Taking Sides: Does Sony Deserve Another Chance?

Randall Smith’s barbed open letter to Sony last month has prompted me to write this open love letter to Toshiba. In reading blogs and forums and press releases, I began to realize just how heavy the competition actually is between Sony’s Blu-ray and Toshiba’s HD DVD high-definition optical-disc formats. Go to some of the discussion rooms and you’d swear it was Democrats vs. Republicans or Cowboys vs. Steelers. Tempers are running high, and participants constantly must be reminded to keep their cool and be polite.

I don’t get it. The HD DVD camp has delivered their product, it works just fine, and its catalog of excellent discs is growing. The BD camp, as they call it (BD meaning Blu-ray Disc), has flubbed just about everything about the format’s launch and the production of BD discs. The contest seems to be in the minds only of those BD fans who hold out for future improvements of their system.

In his editorial, Randall pointed out many of Sony’s shortcomings. Unbeknownst to consumers, Sony included invasive software on some of their CD releases that was automatically installed in users’ computer hard drives. They did it under the name of copy-protection, a phrase that indicates just how much control this vast company desires and how powerful it assumes it is. I had one of those discs -- At This Time, a real downer of a set by Burt Bacharach in which he picks apart all the things that are wrong with society today. If Bacharach makes an At This Time II, he might well mention his own label’s monkey business. I’m still waiting for the $6 that was won on behalf of myself and thousands of others in a class-action suit against Sony, though the label has already sent me a replacement copy of At This Time that they were forced to send to buyers of the original edition. It’s supposedly clean, but I’ll never put it in my computer’s disc drawer to find out. Sony has lost my trust. The debacle with the CDs alone is enough to make me avoid Blu-ray.

Issues of trust aside, look at Sony’s track record with new formats. Betamax and SACD have failed, largely because Sony wanted to have things its way. Their first SACDs were not SACD/CD hybrids and could be played only by SACD players. Hey, consumer, our new discs are great, and they’re not backward-compatible -- to play them, spend your money on our machines.

During the lead-up to the launches of Blu-ray and HD DVD, Sony claimed that Blu-ray was better because it had greater storage capacity. But the first BD discs actually have less capacity than the dual-layer HD DVDs already on the market. Sony says they’ll soon have dual-layer discs, though at the time of writing no one had actually seen one of these.

In short, Sony and friends have delivered only empty promises. If they have not lied outright, they have bent the truth.

Toshiba and HD DVD, on the other hand, have delivered the goods. They got their player out on time, and it works great. It plays HD DVDs but also does a wonderful job, through its astonishing upsampling circuitry, of playing standard-definition DVDs. You don’t have to junk your SD collection on buying this machine. It’s a heck of a CD player, too, with 24-bit/96kHz upsampling.

Toshiba’s HD DVD player can also be upgraded. Toshiba has already produced three shareware discs with updates, one of them adding Dolby TrueHD 5.1-channel sound. And the Toshiba player includes onboard processors for Dolby Plus as well. They didn’t have to do that, but it’s a nice touch. Though ultimately everything will be HDMI connectors and the Toshiba provides that output, the player’s analog outputs let you enjoy hi-def sound with your current electronics (assuming you have 5.1 analog inputs/outputs). The last I heard, and if I understand it correctly, the planned Blu-ray players will require your electronics to do all the conversions.

For customer service, Toshiba has telephone lines manned with trained people to help. When an issue comes up that has not yet been addressed, they write it down and report it. I’ve never had to wait longer than a minute or so to talk to one of these people.

In short, unlike Sony, Toshiba listens to its customers. I haven’t detected a hint of arrogance in their presentation, or any condescension, either. In fact, I’m so impressed with their attitude that the next time I need an audio or video component, I’ll first check to see if Toshiba makes one before I look at other brands. Unlike Sony, Toshiba has earned my trust.

The argument that Sony has signed more film studios to the Blu-ray format doesn’t hold, either. Yes, they have more in number, but what are they releasing? While Universal and Warner continue to release excellent titles, even classics, on HD, Fox and Disney are releasing mostly bottom-drawer titles on BD. They say they want the system to be perfected before they go full blast. HD DVD has no such problems. It’s ready enough that Universal has just announced the releases of King Kong and Spartacus (197 minutes; how’s that for storage capacity?).

Would you rather place your bet on a proven system, or one that might be as good but has yet to be proven so? Apparently, to my amazement, people are willing to go with the latter. But considering Sony’s track record (not forgetting those copy-protected CDs) and looking at the one Toshiba has already established, it’s the latter that has won my trust and confidence. There is no contest for me. As the slogan on the Warner HD DVD trailer says, "It’s here, it’s now."

 ...Rad Bennett
radb@hometheatersound.com

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