Slashdot | In Sony's Stumble, the Ghost of Betamax

Sony needs to have its head examined. Even the Big Blue (IBM to non-geeks) learned the lesson that standing on an island proclaiming it is the best land leaves in one place; on an island, alone. Sony did that with Betamax; rest in peace. Sony did that with Mini-Disc; rest in peace. Sony did that with Memory Stick and UMD; rest in peace (yeah, they are on a lifeline with the PSP but consider them dead). Sony did that with a very stupid MicroMV format (MiniDV rules); rest in peace.

Now, they want to do this shit again withthe next generation of DVD products? Why have they not learned that people do not like to be pigeon-holed and told they have only one choice? We, the consumers, have many choices and it is an expensive manufacturing mistake to not listen. It cost the industry a lot of money in adoption time and bloody warfare when DVD-R and DVD+R formats butted heads at the beginnig of the DVD revolution. Eventually, both sides survived but they are essentially made moot by the device manufacturers supporting all used formats. This will not be the case here for some time and that means buying one and missing out on the other, or buying both and spending a lot for early adoption. Businesses will not do that and will buy whatever is bundled with the systems they purchase.

Microsoft will back and bundle one type, seemingly in spite or defiance of the Sony backed standard which will show up it the delayed PS3 (last heard, one year out now). To Micro$oft's credit, their solution will enable a change to the other format if things tank and sour quickly on their chosen format. The simple fact of the matter is that the consumer will once again get caught in the middle of this latest version of the Hatfield's and the McCoys. And really, why should we have to do that again?

This is 2006 and I for one will not be purchasing either format until they get their shit together. I did not buy my first burner until I had a real need for it (a Pioneer so I could easily use it with my Mac and PC). My second burner was an LG and it was the first multi-format drive that burned DVD-R, DVD+R and DVD-RAM as well as all CD formats. I suspect that a lot of early adopters like myself will sit this fight out. this will hinder price drops, development of products to take advantage of the new standard(s) and growth in an industry that seems to be grappling to provide new toys for us to drool over and spend our hard earned cash on.

We are pretty much stagnant in terms of what we want and need from a system. Hell, in terms of simply getting email, instant messaging, writing some docs and web surfing, those taks can still be accomplished by a Pentium-classed machine quite admirably. When Windows XP first came out, everyone said you had to have at least a PentiumII to run it; I first installed in on a Pentium P166 with 512MB of RAM to show it can be done and works fine for simple taks. Mind you, with all the crap you have to add to it now (i.e. virus checkers, spy checkers, firewalls, that pig SP2 and more), I am starting to find living with a Pentium 4 2.6GHz and an AMD 2600+ just a little bit too slow because I do a lot of video and audio transcoding so I need more floating point crunching power (maybe for my birthday, hint, hint).

Anyhow, maybe they will buy a clue and realize that two formats is the least desrible outcome and fix this before it gets out of hand.

And maybe Betamax will make a comeback.

Peace.

Slashdot | In Sony's Stumble, the Ghost of Betamax