Survey points to Blu-ray negativity, attributed to Sony's "heavy handed" approach
By Darren Murph 
posted Dec 7th 2006 11:16AM
posted Dec 7th 2006 11:16AM
While some folks just can't make up their mind, and other have already leaned one way or the other, a recent independent survey points to Sony's format being the one losing ground and interest, but we can't say we're surprised. Betamax, ATRAC, MiniDisc, and UMDs were all crafted by Sony, and all fell (basically) flat before ever really catching on, and it seems the costly Blu-ray format may be headed for the same fate. Cymfony, a market influence analytics company, found that "positive discussions" about HD DVD were "46-percent higher" than talks about Blu-ray, with over twice as many post authors being "impressed with HD DVD" rather than "impressed with Blu-ray." A good deal of the negativity shown towards Blu-ray was attributed to Sony's "heavy handed" approach of forcing Blu-ray upon PlayStation 3 owners, not to mention the notoriously delayed (and pricey) standalone players. Although it's still far too early to tell which format will rise victorious (you know, since peace talks have all but ceased), there's no denying the high costs associated with both next-generation discs, but Sony's track record with these proprietary ideas definitely doesn't bode well for it.[Via TechDigest]
@Jason
Yes, but there are a lot of entertainment companies that Sony doesn’t own, who are also making movies and TV. NOW with the possibility of get the web and IPTV on your cell phone. When you add in free crap off YouTube. (I don’t even watch cable anymore.)
Don’t you think that maybe Sony might be over confident that THEIR format is the end all, be all? That’s everything’s going to work out, and the Blu-Ray is GOING to be the new standard? It wouldn’t be the first time that a company has grown SO LARGE that they can no longer meet the needs of their customers. Or can see the handwriting on the wall.
Personally, I’d rather have steaming media, than another disc format. It takes up less room, when all I want is the show, not the previews and ridiculous packaging.
i have a sony ps3 i have about 14 blu ray movies
to be completely honest i am not impressed at all.
some of the films are grainy i have not see nhd vdd in action but from what i hear is way better in quality then blu-ray.
but blu-ray have better movie catalog dammit. Wahy did i become an early adopter?
dammit this is not good news for my collection.
lol no duh, lets see hddvd is cheaper, has many movies that are better, and has a video quality thats better as well... not to mention it can be dvd/hddvd hybrid... and on top of that the iHD layer is damn sexy
bluray will end up being the ps3 format only eventually just as UMD ended up... personally i just cant wait for disney and ... there was 1 other big group i wanted to come over to hddvd ... but i forget which... anyways the majority of movies i like are hddvd anyway :)
you forgot Memorystick. Honestly, i think both will fail. maybe thats just me.
And SACD...
bluray has better movieS? who are you kidding lol... not only does hddvd have 3x as many movies out and coming out as bluray, many of the huge blockbusters came out on hddvd or came out on hddvd and bluray... there has only been 1 or 2 that didnt hit hddvd ... but with some luck they will come over as well...
as for the grainyness ... i've seen it on several bluray titles... cant say the same for the hddvd's so far the ones i have seen have been crystal clear.
Both will fail. Just keep watching.
LOL ya people seem to forget that memorystick and memorystickduo are basically failures as well... i mean in comparison to their competiton they mise as well be Sony only formats... kinda like UMD and the other ones that failed from sony
Did you just write 3 comments in a row? Blu-ray has a lot more company supporters than HD-DVD right now *cough cough... Apple*. Give it time, just like every new format when they come out. Give it time.
Yeah, and then HD-DVD has Microsoft, your point? Last I checked Microsoft is a much bigger entity than Apple. Also, while Blu-Ray has more company support, that doesn't matter since there aren't as many movie. There may be more companies "signed on" with Blu-Ray, but that doesn't matter when they aren't doing anything.
The only thing I read here is Sony = crap... fine, they made a lot of mistakes lately, but come on, give them a break !!!
Yeah that's all you hear, but would you actually WANT to own a product hindered by DRM and proprietary formats on over priced players?
> Although it's still far too early to tell which format will rise victorious
It'll be the interweb.
Duh...
I still think about this in rudimentary terms, aside from quality, price, quantity etc. If this 'war' lasts a year and begins to be general public priced, which do you think average joe consumer is going to buy? "What the hell is this Blu-Ray? Oh, HD-DVD that is what I'm supposed to have." High Definition is the biggest buzz word in entertainment, HD gaming, HDTV, HD broadcast, HD TiVo, HD-DVD. It is so logical.
