...concur.

...isn't about time you retracted your story and apologized?

So now you're blaming Sony for you being an idiot? Why don't you just admit that you fucked up and apologize? Rob

So... hold on a sec here Lance. You are just adding fuel to the flames... Not only is your explanation lame (you mean that because there was no clear messaging you could did not deploy your journalistic skills and find out the truth) but now you are also saying that your main purpose was to find out if there was "commercial" discs when Sony has already saidthat the latter will be available in June... Man oh man...Talk about being an icon of journalism...

Just looking at the photo of the two comparisons side-by-side of House of the Flying Daggers - I can tell a huge difference in quality over the Blu-Ray (right side) and the DVD (left side). I guess you need a trained eye to tell the difference between a 480p and 1080p image. Nice investigative reporting, Lance! Get your eyes checked!

I suppose this won't matter to the sony fanatics plaguing the last post, but I don't see why you had to post this. Doesn't change the nature of the story, or how incredibly hilarious it was that Sony was using a DVD+R to demo a movie, blu-ray or not. Still funny, still noteworthy, and you're still spot on, imho. As for the rest, all the "HAH! you suck at journalism" or "can't you tell the difference? sheesh," etc, etc, heckle, ad nauseum, whatever-no one cares. :)

Read NBR's report. They understood it was supposed to be a comparison. Several other attendees knew that it was supposed to be a comparison. Perhaps you were too busy putting away too many cocktails to notice that it was supposed to be a comparison? Why else would they have two laptops side by side? Oh that's right: Blu-ray has a VISUAL STEREO feature.

Haha nice work. First your bs story on foxnews. Dual layer hd-dvd = 30 gig not 45-50 and now this. If I was pcmag I'd be firing this idiot because he doesnt research enough. I wonder how much other inaccuracies I could find if I went back through all your stories? Numbers on HD-DVD dual layers sourced from wikipedia and the toshiba HD-DVD promo page. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,195275,00.html The other article he got wrong. It's pretty safe to say this site has also lost a lot of credibility. Maybe you shouldn't be so quick to jump at the chance to post some sad tabloid journalism.

I love how the comments have changed from "OMG U FAKED IT" to "YOU HATE SONY NEWB" to "LOL U R TEH SUCK AT REPORTING LOL FIRED" wow. Such meaningful commentary from armchair quarterbacks.

YES! YES! RAISE HELL MY FANBOYS! ONWARD! SOMEDAY YOU WILL BE WORTHY OF MY PRAISE! GO FORTH AND CHAMPION MY CAUSE AND OVERPRICED, CLOSED FORMAT, NOT EVEN FUNCTIONAL CRAP! SPREAD THE FUD WIDELY!

I care more about fighting massive stupidity on the internet than fighting for or against any stupid disc format. Seriously, the number of retarded people in this entire "controversy" is staggering. The real story has nothing to do with Sony; the real story is that you are all morons.

Admit that you screwed up and quit passing the buck. Grow up.

It's funny watching all these people calling Lance a loser as if their lives are so much more meaningful and important. I guess it's real easy to talk shit from mommy's basement.

I have only been to this site once. I will never come back. You should probably apologize and say the 3 magic words. "I am wrong"

So yeah.. from what some other (real) journalists are reporting, who were actually at this event and paying attention, Lance was rather drunk when he noticed the mishap, and jumped to the wrong conclusion.' If so, that would explain how he didn't happen to notice the two machines were playing the same movie on different formats. Also, Sony does own the rights to this particular movie, and somehow I think they can copy it to whatever media they particularly want to.. And if he wasn't drunk, he should be fired, because this is a great example of journalists not bothering to investigate what they're reporting on and make sure they actually understand it before opening their fat, attention-whoring mouths. P.S. LOLOMFGFIREHIMHAHAYOUSUX0RS!

>>It's funny watching all these people calling Lance a loser as if their lives are so much more meaningful and important. >>I guess it's real easy to talk *** from mommy's basement. . . .and who the hell are you Afecks? You're just another anonymous shmuck on the internet just like the rest of us. At least when I make an apology, I'm not a condescending jack-ass like Lance.

The Sony rep believes I should have come straight to him when I saw the DVD+R. Had I thought this was a momentous discovery, I would have. Well, you sure as hell made a big deal out of it. This sort of Sh!t is FUD worthy of SCO. You gotta wonder what kind of journalist integrity there is at journalist at PC Magazine. If you have the balls to open up a demo unit to check a disk, you should at least find out wtf you're looking at (or ask somebody). Seriously, people makes mistakes, it happens; but I find it pathetic Lance Ulanoff can't admit to it.

