Sony beefs up Blu-ray strategy
The new Blu-ray-enabled Vaio notebook starts at $879.
(Credit: Erica Ogg/CNET)SAN FRANCISCO--Even as Blu-ray Disc and Blu-ray player sales are growing, Sony is looking to build out its larger strategy surrounding the company's high-definition disc products.
At a small press event here Thursday, the company introduced a new feature of BD-Live and a new piece of Blu-ray hardware.
MovieIQ will be included on some high-profile releases from Sony starting in September. It's essentially IMDb live--while a movie is playing, facts about casting, directors, production, and actors' filmographies pop up onscreen. It's powered not by IMDb, but by Gracenote, creators of CDDB, which Sony purchased just over a year ago.
It's the kind of feature intended to keep people from pausing a movie and hopping online to ask questions like, "I totally recognize that actress, but from what movie?" It's also meant to build on the inherent capability of Blu-ray players that have Internet access. Sony has tried to do this by allowing BD-Live access to exclusive trailers and some trivia games, but MovieIQ seems like something that users would engage with repeatedly, not something they'd just use once and forget about.
A senior Sony exec at the event, Tracy Garvin, called MovieIQ the "first killer-app for BD-Live." That sounded like an admission that none of the BD-Live features thus far have been all that compelling.
It's clear Sony is still in the process of fine-tuning its BD-Live strategy. At the event, Sony Vice President Rich Marty said that while 37 million Blu-ray Discs were sold in 2008, the company has only released about 100 titles that are BD-Live enabled. In other words they still have a long way to go.
"BD-Live is complementary to Blu-ray," he said Thursday. "It was never meant to compete with the Web, it's not a VOD (video on demand) play. We're still building the foundation."
Part of building that foundation is bringing down the cost of Blu-ray players. While the PlayStation 3 is still generally regarded as the best deal on a Blu-ray player from a top-tier electronics company, other brands sell players for as low as $99 or $199 these days. But Sony is also pushing Blu-ray drives in notebooks. While Dell, Sony, Acer, and Asus have dutifully jumped in offering the drives, Sony says the prices are still too high.
So Thursday, the company introduced its Vaio NW series notebook, which starts at $879 with Blu-ray inside, but is $799 without it. It's considered a budget notebook for Sony--it's not the cheapest Blu-ray-enabled notebook out there, but it is for Sony. Some features of the NW Series include a 15.4-inch screen, an HDMI port, and a quick-start Splashtop button for booting directly to the Web if the computer is turned off. It will go on sale later this month.
Corrected on June 19 at 8:36 a.m.: Tracy Garvin's name was initially misspelled in this post.
Erica Ogg is a CNET News reporter who covers Apple, HP, Dell, and other PC makers, as well as the consumer electronics industry. She's also one of the hosts of CNET News' Daily Podcast. In her non-work life, she's a history geek, a loyal Dodgers fan, and a mac-and-cheese connoisseur. E-mail Erica. 
Incidently, the 1080p you get off Xbox live is highly compressed and pales in comparision to a full HD image off of a bluray disc.
And prices are *still* coming down more.
Considering that 75% of the US still doesn't have broadband, the download promoters don't have much of a leg to stand on.
Second, "Blueray's days are numbered"
You certainly didn't make your case, if you think people aren't going to buy movies just because they can rent it for a small amount, you're clearly wrong. People can rent/download DVDs at video stores, netflix, xbox live, and the PS3 for $2-$4 and upscale them, and none of those has stopped people from buying DVDs (or Blu Ray for that matter).
You're just looking for reasons to hate on Sony in favor of the Xbox. Take your petty bigotry elsewhere.
Just sell everything over the web already. They've delayed that long enough.
True HD takes up around 20gb's in size.
Disk always play no matter what...
(1) Selection is limited
(2) Price too expensive per disc
(3) Blu-ray needs proper cables, TVs and players THAT supports blu-ray, and those are not cheap.
(4) Plus, DVD quality is satisfactory to me. Who wants to see wrinkles on actor's face?
Conclusion:
I will stick to DVDs.
2. Prices are coming down; the prices are nearly equivalent to what DVD prices were for the new technology at the time
3. Cables? Component or HDMI is just fine. And if you don't have an HD tv by now, it's time to upgrade: HD tv's aren't that expensive, and, again, the players are the equivalent (actually cheaper) than DVD at the time of its inception and a year later
4. Quality? You were probably saying the same thing about DVD when it proceeded VHS--- too expensive, VHS quality is fine, who wants to see anything clearly at all?
Conclusion: You'll stick to old technologies until they become commonplace before buying them.
When HD DVD was canceled those discs were dumped into discount bins for prices between $1.99 and $4.99, depending on the movie.
At that same time, Blu-Ray was pulled from Las Vegas area retail stores (Target, Best Buy, Wal-Mart) for a good six months, until after Christmas of 2008. The movies returned in early January after the players didn't sell. Now those Blu-Ray titles are all in the discount bin for about $2.99, while the DVDs of those same movies are selling for near $19.99 and above.
For your third point, that's moot for most Americans. When Americans buy an expensive device like a TV, fridge, or car, they expect a certain amount of time for use from the device. A TV should last 30 years, a fridge forever, a car to 100,000 or 200,000 miles. There's a reason that almost 75% of American viewers don't have HDTVs.
For your fourth point, most people can't tell HD from regular, stereo from mono, PS3 from Wii, Apple from Windows. The majority of consumers are morons who don't want to know the technics of a device, but just want to play. When a Blu-Ray player needs to phone home or stops working because of scratches and fingerprints, well, that just doesn't help, now does it?
Get out of your little bubble once in awhile and see the real world. It's totally different that what you think. And that's where magicmaster is coming from.
What Planet are you living on!!? I have never disagreed with someones' comment so much.
