Will Sony start supporting all formats ever? (1 Viewer)

[Westly T]

I've not really kept up on all the chats and information, but after reading a little, these are some thoughts.

With it looking like Blue-ray will be the next format, I can't help but hope Sony will make a universal player. I moved away from Sony DVD players primarily because they have chosen to only support their formats (SACD and not DVD-A). The utter lack of high end products in their current lineup also makes me think their DVD player sales must have faltered. I'm sure some of it was the work on Blue-ray, but still.

I don't want to have multiple disk players! I do prefer SACD for multi-channel music, but with the limited selection of available titles you really need to be able to play both. As more formats emerge I hope Sony considers making players for their customers, and not try to force only their formats as they have for so many years. I have not even considered a Sony player for years because of this.

If they would build a quality player that can do it all, their players would sell. As media comes out, soon the best features would be on Blue-ray disks with the superior capacity. They could sell the players in mass and the media would still win out. Other manufacturers would have added pressure to support Blue-ray as well to be able to compete. I can't imagine it would be difficult for them to make the Blue-ray players compatible, but it would be difficult for Toshiba to make theirs Blue-ray compatible.

If for just once Sony would cater to the needs of their customers, they could win this game with ease. The new format would take off very fast if one could just go buy one player and know it would play everything instead of waiting years for a format war to end before spending a dime. Perhaps some other studios would make a few bucks initially, but in the long run Sony would only win. Hopefully they will also add support for DVD-A as well.

 

[Grant B]

A couple years back I talked to a sony rep at consumer electronics show and asked about supporting DVD-A.

He said since the DVD was 'designed by many', they get 1/16th of the fee from everyone sold. They get 1/2 of the fee for every SACD since they and Philips did it......hence they would never support DVD-A.

......But on DualDiscs it's interesting that the Sony Music/Movie arm loves it but go to the Sony electronics support site and it has this huge warning that Sony does not support DualDiscs since it deviates from both the CD & DVD specs and you'll get cancer from them and go to hell if you EVEN think about buying one......

Interesting little spat between the 2 divisons that one day might them eat their words on DVD-A.

Remember they said they would NEVER EVER EVER IN A MILLION YEARS support VHS.

Now where did I put my Sony VHS tape deck agan???

 

[Kevin C Brown]

I think Sony is stupid. There, I said it.

They have this sweet new DVD player, the 9100ES or something. I can just bet that CD and SACD playback are simply sublime on that machine. But the stupid freaking thing doesn't play DVD-A's. So I won't buy it, and I bet they don't sell that many since Pioneer, Yamaha, Denon, etc, already have very competitive UNIVERSAL machines out there.

Or, just come out with a dedicated audio only machine that only plays CD and SACD. No DVD-V. Then I'd get the Sony and an Arcam DVD-V/DVD-A player and have a killer 2 player combo.

For the very specific reason of the whole SACD/DVD-A competing format war where neither of them went anywhere, I will be on the sidelines waiting to see what happens with Blu-ray and HD DVD before I spend any cash on either of those two. I personally think that those two formats will quite similarly end up as niche formats anyway.

 

[Richard_G]

Excuse my ignorance, but what "in a nutshell" are DVD-A and SACD?

 

[Westly T]

Hi Richard_G

Both are high resolution, stereo or multi channel audio formats that are often included in DVD players. They usually require 5.1 analog inputs to be connected to the receiver, and since most receivers only have one set of 5.1 or 7.1 inputs it's important that one player can do it all. A few have digital connections, but usually this causes the SACD sources to be converted to PCM format which is not prefered.

DVD-A is DVD-AUDIO, a high resolution PCM audio format that allows up to 196Khz, 24bit (CD's are 44.1Khz and usually 20 Bit) encoding on each channel and up to 5.1 discrete channels of audio (CD's are two discrete channels, DVD video's use Compression).

