Sony throws party for Vaios, fakes Blu-ray demo
By Ryan Block 
posted May 16th 2006 3:25PM
posted May 16th 2006 3:25PM
Update: To be honest, we never thought this one would take off the way it has, but it looks like we underestimated the forensic skills of the collective. The latest word is that someone claiming to be from Sony has posted a comment on Gearlog saying that there were two laptops, one with the DVD-R of "House of Flying Daggers," and the other with the Blu-ray version, so that folks could make a side-by-side comparison. Gearlog's reporter apparently popped the latch on the DVD version, and didn't check the Blu-ray one. We have no way to independently verify this version (or Gearlog's original take), though Notebook Review does have some pics clearly showing two laptops on display at the Sony shindig. All of this leads us to one conclusion: Next time, Sony should just invite us to their parties, and we'll get it straight. And we may even like the tinfoil-flavored cake, too.
"It seems somewhat plausible though they they temporarily mastered a HD video on a DVD+R for a demo, since Blu-Ray movies are not widely available, if at all mastered yet."
Christ. I can't believe it's so hard for some people to put all of this information together and get that result.
OF COURSE IT ISN'T AN OFFICIAL BLU-RAY OF THE MOVIE! THEY HAVEN'T BEGUN MANUFACTURING IT YET!
It's sleazy of Sony not to say what's going on, sure. But it's understandable that it's on a DVD.
Some of you have your head in the sand claiming this is faked. Shut up. It's not. In the comments on the other thread, though, the chick fessing up was, just look at the link of her name.
Others of you have your heads in the sand that Sony is lying and evil. Well, they are, but not here. Here they're being deceptive, but not outrageously so.
I love the fact that Sony fanboys live in a world totally amongst themselves. Oh Engadget is biased or the comments are planted by Micosoft or Nintendo fanboys. No the comments are consumer comments who hate Sony. Over-hyping and failing to deliver products while shunning consumer wants and charging an arm and a leg isn't going to get the average consumer to run out and buy Sony products. The tide for Sony has completely turned against them and they have unquestionably lost the battle for the next generation of optical media format and console. Blue-Ray will be a disgusting flop, hitting its ass out the door by late next year. The PS3 will be stagnant at best, it will be supported but title availability and sales will only be matched only by Gamecube (sorry Nintendo fans). If you don't like the consumer comments on this board then go and find a Sony fanboy blog. Beware however, Engadget isn't the only board where consumers are voicing their anti-Sony sentiment
The story wasn't fake, it was a mix-up, a misunderstanding. This PC Magazine columnist, Lance, seems to just have mailed in his unedited and unchecked thoughts about the launch party to the person who also edits the PC magazine Gearlog.
If he'd written about it in his column he would have checked it all first with Sony and cleared up this misunderstanding. So I don't necessarily blame him, these were probably just his private reflections off the top of his head. But the editor of the blog ran with it, probably not used to worrying about factchecking as much as a magazine editor (usually we bloggers just have to check the links.)
It's all very unfortunate for the editor and her blog, but then most people commenting on that blog were critical from the beginnning so the actual damage done was mostly just to their own reputation. I probably would have made the same type of mistake myself in our movie blog if I had gotten word of the story from such a well respected source.
http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=2939
"The premium model comes bundled with one of the first Blu-ray Disc (BD) movies, House of Flying Daggers, which Sony showed side-by-side tonight, along with the DVD version. Contrary to what some have said, the difference in quality is instantly noticeable, and according to Sony, it is even more apparent on movies shot in HD (which HoFD apparently wasn't)."
This was a side by side demonstration on the same laptop model as the placard indicates. One Blu-ray, one DVD. It was a sample, not the movie, hence the DVDR.
Case closed, bitches -Rick James
98. Brady, bravo on your educated and thorough response. No sarcasm there, as a more simple post would have just garnered you another "omg these sony fanboys..." response.
It is so funny how the ps3 fanboys go on to sites and post fake reads like "My xbox 360 caught fire" "My second 360 this week" "I was playing Halo and it started smoking"
This post is to the point betaray is not ready for primetime just like the ps3. Funny at e3 how sony used 360 to demo a few games titles. A single layer HD-DVD offers 8 hours of high def video dual is 16 hours. I am buying an HD-DVD player as soon as the second round makes it to retail.
#72: "someone's gonna get fired over this."
I sure hope it's Lance Ulanoff and Jennifer Deleo for propogating this bullshit.
Gosh, The picutre of the laptop on the desk and the one ejecting the dvd has sound ports on differet sides......You cant see the sound ports of the laptop on the desk but you can see the cdfrom drive and then when you look at the close up of the dvdfrom drive you can see the sound ports! hummmmmmm FAKEEEEEEEEEEEE
It makes me laugh to see all of these Sony fanboys coming to Sony's rescue! But seriously, its normal for Sony to lie about things, remember the PS2 system specs? Oh, and the website now has more pics if you still don't believe them.
Yeah #114, more pictures of the WRONG laptop.
It's this simple:
- The laptop he found was supposed to be playing a normal DVD.
- The other laptop event was actually playing a Blu-ray disc. Like they said at the event.
Lance's steps for great journalism:
Step 1) Get drunk at a Sony event
Step 2) Post your drunk ramblings on the internet
Step 3) Accidentally convince thousands of idiots Sony is "faking" their Blu-ray event.
Step 4) PULITZER, BABY
They did it before, way back at the introduction of MiniDisc in The Netherlands. A Sony rep started shaking the player: "Look, it doesn't skip, it just keeps playing!" Then the audio connector fell out and the music still kept playing (obviously from a differents source...)
