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Sony sued over Blu-ray patents

By Tim Conneally, BetaNews

August 29, 2008, 5:12 PM

Sony has been sued for patent infringement for its Blu-Ray technology once again, this time by California intellectual property company Orinda IP USA.

In May 2007, a company called Target Technology sued Sony, alleging that Blu-ray infringed on patents discussing the reflective materials used on optical discs. The suit from Orinda, filed on August 20, involves the method of reproducing data on "disk-shaped media," namely Blu-ray discs.

All products containing a Blu-ray drive allegedly infringe upon Orinda's patent. This includes the PlayStation 3, all Vaio computers with Blu-ray drives, and any essentially any Blu-ray player made by Sony or other OEMs.

In addition to an injunction on Blu-ray, Orinda is seeking royalties, treble damages, interest, and legal fees.

Like many other cases of this nature, it has been filed in the "Patent Troll Mecca" of East Texas, and will be presided over by the famous patent judge, T. John Ward.

An interesting side note to this case is that Orinda's patent was originally filed in 1993 by Hyundai Electronics Industries. Justice Ward's first patent law case was defending that company in Texas Instruments v. Hyundai Elec. Indus. Co., 49 F. Supp. 2d 893, when TI sued Hyundai for infringing on several patents for DRAM and other semiconductor devices. Texas Instruments won the suit, and signed a multi-million dollar cross-licensing agreement with Hyundai.

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By Secret Agent Man

posted Sep 2, 2008 - 1:23 PM

Just like with the multiple lawsuits against Nintendo and their controller, these come out of the woodwork only when a technology becomes increasingly popular.

Another perfect example of the broken patent system.

Score: 0

By afewtips.com

posted Sep 1, 2008 - 11:01 AM

I think where there is success, you will find attempts to associate with that success.

http://afewtips.com

Score: 0

By flibberyGiveIt

posted Sep 1, 2008 - 10:55 AM

This leaves me wondering whether a triskadecagon
is disk shaped.

Score: 0

By lvthunder

posted Sep 1, 2008 - 12:39 AM

Since when can you sue for interest.

Score: 0

By Hellcat_M

posted Aug 31, 2008 - 11:58 PM

If MS were smart they'd look into paying Orinda to not ask for money but to make Sony not use their technology. This would work in MS favor (if it could be done).

If this is a legel then all bluray (Sony PS3 too) would have to be halted unil a new disk technology comes out which then Toshiba could be the white knight and bring in HD-DVD.

I don't even know if this can be done, if you could not ask for money and ask product to be taken off the shelf.

Score: 0

By Dark_Helmet

posted Sep 1, 2008 - 11:42 AM

you're assuming that HD-DVD would not also fall under this lawsuit...

Score: 0

By Dark_Helmet

posted Aug 30, 2008 - 3:27 PM

this lawsuit will fail...where were these guys when Blu-ray was announced??...this is all nonsense and i hope the judge laughs them out of the courtroom...

Score: 0

By terminalx

posted Aug 30, 2008 - 6:14 PM

If you read the patent they may have a case, its not just about an optical disk it goes on to talk about a protective layer for the data, which dvds do not have.

Now what has to be determined is can someone claim said patent for something they haven't built and its been 15 years later.

Score: 0

By Dark_Helmet

posted Aug 30, 2008 - 6:28 PM

this is the problem with the argument...

there was no intention to even manufacture said products...honestly i think they would have to be able to show proof of Sony intentionally using patented methods....

my biggest questions are simply this....where were these people when the patents for Blu-ray were applied for?? and where were they YEARS ago when Blu-ray was announced...

the REAL answers? they are looking to make a quick buck off of Sony...

Score: 0

By foxfyre

posted Sep 2, 2008 - 9:57 AM

"my biggest questions are simply this....where were these people when the patents for Blu-ray were applied for?? and where were they YEARS ago when Blu-ray was announced..."

Hmmm. My biggest question is where do you come by your ignorance of legal procedure?

Like they are privy to submissions for patents - and like they should be required to review every application, let alone every issued patent.

And why would they have any standing based upon someone's announcement of the intention to build a piece of gear? First, no damage has been done, and there is no real infringement as there is no real equipment infringing on anything!

