After navigating some rough seas, Sony's Electronics division has been starting to right the ship.
Over the past year, the company has been forced to rethink its product lineup and catch up to competitors in some cases, but now the Japanese electronics giant's U.S. division is looking ahead and betting big on the future of flat-panel televisions and high-definition media.
CNET News.com sat down with the head of Sony Electronics' U.S. operation, Stan Glasgow, to talk OLED (organic light-emitting diodes) TVs, Blu-ray Disc, the importance of the PlayStation 3, consumer electronics, and the dwindling margins for manufacturers and retailers on notebook PCs.
During our chat, Glasgow made it clear that Sony is only focused on TVs when it comes to the impossibly thin OLED technology and that soon the company's 3mm-thin TV will be even thinner. And, though the company just won a long and drawn out format war with HD DVD, Glasgow spoke openly about the limits of Blu-ray and what the medium still lacks. Plus, he sounds pretty high on the mini-notebook concept, even if he won't admit the company is developing a product yet.
Stan Glasgow, president of Sony Electronics USA
(Credit: Erica Ogg/CNET News.com)The following is an edited and condensed version of the interview.
Q: You have an 11-inch OLED and said you'd be putting $200-plus million into the next stage of investment. How big are we talking here in terms of screen sizes?
Glasgow: In the short term, which is a couple of years--I'm not going to be more definitive than that--we have targeted a 27-inch. We've showed it as CES, we've targeted the initial investment, and that's what we're looking at in the short term. Certainly in the longer term we'd like them to be the same size as LCD. We'd like them to be 52 inch, 46 inch, 36 inch...it's just a matter of time.
What about affordability? How long until these are affordable for the mainstream consumer?
Glasgow: It's going to be years and years until price points come down to where they're anywhere close to LCD. In the not-too-distant future, you'll have a choice in LCD at this size, or you can buy an OLED at the same size at a premium. I almost see it as a potential--and I don't know this, nobody knows the answer--I almost see this as the upper end of flat-panel television.
We can continue to make it thinner. It's 3 millimeters now, but it can get thinner. Eventually it's printable on a plastic substrate that can bend. But I don't think it's going to take many years to get to that level.
What about applications in other devices? I know Samsung's talking about monitors next year.
Glasgow: We are focused on TVs. Our interest is strictly television at this moment. I'm not saying that will never change, but at this moment that is the most complex area to go after. The bigger you make these, the more complicated they are. They're much simpler to make smaller. So it'd be easier to jump into cell phones, and other types of products, but that's not what we're interested in doing. We're interested in television as our major focus. Our engineering is focused there, and our investment is focused there.
Speaking of televisions, the experiment mentioned last week, with Hancock coming out on the Bravia Wireless Internet Link, is that a one-off kind of thing? Or is there more in the works there?
Glasgow: I'd say maybe it's a step above an experiment. It's brand new what we're doing, how we're doing it. We're trying to excite people by giving them content. It's streaming so we don't have the content protection problems...(But) people's bandwidth across the country is very different.
Prototype OLED TVs
(Credit: Michael Kanellos/CNET News.com)The big problem in the United States is we don't have enough bandwidth to really drive content through the Internet and our pipes. Japan has much better pipes, so does Korea, so does Europe. So it's still experimental. we hope to do more in the future, and it's the first one. We're going to try and see what happens.
What about non-Sony content?
Glasgow: It's possible in the future. I'm not going to rule that out; I don't think anyone at Sony would rule that out. (But) we think it's a good first step.
Besides interactive menus feature on Blu-ray, is anyone doing anything that's a really creative use of the medium that we don't know about yet?
Glasgow: There's so much I have no idea about, because we're going to have to open this up as a social network--not just contributions of Sony and other Blu-ray partners. There are going to be contributions from actual customers.
If we had a dream (for) Blu-ray, it would be much more interactive than it is today: No. 1, where you could interface and change things as you want to see them on the screen. No. 2, you could socially interact with other people, it's connected through the Internet...but theoretically you and your friend could watch the same movie, and you could change themes, change endings, all sorts of strange things in the future. Some type of social interaction in the future....And yes, we'll have a lot more (Blu-ray) product out in the next couple of months.
Looking ahead, you're only just getting into Blu-ray. How do you see the future penetration of the format compared with DVD?
