HD DVD Bets Big On Super Bowl Ad... Yeah, That'll Do It

from the great-moments-in-wasting-money dept

In the biggest standards battle most people couldn't care less about, most folks are assuming that Blu-ray has finally won the battle. However, the HD DVD folks aren't totally giving up yet. After hanging their heads and canceling a party and press conference at CES, it appears that Toshiba believes the way to revive interest in the HD DVD standard is... to spend $2.7 million on a Superbowl ad. As if that's going to make a difference. It brings to mind various dot com startups from the last bubble who put their entire marketing budget into a Super Bowl ad. In the meantime, it may be time to start watching HD DVD's other backers. Microsoft still insists it's strongly behind HD DVD but have opened the door to finally giving it up. Meanwhile, Intel has a long history of jumping ship after it realizes it backed the wrong horse in various standards battles. The company seems to have learned when to cash out and move on. Last year it moved closer to that position by supporting both standards (while still officially backing HD DVD). If the trend keeps moving towards Blu-ray, then expect to see Intel jump more fully to the other camp. Now, if only this had been worked out four years ago, before people had moved on to online video. Blu-ray can still do well, but it missed its biggest opportunity to take over the market a few years ago.

Filed Under: blu-ray, hd dvd, super bowl
Companies: intel, microsoft, toshiba

Playlist Patented... Everyone Sued... But Did Apple Pay Up?

from the sounds-like-it dept

A bunch of folks have been submitting the latest story on a patent hoarding firm, Premier International Associates, who appears to have absolutely no other business than getting its hands on questionable, overly broad, obvious patents and then suing everyone possible. In this case, the patent is for the basic concept of a playlist, which can be found just about anywhere. So, it should come as little to no surprise that the list of companies sued is quite long, including: Microsoft, Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, Dell, Lenovo, Toshiba, Viacom, Real, Napster, Samsung, LG, Motorola, Nokia, Sandisk, HP, Acer, Gateway and Yahoo (phew!). That's quite a list, though it's not surprising to see that there are a ton of companies offering software that has a concept so basic and so obvious as a playlist.

However, there is one very interesting point here. Apple is missing from the list. As the folks over at Ars Technica figured out, Premier actually had sued Apple about this same patent back in 2005, but at the same time it was filing all these new patent lawsuits it filed to dismiss the Apple suit, suggesting that Apple most likely paid off the company (perhaps giving it the money needed to suddenly sue every other company in the universe. Apple certainly has a history of doing this. When the company was sued on a rather similar obvious patent on a hierarchical menu-based user interfaces held by Creative, it eventually (after spending some time fighting it) decided to simply pay $100 million to be left alone. Of course, all that did was allow Creative to head out and sue plenty of others. Sound familiar? By settling on these questionable patent claims, all Apple is doing is encouraging more lawsuits of this nature for itself, as well as others.

Filed Under: patent trolls, patents, playlists
Companies: apple, at&t, dell, lenovo, microsoft, napster, real, sprint, toshiba, verizon, viacom

74 Percent Of Nothing Is Still Nothing

from the hot-air dept

The group behind the HD DVD format in Europe claims that it has 74 percent market share of the next-gen DVD market in a handful of western European countries. Of course, they're not including Sony PS3s, which have a Blu-ray drive, in their count, but the bigger point is that they're claiming 74 percent of a miniscule market. This contrived stat, like Toshiba's claim of 60 percent share of the US market, glosses over the problems that are holding it back: DRM that breaks legitimate customers' players, low perceived benefits and high prices. Apparently, though, the HD DVD folks would rather claim to have a big share of a tiny market than to have any share in a market that's actually meaningful. Update: Just in case anybody cares, the Blu-ray people say they're actually the market leaders.

Filed Under: dvd, entertainment
Companies: blu-ray, hd dvd, sony, toshiba