Oh man, this is a "PRICELESS" moment.. Way to go Sony, you've done it again...

OMFG you got to be kidding me. ... Where did the money go?

Yup this sounds like Sony, always trying to show off something that is theoretical and non-existant, and since its SONY then it will be touted as the best thing since sliced bread..

What's even more funny, is that the DVD is not even a proper DVD of the movie "House Of Flying Daggers" It's a copy LMAO

Too bad this is probably fake. I'd like to see Sony and the MPAA duke it out

Well Sony in the past year or two has done a fantastic job. They are ruining their reputation faster than any company I've seen. I don't know how much longer Sony will be able to "touted as the best thing since sliced bread.." tisk tisk tisk.

and it's not even a sony dvd-r

SONY GOT PWN-JOBBED!!

Does this mean that Sony execs are busy pirating movies and putting copying them on Blank DVDs?

LOL....LOL.....LOL.....LOL......LOL....LOL.....LOL.....LOL......LOL....LOL.....LOL.....LOL......LOL....LOL.....LOL.....LOL...... LOL....LOL.....LOL.....LOL......LOL....LOL.....LOL.....LOL...... LOL....LOL.....LOL.....LOL...... LOL....LOL.....LOL.....LOL...... LOL....LOL.....LOL.....LOL......LOL....LOL.....LOL.....LOL......LOL....LOL.....LOL.....LOL......LOL....LOL.....LOL.....LOL...... man that's funny!

I am suprised they didn't call in the MPAA and arrest and fine the employee who copied the DVD.

This is ridiculous. First, at E3 the supposed PS3 Gran Turismo demo was actually running on a PC (http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=31681) and now they're pretending to show off Blu-Ray when it's really just a burned DVD? How low will they go by the end of May?

So you had a sharpie and a dvd-r with you at the party. Nice way to get attention! Why don't you have a zoomed out shot showing what laptop this tray is on? How do we know you didn't take this pic afterwards?

not just that - will the MAFIA get on their case for illegal copying??

Everybody talks about how sony were going to lick their games and other media content so that they could fight piracy. And here they are at an international media event displaying pirated content as legitimate. Tsk, Tsk, Tsk. Who's a naughty conglomerate?

It's even better that the DVD isn't even a Sony one.

I've actually burned 1080i content onto a regular old DVDR using DVD studio pro 4 and mpeg2HD settings, and the toshiba will playback 1080i quality, but you are limited in length of video as regular dvdrs have only a few gigs, i think it's 25min limit. This is probably what they did so you might have seen similar quality to what blue ray has to offer, but not on blue ray media. Still pretty bad! *spank* sony *spank spank*.

Can anyone give me a link to where PC Magazine's Lance Ulanoff actually posted this account?

The DVD-R was ejected from the VAIO cake retards. -Van Halen ...not Van Hagar!

if you compare the two pictures, you see that the table beneath and the buttons are different, djiz. wii ftw. what a turd.

I mean do you all believe whatever someone tells you? It sounds like bs. Burnt non-sony disc and 3 small pictures.. Funny joke but not believiable

Wow way to go sony you bunch of phonys it's all fine and well to have the technology but to actually claim you are running it when you're not is pretty bad and is the reason I pray microsoft blows you out of the water with hd dvd !!!!

How could you not believe this? It's just the kind of Cabo Wabo bull that Sammy Hagar would try to pull. -Alex, Eddie, take me back.

Haha, bet that guy is looking for a job! Steve www.networking-forum.com

Lance didn't post this story at pcmag.com, he gave it to Gearlog to post; but if you'll check the far right side of the Gearlog banner, you'll see the PC Magazine logo. In other words, we're sister sites. Nearly all our posters work for PC Mag too. Strange as it may seem to some of you, companies actually do this kind of thing. It's perhaps a bit embarrassing for Sony, but it won't put them out of business! We just thought it was funny... anyway, we'll post more pictures, though I doubt they'll convince die-hard Sony fans.

The top picture is the cake. The story is very believiable, SONY is going down the tubes. They need to adapt to current markets and stop trying to push all their proprietary crapy formats. Look at how they lost to apple in the portable music war after they invented it with the walkman. Hail to HD-DVD and my beutifull XBOX 360!!!!

Look at the right of the PC, it's BLACK, just like under the VIAO... Who's a turd?