SACD is Sony's High Resolution scheme that is digital, but has a lot of analog characteristics to it. It uses media that is similar to DVD media and can be either stereo or 5.1, it is not PCM, but DSD (Something Sony came up with) Search on DSD for more information.

It is an example of how format wars can cause both formats to loose out and the masses to just ignore them. We hope this doesn't happen to High Definition DVD's (Blue-ray & HD DVD)!

PS I had all Sony Receivers (My main room unit was Sony's Flagship ES Receiver) and DVD players once, but now my Main room stuff is Denon and bedroom is Pioneer Elite. The only Newer Sony product I have is a 32" TV. I still have a few leftover sony components.

 

[Mort Corey]

The initial reports from this years CES is that the Sony Blu-ray player won't be available until the third quarter of 06 while the HD-DVD rendition will be out in the first quarter........and at half (or less) the price of the Sony unit. Both formats will require HDMI interface for HD play.

Unless there is some killer software that really shines on an HDTV (substantially IMO) the whole thing may become another loser like DVD-A and SACD have become.....not saying I don't appreciate those formats, they'll just never become mainstream and if only one survives it's likely to be DVD-A.

Mort

 

[Rachael B]

Kevin, I don't think "stupid" is a strong enough word! Sony used to have over 30% of DVD player sales and it's eroded to under 20%. Granted, Chinese competition was going to take it's toll but, Sony has just walked away from the "uni" player market, the most profitable players sold. IMO, this has caused them to further lose marketshare and $$$$.

My bet is that by not suppourting DVD-A has directly cost Sony hundreds of millions of dollars, if not much more...?

Sony isn't even a clever market bully, shssssh! "...stupid is as stupid does..."

 

[Kevin C Brown]

Rachael-

Mort- DVD-A itself is already dead. *Sometimes* DualDiscs include a DVD-A layer, but there are a lot more SACDs being released these days than pure DVD-A's.

 

[Jerome Grate]

You would think Sony would have learned during the Beta/VHS war that they painfully lost. DVD-A is probably dead and Sony keeps pumping money and effort into SACD. I wonder if Sony will have the problem of backward compatibility for their SACDs with HD blue-ray players as far as being HDMI compliant? May be some can answer that question.

 

[Mark Hamilton]

I don't understand why Sony is the one constantly at blame for the looming HD-DVD-Blu-ray squables.... the last time I checked, the majority of major electronics manufacturing firms have announced support for the Blu-ray standard. Further, virtually every single motion picture studio has also announced support for Blu-ray. I don't anticipate Columbia Tri-Star or MGM releasing HD-DVD content in the near future.

Why doesn't Toshiba share some of the blame for this fiasco? They stand representing the DVD forum as the lead advocate for the "official" successor to the DVD standard yet the overwhelming majority of DVD forum members have been participating in the development of Blu-ray. If people want to blame anybody for a "format war" which may or may not result in your children being drafted into combat, perhaps consider Toshiba as a potential target of your venom.

 

[ChristopherDAC]

Someone needs to be more specific with his thread titles!

There have been scads of media formats over the years, and Sony has "supported" [in many cases originated] about two thirds of them. When you say "all" -- are you including Cartrivision and VX-1000 video tape? TelDec vinyl video discs? Digital Compact Cassette? AHD [a 10-inch vinyl digital audio record developed by JVC - ed.]?

They've supported 1/2-inch skip-field and EIAJ open-reel, 3/4-inch cassette, 1-inch open-reel, two kinds of 1/2-in cassette [Beta and VHS], and 8mm cassette, in video tape; LaserDisc, MUSE Hi-Vision LD, the wideband HDVS disc, DVD, UMD, and now Blu-Ray in video discs; all four quad LP formats, if I'm not mistaken; video encoders for digital audio, the CD, the MiniDisc, Digital Audio Tape, and SACD; someting called the "Mavica", which seems to have started out as a project to record video on a thing like a credit card; and various other obscure things. "All" covers plenty of territory, some of it hostile.