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Sony Fakes Blu-Ray Demo?

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Tue May 16, 2006 08:33 PM
from the please-ignore-the-man-behind-the-curtain dept.
Sony Technology Entertainment Games
twasserman writes "Lance Ulanoff of PC Magazine reported on Sony's recent event showing the new VAIO AR desktop with a Blu-Ray drive, observing that Sony faked the high-def demo by using a plain old DVD+R of House of Flying Daggers. Even before the rootkit fiasco, Sony has seemed increasingly desperate, but the general consensus seems to be that Sony is looking pretty sad and pathetic." Update 03:07 GMT by SM: Many users are calling shenanigans on this one since there were two laptops side by side, one with the Blu-Ray demo and another for comparison. Independent confirmation or negation has yet to surface, so take with the requisite grain of salt required when reading any news.
+ -
story

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  • Faked Demo? (Score:5, Funny)

    by deanj (519759) on Tuesday May 16 2006, @08:34PM (#15347453)
    A company faked a demo? I'm shocked....SHOCKED, I tell you!

    • All of them are faked nowadays (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 16 2006, @08:39PM (#15347484)
      The last real demo of a new product was Windows 98 at COMDEX on April 20, 1998. [google.com]

    • Re:Faked Demo? (Score:5, Funny)

      by $RANDOMLUSER (804576) on Tuesday May 16 2006, @09:01PM (#15347601)
      Well, you know the old saying: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo".

    • A blogger faked a fake... (Score:5, Funny)

      by EmbeddedJanitor (597831) on Tuesday May 16 2006, @09:05PM (#15347616)
      I'm even more shocked! Press journalists are known to be corrupt and inept, but a blogger screwing up.... well that really makes you spill your cup of tea!

      • Re:A blogger faked a fake... (Score:5, Funny)

        by Jim_Callahan (831353) on Tuesday May 16 2006, @11:29PM (#15348280)
        I agree, old chap. The GP surely owes me a new monocle.

        • Re:A blogger faked a fake... (Score:4, Insightful)

          by AndersOSU (873247) on Wednesday May 17 2006, @09:02AM (#15350400)
          While I think it's fair to have a gut reaction against journalists, I don't think that it is ultimately a defensable position.

          Technically minded people are the most arrogent people on the planet. They think that anything that doesn't capture reality in a wholly accurate manner in detail is useless. I mean clearly it should be a crime against humanity whenever someone equates copyright violation to theft.

          In the real world people actually want to have current events explained to them in a way that they can understand. Journalists are trained in communication, not in your area of expertise. If the average person is incapable of understanding what a root-kit is, is it better to scoff at them and call them names, or to try to explain it (in technically inacurate terms) so that people with no desire to understand the inner-workings of an operating system can at least have an idea what it was that Sony did? So what if they call it a virus? Sure, it's not technically correct, but it gets the point across. That is after all what communication is all about.

          I think that the problem stems from our education teching us that the printed word is an authority. I know I seldom questioned the accuracy of the encylopedia, my textbooks, or even the newspaper before I was in college (or at least until I was an upper-classman in high school.) Now in our particular areas of expertise we are frequently more knowlegable on a subject than the newspaper. We draw the conclusion that the newspaper is worthless as a source of information. What we (as technically minded people) fail to recognize is that the newspaper's goal isn't to be totally technically accurate, but rather to explain what is happening in the world to people who aren't experts.

          Journalists have a role to play and it's not to provide technical information. If you are trying to understand AJAX by reading a Web 2.0 article in USA today, it isn't the journalist who has failed, you have failed in seeking out an appropriate source of information.

  • It's probably NOT fake... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by grub (11606) <slashdot@grub.net> on Tuesday May 16 2006, @08:35PM (#15347457) Homepage Journal

    It sounds like Lance Ulanoff from PC Magazine is jumping the gun. According to notebookreview.com [notebookreview.com]:
    The premium model comes bundled with one of the first Blu-ray Disc (BD) movies, House of Flying Daggers, which Sony showed side-by-side tonight, along with the DVD version. Contrary to what some have said, the difference in quality is instantly noticeable
    It sounds like Ulanoff was in too much of a rush for a scoop and didn't realize this when he ejected what was very likely the comparison DVD. Don't let the facts get in the way of a good Sony bashing, though.