Also, why do all the fanboys think that this is 'just like when PS2 came out". If I recall DVDs were the ONLY new format, they were close to complete adoption (Blockbuster had already begun stocking them I think), and players were already out on the market.
Finally the big difference, the shift from VHS to DVD was monumental. Have you seen a VHS lately? They were horrible compared to DVD. If you had a halfway current TV set, the change was monumental. Here, the industry is so eager to get HDTVs in your house, and while TV broadcasts are much better in HD, unless you have a brand new 1080p set with all the bells and whistles, you aren't going to see a much of a jump in DVD to HD-DVD.
This is pretty much my feeling. Regardless of which format is "better", HD-DVD has a huge advantage simply because of the name.
Lou what are you kidding me ....."unless you have a brand new 1080p set with all the bells and whistles, you aren't going to see a much of a jump in DVD to HD-DVD." Not only Does HD DVD look better than DVD w
ith Dolby Plus and Dolby True HD movies sound better. Whther on a 720p 1080i or 1080p tv. And do more research on the marketing hype that is around 1080p...basically 1. There is no difference to the naked eye between 1080i and 1080p 2. Most of the 1080p TVs on the market can't even accept a 1080p signal all the can do is deinterlace and output progressive scan.
Not that this isn't relevant in the US yet, but it will be:
Sony's FeliCa protocol for contactless smartcards. Sony and NXP (formerly Philips Semiconductor) are working to combine their proprietary protocols in a single chip which will be integrated with 50% of cell phones by 2010. So, it looks like this maybe one of Sony's wins in the "proprietary format business model".
HD DVD is certainly more popular in use on the web as one can see from the Google Trend:
http://www.google.com/trends?q=blu-ray%2C+hd+dvd
You ever watch Family Fued with a bunch of friends and all of you are sitting there wondering who the heck they surveyed to get those results? Yeah... surveys are fine and dandy if they tell you what you want to hear, but they're not exactly definitive as to what the market wants...
Point number two: You know why political polls are run so frequently? Cause we (humans) are naturally fickle. Surveys might show pro-HD-DVD this month and pro-Blu-Ray next month.
Putting stock in silly surveys or polls is foolish. Granted, I'm kinda rooting for HD-DVD to win cause it's cheaper, but Blu-Ray is making a strong showing so at this point it's anybody's game.
Oh, and fanboys suck.
I'm not a tech head and i haven't really been following the "waring" very closely so this might be a ridiculous question for most of you so pardon my ignorance, but is the ps3 able to view hd-dvd's? is this a question of if the blu-ray isn't the winner of this format battle then the ps3 is gonna go the route of the sega dreamcast system? its hard to believe that sony would go out like that.
Um, I'm in said industry, and no, they're not. The PROFESSIONAL betaCAM format is used almost exclusively for broadcast purposes, but it has nothing to do with the Betamax format of old.
9 new screeners in front of me received in the past week; 3 being Beta, 5 being DVD, 1 being VHS.
Seems like Beta is still in use to me.
Neal G : "Yeah , and that seems to be helping (failing) Sony so much."
It's not meant to "help" Sony, it's the point that the format is still used.
Lou brings up a point. In most cases, if your display cant put out 1080p, the image wont display or filter properly.
What I think is hilarious is they take the global opinion from forums. That's like listening in starbucks, or doing a survey there, and passing it off as applicable to the entire public. They are ignoring the fact that not everyone drinks coffee, and you will likely find differences in personality and taste between those that drink it and those that dont. You get a tainted/biased sample.They probably did google searches. Search: "HD-DVD is the roxxorz", count, search: "Blu-Ray is the roxxorz", count.
Result? They come up with something like "the overwhelming majority of Americans are willing to pay an obscene premium for their coffee," because everyone there naturally will, when in fact a small number nationwide (percentage wise) will.
So what about the ignorant consumer? Do the forums reflect their opinion, when they dont even know what a forum is? Will buying/format adoption follow along the same numbers? No. (the HD thing, as mentioned above, will probably work like adding an "i" to anything. "I have an iCamcorder. It's white. 'i' means good.")
The only thing this study proves is that the Internet is full of very loud and vocal people are are disillusioned with all-things Sony. BD is simply another avenue where they can express their hatred for Sony.
I'm going with HD-DVD.
DVD with a good upscaler (e.g. Faroudja) is good enough on a TV less than 40" or so, so I'm sticking with DVD, at least until there are region-free players for either Bluray or HD-DVD.
