Sony Paid Warner Bros. $400 Million to Go Blu-Ray? 487
eldavojohn writes "How much would you pay to be the leading video media technology right now? Is $400 million too much? Sony didn't think so and this article speculates that's how they won the Hi-Def format war. 'With billions of dollars in global sales at stake, experts had predicted the Toshiba-Sony battle would go on for years - not unlike the 1980s battle of videotape formats between VHS (Matsushita) and Betamax (Sony). That war lasted a decade, leaving Sony battered and humiliated. So how did this epic battle come to such an abrupt end? The answer lies in part with the bruising Sony experienced with Betamax, which, like Blu-ray, was also the better product on paper.'"
Market Isn't Even Ready (Score:3, Interesting)
Now call me when we have the bandwidth to stream HD, and we're not paying a premium for discs and when we all have large screen hi def tvs that actually can utilized the enhanced resolution.
That being said, let Sony blow their wads.
Re:Market Isn't Even Ready (Score:3, Interesting)
But remember, the industry holds the strings. All they have to do is start releasing new movies on Blu-Ray before they release them on DVD, and DVD dies sooner or later. Downloading DVD images that have been reformatted to 4.7GB with DVDShrink is one thing. Downloading DVD images of movie that you could get in hi-def for $20 is another.
I think it ultimately depends on what the consumer really wants. CDs had great audio quality, but they became mainstream maybe ten years after the Walkman. Portable CD players always sort of sucked. Enter the iPod, and the die is cast. Similarly, if consumers value being able to watch a movie right now more than they value building their own home theater -- the modern equivalent of hi-fi -- then in a few years it won't really matter what format the plastic discs come in.
Re:Or... (Score:3, Interesting)
If you're at best buy, and you ask the sales guy the difference between Blu Ray and HD DVD, what is he going to tell you that is relevant to your inerests?
Is the DRM model on each relevant? Well, if you need to talk to a sales guy at best buy, then chances are you don't even know what this is; so no.
Is the capacity relevant? Well, not really (of course they both have enough space to hold a movie), but if you need to decide between two (seemingly equal) players, and you're told that one of them can hold more data, which are you going to choose?
The answer is, obviously, blu ray.
Umm... no. (Score:2, Interesting)
Most people simply don't care. And the two formats were neck-and-neck for the past year for mindshare (some studios supporting this one, some studios supporting that one) until the Blu-ray camp staged a series of PR stunts to make HD-DVD look bad, and simultaneously did the backroom wheeling-and-dealing and forked over hundreds of millions in cash to certain movie studios, to make them switch sides from HD-DVD to Blu-ray. Perception is reality. Once news outlets started to crow that HD-DVD was dead, in effect it was dead. And the studios were happy to take the money and switch camps, because they see how much the format war is hurting the (small to begin with) market for HD movies.
Sony won by playing dirty, but who really cares -- most of us don't want or need HD anyway, and those who do mostly just want one format to be the clear winner and don't especially care which one it is (unless they were stupid enough to be early adopters of the losing format while the format war was still going on).
Re:Market Isn't Even Ready (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Or... (Score:5, Interesting)
Not entirely true. It had at least ONE major advantage, less market confusion with DVD.
I've seen at least two instances personally (not counting the numerous anecdotes mention here on slashdot
With Blu-Ray, there was much more of an instinctual "This is a new format that needs a new player".
I'd also wonder if Blu-Ray's choice of using Blue for their media vs HD DVD's Red made a difference from a psychological point of view. Most people associate Red with Danger, while Blue is usually associated with Calmness.
Re:free market? (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Even for /., bad summary and headline (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes, they supported blu-ray over hddvd incidentally. Ie if the PS3 had been hddvd they would have bought it all the same. The market skew toward blu-ray by way of ps3 sales was NOT on blu-ray's merits over HDDVD, it was simply by virtue of the fact that that is what the PS3 came with.
Everyone picking a stand alone player had to agonize over whether to go bluray or hddvd.
If the PS3 had somehow been available in two flavors
It came with hidef (which they wanted or at least saw value in), it happened to be bluray which they mostly didn't care about, so that's what they got. People buying a ps3 wanted a ps3 and took whatever hidef player it came with.
