Book: Microsoft promised Toshiba HD DVD support
Even after it was clear that Blu-ray would win the DVD format race, Microsoft continued to stand behind the rival HD DVD.
The software maker may have had many reasons, including the fact that its technology was used by HD DVD, but another reason was that Microsoft had promised HD DVD format backer Toshiba that it would do so as part of its effort to win a patent cross-license deal with the Japanese electronics giant.
(Credit:
Amazon.com)
That's among the interesting tidbits tucked away in Marshall Phelps' new book, "Burning the Ships," which I wrote about earlier Tuesday. Phelps, a top Microsoft lawyer, and co-author David Kline suggest that Microsoft had already decided to back HD DVD, but that the company redoubled its support as part of its effort to woo Toshiba to become the first big Japanese firm to take a cross-license to Microsoft's patents.
Microsoft lawyer Anne Kelley and her team were trying to get Toshiba to sign a deal in a matter of weeks as opposed to the year or so such an agreement would normally take to hammer out. The HD DVD pledge was only part of Microsoft's effort, which also included sharing some of the future things it was working on that might interest Toshiba.
"Kelley's team also reaffirmed its support for Toshiba in its battle with Sony over DVD formats," Phelps and Kline wrote. "As she put it, 'we let them know that Microsoft would stick with them till the end.'"
The battle between the formats was a high-stakes affair, with Toshiba and Blu-ray proponent Sony each trying to line up backers for their formats. In the computer world, Intel and Microsoft backed HD DVD, while Dell and HP aligned with Blu-ray.
At the same time, winning the deal with Toshiba was key for Microsoft in its efforts to convince large companies, even those with broader patent portfolios, to cross-license Microsoft's technology.
In the second half of 2004, Microsoft struck roughly 20 new deals, including with some big names such as Cisco and Samsung, but the company was having a tough time striking deals with Japanese PC makers.
In February 2005, Microsoft general counsel Brad Smith held a mid-year review meeting in Building 43 on Microsoft's campus, stressing the importance of cracking that market. "I conveyed my concern in the meeting about the lack of progress in Japan," Smith is quoted in the book as saying, "and I started to push Anne and the team pretty hard on how and when we might improve this."
The company decided to focus on winning a deal with one company: Toshiba.
"We did everything we knew how to do to show them that this was a new Microsoft they were dealing with," Kelley says in the book. "We studied Japanese, we went to cultural training and we constantly reminded ourselves that we needed to create a relationship, not just get a deal done."
The strategy ultimately paid off, as Microsoft went on to sign a host of such deals, including with other Japanese firms such as Fuji Xerox, Seiko Epson, and NEC.
During her years at CNET News, Ina Fried has changed beats several times, changed genders once, and covered both of the Pirates of Silicon Valley. These days, most of her attention is focused on Microsoft. E-mail Ina. 
Apple joined Blu-ray's board of directors in 1995: http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2005/mar/10blu-ray.html
Apple however has a competing product, the "iTunes video Store," which trades quality for convenience. Are people still willing to go out of the house and buy a physical disk for its vastly superior video and sound quality, or they willing to trade that for the convenience of buying it by clilcking on a link?
Microsoft Trust, there is another one.
Thanks Sony and other idiots that pushed Blu-ray. You've saved me a ton on my movies.
Blu-Ray on the other hand is still not standard on the Apple platform and a far cry from being anything like an HD-DVD killer.
Add to that DVD sales are shrinking as people tend to look online more and more for content delivery instead.
I don't think it matters who won the DVD format wars- the winner would be the loser either way.
Yeah, it's supposed to be "blu-ray" but who cares...
Here's the system comparison chart for the PS3 flavors
http://www.us.playstation.com/PS3/Systems/Compare
Some partnership!
As long as the DRM situation does not change, most people stick with the opinion of that GNU-pope, what's his name, Richard Stallman, who calls the whole lot of DRM technology 'Faulty by Design', whether they even know him or not!
Of course, a change would also need as a precursor that Hollywood takes on a couple of lessons from Bollywood, where about any flic is available for a $1 or so in the next corner shop.
Oh, I can just see the executives of the RIA, MPAA and related mafia's getting stomach cramps.
"Planet Earth" or watching glaciers in the Arctic have a much bigger impact emotionally and artisticly in HI-DEF BLU-RAY.
- by J. Blow March 25, 2009 8:20 AM PDT
- Phelps wasn't part of the partnership in any meaningful way and had nothing to do with the strategy. Here are the realities of the situation:
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(30 Comments)Sony/Panasonic were looking for another IP licensing cash cow like MPEG2. With MPEG2 they are still making hundreds of millions per year just in royalties. Blu-Ray is where they held IP and why they backed it.
Toshiba held little to no IP in Blu-Ray and had no reason to support it. Apple doesn't support anything MIcrosoft does no matter how logical it might be. Dell signed on to support Blu-Ray after Sony offered to pay them. In fact almost all of the "supporters", including Apple, were paid by the main IP holders of Blu-Ray. Many of these were multi-million dollar payments.
Microsoft and Toshiba thought they had superior technology and certainly from a production cost standpoint HD-DVD is vastly superior, and thought that would win out. In the end, with the Blu-Ray consortium paying literally every major player to use their technology, it wasn't enough.
Case in point: a few years ago over 80% of all Blu-Ray discs after they had been formatted and encoded with content, had to be thrown out due to malfunctions in the writing process. This cost a huge amount of time and effort and made the discs unprofitable. HD-DVD had an error rate around 10%. This isn't that much different today.