Did Sony actually annouce that the Vaio was indeed playing a Bluray or did it simply have a demo of a partial high-def burned movie for demo with a mockup of a Bluray case nearby to show the new case design?

The PC in the first image is NOT the same as the one with the DVD. You can clearly see the letters 'SO' in the picture with the DVD, and there are a couple of input jacks next to the DVD tray. The picture at the top has no such DVD tray anywhere near the Sony logo. And no input jacks on that side of the laptop to be seen anywhere. This is a fake by someone who is obviously a Microsoft Fanboy. Get over it. Both formats will survive, and each will have their fan base.

That's so funny. $ony is really sucking.

You are all morons, just like Hagar.

In the Image of the DVD Drive you can see to small round ports like the ear phone jacks you get one is lit up red. On the Image of the Laptop you can see that there is no bright red light next to the dvd drive

If Lance really opened the disc tray therefore stopping the only alleged Bluray playing device in the entire party how come no Sony Reps didn't notice him doing this? Why didn't the Sony Ninjas come down through the ceiling tiles and slice Lance's jugular and take away the DVD+R imposter all before anyone could notice?

wow, read the damn article, it was only a few paragraphs $ony 0wned

It is a cake. You know flour sugar etc.

haha $ony!!! http://www.engadget.com/2006/05/16/sony-throws-party-for-vaios-fakes-blu-ray-demo/

MMMMMMMMMMM CAKE AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH

pretty amazing cake anyway, i bet it has proprietary frosting.

Putting all the above crazy talk aside... I thought this was a big huge party? The lady in picture 2 doesn't look she having a very good time. Isn't this party in/near a bar? Why isn't anyone totting around alcoholic beverages?

The top picture is of the laptop cake. His pic of the DVD is from the laptop set up to play DVD's.

Haha....$0NY got owned, I wonder what would have been inside their PS3 @ E3...... LOL

Along the lines of Loopymonkeys post... HD-DVD and Bluray drives do play advanced content (iHD and BDJ) from Red Laser media. This is simply a case of Sony demo'ing Bluray content before the title ships, so they asked their Bluray pre-mastering house to burn them a demo of the functionality for the press event. Not unusual or illegal, although I do agree that its amusing that they didn't use Sony DVD+R media and don't yet have a working demo and Bluray recordable media in their developers hands. Personally I think it's cool they are showing off Bluray functionality on a laptop regardless of what optical format they burned on.

very mature posts. blu-ray content is months away; so i don't see how "pwned" "$ony" is, or even what's the fun part.

Personally I think it's cool they are showing off Bluray functionality on a laptop regardless of what optical format they burned on. If one assumes the Drive is actually BluRay.

blu-ray content is months away June 2006 is next month.

For all you smart people crying "Sony are Pirates!!!!1" need you be reminded that House of Flying Daggers is a Sony movie.

gee- do ya think there's a job opening in Sony's marketing department? Not even a Sony disc! woot!

HOLY FAKE! You'll be lucky if you're not sued. Good luck with your "reporting" career. We'll visit you in jail.

Q) "Why didn't the Sony Ninjas come down through the ceiling tiles and slice Lance's jugular and take away the DVD+R imposter all before anyone could notice?" A) SPOON! Heck, *Everyone* who's read "The Tick!" knows that American Ninjas are crap, and you know what the tick hates... :)

While I'm ready to bash sony whenever possible... has anyone actually verified if it was HD content on a dvd... or if sony was flat out lying saying it's playing a bluray disc?

Our blank media sucks. Use Verbatim we do. I know what blank media I am going to buy now.

Everything on the internet is true. If it is written, it is fact. If it is photographed too, it's definitely fact. Of course Sony left the machine un-attended. Of course they let someone touch it never once fearing the disc would be stolen. Of course they couldn't have disabled the eject mechanism on a drive they built in a machine they built. And, last but not least, obviousy Sony uses Verbatim media (not their own) for all their piracy needs (even for their own distributions)! Wow, they sure do like morons. Yup. Uh huh. Sony does.

Euhm, Wtf?? ONE WORD ---- HOAX This is so FAKE !!!! If yiu believe this then i will now tell you that you can really fly if you want too ... now go to the roof and JUMP ... Kinde Regards, Sony Style

Ow yeah i forget to tell you i got pictures of it

Everything on the internet is true. If it is written, it is fact. If it is photographed too, it's definitely fact. Of course Sony left the machine un-attended. Of course they let someone touch it never once fearing the disc would be stolen. Of course they couldn't have disabled the eject mechanism on a drive they built in a machine they built. And, last but not least, obviousy Sony uses Verbatim media (not their own) for all their piracy needs (even for their own distributions)! Wow, they sure do like morons. Yup. Uh huh. Sony does. I usually dislike sarcaasm, but occasionally, it is necessary to help put things in perspective. To quote a Biblical proverb, "anyone inexperienced puts faith in every word."

