Why don't you just buy a house in a Sony gated community?

Best explanation yet of why Sony pushing Blu-Ray is a really, really
bad idea:

http://www.gizmocafe.com/blogs/gizmo...08/106130.aspx

For the lazy, some key quotes:

"In 1988 Sony bought CBS Records. A year later they buy Columbia and
Tri-Star Pictures.Sony is now one of the largest music and film
studios in the world. That's a conflict of interest you could drive a
Sequoia through."

"Do you think the consumer is a priority to the Blu-Ray disc
association? Blu-Ray only won over 20th Century Fox by promising an
extra layer of DRM encrypion called BD+."

"Do you think if the Soviet Union were a disc format they'd bother to
support IHD or managed copy?"

"Let me get this straight, the company that makes the movie also wants
to create the disc format. It also builds the hardware, writes an
extra digital rights management encryption, why don't you just buy a
house in a Sony gated community? That's exactly what Disney's doing in
Celebration, Florida."

"If Blu-Ray wins we don't realize how badly shafted the consumer is
going to be."

"When Sony is a hardware company, they're a good company, great ideas.
But the trouble is when one company controls the media, controls the
content, controls the hardware, whose interests are being served? Why
should they bother to innovate?"

- Jordan

Jordan

Jordan wrote:
> Best explanation yet of why Sony pushing Blu-Ray is a really, really
> bad idea:

World domination and really big bucks is a bad idea? I guess it would
depend on which side of THAT equation you're on.

My guess is that computer hardware will kick-start the real interest in
high-definition DVD's.

I don't think gaming consoles will cut the mustard as far as mass-market
penetration. HD T.V. doesn't need hd-dvds - plenty of programming
already on the air, with plenty more just around the corner. I know
quite a few folks who have purchased hd-tv monitors. None of them have
blu-ray or hd-dvd players.

Neither Blu-ray nor HD-DVD are going to do squat until Vista Windows
really kicks in, and people upgrade to some killer hardware. Once
that's in place, we'll need some hi-def BURNERS - not just lame players.

That's when the party will really get CRANK'in.

That's when Jack Sparrow will start sharing his bounty of hi-def movies.
If it gets out-of-hand, I guess the movie barons can stop producing
CONTENT (hello - asjbiotek).

You have to risk big bucks to make big bucks. We live in exciting times.

- winf

WinField

Jordan wrote:
> Best explanation yet of why Sony pushing Blu-Ray is a really, really
> bad idea:
>
> http://www.gizmocafe.com/blogs/gizmo...08/106130.aspx
>
> For the lazy, some key quotes:
>
> "In 1988 Sony bought CBS Records. A year later they buy Columbia and
> Tri-Star Pictures.Sony is now one of the largest music and film
> studios in the world. That's a conflict of interest you could drive a
> Sequoia through."

I'm sorry, but I fail to see how that's a "conflict of interest." Sony
makes hardware, and they want to make as much of the software as
possible. That's a reasonable, expected goal for a media company. It's
the same reason Microsoft has been branching out into hardware for the
last half-decade. Companies makes products, and people decide if they
want to buy them or not. How is that a conflict of interest?


> "Do you think the consumer is a priority to the Blu-Ray disc
> association? Blu-Ray only won over 20th Century Fox by promising an
> extra layer of DRM encrypion called BD+."

Um... last time I checked, the priority for ANY company is to maximize
the value of its stockholders' investment. Now, in a consumer
environment, that generally means trying to make the customer happy,
something that all this DRM nonsense DOES NOT DO. Maybe they'll figure
this out before it hurts their bottom line; maybe they won't. Who knows?
Either way, the free market will render unto them either the rewards or
the smiting they so richly deserve.

As for Fox, try to remember these are the same clowns who jumped
on-board for Divx, and even tried to push Digital VHS (!) for a WHILE.


> "Do you think if the Soviet Union were a disc format they'd bother to
> support IHD or managed copy?

Stupid hack writer analogy.


