Category: High Definition War

Sony’s problem

Posted by DarkJedi – February 7, 2009

Red as blood. That is the only way to describe the latest numbers of lacking income at Sony. A company that once was at the top of the hardware business with enormous successes such as the Walkman, the Trinitron TV technology and the PlayStation 1 and 2. A hardware company that lead the business with innovation for many years. Now the times have changed and some might be wondering why. The answer, however, is painfully obvious… Sony is no longer one company, but rather a gathering of businesses with opposite directed interests.

The three faces of Sony is their hardware business, Sony Pictures in the movie industry and Sony BMG in the music business. The main problem appears, however, in their software department. While the hardware business is trying to create open, innovative hardware, the two content businesses Sony Pictures and Sony BMG is trying to prevent that hardware from being used in piracy. Here is where the customer gets completely forgotten. We then see failures such as the rootkit fiasco in their CD publishing part and the Walkman relaunched that was supposed to smash the iPod but failed completely because of unusable software as it was too ridden with DRM and copy protection technology making it impossible for customers to use. The Walkman’s price was slashed by more than half, but little did it help. The software was useless and people kept returning their Walkmans as they saw them as broken.

Sony, however, learned nothing from this. They still struggle with technologies that Sony Pictures and Sony BMG wanted to push in order to control their customers. Think of the many failed formats Sony has tried to push: ATRAC, MiniDisc, SACD, MemoryStick and so forth. ATRAC is a perfect example here. When the rest of the market had already accepted MP3 as the standard and Microsoft was pushing WMA Sony kept forcing their poor customers onto ATRAC and nothing else. After several years of being practically the laughing stock of the MP3-player market with a ridiculously small percentage they finally yielded to MP3 and released the Walkman player which could play both formats. However, the software was so riddled with DRM og copy protection technologies that it failed completely. Hardware is only as good as its software. Why didn’t they learn?

Even though music has been distributed over the Internet for nearly fifteen years Sony BMG and the rest of the music industry still hasn’t found a digital strategy. In this field Sony is also showing its many faces. It wants to give its customers as many options as possible, but also to completely control their use. This can be seen clearly in the fact that Sony is one of the companies pushing the hardest for the power to use selectable output – a technology that takes away a lot of the consumers rights without asking. So on one side Sony wants to push HD content in all your equipment – on the other side Sony wants complete control to fully disable all your equipment and remove the ability to display the HD content.

Then came the PlayStation 3 and Sony’s newest push of technologies. Now it wanted its customers onto the Blu-Ray path, so that it could force new copy protection technologies onto its poor customers. Another HD technology riddled with DRM. However, when one focuses too much on technology and marketing and forgets about software, which has always been Sony’s soft spot, one is set up for a major disappointment – especially when one is as arrogant as Sony Entertainment. The PlayStation 3 didn’t quite know what kind of machine it wanted to be. It wanted to be a game console, but also a media center and a Blu-Ray player… but as everyone knows: The Jack of All Trades is a Master of None… And that also happened with the PlayStation 3, who is suffering greatly on the market today.The holiday sales has shown that in this time around Sony is way behind its two competitors…

What Sony failed to do Nintendo did to perfection. They focused their console on a major market and didn’t put everything into the console – only what the market was asking for. The result is remarkable – especially compared to the once master of the market, Sony. Even their newest competitor, Microsoft, understood where they needed to beat Sony. Microsoft didn’t have Sony’s innovation in hardware or even remotely their experience in this field. When it comes to software, however, Microsoft is million miles ahead of Sony. They made the right tools for developing software on their platform and they made a brilliant working network service in Live far ahead of Sony’s PSN, which most of all looked like a small afterthought from Sony in hindsight of Microsoft’s success. Microsoft success came from ensuring a lot more titles than Sony did – especially when it came to exclusives, where Sony was once master. Sony simply forgot that consoles are about games. At the same time Microsoft is cutting prices making it harder for Sony to sell consoles, who are already seen as expensive…

Times has changed. Hardware is no longer everything. These days a console is measured by its software and in that field Sony is having serious problems – not only with its countless delays, but also with the quality of the software, which almost always fails to live up to the hype. A clear example of Sony’s problem with software is that every game studio claims that it is much simpler and thereby cheaper to develop on Microsoft’s Xbox platform compared to Sony’s PlayStation platform – even such former Sony exclusives as Square Enix.What is Sony’s response to this criticism? Well, even more strange… They claim that they have made it difficult to develop on the PlayStation 3 on purpose to make it last the ten years they somehow expect this console to last – even though it is far behind all its competitors in every way… sheeesh!

The strangest thing about this is that Sony doesn’t seem to learn anything. They keep on lying through their teeth and spinning numbers in their marketing. They keep on screwing their customers with DRM and copy protection and the removal of consumer rights, using lobbying. One would think that a company that makes a PR nightmare like the CD rootkit would learn something, but it doesn’t seem to happen. What Sony needs a common sense czar…

The Console War : Sony – Please grow up!

Posted by DarkJedi – November 19, 2008

Just because you cannot seem to offer anything of value, especially concerning films and HD-content, on that “mediacenter”console of yours, please stop acting like a spoiled child!

We all know how you tried to market the PlayStation 3 like a center of HD content and we also know that your PSN doesn’t contain anything of value and absolutely nothing of HD value!

Instead of blocking Microsoft’s excellent attempt at providing what you have failed to do, please start making your own attempt at delivering something of value to your customers.

It is simply a childish act and shows that you can’t be trusted to run both a music, movie and game business at the same time without getting your childish feelings hurt and instead screw your customers. It’s enough just to see how you handled the enormous amount of Sony product-placement in a James Bond film, but this?

Seriously, Sony, grow up – and fast!

UPDATE: … And so they did (for the time being :) )!

And note to Microsoft: “Please join the digital age soon!” !!!

