- Related Stories
-
PS3 shipments hit 1 million in 2006
January 9, 2007 -
Sony eyeing OLED TVs for 2008
January 8, 2007 -
LG to sell first Blu-ray/HD DVD combo player
January 7, 2007 -
Fall electronics to rally Sony?
September 13, 2006 -
Can Sony reinvent itself as cool?
January 20, 2005
(continued from previous page)
You are going to say, "What took you so long?" and that's irrelevant. We are doing it. For the first time, particularly from the spring onwards, (for) the products coming into marketing, like the IPTV television, there's more and more understanding at Sony and in the content companies that working together is a big advantage for us that nobody else can manage.
What are Sony's plans for Web 2.0?
Stringer: The first example is the IPTV opportunity. (Editors' note: At CES, Sony showed off a Bravia TV that can play content directly from select Internet sites.) Basically, we've made the television the center of the Internet world instead of the computer, by bypassing the computer and taking the Internet direct to that television screen. Now, there are a lot of implications for what that will do inside the television set. It's a sea change for Sony to be the first to do that because two years ago you were all muttering at us for being software-illiterate.
Glasgow: We had to build the application layers of software to be able to put a module to connect to the Internet and stream content. All of that is 80 percent software-controlled, and that includes streaming high-definition content, so we can stream high-definition movies through this, and that comes through cooperation with Sony Pictures. What we wanted to do is seed all of our televisions with the capability of having this but not burden the cost of a TV for those consumers who are not ready to adopt this extra option. That's why we did it as an optional module.
The content at this moment is free. There may be premium content in the future.
Stringer: Nothing is free. It's not free to us. If we put the movies from the studio on, as we did with Blu-ray, someone has to pay for it. In this case, it's an investment. We have the opportunity to use content to drive the success of hardware products--again, something that would not have been possible three, four years ago.
What are the implications for IPTV for broadcasters? Is it going to spell trouble for them?
Stringer: That's very hard to say. Content is coming to you in every different direction in every different device. All devices with Wi-Fi can deliver content of one kind or another. The customer has to decide first what's convenient. We have to respect the integrity of copyright because we own a lot of copyright. We also have our brothers at our studios to figure out how to use the content most successfully. All we are really demonstrating is that we are no longer behind the curve; we are ahead. I think you have to keep enhancing technology to stay ahead.
The movie theater has to change to be attractive to the baby boomers and middle-aged customers. Young kids will probably always go dating in the movie theater. This year, the box office in the United States went up, so there's still demand for the movie experience.
What do you think of the LG combo Blu-ray HD DVD player?
Stringer: It's an expensive way of showing universal discs. The three biggest box-office winners of this year were, in order: Sony, Disney and Fox. Those are the three Blu-ray players. When you consider that those three successful studios will be delivering last year's successful box office in home video this year, then that's an enormous advantage. The fourth is Warner, and they release in both formats, so it doesn't hurt. If you are going to be buying discs, you are going to be buying an awful lot of Blu-ray discs going forward--if you want Pirates of the Caribbean or James Bond or Da Vinci Code or Spider-Man. Universal is the only one with HD DVD. I don't feel terribly intimidated.
How far in the future are OLED TVs for Sony?
Glasgow: OLEDs are being produced right now in very small sizes. I think we'll probably be doing something in the next year.
Stringer: You really need to look at it because it is one of the few products that stops you in your tracks. It's so breathtakingly bright and clear and original and microscopically thin. Strangers stop in the street, stop by the booth (at CES) all the time to look at it.
But do you think by next year you can reach a level of price compared to other TVs?
Stringer: I think that's the issue. We showed it to you because we want to show you the promise. The reality is connected to price and availability and mass production because it's also a quite complex technology. But it is so beautiful we want people to see it. Excitement comes first, you know.
What's the situation with LCD TV prices?
Glasgow: The best answer I can give you is that it's going to remain very challenging. We were able to compete over this holiday season effectively in LCD and not get into financial trouble and maintain No. 1 market share (in the U.S.) in both dollars and in units. So we're just going to have to continue to come up with new systems and new ways of driving costs down.
We're going into a generation eight fab at the end of this coming year. That will give us tremendous economies going forward. Those are huge investments. Not many companies are doing that.
When does it open?
Glasgow: It's been announced for September-October. It takes a couple of months for them to really ramp up production, and it's a joint venture with Samsung.