Face it...Sony, this format is no where near ready. Did anyone happen to notice that initial BluRay movies releases are all movies that are less than 100 minutes in length? They're using old MPEG2 (they not ready for any advanced codecs) so they don't have enough capacity on their 25gb discs. Don't even think you'll get any bonus material if they do release these, because you won't - there's not enough room.

Please post your pictures somewhere, Sony Employee...wait a minute, let's stop wasting time writing about this-"to the writing of many books there is no end-but much devotion to them is wearisome to the flesh." I'm sure I'm not the only one who realizes that we got distracted by this drivel (no offense) and could be doing more profitable things, IMHO... But, oh what interesting conversation... ;)

...Are you guys stupid... the laptops arent even the same... one has air vents and the other has mic inputs or somthing... NOT TO MENTION SONY WOULD HAVE USED A SONY CDR.

Hey... I hope that DVD-R was copied with the content owners consent and after all appropriate fees had been paid. Otherwise SONY should be charged with piracy. SONY has fucked things up so bad with virtually every piece of their next-gen business plan I wonder if they're going to survive! Beyond stupid!

U know it's funny yet sad all at the same time ( also I was laughing my ass of @ the people who thought the labtop cake was the one with the cd in it XD ) Sony didn't have a bule ray disc to show off and don't get me wrong the casing for the supposed bule ray looked nice (shrugs ) but if I was sporting off my new disc/disc format I would want to twirl it around explaining it to the folks and letting them actually seeing it as proof from beta to current and then show what the quailty was. the non-sony disc was a riot to , >..>" who left the tray open o.0 ?~?!!?!?!?!??!

I just love the morons that keep referring to the cake and saying the notebooks aren't the same. Some real smart people posting here. GET A LIFE!!!!

That's a load of fake crap, and the picture with the guy in the blue shirt is obviousely photoshopped. You can tell by how is hands are. Idiots.

This is clearly Karma striking back at them for all those DRM rootkit infections they spread around last year.

So fake not funny. Try hader next time

The pictures are clearly fakes. Look at the picture of the laptop. Notice the drive is on the side facing the camera. Notice how there's no little red or black audio ports. Pay special attention to the location of the keys relative to the drive. Also, look at the tin foil under the laptop and the wood bar top next to it. Now look at the picture of the DVD+R. Two audio ports next to the drive. Some sort of blue base next to black. And, if that didn't convince you, look at the position of the keys relative to the drive. Clearly not the same laptop. You are definitely risking some legal action by posting this. If you're going to go to all the trouble go all the way and make sure you're pictures match up.

Adam, that picture of the "laptop" is a cake.

Adam, that picture of the "laptop" is a cake.

if you guys have any sort of journalistic integrity, you definitely owe an apology to sony, something like an article of retraction, and modifying the top of the story (NOT DELETING!!!) to explain what happened. some people are wondering if maybe they haven't heard of it yet, but do you know how many sites are repeating this? i dislike sony for pulling all that crap with the drm-rootkit and their lousy software, but this is just bad reporting.

Have the FBI investigate this incident. The copyright infringement laws do not allow for coping coptrighted material, especially when used for public display.

[quote=adam] The pictures are clearly fakes. Look at the picture of the laptop. Notice the drive is on the side facing the camera. Notice how there's no little red or black audio ports. Pay special attention to the location of the keys relative to the drive. Also, look at the tin foil under the laptop and the wood bar top next to it. Now look at the picture of the DVD+R. Two audio ports next to the drive. Some sort of blue base next to black. And, if that didn't convince you, look at the position of the keys relative to the drive. Clearly not the same laptop. You are definitely risking some legal action by posting this. If you're going to go to all the trouble go all the way and make sure you're pictures match up.[/quote] That "laptop" on the "tinfoil" is a "cake."

Real or not I was cracking up from it... If it is, well Ziff Davis just posted it in their E-Newsletter. As a spoof goes don't forget the Ipod Flea! I just crack up just thinking about it!

