Sony Starts a Standards War Over Wireless USB 401
Stony Stevenson alerts us to news out of CES that Sony has kick-started another standards war, this time over wireless USB. Ars notes that Sony "[never was] one to settle for an open standard when the opportunity to push a proprietary alternative presents itself." Sony's TransferJet technology uses low-power UWB at very short distances to transfer data at a nominal 520 Mbps. Almost every other large technology company — including Intel, Microsoft, HP, and Samsung — has embraced the W-USB standard, which promises transfer speeds of 480 Mbps at distances up to 3 meters, vs. TransfeJet's 3 centimeters.
3cm is a Good Thing (Score:5, Informative)
The protocol is promoted to be "touch-and-go", not requiring any setup or user intervention. Thus you simply "touch" (meaning bringing within 3cm) a device and an action is performed automatically - such as downloading your photos or displaying a video.
This has the possibility of simplifying connections (we'll have to wait and see if it works) and the 3cm distance makes it such that you have to consciously activate the connection, possibly saving you from embarrassing situations.
Re:3 cm? (Score:2, Informative)
This transferjet is just a very slick dock. That's all it is. It automatically transfers your media when you sit your product on the station. 3cm is a proxy for 0cm, since you are supposed to just sit it down.
To compare this with wireless USB is ridiculous.
Re:Sony obviously.... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Sony obviously.... (Score:3, Informative)
Yes, obviously not. I hadn't heard of all of those acronyms, so here's a quick summary of Sony's history:
- Minidisc and ATRAC? Licensed to several other companies, like JVC, Sharp, Pioneer, and Panasonic. Specially designed to require very little power to decode, unlike other codecs like MP3. Still somewhat popular in Japan.
- Memory sticks? Still around, like CF and SD, and unlike some earlier open standards. Again, licensed to other companies, like SanDisk and Lexar.
- DAT? Digital and recordable on small tapes, in the mid-1980's -- can you even buy anything today that's comparable? Loved by countless, especially in the music industry (Karajan: "All else is gaslight").
- SDDS? Used by over a thousand films, and installed in many thousands of theatres. Though less popular than other systems like Dolby (despite having a far higher bitrate than Dolby Digital), many films are still released with a SDDS track.
- HiFD: an attempt by Sony to make a 150MB, backwards-compatible 3.5" disk. Failed horribly, for various reasons. Note that the old 3.5" disk they were trying to overtake was Sony's to begin with; Apple bought Sony drives to put in their now-famous 128K Mac.
- 8mm video: introduced with the Sony Handycam. Compared to VHS and Betamax cameras of the day, it was smaller, had similar video quality, and better audio quality. 8mm and its successors dominated the market for almost 2 decades, until digital video arrived and squashed everybody. Not a "failure" by any stretch of the imagination.
- SACD: attempted successor to CD audio (along with DVD-Audio), but CDs are good enough for most people. Hybrid SACDs are backwards-compatible, so you may actually own some (I do!) even if you have no intention of buying a SACD player. Not officially dead, but not a runaway success, either.
- UMD (not "UMF") is the portable optical disc used by the PSP. They've sold 25 million PSPs since it started shipping just over 3 years ago, so averaging around 22,000 per day since then. Hard to see how this could be called a "failure", either.
So let's see... licensed to other big companies, licensed to other big companies, awesome technology, good technology that didn't end up being that popular, failed attempt to replace their own 3.5" floppy, technology that dominated its field for 2 decades, failed attempt to replace their own audio CDs, optical disc for one of the most popular handheld video game systems.
Yeah, I'm sure they're crying all the way to the bank. What's the "lesson" you want them to have learned here? If they build their own, they can license it to others? That they should stop trying to innovate at all, despite huge successes like the 3.5" floppy, CD audio, and 8mm video? Sony is big and rich because they build things people want, more often than not -- not simply because the Japanese' eyes are closer to the electronic components.
<Randall Graves> You'll be missed!
Re:Bluetooth? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:3cm?! (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Sony obviously.... (Score:5, Informative)
But mostly because it's a card that is supported natively by my laptop, my game console (wii), my digital camera (canon powershot a50), and my gps (garmin nuvi). At $40 for two 2g-ers, you can't go wrong. It's like my new floppy.
Re:Losing a battle to win a war. (Score:3, Informative)
different uses (Score:3, Informative)
This is not obviously a format war (Score:3, Informative)
The system is designed for maximum ease of use, which means limited options for controlling the transfers; devices will transfer their contents automatically to another device within range.
In other words it looks like the Sony device is more like a "plug without physical connection", working when devices are touched together with little or no configuration. It may also be suitable for very low power devices, for example you may be able to "touch" a PC to a battery-powered data collection device to download data.
The W-USB on the other hand seems to be more like bluetooth, connectivity for "nearby" devices.
Re:Losing a battle to win a war. (Score:5, Informative)
And since there is no "open" standard for high definition discs, I fail to see what your point is. If you mean the standard with the largest industry support by a mile then Blu Ray is that standard.
And the PS3 is an incredibly open and standards compliant device, especially considering it is a games console. Want to upgrade your HDD? Just whack in a 2.5" SATA drive with no bullshit 2x markup for drive in a special case. Networking? 802.11b/g wireless with full WEP/WPA support and gigaethernet are there to support you. Want to use a keyboard / mouse / storage device? USB is there to do it? Want to use a wireless mouse / keyboard / headset? It has blue tooth support? Want to save / restore files? Use CF, SD, MS, USB to do it. Want to talk wirelessly in-game? Want to play CDs, DVDs? Yes it does that, and rips CDs to MP3 or AAC too. Want to play MP3, AAC, JPG, PNG, MPEG2, H263 ASP (divx), H264 AVC files locally or streamed over a network? No problem. Want to stream? No problem it implements DNLA, an open standard. Want to run Linux? It supports that too. Or browse the web? No problem.
The PS3 is an amazingly open device and you bitch that Sony dare push their own (widely supported) standard for just one aspect? You don't have to buy the device you know.
Re:Sony obviously.... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Losing a battle to win a war. (Score:3, Informative)