Next-gen DVD Format War over

Posted by DarkJedi – February 19, 2008

Today Toshiba threw in the towel, formally declaring HD DVD a dead format, leaving Sony’s Blu-Ray as the remaining option for consumers. Everyone is happy – we can move on! All we need now is that Blu-Ray needs to grow up and mature. So Sony, instead of gloating over your first victory in a format war ever, here is a couple of suggestions on improvement that you might as well get started on…

In terms of maturity Blu-Ray needs to adapt its Profile 2.0 as fast as possible so that people doesn’t get burned any more than they already have. Regional coding is also a thing of the past, trying to keep the markets separated so that they can squeeze more money out of the western countries and offer richer content to the slower adapting markets, like USA, the same way it happened with DVD. Regional coding simply needs to go.

Then the content needs to go up in quality. Sony has for so long championed that 30 GB is not enough for the next-gen format – then why don’t you use more than maximum 18 GB on any Blu-Ray? Give the consumer a reason to buy these disc for the already far too high prices Blu-Ray disc are selling f0r – simply add more and better content! One might still remember the early days of DVDs, where almost no real additional content was put on the discs, the prices were high and the movies were poor conversions with almost the same low quality as VHS in terms of picture and especially sound. Sony has championed this format as crystalline in terms of quality so the content needs to be as well – or the money spent on the disc will again be wasted…

Then the loading times of Blu-Ray discs needs to go down. Choosing Java as a language might seem smart in terms of flexibility, but NOT in terms of speed. Customers doesn’t want to go from DVD with almost instantaneous loading times to a Blu-Ray disc with between 50 seconds and 150 seconds worth of loading time. This simply needs to go down! Way down … Computers are fast and we do not live in 1990 anymore… Loading times should be labelled on players to give buyers something to assess them by.

The question of upgradeability then comes to mind. A lot of early adapters have been seriously burned by the lagging maturity in the rushed-to-market Blu-Ray specification. This should not happen to common consumers. Players should be marked with a clear label that they are future-proof.

The prices need to go down. I know that Sony considers the DVD to be last-gen by now, but it is still the bar on which Blu-Ray is measured. Upscaled DVDs look good. Few normal consumers see real difference on medium quality flatscreen TVs combined with a standard HIFI-setup between upscaled DVDs and the Blu-Ray discs. When this is the reality the difference in price in terms of both content (discs) and players becomes an issue and currently Blu-Ray is too expensive on both accounts. This needs to be addressed.

Digital Rights are an important issue and copy protection on Blu-Ray discs are, like HD DVDs, appalling. On top of an already dis functional AACS Blu-Ray has BD-Java to further slow players down. This needs to go! Normal consumers will not accept their legally bought discs doesn’t play correctly. The explanation that copy protection is needed and fair will not be accepted by the common consumer. He wants the content he had paid good money for to play correctly or he wants his money back and heads back to DVDs where this is not an issue anymore!

Well, that should be enough for Sony and the rest of the group to keep them occupied for a while… Let’s not hope for their sake that they are too late in fixing this because digital downloads are coming – with Microsoft pressing harder each day for this alternative – an alternative that is not limited by size or production cost in the same way…

Greedy Business ™ – Digital Rights Menacing

Posted by DarkJedi – May 14, 2007

Let me start this post by summering up the conclusion of the recent months: The reign of Digital Rights Management has seen better days…

Since the classic battle for keeping customers in line back in the Napster lawsuit the Greedy Business ™, consisting of major parts of the music, movie and software industry, has been trying more than hard to force DRM down into the consumer’s throat. The music industry back then was faced with a problem they and their expensive analysts could not account for: Their sales were declining… Something had to be wrong – It couldn’t be that their distribution model or their quality has faltered… Only one thing could come to mind in their heads: The consumer must be doing something bad! They started pumping tons and tons of DRM into their productsas they seemed convinced for some reason that this would eliminate piracy or reduce it to a bare minimum… Now ten to fifteen years on and how did the strategy fare?

Well, they are still seing declining sales and after thousands upon thousands of lawsuits against their customers they have also completely lost consumer trust. Even though the numbers are staring them in the face they still cannot see it. DRM has reduced piracy by 0,001 % at best. My guess is that piracy is actually doing much better today than back in the days of Napster. What happened to DRM then? Well, it left the average consumer back in a frustrating situation: He buys the CD or DVDs so he helps the declining sales, but he cannot get his versions to work correct because of DRM and looses interest in the product. Meanwhile the pirated versions provide an option you cannot find the legal market anymore: High quality music without technical hazzle or restrictions on use!

How does for example RIAA, as a glorified member of the Greedy Business ™ react to this situation? They watch the music business’ revenue slump year by year, but see absolutely no result on their work. However, they can still not see the picture – not even after more than ten years! They have not tried to search for a different answer in all that time. Even the most damp of analysts can see that most of their declining sales numbers can be explained by the “Single Effect”, but nevertheless they regard no other option than to sue their customers and place bad products on the shelves for the legal market as the only choice. In most analysts outside the Greedy Business ™ it is clear as broad daylight that the Greedy Business ™ is having dire problems with album sales and cannot find an alternative distribution model to account for this loss. Even though DRM has not even been succeeded in stopping a single pierce of music from reaching illegal distribution channels the Greedy Business ™ still pursues the way of DRM, like there are no alternative.