Geez guys give him a break. You all would have done exactly the same thing if u were in his shoes. He made an attempt at an apology, cut him some slack

>>Geez guys give him a break. You all would have done exactly the same thing if u were in his shoes. He made an attempt at an apology, cut him some slack. Fact is, other folks, like people at notebookreview.com opened up the unit too and saw the DVD+R, except they figured out it was meant for comparision instead of jumping to conclusions(being that the unit next to it was actually playing Blu-ray). Thing is, you can't be a hypocrite, if you are willing to make accusations and flame people, you gotta be able to take what you dish out. Personally, more pissed off at this half-ass apology. Its like he's blaming someone else for his own damn mistake. He can't fess up for his mess.

Lance Ulanoff is a disgrace. Next time when you're drunk, late to the party, miss everything that's going on, xstumble over to a demonstration, and make wild accusations that border on slander if you're incorrect, why don't you take a step back and think, maybe I don't really have the biggest scoop of the year and wonder maybe there's a reason why all those /other/ journalists and media who saw the disc (like NotebookReview) didn't even blink. NotebookReview says the right notebook had a *significant* and *noticeable* difference of picture quality-- maybe he was too drunk to notice that there was only *one* Blue-Ray case RIGHT NEXT to the placard he mentions? Perhaps he should check the right laptop before accusing Sony of having absolutely no Blue-Ray disc of any kind at the party? People like Ulanoff really worries me... he has an anti-stances (like Apple or Blue Ray) and his bias causes him to jump at this story just because it *feels* so true in his world view. "Truthiness" at its worst.

Isn't it possible Sony is LYING and had a DVD+R in both drives?! Since no one checked...

Surprised, amused and a tad disappointed idiot: How much and by whom have you been paid for this opus ?. Please itemise.

Several articles Ulanoff has on the PC Magazine site list him not only as a columnist, but also as an editor. WTF? Honestly, if they were a real news publication, someone who pulled an Ulanoff-style stunt would get fired.

Great work Lance. I would've acted exactly as you did. Very humourous.

One moment the shining turd of web obscurity, gearlog reurns to it's rightful place at the bottom of the heap of sites I give a crap about. "Humerous" my left nut, Lance you are an attention whore and this is your 15 minutes. Ejoy them.

I would like to add that I also agree that Lance is a useless piece of tard. He belongs on FOX news or in a rubbish bin full of used condoms. Lance; should you read this, you are a disgrace.

All these comments and yet, Lance, the icon of PC journalism does not react. You gotta wonder... Maybe he was too sloppy to do the right thing (as a journalist) and hopes this all will blow away (like the rest of the PC mag staff!). Whether you like Sony or not, the question here is not if Sony faked it or not but whether Lance did his job guys...

Have you ever thought that the DVD could have been reencoded with purpose to artifically cripple the DVD quality. So the visible difference may not be so obvious with "original" DVD. Anyway, it is pointless to talk with PR people and throw accusations. Sony have the laptop with blu-ray disk and they can demonstrate it again at any time.

to all of you who say its obvious that it was a comparison demo. unless you were there STFU. Second, this is a very reasonable assumption since sony has had numerous problems with the blu-ray spec. just becuase you want to make love to your playstation doesnt give you the right to tell someone else how to do their job especially when you are a no talent *** clown yourself who probly couldn't pass an intro to journalism class at a comunity college. give the guy a break. and maybe consider the chance that a huge corperation under pressure to produce did in fact bait and switch.

does anyone agree that Lance/Jennifer (and their fans) are skirting the issue? Until someone shows us the pic of the notebook's drive on the right this is a foregone conclusion. Innocent till proven guilty ring a bell guys?

Well, to all who felt so outraged by this story because of the SONY. The fact is that the whole presentation was faked indeed - maybe the BR disc was the real one (we do not know), but for sure they did not compare BR disc with DVD quality, but "something" with DVD+R with unknown codec and unknown quality - so they did fake the presentation one way or another - period. IMO it is great that, from all the crowd, there was one person with enough curiosity to open the drive - too bad that only the left one. ps. Of course I am aware of the fact that any vendor presentation must be taken with a (big) grain of salt. Best regards.

...what this guy did wrong? If you look at all of the pictures of the Sony booth, you'll see that both laptops are being pitched as blu-ray enabled. Look at this picture: http://gearlog.com/photos/gearlog/images/11655/original.aspx It's clearly a blu-ray drive, but with DVD+R media. There is no question in my mind that they were streaming blu-ray content from a DVD+R.. which is EXACTLY THE PROBLEM. The various codecs and environment have been around for awhile, we're all worried about the manufacturing of the blu-ray drive itself!