I'm in a holding pattern on HD disks until there is a clear leader and that leader has a comfortable 60% of the market. Realistically I'll probably wait until after the '07 holiday season and see where things are at. God know my 1080i tosh TV is waiting but I'm not going to throw away my money at this point.
"HD-DVD" is a much better product name for high definition content than "Blueray." Blueray means nothing to the average consumer (but might be a better global name) and the additional media spend required to make it 'mean something' is really just being spent to try to achieve parity with the HD DVD moniker.
The fact that its a Sony format tends to make most fanboys a bit suspicious and reticient (self included). Shades of all other media formats Sony has tried to forcefeed.
You know, I think trying to "own" media formats is going to be the death of Sony... I understand the reasoning behind this impetus, but if I were a stockholder I'd think they were gambling away the company's future.
Blueray and PS3 have a LOT of potential. $600 is a great deal for this tech and most mediaphiles know it. However, most mediaphiles also know that streaming media and digital download is the real future. And both HD formats could likely be supplanted by upcoming formats which use Regular DVDs and superior vid compression to deliver HD content.
I mean, "larger and more money" is not always better. In my world an 80GB USB pocket drive has far less utility than a 2GB miniSD card.
Hey, Mark Nelson, it's "Blu-ray".
Mark Nelson:
It's Blu-Ray, not BlueRay. If you're gonna hate on a format, at least get it right. And in the end, it's not us geeks who decides what format wins. The consumer is gonna look at a Sony box and a Toshiba box. They're gonna say "Oh, Sony is higher quality than Toshiba. Blu-Ray must be good!"
Also, Disney, Sony Pictures, 20th Century Fox, all support Blu-Ray, almost exclusively. Warner Bro. supports both. If a kid can't get their new Disney film because they own a HD-DVD player, there's going to be hell to pay at home.
All this Sony hatred around these parts sure have made you guys painfully unaware of the real consumer thinking process. And no, a Google zeitgeist doesn't do it either.
@Jeff:
Mark Cuban supports HDTV!?!?!? I'm gonna have to throw my DLP set out the window now!!!! ;)
If this "report" is based on the kind of reactions being posted here in the comments then both formats are doomed to fail due to consumer stupidity.
Lets get a few things straight.
1) Both formats use the same damn codecs and resolutions! MPEG2, MPEG4/VC-1, and 480i-1080p.
B) Old movies brought to HD formats were NOT recorded in HD, or even digitally for that fact! So this means non-HD movies brought up to HD resolutions will look like ass!
3.C) That grain you are seeing is called film grain. It's on all non digitally recorded movies!
*) Blu-ray has a larger capacity, cost more to manufacture, Sony has a licensing issue currently stopping the use of MPEG4/VC-1.
2) HD-DVD is smaller, cheaper to produce, and doesn't have the for MPEG4/VC-1.
H.1) A Dual Layer HD-DVD does not have enough space to hold a 2.5 hour movie at 1080p/MPEG2. The disc would have to be triple layer. As far as I know, no DVD production plant is ready to make triple layer HD-DVD disc yet.
Simply put Blu-ray is the better format. Once again Sony has a product that no-one wants to pay the licensing fees for.
For the record, I am not a Sony fanboi. My 360 rocks my PS3's sox, and I don't think thats going to change any time soon. The Sex-Axis of Evil controller was pretty useless gimp idea. Its just a castrated wanna-Wii controller!
Simply put until we change the way we make movies, the larger the storage capacity the better for home viewing. A $5 or $6 difference in price on already over-priced media isn't that big of a deal.
Get your facts straight first my friend. First film records movies at a much higher resolution that whats currently possible on HDTVs ... even older ones. Second why the heck would they want to encode a 2.5 hour movie at MPEG2 when they can use VC1 which is far superior of a codec, case in point the 3 hour 9 minute KING KONG on HDDVD. Also the larger storage capacity of BR doesn't mean anything if they keep using MPEG2 which eats up space inefficently.
I agree with mathew - (upconvert dvd player)++
There's nothing more "proprietary" about Blu-Ray than there is about HD-DVD or even DVD itself. Look up the meaning of the term. Then look at the membership of the BDA vs. the original DVD Consortium vs. the list of HD-DVD promoters. They are all similar.
Sony is promoting Blu-Ray rather than HD-DVD. Toshiba is promoting HD-DVD rather than Blu-Ray. Why would you consider one proprietary and the other not? There's nothing open-source about HD-DVD, and nothing "standard" about it either. They are both just competing formats backed by similar groups of technology and content companies, and both technologies are completely closed-source and proprietary.