I stopped buying products from these guys after the drm incident, they just keep getting curiouser and curiouser, what are they thinking...........

Your a dumb shit! you think anyones going to think your not telling a lie. Those pics don't prove shit and sony has access to blu-ray products...

They probably used a burnt disc to avoid the chance of a rootkit :)

Oh ya, I'm sure sony would BUY a verbatim dvd+r and write like idiots on it then leave it in a laptop meant to be playing blu-ray content for anyone to check.

There were 2 (real) laptops (and one cake) right? The laptop on right was showing Blu-Ray, laptop on left was showing the same movie playing on DVD for comparison purposes. Lance poped the disc on the left laptop (the one showing regular DVD). Lance was confused if he expected that one to be the Blu-Ray disc.

Posted by: BS Tuesday, May 16, 2006 7:34 PM That's a load of fake crap, and the picture with the guy in the blue shirt is obviousely photoshopped. You can tell by how is hands are. Idiots. ...that's the cake you moron. I can't imagine why his hands wouldn't be mashing in the keys of the cake and ruining it!11!11!!1 Christ you guys are idiots.

I am laughing so hard. Not because I think this is fake. Because at all the rabid sony supporters in denial. And because said sony supporters are "intelligent" enough to think that the CAKE is the actual LAPTOP. Funny indeed.

It's about time journalists took their heads out of their asses and starting looking for the hard facts. And the fact here is that Sony is full of shit. It's unfortunate though that Sony didn't learn from Microsoft at E3 last year, when they were displaying the new 360s which were actually empty cases hooked up to computers underneath the display booths. Yeah, real classy. I'm glad game journalists are starting to grow balls, hopefully we'll see something actually worthy of calling "next-gen" soon enough.

The sony fancrew sure came out in force to try and make us believe this is fake, didn't they? If anything, the collecting screaming of what must have been some sony message board that was alerted to a mistake by their all powerful consumer pimp proves to me that this story is ABSOLUTELY TRUE. Great job DeLeo, for calling Sony out on its BS, and not shoveling any yourself. Don't mind the Sony fanboys, this is the real scoop and you bet I'll repost it. ;)

while this is amusing, the fact that the disc is not blue ray doesn't mean the dvd r doesn't contain blue ray formatted footage, which it certainly could. unless of course they claim to have the whole BD movie on that disc. that would definitely be bogus. but the burner is obviously not finished.

thats a bunch of crap, that box is a bootleg movie box with a blu ray sticker on it

Your "article" is just plain stupid! From a slashdot comment: It sounds like Lance Ulanoff from PC Magazine is jumping the gun. According to notebookreview.com [notebookreview.com]: - The premium model comes bundled with one of the first Blu-ray Disc (BD) movies, House of Flying Daggers, which Sony showed side-by-side tonight, along with the DVD version. Contrary to what some have said, the difference in quality is instantly noticeable. - It sounds like Ulanoff was in too much of a rush for a scoop and didn't realize this when he ejected what was very likely the comparison DVD. Don't let the facts get in the way of a good Sony bashing, though.

Look at the Blu-ray case and the disc tray...Notice the glowing blue surface they both stand on? Kind of says something to the stupid cakers.

This was a demo.. They wanted to loop a portion of the movie. Easiest way for the geeks to do that? Burn the portion to DVD, set the player to repeat. While it is rather funny, I don't think it was horrible or anything. Many demos out there are done with much higher levels of cheating on the part of the company involved. I don't think it would even be piracy; Cony owns the distribution rights to that particular movie.

Apparantly this was a dvd vs bd comparison. One drive has the bd, one has the dvd. Where is the story?

Why don't you take a picture of both drives ejected and both discs? I can't believe I gave this hack a hit, ah well...

As much as I hate Sony, it still kind of looks fake. Of course, they could've compressed a part of the movie, or a feature-less movie into the DVD so the movie can play at a higher resolution. In the process they save a buck here and there and risk those couple of bucks to show off this new tech, only to ruin their image/reputation when they show it off to a room full of reporters from computer magazines, where all they have to do is press the eject button and poof... Ya right.. Everything about this screams fake. You're telling me people won't be able to tell 1080p from 480p? you think anyone is dumb enough to even pull this off? Anyone will want to see how the new disk will look like, and press the eject button. also, shouldn't these computers have admin locks on them? unless the guy used a pin to manually eject the disk... The only way i will be convinced is if someone actually took a VIDEO of the thing, and ejected the DVD. This video will be continuous from the time the person entered his car from hom, and drive many hours to the event, and then show the DVD-R being ejected. It has to be all continious to be convincing. If no such video exists, this is FAKE.