  • Too many holes... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by DrEldarion (114072) * on Tuesday May 16 2006, @08:35PM (#15347459) Homepage
    So, wait a second. We've got some guy on some site that has pictures of a DVD in a drive, and this is somehow proof that Sony faked the whole thing? Aren't there just a few holes here?

    1) Sony has the tech, why on earth would they resort to a DVD?
    2) Why would they use a DVD+R with no label when they distribute the actual DVDs?
    3) Why would Sony use a Verbatim DVD+R?
    4) How do we know that machine wasn't supposed to be running a DVD to compare to a computer next to it running Blu-Ray. (Quite coincidentally, there are no pictures of the disc from that machine.)
    5) How do we know the picture wasn't staged by someone anti-Sony?
    6) Howcome nobody else is reporting on this?

    I know Sony's no saint, but this just doesn't make any sense at all.

    • Re:Too many holes... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 16 2006, @08:49PM (#15347533)
      At CES, I know for a fact that the demos for Blu-ray were run off of hard drives, not off of blu-ray media. it was all smoke and mirrors. my company created content for one of the blu-ray demos, and it never showed on a real blu-ray player.

      But, I have to ask -- this is a surprise? this is something to be outraged at?

      Has the author never attended a trade show like NAB or CES? It's pretty much standard operating procedure for these shows to show off stuff that isn't yet finished - half the high end digital cinema cameras that are shown at NAB are wooden models, for crying out loud!

      If it's not shipping, it doesn't exist yet, as far as I'm concerned.

    • Re:Too many holes... (Score:5, Informative)

      by Wdomburg (141264) on Tuesday May 16 2006, @08:56PM (#15347575)
      3) Why would Sony use a Verbatim DVD+R?

      The other points have some validity, but different divisions of a single company don't stick to using in-house products. Even years before IBM spun off the drive division most of the drives they shipping in machines came from other vendors.
    • I've been responsible for a demo or two in the past and there is nothing like having things fall apart at the last second. If what we saw is true, I wouldn't doubt that there were engineers scrambling to save the demo. There could be many reaons for that. who knows.

    • Re:Too many holes... (Score:5, Funny)

      by 4e617474 (945414) on Tuesday May 16 2006, @09:16PM (#15347690)
      So, wait a second. We've got some guy on some site that has pictures of a DVD in a drive, and this is somehow proof that Sony faked the whole thing? Aren't there just a few holes here?

      Come on, to prove he was on the level, he enlarged the photos!What more do you want?

      But seriously, I could go either way on this one. You raise good points, but let me play devil's advocate point by point:

      1) The whole idea was that working tech or not, there are so few Blu-ray discs to be had that it's hard to get one, even for an official demo.

      2) Even the biggest corporations come down to a couple of guys low on the totem pole sooner or later. When the job is "Take this cake and a couple laptops to a night club" there's no telling who they're going to send. A couple of guys with a deadline, an iso file, and blank media laying around isn't that big of a stretch.

      3) Again, it's a couple of guys. Maybe a couple of guys who heard Verbatim's don't make as many coasters.

      4) I doubt they'd want to do that. Can you really tell the difference on a notebook screen? And if both machines had the discs they were officially supposed to, I'd expect a standard commercial DVD. A DVD+R of a commercial movie is generally not legal.

      5) Okay, you got me. I might make a comparison to "How do you know it's not a government conspiracy" but anti-Sony sentiments are too widespread and getting faked photos onto a blog "expose" are too in vogue not to give that a pass.