Glasgow: That's a good question. DVD took 10 years to really penetrate. We're now in the second year of Blu-ray. My guess is it will probably happen a little quicker in terms of penetration. The pricing is already coming down more quickly than DVD came down. I don't think it will take as long as 10 years, but I don't think it will penetrate to the same percentage because there's a couple of conflicting forces. Certainly, people that want the best picture are going to want it, without a doubt. People that are OK with upconverting DVD players, which is somewhere close to 600, 650, maybe 700 (lines of resolution)--that's not a bad picture either. So a lot of people may be happy with an upconverting DVD player. And (Blu-ray) may not turn over, it may not penetrate to the same extent, because (DVD) was such a big medium change from tape.
But I see it being the major format. It's won the war, that's done. Now it's a matter of: Can we provide an exceptional experience? Can we provide a social part? And can we involve the overall community in, let's say, designing applets and coming up with new things that we can't even think of today?
How critical is the PS3 to your overall electronics strategy here in the U.S.?
Glasgow: I think that there's strength in Sony...it's about having a gaming division and an electronics division, a pictures division, a music division--we've never worked together like we have now. Hancock is a great example. We're so well-connected together. Here we are doing an experiment with a film. We're going to promote the heck out of it through our electronic retailers. The gaming division is working on it at the same time. (The) music (division) is involved. We're operating as a very balanced group. So what I can say is, without the gaming, we wouldn't be as strong and as balanced as we are today. It adds a great deal.
What do you think the effect of these ultra-low-cost computers' popularity will continue to have on the notebook business?
Glasgow: The question is, how important is that in the United States and developing countries? We're doing a lot of research on what consumers want and don't want. And I think we'll get it figured out over time. But is it worthwhile to have a second notebook that starts up quickly, can only do e-mail and connect to the Internet, can't do spreadsheets, and other things you'd normally do? Those are the things we're testing right now.
But what do you think? Do we need fewer devices? Or more?
Glasgow: I'm not the normal consumer obviously. I do an awful lot of e-mail, I connect a lot. I'm not happy with the (BlackBerry-type devices), like this Sony Ericsson I carry around. I find it hard reading, I'm getting older, and it's getting too small. But I don't want to carry my notebook around because it takes awhile to start up. So something in between would be very cool, and it wouldn't bother me to have an extra PC around.
That's sort of what we're thinking in this country. I think the emerging countries are different...But in terms of the U.S., we have a lot of homework to do.
Now, last month there was a report that Quanta was making a mini-notebook for you guys. Is there any truth to that?
Glasgow: I can't say yes or no. I love all the rumors, though.
What do you think about this Blockbuster/Circuit City proposed tie-up as far as retail electronics goes? (Note: later that same day Blockbuster announced its plans to abandon its bid for Circuit City.)
Glasgow: It's fascinating what's happened in the last 10 years in electronics retail. The big have gotten much bigger and extremely successful, like a Best Buy. The smaller guys, regional retailers, have done extremely well. The middle-sized guys have gotten into a lot of trouble. It seems that the companies expanded too much, but haven't prepared the infrastructure properly to service customers.
It's also interesting to watch how well Wal-Mart and Target have been doing, in terms of building more consumer electronics...
Circuit City--we want a very strong No. 2 (electronics retailer). Best Buy is certainly the leading company. We would like Circuit City to be strong. How that gets done--it can be done in many different ways.
My hope is that either by themselves, or by merger, or by working with another company that they'll be stronger than they are today. We think the possibility is there, and we support them. A good, strong No. 2 player in consumer electronics is a positive thing for manufacturers. They've got 800 stores. There are not many companies that have 800 electronics stores.
Turns out, the so-called Netflix box could be even cooler than initially thought.
The tiny black device from Roku was introduced to the world in May as the first box that could stream Netflix's "Watch it Now" option directly to a television.
But the company is saying there could be more where that came from.
(Credit:
Roku)
Roku's vice president of consumer products, Tim Twerdahl, said Wednesday that, yes, more content partners are coming, but, no, he's not saying who just yet. That makes the $99 price tag look that much more attractive.
So who will it be? YouTube seems obvious, as they've been partnering with a bunch of hardware makers lately: Panasonic, Sony, Apple, Hewlett-Packard.