And the fact is Blu-Ray is better technology. It has higher storage capacity and faster DTR speeds, the only two things that really matter for digital media. Why would you root against the better technology just because you don't like one of its backers? Do you also root against the whole of HDTV because you don't like Mark Cuban?
I've seen an amazing Blue Ray movie in a store - on a $4,000 TV, $1,200 player, $1,000 power conditioner, etc. - looked great.
I just BOUGHT a 1080 SXRD (thanks Sony!) and the $200 HD DVD for my xbox360 - came with King Kong - AMAZING. First time in years I feel like watching a disk instead of broadcast HD....
HD DVD is the way to go - especially if you already have a 360.
The only benefit Sony has espoused regarding Blu-Ray is that the discs hold more info than HD-DVD, but so what! As a consumer all I care about is that the movie fits on the disk and for all of the reasons mentioned by others HD-DVD is a better performer and better value.
And yes, for computer use a Blu-Ray disc will hold more info but I've been shafted in the past using discs for storage and I'm very skeptical of the archival quality of "made at home" discs.
Prior Example - I invested a lot in Panasonic's DVD Recorder/HD that allows copying to DVD-Ram Discs and also has a firewire input. I bought a couple of hundred discs and recorded/archived all kinds of stuff from TV Shows to my large DV footage library --- but guess what --- a few years later the discs are unplayable --- a huge waste of time and money (all the hours spent copying scenes from DV Tapes, naming the scenes etc). And these are discs that were never played, never moved from a normal environment, never scratched - just a poorly implemented technology that I'm stuck paying for. Now I leave everything on hard drives and always have a back up hard drive as well.
Oh Philip, you beat me to it.
HD-DVD players are crap. XBOX 360 is noisy as hell and Toshiba players are big, bulky & slow!!! HD-DVD quality is equal to Blu-ray so don't believe their ignorant bias crap. Blu-ray movies are catching up to HD-DVD movies available. You'll get blockbuster exclusives like X-men 3, Ice Age 2, Kingdom of Heavens, ... HD-DVD just has King Kong. More new releases are release on Blu-ray compare to HD-DVD. I own both formats and HD-DVD is no better in terms of picture quality.
ATTENTION: BLU-RAY IS NOT A SONY FORMAT.
That's right, I work in the optical industry. I work with HD-DVD and Blu-ray, and I work with the companies who designed these formats. Panasonic was the lead designer of Blu-ray, and that's why it works like a HDD when used with a Windows PC, just like DVD-RAM does but much much bigger.
There's also a HUGE support list for software that is releasing soon that currently backs blu-ray only because HD-DVD Drives have been hard to produce burning lasers for.
I've seen the roadmap for blu-ray and we're seeing 100GB discs in the public next year and it falls within the spec of blu-ray, therefore no new burners or players need to be bought to use it. Also, 200GB is within the spec, and that is in two years. After this continuing trend HD-DVD will be either joined with Blu-ray to survive, or die out like DIVX discs did when DVD's annihilated them.
That's not the point. Even though Betamax has outlasted VHS, it's still a failure because blind fanboyism knows no boundries. Somehow it became "cool" to hate on Sony and somehow Microsoft is the good guy now? I guess boatloads of money will buy the market and the one with the deepest pockets does prevail.
Yes, I bought a PS3, and I have to say I'm completely satisfied so far. I don't do alot of online gaming so I could give two shits for Live and have had no issues with the Blu-Ray movies I've played so far. It's ultra-quiet, streams data well and I can say that the in-store Kiosks do nothing for the games. They look much better on my rear projection than some cheap LCD.
Besides, who cares if Blu-Ray doesn't become the next big movie format? It still has it's uses as a large capacity media for games and PCs in the near future. I find it funny when people tell me that UMD failed, when in fact, it's still being ued by the PSP. Saying UMD failed is like saying that the Nintendo cartridges failed because they weren't used for movies. It's a pointless argument anyway. People will draw their own conclusions and do everything in their power to try to convince everyone else they were right. People are retarded like that.
The only thing I'll agree with in this article is that Sony is pushing Blu-Ray with all it's might.
Because they actually might have a decent format. They're involved with several different people who are across the board:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blu-ray_Disc_Association
http://www.blu-raydisc.com/
So calling it a Sony-only format isn't right. UMD was Sony only, so is memory stick, and so is mini disc. At leas this format doesn't have "Sony only" attached to it.
Secondly, it's too close to call. Not only is there HD and Blu, there's other formats leading distant places, but any one of them could come from behind to replace either leading format.