We've actually had increasing ASPs (average selling prices) in LCD year to year, because we're selling the highest screen sizes. We're not going after the lowest price points or the lowest possible size in LCD. We're trying to add the features to make it optimal for consumers. So we have a chance to be considerably better off financially by being that way.
Could you give us an update on the Sony Reader?
Stringer: We are very happy with it. It's selling as fast as we can make it. We're not making enough. We've been very cautious in launching it because, as you know, it failed in Japan two years ago. This is a totally different version with totally different economics and software, and we understand that Amazon is also coming on with something in the relatively short term. So, we need to get a second reader out. We probably need a Wi-Fi component.
But we're very pleased that the acceptance from the consumer is unusually strong. I don't want to be a salesman, but people love the device. How many ultimately can be sold is a question mark. I think the next iteration will be the educational marketplace. We've sent some to England. I haven't heard back from the English publishers that I've sent them to, but clearly there is a component in the English-speaking world where you can stack so much educational content that kids can take (the entire content of) their whole (collection of) textbooks (in their Sony Reader).
We didn't go there (into education) at first because there was a lot of caution. A lot of my contemporaries in Japan weren't sure about this. This has been a peculiarly American dynamic. We're well aware of the potential publishing costs and paper costs, and it has a unique ecological advantage.
See more CNET content tagged:
Howard Stringer, Sony PS3, Sony Playstation, Blu-ray, Blu-ray disc
The Nintendo Wii, on the other hand, still cannot be found.
SONY BITES THE BIG ONE!
My HDTV will be any brand but sony, even if it doesn't have as a good of a picture. Tossed ALL of the sony audio/video gear. Didn't try to sell it, it's landfill fodder!
Once again Sony is taking credit for DVD's which were already well excepted before the PS2 came out. And they claim every PS3 owner is someone that supports Blu-Ray. However, when you actually listen to what PS3 consumers are saying, they could care less about Blu-Ray. I know a couple that have HD-DVD players and don't plan on buying any Blu-Ray movies.
But hey, whatever Sony has to do to make the numbers look good. I can't wait to see the huge PS3 pyramids the stock boys create at Target after Sony is done "shipping" the 6 mil. Should be a beautiful thing.
http://www.tvpredictions.com/debbie011207.htm
The adult industry will be going with the format that is best for their sales. The factors that have been discussed so far include: 1) the cost of the media, 2) the number of players, and 3) if the industry is allowed to use the media.
Here are my reasons for thinking that Blu-Ray can still win over the adult industry. 1. The media prices are constantly dropping. Within a year or two there will most likely be little to no difference in the prices HD-DVD and Blu-ray. 2. By including a Blu-ray player in every PS3, Sony has made sure that there are now far more Blu-ray players sold than HD-DVD players. 3. So far there is no official policy that Blu-ray media cannot be used by the adult industry. In fact, everything I have seen coming from Sony is saying that they are welcoming the industry.
Also, with the backing of several movie studios, and the makers of every game for the PS3, I think Blu-ray is strong enough to survive even without the adult industry.
factor in something like what media format "wins".
industry shows in Las Vegas, and it turns out that some of the
biggest adut companies are now going Blu Ray. Sony has
dropped the no XXX rule. I don't remember the names of most of
the companies he told me about, but Vivid (one of the biggest) is
now Blu Ray exclusively, and one other one as well. More are
saying they'll do Blu Ray as well. So HD-DVD no longer controls
the adult video industry.
I agree that it's sad that such crap is determining and has
determined technologies viability. But that's the world we livei
in.
It was a mistake for them to take this "winner take all" contest of incompatible formats to the consumer. The consumer wants a "rock solid" standard that everybody is behind. Too many have been and continue to be burned by new technology that the industries as a whole don't get behind.
I wouldn't call Sony's Sir Howard Brave but arrogant and ignorant. this is one of the reasons that Sony is failing to provide the consumer what they want at a pricepoint they can afford.
Fred Dunn
Josh Chandler
http://www.josh-chandler.blogspot.com
Blue-Ray also has more exclusive content. The content gap will grow over time.
With the advent of (broadband) internet -- plus Pay-Per-View streams on cable and satellite TV -- the importance of physical delivery of adult content is much less today.
And since the regular DVD format will still be with us for a long time, high-definition DVD is only one among many distribution channels available to consumers today. Big change from 20 years ago.