I have purchased a lot of Sony products, mainly because of their reputation and general product reliability. The last product I purchased was an optical drive with an offered rebate included with the purchase. I mailed it in. Weeks later I got a letter stating that I had exceeded my rebate per household limit. This disclaimer was not included in the rebate offer. I was outraged by the audacity of this company that, up until now, I have been somewhat fond of. This bespeaks of a pattern of behavior that is unhealthy for them. It's not the $30 that I am concerned about.

Some years back I worked in television production. Amongst the $50K Ikegami cameras we had some $10K Sonys cams and recorders. They were reliable, good video, etc. I bought some prosumer Sony equipt. Big mistake. Since then any prosumer/consumer grade stuff has broken or disappointed. This and the DRM/rootkit episodes shows a company headed for the gutter.

good job Danio; now I'm even more convinced in Gearlog's credibility. Not only did your post make absolutely no sense whatsoever, your link offers no evidence to your claim. Sorry, but this looks solid to me. But I'm no sony fanboy, so that must make everything I say false too.

YOU CAN SEE the burned DVD in the pictures at the link you provided! That's even MORE proof; someone else saw the same thing DeLeo did! Wow...one would hope that fandom for a product wouldn't blind someone to what's right in front of their face, but I've been wrong before.

...a moron from GearLog doesn't realize that Blue-Ray drives are backwards compatible with DVD and CD writable media.

Look at the laptop picture: A nice light blueish/silverish contour. A little black/dark band all around the keyboard Some little black holes on the side of the cd-tray, near the screen And now look at the drive picture: No light contour. No dark border for the keyboard AND we can actually see some keys AND there is now 2 stereo jacks on the side of the cd-tray and one of them is RED! Conclusion: Some rendom slander and a great hilarity from the poster God really made most people stupid.

Just because I'm tired of OMG and LOL being the prevalent form of commentary: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=185953&cid=15347571

YOU CAN SEE the burned DVD in the pictures at the link you provided! That's even MORE proof; someone else saw the same thing DeLeo did! Yeah, in the LEFT HAND LAPTOP. The ONE SHOWING THE STANDARD DEF MOVIE CLIP. Geez. There were two real laptops (and a cake, but let's ignore the cake, please? If you're confused, if you see a laptop in a picture, and it's on tinfoil, assume it is a food item). The laptop on the LEFT had a burned DVD-R Verbatim media with a standard DVD movie clip on it. This is the one that shows up in the pictures above and at the other review site. The laptop on the RIGHT had the BluRay media in use, showing the comparison. NEITHER site has pics of the RIGHT hand laptop with the tray open. Tada. Mystery solved. Sheesh.

nice try danio. and if the drive is just backwards compatible, why did Sony make a big deal out of putting an old disc in the shiny new blu-ray case? sheesh-you sony fanboys try to make more excuses for their crap, wind up making yourselves look stupid, and add more proof to the pudding. Keep it up!

People trying to compare the "laptop" picture with the pic of the burned CD... so stupid. RTFA, it says it's a cake.

don't necessarily believe a post made by a given name.

Whatever, You really deserve your name... you really are missing the point man... if they used a standard DVD it was to not only demonstrate compatibility with DVD, in addition to Blue ray, but it was also to show one againts the other as Dances with Morons just pointed out. Man... I can't believe you eat this sensationalist news cr@p without checking the facts for yourself.

Jennifer, are you saying that the story is not true? A detraction in the air? Oh... this would be FUN!

I'm not a big fan of sony personally, but any one can see that this was faked. Sony owns the rights to house of flying daggers, do you really think they would have a burned copy of the movie in the drive, with a disc from one of there competitors in peripherals? No, come on people think! Infact sony is pretty cautious of using non sony products for anything, unless they have to. Also, the person who was in charge of this device probably gets free sony dvd's. Please try to post as little crap as possible on slashdot.

Your blog sucks! You are what keeps the internet from being good. Get a life loser!

Yes the dvd is not sony.. to bad... yes the dvd movie is copied, but they have the copyrights... the movie is made by sony pictures, even though its a differnet branch of sony, they still own it... yes Blu-ray has not been fully developed, meaning no burner, no media, no movies, so you cant believe the thought, but you can believe the situation of what sony is trying to do to the world of technology. If it wasnt sony, nor pioneer, nor apple, we wont have been laughing at the situation sony is in right now..