Thirdly, both formats are new and will look and sound like crap. Give them 5 years to improve the hardware and audio/video. Everyone is trying to declare a winning format using first generation 1080p TVs, first gen discs, and first gen players. You can't.
So I'm going to sit back and buy a smallish LCD TV, an upconvert DVD player, and sit while everyone enjoys their shoddy first gen hardware. And when the dust finally settles I can walk out and buy what everyone has now for half the price.
"B) Old movies brought to HD formats were NOT recorded in HD, or even digitally for that fact! So this means non-HD movies brought up to HD resolutions will look like ass!"
I'm sorry, I hate to be rude here, but you have absolutely no clue as to what you're talking about.
35mm film resolution is approximately 4000 -- roughly 4 times that of HD video. Anyone who has seen the HD DVD presntations of Grand Prix (1960's), Casablanca (1940's) or The Adventures of Robin Hood (1930's!) will know that your statement has no basis in fact.
Yes, I'll be the first to admit that some older films have not gotten good HD transfers -- Spartacus was especially disappointing -- but that's not the fault of the format. Properly preserved film is *much* higher quality than 1080p video.
"3.C) That grain you are seeing is called film grain. It's on all non digitally recorded movies!"
Grain is inherent in film but how much you see of it is affected by the type of stock, the qualities of the lens used in the camera, the transfer process, etc etc etc. A filmmaker may choose to make a film grainy for artistic reasons, but the general rule of thumb is that if you don't see grain theatrically, you're not going to see it on a proper home transfer (whether it be DVD, HD DVD or Blu-ray).
"H.1) A Dual Layer HD-DVD does not have enough space to hold a 2.5 hour movie at 1080p/MPEG2. The disc would have to be triple layer. As far as I know, no DVD production plant is ready to make triple layer HD-DVD disc yet."
That is completely dependent on the bitrate. That said, the aforementioned Grand Prix is a 3 hour film, King Kong is a 3+ hour film -- both are available on HD DVD with a VC1 encode and look spectacular.
Warren Beatty's Reds, a dual-format release from Paramount, is closer to 3.5 hours -- the film is spread across 2 discs on both formats. From all indications the only thing different about the different releases of Reds is the price of the hardware that is required to play them. (and yes, I'm aware of the price of a PS3. I also know that I'm not going to find one outside of eBay).
why would they want to do HDDVD in mpeg2/1080p? are you insane, lets see bluray uses mpeg2 and so far every head to head has said the bluray versions suck in comparison... VC-1 is clearly the winner, and hence hddvd uses it.
I think its amusing to assume a winner when there isnt even a dominance in HD yet. Until the averege consumer steps in it wont matter. To point anyone talking and or using this is an early adopter.
IMHO we're arguing about the LASERDISK OF TOMORROW.
Videophiles(?) will buy HDDVD/Blu-ray & feel smug...
While most of the world will happily watch & record DVDs for the next decade or so.
I'd also bet the Sony format will "loose," but stick around on the fringes like Beta, MDs, &c.
I think that's just BS. Anyway, the US market seems to be more for HD-DVD and Europe and Asia for Blu-Ray. I will buy a Blu-Ray device for my Computer as soon as the price is reasonable.
Wrong. In europe they preffer HD DVD already. Even before the players where release the european stores where selling out of their HDDVD movies as well as their pre-orders. In asia is another story, so far there is no clear winner there.
all sony's articles from engadget today seem to bash Sony.
(GPS for PSP, the patent issue and now this) what's up with engadget?
Im not a sony fanboy, but it's so tiring that when I read the word Sony in the title, I know there must be at least a sarcasm involved.
Sign the HD DVD Petition for the rest of the studios holding out start releasing movies in HD DVD format. so we the consumer, end this foolish format war once and for all. Thank You.
http://www.petitionspot.com/petitions/HD_DVD_Studio_Support
HD-DVD has a pretty good lead right now. This is no surprise. The players are cheaper (or, were before the PS3) more plentiful, and came out months before the BD players.
HD-DVD also had a lead in disc manufacturing at first but that gap has closed. There are now like 157 HD-DVD discs in print and 155 BD I believe.
The first batch of BD were single layer (27GB) and had to use heavy MPEG2 compression, but just in the last month the factories have been pushing out dual-layer BD (54GB) with much better compression, so the quality gap is also closing fast.
By this time next year the war will really be heating up, with more and cheaper players hitting the market, more movies, and greater consumer awareness. BD hasn't even started their real advertising push. Hell the Sony player that was so delayed JUST hit the store shelves last week...
Technically BD is superior, and has more studios signed on.