Another problem arises when you have entire industries, like the Greedy Business ™ represent when talking about the music and movie industry, that cannot fathom the technology and how to harvest its new possibillites. While others were quick to see the potential of the Internet and its amazing use as a distribution channel the Greedy Business ™ first tried to have the entire Internet shut down instead. Instead of understanding and taking advantage of a new technology like Internet Radio the Greedy Business ™ completely messes things up with a radio tax that will utterly destroy the technology and leave behind another vacuum in a place where a possible distribution channel could have been created. Furthermore RIAA goes into the case and suddenly poses as the only authenticated place get money from the collected Internet Tax – even though they do not represent many independent artists that are played on the radio. And who who want to be represented by the company that got the vote as the worst company in USA in 2007? Not exactly what most upcoming musicians think of good publicity for their fans… Like RIAA the MPAA of the Movie Industry is just as slow and complacent about new technologies. The great fears of piracy has let the MPAA to slowly destroy the once great experience of going to the cinema – an experience the movie industry shouldn’t want to loose as the sales of DVDs are set to drop dramatically from now on, as the battle for the next-gen DVD is still very unclear and far from consumers. Every day new technologies appear that can open up new markets, like BitTorrent, but the first thing the Greedy Business ™ does is to try and stop it. The father of BitTorrent has been known to say that he thinks the current DRM technologies are destroying new technology like BitTorrent.

Meanwhile the technology firms continues to come up with newer and more expensive copy-protection schemes, that has one thing in common with all the DRM schemes that has come before it: It will be cracked with days and will not prevent a single pirate from pirating a DVD or CD… Sony’s latest attempt at a DVD DRM scheme proved to be so useless that the DVDs could not even be played on Sony’s own DVD players! Luckily because of their long history with malfunctioning DRM schemes, containing rootkits and other malware, Sony was for once quick to recognize the problem and fix it… The constant reign of trouble that Sony has been causing with their DRM schemes over time has quickly made the company one of the most hated companies on the Internet. The most discussed DRM today is AACS, that was claimed to be impossible to crack, like many other before that. Once again we see history repeat itself. In the same manor in which the DVD protection scheme, CSS, was published all over the Internet like wildfire and made copying a DVD a trivial task for most users, the next-gen DVD formats like Blu-Ray and HD DVD can now be copied thanks to the Internet distribution of an AACS crack code in Hex. The most interesting part of that tale is that it showed how little people wants DRM as a revolt suddenly appeared on the social newssite Digg, when AACS LA tried to remove references to the hex code. It is my guess that this revolt will create an even more polarized world, which is quickly becoming us versus them – and that’s not exactly the kind of publicity and public relations the movie industry should go for, when they are desperately trying to win consumer over to their next-gen DVD replacement in a time where they need the sales to go up, instead of down.

While DRM continues to be made and shipped to unknownly consumers who struggle with it daily another battle is raging in the courts, where the Greedy Business ™ is busy suing their customers. It can be a pretty daunting task to sue your customers when you your understanding of technology and IT is several centuries old, like RIAA’s “expert” witness in one of their court cases. Their methods in court are often comparable of those used by the mafia, and even judges are starting to tire of this misuse of their authority and their methods. The problem of going to court is that even though you spend half of your development budget on lawsuits against your customers you might end up with a court ruling that goes against your wishes, like one the latest court ruling against the DVD consortium where the judge actually approved of DVD copying. The worst part about court rulings is that when you loose a lawsuit you leave yourself open to countersuits. Currently RIAA is having major problems with countersuits and furthermore being accused of copyright misuse at the same time. In the mean time in another court RIAA is being accused by the judge of lying in court. In another attempt to rol in some money for the needy executives of the Greedy Business ™ they have decided to start a propaganda campaign and a massive launch of lawsuits against college student across USA. Luckily some of the Universities doesn’t bend over to this oppression and have instead chosen to counter-sue RIAA for waste of time and ressources on their part. One could only hope that this would prove how ridiculous their claims and logic far too often is. Unfortunately some politicians doesn’t have a single analytic part in their brain and buys this propaganda without questions, calling the Universities “A wretched hive of scum and villany”. One that buys the numbers issued from the RIAA/MPAA without questions certainly doesn’t qualify as intelligent in any way. Especially since it is by now a wellknown fact that the MPAA has been caught lying on numerous occasions. And for the Greedy Business ™ to start this campaign? Well, it sounds like a perfect business plan: To ensure that their current largest market segment is sued into hell… Makes good sense! Just like the business plan is sound when you sue a ten year old girl with a disabled mother or a stroke victim…. The Greedy Business ™ have misled themselves and they have ended up with a completely screwed up image of their customers. It isn’t always a good idea to try and act the hero against the “evil pirates”. Especially if the Greedy Business ™ themselves doesn’t mind pirating from others. The “antipiracy” strategy of RIAA/MPAA of using lawsuit upon lawsuit against their customers are backfiring big time now. The situation has become so tragic that one can only ridicule the Greedy Business ™ for not altering the strategy immediately.

The discussion of DRM is slowly moving into the public spectrum as more and more people are affected daily and with it times are heading for a change. The wind of change can be seen, especially with the latest development on the DRM stage… The closed DRM system employed by Apple in the iPod/iTunes distribution model has been getting scrutinized by the European Union as of late. The European Union and especially Norway and the other Scandinavian countries will no longer accept such vendor lock-in by DRM from Apple.

It is clear to many now that DRM has nothing to do with stopping piracy. The Greedy Business ™ can read numbers as well as I can. It has always been about controlling the market, controlling the consumer. In terms of software we can see how Microsoft has become a market leader and quickly become a master in forcing people to get DRM into their products and then been quick to use this power to control the market afterwards. The concept of DRM and its current appliances has been dealt a hard verdict by the Economist and by now it should be apparent to everyone in the industry that even though they thought DRM could wield the market for them it will never become the new distribution model they hoped for. For too long have the Greedy Business ™ used it to keep control over markets and kept a distribution model alive that should have been replaced more than a decade ago. The Greedy Business ™ found that instead of going with innovation and giving their customers what they asked for, like a normal market player would do in a free market, they chose to misuse the law – and especially the DMCA – and sue their customers into hell in their thousands. Luckily it has been proposed that a FAIR USE act should be applied to the DMCA, which of course meets fierce resistance from the Greedy Business ™ that fear that their army of lawyers, which by now must be around 80% of their workforce, would end up loosing each and every case and in the end become unemployed. In the meantime another problem for the Greedy Business ™ have appeared in the EU, where a proposal is preparing to allow personal copying and filesharing, where there are no profits made. This sort of embrace of technology and progress is the direct opposite of what the Greedy Business ™ wants to do. In their wretched minds they want more DRM and it should be more restrictive, like the AACS, to give them more control over the consumer and the entire market. They do not see the problems that DRM causes, like the fact that the current DRM schemes is killing legal BitTorrent movie download and thereby destroying an emerging market, or the fact more than 75 % of all customer problems are caused by DRM. They only see profits, not customers, which they regard as cattle – nothing more! Attempts have been made to try and explain DRM and the problems that it is causing to executives in the business, but little understanding is met – only profits matter… They have completely failed to realize that what they actually did with their DRM iniatives was to alienate their customers!

