was inelligible for entry. Part of the submission criteria was backwards compatability with DVD equipment. Other than that I agree they wanted (or chose to have) a fomat war.

As for 360, I don't think MS went with HD-DVD because they *need* a next-gen media player. As has been discussed, their move seems to have more to do with scuttling blu-ray than actually supporting HD-DVD. Which is valid.
 
ihamoitc2005 said:
I am sorry my friend I must disagree on this. Sony is promoting superior technology it has developed but MS is promoting inferior technology that is owned by other companies. Very different. Blame is always for company promoting inferior technology for this is not so good for consumers.

For consumers sake we should wait for HVD which is clearly the superior technology...
 
Joe DeFuria said:
Um, anyone who tells you that one or the other party is more responsible than the other for the ensuing format war, is smoking crack.

The blu-ray camp and the HD-DVD camp are both responsible.

Your post is an example of the reason why people hate fan-persons.

True for the most part, although I'd tilt in favor of Blu-Ray since the the organization existed and demo'd long before AOD (HD-DVD's predacessor) was even a paper spec...

Just for starters, do you have any diea how many industries Sony is in? How many proprietary foramts theyve released?

Proprietary formats is hardly a benchmark... Especially for a company had to develop its own media at times in order to sell a new product...

Sis said:
Er, no. Sony bought into the entertainment industry, according to wikipedia, back in 1988.

Wikipedia would be off by about 20 years since Sony first bought into the *entertainment industry* in 1968 when it entered a joint venture w/CBS records and formed CBS/Sony Records

Sis said:
i) The fact that their codec, VC-1, is being used by both camps is indicative that they should have some say.

Actually they don't... It's not their's to do as they please.

expletive said:
Well then by that logic, the movies studios and music industry should have been perturbed when Sony entered THEIR industry?

Except Sony didn't *Enter* it, it was invited into a partnership... And it wasn't the first either as JVC had been involved w/the music industry for many years before Sony was, and Pioneer for example also started getting involved w/the movie industry around the same time as Sony, so it's not like Sony was setting some sort of precedent that the record labels or movies studios would panic over...

aaronspink said:
Sony isn't promoting superior technology, it is promoting a more expensive technology which it makes a greater amount of money on via royalty licensing. They expect to make so much money that they are willing to pay cost differentials for certain studios to get them to release content on their proprietary format. Sony is the reason there is a format war. End. Stop.

HD-DVD and BRD are different. And both are inferior technologies that are at most a point solution as neither has enough data capacity nor bandwidth to support where we really need to be to distribute high quality 1080P motion video content. The industry, and consumers would be better off if both failed until they have a disc format that can deliver 100GB per disc cheaply and reliably.

Wow, talk about ignorance... :) Blu-Ray (nor HD-DVD) can't be considered proprietary in the classic sense since neither are wholly owned by one entity or another. And by *we* I presume you're referring the consumers who've been buying up 1366x768 panel tv's (or gads worse, some of those 854x480 ED plasmas) for the past couple of years, and wouldn't know 720p from 1080i? "We" don't *need* any of that, it's all just a luxury... I won't speak for HD-DVD, but for the record, yes you can have 1080p content on Blu-Ray...

Sony moved into the content business relatively recently. In fact, I'm pretty sure that MS has been in the content biz for longer than sony.

I rest my case...
 
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I'm with Aaron on this. You won't get more episodes per disc for the reason people will not pay the same amount for one disc versus 5 disks for a season of tv-show.

It's just psychological that people seem to think they don't get their moneys worth if they have to pay 100$ for one disc with one whole season vs. 5 discs.

That's also one of the reasons Sony is using mpeg2 for their blu ray releases to make it seem like the space is really needed. The other reason is that they don't have to learn to optimize new codecs when mastering the movies.
 
Alpha_Spartan said:
Thus you don't have any credibility. If you believe in "evil" corporations, then you must believe in "good" corporations which is stupid.
There are, as with all concepts, shades in between. Very few corporations are completely good or bad but some are worse than others and a few a lot worse.

microsoft had a "lucky" brake when they were "chosen" to supply the OS for the IBM PC. They have since done everything in their power and used any means to exploit that opportunity to the fullest.
No corporation ever, before or since, has been able to get such a vice grip on a marked by “natural” means.

Two things about microsoft worth noting:

1. They haven't been able to gain monopoly in any marked, where they weren't able to leverage their monopoly.

2. In all their years of monopoly (25 years), being sole valid provider of a PC OS and being one of the worlds richest corporations, they haven't made one, not even one single breakthrough product, invention or discovery.
 
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archie4oz said:
Wikipedia would be off by about 20 years since Sony first bought into the *entertainment industry* in 1968 when it entered a joint venture w/CBS records and formed CBS/Sony Records
This could just be my scanning through it looking for when they purchased their first entertainment company. Regardless of actual date, the point remains.
Actually they don't... It's not their's to do as they please.
How is that different than any of the other participants? In fact, your very own post seems to indicate this:
Wow, talk about ignorance... :) Blu-Ray (nor HD-DVD) can't be considered proprietary in the classic sense since neither are wholly owned by one entity or another.
 
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