Market forces at work! Well, barely. Too bad the market has less to do with this than the recording industry. Too bad those studios decided Blu-ray because it has more restrictive DRM (region locked)
Proprietary Sony formats are always losers, whether or not they succeed in the market place, and those who sell out to Sony do so at the peril of their wallets. Will this be different? No way to tell. .
"are always losers" While I agree they have done some stupid stuff (rootkit, UMD, memory stick, etc), they have had a HUGE impact on the CE industry in a good way. Idiots like you don't give them any credit for all the good things they've invented.
1) 3.5" floppy disk 2) First portable music player 3) Compact Disc (CD) 4) S/PDIF - optical digital audio format 5) PS1 / PS2 / PS3
Just want to correct a couple of things heres! I hate sonu but they have made some good things for us, but it was Phillips who created the cd and when it comes to spdif, it was again phillips who invented it but marketed it with sony spdif (sony/phillips digital interface format)
I hate Sony's tactics as much as the next guy but how is Blu-ray "prorietary"? Its just a standard and is no more proprietary than the DVD standard (or HD-DVD for that matter).
@minimalist, i'm another guy who hates Sony's tactics. i view it as proprietary because they seem to be the only one at the forefront of this war, bumping heads with Toshiba. Sony pimps the Blu-ray format so hard and furiously, yet, i've never seen any other company in the BDA push their format. basically, it seems like a proprietary format because they're the only ones doing anything about it.
Current 18 board members of the BDA(as of January 2008) are: * 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.
Out of this list...who else really pushes the format? Maybe Fox a little, but it's not treated as their own. Sony makes it the format their own via their sycophantic tactics and undying quest to win at least one large-scale format war.
@minimalist, i'd also like to add that Sony has a lot more riding on this w/ the integration of a BD player into their PS3. if BD were to fail, PS3 would have a lot less marketability. sure, you can get BD players cheaper than a PS3 now, but for the past year, people have purchased PS3's solely for their BD-playing capabilities.
Andy, Do you really think a Blu Ray player costs $200 more to make than an HD DVD player? Of course they don't. The production costs are fairly comparable and therefore so should the retail prices. So why is HD DVD so cheap? Here's a clue - it has nothing to do with "market forces" as you say. Instead, Toshiba used the only weapon at their disposal to capture an early lead - subsidizing the cost. They are the inventor and virtually the sole manufacturer of equipment so they can slash prices. Anyway this tactic failed (BD players still sold more even without looking at PS3 sales) and the reason you're now seeing some *really* cheap HD DVD players is because they're all clearance sales. Toshiba and retailers are clawing back as little as they can get from the format before pulling the plug. Anyway I expect you'll see sub $200 BD players this year.
Actually, if Bluray had failed, the PS3 would still have games released on BD, just like how they still release games on the PSP with UMD.
All this talk about proprietary formats and DRM is pretty interesting. I'm guessing that if you ever worked in some sort of media industry, you would support it. Even if you wrote software, say you spent 3 months writing this killer-app, and tried to sell it, and your aim is to try to make as much money as possible from it. You would be crazy if you tried to release it without some sort of DRM (license key activation, or whatever method) to protect your income.
Now, think about what happened if you tried to write a book and publish it. If someone copied that book and put it on bit torrent. Then you see that you have only sold 500 copies of the book, but 20,000 copies were downloaded. Wouldn't you get upset?
How about if you spent over 100 million dollars to produce an epic movie, but could not realize your revenues because of piracy?
It would be nice to be able to live in a DRM free world. I just can't see how movie and music studios can secure revenue for their industry without DRM.
HP's Jon Rubenstein told us that his company wanted to veer in a new direction, and veer it surely did -- the HP Veer 4G will arguably be the smallest fully-functional smartphone on the market when it goes on sale May 15th.
The most commented posts on Engadget over the past 24 hours.
Now that we've thrown 'em off the trail, use the form below to get in touch with the people at Engadget. Please fill in all of the required fields because they're required.