In the article it says there were two AR's side by side, do you think one was blu-ray and the other standard DVD? He did not eject both drives and compare disks. just a bunch of internet geeks making shit up.

> if you compare the two pictures, you see that the table beneath and the buttons are different, djiz. wii ftw. what a turd. The display model with the 10th anniversary screen is different from the computers with the Blu-ray drives/movie(s) showing. They're just different computers, idiot.

thats so BullS#*& you all think theyll let you get close to a blu-ray when its still not out. This pic is fake wouldnt he get stop if it was demonstrating wouldint ther be security glass and crap,this pic is fake and so is the guys who posted this.you all would believe anything thats shown to you.anyways blu-ray says they signed a contract with sony,and thell be getting 45% of the profit sony makes. check it up on the net if you dont believe me.

http://erick.theory-x.net/pa/images/spank.jpg This is to those of you who genuinely think it's a cake.

This obviously fake. But assuming this VAIO is actually playing a demo from a DVD, like a small HD clip from the movie, what's wrong with that? And anyway House of Flying Daggers is Sony Pictures movie, which is part of Sony. They can do absolutely anything they want with their content. Blu-ray will prevail.

Perhaps this was just something sony cooked up in order to try and get people to be a little more patient. They must be working their asses off trying to make this blue ray system wotk! you people are assholes, just leave them alone. Sony is a multimillion dollar company with years of success, and this is just one of very few messups. So stfu and move on.

The picture with the blu-ray laptop containing a DVD+R of HoFD is not fake. However... there were TWO laptops. Both of them were Blu-Ray laptops judging by the Blu-Ray logo on the bottom left of both of them. The laptop on the LEFT was the one playing the 'DVD' version vs.the laptop on the RIGHT which was playing the Blu-ray version. Thus the picture does not lie. That is the laptop on the left. Gearlog's pictures are badly shot angles. For pictures which display both laptops go to http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=2939 where you can enlarge them and see for yourself. You can clearly tell as it's the left side of the table (you can see the edge) where the laptop playing the DVD+R was.

Please remove this incorrect and simply embarassing story and issue a correction as soon as possible.

Maybe they didn't open that tray. If they did, they didn't take a picture of it with it's tray open. If they did open that tray, where's the picture? We simply don't know. This story seems like bad jounalism, someone drunk, or they just got their wires crossed and thought the left dvd playing laptop.. was on the right! Even if it was being played on a Blu-ray laptop (remember both laptops were Blu-ray laptops), Sony did not lie when they were playing a DVD version of HoFD on the left laptop (That's obvious by now). Gearlog should just apologize to Sony and have a written apology on their site.

Actually apparently he thought they were BOTH supposed to be playing Blu-ray discs. Because Blu-ray technology is in VISUAL STEREO.

Hey Lencelot, those photos you link to are taken at a completely different location! Look at the table and the background. They're both different.

Obviously this copied disc is NOT illegal because Sony owns publishing rights on this movie.

They use to be a leading-edge innovator in their field! Now what... has SONY really deteriorate into such a bunch of dimwits dwarfs trying to fool epople most of the time? Maybe time for their Board to sub their Irish honcho fo a Shanghaied man huh? :(

I realy hate it when dimwits dwarfs try to fool epople

Sven, look at the background for the laptops. Then look at the one the 'laptop' that says Happy 10th Anniversary. That one has a brick background and just so happens to be a CAKE! It's even in the article above! 'even a huge, 70-pound VAIO laptop cake (left)'

The problem is people lost all confidences about the everything about $ony. This is the most important thing. Just because of this, all kind of bad news about $ony are reported. Just blame $ony! This is nobody's fault.

I like cake but overall I'm an ice cream fan. If I had the choice I'd pick ice cream over cake.

Did they turn themselves into to the proper authorities for violating DRM? Not only a violation, but one expressly forbidden at the start of every movie for public display, but then Sony has never been one to follow the rules, they are for everyone else.

Could be they were keeping their precious blu-ray titles safe by substituting the DVD-R copy. Then again, it could be that pigs fly. ; )

posted by the same person, probably. Give it up! Your little article doesn't help your sony-lovin cause! Just let it go, sony fanboys; the truth is your godly company goofed! Man, and I though Apple fanatice were crazy!

