Comments on: Book: Microsoft promised Toshiba HD DVD support

In a new book, a top Microsoft lawyer says that Microsoft reiterated its pledge to support the high-definition disc format as part of an effort to win a patent deal with Toshiba.

[NeverFade]

PlaysForSure! ;)

[draystl]

Weird that you left out that Apple technology was behind the winning format, Blue-ray, and that Apple & Sony were it's biggest supporters in the PC world.

[Knightro2]

Weird that you misspelled Blu-Ray.

[slecalvez]

Oh really???!!! And how come there is noe BluRay player in any Apple computers???!!! There are BluRay for Windows...

[getwired]

Apple has nothing to do with Blu-Ray. It's a Sony invention that Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO, referred to as "a bag of hurt".

[llungster]

huh? The article was about Microsoft's legal team and had nothing to do with Apple. I realize every Apple fanboy feels the need to make Apple the center of their universe but ... too bad! There are many other companies who played a very large role in blu-ray, much larger than Apple, and none of them got mentioned. Live with it.

[draystl]

Really? Hmmm... might want to check out the facts.

Apple joined Blu-ray's board of directors in 1995: http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2005/mar/10blu-ray.html

[Maccess]

Blu-Ray uses Java Technology, and has nothing to do with Apple other than that Apple, like all PC vendors, will support it on their products.

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?

[aaronwt]

it's Blu-ray Disc or BD. notice the spelling and which letters are capitalized. It's not "Blu-Ray" or "Blue-ray", it's Blu-ray Disc.

[BogusBasin]

Microsoft Promises. There's an oxymoron. PlaysForSure fo sho!

[t8]

He he, nice one.
Microsoft Trust, there is another one.

[Captain Bebops]

The whole war was a mess. HD-DVD was easier and simpler for second tier studios to get into. Blu-Ray was elitist and today I still tire from watching the "loading" progress bars for unnecessary features when I just want to watch the damn movie! As Blu-Ray goes more manstream studios are going to have to consider whether they really need to have 2.0 features just to sell the disks. The pubilc, used to DVDs are going to wonder what the progress bars are about and why they have to wait so long to watch a movie. And to add to that most of the disks are stoppable so you can come back to the same point later. You stop, you go back to the boot cycle all over again. Lame.

[sanenazok]

Re: progress bars - consumers will think the movie is rewinding!

[codynews]

When Blu-ray won over HD DVD, I vowed to never buy another dead-dino media disk. I now DL my HD content and watch it on my TV via my PC's HDMI out.

Thanks Sony and other idiots that pushed Blu-ray. You've saved me a ton on my movies.

[streamOG]

PlaysForSure is actually much more relevant than Blu-Ray and has enabled far more money to move between consumers and content owners.

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.

[Vegaman_Dan]

It's all a moot point now as even Blu-Ray has failed to capture the market's attention. The pricing of Blu-Ray disks is still too high and the quality difference hasn't been enough to the average customer to convince them to upgrade. If it had, we would see a difference in the market today.

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.

[TravisOwens]

Just because you aren't jumping on BluRay doesn't mean the rest of the world is ignoring it. Look up the sales and you'll see BluRay is taking off rather well.

[cleptomaniac]

Personally I don't think Blu-ray hitting that 100 million units sold mark is "failing capturing the market's attention". You also have to take into account that High Def in general only has about a 35 percent penetration. So not to shabby overall.

I don't expect to see the end of HD-DVD. Especially if Microsoft is coming out with another XBOX console. Microsoft is big on piracy and patents. So what better way to put the games on them. But sony bomb with UMD's as well. So we'll see.

[t8]

PS3 can play Blue-Ray, XBOX cannot.

[DrtyDogg]

no PS3 can not read Blue-Ray nor can XBOX.

[codynews]

@ DrtyDogg: And you spelled "Dirty" and "Dog" wrong. Who cares if someone spells it "BlueRay". Hell, it's Sony that's spelling "blue" wrong. After all, the tech uses a BLUE laser, not a "blu" one.

Yeah, it's supposed to be "blu-ray" but who cares...

[llungster]

Guess again. PS3 does play Blu-ray, XBOX360 can not.
Here's the system comparison chart for the PS3 flavors
http://www.us.playstation.com/PS3/Systems/Compare

[interoperate]

The Microsoft kiss of death.

Some partnership!

[jtjt145]

Is there really anyone interested in that stuff? None of my relatives, friends, acquaintances has either Blu-ray or HD-DVD. Am I living on an island, or did I miss anything?
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.

[sanenazok]

Ina: When will you finish reading the book? Is there going to be a review? I'm thinking of picking it up but don't want to waste time on something not readable or filled only with insider stories.

[jmmejzz]

This is not like going from vinyl to cd or tape to DVD, for the difference in cost there is not a significant advantage to move away from DVD. The perception of quality is subjective, the visual improvements of say "Gladiator" doesn't change its emotional or artistic impact.

[tkspyder]

speak for yourself "subjectively".
"Planet Earth" or watching glaciers in the Arctic have a much bigger impact emotionally and artisticly in HI-DEF BLU-RAY.

[RighteousSoutherner]

That sucks how an American company has to suck up to Japanese companies to get them to see our way, when we often invented the technology they use in the first place. How ironic.

[J. Blow]

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:

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.