Anybody remember ATRAC? No? Just me? Probably just me.
Context? google is just giving some stuff about saving sony camera files.
Over the years Sony had engaged in several media storage format wars. Just a few off the top of my head:
VHS vs Sony Betamax
HD-DVD vs Bluray
SD cards vs Sony Memory Sticks
DVD-R vs DVD+R (two competing standards of writable DVDs within the DVD format)
On top of that they were behind or otherwise involved with other successful formats such as the 3.5" floppy disk and the CD.
Spoiler alert: If your media format is successful, you get passive income via licensing. If some company wants to print Bluray discs or manufacture Bluray players, they have to pay licensing fees, leading to further profit for Sony (and anybody else involved in the making of said media format.)
Ohhh, format wars. I thought it was some copyright thing.
And after the physical format wars came the digital format wars. Wanna watch this cool movie you downloaded from the internet? Better make sure you have DivX or iMovie installed.
Don’t forget about RealMedia
Unfortunately the thing about digital media is people can reverse engineer it and release open source codecs for free.
that doesn’t seem unfortunate at all.
Only for people making proprietary codecs.
That’s my take on it. 20 years had a Sony Camera which took a Memory Stick even though SDcards were a thing.
