“Every July, 400 of the most powerful media and tech industry chieftains meet at investment banker Herb Allen’s conference in Sun Valley, Idaho, for what are usually convivial discussions of megatrends and megamergers. But this year, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates III laid into Sony Chief Executive Howard Stringer, according to two sources, including one who witnessed the exchange in a private room,” Cliff Edwards, Peter Burrows, and Ronald Grover report for BusinessWeek.
“Gates argued that Sony’s new high-definition DVD standard, called Blu-ray, needed to be changed so it would work smoothly with personal computers running on Microsoft’s Windows operating system. Stringer and two lieutenants defended the technology, insisting Blu-ray would work fine in PCs,” Edwards, Burrows, and Grover report. “Yet Gates’s ire only grew. ‘There must be something much deeper going on,’ Stringer said later, according to another person who heard the comment.”
“Despite the backing of the PC industry’s two biggest titans [Microsoft and Intel], it looks as if HD DVD’s days are numbered,” Edwards, Burrows, and Grover report… Sony appears to have a critical mass of support for its [Blu-ray] standard… A major factor swaying these companies is Blu-ray’s massive capacity. Its disks will hold at least 50 gigabytes and perhaps 100 gigs or more. HD DVD will start at 15 gigs, and top out at 45. ‘We want a standard that’s going to be around for 10 or 15 years,’ says one studio exec… Why is so much vitriol spilling from behind closed doors over one tech standard? The shiny little disk that Gates and Stringer tangled over has the potential to alter the landscape of the entertainment and technology industries.”
Excellent full article that explains the whole Blu-ray vs. HD DVD “war” here.
Related articles:
China to develop own as-yet-unnamed DVD format; Blu-ray vs. HD DVD vs ? – October 07, 2005
Paramount’s decision gives Blu-ray slight lead over HD DVD in next gen DVD format war – October 04, 2005
Record set straight on Blu-ray Disc Association’s superior high definition format – September 29, 2005
Microsoft backs cheaper, less sophisticated, lower capacity HD DVD over Apple-backed Blu-ray format – September 27, 2005
Twentieth Century Fox joins Apple, Dell, HP, others to support Blu-ray Disc format – July 29, 2005
Poll shows Apple-backed Blu-ray preferred by consumers over HD DVD for next-gen DVD standard – July 14, 2005
Microsoft allies with Toshiba on HD-DVD vs. Blu-ray Disc backers Apple and Sony – June 27, 2005
Apple joins Blu-ray Disc Association Board of Directors – March 10, 2005
MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Gates blew it when he didn’t select Sony (must have been because Apple did . . .). The problem is that he selected the wrong option, but that’s not a surprise as this is the guy that brought us Bob.
I love this quote…
Microsoft’s criticism is that Blu-ray disks will be more expensive to manufacture and may be impossible to make in large volumes. Yet the technology’s supporters are convinced costs will be similar over the long term. “We don’t see any big cost difference, and we know a thing or two about volume manufacturing,” says Michael Dell, chairman of PC giant Dell.
Talk about an understatement. LOL!
MW: Society
Leave it to Bill to keep progress bogged down deep in the mire.
Go, Bill, Go!
Stringer should have told Gates to change Windows to work with Blu-ray. Any changes Gates wants are, no doubt, designed to try and extend his illegal monopoly.
ken:
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Even more funny (perhaps), Bill’s wife Melinda actually headed up the Bob project. Her overwhelming insight to the future of GUIs told him she was THE ONE.
Does anyone wonder why the address for the Redmond campus is ONE MICROSOFT WAY? (all caps intended for poetic emphasis)
“In those days spirits were brave, the stakes were high, men were real men, women were real women and small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri were real small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri.”
– Douglas Adams
Hmmm 15-45 gigs vs. 50-100 gigs. That Bill sure knows how to make a micro softie.
Seems obvious to me. Blu-ray devices use BD-J (Java) to run them. HD DVD will run M$ software. I am sure these chieftains know this.
Rah Rah; Apple’s winning, Microsoft’s losing. Can we get past the cheerleading and look at the actual implications of these technologies?
BluRay intends to limit or remove fair personal for your video conent. With Apple so firmly entrenched in this camp, won’t it be difficult for them to move forward with the concept of the digital living room? Microsoft’s idea of streaming video from a computer through the XBOX-as-set-top is exactly what lots of people are hoping Apple will produce.
With BluRay preventing any kind of “ripping”, that scenario is cut off at the knees, no?
Sounds as if Gates has had his media R&D department forging away on HD-DVD related hardware/software. Gates can smell the stench of irrelevance for all those products MS is planning to release for the home media market. Sony’s looks as if it will be able to forego a repeat of the Beta vs VHS loss it suffered.
Isn’t Bluray going to be using H264 standard for their content format? M$ have been trying to get their own propriety format VC-1 to be adopted for this open standard without success. Of course Apple have already got that to work.
It seems to be that M$ wants their technology to be implemented in the next generation DVDs and it looks like they are going to be locked out.
Streaming video is what really interests me. I wouldn’t mind having movies stored on a server (either at home or remotely), rather than having to have shelves of DVDs messing up the place. H264 seems ideal for this.
Ampar –
Apple’s is at ONE INFINITE LOOP. What’s your point?
It’s all about VC-1. HD DVD has it, Blu-Ray does not.
Guess who developed VC-1?….
Why it was Microsoft. Bill is getting the mad because folks don’t want to use his proprietary codec. Seems like the world is getting some spine in telling Gates to pound sand.