Strange thing is... how come no other site has a picture of the blueray disc. Oh well...

Sounds to me like Lance really messed that up, but let's look past that and ask why Sony would have burned media in their Laptop. I'd put money that the DVD was re-encoded with uber-crap quality. Which would still make it a BS presentation in my book.

that cruddy outfit claims to have some leverage over pc mag? please, whatever; let notebook review have their 15 minutes of fame and then slink back into the abyss as a no-name no-one case hack outfit know-nothing blog.

But there are some things that maybe should have clued you in: 1.)Two version of the SAME movie playing side-by-side. What possible purpose could that have other than a side-by-side comparison? 2.) An obvious quality differential from one display to the other. Now, the story no one seems to be grabbing here is whether or not Sony recorded the DVD (on the non-Blue-Ray machine) at a bit-rate less than a production DVD. One would think with Sony's recent string of clandestine attempts, that this would be one of them.

like this would be the first time Sony used smoke and mirrors, i really hope blueray fails. seems over the years sony has had a fallout on the quality of their products. as a computer tech i've seen a lot of crap from sony, about a year ago i went thru 3 sony DVD-RW DL drives in less than 4 months, the only computer i hate more than a Vaio (desptop and laptop) is the Emachine, i got a Clie, screws fell out, and if i don't use it every few days it does a FULL reset, programs, contacts everything, and yes the battery still had a charge. the playstation 2, went thru 2 of them in the first year, got an xbox after that, haven't had a single issue with xobx in 4 YEARS! bottom sony is to big for it's own good and is about to fall flat on it's face.

Okay, so you saw two laptops running the same video. Why would you assume they are both playing the same exact technology? What would the purpose of having two of the same laptops and two of the same discs?! To show product consistancy? No, it was obviously to compare SOMETHING. Don't let your enthusiasm to boost your article traffic block your sense of logic, dumbass.

what's really cool is that Toshiba has an HD DVD demo that shows SD on one side of the screen and HD on the other. this allows the true clarity of HD to bee seen. see you local toshiba rep for this demo. oh by the way, toshiba is shipping an HD DVD CE player & PC equipped with HD DVD and the movie titles are in the retail stores with new releases every week. enjoy HD DVD...it's NOW PLAYING.

You found it "humorous" that one of the most crucial products in years for Sony, a product that is supposed to be released very soon is apparently not functional enough to do a 10 minute demo? That wasn't the feeling I got from the initial article. Sounds more like you thought you had the scoop of year and got so excited you didn't research it enough, and then tried to play it off like it was all a big joke. Just goes to show how far behind some blogs are from traditional news sources. Lord knows any self-respecting publication would have published a very apologetic retraction. The fact that I can tell the difference between the pictures on my crummy computer monitor shows what a short glance you must have taken before rushing away without talking to anyone to confirm your story. One would have though that even a moron in a hurry would have noticed it.

He almost had the right story. The right story is that there was a very good reason that the movie was on a DVD-R. It's because they re-encoded the movie to make sure people noticed the difference between Blu-Ray and standard DVD. Virtually any reviewer who has seen HD content will tell you it's nearly impossible to see a difference on small screens, and yet everyone in the room, looking at tiny laptop screens, saw a clear and visible difference. It's because the DVD-R wasn't running a standard format, but one Sony inentionally scaled down for comparison purposes. If only he'd bothered to look at the format of the file...

NONE of you would know that SONY DOESN'T even have enough faith in their product to give a fair comparison! So I give props to him for hitting the eject button! SONY is about nothing but smoke & mirrors, look at the PS3!

Blu-raygate Updated: Dualing Machines Last email I told you about the Sony Blu-ray demo that was playing...

Why do you even believe what's SONY is telling you? Some of you guys seem like you'd pay any amount of money for a bag of crap, as long as it had SONY's label on it. Is paying $1000 for a glorified DVD player, on which you can only watch a handful of movies, somehow attractive to you? Especially since you don't even have a 1080p TV, and won't be able to notice any difference? Sign me up for that!

The 'What's new now' email from ZD says 'Someone's got egg on their face, we just can't figure out if its us or them!' Well, it's you. You rushed out a story without checking your facts and now you're trying to back-pedal. You sure shouted loud enough when you announced this non-story and suddenly you've gone quiet. "Why didn't you tell us?" you wail - what, why didn't they tell every attendee all the methods they use to set up their demonstration? Who ever does that? It was clearly a side-by-side demo and OK it may have been a triumph of marketing over technology but that wasn't the point. Let's just have an apology rather than more childish defensive retaliation.

