Why can't Sony catch a break?
20/03/07 21:49 Filed in: Technology
Twenty years ago Sony was a force in the HiFi, TV market. They dominated personal music in a way only Apple's iPod can replicate. 20 years ago you were nobody if you didn't sport a Sony Walkman, and preferably the latest and greatest with built in whuffle tweeters and smerg smoothers or some other technologically advanced gizmo I just made up. Sony were expensive, quality and technology. A byword in how smart a company could be.
But its not all be sweet smelling roses for Sony. In the late 70's early 80's they managed to completely destroy their own good work with the Betamax video cassette, a format far superior to VHS, by being greedy. Sony wanted everybody to pay then for each and every cassette produced. The result was disaster. VHS allowed all comers to use its format. Movie studios switch to VHS, especially those not under the Sony Company control. Betamax was dead.
Ten years ago Sony produced the Playstation. It had advanced graphics (at the time), used simple technology and produced a games empire. They repeated the trick with the slightly warmed up version of the same thing (only with a DVD drive) (don't believe me, check out the 33Mhz CPU). By which time the competitors had split camps into kids go Nintendo and teenagers PLUS go Sony Playstation. Remember the XBox was late to the party.
Now we have the Xbox 360. You can add a HD-DVD to it for very little money. It's also got some awe inspiring games and worse of all for Sony. It's already in the market place.
So Sony are putting all bets on the Sony Playstation 3. Which, and lets be fair, hasn't had the greatest reception. Sub-Xbox 360 games, unit failures, poor supply resulting in a terrible opening month. It's all gone very bad for Sony.
But could it get worse? Well one of their big selling points for the PS3 is that it will play back HD content via BluRay. Which is great. But just a quick glance of Play.com or Amazon shows that MORE titles are on HD-DVD.
Sony must feel that time is on a loop and they are going Betamax all over again.
My own personal thoughts are that as broadband, especially outside the US, gets faster and faster it's going to easier to get content directly from the web. Not to mention that convenience always outweighs quality. Given the choice of download and start watching in 20 minutes for 720p or spend 2 hours going to the shops for 1080p; I think the techie is going for the easy option.
And lets face it, who is going to be getting 1080p/720p movies at present... it's the techie people.
The point being the HD-DVD or Bluray, they are just as redundant in the future as the best floppy disk is today.
Rob (on the road, via 3G broadband)
But its not all be sweet smelling roses for Sony. In the late 70's early 80's they managed to completely destroy their own good work with the Betamax video cassette, a format far superior to VHS, by being greedy. Sony wanted everybody to pay then for each and every cassette produced. The result was disaster. VHS allowed all comers to use its format. Movie studios switch to VHS, especially those not under the Sony Company control. Betamax was dead.
Ten years ago Sony produced the Playstation. It had advanced graphics (at the time), used simple technology and produced a games empire. They repeated the trick with the slightly warmed up version of the same thing (only with a DVD drive) (don't believe me, check out the 33Mhz CPU). By which time the competitors had split camps into kids go Nintendo and teenagers PLUS go Sony Playstation. Remember the XBox was late to the party.
Now we have the Xbox 360. You can add a HD-DVD to it for very little money. It's also got some awe inspiring games and worse of all for Sony. It's already in the market place.
So Sony are putting all bets on the Sony Playstation 3. Which, and lets be fair, hasn't had the greatest reception. Sub-Xbox 360 games, unit failures, poor supply resulting in a terrible opening month. It's all gone very bad for Sony.
But could it get worse? Well one of their big selling points for the PS3 is that it will play back HD content via BluRay. Which is great. But just a quick glance of Play.com or Amazon shows that MORE titles are on HD-DVD.
Sony must feel that time is on a loop and they are going Betamax all over again.
My own personal thoughts are that as broadband, especially outside the US, gets faster and faster it's going to easier to get content directly from the web. Not to mention that convenience always outweighs quality. Given the choice of download and start watching in 20 minutes for 720p or spend 2 hours going to the shops for 1080p; I think the techie is going for the easy option.
And lets face it, who is going to be getting 1080p/720p movies at present... it's the techie people.
The point being the HD-DVD or Bluray, they are just as redundant in the future as the best floppy disk is today.
Rob (on the road, via 3G broadband)