BluRay Vs HD-DVD

[icarus]

Ok so I was wrong about that.
The point still holds that HD-DVD still had the same DRM as BLU-ray.
All companies do this to some degree. Sony (and hopefully more companies) does not do this as much as before.

For instance,

The last mp3 player I owned was a Sony NWE-507. It only played DRMed atrac MP3 files and you had to use they bloaty proprietary software to convert you mp3s. This was during the whole Rootkit fiasco so you can imagine how bad this was.

However they did have a patch that would allow you to load and play normal mp3s. This was an official sony product and alowed you to use the player the way you wanted. I used it and was fine untill it broke 3 years later and it was time to buy a new one.

While I was reluctant to buy another sony product I eventualy settled on the Sony NWZ-s618f.
Apperantly sony had learned from there mistakes and here was an MP3 player that had no form of DRM and allowed you to drag and drop files straight into the player via windows explorer. No software necessary.

Moral of the story.
Don't hate a company. Its a fluid entity composed of a bunch of replaceable people who will be fired if they do something stupid. Just because you got screwed over once does not mean you can not trust them. A company is perfectly trustworthy It only wants you money. It does not want to screw you over and it will change over time for better or worse in an attempt to make something you will buy.
When buying a product do not take the brand into consideration. Look at reviews and look for features you want. Above all THINK FOR YOURSELF!

[Poo Bear]

Sony may have replaceable staff, but like other large companies it has a history and it has a style of business that probably won't change unless something very bad happens. Sony's company ethos at the start was to bring together the very best Japanese engineers and create small independent working groups. Their goal was to come up with innovative new patentable technologies (devices) protected with proprietary licensable formats.

Umatic (~1968 ),
Betamax (1975 ),
Betacam (81 ),
Compact Disc (82 ),
3.5 inch Floppy Disk (82 ),
Video8 (85 ),
DAT (87 ),
Hi8 (88 ),
Minidisc (~90 ),
Digital Betacam (~90 ),
miniDV (92),
Memory Stick (98 ),
Digital8 (99 ),
PSP Universal Media Disc (~2003 ),
HighDV (~2004 ),
Blu-ray Disc (2006 ).

Being closed formats that are owned by Sony these devices/media tend to be more expensive and therefore tend to fail more often than they succeed. Customers therefore can end up in trouble, either they have Sony devices with over expensive dwindling media or a competitors device that Sony squashes with a successful non-compatible media.

Lots of other companies have a similar ethos, but Sony tend to be more visible with more devices in your home so they often get an unfair proportion of the hate.

Another result of the Sony company ethos and history is its focus on devices, it isn't historically good at software and it doesn't focus on it. Hence the wonderfully innovative PS3, very complex architecture, poor tools, poor online system and no real way into the PS3 for indies other than Sony actually selecting you for first party support (flow and everyday shooter were extremely lucky).

Microsoft on the other hand is the complete opposite, very good at software and weak at hardware (read ring of death, zune, etc). Their angle is to build entire suites of closed source software and push competitors out that way, with less concern about the hardware. It does let them put out great things like DirectX (what's wrong with OpenGL?), XboxLive and XNA.

Both companies will be destroyed when the utopian vision of Gene Roddenburry is realised.

[icarus]

First I would like to point out that sonly did not invent BLU-ray.
BLU-ray was invented by the Blu-ray Disc Association (which sony is a member of) They are not the sole owner and inventor.

Secondly HD-DVD HAS THE SAME DRM

[Fost]

Yeah, except HD-DVD was region free.

Am slightly worried that with Bluray, there will be huge gaps between region releases and some more obscure stuff won't even get released in certain regions. Hopefully, it'll be easy to get hold of region free players.

I consider region locking to be an abuse of drm.

[Weeble]

My girlfriend moved from the US to the UK. Most of her DVD collection won't work on players here, unless they're specifically region-free. If she had brought Blu-ray movies she'd have almost no hope of watching them here. Region locking is abusive, unfair, and set to become harder and harder (technically and legally) for ordinary folks to circumvent to watch the movies that they bought legitimately.

[Fost]

Still, the future issue is going to be digital distribution - in that case, you suffer the problem of network exclusives, and local deals not going through. Hopefully there's be standardised ways just to buy a film direct off the distributor.

[icarus]

I heard that you can play Japanese games on the American PS3 and visa versa. Is this true?

[James]

Yes. The PS3 is region free for games*, but region locked for Blu Ray.

Annoyingly, although quite a lot of Blu Ray disks are region free, they often don't bother to put the region code on the case. I'd have bought far more disks if I knew they'd actually work on my player (I have a US PS3 in the UK).

* Not entirely true if you have an SD TV and you're trying to run PAL games on an NTSC system or vice versa. Between NTSC regions always works though.

[Kenneth]

This is a very interesting discussion. But one thing bothers me! Is Blu-Ray technology a relevant upgrade to the ordinary DVD. Or will we see new and more viable solutions before Blu-ray gets a chance to replace the DVD as the number one media on the shelves.

I find a strong similarity to the battle between HD-DVD vs Blu-Ray and Mini-Disc vs DCC. Mini-Disc won the battle back then and was clearly a product that presented more options than the CD. But Mini-disc competely failed to replace the already established CD. And became a mute point with the introduction of CD-R.

As such I seriously doubt that Blu-Ray will be able to replace the ordinary DVD before new and more innovative medias is introduced.

As such I believe that I will skip the Blu-Ray technology altogether... at least until they stop selling the ordinary DVD.

But what about you guys? Do you believe that Blu-Ray will replace DVD as completely as the DVD replaced VHS?

[icarus]

Well some say that optical disks are going the way of the tape. With online streaming offering more freedom for consumers (I watch what I want to watch and when I want to watch it) and control for publishers (I decide who watches it and can put whatever kind of protection on it I want) It seems to make everyone happy.

[Fost]

Your easiest option for HD is now bluray. It's not that much of a generational leap over DVD's though.

My eyesight isn't the best, but I can't tell much of a difference over upscaled DVD on a high def set when at normal viewing distances.

I'd still advise waiting. Player costs should drop, load and boot times should improve and also they'll hopefully sort out the stupid bluray spec (which still isn't finalised!).

Already moves are underway to get digital distribution off the ground though. You'll be able to use an xbox to get all the BT vision stuff in the UK soon. Although it's debatable whether or not you'll be able to hear over the vacuum cleaner sound of the xbox360.

[SethP]