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Topic: Anyone consuming HD or Blu-ray?
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 03-23-2008 01:04 AM
quote: Ron Funderburg
If I win $100,000,000 I can get a lot of sex.
Ugly with money can buy a whole lot of pretty.
quote: Mike Schindler
Actually, skinny people have to pay $15 too.
According to The Digital Bits "fat people" pay $2 more.
quote: Ron Funderburg
But Bobby talking about sex still isn't oral sex.
What does that even mean at all?
Oral sex is the appetizer preceeding the main course. That being intercourse, of course. Which, of course, has nothing to do with Blu-ray unless you're blowing your load watching the porn flick "Pirates" on Blu-ray.
quote: Jennifer Pan
ANYWAYS, what's up with Microsoft not wanting to do a Blu-Ray attachment for their 360?
Ah, we're back on topic.
Why, exactly, is Microsoft refusing to include an add-on Blu-ray drive for XBox360, much less provide little more than perfunctory support for BD-RW drives in Windows Vista?
The answer: Basically Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer and others at Microsoft have the same stupid notions as that of Steve Jobs. They fantasize of killing Blu-ray in favor of shit quality fake HD Internet downloads. They think they're going to corner the market on it. But it isn't going to fly. The quality of product is terrible. It takes too much time to download. And it is not anywhere near as simple as inserting a disc and pressing the "play" button, if you even have to do that.
Microsoft also sees Apple doing something and automatically has to copy it. Even if the move is a bone-headed mistake.
The Warner Bros. Blu-ray movies I have automatically start playing when I load them into my Playstation 3. It's a hell of a lot more simple than visiting iTunes, downloading some brutally compressed 720p fuzzball video for hours on end and then transmitting it somehow to my HDTV via a "AppleTV" box. No. I'll pay the same amount of money to rent a Blu-ray movie in much better quality encoded 1080p format. So what if I have to pedal my bicycle to the corner video store? I need the damned exercise! Fuck sitting on my couch 100% of the day to get fatter than hell! I might end up having to spend $2 more for my T shirts!
[ 03-23-2008, 11:14 AM: Message edited by: Bobby Henderson ]
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 03-24-2008 11:34 AM
Reuters News Link
quote:
U.S. trade body to probe Sony
Fri Mar 21, 2008 4:42am EDT
TOKYO (Reuters) - The U.S. International Trade Commission said it would launch an investigation into some 30 companies including Sony Corp on possible patent infringements related to Blu-ray disc players and other products.
The commission said on its Web site on Thursday that the products involved are short-wavelength light-emitting diodes and laser diodes used in such electronics as handheld mobile devices, traffic lights and high-definition DVD players.
The move is based on a complaint filed in February by Columbia University Professor Emeritus Gertrude Neumark Rothschild, who is seeking to block imports into the United States of a range of products that she said were infringing her patent.
Besides Sony, companies cited in the ITC announcement include Nokia, Motorola Inc, LG Electronics Inc, and Panasonic maker Matsushita Electric Industrial Co Ltd.
A Sony spokesman said the consumer electronics maker could not as the investigation is ongoing.
(Reporting by Kiyoshi Takenaka)
I'm not sure what to think of this lawsuit, although I am suspicious about the timing of it.
If there is merit to this lawsuit, why wasn't it brought to the courts earlier? Toshiba was using the same blue laser diode technology in its HD-DVD players. Obviously, there seemed to be much better potential in a lucrative court judgment once a format war "winner" was established.
One also has to wonder if Apple and/or Microsoft has been lobbying behind the scenes to promote this case as a means of tripping up Blu-ray and buying more time for their movie downloading schemes to gain traction. Apple doesn't have a reputation for dirty tricks, but Microsoft is infamous for it. If either company was politically involved in this I'd be very skeptical of the ploy having any chance to work. Lawsuits like this can be dragged out in court for more than a decade. The only near-term thing that would help Apple or Microsoft's efforts is an injunction blocking further Blu-ray product sales.
The Blu-ray format is just now getting fully on its feet. An injunction to block product sales at this point would be very damaging to the format. But such a move could seriously back-fire as well. Naturally, consumers would be outraged. But that's not the "backfire" part. That lies in how the movie studios (i.e., the content providers) would react to such an injunction.