Gee, I'm going to make a data storage media that is 100 times faster than any heretofore manufactured media, that is infinitely non-volatile and self healing, has an infinite shelf life as well as MTBF, and costs less than 1 cent a terabyte. Sue me. LOL!

Score: 0

By fewt

posted Aug 31, 2008 - 8:54 AM

"there was no intention to even manufacture said products"

Where is your evidence of that?

Score: 0

By terminalx

posted Aug 30, 2008 - 8:29 PM

It takes time to build the case for all we know they may have been sending notices to Sony about this since ps3 debuted.

Look at the Immersion Lawsuit it didn't come out until 2002 the ps2 has already been out for 2 years.

So, my point still stands what is the stature on these patents AND are they required to have a working product?

Score: 0

By MikeTechno

posted Aug 31, 2008 - 12:47 PM

Patent infringment is patent infringement. It doesn't matter whether the party that has been infringed upon ever produced a product based on the design or not. That is irrevelent.

What matters is who can prove by documentation that they came up with the idea first. Patent law is designed to protect ideas from being stolen and used by those why didn't come up with those ideas. It applies universally, it isn't contingent upon whether or not the originator of the idea ever successfully brought the design to market in the form of a product (or ever even intended to for that matter).

Patent law is about protecting ideas (intellectual property) and therefore subsequently punishing those who unjustly benefit by stealing those ideas.

Score: 0

By foxfyre

posted Sep 2, 2008 - 10:00 AM

But file sharing without the consent of the owner of the data in violation of the media's EULA is not only proper, but it promotes the material. LOL!

It would be nice if a few applied their logic consistently.

Score: 0

By MikeTechno

posted Sep 3, 2008 - 3:05 AM

Sharing of MP3's without the consent of the owner is currently illegal. However, the point I was making what that this is a FOOLISH law that has been pushed, promoted and supported by FOOLISH people who don't understand the absolutely incredible new market opportunities that sit right in front of their faces. They are so tied to old ways of doing business and old ways of thinking that they would rather turn their own CUSTOMERS into criminals and therefore absolutely RUIN their own standing in the global community than evolve with the marketplace and see the world through new, modern, evolved eyes.

If these people insist on living in 1970 and acting accordingly then they shouldn't be surprised when their customers abandon them and turn against them en mass.

Score: 0

By SGD

posted Sep 1, 2008 - 9:26 PM

Monster cable is great at doing just that.

Score: 0

By terminalx

posted Aug 31, 2008 - 1:27 PM

thank you

Score: 0

By TSThomas

edited Aug 30, 2008 - 12:13 PM

I've filed a patent describing a process for the extraction of oxygen from the atmosphere utilizing a trio of orifices integrated into the human body...

Where's my money folks?

Score: 0

By Khayman11

posted Sep 3, 2008 - 12:15 AM

Unfortunately, the design is already in use by a previous manufacturer that holds the patent. Your application has been denied.

Sincerely,
The Universe

Score: 0

By Isaac

edited Aug 30, 2008 - 11:06 PM

I think your biggest legal hurdle is in which orfices said body extracts said oxygen from said atmosphere. You may be able to sue Al Gore though who in fact breathes out his arse.

Score: 0

By SGD

posted Aug 30, 2008 - 10:51 AM

Lets say you make a controller that vibrates and file for patent protection to protect your creation and someone steals the idea. Oh yeah Sony did that already and lost in court.

Score: 0

By Dark_Helmet

posted Aug 30, 2008 - 6:25 PM

So did Microsoft....MS just decided to open their check book and settle out of court....Sony tried to fight it...

Score: 0

By SGD

posted Sep 2, 2008 - 10:13 AM

Sony would never had made good if the suckaxis controller wouldn't have been a piece of crap.

Score: 0

By terminalx

posted Aug 30, 2008 - 9:42 PM

Except you being the fanboy you are even though you claim to have both.

This is what happened...

A similar lawsuit was settled by Microsoft in July 2003, when the company agreed to pay Immersion $26 million to license the technology for use in its PC and Xbox joypad products. As part of the deal, though, Immersion is required to repay a portion of this sum, should a lawsuit be won against Sony. (which they did)

MS paid to LICENSE IT and Sony chose to fight it even though they were wrong they lost 6 times the amount MS paid to license it AND 20 million of it went back to MS...