There are plenty of bad signs in the industry that they still don’t see what they are doing, but lately something has happened. Major artists are deciding to go the non-DRM way and head for the new dsitribution model, instead of swelling in the past. The MPAA chairman has been out saying that he promises free DVD copying and interoperable DRM. These are good signs in a bad time, but the major light at the end of the tunnel is the result of the pressure EU has put on Apple because of their Vendor Lock-in DRM in iTunes and the fact that EMI is in financial trouble and needs a change in their distribution model. This was the perfect match… A company like Apple with a new and popular distribution channel that has proven its worth and a member of the Greedy Business ™ in dire straits that wants to make profits. They have announced a deal that means that EMI’s music catalog will be available without DRM on iTunes as of this summer. This move towards the end of DRM and higher quality in digital music is seen by many as the way forward and back to the consumers for the Greedy Business ™. There has already been many reactions to the deal between EMI and Apple. There has been speculations that Apple has been taking too much credits for this move, which is essentially EMI’s exclusive decision. However, there is no doubt that this deal is having repercussions throughout the entire market. Amazon is preparing to launch a DRM-free music service to compete with iTunes, Microsoft has suddenly expressed interest in selling DRM-free music… Suddenly the world is turned upside down! One cannot escape the past, however, and Apple and Microsoft has been caught in battle by another company, that are using their own weapons against them. Apple, Microsoft and many others of the DRM-pro team, who has helped the Greedy Business ™ by inventing, implementing and forced DRM into many of their products are suddenly sued for not using DRM, in accordance with the DMCA. I could not come up with a better twist than that – especially since the DRM-pro team has used the DMCA together with the Greedy Business ™ for long to suppress other companies. Most companies will soon see that DRM is heading for the end of its lifetime and alternatives are suddenly examined. With countries like Norway seing that we need modern laws that allows filesharing in a modern society it is only the completely consumer-blind companies like Warner Brothers that firmly stick to DRM these days. Of course Warner Brothers gets ridiculed for this by more modern company leaders, like Robertson of MP3.com. Of course one could ridicule Warner Brothers, but why bother? They are only saying this because they can no longer innovate and find an alternative. One should instead ridicule a company like HBO that wants to change the name of DRM to make it sound more positive! No positive spin will make the consumer see why all their good money is spent on a product that doesn’t work, costs a lot and allows you to do much less than the free one offered by the pirates! The change is coming and only the non-innovating companies like Warner Brothers and HBO will be left behind. Later they will see, like Sony did far too late with MP3, that the consumer still holds the key to profits and they will be in dire straits…

The most interesting part is about to happen… Apple is about to renew all their contract with the content-providers on iTunes. It will be interesting to see how the repercussions of the EMI deal will affect those dealings. My guess is that Warner Brothers will soon find themselves to be rather alone on the matter of keeping DRM alive without non-DRM alternatives on iTunes… Once again Apple is holding all the cards, some dealt to them by EMI and the rest by the amazing performance in terms of sales that iTunes is generating. At this point in time, with no alternative on the new distribution channel, companies like Warner Brothers will be left in the dark without Apple – and in the dark no profits are made …

Statue of Liberty

High Definition : The Latest Contender

Posted by DarkJedi – March 2, 2007

As long as there has been royalties and influence in having control over a format as long will there be format wars… Time and time again has this type of greedy company-backed wars hurt consumers and caused big problems for both content-providers, for consumers and especially for technology, that seems to be standing still while people wait for the verdict on the war. HD DVD versus Blu-Ray is the latest in this series of destructive conflicts, that couldn’t be solved like adults!

The content-providers are waiting eagerly the outcome as they are experiencing dropping DVD sales and need the next-gen format out the door and into the shops, into the consumers home so that they can supply the consumer with the same movies over again in better quality!

Often, however, consumers take a while to adapt a new standard, especially when that standard is not decided yet. The problems inflicted on the consumer who chooses to adapt too early are numerous:

  • 1st Generation players are often not capable of fully supporting the standard
  • Problems with DRM-subsystems are often found after the first batch of players is sold – Even in software players, like CyberLink HD, who is currently having massive problems with DRM in HD content.
  • Region coding is often decided at a late hour, which means that the newly bought player might not have the region-support it needs for 2nd generation titles. The example lately is that HD DVD has only recently announced that they will not enforce Region Coding in their format, even though the first batch of HD DVD players has been out for more than six months.
  • The DRM might suddenly need to be changed when anti-DRM schemes opens the current locks on the player, like AACS is already facing at this point in the HD war.
  • You might end up with an expensive movie-collection in a format that didn’t win the war and therefore is no longer supported by the mainstream production lines or the content-providers…

While the players in this battle of formats continue to improve in the end you are betting a lot of money on an expensive player, that might not support the titles of tomorrow and buying a lot of movies that might be able to play in the player of tomorrow…