Blu-ray replication facilities are backed up beyond all belief with authoring and replication projects. Hollywood is now pouring some serious money into Blu-ray projects now. And studios are beginning to see some good revenue growth from the format. Over 10% of disc sales of No Country for Old Men has been Blu-ray. That percentage suggests a much greater percentage of Blu-ray players owners bought that movie versus people who own DVD players.
Apple and Microsoft are throwing their weight around as if they're somehow automatically entitled to distribute and re-sell Hollywood movies over the Internet. They seem to forget the optical disc movie sales market is the main thing keeping Hollywood studios afloat right now. DVD disc sales are in a state of decline. The format is past its peak. Blu-ray sales are growing and will become increasingly important to the bottom line of every movie studio. If Apple and Microsoft interfere with that business too much to leverage their movie download models Hollywood could effectively "turn off the spiquot" and deny them any content to sell.
Apple and Microsoft should probably adopt a PR posture that movie downloads and optical disc sales can coexist -rather than put out all the phoney "FUD" spin pronouncing Blu-ray dead through various mouth-pieces.
Microsoft doesn't even have a real movie downloading business up and running, but the company wants one in order to copy what Apple is doing. Apple's own movie download business isn't doing all that great either. Add to that a recent report claiming only 20 iTunes songs are purchased for every iPod sold. It seems to suggest iPods function more as jewelry and people only like downloadable music when it is free.
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Scott Jentsch
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1061
From: New Berlin, WI, USA
Registered: Apr 2003
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posted 03-24-2008 03:00 PM
quote: Bobby Henderson
Why, exactly, is Microsoft refusing to include an add-on Blu-ray drive for XBox360, much less provide little more than perfunctory support for BD-RW drives in Windows Vista?
Maybe they're waiting for the Sony wallet to open? Or there may be hoops that the BDA wants them to jump through that they don't wish to.
Or, maybe Microsoft doesn't see a financial case for making a Blu-ray add-on available?
I would imagine that there might be a case of a few sour grapes, but in the end, Microsoft is a public company looking to make money. I believe that anything that will help them do that is on the table and a few bruised egos over HD DVD aren't going to get in the way of that.
I would also imagine that adding a Blu-ray drive onto the Xbox 360 isn't a minor project.
The hardware is probably expensive, so coming out with a drive at a reasonable price is probably a challenge. The least expensive Blu-ray playback-only drive I found after a quick search was $125 at Newegg. It's also going to need an external case and a USB-to-SATA interface.
Now, the Xbox programmers need to be able to support a Java Virtual Machine in the Xbox code. I have no idea how much work this is, but I'll bet it's not something that can be done, tested, and released in a short timeframe.
Say that a reasonable projection is that BD-Live and Bonus-View capable players will be under $300 by Christmas. How would a simple add-on drive to a game system be attractive compared to that?
In a lot of homes that I'm familiar with, the game system doesn't stay put. The kids are taking it into their room, or taking it over to a friend's house, or something. It also gets back to the idea that a game system is being used to play movies. There are always going to be compromises associated with that, because a game system is going to be designed with gaming as its first priority.
I think a more elegant solution is to have a standalone player. If such a standalone was available that supported BD-Live and Bonus View, the PS3 would fall to the bottom of my recommendation list, if the prices were equivalent. Sadly, no such player exists, so the PS3 is currently the only way to go, IMO.
Or, maybe the simpler answer is that Microsoft and Apple know/believe something that we don't. Both companies are versed in consumer electronics/computers, both have online download services, and neither have publicly supported Blu-ray. Apple is also tied to a major movie studio which has been a big supporter of the format. Apple also has ties to Google, which has been building a data center network around the country, and which campaigned to keep open access as a component of the recently-sold wireless spectrum.
I highly doubt that Apple and Microsoft are working in concert with each other, so I believe their actions are independent.
What do these companies know?
Sony is the only company seriously pushing the Blu-ray format forward. While there are a lot of other companies with products, none of them are in as deep as Sony. Only Panasonic has announced the release of a BD-Live player, the rest of the next-gen models are Bonus View only (so far).
Do I want Blu-ray to fail as a format? No. But to sit back and dismiss downloads as something that's not gonna happen is folly.
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