      6) Like who? The mainstream press? They barely covered the rootkit, and that allowed undetectable arbitrary code on your home PC. Besides, the CIA director just left on bad terms, Bush is proposing to throw out the tradition of civilian leadership in replacing him, the NSA knows who calls your house (thanks in part to the new proposed CIA director), we're militarizing the Mexican border but cutting existing illegal aliens a yet-to-be determined amount of slack, and nobody knows how close Iran is to getting the bomb, and Britney Spears is pregnant again. It's not an easy time to break into the news cycle when there are no celebrities involved.

  • Poor Sony. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Freaky Spook (811861) on Tuesday May 16 2006, @08:38PM (#15347481)
    They are like M$, they can't do anything anymore without bad press.

    Perhaps we should start using $ony when having a whinge about them.

    You get what you give though.

  • Obligatory Ctrl+Alt+Del reference (Score:4, Funny)

    by thib_gc (730259) on Tuesday May 16 2006, @08:43PM (#15347508)

    http://www.ctrlaltdel-online.com/comic.php?d=20060 512 [ctrlaltdel-online.com]

    Thib ;-)

  • Gotta love journalists (Score:4, Insightful)

    by billcopc (196330) <vrillco@yahoo.com> on Tuesday May 16 2006, @08:49PM (#15347532) Homepage
    Dumbass journalist alert!!!

    Repeat after me: DVD is not HD.

    Would Sony use a burnt DVD for display ? Possible (hey, there's idiot students everywhere), but unlikely. Would Sony use a regular DVD for comparison versus Blu-Ray ? Certainly!

    It's not like they have to fake it, they have the drive. They probably have demo content too. I'm pretty sure Blu-Ray video is encoded at a much higher resolution than boring old 720x480 Mpeg-2 DVD. Now maybe if our overzealous reporter had taken a moment to actually examine the demo and see the difference, maybe even chat with the Sony media monkey, perhaps he would have come up with a more valid article. Or maybe he did all that, but decided the notoriety of his lies would be a bigger hit.

  • Sony the bootlegger (Score:5, Funny)

    by Neo-Rio-101 (700494) on Tuesday May 16 2006, @08:53PM (#15347560)
    Even if the reporting of the "faked" Blu-ray is a complete load of hogwash, it doesn't excuse the fact that Sony bootlegged a movie. Would the MPAA like to find out about that? If that much is true, and if there was no proof of an original DVD of the film anywhere to be found, then what's to say that Sony haven't image tweaked the burnt DVD+R to a lower encoded video quality, in order to help with their performance? Did anyone see the original blu-ray disc of the movie?

    • Re:Sony the bootlegger (Score:5, Informative)

      by DragonWriter (970822) on Tuesday May 16 2006, @09:14PM (#15347676)
      The US DVD distributor for House of Flying Daggers is Sony Pictures Home Entertainment; the US theatrical distributor is Sony Pictures Classics.

      Somehow, I'm not sure "bootlegged" is the right word for Sony making a copy of this film.

  • More than just a laser (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 16 2006, @08:55PM (#15347571)
    So, I work on Blu-Ray players(not for Sony), take that for what you will.

    Aside from the article submitter trolling, I would like to state that Blu-Ray is more than just a laser. It's an entire format complete with a software virtual machine.

    When we test content it comes on a DVD-R, we're testing layouts of files, VM access, decoding, video quality etc.

    Now I don't know what was at the booth, but it is certainly possible that they were showing off their software Blu-Ray player with the content burned onto a DVD.

    • Now I don't know what was at the booth, but it is certainly possible that they were showing off their software Blu-Ray player with the content burned onto a DVD.

      Which would definitely constitute a rigged demo. We've had the ability to play high-bitrate movies from hard-drives for years, so why does anybody care about Blu-Ray? Because it's a removable optical media with enough capacity for full-length high bitrate movies. So if that's not what they were demoing, it certainly was a rigged demo.