I bought HD DVD @ $150.00
I'll buy Blu-ray when it drops to $150.00
Market forces at work! Well, barely. Too bad the market has less to do with this than the recording industry. Too bad those studios decided Blu-ray because it has more restrictive DRM (region locked)
Proprietary Sony formats are always losers, whether or not they succeed in the market place, and those who sell out to Sony do so at the peril of their wallets. Will this be different? No way to tell. .
"are always losers"
While I agree they have done some stupid stuff (rootkit, UMD, memory stick, etc), they have had a HUGE impact on the CE industry in a good way. Idiots like you don't give them any credit for all the good things they've invented.
1) 3.5" floppy disk
2) First portable music player
3) Compact Disc (CD)
4) S/PDIF - optical digital audio format
5) PS1 / PS2 / PS3
Just want to correct a couple of things heres! I hate sonu but they have made some good things for us, but it was Phillips who created the cd and when it comes to spdif, it was again phillips who invented it but marketed it with sony spdif (sony/phillips digital interface format)
BD players will hit $150 in the PS3 FIRST.........
a stand alone BD player MAY hit that price point around 2010.......
some people fail to realize that DVD players didnt really hit below $150 until the PS2 Launched.......
hell there were STILL DVD players that did nothing more than 480p for $100 like 3 years ago........
I hate Sony's tactics as much as the next guy but how is Blu-ray "prorietary"? Its just a standard and is no more proprietary than the DVD standard (or HD-DVD for that matter).
@minimalist,
i'm another guy who hates Sony's tactics. i view it as proprietary because they seem to be the only one at the forefront of this war, bumping heads with Toshiba. Sony pimps the Blu-ray format so hard and furiously, yet, i've never seen any other company in the BDA push their format. basically, it seems like a proprietary format because they're the only ones doing anything about it.
Current 18 board members of the BDA(as of January 2008) are:
* 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.
Out of this list...who else really pushes the format? Maybe Fox a little, but it's not treated as their own. Sony makes it the format their own via their sycophantic tactics and undying quest to win at least one large-scale format war.
@minimalist,
i'd also like to add that Sony has a lot more riding on this w/ the integration of a BD player into their PS3. if BD were to fail, PS3 would have a lot less marketability. sure, you can get BD players cheaper than a PS3 now, but for the past year, people have purchased PS3's solely for their BD-playing capabilities.
Andy, Do you really think a Blu Ray player costs $200 more to make than an HD DVD player? Of course they don't. The production costs are fairly comparable and therefore so should the retail prices. So why is HD DVD so cheap? Here's a clue - it has nothing to do with "market forces" as you say. Instead, Toshiba used the only weapon at their disposal to capture an early lead - subsidizing the cost. They are the inventor and virtually the sole manufacturer of equipment so they can slash prices. Anyway this tactic failed (BD players still sold more even without looking at PS3 sales) and the reason you're now seeing some *really* cheap HD DVD players is because they're all clearance sales. Toshiba and retailers are clawing back as little as they can get from the format before pulling the plug. Anyway I expect you'll see sub $200 BD players this year.
Actually, if Bluray had failed, the PS3 would still have games released on BD, just like how they still release games on the PSP with UMD.
All this talk about proprietary formats and DRM is pretty interesting. I'm guessing that if you ever worked in some sort of media industry, you would support it. Even if you wrote software, say you spent 3 months writing this killer-app, and tried to sell it, and your aim is to try to make as much money as possible from it. You would be crazy if you tried to release it without some sort of DRM (license key activation, or whatever method) to protect your income.
Now, think about what happened if you tried to write a book and publish it. If someone copied that book and put it on bit torrent. Then you see that you have only sold 500 copies of the book, but 20,000 copies were downloaded. Wouldn't you get upset?
How about if you spent over 100 million dollars to produce an epic movie, but could not realize your revenues because of piracy?
It would be nice to be able to live in a DRM free world. I just can't see how movie and music studios can secure revenue for their industry without DRM.