said by Gbcue:It's the accumulation of public failures by Sony (rootkit included, laptop batteries, PSN hacking, stupid standards (MiniDisc, Betamax, Memory Stick)) and personal experiences with their stuff breaking. Their stuff would be breaking back in the 90's, when supposedly products were made to last.
Is it safe to say consumers are generally idiots? Both formats, Beta and Mini Disk failed in the consumer market, but held their niche in the professional world and theyre still being used today. And the formats have been around forever. The last Betamax hardware didnt roll off the assembly line until I believe 2002 or 03, and Im pretty sure MD stuff is still being produced in limited quantities for the professional market. For those that used portable CD players, you can thank Sonys Mini Disk format for the buffer and anti skip technology. And while I have never seen content on beta, I have seen U-matic and Laserdisk though, everything Ive ever read gives the picture quality nod to Betamax.
I was so glad that the studios had the ultimate say in the Blu Ray/HD DVD war, not the consumer. At CES when WB announced that they were going to go with BD exclusively, I knew it would take a miracle for HD DVD to survive. Shortly after that a bunch of HD DVD related events at CES were scrapped. When I read that, I started chanting to myself out loud Red is dead, red is dead, RED IS DEAD!!!. Watching the various studios and retailers like Walmart jump from the sinking ship called HD DVD was like the week leading up to Christmas and February 19 2008 was my Christmas morning. The death of HD DVD.
Not sure why no one likes the Memory Stick. The original Memory Stick was a hell of a lot better size-wise then Compact Flash and Smart Media. Some people say it was expensive, but I think I paid like $18 bucks for my 8GB Memory Stick Pro Duo last year for my camera. The problem with Sony, is outside of their Sony Computer Entertainment division which handles Playstation, they have zero marketing. The innovation that comes from Sony is astounding, a lot of technology we have today can be traced back to Sony.
Sony is top notch quality all around. Back in the day the Trinitron as big of a beast as it was, as the benchmark of video quality. Now the Bravia XBR takes care of that. My Sony DB500 2.1 PC speaker set up produces better sound quality then my Klipsch THX Certified system did. My latest toy, my Walkman Z is just phenomenal. I did not think mobile audio could sound that good. If you have the money to spend, theyre Elevated Series home theater gear is top notch and feature rich.
Sony is not afraid to experiment. There have been some successes, there have been some failures and there have been some things that just faded away. But all in all we are all better off because of the innovations from Sony. What was the iPods grandfather? The Sony Walkman.