Or what about Hulu, as my colleague and CNET's resident home theater expert John P. Falcone suggests?:
The Netflix vids use the VC-1 codec, but the box can handle H.264 as well. Of course, because all of these players--Apple, Microsoft, Netflix, and Sony--are already trying to sell you videos, it's unclear why they'd want to provide a free competitor that's just a click away. So even if a Hulu option is technically feasible, business considerations may keep it relegated to the drawing board. But hey, we can dream, can't we?
Either way, Roku will have to differentiate. Rumors are flying fast that at E3 next month, Sony or Microsoft (or maybe both) will announce support for Netflix's "Watch it Now" feature as well, for the PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360, respectively.
And though far more expensive than $99, both game consoles have large install bases, and are also far more functional beyond just streaming video.
Blockbuster announced Tuesday it's teaming up with PayPal to offer users another payment method for purchases off its Web site.
Under the arrangement, consumers can use their PayPal account to pay for their online movie rental subscriptions. And later this summer, Blockbuster expects to launch its downloading service for movie rentals and purchases.
Eventually, Blockbuster expects to make PayPal available for use to purchase other things off the Web site, from gift cards to new and used DVDs.
Blockbuster is offering users a $10 cash back to their PayPal account, if they sign up for a new online Blockbuster rental subscription.
The path to world domination is paved in round numbers, especially big ones like this: 5 billion.
The face of the iTunes store.
(Credit: Apple)That's the number of songs that have been purchased and downloaded from the iTunes Store, Apple said Thursday. (Actually, for the record, the press release says "over 5 billion.")
That shouldn't be surprising, of course. Apple's iTunes store has long overshadowed the rest of the music download scene. Rivals have launched many an assault, but even e-commerce competitors as savvy as Amazon.com still face quite an uphill battle--sales of songs at 9-month-old AmazonMP3, the No. 2 digital music store, are only a tenth the volume of those at iTunes, according to market researcher NPD Group.
Apple is, in fact, the largest music retailer in the United States, period, having pushed past Wal-mart Stores earlier this year. And it seems to be making a healthy profit from its iTunes operations. No wonder many a politician is toying with the notion of taxing digital downloads.
The company also said on Tuesday that iTunes customers are toting up purchases and rentals of more than 50,000 movies per day.
Take this statistic with a grain of salt, but Mozilla said more than 8 million copies of Firefox 3 were downloaded in its first 24 hours online.
Mozilla, which is behind the open-source Web browser, was trying to set a download record for the software. The 24-hour period lasted from 11:16 a.m. PDT Tuesday to the same time Wednesday, and Mozilla said it's waiting for the Guinness Book of World Records to review the results.
Mozilla showed more than 8 million copies of Firefox 3 were downloaded in its first 24 hours online.
(Credit: Mozilla)The download rate, which peaked at 14,000 per minute Tuesday, was still going strong at more than 6,000 per minute Wednesday morning.
Next question: will it make a difference?
Mozilla fanned the fanboy flames with its download record attempt, but it's likely the majority of those who downloaded Firefox 3 at this stage will just use it to replace Firefox 2, not a competitor such as Microsoft's still-dominant Internet Explorer or Apple's third-place Safari.
There's also a big difference between downloading Firefox, installing it, using it, and switching to it as the primary browser. One early sign shows at a minimum, though, that Firefox 3 usage is significant at more than 4 percent share, according to Net Applications.
And don't forget the error bars: it's impossible to say how many of the Firefox 3 copies were installed by enthusiasts trying to goose the number.
And while 8.3 million might well become an audited record, Adobe blogger and evangelist Ryan Stewart pointed out that Adobe gets 8 million installations of the Flash plug-in on an average day.
Don't let my note of skepticism detract from the occasion, though. This might have been just a PR stunt, but the fact that Mozilla's Download Day drew as much attention as it did indicates that Firefox is more than just a piece of software. It's a movement people want to belong to.
For full coverage, including reviews and videos, see CNET's Firefox 3 resource center.
Firefox 3 gained market share rapidly, even before it was 24 hours old.
(Credit: Net Applications)Firefox 3 is spreading fast, claiming more than 4 percent of the share of Web browser usage less than 24 hours after its release.
According to Net Applications, which monitors browser usage at major Web sites, Firefox 3 rapidly ascended to what I'd call force-to-be-reckoned-with status, something Web designers shouldn't be ignoring. For comparison, Apple's Safari had 6.25 percent share in May, and Opera had 0.71 percent.