Call it whatever you want but MS knew they couldn't win because the patent was very specific and applied to both companies.

Score: 0

By Dark_Helmet

posted Aug 30, 2008 - 9:48 PM

im not saying Sony did the right thing...MS made the right move in hindsight for sure...but to make MS seem any better than Sony in that lawsuit is stupid...MS infringed on patents just like Sony did...MS just decided not to even bother fighting it and just pay up...

Score: 0

By terminalx

posted Aug 30, 2008 - 10:02 PM

They licensed it to and have a stake in the company, regardless who was wrong (Sony)because MS thought "hm this does look exactly like what we are currently using and since we are using someone elses product and will continue to do so lets license it so this is a moot point.

Again, so because there is a patent and its quite specific and correlates with what blu-ray is will it count?

Score: 0

By siryak

posted Aug 30, 2008 - 6:48 PM

So MS admitted that they were wrong and paid up while Sony instead tried to get out of it. Was this supposed to be a jab at MS?

Score: 0

By Dark_Helmet

posted Aug 30, 2008 - 9:50 PM

no it was not a jab at MS, but a reply to saying that Sony was stealing a tech...when in reality so was MS...

i doubt it was an instance of MS just "admitting it was wrong"...because surely they would have just gone on using the technology without a thought...i think it was just more of a smart legal move...realizing they would probably lose in court, and settling for less out of court....im sure if MS thought they could win they would have gone through to trial...

Score: 0

By terminalx

posted Aug 30, 2008 - 10:06 PM

You act like MS is this EVIL company that takes everything, they are doing what everyone else is, staying competitive and giving their users what they want.

Score: 0

By Khayman11

edited Sep 3, 2008 - 12:43 AM

MS is an EVIL company. And so is Sony and why is that?

To quote, "they are doing what everyone else is". That doesn't make it right.

It's not like MS is innocent of taking that action in the past. Heck, the whole embrace, extend, extinguish tactic is centered on it.

Score: 0

By Sven123456789

posted Aug 30, 2008 - 8:40 AM

Sue everybody.

Score: 0

By mdotwills

posted Aug 30, 2008 - 8:33 AM

I'm sick of companies spending months looking for something just to try and fault another, resulting in some sort of court case. This is not particular to Blu-Ray, don't get me wrong. I'm just tired of it altogether!

Score: 0

By kb9mawjh

posted Aug 30, 2008 - 6:39 AM

Man I wish blu-ray would just die. I have a PS3 and a xbox 360 and I just bought a Dell XPS 1730 with bluray... but guess what the bluray in the laptop wont read ANY new released bluray dics and Dell says panasonic won't provide them with newer firmware (sony gets it somehow tho strange huh for thier sony laptops using the panasonic drives)

Sony already rootkit'ed many of us and now their bluray devices can't even play movies days later.
With the exception of the PS3 wich miracoulsy gets firmware updates.

Score: 0

By mjm01010101

posted Aug 30, 2008 - 8:59 AM

wtg early adopter/sony user.

Score: 0

By Metshrine

posted Aug 30, 2008 - 8:49 AM

So, you blame Sony because your piece of crap player's producer doesn't release firmware updates which updates your BRD keys so you can play back discs? Yeah, that sounds about right. Especially given that Sony is NOT the only company in the Blu-Ray Consortium.

Score: 0

By kb9mawjh

edited Sep 2, 2008 - 7:12 AM

MY players (panasonic) producer makes the firmware.. but they wont give to any body except Sony as their OEM any other OEMs that use the drive they lock out of getting the firmware including Dell This is a Laptop Drive I am speaking about. The firmware exists but they just won't give it out unless you are a Sony customer.

The problem isn't even that I cant get the extra features. The problem is it doesn't even regonize the disc exists in the drive. I have verified a firmware fill fix. I am at 1.00 latest is at least 1.05 but they refuse to share it.