Re:Or... (Score:5, Interesting)
No, I'd say capacity was the #2 thing that mattered.
#1 was: Blu-Ray discs don't get scratched.
"Geeks" here on
Re:Market Isn't Even Ready (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Or... (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't see a real compelling reason for something to be able to play 8 hours of uninterrupted content for the home market. Those that need that kind of play time are a insignificant minority. The only reason for increased capacity would be when the move comes to the next higher resolution format, which will involve new hardware anyway.
-BbT
I wonder if Nintendo and Microsoft see... (Score:4, Interesting)
The PS3 cost Sony even more. (Score:4, Interesting)
Even if this specific rumor turns out to be false, the broader implication that Sony was willing to sacrifice to ensure the success of Blu-Ray is undeniable. For a while Sony's use of a Blu-Ray player in PS3s was considered a blunder. The fact is, Blu-Ray is more important to Sony than the PS3 was. If coming in behind their competitors in this video game generation is what it cost to make Blu-Ray the HD standard, Sony is perfectly happy with that. Of course, there remains the possibility that Blu-Ray will turn out to be a competitive advantage for the PS3, in which case it would be so much the better. The point is, from Sony's perspective, it didn't matter if the Blu-Ray turns out to be good for the PS3 or not, because they consider it a win either way. If it is, they're obviously happy, but even if it isn't, they're still happy because they still win by massively inflating Blu-Ray's install base. For Sony, Blu Ray>PS3.
In contrast, to MS the 360 was a much higher priority than Toshiba's HD-DVD. MS has been trying to get into our living rooms for over 10 years now. (Bill Gates was already obsessing about it in The Road Ahead and that book was written 13 years ago.) All things being equal they'd prefer Toshiba to win and Sony to lose, of course, but it wasn't important enough to them for them to risk 360's success on.
Re:Market Isn't Even Ready (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, I know a lot of people with laptops that have displays capable of at least 720p. Sound quality may not be great, but they can show a high-def movie in an honestly OK quality.
I don't know quite so many people that own HDTVs. (Actually, I haven't asked in most cases, so I could be underestimating, but you get the idea.)
The penetration rate for something that can display a high-def movie via download is much higher than HDTVs. Granted the experience won't be as great, but it's a place to start. Once people have downloaded movies, things like TiVo or Apple TV can be used to display them in a home theater.
So in that aspect, I can see downloads as being much more accessible than Blu-ray.
The remaining unsolved problem being download speeds.
Welcome to Sony (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:free market? (Score:5, Interesting)
I hate to break it to you, but no, we didn't. Last I checked, Marx wasn't a big advocate for totalitarianism.
Re:free market? (Score:3, Interesting)
I agree that HD DVD were the better one from the perspective of the users (Weak DRM and no region codes) but in the longer run that may also have hampered the technology with studios trying to drag their heels a bit, until even worse DRM schemes were introduced on the download services.
I hate that point. (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, yes, there are a lot of members, but Blu-ray is still Sony's. They not only have the most invested in Blu-ray, they have the most to gain:
1) They developed the hardware platform entirely on their own and gain royalties from the format's sales
2) The success or failure of their gaming console is tied inexorably to the success or failure of the format
3) The decision to splinter off from the DVD Consortium, following the DVD Consortium's choice of HD-DVD as the next format (supposedly chosen because it would be ready sooner), was entirely theirs. Broader industry support came after that decision, and was reportedly driven by studio fear of Microsoft. Without Sony, there's no format war.
There's a very very good reason that people associate this format with Sony - it's their format, it's just supported by other people. Lots of people support the CD format but that doesn't make it any less Sony / Phillips' format.
Re:free market? (Score:3, Interesting)
The first and foremost (for any system of extremely progressive taxation) is real tax havens, I dont mean illusary non-citzen ones... but the very real threat that a society that implements extreme taxation on its resource leaders will litterally suffer expatration. People would swear off their american citizenship and be gladly welcomed into ameniable nations (and would apply for citizenship there... which would be granted on account of their resources).
Remember... a really rich person would gladly pay taxes at 50% in france or where-ever over 90% in the USA... even if it meant giving up their citizienship.
Youd need to implement some pretty heavy handed anti-emmigration and/or foreign income protectionisms that would be very oppresive and likely ineffective to pull it off.