Much like a mini Dan Rather (and the fabricated Bush documents), Lance had already made up his mind about something (Sony and BR) and got sloppy. This is pretty typical in "journalism" now, so in a way, I guess we shouldn't be so shocked.

Blu-Ray is secondary; it flies or it doesn't, the market will decide, not a tech-show demo. The real story is the apparent violation of DRM by rootkit-loving Sony. Like the documented violation of rights by the RIAA of a Sundance entrant's copyright, it shows that these people think they are above the law. Which is exactly why they are lobbying Congress to pass legislation that would have made the exposure of the Sony rootkit and even the removal of the rootkit from your computer a felony. Will somebody start paying attention to the real threat these meglomaniacs present?

Lance is obviously the Anti-Christ and has begun his diabolical plot to torture the earths inhabitants. After reading the posts above I believe it is clear that people like Lance should be spanked and not fed their dinner. The fact that this tiny little article with it's rather non-earthshaking content could spark this kind of vitriol, says something about the intellect of your average netizen.

. . . it's duel.

...it's a subtle word play on the fact that there were two of them. Actually, no, they can't spell.

That laptop you see in the pic is... A FRIGGIN' CAKE!!!! oh...am i too late on that one?

It's quite interesting to note that Lance simply reported what he saw, and gave his reactions to it, and is being (more or less) excoriated for that. Should he have checked both laptops? Perhaps. There are some restrictions at these sorts of presentations; especially pushy people are sometimes not invited back. Should he have checked directly with the Sony representatives when he saw the DVD-recordable disc, not a factory-mastered disk? Perhaps. (Using a custom-selected piece rather than a commercially-released master is a fairly common practice at tradeshows or presentations, so this is neither surprising or "bad".) If he had faked the event, or lied about his actions, or mis-quoted the Sony representatives, then certainly, an apology would be called for. As it stands, um, not necessary for any of the adults in the crowd. Get a life, people! (Or, perhaps better, get invited to these events and do a more rigorous, "proper" job of reporting it. Lead by example, rather than whining by habit.)

So, wait a second. If I go to a library, and they have say, the Communist Manifesto there, they clearly are Soviet agents? Why not, and I know this is crazy but stay with me here, actually ASK them something? Instead of being a guy who went to an event and saw a thing, why not be a JOURNALIST? First you should appologize for your moronic slandering, then you should remove the title 'journalist' from anything to do with you.

The real issues in this story are totally missed. Sony is trying to screw the consumers on so many levels it's not even humorous. The company that is putting rootkits on computers giving full backdoor access to anyone is using a copied movie in a demo. Who cares that they may own the rights. They are doing (probly with their own hardare they sell to the same consumers) exactly what they are bending us over and telling us we can't do (coppying DVD's for thos not paying attenion) while infecting our computers with their own viruses. On top of this lets take the fanboy explaination of it being a comparison. Well wich lie do you want to take you only have two lies to chose from. Either Lance's or the fanboys. They are using a 4.7GB recorable DVD to play a movie from. This means they had to re-encode the movie and shrink it to fit on this smaller format. For those who still don't get it that means they just stripped out the quality of the picture to make it fit on the DVD. Well guess what the result is? Movie quality that is less than a STANDARD DVD. This is what they are comparing to the new Bluray. This is no where near a fair comparison or even ethical practice. You only have two LIES to chose from which one do you want? Pay attention people. Your rights and you money are both being stripped away by corporations like Sony, and you are gladdly lapping it up.

I am sorry, but there is no way that a comparision with DVD-R would in any way be a fair measure against a standare DVD let alone a high Def BluRay Disk. I suspect that there is much more to the story then Sony is letting on. After Sony's Root Kit fiasco, I have lost complete faith in the BluRay Drive. Add to this the massive retooling of DVD factories and incompatability between BluRay and HD DVD and it is time to run away from this format.

A decade or so ago, Sony held a press demo in England about one of their video products (it may have been early HDTV, i forget that bit). The British science/tech magazine New Scientist covered the show, and *looked under the table's drapery*. They did NOT find the product Sony was "demoing", they found a raft of other equipment simulating it. They -did- "bring it to Sony's attention" and got a lot of hemming, hawing and not-admitting-fraud. But that well-attended "demonstration" was a fake, not a "comparison", and only one curious reporter discovered the ruse.