Score: 0

By kashin

posted Aug 30, 2008 - 1:49 PM

No, we blame Sony for being the main proponent behind the Blu-Ray format and as such making the monumentally idiotic move of making multiple changes to the format years after its release. Changes that destroy any hope of backward compatibility. Last I checked, Panasonic was not a "piece of crap" and I'm sure their product was designed and manufactured to the exact specifications set forth by Sony and the rest of the Blu-Ray retards. It's not Panasonic's fault that Sony decided to keep moving the goal posts.

Score: 0

By MikeTechno

posted Aug 31, 2008 - 1:06 PM

There are so many good potential arguments against Blu-ray that the list could go on forever, however, this is clearly one of the strongest ones. By rushing a knowingly unfinished product to market long before it was really ready, and then NOT forcing all producers of that product to be FULLY firmware upgradable, like the PS3 was, (in order to insulate consumers from harm) they completely screwed the consuming public over, at a multitude of different levels.

I have heard it said that the way Blu-ray was introduced to the market, with its drawbacks and short comings intentionally and knowingly withheld from the consuming public, is one of the single greatest frauds ever perpatrated in the history of the American consumer electronics industry.

The full upgradeablility of the PS3 proves that ALL Blu-ray players produced could also have been fully upgradeable as well. They weren't though and the wool was collectively pulled over the eyes of the consuming public...when it didn't have to be.

That is the lie....and the fraud, that is Blu-ray. Those companies that chose to bring those products to market with no warnings or notifications to the buyers before they put their hard earned money down now have to live with that stigma, and rightfully so I think.

They had a choice to make and they chose to knowingly and intentionally leave consumers in the dark about something that was of material importance to their buying decisions. They did this out of sheer greed.

They didn't have to do that. They CHOSE to do that. Now they have to live with the mess they created while their chickens come home to roost.

Score: 0

By Cairobeta

posted Aug 31, 2008 - 4:21 PM

Now see this is an example of not thinking outside the box or for that matter thinking what's inside the box.

BD Live or BD1.2 as it is called requires some form of internet connection. If your player doesn't have an internet port (Ethernet or wireless radio) no amount of firmware updates is going to make an Ethernet port magically appear on one of these players.

What's your definition of unfinished? Just about anything technology related being sold is unfinished if you consider that the standard is upgraded from time to time.

The single greatest fraud isn't Blu-Ray. It's things like Divx, HD-DVD, Plays for sure, and other technology that billed themselves as the future and then went belly up. Any consumer that bought into this is SOL. HD-DVD is the technology that is finished because it's GONE!

Score: 0

By MikeTechno

posted Sep 3, 2008 - 3:09 AM

Yeah, right. Go tell that to all the people that bought the new Blu-ray discs and were told "Oh, don't worry about it, even if you have an older Blu-ray player the discs will still work fine, you just won't have access to the new/enhanced features, that's all".

The only problem here is that those disc didn't play in the majority of earlier model Blu-ray players...they didn't play at all!

Is that what you like to refer to as "backward compatible"?

Score: 0

By terminalx

posted Aug 31, 2008 - 6:05 PM

Oh good another Sony fanboy who is quite clueless...

With the exception of playsforsure everything that the consumer bought will still continue to work and will not miss any of the features of the product they have

HD-DVD + Divx just because its been discontinued doesn't make the source material spontaneously combust- it still will perform all the functions for what was released and none of it is crippled.

Any hd-dvd disk you buy will work on whatever player you bought with all the special features

Blu-ray has problems with some disks not working on pre 1.1 players, slower load times and of course features not working

Blu-ray also took a year before it had the same features that hd-dvd had from day one.

You must also realize blu-ray won because of the ps3 right? Its also one of the factors (I believe) why more games are being made for the xbox360 a year later (that and developers still have a difficult time programming for it as it uses a completely different architecture then a pc and xbox360 does)

Standalone players are still selling poorly and that's not going to change until they go down in price.

Score: 0

By Cairobeta

posted Aug 31, 2008 - 9:16 PM

I'm not a Sony fanboy. I'm more or less sick of the anti-sony fanboys sitting in there mothers basement griping about something they can't change.