I personally have often contemplated similar methods... such as an income cap... or other such devices... where-in there is that same similar form of control... i also thought maybe instead of capping or taxing away the money we could instead force charity/non-profit for excess income.
So a person who makes over 5 million a year must invest 90% of his/her additional earnings into charitable foundations (revieed and approved by the government as being real and socially beneficial) and the like... but of their choosing. In this way a person could still spend their earnings according to what they think is best (funding charities that do the thing they believe in), but wouldnt be outright loosing all their "hard earned" cash to thrid parties who may use their money against their intrests.
Even that system would be hard to prevent flight of capitol with.
Considering everything... without a worldwide enforcement.... it would be damn hard to implement anything too aggresive... as wealth is only usefull to an individual during their lifetime... i think the path of least resistance is to slowly but surely become much more aggresive with our inheritance taxes.
Fundementally the drive to excell and suceed is almost always balenced with the reward.... which is most of the time implemented through money. We dont want to sap that drive.... so let people become as rich as they can be within our current (or somewhat modified) progresive tax system.... but lets remove inheritance... lets say that a person can give no more than a set amount to their prodigy (10x the median household income per child)... and that the rest (upon death) must be given over to the charities of their choosing.
This would be a system that once again, gives the right of choice to the earners of money... allows them to keep and have as much as they can earn post taxes... during their lifetime.... allows them to invest freely and widely and spend like crazy if they like (and may encourage it as death will part them of all).... ensures a significant but not unfair inheritance to all their children and allows them to keep their money even past their life in causes that they believe in and brings honor to their name.
Think of it as a highly incentivized philanthropy.
Re:free market? (Score:4, Interesting)
There really isn't; economic structure and political structure are intrinsically inseparable. There are uses, at times, for analytically pretending that there is a wall between them and that they can be examined in isolation, just as there are uses for all sorts of fundamentally inaccurate assumptions in simplifying analysis of various problems, but in reality they both fundamentally concern the same thing and they are intertwined at the most fundamental level. Economics is about the distribution of goods and services. Politics is about the distribution of power. But power is fundamentally the ability to get people to provide you the goods and services you desire: it is, precisely, the same thing as "wealth".
Now, in many systems (particularly, the kind of democratic capitalism the West aspires to), there is an effort to try to have, at the same time, virtually unlimited and unregulated concentration of "economic wealth" while maintaining an equal distribution of "political power". Inevitably, also, this effort fails because the two quantities are inseperable. Each is simply a different way of referring the capacity to get other people to do what you want.
Re:Or... (Score:3, Interesting)
HD-DVD media is made of the same material used in standard DVD media. It is pretty cheap and easy for the average person to resurface a DVD. When a Blu-ray disc does get scratched, it is far more difficult to fix. If you try to use a DVD-doctor on a Blu-ray disc it doesn't help. The only fix I've heard for a scratched BD is to trash it and purchase a new one.
Does anyone know of a cheap, easy and reliable way for consumers to resurface scratched Blu-ray discs?
Re:Holy rumor mill, Batman (Score:2, Interesting)
As far as I am concerned I don't think Sony did enough to market the Bluray during the war against HD-DVD; they should have thrown loads of money to get them to switch instead of dicking around.
Sony wanted Microsoft's HDi as part of the BD spec but were outvoted by the rest of the BDA, who chose Java. Stupid MS decided to start developing HD-DVD as Blu-Ray was already being developed and the rest is history.
Since the article is pretty much speculation lets get some real facts rolling, although I am sure that there are a thousand posts below me which re chant the same thing every Sony/BluRay thread.
1. DVD recordables were just as expensive in the beginning. And guess what? Prices fell. BD media started out at around $20, and now it's below $10.
2. It's been posted elsewhere (Google the links yourself, learn to do research and not listen to the FUD) that Sony does not lose money on PS3 production anymore, and Toshiba was bleeding millions on their firesales.
3. BD is THREE regions. DVD is SEVEN. Same, eh? Not to mention that it's OPTIONAL, unlike DVD (example Warner BD discs are region free, Sony & Disney discs catalog titles are as well).
