Video Chief Blu-ray Warning

In an extraordinary speech, Warner Home Video president Warren Lieberfarb has hit out at Sony over its tactics in winning the next generation war between Blu-ray and HD-DVD.

Source: Next-gen.biz

Speaking at the Perspectives in European Video conference, he addressed Sony’s battle to bring its Blu-ray format, used in PlayStation 3, to prominence.

He said movie studios are being drawn into the war between console manufacturers, against their will, and not necessarily in their interest. He said, “If I put Blu-ray in PlayStation and I don’t license it to Microsoft for Xbox and I get all the studios to only publish in PlayStation, I’ll beat Microsoft in the next-generation games market. We’ve been sucked into PlayStation versus Xbox.”

He went on, “Hollywood blew it. They got duped. They could have created the format that optimized their creative interests. It looks like we lost, because there are six studios supporting Blu-ray and only three supporting HD-DVD. But you know, there’s always surprises.”

‘Samurai’ Sony

He said, “If you ever read ‘The Art of War,’ you will see all of Sony’s moves, including taking all its enemies in the same tent and then leaving them empty-handed. These are things that they have done historically.”

He added, “They did the same thing to Matsushita and Betamax, they did the same thing to Matsushita on compact disc, they did the same thing to Matsushita on the digital video camcorder. They compete like samurai. It isn’t the way we compete in the West.”

Lieberfarb, who is in Microsoft’s anti Blu-ray camp, urged the industry to embrace HD-DVD. “Convergence is here, everything is digital, the Internet is going to deliver video, you are going to want to pass information from one device to another and HD-DVD versus Blu-ray is really the first battle in the issue of who controls the home.”

In an extraordinary speech, Warner Home Video president Warren Lieberfarb has hit out at Sony over its tactics in winning the next generation war between Blu-ray and HD-DVD.

Source: Next-gen.biz

Speaking at the Perspectives in European Video conference, he addressed Sony’s battle to bring its Blu-ray format, used in PlayStation 3, to prominence.

He said movie studios are being drawn into the war between console manufacturers, against their will, and not necessarily in their interest. He said, “If I put Blu-ray in PlayStation and I don’t license it to Microsoft for Xbox and I get all the studios to only publish in PlayStation, I’ll beat Microsoft in the next-generation games market. We’ve been sucked into PlayStation versus Xbox.”

He went on, “Hollywood blew it. They got duped. They could have created the format that optimized their creative interests. It looks like we lost, because there are six studios supporting Blu-ray and only three supporting HD-DVD. But you know, there’s always surprises.”

‘Samurai’ Sony

He said, “If you ever read ‘The Art of War,’ you will see all of Sony’s moves, including taking all its enemies in the same tent and then leaving them empty-handed. These are things that they have done historically.”

He added, “They did the same thing to Matsushita and Betamax, they did the same thing to Matsushita on compact disc, they did the same thing to Matsushita on the digital video camcorder. They compete like samurai. It isn’t the way we compete in the West.”

Lieberfarb, who is in Microsoft’s anti Blu-ray camp, urged the industry to embrace HD-DVD. “Convergence is here, everything is digital, the Internet is going to deliver video, you are going to want to pass information from one device to another and HD-DVD versus Blu-ray is really the first battle in the issue of who controls the home.”