Sony isn't the only proprietor of Bluray, everyone is looking for green...

hdbeat.com ponders why Bluray is labeled purely a Sony product, when that couldn't be further from the case.

Sony is one of 17 companies on the board of directors and the only company that gets credit for owning the Blu-ray standard.

Really? I am guilty of making the Sony-made-Bluray assumption because "proprietary" is Sony's middle name. They are pushing it more than any other company, and it will be in their possibly-no-longer flagship gaming console, the notorious PS3.

This article educated me on some of the reasons behind this format-war-fiasco. So up to now, these other businesses have totally had to pony up royalties for using DVD to Toshiba. No wonder they don't talk of hybrid Bluray-DVD discs and people question Bluray's backwards compatibility. And yet another slam: Sony has invested interests in MPEG2 which may explain why they haven't moved to a better codec on their current Bluray offerings.

Not that HD-DVD doesn't have it's own money-minded purposes. Microsoft has invested interest in iHD, which is the XML-based language for the interactive layer on HD-DVDs. Beyond that, HD-DVD also uses a Micrsoft codec. However, being in bed with Toshiba would mean no DVD royalty problems for them, and insured backwards compatbility for consumers.

Not that this should be any surprise; companies are in the business with the sole purpose of making money. However, much can be learned and speculated from here.

Edit 07/20/2006: Fixed quote link