      • but the disc itself plays no part in the quality of the image (assuming of course that it meets the basic requirement that it's possible to pull the data off it fast enough)

        In most cases, the only meaningful demo of BluRay is going to be quality based, and therefore the physical media is irrelevant, so I don't see how it's "Rigged" if it's still showing BluRay content.

        • Re:More than just a laser (Score:4, Insightful)

          by timeOday (582209) on Wednesday May 17 2006, @12:49AM (#15348547)
          It all depends on what you believe the main contribution and technical risk of Blu-Ray to be. As I said, I don't think it's the codec, we have those coming out of our ears. If somebody showed up at a trade show to demo yet another video codec playing back from a hard drive nobody would even notice. Rather, I think the main question is who can really manufacture a high-capacity optical disc players and media, and do it cheaply. Sony's problems in getting this done are reportedly contributing to the delays and high cost of the PS3, which is intended to be the biggest-selling Blu-Ray player of the next few years. Yet if Sony is demoing Blu-Ray without a Blu-Ray drive, that implies to me that they aren't because they can't. Even if that's not strictly true, it looks very bad for them not to be able to demo their own technology.
  • In other news, the Motion Picture Association of America takes on a legal battle against Sony. Sony allegedly made unauthorized copies of one of its own movies, House of Flying Daggers. Sony also allowed an unlicensed public performance of said film.
  • In other news, Gearlog fakes news story by not mentioning that the DVD+R was being used for a comparison.

  • Faking it isn't a problem (Score:5, Funny)

    by skayell (921119) on Tuesday May 16 2006, @09:13PM (#15347669)
    Faking a demo isn't really a problem at all. You just have to be smart enough NOT TO GET CAUGHT. I've faked dozens of demos in my lifetime (and, yes, I still sleep okay).

    But, then, I'm female and we're used to faking it realistically.

  • This topic is complete troll bait. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Awptimus Prime (695459) on Tuesday May 16 2006, @09:14PM (#15347677)
    Okay, I don't know why our poster thinks engaget is the "general concensus", perhaps he finds their comments section mentally stimulating (click the link in the headline and scroll down).

    Regardless if this was faked or not, I don't trust all these band-wagoning fools here or there. All you have to do is read my previous posts that were modded as troll, flame, etc when I predicted a fiaso with Sony's Blu-ray and PS3 releases. People saw big numbers, wanted big numbers, and completely forgot about Sony's failures in the past.

    Kind of reminds me of the idiocy supporting support for multiple wars a couple of years ago. People like to believe things and completely turn off the part of their brain that comprehends history's lessons.

  • Fake (Score:5, Informative)

    by CNERD (121095) on Tuesday May 16 2006, @09:23PM (#15347732) Homepage
    Fake.

    http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=2 939 [notebookreview.com]

  • FFS (Score:3, Funny)

    by kaffiene (38781) on Tuesday May 16 2006, @09:48PM (#15347847)
    Could Slashbots BE any more eager to make up bullshit to trash Sony with? Good to see /.'s editorial integrity is keeping to its... high... standards.

  • What are the facts here? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by kimvette (919543) on Tuesday May 16 2006, @09:55PM (#15347872) Homepage
    I mean, really! Was the demo to show off the technology and the HiDef resolution, or was it to showcase the underlying media technology? If the former, and the story is indeed accurate, then shame on Sony. Ah hell, based on the rootkit, their membership in the RIAA and MPAA, attempted hijacking and elimination of Fair Use rights and right if first sale, it's clear that Sony has no shame.

    If it is the latter and they were using a small amount of Blu-Ray-encoded/resolution files on DVD-R media with a custom build designed to recognize Blu-Ray content on a DVD due to what could be a scarcity of notebook form-factor Blu-Ray drives for the demo, then there isn't so much of a problem, except that if that were the case Sony should qualify the demo with "by the way, this is our software technology demo, using DVD-R media for this demo, blah blah blah" just to avoid the negative PR fiasco that you see here.