<< Why is so much vitriol spilling from behind closed doors over one tech standard? >>
It’s simple. Blu-Ray uses the industry standard H.264 compression standard. HD-DVD is built around Microsoft’s VC-1. Without HD-DVD, Microsoft can’t control content. This is another case of Microsoft losing the standards battle. xBox is supposed to control the living room using HD-DVD.
Microsoft was built by its ability to establish standards. Since the anti-trust trials, Microsoft has been unable to do so. Without control of industry standards, Microsoft can’t control the desktop.
This isn’t the end of Microsoft. And it isn’t the beginning of the end, it is the end of the beginning (with apologies to Winston Churchill).
PC Apologist–
It’s pretty clear that Ampar’s point is that Gate believes there should be
ONE Microsoft way for everything.
Compare that to Apple’s Infinite Loop.
Didn’t steve say that both bluray and hddvd will use h264 so its win win??
“Fifteen gigabytes should be enough for anybody”
He didn’t say it word for word but the same meaning comes across.
“It’s all about VC-1. HD DVD has it, Blu-Ray does not.”
As I understand it–and from the article–Blu-Ray will support VC-1 as well as H.264. Conversely, HD-DVD will only support VC-1.
Its all about XBox and PS3. Gates and emBalmer will not cede anything to Sony.
Quote from article:
“A Microsoft spokesman acknowledges that Gates and Stringer talked at the conference, but says things did not become “heated.” “
Just like Ballmer never threw his chair and said he would “fscking kill Google”
Nice boys, these Softies.
“Stringer should have told Gates to change Windows to work with Blu-ray.”
But that would force Longhorn/Vista to a late-2008 release date.
Nice to hear how visibly upset Gates has become. He insists on setting the hardware and software (co-dec) “standard”, not the other way around. It looks like Sony and other big entertainment content providers are going with Blu-Ray. Apple continues to lead, not follow, as the entertainment industry as a whole are adopting flexible standards independent of Micro$oft’s paths. I expect the final nail in the coffin to be set soon.
PC Apologist: Why do you stick around here? It’s clear you’re not a common troll, so there must be some reason. Is it out of sheer stubborness? Are you obsessed? It’s obvious you have little respect for the site or its readers, so why don’t you leave?
Get it through your head: THIS IS A @#$%IN’ MAC FAN SITE!! Of COURSE we’re all “rah-rah Mac”! Of COURSE we’re all “Microsoft sucks”! If you want unbiased news coverage, go to a general news site.
I’m so vain, I call myself Lord. And I wear green tights and dance around Sherwood forest.
Gates gets visibly upset pretty easily. He and Ballmer are very ‘sympatico’ in that regard.
Pertinent quotes from the article:
“A major factor swaying these companies is Blu-ray’s massive capacity. Its disks will hold at least 50 gigabytes and perhaps 100 gigs or more. HD DVD will start at 15 gigs, and top out at 45. “We want a standard that’s going to be around for 10 or 15 years,” says one studio exec.”
First, if each BluRay layer can hold 25Gbs, and a triple layer disk is all that’s reasonable to expect they can make (a] because HD-DVD tops out at 3 layers, and b] BluRay group hasn’t even made a dual layer version yet that can be manufactured), then the most anyone should expect from BluRay is 75Gbs. Nice, but a far cry from “100 gigs or more”.
Second, what standard is realistically going to be around for a decade or more in the climate of technological change that we live in today? It’s just plain stooped to think BluRay, in any from we recognize now, will be on top in 2015. By that time, video streaming or high capacity, non-volatile flash memory (of just the technologies that we can predict) will make optical disks look quaint.
“Sony’s people have “bet the entire future on this,” says analyst Michael Pachter of Wedbush Morgan Securities. “It’s too important for them to lose, so they will do everything they can to win.””
That’s what this is really all about. FUD in the service of one side’s bottom line, not a rational accounting about which technology actually makes more sense – economically and technologically – to invest in.
As for why BluRay seems to have so many adherents besides the principals:
“In July, Sony decided to refine the Blu-ray standard in a way that would have far-reaching implications … Sony wanted to win the support of Twentieth Century Fox Film Studios, long Hollywood’s leading advocate for tough anti-piracy measures. So Sony agreed to add safeguards developed for Fox by San Francisco’s Cryptography Research, which could prevent Blu-ray movies from being ripped to a computer’s hard drive. … Fox execs say their decision became a no-brainer, because of the extra protection …”
This probably why Apple is on board too. They likely figured it was a good strategy to lick these studios’ boots in any way possible when it came to DRM, in order to get access to their content for the ‘iVideo Future’ Jobs wanted. In fact, a disk that made streaming more difficult dovetails nicely with Apple wanting to establish an online video download business (“Sure it may take a while to download content, but at least you can stream it from your hard drive!”).
With Universal’s recent decision to go it’s own way with downloadable content (and the probablility that the other studios will do the same), all of the toadying to them was for naught in Apple’s case. But the fact that BluRay disks will really lock down the content was and is a huge incentive for the rest of the industry – the economics of actually making the thing be damned. After all – they can always pass along the costs (not to mention the hassle) to us law-abiding customers. Right?
I’ve said it a milllion times, but forgive me – for the consumer, and for producers who realize that optical disks probably won’t be the ‘consumer’s choice’ for decade, HD-DVD makes MUCH more economic sense. It’s a tenth of the cost to produce, it has higher capacity versions that aren’t just ‘vapor’, and – since a 2+ hour HD movie will fit comfortably on a 15GB disk – the dual/triple layer versions will also hold all the content any HighDef release will ever need.