The net effect is the adult industry can no longer dictate which physical format the rest of the world uses.
So even if the industry standardizes on HD-DVD as the physical delivery method, it wont matter much because those with Blueray can still access the same content through one of the other channels. Most consumers might even prefer non-physical delivery for their porn.
I would suspect at the end the adult industry will produce Blueray content after all.
I purchased a PS-3 because I wanted a chance to play with the Cell processor (PS-3 running Linux is a very easy way to write Cell code).
PS-3 games and Blue-Ray movies look great. The sound is stunning. PS-2 games look very bad unless you drop resolution to 420P.
All Sony needs to do is Auto change to 420P when a PS-2 disk is played, or let the user set a different resolution for PS-2 games and users will have a much better experience.
Please Sony, it is a very easy fix.
But the problem has nothing to do with the PS3, its the games themselves.
If the game is written for say the 320 x 240 standard def resolution, if you play that game on even a 640x480 480P resolution you've either got to scale the picture to double its size (try doing that with a photo in a paint package to see the effect).
The alternative would have been to have the game appear in miniature on the screen (in the same way a background picture will appear to shrink if you increase you computer's resolution but don't stretch the image to re-fill the screen).
In my mind this would have been the better option, except that on smaller TVs games may have become unplayable.
Progressive scan games such as God of War should not have this problem as they are written for both 480i and 480p resolutions - and other games appear to have better scaling algorithms written by the coders that can mitigate the jaggie effect somewhat.
But generally there's not much you can do if, as Sony have done, you install the original PS2 graphics chipset on the motherboard instead of emulating the chipset as the 360 attempts to do.
In the case of the 360 you can write upscaling algorithms to smooth out the jaggies when you double the size of you bitmap images. The PS2 hardware won't do this, because on the original PS2 it was completely unnecessary.
So Sony could fix the problem by writing a PS2 emulator in a new firmware update - but this would probably lead to more compatibility issues.
Personally I have no particular desire to play PS2 games on my PS3 - yes I realise that you probably have a few you enjoy too much to wait for PS3 equivalents to be produced - but unless you use the composite cables and play the PS2 games on smaller SD tvs, there's no answer to this unless Sony change their minds and produce PS2 emulation for the PS3.
by a medieval singing troupe. Actually, I think I can better imagine
a Sony exec being followed around by some type of crappy pop
rock group singing in a whiny emo voice....
Bravely bold Sir Robin rode forth from Camelot.
He was not afraid to die, O brave Sir Robin!
He was not at all afraid to be killed in nasty ways,
Brave, brave, brave, brave Sir Robin!
Ten years ago my living room was all Sony: CRT, A/V Receiver, DVD Player, Cassette Deck, Turntable, several CD Changers, WebTV, and the fancy headphones. I've had problems interfacing them (changing Ctrl-A, S1, etc. standards), early obsolescence, etc. And now very little Sony product remains.
Personally I can't tell the difference between the formats and I don't care. An uncompressed 2hr digital movie is approx 1 terabyte in size - that's 1024 gigabytes. So whether the disk stores 25 or 50 gigs is irrelevant, as they're both hugely compressed. Both look great, although the XBox HD-DVD player does do a decent upscaling job on regular DVDs (as do stand-alone blu-ray and HD-DVD players), so it has the edge in that regard. However I already have a 1080p 5 disk upconverting DVD player, and my next TV will do the upscale/conversion itself, so all that will become irrelevant as well.
But what excites me the most is the use of either platform as a media PC. I can't speak for the Mac, a great computer to be sure, because I have owned one since the days of the Amiga. But the Windows PC is total garbage when it comes to using it as a everyman media center. It is too unreliable, too clunky and as with all media systems, too tied down with competing DRM software screwing up the potential of sharing media throughout the house or handheld players.
The PS3 itself excites me the same way the Amiga did when it first arrived. Sure it is primarily a game player, and so was the Amiga to start with. But some of the most innovative software and ideas were developed for that platform - it became the first affordable DTV system, the first affordable desktop 2D and 3D animation system, and a great development platform that kickstarted most of the major game studios of today. It was the only computer system that allowed real time visual affects to be applied to live TV feeds for more than a decade.
And sure you could set up a PS3 or 360 to run Linux, but that just scratches the surface of possibilities.