By the way, can you grab me some of those Blu-ray titles that are in the bin for 2.99? That's an awesome deal!!!
I hope you weren't stupid enough to purchase an HD-DVD player. Because that is exactly the reason why those L.V. retailers pulled blu-ray off the shelves temporarily, to fool suckers into buying their worthless inventory of HDDVD.
You're using irrelevent details just to fit your arguement.
1) Citing examples with HD-DVD are irrelevent. Blu ray selection is in fact increasing. Simple logic proves that every new Movie release means an increase in selection. Every new release comes out on Bluray and the release list on bluray.highdefdigest.com confirms that. Even many older back catalog of movies are being released on Blu Ray.
2) Why would every store in Las Vegas pull Blu-Ray? (If that is true, I'd like to see some real evidence because I smell a story conveniently made up to fit your argument).
Walk into any store in the rest of the country and blu rays movies average $15~$25, the same as many DVD's, and the prices are steadily dropping.
3) Many people keep their equipment for years, that point I agree. But the fact is they all do eventually purchase new ones and stores are in fact selling them everyday. Standard Def equipment isn't even being sold in some places and the prices of HD is in fact falling. Nearly every TV sold now is HD capable and with the Government mandated transisiton to Digital the number of people with HD can only go up. You're fighting a losing argument by implying otherwise.
4) Maybe in you little corner of the universe most consumers are alll morons who can't tell Stereo from Mono or HD from standard but in the rest of the world many can. Either way, the progression of technology means you will be buying into it eventually.
deric_raymond was very correct in saying "You'll stick to old technologies until they become commonplace before buying them. "
Bravo, Sony, big pat on the back!
Blu-ray = DRM (digital rights management = FAILURE
It's as simple as that! Don't waste your money!
HD-DVD had all these functions from the very start and their players were MUCH cheaper two years ago as were the discs. I have both formats now (I really didn't have a choice, did I?) I also think BluRay will die a slow death. Sorry if I offend the BR crowd, but, to me, this is a no-brainer.
Movies are already being made on bluray all the time.
The quality is much better and easier for movie studios to work with.
So how exactly is BR going to die.
Every new major release is currently being simultaneously released on BR. Now that BR players are at the $100 psychological wall, this time next year I (and contacts in the business) suspect we'll see BR being the dominant format on store shelves and in marketing, with a small footnote saying "also available on dvd". The year after that, it will only be "select titles available on dvd". The studios will go where profit will lead them, and giving consumers more (resolution, sound, features) will bring in more money for them.
- I doubt you having any true insight into what a "vast majority of Americans" actually do and determine.
- A Bluray players having to "phone home" is really no different then tried, true and accepted technology such as Tivo's or DVR's, Cable boxes or Satellite receivers which also have to phone home periodically. Are you implying that this "vast majority of Americans" that you're apparently so close with have neither a phone line or a internet connection?
- "can't have scratches or fingerprints otherwise disc won't play". How is that any different then a CD or DVD that's scratched and won't play? Everyone has already accepted that as a basic limitation of any optical disc media and Bluray is no exception. What were you trying to argue with that fact?
It?s fairly obvious that you have no desire to get a blu ray player. That?s fine. But why the overzealous need to convince others? Why do you care? Do you think you?ll win something?
I hear rumors of this crap all the time (the 1.4 GB Sanyo-only CD-R in 1999). You show me how, on the current platter size, using a DVD-18, that GE, the strangest company on Earth, will develop a 500 GB DVD. GE is a joke and turned to "green" power because nobody wants to buy their TVs, radios, light bulbs, etc. anymore.
A 128GB flash card will run you close to $200.
Nope, don't think so. Not any time soon. Maybe someday, but by then, hopefully we'll have holodecks... ;)
Everybody buys or uses some GE products. Just because a product doesn't explicitly say GE on the label doesn't dimish that fact.
GE is a a huge congomerate with an extensive amount of influence on the technology or products people use every day. Forbes ranks GE as the largest corporate entity on the planet and they're in everything from Finance to Aircraft engines to Power plants to home electronics. It's a safe guarantee that at over dozen items in your very own home have some component, technology, or connection to GE.
What really killed Blu-Ray is Apple not putting it in their computers. All optical disc tech requires Apple to succeed. CD-ROM on Apple II, DVD-ROM on the PowerPCs. If these were ignored by Apple, the tech would go by the wayside. I mean, even ZIP is still supported today.
When they were first released they went for several hundred and it stayed like that for years.
Hell my first basic dvd player costed me $160
So, don't buy from Sony. Samsung and Pioneer make really nice BR players, as do dozens of other companies.
Disks don't have to be that way and the ones that aren't often allow you to stop the movie and start back up again in the same place (something you can't do with BD+ disks). Clueless studio stuffed shirts concerned about that 3% empty on their 97% full glass making bad DRM decisions.
And I also have an HD-DVD player which has none of the above problems.
- by mickey918 June 19, 2009 10:41 AM PDT
- I'm glad somebody finally mentioned all the "extras" that are dangled in front of you to get you to buy their disc (some even offer a "digital copy" that will only run on your computer. I absolutely HATE all the "crap" at the beginning of those BR discs. First is the FBI warning (in 3 languages), then the "we are not responsible for the content of the disc" warning (in 3 languages). The the trailers. Last night I tried watching "Sunshine" in BluRay and it had 15 trailers before the movie screen appeared. And do you notice they have disabled the "menu" buttons on the remote so that you have to "watch" all that crap? I don't think they realize you can use the "chapter forward" button to skip each trailer at a time. I don't give a darn about the "extras" on a disc. I never watch them anyway.
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- by KingV911 July 31, 2009 9:37 PM PDT
- you can FF thru each preview to speed up the process. But I know what you mean...
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