Coming back from a bit of a vacation from the board to post this interesting
interview and
podcast. If what he's saying is true, then a lot of the accusations about BDA licensing, BD+, and managed copy are just plain false. And yes, he does make the tired cheer for MPEG-2 (give it up already!), among other things, but he also makes a lot of good points about the business side that a lot of people ignore.
ETA: The podcast contains significantly more discussion, such as Parsons tipping his hat to HD DVD's run out of the gate, as well as the mention of a Philips Blu-ray player, presumably by the end of 2006.
Here's a couple of excerpts:
On title quality and the first side-by-side comparisons:
Quote:
Ben:
One of which is an exclusive Blu-ray titles, yet to be released on HD DVD.
Andy:
It's an interesting thing. One of the points we wanted to make today, is that we understand what you guys are doing as far as looking as what is comparable today and comparing apples to apples for the first time is irresistible and exciting when you are looking at the same titles on both formats. I did see what I thought to be some procedural errors on the part of Hi-Def digest, they were making some assumptions about hardware that were being attributed to the format. Obviously you have a player with it's own decoder in it and you have some assumptions about what CODECs were being used, which I don't think were necessarily fully accurate. But I think once again that's irresistible, it's understandable, but it's missing the long term view, which is when this thing really gets going, this big bolder rolling down hill, it's kinda hard for me to imagine how a consumer could look at both formats and say, you know that one that only has 3 studios and one or two CE companies supporting it, is the one for me. I understand the argument about the low price, but as you pointed out, Matt they are loosing a lot of money on that and they will not make up for it in titles because they won't have enough titles.
|
On BD+ and managed copy:
Quote:
Ben:
How do you envision managed copy working and is there still a distinct difference in HD DVD and Blu-ray in regards to their managed copy?
Andy:
There never was a difference, that is a AACS function, has nothing to do with the formats, if you utilize AACS when the final specs are completed, than managed copy will become part of the specification.
Ben:
MS stated as it was not technical, but instead a license difference.
Andy:
Some companies were concerned that BDJ might interfere with managed copy. There is no such thing as mandatory managed copy in terms of the AACS spec. Mandatory means a title producer is required to support that. But right now it isn't part of the spec. BD+ will have no impact on managed copy. We do have it and have stated that we will have it and that if you have a BD player and managed copy is supported by AACS, than it will work the same as HD DVD, there will be no difference and BD+ will not interfere with it in any way shape or form.
|
On the BDA and "it's all Sony's fault"
Quote:
Ben:
How do you feel, being from Pioneer and all, that Song gets all the credit for Blu-ray? What has Pioneer's role in the BDA?
Andy:
We began R&D way back in the 90's. I did a presentation that an old DVD conference called DVD Pro back in 2000. We didn't know at that time that we would be one day talking about a format called HD DVD. In fact we went to great lengths not to call it HD DVD. We decided that we need 2x the quality of broadcast quality.
Ben:
So do you think Pioneer has as big if not bigger role then Sony does?
Andy:
No, no Sony shipped a blu-ray drive two or three years and they do deserve the image of the leader of Blu-ray.
Ben:
Don't you think that it shows something that Samsung shipped the first Blu-ray player?
Andy:
Your point is that it isn't fair to call it a Sony product. In fact, we think that Sony gets rather annoyed when it is called that. The BDA is comprised of many successful CE and computer companies
|