Then Sony would have proved the guy wrong, but they didn't. All the roomers I've heard is the yield on actual BluRay discs is very poor, many bad ones from the press and others that go bad after the fact. It's no suprise as that is exactly what was predicted by all the other DVD press companies except Sony. On top of this, Sony has been cought running "PS3" demos on PCs. How many Sony lies will fanboys buy? Look up all the crazy prerelease PS2 promises and compare them to the reality!

So it might be ok if Lance came back and said he was just messing around... or that he got confused about which laptop he was taking a picture of.... or just that he's an idiot.... except for one problem: He wrote this story 7 days ago talking about how Blue-ray disks were doomed: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,1959609,00.asp. This whole thing reeks of purposeful journalistic fraud. Even if he tried to come back and say he made a mistake.... it's a pretty big coincidence that you just wrote a story about the product a week ago. Honestly, I'll be upset if you keep your job at PC Mag.

Don't u people have anything better to do with your time but trash Sony?....get a life

unbelievable!! what did you see it?is it really DVD-R? you`re kidding me.confusing.....

Man oh man... At the end of the day, this humble person has to wonder: what is the world coming to when 3 so-called experts in IT who attended the same event have such contradictory opinions: Malia Zee of Notebookreview.com says "Contrary to what some have said, the difference in quality [between DVD and BD] is instantly noticeable." Jennifer DeLeo, picking up on Lance Ulanoff, from PC Magazine - no less - claims it's a sham. Let the journalistic reputations fight it out! One of them has to be wrong, egos will be bruised, careers will go down the drain, and - I can only hope - the truth will come out. C'mon Malia vs Lance/Jennifer! Show us the path to the truth. The Da Vinci code comes to the Computer world!

I admit, I am a fraud, oathbreaker, and traitor. If I wasn't bornified to a rich daddy I'd be making my living sorting glass. Slashdotters shouldn't be so moronical as to beleive comments on a blog.

Why would Sony use a DVD R to compare with BluRay. Maybe the "amazing" quality of Blu Ray was due to the fact that the "DVD" version was a low quality poorly mastered piece to better highlight the greatness of BluRay. It's going to be hard to notice a difference on a little 17" LCD unless you're less than a foot from the content so Sony doctored the DVD version to get the results they were looking for.

WTF! So they do patronize 'Backup Copy' of DVDs then... hehehehe

Seeings how the two laptops were side-by-side, it seems odd to me that he only bothered to open one and not the other. For that matter, how his pictures are so low-res that you can't see the comparason note in-between the two laptops. The truth is, he knew about the blu-ray disc in the other laptop, but he wanted a controversial story to get some easy fame. However, as other posters have demonstrated, the lie doesn't last long, and the consequences will be upon him soon enough. @DRM violation: It's not a violation when they own the movie rights. @Sony haters: You may not like them, but surely you realize that it make's you look foolish when you use a false story like this as your support. Don't let your grudge blind you to a case of bad journalism, as you should not be encouraging such a practice.

The management at Sony getting their priorities wrong. Too much money has been in propiertary stuff and their first foray into an "Standard" based products is showing it. They need to get their head out of their collective rear-ends and put proper funding into product development and production which they are good at. I think Blu-Ray is an better idea than HD-DVD but this is going to kill this great product... if it ever get into the market place. I know revenue streams are important but shooting ones foot doesn't get you anything. DRM like anything other fixed based security measure overtime will be will be defeat if you have idle people hacking at it.

yeah the 1 on your right hand does look better dont it?

Nice. You print a sensational tech story without checking out the facts. I'm sure you're gonna cry when Sony sues the pants off you fools.

What two laptops? One's a CAKE you friggen genious. How's he supposed to compare a friggen laptop with a cake? "and even a huge, 70-pound VAIO laptop cake (left). I tried some and the faux magnesium chassis tasted like tin foilblech." The UX doesn't have a blew-ray drive in it, so that leave the ONE blew-ray laptop to discuss... GG Sony. I sincerely enjoyed watching you shoot yourself in the face at E3. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJElsNaC6yQ "Stages of the game are based on famous battles which actually took place in acient Japan. So here we are with this giant enemy crab... C.L.A.S.S.I.C."

