Thoughts on Sony

Sony didn’t learn from Beta format mistakes

Sony isn’t letting the porn industry use their BlueRay format? I’m amazed at their short-sidedness here. Adult Entertainment was one of the key drivers for several industries success. It was key (as Scoble points out here) in VHS winning the format wars. Plus, it was one of the early winners when it came to profit making on the net. Someone might want to the let Sonys exec’s know that they’re locking out a $57 billion industry.

On a mildly related note, I received a Sony Reader over the holidays. I’ve played a little bit with it, and am going to spend some significant time op-testing it over the next few weeks. Already, though, I’ve two complaints. Number one, no backlighting. So, while I’m waiting for the train to come on a dark platform, too bad, so sad. I think this was a gross oversight. It might save a bit on battery life, but I can think of way too many times that the backlight would be critical. It certainly will keep me from using this for my latenight/can’t sleep reading. Also, I wonder why it doesn’t have a touch screen. I don’t know the price points here, but if it doesn’t add too much to the sales price, they should seriously consider dropping one of those in. That could also expand the functionality of the device.