Disney - Blu-ray's Fair Weather Friend 138
An anonymous reader writes "One day they're out, the next day they're in. Back in March, Disney CEO Bob Iger seemed to indicate that his company (which has exclusively backed Blu-ray since the start of the high-def format war) was on the verge of supporting *both* high-def formats. What a difference a couple of months of good press for Blu-ray makes: this week, the CEO reversed his earlier position, saying 'the single greatest thing we can do right now is to not waffle, but to be very, very blunt about it, (and) to continue our support of Blu-ray because we sense a real advantage.'"
Disney's largest shareholder.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Whatever... (Score:3, Insightful)
My media server doesn't care what kind of "optical disc" Disney backs.
Doesn't mention the little problem of broken DRM (Score:5, Insightful)
Blu-Ray has additional copy protection in addition to AACS, so any media mogul who is depending on DRM to protect his profits would naturally be waving the Blu-Ray banner at this point.
Of course, Blu-Ray will have all of its protections defeated too - it's just a matter of time.
I Don't Get It (Score:2, Insightful)
HD-DVD's are better for consumers (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Doesn't mention the little problem of broken DR (Score:4, Insightful)
The PS3 is a little harder to crack. I know it'll happen, but for someone like Iger, being able to push Microsoft around is probably the stuff of his dreams. I'm sure he doesn't care about the other HDDVD partners, and dual-format players will just make it easier for media houses to produce their content. Like you say, Whuffo, The writing is on the wall.
Microsoft has lost another battle.
Aww, Poor Liddle Zonk Still Trying To Save HD-DVD (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:You gotta wonder... (Score:3, Insightful)
It must be noted that a good marketing campaign works well if you have some catch word that is relatively short and can be perceived as "cool", is easy to remember and can easily be abbreviated to a few relevant characters. At the moment Bluray fits that criteria.
As to which format will win, well it is far to early to tell which format will dominate, however the Bluray consortium does have more money. Still time will tell.
? title ? (Score:1, Insightful)
A fair weather friend is one who is with you in the good times and against you in the bad times.
According to the summary, Disney has been exclusively signed up to Blu-Ray from the beginning. They have never not supported Blu-Ray.
They have never rubbished Blu-Ray, nor released any plans to withdraw their support of that format.
So how does this make them a "Fair weather friend" ?
If they had supported one then the other then the first again, according to economic climate then the statement might be true, but they haven't done that at all.
Re:? title ? (Score:2, Insightful)
Blu-Ray Can Hold More Commercials (Score:5, Insightful)
So in their shoes I'd be thinking Blu-Ray too.
Re:Whatever... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Do you support crap or crap? (Score:3, Insightful)
This got modded up? (Score:3, Insightful)
First of all, modding pedants up always rubs me the wrong way. I'm a pedant myself, and sometimes even a grammar nazi, but I don't expect (or even hope) that such posts of mine are modded up. I completely fail to see how someone giving their definition of a "fair-weather friend" is insightful. If I point out that fair-weather friend [m-w.com] is supposed to be hyphenated, does that make me insightful? What about if I point out that technically, only the B in Blu-ray [blu-raydisc.com] is supposed to be capitalized?
Second of all, it seems to be your definition of fair-weather friend that needs adjusting. As pointed out above, a fair weather friend is not the same thing as a foul weather enemy. It's a friend that is "loyal only during a time of success." There's no implication that such a friend actually turns against you when the weather isn't so fair, just that they don't support you.
Just because Disney has been contractually beholden to the Blu-ray format does not necessarily make them a supporter. If their contracts lock them into using Blu-Ray but they were out there touting how great HD-DVD is and how much Blu-ray sucks, would that make them a supporter? No, and there have been some instances where something like that has happened. (The row between Howard Stern and Clear Channel comes to mind, when Stern was actively ridiculing Clear Channel on the very stations they owned.) In this case, Disney trying to straddle the fence with their public comments can certainly be taken as non-loyalty towards Blu-ray.
Re:Dual-speak (Score:3, Insightful)
Now my take on this.
1. The PS3 has a built in Blu-Ray player and like it or not there are 3 million of those already out there and will probably be over 6 million produced this year. Granted it isn't 10 or 15 million but it is still 6 million. Will HD-DVD even produce 500k?
2. Because of the PS3 and producing millions they have reduced the mfg cost, and can now start to lower the cost to consumers. So the cost difference is slowly going away and putting huge pressure on HD-DVD (Toshiba) to take even more loss in their system. Microsoft is obviously giving them money, or else they would have folded already.
3. The content providers lined up behind Blu-Ray and are reluctantly supporting it.
4. The "average" consumer doesn't care about either technology now and if either player cost more than $40 more than a "standard" DVD player they won't buy one. So both are "premium" items for the foreseeable future. Thus it will be the gaming market to drive sales of either brand and again, because of the PS3 Blu-Ray wins.
Lets be honest here. If it wasn't for Microsoft, this battle would have been over in the U.S. already. I understand that the last thing they want to do is to have to license Java from Sun again, but with Java now going GPL'd they may be able to work something out. I also understand Microsofts mantra of "If it isn't invented here... kill it". But this is one instance where they couldn't leverage their desktop to win the war and it shows. They could have put an HD-DVD player in every 360 but they chose not to and thus will probably sell more 360's for the next few years over the PS3 but at a cost of this format war and now they will probably have to eat some crow and work with Sun again.
Sony on the other hand could wind up third in the console war this time, but win the format war. If they don't address the price of the PS3 this year then it is obvious that their sales will not reach 10 million and that will be seen as a failure in a lot of peoples eyes. Granted they have other issues as well, like getting out more games, but the price is the largest issue.
Re:Whatever... (Score:3, Insightful)
Speed is only half the equation: if ISPs don't stop chopping their customers down for using their services, there will be customers who pay for a movie, then can only watch half before the ISP starts throttling back their connections for overuse. For this type of downloading to become "mainstream", ISPs must start implementing graduated price scales that more accurately reflect their subscribers' usage (ie. reducing prices for light users, increasing prices for heavy users, instead of this fake "unlimited" BS). Otherwise, online distribution of content will never hit critical mass.
(Of course, that may well be the entire point! The content industry would prefer the internet just go away, so they can go back to their cosy old business model.)
Re:Doesn't mention the little problem of broken DR (Score:3, Insightful)
Mutli-Disc games. Yes that's right, Final Fantasy did it, so did many other games.
Sure you've got to put a lot of redundant data in there but acting like you're limited to 1 disc per game is a straw man argument. Need more space? Add more discs. Simple.
Re:Doesn't mention the little problem of broken DR (Score:3, Insightful)
Mutli-Disc games. Yes that's right, Final Fantasy did it, so did many other games.
Sure you've got to put a lot of redundant data in there but acting like you're limited to 1 disc per game is a straw man argument. Need more space? Add more discs. Simple.
Re:Doesn't mention the little problem of broken DR (Score:2, Insightful)