In a nutshell anyone who argues about HD-DVD being better is really kind of pointless. Why? HD-DVD is not going to come back from the grave. It's done, gone, fat lady has sung, whatever you want to call it. Yes there are still players and discs out there that will work, but it's a finite supply of discs and players and eventually the player will break, discs scratched, warped, etc. Sooner or later you will buy a replacement for your HD-DVD player and that means your discs are worthless at that point.

Also HDi requires internet access and the internet changes (it's not stored on the disc). So that means that your web interactivity feature can be removed at anytime. Same thing for BD-Live. Another reason why I don't really consider web interactivity a great feature on either format.

You know what else. Who said that Blu-ray had to have the same features as HD-DVD at the same time? HD-DVD fans so they have something to whine about. Blu-ray worked on the content and storage capacity. So they have different advantages. That's what competition does sometimes.

Guess what? Those 1.0 players that you are complaining about aren't sold anymore. Same thing will happen to 1.1 players. I'm guessing the future they may have newer technologies in the players that no-one though of in 2006 or had the ability to include. I've seen 1000 times more HD-DVD fans grip about this profile stuff then I've seen actual customers affected by this.

Sorry for the essay.

Score: 0

By terminalx

posted Aug 31, 2008 - 11:58 PM

As long as the internet exists there will always be a way to replace your hd-dvd player plus the majority of hd-dvd disks are dual sided. You can still buy beta players after all these years too. There is also combo players as well that are still selling.

The movies that came out on hd-dvd all look great and some better then their blu-ray counterparts.

No, they aren't making anymore but again it doesn't stop the disk from working.

Blu-ray won because the ps3 had it built in, plain and simple, hd-dvd at the time looked better but blu-ray has since corrected the mistakes from the beginning.

Score: 0

By Aires

posted Aug 30, 2008 - 6:59 AM

When China gets going with their version of HD DVD, I do predict people will revist the concept. Hey, but that's a few years off so I'll say no more now. (Let's wait and see though).

Score: 0

By TSThomas

posted Aug 30, 2008 - 11:42 AM

Ahh no, not another HD DVD comeback post ;)

Yes, yes, yes, all those $99 Toshiba players they sold last year will help the format too...

Score: 0

By Aires

posted Aug 30, 2008 - 4:42 AM

"Sony sued over Blu-ray patents"

Yes! C'mon!!

Score: 0

By rjriley5000

posted Aug 29, 2008 - 9:48 PM

Here is an analogy to help everyone understand the essence of the patent wars. Lets say that you lease a piece of land for twenty years and that you build a building on that land for rental purposes with the expectation of being able to lease it for say ten to fifteen years. Then a number of really big companies come along and occupies that building without paying. After spending money to lease the land, build the building, and trying to evict the squatter

This is roughly the same situation as we have with a patent. The inventor invests time and money to produce the invention and then more time and and money to teach that invention via a patent. In exchange they get a twenty year lease from the date the patent is filed.

Remember that just as it takes time to build the building in the above example that all the patent processing time (which can easily be 3-15 or more years) comes out of the leasable time.

It is not unusual for large companies to all squat on an inventor's patent rights, refusing to pay while they are making gobs of money which should go to the inventor.

Since inventors cannot afford justice they seek either a buyer or a partner for their distressed property who can afford to extract rent and/or evict the squatter.

A big part of rather or not a buyer or a partner can be found is how fast the courts will act on evicting and extracting payment from the squatters.

This is the reason that victims of patent piracy go to the Eastern District of Texas. The court does not allow an endless stream of delaying tactics as do many of the courts which patent pirates favor. In the Eastern District I would guess that the typical time from start to finish is five years. Other courts may take two or three times as long.

Justice delayed is justice denied, especially when it is a small and fairly new company which cannot grow and prosper because their property is being stolen by a large patent pirate.

All this talk about patent trolls has been driven by lying, cheating, disreputable transnational companies. These are companies who either never were inventors of anything significant or who have lost the ability to to produce significant inventions as they grew into big companies.

While they are incapable of inventing anything worthwhile they are very capable of inventing propaganda about "trolls" and conducting massive public relations campaigns to cover their tracks.

They even have a trade association of like minded patent pirating companies who go by the name of the Coalition for Patent Fairness. Like most big business fronts their name implies something very much at odds with what they really are about.