In the mean time a third alternative has come into the light of day. Albeit a bit late, but interesting none the less! HD VMD is entering the race for the next-gen DVD format by supplying a cheap alternative to the HD DVD and Blu-Ray alternatives. With prices around 200$ for a player, compared to 500$ for an HD DVD and lately 600$ for a Blu-Ray, this must be said to be a cheap technology. It supports a high read speed that surpasses that of both HD DVD and Blu-Ray and can support from anywhere between 20 GB disc up until 100 GB disc in the future – In summary: The technology is ready enough for HD content. They have started out slow with India and China as their main markets, moving into Eastern Europe, but lately decided to go head to head with the two big formats and are now entering Nassaq and trying out retail in the USA, with the backing of Warner Bros. The breaking poitn for this alternative will surely be how they will use the technology of the HD VMD on the handling of HD content like extra materials, interaction and subtitles. But even more important will be the backing of the content-providers, who desperately needs to get the customers into the next-gen buying frenzy – and the cheaper price level that actually competes almost directly with that of DVD players might just prove to be what the doctor ordered! The technology behind HD VMD is being demonstrated next week in Barcelona, where Dr. Levich will demonstrate how a HD VMD disc can be played in a standard off-the-shelves dvd player. What I find intriguing about the HD VMD, apart from the price, is the speculation that it will also support Open Source codecs, as well as the standard HD codecs, such as VC-1. Werther it will be a contender in the big format war of our day is not easy to predict, but I think the technology at least will be good alternative on the PC drive-side of the business, which might also prove a good entry strategy for the HD VMD format into the real war of delivering HD content on players in consumer’s homes.

I still think that this battle is a battle that will last too long for the disc to become as popular as the CD or the DVD. In the end we are not far off the real technologies like HVD (or their fast-to-market alternative, InPhase), which is where the real revolution lies in terms of durable storage for delivering HD content, if the Internet doesn’t prove to be the next-gen format that HD content will be delivered through in the future… (or their fast-to-market competitor,

TV

The Console War : Sony’s “Supercomputer”

Posted by DarkJedi – February 5, 2007

The marketing department at Sony has had a busy year in 2006. They had to ensure that people kept the interest in the upcoming PlayStation 3 console – even though Microsoft had already released its XBox360 console. They couldn’t come out and say that they had based their designs upon a series of bad decisions, like forcing the Blu-Ray drive into the PS3, which meant that only a ridiculous amount of consoles could be produced at any giving time. Instead they had to keep people interested and suddenly the hype went to high heaven. Suddenly the console wasn’t just a little more powerful than the Xbox360 as they had claimed earlier – now it was a supercomputer, which was almost a generation ahead of the newest XBox… We have all read reviews from “tech-savvy” reviewers who without any form of criticism to their source calls the PlayStation 3 a supercomputer because of its Cell-processor (which they call a “supercomputer on a chip”) and the Blu-Ray drive. Let’s take a closer look at those two “amazing” technologies then, shall we? Unlike the many tech-reviewers out there I tend to look at the hole picture instead of just pushing Sony’s hype onto my blog…

The Blu-Ray drive: It is not a secret that Sony is one of the companies that stands to gain the most if they for once win a format war. The Next-gen DVD format war between HD DVD and Blu-Ray is fierce and ruthless and Sony saw a great potential in fitting their PlayStation 3 with such a drive. They assumed that the console would be a massive and instant success and therefore there would very quickly be a Blu-Ray drive in many homes, thus ensuring a win in the long haul in the format war. Unfortunately that decision had to made for Sony’s best, not the customer… What the customer got was a very expensive gaming console that suddenly could not be produced in large enough number because it depended upon a technology that Sony wasn’t ready to produce. The problem with the combined Blu-Ray player and gaming console is that it is aimed at two different audiences. The Blu-Ray player is a new format and one for early adapters, as the war is far from decided. HD is still only in its infancy and for the highend buyers, who want the best sound and the best picture. Only problem with this is that they usually doesn’t want a gaming console to play these things – they want a real player from a professional company like Denon, Harman/Kardon and so forth – not a gaming console aimed at 14-year old kids. The second audience is for the gaming console. They are for the largest part kids or young people, who wants a console that plays the games they and their friends want to play. They want gameplay and good titles, not high prices. Unfortunately the Blu-Ray drive (and the fact that game developers has to develop in HD) has made both the console and the games rather expensive. This means that Sony will be loosing a lot of these customers, who instead will go for the cheaper alternatives, such as the PlayStation 2 or the Wii (or to some extend the XBox360). All in all the Blu-Ray drive missed its purpose. It is not a good or fast drive for spinning games and it is not the solution for playing HD content on a serious scale, but simply adds to the cost and ensures that they cannot produce enough consoles. I simply cannot understand why Sony would want to make it obvious to whole world that Blu-Ray cannot be produced easily, and therefore is a bad choice?

The Cell Processor: To many it was hailed as the newest miracle in computing. To reviewers who heard some of the hype it made up the sure winner-technology of the next-gen console war. To people who understand computer design and processors and especially the structure and performance demands for games it made up a bad choice… First of all it is very difficult to produce. Why did Sony not launch at the same time as Microsoft? The Cell processor was to blame at first since IBM (the big winner of the console war, as they are producing all the processors in every next-gen console) couldn’t produce the Cell properly. The yields were simply too small for it to be economically feasable. They still haven’t perfected the production, which means that when Sony decided to accept the quality they accepted that some of the units didn’t have all 8 SPEs, but only 7. That means that you might be sitting with a console that doesn’t have the full processing power promised from Sony. Furthermore Sony expected too much from the processor, expecting it to be a supercomputer-processor, which could run graphics, sound and everything all at once. Therefore Sony didn’t include a DSP or a GPU at first, but then it become obvious: The Cell processor was fast, but not a floating points, which is the most essential part of the GPU. So in the last minute they had to call up Nvidia and have them supply a Geforce 8-GPU for the PlayStation 3. They never made a true console design with integrated video-memory making the communication between the processor and the GPU very inefficient – even compared with the PlayStation 2-design. Furthermore the 8 SPE-design of the Cell processor is very difficult to program to. This makes up for the biggest design flaw Sony has ever made. When you make something that the game developers cannot fully take advantage of you end up with a poor performing machine. Sony simply didn’t supply the developers with good enough tools, a difficult platform to program to and not enough support. The result is that developers won’t develop exclusive titles for the PlayStation 3. Instead almost every game development company today develops the game for the XBox360 and then ports it to the PlayStation 3 – ensuring that it performs optimally on Microsoft’s console. The Cell processor isn’t a super-computer. It does have its uses. When the price drops enough it will be a useful processor in many integrated systems, such a mobiles and advanced appliances.