The journalists who were present were advised not to write about the incident "if their paper valued Sony's advertising".
http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=2939
If you read the report... BOTH machines are Blu-Ray systems. The one on the right is DEFINATELY the high spec VAIO AR190G. There is photo evidence with a caption "Front view of VAIO AR190G" against the machine on the right.
http://www.notebookreview.com/assets/12126.jpg
Also if you look at the pic of the left machine...
http://www.notebookreview.com/assets/12120.jpg
In the distance you can see what appears to be the same Blu-Ray logo in exactly the same place on the RIGHT hand machine. I'd say they are simply both the same machines, the High Spec AR190G (Hence only ONE display info card with ONE price). The left one playing DVD, the right one playing BD. The offending pic is obviously from the left machine otherwise you wouldn't see the black part of the table (The edge). The right machine is sitting on pure white table top and has a BD box right next to it so you'd see it in picture if the offending photo was from that machine.
Look at this pic too: -
http://www.notebookreview.com/assets/12132.jpg
From the front they are identical too, and here you can clearly see the model number and the price. It makes sense to use the same machine for the test as well so it looks consistent (making exact benchmarks etc).
Heres a doctored Pic to try and make it look like the machine is on the right (The one you are using Engadget, stirring shit are we?): -
http://www.engadget.com/media/2006/05/blu-ray_dvd.jpg
But its obviously cut if you look carefully down the middle there in an obvious join where one pic is placed next to another to make it look like the machine next to the BD box. (Well done Engadget on that attempt)
Someone is just jumping on the Sony hate bandwagon and you are joining in Engadget... then you spread it to Joystiq for good meansure.
Bunch of amatures! :D
Even if it was a side by side comparison there is still something very important to note here. SONY STILL CHEATED.
If the goal is to show the difference between DVD and Blu-Ray, they copied a DVD which probably means they compressed it and put it on a DVDR so the video quality isn't as good.
Please reports facts, not rumors!
I don't know if this is true but if it is, it's realy a shame. Realy a shame. Not for the Blu-Ray format itself but for Sony. I'm still a big supporter of the Blu-Ray format and I'm not going to change that. But if this is my trust in Sony is gone. Well, it is somewhat gone since the Root-kit thing. But, I'm still supporting the Blu-Ray-format but this realy not help it's case.
So here's more to go on, seems the PC Mag guy was possibly under hte influence.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=54374
From Weblogs main page:
All of our blogs are 100% unfiltered and certified to be the complete, unvarnished truth.
WHY is the original, inaccurate text still on Engadget's front page? Good luck getting into those Sony events in the future...:o
Nice. You print a sensational tech story without checking out the facts. I'm sure you're gonna cry when Sony sues the pants off you fools.
ok, so why is Sony pirating movies onto DVD-Rs then?
Sony could dupe it's own movies all day and it wouldn't be "pirating" as THEY OWN THE RIGHTS to House of Flying Daggers.
Lame gearlog (Lance is a Wiitard) followup:
http://gearlog.com/blogs/gearlog/archive/2006/05/17/11993.aspx
Sony PR man responds, confirms it was DVD/BD comparison:
http://games.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=185953&cid=15348016
NBR reviewer who was there, Malia.Zee, confirms there was a DVD/BD comparison there:
"The laptop on the right was playing a BD, the laptop on the left (the one pictured) was playing a DVD. I feel bad for Sony, since if it wasn't for me, this guy would never have taken the picture - and now it's been picked up by all sorts of sources."
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=54374
Engadget should *really* post a retraction/apology. Crap like this that is allowed to propagate unchecked only hurts Engadget for being less-than-professional, and Sony, who was innocent in this case. (I am not a Sony apologist, they have their problems, like the rootkit fiasco and they damn well deserve to be called out when it is deserved. In this case it was not.)
well, i suppose i can add in my 2 cents worth. which brings the grand total worth of this thread to about 1.2 mil.
ahh well. I find it a bit odd that sony would use a burned disk. If they were showing the difference between a normal DVD and a blu-ray disk, they wouldn't have to ahve a burned disk, would they? they could just pop in the real DVD. If they couldn't find the DVD, well, i doubt sony movies are doing that badly, or that well.
Now, if they were trying to show HD content from a regular DVD-r, then, most definatly, they would have to burn one, which seems a bit more likely.
both ways still don't make sense don't make sense.
the only explanation that would totally explain why it's a burned DVD is that they weren't showing the movie, but rather excerpts and highlights. Maybe they had a dramatic fight scene that they looped. Which i think is the most logical explanation.
From a technical standpoint demoing a short HD video loop of HD DVD, Blu-ray, or DVD wouldn't really make any difference if it was encoded at the same bitrate/quality. This was just a jokey post that we had some fun with -- even if they did fake it, which they may not have, it wouldn't exactly mean anything in the grand scheme. Maybe they couldn't get a disc, maybe they were just pressed for time, who knows. That said, we did update as more information came to light about the situation, which is about the best we can do. We consider GearLog a trustworthy news source, but if something someone publishes turns out to be untrue, the most we can do is update and be clear about any mistakes made. So why don't you guys settle down a little?
What is most interesting about this is how quickly people were to believe it. I thought at first glance that it was real untill I took a closer look. This is indicative of how much negative PR Sony has taken since its DRM mongering. There are many companies that could have done this for real and people would be skeptical. But instantly a Sony fake is bought. They have seriously damaged thier street cred and will have to work very hard to rebuild it.
shut this bitch of a thread DOWN!
enough already, jesus...
I think you've got the right idea, Dan.