Ronald J. Riley,

Speaking only on my own behalf.
Affiliations:
President - www.PIAUSA.org - RJR at PIAUSA.org
Executive Director - www.InventorEd.org - RJR at InvEd.org
Senior Fellow - www.patentPolicy.org
President - Alliance for American Innovation
Caretaker of Intellectual Property Creators on behalf of deceased founder Paul Heckel
Washington, DC
Direct (202) 318-1595 - 9 am to 9 pm EST.

Score: 0

By kashin

edited Aug 30, 2008 - 2:07 PM

That is one of the dumbest and most inaccurate analogies I've seen in a long time. While there are patent holders who do indeed deserve compensation for their work and investment in research, etc. Microsoft for example pays royalties for hundreds of patents included in their Windows operating system alone. A large majority of these patent trolls are nothing but law firms who acquired patents from other companies through various means (bankruptcy is a good way). These companies exist for the sole purpose of extorting money out of other companies who actually have a product and happen to infringe (most often unknowingly) on some loosely worded patent. rjriley5000 makes it sound like every company that's doing decently well with their product, should be aware of every single idea ever patented and make sure they're not infringing. There have been various cases where some patent trolls patented an idea AFTER other companies were already using that idea, but didn't think the idea was specific enough to merit a patent. Of course if you have enough money and live in "the land of the free" you can patent any asinine idea. Don't kid us about the reason that most of these patent trolls choose the Eastern District of Texas for their lawsuits. They do it not only because it's quicker, but also because that court happens to favor patent trolls and everybody knows it.

Makes you wonder how much this rjriley5000 guy is getting paid to spread his baseless propaganda.

Score: 0

By fatty

posted Aug 30, 2008 - 7:03 AM

Wrong.

All this talk of patent trolls has been driven by people reading how companies get setup to patent thousands of "ideas" then sue everyone until they find something that sticks. They have zero intention of ever building or using what they patent, they just want to milk the real inventors and innovators who are doing things.

Score: 0

By Hellgod77

posted Aug 29, 2008 - 8:16 PM

there needs to be a time frame to utilize a paten, if some one utilizes it after a certian time fram they should not be held liable.

Score: 0

By DonGato

posted Aug 30, 2008 - 11:23 AM

And shouldn't be longer than a couple of years.

Score: 0

By kashin

posted Aug 30, 2008 - 2:11 PM

Umm, it SHOULD be longer than a couple of years. I think 5-10 years would be reasonable, because some products and ideas do take a considerable amount of time to research and develop, and that's not even counting the amount of time it might take to find investors willing to put up the money for it. Example: It's not like I can come up with an idea for a new type of memory controller and then start building it next month.

Score: 0

By Grazer

posted Sep 2, 2008 - 12:17 PM

Umm, if you don't know how to do something yet, you shouldn't really be able to patent the ability to do it.

Score: 0

By DonGato

posted Aug 30, 2008 - 8:49 PM

Most ideas should start up in less than a year. If not is just an idea. Some work being done with them should be verifiable. I don't think it helps innovation letting people have 'ideas' for five years without working on them.

Score: 0

By ingram091

edited Aug 29, 2008 - 8:05 PM

Naw nevermind I can't delete it so I just do this to delete it. I just dont care either way.

Score: 0

By Banquo

posted Aug 29, 2008 - 5:38 PM

Why does the headline say "Sony sued". Shouldn't it be "Blu-Ray Group sued"? Sony does not own Blu-Ray, a whole group of companies does. I guess putting in Sony like that does stir up better flame wars though.

By the way I hate patent squatters. Having companies exist for the sole reason of holding patents and suing other companies is ridiculous. If you don't use them, you should lose them.

Score: 0

By kashin

posted Aug 29, 2008 - 6:20 PM

WRONG! The "Blu-Ray Group" doesn't own the patents in question, Sony does. While there are other companies involved in Blo-Ray, Sony holds most of the patents, collects most of the royalties, and essentially "owns" Blo-Ray. I wish you Sony retards would actually read the article instead of immediately starting to whine. WAAAAH WAAAH WAAAH DON'T SAY ANYTHING BAD ABOUT SONY AND DON'T PUT SONY IN THE HEADLINE WAAAH WAAAH WAAAH

Score: 0

By Cairobeta

posted Aug 29, 2008 - 7:14 PM

Um. Where do you get your information? It sounds like to me you are more like the polar opposite by basically saying that Sony can do no good.

