Nov
10
Mildly off-topic rant: Sony and closed systems
So. I was reading BusinessWeek’s article on “Stringer’s Sony Turnaround Plan”, trying to see if there was a quote on the company’s portable audio plans. There was none (HD, the PS3 and Blu-ray are the company’s main guns), but my crap-o-meter went nuts upon reading the following quote, courtesy of Sony CEO Howard Stringer:
“Why would someone want to pay $1.99 per download of one TV series episode on a closed system like a video iPod when they can transfer all the content they want from their own devices like DVRs to our multimedia portable player at no extra cost? Consumers already can do this with the PlayStation Portable,” Stringer said.
DRM is evil (so I’m not defending Apple here), but who on earth is Sony to talk about closed systems? How about:
“Why would someone want to pay $20+ per movie on a closed system like a Sony PSP when they can transfer all the content they want from their own devices like DVRs to our multimedia portable player at no extra cost? Consumers already can do this with the PlayStation Portable.”
You didn’t ask this question when your company started selling movies in the UMD format (playable in the PSP only, for now at least) at $20+ a disc. Enough with those incredibly stupid quotes.
Before leaving the site, have a look at our most popular entries:
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- Apple Lossless offerings from the iTMS not likely—for now (June 28, 2006)
- Review: Datasafe oomi (June 7, 2006)
- HOWTO: Move your iTunes music while preserving library data (May 11, 2006)
- Batteries 101 (May 8, 2006)
- Presentation: iPod Hi-Fi, plus a few thoughts (March 2, 2006)
- Presentation/Review: Creative Zen Vision:M (December 9, 2005)
- Review: Alegria Audio Ling bookshelf speaker system (November 9, 2005)
- HOWTO: Put together a $3K audiophile CD player for $555 (October 20, 2005)
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