//beconfused

Sony Pictures has openly invited Toshiba and Microsoft to join the Blu-ray Disc Association. The IFA event saw an official announcement from Toshiba and the HD DVD Promotion Group about the lowering of prices for both HD DVD stand-alone players as well as for laptops with HD DVD drives, trying to fight the format war on price points.

Here is some of the points Blue-ray camp brought up:

“Never thought the price was an issue… when it comes to investing in a state of the art entertainment system with HD-Ready television and surround sound system, having to spend a bit extra to get Blu-ray, we feel, isn’t going to drive customers away. It’s the bigger picture we are looking at”.

Never thought that price is an issue? Someone should be fired here.

“The DVD format was good, but profitability only lasted for a couple of years before there was no money to be had in the hardware market”, said Marty. “We believe consumers are smart enough to realise the benefits and pay the extra accordingly.”

Actually the Blue-ray camp is being rather honest isn’t it. Everyone wants profit. The point that “consumers are smart enough to realize the benefits and pay the extra accordingly” irks me though. I am apparent quite stupid so please enlighten me.

“People aren’t interested in downloading videos at the moment. The internet is a good way of delivering music but not video”, said Eklund. “Blu-ray has a good 8 to 10 years before the Internet catches up.”

What?! People not interested in downloading videos? They actually wanted to if the price actually is more friendly. Look at what they’re doing with BitTorrent. And YouTube, which streams video is quite popular isn’t it? I conclude that this guy don’t use the internet, spend all his fortune on Blue-ray disk and is stabbing a HD-DVD voodoo doll right now.

Full report at Pocket-lint

Just last week Venturer Electronics announced a US$199 HD-DVD player. HD-DVD is region free. I don’t support either formats, but I certainly feel paying a thousand for a player is ridiculous. We shall wait and see.

A collection of some of Sony’s greatest quotes.

1. “Itâ??s probably too cheapâ?¦” â?? Ken Kutaragi, Regarding the $499 to $599 price point
2. “A bit pricey.” - Michael Ephraim, Managing Director of Sony Computer Entertainment Australia, speaking about Nintendo Wii in an interview with the age.com.au
3. “Microsoft does not concern us. Microsoft is not a technology company.” - Nobuyuki Idei, Sony chief corporate adviser in an interview with BBC NEWS
4. “We do not care.” â?? Kaz Hirai, current President of Computer Entertainment, regarding competition from Microsoft and Nintendo
5. “(the PS3) is not a game machineâ?¦” - Ken Kutaragi, Regarding the machineâ??s beefy hardware architecture
6. “Most people, I think, don’t even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?” - Thomas Hesse, Sony BMG’s president of global digital business, responding to the outcry over Sony’s DRM Rootkit spyware uncovered on its music CDs

Thanks Sony, you guys brought a lot of memorable quotes. Meanwhile in technology news, PlayStation inventor Kutaragi leaves Sony. Since hitting the market seven months ago, PlayStation sales have been outpaced by Nintendo’s Wii and Microsoft’s Xbox 360.read more | digg story

Last Friday I went to the PC Show held in Suntec Convention Center. I carefully picked Friday since Thursday is a public holiday (Vesak Day) and Saturday Sunday is just weekends. I don’t want to go there when it is crowded you know.

I went with about 6 friends all aiming to purchase different things. I realize the hottest selling thing is probably storage disk, storage media and RAMs. I don’t think they are that cheap but everyone’s excited over storage cards. I wonder why would people need so much SD cards.

I purchased a printer, the HP Photosmart C5100. It’s quite affordable at SG$279 with a SG$50 voucher. And with trade in of my non-functioning printer, I get an additional SG$50.

Above is the printer. Can you name all the items on my table?

There aren’t really any special stuff asides the usual showgirls. Sony brought some people to do Brazilian dance or something. The Brazilian dancers shake here and there and patroled the entrances of the PC Show. It was seemingly good treat to the photographers. They’re snapping happily and the Sony girls were looking really good. And at the end of the dance routine, they unveil a scroll that has some Sony promotion which look awfully ridiculous and they shouted “Sony!”

I was stunned for a moment and the other girl shouted “Sony!” and they continued parading to the next entrance announcing “Sony!” every few shakes. My heart just died a little. Sony!

This new Sony LA3 desktop doesn’t have the mouse attached to the keyboard and it looks sleek! It’s look good but Sony, if you give me a transparent keyboard with a glassy keyboard base, I’ll love you more! And the computer could have looked cooler.

In the PC market, Sony is definately doing their homework more on iconic designs. Apple did wonderfully well in the design field, it’s something that boring PC markers such as Dell and Dell and, er, Dell can learn something from. I already see HP and Acer having bits of improvement althougth they still do a lot more work in a prettier chasis.

[via Engadget]

The Sony Playstation Portable (PSP) translates for you when you need help - in this case, the supply of toilet paper.

Funny Jap PSP Ad

Ahhh, the power of Sony!

An advertisement every Tuesday

Engadget notes that Xbox 360 is getting a new peripheral - a QWERTY keyboard no less.

It doesn’t really look too comfortable but it’s perhaps something new. It’s now got a keyboard and it’s somewhat like a computer now. It just needs a web browser, probably not Mozilla Firefox. How about Xbox 360 Internet Explorer? (Please give me some money if you use this name, thank you.)

I was just thinking last week actually - one day gaming consoles and PCs would become some sort of a combine console. And the company that’s likely to make it happen is probably Microsoft. Apple is going a slightly different directly by introducing the Apple TV thing. It’s cool but honestly, I don’t think it would sell that well.

Sony has a great contender in Playstation 3 but the Playstation 3 console pricing is just not as consumer-friendly. But whether Microsoft Xbox 360, Sony Playstation 3 or Nintendo Wii win is really not much of my concern; in the end, they just come and go but the overall technological benefit they bring to the living room - well, those are here to stay.

The whole living room technology is going to be really exciting coming decade, so watch out for it.

[By the way, I'm currently drooling over Command and Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars. Any kind (and wealthy) soul wish to buy it for me? Hehee...]

Opening May 4th, Spider-Man 3 looks sweet.

Anybody keen on catching this too?