Having said that this patent is basically about a file system on an optical disc with multiple layers. Wow. That's..That's so original. It's never been done before and these guys are real geniuses. Not! I have this old optical drive from 1991 that I had to restore the data from that pretty much did exactly that with a FAT file system. Technically this company is within there right, but I think this shows exactly why software pattens are stupid.

How did the DVD forum (which includes HD-DVD) escape this one? Or for that matter how did any other manufacture escape from this one? Simple. Sony is the company to through rocks at. Just look at all the Sony haters on this site.

Score: 0

By unistyle

edited Aug 29, 2008 - 7:22 PM

can you blame us for hating sony? honestly, can you?

Score: 0

By Cairobeta

posted Aug 29, 2008 - 7:50 PM

Yes I can. What did Sony do/say/cause that made so much hardship for you? And what monetary number would you place on this hardship?

If you don't buy Sony products because obviously you hate Sony then I say that number if a big fat goose egg.

Score: 0

By kashin

edited Aug 30, 2008 - 1:44 PM

"Yes I can. What did Sony do/say/cause that made so much hardship for you? And what monetary number would you place on this hardship?"

Is this some kind of a joke? Aside from the obvious rootkit fiasco and the turd called Blu-Ray, there's a list of Sony blunders that's a mile long. Just off the top of my head, what about the exploding Sony batteries that caused millions and millions of batteries to be recalled? What about the fact that almost all Sony products are now made in China, yet we have to pay a huge premium for the name? I don't see much good about Sony products compared to other decent brands which cost considerably less and have the same or MORE features. Their MP3 players are a perfect example of this. They lack almost all the features that come standard with even the crappiest brands. A few years back when those Sony MP3 players came out that look like a fancy perfume bottle (I forget the model #) I bought one and had to return it. It used some fancy new thing called organic crystal liquid display. The thing was absolutely impossible to read under daylight and lacked basic features like a graphic equalizer, FM radio, voice recorder, etc. What about the fact that Sony constantly tries to create their own format monopoly (and fails miserably every time, but continues to try again every few years) ? There are tons of examples of this. MiniDisc, UMD and the soon to be defunct Blu-Ray are just a few. What about Sony's arrogant execs and constant lies and misleading of their own customers? When the race between the PS3 and Xbox360 release was on, Sony new they had nothing to launch, yet they pretended the PS3 was going to be released BEFORE the 360. Even when all the journalists and people in the gaming industry KNEW for certain that Sony had nothing, they still waited until the last possible minute to admit there was no PS3 coming out. Then they lied over and over about a new release date and kept pushing it back. I mean, I could go on all day about all the Sony BS over the years.. but hey, Maddox put it pretty well too: http://www.thebestpagein....net/c.cgi?u=sony_bulls***

PS. - You have to add "hit" to the end of that link to make it work, since it's censored. Or simply search the page for "Sony" once it loads.

Score: 0

By Peregrine1970

posted Aug 29, 2008 - 11:16 PM

I've owned quite a few Sony products over the years and up until this last couple years, was fairly happy with them... They they seemed to go retarded. Sticking rootkits on people's machines to 'protect' thier DRM, and the crap that is bluray.

It's actually kind of amusing to watch all of the Sony fanboys do thier thing but if you see an article with MS fanboys in it, they will make fun of the MS ones for doing exactly what they do.

Score: 0

By Metshrine

posted Aug 30, 2008 - 8:53 AM

OK, yes, they put out a rootkit, but guess what, I wasn't affected by it and I wager dollars to donuts you were not either. Am I Right? Thats like someone buying a piece of software, the developer releasing a new version which supports a new hardware platform, and then the original purchaser whining that the upgrade to said version wasn't free despite the fact that they have no intent on buying the piece of hardware which the new version supports. It's pointless. Unless you were affected and the problem caused you a hardship besides having to read about it, you have no right to complain. Yes, it's wrong, but complaining about it should be reserved for the people which it did affect.