  • Here's the problem... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by JayBlalock (635935) on Tuesday May 16 2006, @10:09PM (#15347937)
    Sony has ZERO credibility when it comes to demos. The fact that so many people accepted this story pretty much proves it. They fake demos left and right. (remember the "PS3" demo from LAST E3?) And when you're a tech company, and people won't even believe your PR any more, you've got MAJOR problems.
      • I have to agree. I was at E3 and I enjoyed seeing what other companies were doing on all the other consoles. I really enjoyed the PS3 demos, since you could play even the more experimental titles -- no movies -- no insane backrooms. Sony is going to have the most open console for hobby developers again this generation. I'm a professional developer, but I got my current job partially from skills I got working on my PS2 hobby kit. I don't see Nintendo and Microsoft doing this without fees on top of hard

  • Sony Responds - a comment FTFA (Score:5, Informative)

    by bi_boy (630968) on Tuesday May 16 2006, @10:29PM (#15348016)
    Found this as a comment on the site, who knows if its legit?


    Sony Responds
    Posted by: J Piazza, Sony Employee

    I would like to clarify this issue regarding the content that was shown last night at the Sony VAIO 10th anniversary event.

    The demonstration in question was a side-by-side comparison of Blu-ray Disc recorded content compared with a DVD recording of the same content. The identical notebooks were each playing the Sony Pictures release, "House of Flying Daggers"- one notebook showing the DVD format and the other showing the Blu-ray Disc format.

    The photograph taken by one of the reporters attending the event was of the DVD version used for demo. The Blu-ray Disc media had no label.

    I can attest that the disc in question was a Blu-ray Disc as I organized the event. The Blu-ray Disc media used, though not a final master, was encoded and displayed using Blu-ray Disc technology and rendered in true 1080p resolution. This resolution could not possibly have been duplicated using a DVD. I hope this clears up any confusion.
        • Boy do I wish I hadn't just pressed reply.

          A DVD+R (the one shown isn't DL) is 4.5G of course. What's wrong with me thinking of CDs?

          You're right. With H.264, at 4.5G for a 2 hour movie you could get very good results. With 9G (dual layer), I figure you could get nearly perfect results perfect results.

          Boy do I feel stupid. I apologize. I musta had a brain lock.

  • Rabid anti-Sony brigade just jumped the shark (Score:3, Insightful)

    by SuperKendall (25149) on Tuesday May 16 2006, @11:14PM (#15348218)
    Well that was the most obviously trumped-up story I've ever seen - what's next, Sony Tortures Kittens And Laughs Heartily?

    I'd say the anti-Sony cabal have jumped the shark with this one.

  • Guilty until proven innocent (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Opportunist (166417) on Wednesday May 17 2006, @02:50AM (#15348986)
    Well, let's put it that way, should Sony sink, I'd offer them a glass of water or an anvil, but still, even they should be tried by the same standards I want to be tried on.

    If someone claims a demo to be rigged, he should produce some evidence. Not the other way 'round.
    • This is the problem with jumping to conclusions without any more evidence than a single photo of a burned disk, an empty case, and a computer being juxtaposed. Your IQ may or may not have been toyed with by the OP. After reading the article from notebookreview.com though, I'm somewhat inclined to believe that you've been had. So . . . is anyone gonna pay now?
    • "It will work. It will be in the PS3. It will have a huge market just because of the PS3. It therefore will not go away. Yes sony sucks, but for some reason everyone and their dog will buy the ps3. It guarantees Bluray's success."

      It will work. It will be in the PSP. It will have a huge market just because of the PSP. It therefore will not go away, It guarantees UMD's success....

      Wait? They are stopping production of UMD movies? Ah... forget what I just said.

    • Every time someone posts something like this I go to Digg... and see dozens of examples completely inane/utterly worthless/disgustingly badly-reported shit I'd rather not slog through.

      Seriously, this is like going to church to go tell everyone how awesome atheism is.

      (also, your post kind of doesn't make any sense. you simultaneously expect slashdot to produce a story like this and expect it to be better? what?)

      *burns karma*

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