> "Let me get this straight, the company that makes the movie also wants
> to create the disc format. It also builds the hardware, writes an
> extra digital rights management encryption,

And your problem with this is...? I, for one, think DRM is stupid, but
ultimately the only real damage it can do is to stifle consumer interest
in the Hi-Def disc formats because of all the problems people are
experiencing with HDCP. If the situation gets bad enough, one of two
things will happen: either both Hi-Def disc formats will fail out of the
gate, or DRM will "magically" disappear. Either way, it's a
self-correcting problem.


why don't you just buy a
> house in a Sony gated community?

Frankly, even with Sony's miserable handling of the PS3 launch, I'd
still trust them more then I trust half the real estate developers I see
around.


That's exactly what Disney's doing in
> Celebration, Florida."

Good for Disney. As I understand it, Disney's planned communities are
clean, safe, and selling like hotcakes. I don't know that I'd pay to
live there myself (I suspect the land covenant/homeowner's agreement
would be pretty stringent), but if that's what people want, more power
to 'em.


> "If Blu-Ray wins we don't realize how badly shafted the consumer is
> going to be."

Except the writer of this article, who clearly has a better
understanding of the complicated issues involved than plebes like you or
I could ever possibly hope for.


> "When Sony is a hardware company, they're a good company, great ideas.
> But the trouble is when one company controls the media, controls the
> content, controls the hardware, whose interests are being served?

Um... their stockholders? Ya know, like every other company that has
ever existed in the history of free enterprise?


Why
> should they bother to innovate?"

If consumers demand it, they will. If consumers don't demand it... then
I guess some smelly hacker asshole will still come up with the Linux
equivalent of Blu-Ray, and smokers of clove cigarettes everywhere will
give themselves another "reason" to feel superior to everybody else.

Bear in mind, the above assumes that Blu-Ray will come out on top of
this idiotic "format war," an outcome that is in NO way assured; it's
also conditional on cash-strapped Sony becoming the dominant media
company in the world, an outcome that seems pretty unlikely at this point.

--
--
Well, whaddaya know? War WAS the answer, after all. Go figure.

A lone Micronaut lost in a world of Star Wars action figures,
(The Excessively Parenthetical) Geena-- Worrier Princess

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minutes. The unfortunate corollary is that everyone will also appear in
a Freddie Prinze, Jr. movie for fifteen minutes."
--me

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--Tony Bourdain

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helps if you have some kind of a football team, or some nuclear weapons,
but at the very least you need a beer."
-- Frank Zappa

"I'm not sayin' it's the best thing in the world FOR ya; I'm just sayin'
it's the best thing in the world."
-- Alton Brown

"The most preposterous notion that H. sapiens has ever dreamed up is
that the Lord God of Creation, Shaper and Ruler of all the Universes,
wants the saccharine adoration of His creatures, can be swayed by their
prayers, and becomes petulant if He does not receive this flattery. Yet
this absurd fantasy, without a shred of evidence to bolster it, pays all
the expenses of the oldest, largest, and least productive industry in
all history."
-- Robert Heinlein

Geena Phillips

On Feb 11, 5:40 am, Geena Phillips <gbee...@comcast.netrosexual>
wrote:

> > "Do you think the consumer is a priority to the Blu-Ray disc
> > association? Blu-Ray only won over 20th Century Fox by promising an
> > extra layer of DRM encrypion called BD+."
>
> Um... last time I checked, the priority for ANY company is to maximize
> the value of its stockholders' investment. Now, in a consumer
> environment, that generally means trying to make the customer happy,
> something that all this DRM nonsense DOES NOT DO. Maybe they'll figure
> this out before it hurts their bottom line; maybe they won't. Who knows?
> Either way, the free market will render unto them either the rewards or
> the smiting they so richly deserve.

Hopefully it won't get as far as the DRM fiasco Sony had with their
rootkit disaster. But that's the whole point of the article, by
putting Sony's interests ahead of the consumer they are going to cause
nothing but trouble and in the end, I'd argue, the whole notion of Blu-
Ray has done nothing but damage shareholder value. So why is Sony
persisting in it? Greed. Pure and simple, greed. If they can pull off
controlling the next (some would say last) physical media format the
long term rewards outstrip any short term losses. But they have to
take it in the shorts short-term to make sure consumers get screwed
long-term.

- Jordan

Jordan