Everything that people claim HD-DVD is good for, Blu-ray can eventually do. If they had wanted to, they could've made it region free, and implement whatever software layer HD-DVD had, and you have a great format. The fact that the goal could be achieved with either format, makes the whole war unnecessary. HD-DVD was unnecessary, simply because Blu-ray was already there. The companies behind HD-DVD should've pushed for Blu-ray to include all those features they wanted, and avoid the war. But HD-DVD was 'juicier' choice for them.
Toshiba and Microsoft have hurt HD media adoption in catastrophic proportions. IMO, Blu-ray was the most future proof, but meh, their half-assed efforts at promoting the format, only prolonged the war and screwed many consumers. And all the FUD being spread now about how upconverting is just fine, it's making me sick.
Re:free market? (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, yes:
The Movie Industry.
No, seriously, the movie industry. Around 1911 or so, the entire movie industry was controlled and locked by Edison and a heavy collusion with manufacturers of motion picture equipment. Every bit of movie equipment (including film(!?), cameras, lighting rigs, and projectors) was to be rented, period. In response, a group of filmmakers ran off to California, built their own equipment, and proceeded to make movies. The result is Hollywood and the MPAA. While we can all appreciate the irony of the MPAA being founded by "pirates" who were "stealing" Mr. Edison's "Intellectual Property", the point is that competitors managed to break a collusion-heavy industry to come up with cheaper, faster, and better movies... a product that the public was more than willing to pay for. Edison eventually had to simply give up trying to contain them.
Want another? How about...
The AFL/CIO, WRT the US Auto Industry.
Crazy-sounding, I know, but true... the auto unions had a dominant lock on American automobile manufacturing. By the late 1960's, they were pretty much dictating terms to every major US maker out there, and the disproportionately high salaries of auto workers were being passed on as a higher cost to the consumer. Then the Japanese came along with Nissans, Datsuns (Mitsubishi), Toyotas, and Hondas. The Germas showed up with Volkswagens and Audis. The OPEC embargo of 1974 caught the domestic big boys off-guard, while the Japanese and Germans were more than ready to take advantage of it with their existing engineering and dirt-cheap costs. It was such a powerful shift, that the gov't actually intervened to bail out Chrysler at one point. It also broke the Teamsters' back... hard. Now they are forced to play nice, with nowhere near the power they once had.
Okay, if you don't like those two, let's try...
Microsoft.
But, they're still a monopoly, you cry. Yes, for now... and in spite of a practically non-existent governmental punishment (c'mon, seriously... it wasn't jack and didn't even slow 'em down), the likes of Linux and Apple in the marketplace are now climbing at astronomical rates, as people choose to take their money elsewhere. It was certainly enough to get Dell interested in selling Linux gear (and on the business level - HP, and IBM, and...) Yep - it'll take time; exactly however long it takes for consumers to stop funding them and put the money elsewhere.
'course, there is no perfect example, because there is no perfect situation. Capitalism itself is highly imperfect. Someday, hopefully someone can come up with something better. Until they do, it's pretty much the best we got. Ain't much, but it beats everything else we've tried as a species.
Reg'ds,
Re:free market? (Score:5, Interesting)
I wouldn't be so sure... Mao managed to wipe out (roughly) 100+ million of his own people during the "Great Leap Forward"... over 10% (at the time) of China's entire population. The USSR comes in at a somewhat close second, and only had a peak population of ~300m during the 1980's. I'd have to go dredging numbers (population vs. deaths during a given Purge or Gulag expansion period, and esp. during the starvations in the Ukraine), but I'm fairly willing to wager that as a percentage of the whole, it was a whole lot safer (odds-wise) to live in 18th/19th century England than it was to live in 20th Century Russia.
It's one thing to get killed due to willingly working under unsafe conditions and the like. It's another entirely to get executed or sent to die in a slave labor camp, just because the neighbor down the street reported you as a 'counter-revolutionary' to the local authorities. You're still perfectly free to walk away from the latter situation with at least a reasonable chance at continued survival...
Now as to whether or not free and open Capitalism would ever get to the point where millions are killed off due to malice on the part of those at the top of said system? Remains to be seen. OTOH, it's a lot harder to pull off than if you were in, say, Stalin's boots...
HD DVD in circles? (Score:2, Interesting)