Undoubtedly, most Firefox 3 activity is from existing Firefox users, but it's still a notable achievement, given that software companies constantly struggle to get users to adopt the latest products.
Mozilla, which sponsors and oversees development of the open-source Web browser, released Firefox 3 for download on Tuesday. It primed the publicity pump with an effort to set a 24-hour download record, and interest by the abundant Firefox loyalists brought Mozilla's servers to their knees for nearly two hours Wednesday.
Mozilla has been fulfilling pent-up demand ever since. Sometime after 7 a.m. PDT, downloads crossed the 7 million mark, according to Mozilla's download counter, which is fun to watch, even though it's badly formatted.
The download rate, which peaked at 14,000 per minute Tuesday, was about 6,600 per minute Wednesday morning.
For full coverage, including reviews and videos, see CNET's Firefox 3 resource center.
Web site problems held up the launch of Firefox 3 on Tuesday.
The Get Firefox site went down near the 10 a.m. PDT launch time. Mozilla, the for-profit subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation that oversees Firefox development, said it was having technical difficulties with the site.
Firefox 3 downloads surpassed 1.4 million before four hours had gone by.
(Credit: Mozilla)Mozilla hopes to set a 24-hour record for most downloads with Firefox 3, but the delay shouldn't affect that much. "The 24-hour period starts when the site goes live," spokeswoman Melissa Shapiro said.
Update 10:51 a.m. PDT: Mozilla said in a blog posting that the site should be available "shortly."
"The outpouring of interest and enthusiasm around Firefox 3 has been overwhelming (literally!). Our servers are currently feeling the burn and should be back to normal shortly. Download day will officially commence once the site goes live," Mozilla said.
Update 10:57 a.m. PDT: Popular projects are tough to bring to the Web for mass download.
Ubuntu's Feisty Fawn version of Linux was run over by Intenet traffic when it launched in 2007. Likewise, Sun Microsystems couldn't keep up when it released the source code for OpenOffice.
Mozilla is trying to set a record for Firefox 3 downloads. Site problems hampered the effort.
Red Hat has used BitTorrent to try to distribute download pain among many interested users of its Fedora version of Linux. That's not a great solution if you want to track your download record, though.
Update 11:17 a.m. PDT: The download page was back up for me, fleetingly--but it only showed the link for Firefox 2.0.0.14.
Update 11:20 a.m. PDT: The site is up, and the download link is working for me. Let the record attempt begin.
Update 11:30 a.m. PDT: Whoops! The download I'm getting from the download pages is still for version 2.0.0.14. I guess there's still some work to be done.
The Mozilla page redesign has a crazy combination of Firefox 3 graphics but Firefox 2.0.0.14 files, but at least the Web site is crawling back.
Update 11:49 a.m. PDT: This is like Amazon.com's outage all over again: Now all I'm getting is "Http/1.1 Service Unavailable." The Web site is totally gone again.
Update 11:53 a.m. PDT: The site is working, both the Get Firefox site and the U.S. download page.
Also, for some more details, see the Firefox 3 release notes.
Update 12:01 p.m. PDT: The clock is ticking for the download record attempt. The official 24-hour period began at 11:16 a.m. PDT, when the download began working in Europe, Mozilla told me.
The redesigned Mozilla site was a hodgepodge of Firefox 3 and 2.0.0.14 versions as it crept back online.
(Credit: Mozilla)Also, be cautious about updating: Firefox 3 will overwrite your Firefox 2 installation. The release candidate has been stable for me, but not all plug-ins are available; Microsoft warned that Silverlight 1.0 doesn't work on Firefox 3, and there could be other issues.
Update 12:05 p.m. PDT: Mozilla said on its developer blog that Firefox 3 is being downloaded at a rate of 14,000 copies per minute.
That's 13 gigabits per second. No wonder the servers were struggling.
Update 12:15 p.m. PDT: Say what you want about its ability to deliver the technology, but it's impressive what Mozilla has built around Firefox. A download rate of 233 copies per second is pretty staggering.
You can call the download record an attempt at a PR stunt if you want, but clearly it's more than that. Evidently there are a lot of people for whom using Firefox makes them feel like part of some movement.
Is it because it's open-source software? A way to stick it to Microsoft? Technologically superior? Helped by plug-ins? Something else? Weigh in below so those who aren't true believers can see why you are. Or send me e-mail at stephen.shankland@cnet.com.
