| Editorial September 2006
An Open Letter to Sony
Dear Sony:
As you look across the consumer-electronics marketplace, do
you see many familiar faces? Can you see your own longtime customers, who have faithfully
supported you as you have brought forth such products as the Walkman and the PlayStation?
I have owned both of those products, and have enjoyed and appreciated their innovative
technology. They set new standards and created more possibility. That’s what has made
Sony such a large and profitable company.
I also own a 36" Sony HDTV that I bought two years
ago. I haven’t replaced it because I haven’t seen a better picture. You
cocreated the CD in the early 1980s with Philips and, with Matsushita, Philips, and
Toshiba in the mid-1990s, the DVD. Both formats revolutionized the industry and brought
capabilities to home audio and video that hadn’t existed before. For all of that, I
thank you.
But what’s been happening lately? The faces of your
past customers now look stern. We are here to say, "Wake up, Sony."
Sony, is it possible that some of your decisions are
hindering, not helping, the growth of our home-entertainment hobby? Never mind the whole
fiasco concerning the copy-protection software hidden on your CDs, as reported by MSNBC and
countless others -- you know, the rootkit malware that would be surreptitiously
installed on our computers as soon as we inserted the CDs in our disc drawers. I’m
sure that installing harmful software in customers’ computers without their
knowledge, thus putting them at risk of malicious hackers, sounded like a good idea at the
time. All of this shrewdness was designed to protect your copyrighted songs, but what
about us? Perhaps you shouldn’t have signed off on that idea. It was wrong, and you
apologized, but the trust of a customer betrayed is something that is tough to get back.
As your Blu-ray technology battles it out with HD DVD for
supremacy as the high-definition-video optical disc format, do you foresee a
debacle similar to what happened with the hi-rez audio formats of SACD and DVD-Audio? A
format war creates confusion among consumers, and indecision among makers of hardware and
software. Although the SACD survives, it certainly hasn’t replaced the CD. The
evolution of hi-rez audio was shut down almost before it began. Of course, your
competitors had something to do with that: Internet downloading and the invention of the
Apple iPod didn’t help. Now I have an $800 universal audio/video player with
capabilities that are no more useful to me than a good DVD player at half the price.
Today, no one can really use a Betamax videocassette player either.
Perhaps someday you’ll realize that you should have
considered unifying the two new hi-def video formats. Sure, there will be a universal
player within the next year or two, but who knows if, by then, consumers will still be
interested? You had the time and the ability to stand back and reevaluate the moment.
Toshiba was at the table with you, but alas, their new HD DVD players made it to market
first, and have been greeted with much more appreciation and much less trouble than
predicted. The quality of HD DVD video is outstanding, and Toshiba’s players are much
less expensive than yours. Blu-ray’s launch has been slow and limping, and the format
now seems to be falling behind.
Sony, please remember that while we, the consumers, have
long been your supporters, we will pull for new technology regardless of who makes it. We
want better technology, and we’ve proved that we’re willing to support it
and pay for it. So don’t be the schoolyard bully. Don’t squander the
buyer’s trust. Innovate, learn from your past mistakes, and move the industry
forward. We consumers have learned from our own past mistakes, and will not repeat them
again and again. The next time you look out over the consumer-electronics marketplace, the
familiar faces you once saw may have been replaced by our turned backs. It’s all up
to you.
...Randall Smith
randalls@hometheatersound.com |