The PlayStation 3 isn’t a super-computer. It is a very expensive and ill-designed console, which already today suffers from production issues, memory limitations and simply not enough game titles… This isn’t the great step in computing Sony promised. In terms of raw power and more efficient design Microsoft’s XBox360 got it beaten hands down. It will be years before developers learn to take advantage of the Cell, if there is anything left to take advantage of – and by that time the battle of the Next-gen console is already in the hands of Microsoft and Nintendo, who both knew who their audience were and what they wanted to create!

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Vista: Gone Public… Gone Sour!

Posted by DarkJedi – February 2, 2007

These days the TV, the Internet and everything is filled with hype and advertisement for the public launch of Windows Vista. I have already blogged about how Microsoft seem to have little to no arguments for buying Vista and while this could prove a problem for their marketing department (and later their profits) Microsoft is facing is far bigger problem: public opinion…

The blogosphere is filled with blogs and indepth articles on Vista, and frankly, it isn’t a positive vibe! The blogosphere, for the largest part, rejects Vista as a product of real value, claiming it to be overpriced and filled with consumer-encumbering DRM. Furthermore Microsoft has complicated the issue for a normal user, when he wants to buy a version of Vista, as there are simply to many versions to pick from – and the normal user cannot distinguish these and will probably end up buying either a version for which he pays too much for features he will never use or buys a version that doesn’t hold the features he required or expected. This isn’t going to go well with public opinion over time, trust me!

However, the main problem for Microsoft and its marketing department will be to distinguish the much needed features in Vista from the already working and installed XP on the ordinary user’s PC. Even Mac OS X has gained a lot of support over the years from when Windows XP was released and now the new version, Leopard, will soon appear and make the choice of buying Vista even more difficult – especially since all the “innovation” in Vista has come from the current version of Mac OS X :) Wherter to choose to continue using XP, install Mac OS X or buy Vista will be a choice that will prevent a largescale adaptation of Vista in itself.

Another problem for Microsoft is that history has taught people to wait for at least the first service pack when Microsoft released a new operating system. This time around business is highly expected to use such an adaptation strategy and Microsoft knows this. Naturally what they do is that they speed up the production of the first service pack and therefore expects in the second half of 2007 – hoping that people doesn’t notice the other message a quick service pack release is saying, which is:

“Vista is every bit as filled with security holes as XP was”

Apparently issuing a service pack is the best argument for Vista Microsoft’s marketing department could come up with. Of course they still have to defend their choice in adding tons and tons of DRM directly into Vista to the consumer. There is no doubt that, apart from using valuable ressources on the users computer, it will annoy and take away basic rights from your own computer. As the BBC has already reported the DRM-schemes and license in Vista is perhaps its only real new feature and it is very anti-consumer! Naturally Microsoft claims that they had no choice in this and that the Greedy Business ™ of the movie- and musicindustry forced them, but hey, Microsoft represents the most widespread pierce of software in the world. Their operating system is the basis of almost the entire digital world and trust me when I say that if Microsoft threatened to exclude all the movie studios that wanted this DRM in Vista from its operating system they would all agreed to almost any demand made by Microsoft. Apparently Microsoft doesn’t care for the interests of its customers anymore and are afraid of a little confrontation with the content-providers, unlike Apple. This is perhaps the most sad part about Vista, as even Microsoft’s founder Bill Gates has admitted that DRM in its current form doesn’t work. Even more sad when you consider that the DRM functions in Vista has already been bypassed, which means that every pirate now has a way around and only the paying customer will feel its constant annoying degrade of his computer. Of course this will be nothing, in terms of DRM, compared to the next version of Windows…

A hot topic is also the activation scheme in Vista which is another pierce of DRM in the software, which is according to Microsoft’s claims suppose to prevent piracy. Their studies show that 22% of activations fail and claim therefore that 22% of Windows installations are pirated… Well, that’s one way to twist an analysis the wrong way! Another, and more proper way, would be to say that their activation scheme doesn’t work for 22% and is therefore a pretty lousy pierce of software. Everyone knows that the windows activation scheme has been bypassed since day one and therefore Microsoft should instead of accusing paying customers of being pirates and using them in an anti-piracy spin on analysis ensure that the user is not troubled by this DRM-scheme.

While Microsoft does all it can to hype and spin its latest Windows version into a success its partners are having problems making drivers for Vista, which means that many users will find the Vista experience tedious, annoying and unstable – not a good start for something they claim is a better alternative than XP, Linux or Mac OS X! Stability is a main issue when companies choose an operating system and therefore this will also give a bad public opinion on their product pretty soon, when people starts to report their many encounters with bad drivers – or as they will see it: bad stability!

The reason Microsoft is trying beyond hard to market and hype this product, together with its new version of Office, is that such a big upgrade – especially combined with an Office-upgrade – is a big decision for many companies and government organisations … and also an opportunity! Many are looking at the alternatives currently. Mac OS X has gained momentum from the success of the iPod and Linux has gained a lot of ground on the server-side and are pushing to become a desktop alternative. This is a dangerous time for Microsoft, who needs to keep people vendor locked-in to Microsoft and their products. If they choose Vista they will be in the Microsoft boat for a long ride and this is good business … for Microsoft at least! There are many good reasons for choosing an alternative to Microsoft line of software, but every serious company should at least investigate the choice at this point in time. Perhaps they will discover a better alternative for their company structure and work process – and in the process become more vendor independent!