I realise there can never be another Amiga, Atari ST or Archimedes computer - such things belong in the past. But there does exist the possibility of using these consoles for heavy weight media purposes, such as a media server for the home, or an editing system for movies, photos and sound.
Bad QA, hidden Virus', hurting their own customers, etc... is something that is a normal business practice for Microsoft. It will slowly take them down.
For Sony it will rapidly take them down.
So that one million PS3s 'shipped' in the USA is exactly that - units shipped - most of them are still sitting on store shelves
No one want to pay such a high price when the Xbox 360 provide superior graphics and better looking games at a much lower price point.
I note that the price on the Xbox 360 is steadily moving downwards and / or being discounted, with bigger bundles added for the same money - as Microsoft are close to break even on the current hardware pricing.
Sony simply cant compete with that as they are already massively subsidising the PS3 hardware costs.
know about the PS3 deal in any other stores, I saw 6 60 GB PS3s for
sale when I went to Toys R Us looking for a Wii. The guy I asked to
see if they had any in stock (In case I simply couldn't see them) said
basically that. They were out of Wiis but has PS3s for sale.
I was probably only able to get my Wii by chance, as I went in to a
different store the next morning and they had JUST gotten a
shipment in.
So that one million PS3s 'shipped' in the USA is exactly that - units shipped - most of them are still sitting on store shelves
No one want to pay such a high price when the Xbox 360 provide superior graphics and better looking games at a much lower price point.
I note that the price on the Xbox 360 is steadily moving downwards and / or being discounted, with bigger bundles added for the same money - as Microsoft are close to break even on the current hardware pricing.
Sony simply cant compete with that as they are already massively subsidising the PS3 hardware costs.
I definitely thought that the PS3 would kill it's competition and that Blu-Ray would win because of it, but I know realize that people care more about gameplay that graphics. Always have in fact. For this reason, and the fact that it's half the cost, the Nintendo Wii will most likely beat out the PS3 and Sony is in a lot of trouble.
Some call it arrogance or ignorance, but the simple truth is Sony has lost sight of what consumers want. They've always done business based on their brand name. General consumers always thought Sony represented a top of the line product - because it always cost more. Now, the only technology Sony has a good handle on is LCoS displays.
I was really impressed when Microsoft said something to the effect of, "you should get a 360 and a Wii, that way you have the best of both worlds". I truly agree with that approach and intend to do just that when the Wii comes back in stock. Microsoft isn't taking an arrogant approach about it, they're just doing everything they can to give everything to the consumer. Their only problem is the whole "3 rings of doom" issue - to which I was glad they decided to increase the warranty.
Overall I've been very impressed with Microsoft's handling of things.
As far as HD, he lied...Universal isn't the only studio. Let's not forget the "adult" corner...which basically is ALL ending up on HD. He may be too blind to realize it but that's huge.
"When will Blu-ray players drop in price to become a mainstream product?
Glasgow: If you go back to when DVDs came into play, it took about three years until they got into price points of $299 to $399. I suspect it's about the same thing here with Blu-ray. I think it's going to take up to three years to get down to those price points, possibly a little longer. But I would assume it's similar to DVD."
...until the entertainment divisions started calling the shots. More worried about protecting their precious content rather innovating with technology, they were slow to adopt digital anything and are still playing catch up.
Sir Howard is from the same group that brought us these issues, so I don't expect any significant improvements to the situation.
- keep your millions
- by theprof00 February 28, 2007 9:03 AM PST
- why dont yall just stay away and stop talking smack about a company that brought you the discman, and the walkman. Pioneers of the blue ray, the transistor radio, Betamax (a piece of hardware that was superior and is STILL used in the movie industries, it was the public that killed Beta,...for porn) The trinitron monitor(still produced today), with philips, they introduced the CD to the world...the CD and later the DVD. The brought SDDS and many other great products.
- Like this Reply to this comment
-
(49 Comments)The problem, is that Sony always spends all this money inventing superior formats, and a lot of people are just too damn lazy to pick up the newer technology until it is practically being given away.
The millions that you speak of sir, is a minority. Much more people love Sony because they are always trying to create better hardware and this is a world where porn can hurt an industry, a world where companies can create pirating software (Bleem), and generally there are a million ways to take pot shots and take out lawsuits against a company that deserves better.
IMO Sony is not failing right now, but if many of you took your own advice and looked at the historical aspect of Sony, you would realize that the populace, being tight with money and greedy, in one way or another, is what hurts Sony the most.