Score: 0

By mjm01010101

posted Aug 30, 2008 - 9:08 AM

What bulls*** and tripe. You are saying we should support companies and evil entities that we have no relation with? Forgive me for invoking godwin but he serves a purpose. An analogy of Hitler comes into play. Hitler never attacked U.S. soil, so ideally, the U.S. should never have gotten involved in WWII? Or only Hawaii should have attacked Japan.

Of course the rootkit fiasco should mar sony's reputation. PERMANENTLY. Why would I use a product from a company that breaks my software? Why would I need to use the software to understand that it might happen to me? Sony is dead to me, I don't play around with evil, damaging companies, and I certainly don't have to do business with them to understand this.

And yes that goes for Sony movies. I refuse to watch them.

And yeah I will complain about it, Sony's fix to the rootkit was WORSE than the rootkit itself!

Score: 0

By terminalx

posted Aug 30, 2008 - 10:34 AM

He's a fanboy of Sony, doesn't matter what you say.

Yeah, I wasn't affected by the rootkit fiasco but could have been and what if no one ever said anything and it appeared in more and more of their releases?

Had someone not discovered it you believe Sony would have disclosed this little tidbit of info?

I judge a company one product at a time not by who they are, I own a ps3 but I don't own blu-ray movies, I haven't found anything compelling enough that I want to own. It does make the picture look better but its not a must have as the only thing different from it over dvd is better picture quality and sound (which to achieve this one must spend thousands of dollars to get)

Score: 0

By Metshrine

edited Sep 1, 2008 - 9:32 AM

I am not a sony fanboy, but I do give credit where it is due and will continue to push that consumer mis/non-education is not the fault of the company. Yes, what sony did was wrong, but they are not the first or last company to employ such a tactic. The only thing I own sony is a PS3, I will not buy anything else sony given the exuberant cost of doing such.

Like you, I judge a company one product at a time. That said, The rootkit fiasco is long since done-with and I am certain they wont make that mistake again. As such, I am moving on and putting the past in the past. This is the same thing as people whining at microsoft for the stunts it pulled to get windows into the mainstream. Its done with, 90% of us use it now, complaining about it wont change that. It's the same thing as holding a grudge against someone for hitting you in the face when you were 8 and stole their baseball card. Whats done is done.

Score: 0

By terminalx

posted Sep 1, 2008 - 4:13 PM

Fair enough, you have a similar name someone else who was very rabid on here had, so sorry about the confusion.

Score: 0

By Banquo

edited Aug 30, 2008 - 5:13 AM

I admit I'm wrong then, and I was going to graciously accept your correction until you hit the caps like key and went into full out retard mode. I don't even like Sony.

Score: 0

By sjc001

posted Aug 29, 2008 - 6:18 PM

Its like back in the 80's, under Reagan, when a company only existed to buy out other companies and than dismantle them for their assets.

Score: 0

By Peregrine1970

posted Aug 29, 2008 - 11:17 PM

You make it sound like that doesnt happen anymore. *cough* EA *cough*

Score: 0

By dvferret

posted Aug 29, 2008 - 5:29 PM

"An optical disk-shaped recording medium comprising a plurality of tracks, the tracks constituting blocks in the unit of a predetermined number, each of the blocks being provided with a data region and a first mapping region, a second mapping region being further provided on a center one of the entire tracks, each of the first mapping regions including mapping sectors and replacement sectors, the second mapping region including; a mapping information recording region and a replacement sector region for the first mapping regions of the whole of the blocks, the mapping sectors of each of the first mapping regions recording mapping information about bad sectors of the corresponding block thereon, the replacement sectors of each of the first mapping regions being replaced for the bad sectors of the corresponding block, and an apparatus and a method for recording/reproducing optical information using the optical disk-shaped recording medium. "

This patent is from 1993 it seems. I assume this is the same process for dvds as well? So did the dvd forum have to pay royalties for this process?

Score: 0

By Peregrine1970

posted Aug 29, 2008 - 11:18 PM

It also sounds quite familiar from another product. Ever seen the insides of a hard drive?

Score: 0

By terminalx

posted Aug 31, 2008 - 1:35 PM

A hard drive doesn't use an optical disk though...

Score: 0

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