There is no doubt that this is a critical point in time for Microsoft and they are struggling against a negative turning of the public opinion on their products. Vista comes late and it does not give a direct advantage, a must-have feature, that Microsoft can use to hype and sell the product. Instead Microsoft has found out that the competition has grown stronger in its absence and the Internet has made it more difficult to cover up the truths about what the user is really getting. The issue of DRM will not go away, and Microsoft will be one of the companies that will feel the wraith of its users most as their user base is so large and so diverse… They will blaim Microsoft for making an unstable product because of DRM and poor drivers, blaim Microsoft for selling them the wrong version or forcing them to upgrade and thereby spending a lot of money on a new version that has no real advantage over the old one. No one said it was going to be easy to sell Vista, and if they did they were wrong :)

Vista Logo

Greedy Business ™ : Refusing Reality!

Posted by DarkJedi – January 23, 2007

The recording industry and the movie industry is still locked in a fierce struggle between its enormous earnings and its customers. Questions like the next-gen DVD format, DRM, Digital Music and the Distribution Model is becoming a daily debate on the Internet. Meanwhile the Greedy Business ™ continues its hollow crusade against its customers in a poor attempt at gaining some earnings, when innovations and reason fail completely! They keep on forcing companies like Microsoft to incorporate tons of DRM in its products – DRM that will annoy and alienate consumers worldwide according to the BBC. At the same time news is running across the Internet showing that one DRM-scheme after the other becomes obsolete, as programmers finds way around the annoying software – leaving the average customer in a DRM-hell while the pirates gets the best and most functional product…

Even though many companies among the Greedy Business ™ understands that DRM is loosing its battle and is only ending up hurting their image and loosing customers, they still refuse to act. The boss of Real admits that DRM needs to go, and he is the CEO of company that makes a living on selling DRM-infected music! They are faced with a distribution model that doesn’t cut it for the digital markets and therefore they are loosing grounds to independent labels fast! It is a wonder that companies as big as the big four, with all their analyst, having seen the signs before? They have lost all credibility with their ridiculous lawsuits among customers, and failed to see the market that was right in front of them and lost it all to Apple, who now sits firmly on the throne. The problem for the Greedy Business ™ is that Apple is the key to the digital music distribution and they have lost control with Apple – and they want control! More than Gollum wants his precious.. Simply put: Their analysts failed them in every way possible and they ended up loosing the distribution model of tomorrow (or rather today) to Apple, while they were busy suing their customers making Apple look good and them looking rather tarnished…

Now they are realizing that times are changing and the new time is now. Universal admits that they have finally realized this. They can no longer keep using the tactics they used to sway the French when they were met with the claims of tomorrow! Luckily for them the French are easy to scare and even easier to buy! Websites are now creating the link between music composers and performers and their fans – without labels! Of course the Greedy Business ™ respond quickly by using the massive army of lawyers (which by now must be many times larger than their group of signed musicians) and tries to gain control of these markets using untruthful allegations like they have done up until now. Of course the best way to shut down a competitor that does a better and cheaper job than you is to have his ISP shut down the website, when you cry foul… The Greedy Business ™ simply doesn’t understand the basics of the Internet and the great distribution model that lies within… The social commitment from people and the cheap access to information makes it an ideal replacement for labels, but hey – you can always cry “piracy” and sue everybody! That’s a business plan as well … and has been for the last decade if you talk to the CEO’s of the Greedy Business ™. They have refused to admit that their distribution model is failing and only a few of the smaller companies actually does anything about it, like giving more power and earnings to the actual performers/artists (the one that make all the content and the money earning potential in the first place). Meanwhile organizations like RIAA and MPAA keeps adding more and more dirt to the public image of the Greedy Business ™.

The digital music sales continues to rise with an amazing speed and the CD sales continues to fall, like the DVD sales … People are looking for the digital alternative – but DRM simply makes this too complicated and frustrating and often piracy is the only real alternative out there! The Greedy Business ™ keeps on blaming piracy, while they fail to realize that they have not given people a real alternative to piracy. It isn’t only about price, and obviously you can’t compete with free, but also about the rights you buy. When you buy DRM-infected music you have bought a product of much less value compared to one without DRM. When you want to buy one without DRM what alternative do you have, save piracy? The Greedy Business ™ cannot answer this question as they know the answer would reveal what they are actually using DRM for: Controlling the market and the consumer’s habbits – NOT controlling piracy, which they by now must know is impossible (even though they naturally claim every year that their efforts are working… *sighs*)…

The future has already begun. The demand is there. The technology is there… But the Greedy Business ™ isn’t ready to provide us with the alternative, like the pirates have been for over a decade! They keep on believing that suing their customers will keep the past alive and their failing distribution model above water. They have by now blamed everyone, save themselves, for their failing sales… With so many analysts employed one would think that they could see things a bit clearer and perhaps a bit sooner. They failed to see the market Apple saw clearly, they failed to see what their customers wanted in digital distribution, but kept on restricting content and adding more and more DRM… One day soon they will see just how far from reality they have swayed – and when they do realize that their market is gone, taking over by someone else… and their army of lawyers won’t be able to help them (perhaps except in USA with their lack of reality in their lawsuits!) …

Statue of Liberty

The Console War : Poor Design Decisions!