Sure, this was a fun story, but just about every "critique" here is just an assumption. As for DRM argument... Simply put, if ony owns the rights, they can do whatever they want. To whoever said they're doing exactly what they want to prevent us from doing... no. If YOU or I make a copy, we've broken the law because we do not own the *rights* to the movie. By definition, if Sony owns the *right*, they have the *right* to reproduce the movie however they see fit. They could put it on floppy disks and hand it out to everyone there for free if they wanted. Come on. Think man. Think! As for DVD-R quality being crippled... again, absurd. There's nothing to say that the DVD+R is any worse or better than a normal DVD-ROM would have been. Again, assumption. The REAL issue is exactly as one poster mentioned: CAN Sony actually put out a bluRay disc right now? The DVD+R is just a storage medium. And just because a DV+R was in the drive doesn't mean it wasn't a 1080 movie. I could copy a 1080 trailer from Apple.com, burn it to a DVD+R, take it to a friend's house, copy it to his HDD and then play it. Does it mean he's not getting 1080? nope. But it DOES mean he's not playing a BluRay disc. The presence of the DVD+R in the drive could be an even bigger story than we think IF Sony had used it to copy BluRay content to the HDD and run it run there. Far as I know, Lance didn't check to see if the drive was actually reading the disc. Everytime I read his story, I wonder why he didn't comment on how many people were pissed that he jected the movie while it was playing. Maybe it wasn't...? Anyway, there are too many unknowns here for anyone to comment with certianly. lance found a DVD+R in a BluRay drive and it made Sony look bad. We won't know until the real BluRay launch if this was a meaningful story or not. So everyone, get back outside. It's awfully nice out there :) (Not edited for typos)

Root kit none blue ray blueray just more sony crap after their root kit fiasco you think they would have learned..... us consumers will only take so much bull.I for one have decided that I will never purchase a sony poduct again and I will also stear my customers to any one but sony

While it is true that they could run a few minute demo at 1080p on a standard DVD+/-R, what would be the point. If the BluRay holds 50 Gig, you would have to load either a very short demonstration piece on the DVD+/-R; which only holds 4.7 Gig or a poorer quality piece of longer duration. Either way, demo does not make much sense to me. I suspect that there was no bluray on the table because they couldn't get things working in time for the demo and they went with the best alternate that they could throw together.

I guess all the fuss about excessive DRM companies impose doesn't affect some people. Sony seems to be the worst, and shows in in the Blueray track-em and smack-em capability I read about a while ago (maybe it is not in the standard anymore??). Since we don't know, it could be worse for Sony if Lance had actually checked further into the demo, what a terrible missed opportunity.

If lance had done like the sony rep would have said and come straight to him to clear the whole mess up, this is what probably would have happened. lance: whats the deal with the dvd-r in here? rep: uhh what? lance: thought so. the end you honestly think that they would let lance anywhere near the second laptop if it had the disk or not? Sony had no idea whats going on, and as i said in an ealier post, it was probably burned because it was a custom movie with about 10-15 minutes of intense scenes to show the dramatic difference in quality etc... its a marketing technique. next time you all want to post, close your fists and open your mind before you start pressing buttons. doing just that happends to be one of my buttons, and ya'll are pressing them.

Sony using another company's dvd+r at a tradeshow is quite funny, but it's only a tradeshow. I don't think the Sony corporate machine threw it's full weight behind a table with 2 laptops on (3 including the cake) manned by a miserable looking marketing person, and said marketing ladette probably spent the best part of the morning trying to scrounge a copy of a DVD to match the bluray content they'd just been sent. Tradeshows are bollocks. We all know that. Beautiful swans furiously padding under the water, aye? The sad part of all this is how agressive some of you internet ninjas are to poor old Lance, and how willing you are to defend Sony's inept marketing droids. They are just another company who's continued existance is dependant on seperating you from as much of your disposable income as possible. You owe them nothing. And look! i didn't even need to think up a clever internet pseudonym to post under. Go me!

well, all of you fuckin retards that are bitchin about him being drunk....thats sony's fault. if you dont want somebody to jump to the wrong conclusions, maybe if a reporter is drunk you shouldnt let them into your demonstration? and, hell, HD-DVD is going to hold as much as bluray, be cheaper, and be easier for those of us who break the law and copy their games to do our business with. so fuck bluray altogether, especially since you need to spend $600 probably plus a $100 external drive to use it. ill take my $300 xbox360 to play HD-DVD discs any day.

When I read the first story, I figured it was some sort of prank or goof on Sony by Lance. I laughed even harder at all you sops for buying it as the real thing! Even if Lance did mis-report it, I don't see why you all can't have a sense of humor about it. Jeez, do you all react this childishly when the NYT does poor reporting? Don't worry, Lance. We ALL take it on the chin once in a while and I dare any of you to say that you've NEVER messed something up in your professional life!