Update 12:55 p.m. PDT: The Firefox 3 download counter (when it works) currently shows more than 875,000 downloads.
Say what you will about Google's plain-jane text-heavy Web sites, but they load faster than the eye candy such as all those pretty flags on the download counter page.
Update 2:46 p.m. PDT: Mozilla's Spread Firefox site shows more than 1.4 million downloads so far. The rate is tapering down--it's less than 10,000 copies per minute now.
Update 4:25 p.m. PDT: The download rate has wound down to about 5,400 per second, but the total has surpassed 2 million.
Update 5:20 p.m.: It looks like Firefox's biggest rival is being big-hearted about Download Day: Microsoft shipped an Internet Explorer cake to Mozilla.
The cake reads: "Congratulations on shipping. Love, the IE Team."
(Credit:
Pearljam.com)
Pearl Jam, a band with a reputation for delivering great live performances, is offering to sell "bootleg" recordings of the group's concert shows.
Fans can go to Pearljam.com and purchase streaming downloads or burn-to-order CDs of each of the band's performances during its 2008 concert tour, which launched last week in Florida. Internap is overseeing the audio streaming.
Pearl Jam is taking liberties with the term bootleg. Typically bootlegs are pirated material that are given away or sold at bargain-basement prices.
That's not the case here. Each concert performance will sell for $9.99 (MP3) and $14.99 (FLAC) and be made available two weeks after the performance. But fans may give Eddie Vedder and the group a pass on this one.
Why?
Because at least Pearl Jam is offering the music free of digital rights management. This means fans can burn the songs to disc or transfer them to their digital music players. Another reason is that Pearl Jam is a longtime advocate for fans.
Pearl Jam once canceled a concert tour to protest the high price of concert tickets. The group sued Ticketmaster and requested that the U.S. Department of Justice investigate the company. Nothing came of the lawsuit.
In the opening scene of The Player, Tim Robbins' character is meeting with writers who are pitching movie ideas they hope the Hollywood producer will agree to make. One idea is pitched to him as, "It's Pretty Woman meets Out of Africa, without stars."
(Credit:
Blockbuster)
Applying that Hollywood approach, the latest idea from Blockbuster can best be described as "Netflix meets YouTube, without the convenience." That's basically the pitch Blockbuster Chairman and CEO James Keyes made at his first annual shareholders meeting on Wednesday when he unveiled an in-store kiosk he hopes consumers will use to download movies.
The plan, as outlined by The Hollywood Reporter, is for consumers to bring portable devices into Blockbuster stores and download movies, usually in about two minutes. Blockbuster expects to begin testing the kiosks, which were produced by airline-kiosk maker NCR, in about three weeks. Initially, the system will work only with Archos devices, but Blockbuster expects the kiosk to be an "open system" that is compatible with a range of devices. Keyes declined to predict how many titles will be available on the kiosk, noting that Blockbuster was still in negotiations with the major studios for content.
I wasn't at the meeting, but I have to wonder if reporters giggled at this idea:
Keyes acknowledged that the kiosk pilot is likely coming well ahead of broad consumer demand for such services and should therefore only be seen as one additional distribution channel for the company as it tries to offer entertainment content whenever consumers want in whatever form they want.
"Well ahead of broad consumer demand for such services." Huh?
Talk about an innovative idea. Amazon.com, Microsoft's Xbox Live, and Netflix already deliver movies directly to PCs; TiVo, Vudu, and Apple TV, as well as cable and satellite services offer video on demand to TVs; and electronic copies of movies are being sold alongside DVDs. So what makes Keyes think people want to leave their homes to drive to a store with a laptop-size device to download movies from an ATM?
People don't want to make the trip to the video store. Convenience is why Netflix is kicking Blockbuster's butt. Blockbuster seemed to have a road map for getting back on top with its acquisition of movie download service Movielink in 2007, and its idea for a set-top box for streaming video seemed to show promise (Indeed, my colleague Greg Sandoval reports that Netflix sees video streaming eventually overtaking physical DVD rentals). But this is also the company that has been kicking around the idea of buying electronics retailer Circuit City for $1 billion.
I could see these kiosks appealing to airport travelers, but otherwise this strikes me as an expensive remake of a soda machine.