Posted by DarkJedi – January 19, 2007

The war of the next-gen console is still raging. The fronts are being pushed as frontal attacks are launched almost daily using false hype. Sony is in dire straits at the moment as they desperately needs the momentum of a successful PlayStation 3 in their next-gen DVD format war, where the battle between Blu-Ray and HD DVD is entering a critical stage… A stage, where Sony would have hoped to had announced the massive success of its PlayStation 3 and thereby the Blu-Ray player hiding within. While most of us with a bit of understanding for technology couldn’t see the benefit of using the slow Blu-Ray drive Sony was sure in its mission: To ensure that people get vendor-locked in to paying Sony royalties with Blu-Ray. For game developers, like the ones that worked on the PlayStation 3-version of Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion, the slow speed of the drive actually makes them put the game content on the drive several times to increase the read speed of the drive. Others instead use almost full game installations on the hard drive to avoid having horrible load times! Why Sony chose to include a 60 GB hard drive is obvious: It is needed to avoid the slow loading times of their “wonderful” Blu-Ray drive… What a design decision! No wonder that the PlayStation 3 is not in high demand!

Apart from the horrid Blu-Ray drive the PlayStation 3 is having certain problems because of all the copy-protection DRM software Sony has put in their expensive pierce of hardware. The occasional blinks people are reporting is not caused by the PlayStation 3 to be out of performance power, but instead caused by the HDCP DRM, that tries to ensure that you do not copy those Blu-Ray movies on your PlayStation 3! … And should you decide to try and expand your PlayStation 3 capabilities (why you buy one in the first place is beyond my understanding, buy hey!) make sure you buy Sony’s stuff, or you will void your warranty!

This all adds up for Sony, who is in great trouble, as nobody is really buying their brand new console because of two things: Price and Titles! There simply aren’t any titles that are giving people a reason to buy this ill-conceived console! Sony cannot hide the numbers any more – even their scaled down expectations did not cut it! This problem will keep on growing as no game developer will spend many years and great investment in trying to develop a number one hit game for a platform with a little more than 1 million consoles, when they can develop easier for Xbox360+PC easier, with better tools and go for a market with more than 250 million gamers! Already game developers are scaling down their PlayStation 3 investments! Meanwhile Sony can see Microsoft getting exclusive hit after exclusive hit on their XBox360, like the speed-selling smash-hit, Gears of War and the newcomer on the hit-block, massive-selling Lost Planet… Perhaps Sony should have listened to guys like John Carmack of id Software and Gabe Newell of Valve.

While Bill Gates is often a better speaker than the designer of the PlayStation at Sony, he is firm in his criticism of the competing consoles he does have a valid point! The Xbox Live! service did things right… Both Sony and Nintendo are trying to copy that success in their consoles, but they will start from zero, while Microsoft can boast of a well-earned success at this point! There is good money in Live! at this time – and money is nice when you want to hit Sony where it hurts: The price! … Well, if the guys at Microsoft were a bit smart they would VERY quickly pick up the phone and call Blizzard and make the deal of their life: Make sure that World of WarCraft comes to XBox360 and becomes an exclusive title! That alone would put Sony in their coffin and seal it nice and tight!

PS3

High Definition : Progessive War!

Posted by DarkJedi – January 16, 2007

After CES the next-gen DVD format war turned nasty. Until now most of the press releases and hype shouted from the two camps have been rather sober, but now they are both releasing that this will be a long and devastating war. The hybrids have entered the war, promising to prolong, but not help either win the war. Customers are still leaving the two duke it out, while staying away from choosing sides. This of course means that neither side can claim victory – even though that hasn’t stopped Sony from doing so. In the mean time people are starting to test the two formats up against one another and finding out the truths. Currently HD DVD has three main advantages, if you look at this war from the eyes of the consumer for once, and not who’s company will earn more from winning:

  1. Cheaper and easier to produce. Toshiba found a cheaper and more cost-effective choice, which does not suffer the problems of the more advanced Blu-Ray blue diode, which has caused much production despair at Sony. The problem is mainly based in the fact that the blue diode of the Blu-Ray is more advanced and has to be cut more flawlessly than that of the blue diode of HD DVD to be able to read the more densely packed information – yielding in greater storage capacity.
  2. HD DVD currently has the best result on screen with less artifacts – according to test on Ars Technica. Apparently there are some problems with artifact in the Blu-Ray encoding/decoding on the tested machines.
  3. It is easier to decrypt and copy. Already HD DVD allows “Managed Copy”, but it is also restricted to “only” having AACS-copy protection, which is already broken at this point. This means that people can make backups and distribute the legally bought content onto their portable devices, which is a very nice freedom to have, when you pay good money for the product.

While there is no clear winner both aim lower and lower in their arguments against one another and customers remain unaware of the true differences between the two. Most just pick Blu-Ray because it has bigger capacity (which Toshiba has just made a thing of the past). The PlayStation 3 was suppose to put the last nails in HD DVD’s coffin, but Sony’s production problems and failing demand for the new generation is making the Blu-Ray look a bit troubled. It still has the largest support among the film studios, but so far most titles and the best one have been released on HD DVD. In the last great war of formats between VHS and Betamax (supported by Sony), Sony lost on Betamax – mostly because they would not allow the adult film industry to use its format. This was a great misunderstanding of the consumer, who wasn’t about to choose a format without adult entertainment and therefore Betamax lost – costing Sony a fortune! This time around, however, Sony hasn’t learned its lesson, as adult filmmakers have chosen HD DVD, based on two main points:

  1. It is cheaper and easier to produce HD DVD, compared to Blu-Ray.
  2. Sony won’t allow adult films on Blu-Ray.

Of course at this point this doesn’t make HD DVD a clear winner and therefore speculation have begun that question whether a winner will be found among the two or a third party will go in and snatch victory among the already irritated consumers. Some have suggested that Flash-technology combined with broadband will win, or the newly announced VMD, while others, like myself thinks that this discussion will reach another level when InPhase launch their highly competitive product later this year. In the end my guess is that Holographic storage will win the day, if optical storage last that long :)

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