Cilogy wrote:I just realized there is no way to say "I don't have friends" without feeling incredibly ashamed or making it sound awkward.

ChristNolan wrote:

Cilogy wrote:I just realized there is no way to say "I don't have friends" without feeling incredibly ashamed or making it sound awkward.

This is why they should have never given the HD disc market "Blu-Ray" to Sony, a motion picture company.

HD-DVD was the better technology and Toshiba, who was behind it, is a manufacturer in technology, not a motion picture company. They would've been looking out for the consumer first and the studios second.

Notice how Blu-Ray's still have region coding?, in 2014, for no reason really ---> When all HD-DVD's were region free from the start, all of them! HD-DVD also had so many scanning and viewer advances than Blu-Ray. King Kong HD-DVD is still one of the best HD discs ever made. U CONTROL is awesome.

Toshiba also had the DVD logo rights, they were going to make DUAL DISC (HD-DVD and DVD) back in 2007 to get people to transfer over from DVD in masses, what did Blu-Ray do? Not introduce this until 2013 for the most part. Again, only looking out for selling various SKU's of the same movie on DVD instead of advancing the technology to get everyone to switch over right away to the HD disc market.

Once Sony won, Sony crippled the advancement of the technology. Have you heard of anything great Blu-Ray has done to the technology and their Blu-Ray decks? Toshiba's HD-DVD deck, HD-XA2, made around 2007 is still the best HD deck out there. Some 2007 HD-DVD's are still better HD discs, both in quality and features, than anything pressed in 2014 by Sony's Blu-Ray. I own all HD-DVD movies pressed and honestly, the movie looks better on HD-DVD than on Blu-Ray. God honest truth! And these were pressed in 2006-2007 for the most part!

I was preaching this in the early days of the Blu-Ray vs. HD-DVD war, but everyone was so up Sony's butt, that I was baffled how a consumer would pick a studio to control the technology!!!! I was like, "Don't you guys understand what they're trying to do here????"

Years later, Blu-Ray is continually dying because it's being controlled by a motion picture studio who is only looking out for piracy first and foremost and consumer second or last. Why care about technology when you are the one in charge of the content as well, you know? That is what happened and consumers have been screwed since.

In addition, Sony has never lowered their licensing fees to simply allow a company to use the Blu-Ray logo so that more electronic companies can make Blu-Ray products or playback decks to advance the technology. Can you burn a personal copy of your Blu-Ray movies at home like you can DVD movies? Wonder why? Sony makes it expensive to license/produce blank Blu-Ray discs and drives, and that's just a small part of it. The encryption on Blu-Ray is harder than DVD. In the end, it's just greed by the studios who put their content/product in front of the advancement of the Blu-Ray / HD disc technology. They have slowed/crippled the HD disc market and technology annually because they are in control, from A to Z.

This is why the U.S. government still doesn't allow movie studios to control or own any public movie theaters and rightfully so. (U.S. v. Paramount Pictures, et al., 1948) You should never give one entity complete control of 1 market. Collusion, corruption between competitors happen and that's what you have been seeing with Blu-Ray technology. Imagine if studios own all movie theaters? They would never allow smaller movies to screen and they would never technologically advance anything in exhibition for the consumer other than to make it cheaper for themselves. They would manipulate the release dates, have short screening windows or play a movie forever, never releasing it on HD disc or DVD, you know? Thank God, they can't own movie theaters!

I wish HD-DVD would have won, Apple and Microsoft with Toshiba would have advanced the HD disc market tremendously. Steve Jobs/Apple and Microsoft were ready to fully back HD-DVD if Toshiba won. Microsoft even had an external HD-DVD player for their XBOX out in the market. They were going to include a built in HD-DVD drive in the next XBOX. What could have been! When Sony won, Apple/Microsoft and many others left it for digital downloading and streaming.

Notice Apple never put Blu-Ray players or drives in any of their machines after Sony Blu-Ray won. Then Steve Jobs famously said, "Blu-Ray is in a bag of hurt," in 2008. Sony was just in it, to control the content and how you can watch their content. Apple/Microsoft knew this and balked, sadly this killed the advancement of the HD disc market technology in the process for us, the consumer.

So, this leak doesn't surprise me one bit, the studios strong armed Toshiba and forced them out in order to control the HD disc market. They hated that Toshiba controlled the DVD logo and market since the day VHS beat Sony BetaMax years before. Sony vowed to not lose again and spent a good fortune on the Blu-Ray war.

In the process though, Sony and the studios have pretty much killed the HD disc market because they were not looking out for the consumer or the technology of it, they are looking out for their content that THEY produce. Never a good thing for a consumer, ever. And consumer's today are way smarter and saw how bad, expensive (still) and inferior Blu-Ray is becoming. One wonders if it's being done purposely now by Sony to completely eliminate all physical media, but that's a whole other theory.

Now Sony is trying their luck on controlling the entire internet from their content. Good luck with that Sony!

dafox wrote:How much time I've wasted on the internet.

dafox wrote:How much time I've wasted on the internet.

dafox wrote:How much time I've wasted on the internet.