Blu-ray is already dead if this is ture-- http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,1959609,00.asp

This looks wrong from the other sites linked to above. It appears there were two computers side by side. The one on the left had a DVD and the one one the right was the BR HD. Seens like Lance needs to clarify or admit he screwed up.

http://gearlog.com/blogs/gearlog/archive/2006/05/17/11993.aspx "Yes, there were two AR laptops with Blu-ray drives on that table, each one with a crowd of people waiting to see it."

.. Buying Colombia Pictures wasn't enough. I bet it very difficult for Sony to make its own monopoly in the market. So when microsoft decieded to release the HDDVD as an add on, it seem to make more and more sense now. Cause its not there technology, so if it fails M$ can still discontinue production of that add on. And support the bluray. Maybe by third party player? But with Sony, its Bluray or Bust! So if HDDVD succeed. Don't that mean the PS3 will loose the support of its drive as well. Its not like they have an option to can it. They gotta support the mainstream media. Regarless what win favor with the public. To be frank, I can care less who wins because of fail promisies with current DVD. %89 percent of hollywood still use Kodak film to make movies. And when it comes to them cleaning up those for home release its a rarity... With the expection of "Troublemaker Studios" Rodriquez, "Lucas Films- Light and Magic" George Lucus, and Maybe Spielburg. Who making waves in the industry with DIGITAL MOTION PITCURE CAMERAS. There new movies actually say "Master in High-Definiton" on the box. Get it! Shot in HiDef with a HiDef camera! To really support the new digital mainstream all of Hollywood must make changes at the source. At the production level Hollywood should get rid of all those "Analog Panavison" cams. And start digital revolution on all features, because not all Blurays or HDDVD will be clean RE-MASTER versions of that film. Simply they just be the same dirty analog film original MASTER on HDDVD of BLUray disc at 1080p home media resolution. So some still will have dirt and hair and grain. In some cases "cigarette burns" can be found on a DVD. And still NO 7.1 support! The above is not acceptable in the home digital median. Hollywood clean up your shit!!! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Film_preservation Btw, If you don't know what a "cigarette burn" is, then pop in FIGHT CLUB dvd. And listen to Tyler Durgen explanation of it.

I don't exactly get what this is supposed to entail. It could have been a Blu-ray mastered hd movie with Blu-ray menus burned onto DVD+R. Most likely, it's not a final mastered version of the movie, and therefore wasn't pressed onto a Blu-ray disc and since Blu-ray burnable discs are very expensive right now, they probably chose a DVD+R because it was cheaper. After all, it was a demo of the quality of movies that will be on Blu-ray vs. quality of standard DVD movies.

Either Sony are betraying every customer they've ever had or this is a fake constructed by some HD-DVD or possibly Nintendo fanboys. I can't help but feel that the first one is more likely... congrats Sony.

It was to totally fake! and I have proof! I was there, and I opened the dvd player as well. But when I opened it, there was no blu ray disc! JUST some crazy concoction of flour, water, eggs, and sugar!! AND IT WASNT EVEN SONY BRAND FLOUR!! IT WAS ALL PURPOSE!!! (pictures to come)

Seeing as most sony fanbois refers to a 3 by 4 foot, 70 pound "lap" top made out of sugar and flour as a real laptop. Must mean theirs are friggin huge.

First they try (I must emphasize try) to rip off Nintendo's controller, now this? Bring on HD-DVD baby!

I don't belive this. How do we know that these pictures are real? I don't think that a huge company like sony would cheat people,for what ??! At the end , the PS3 will approve it's ability to play blue-ray discs.

the top thing is a real computer

It seems there is another sucking lies on this show. 'THE HOUSE OF FLYING DAGGER' is, originally Double layered disc movie. It's contents is much bigger than 4.7g single layerd DVD+R. Maybe, they compressed original movie as 4.7g, and make it's quality looks bad just for this sucking $ony's lie. Suck $ony. Sucking cheater!!!

1st Lance Ulanoff is an M$ fanboy, therefor, should not be trusted with anything. 2nd M$ SUCKS, GO LINUX 3rd $ony sucks, but said they would be using Linux 4th Those pics: could be fake, they could be real (but the story isn't exectly true or somewhat not "exact", he might had missed alot) 5th Nintendo Wii will probably SERVE Xbox 360 (anyone who'd like to buy one by the way?). And PS3 will be second place in Japan atleast. 6th BetaMax was better than VHS 7th Blue-Ray will probably be better then HD-DVD, but HD-DVD will have better support from M$ and so on, therefor, the consumer will suffer. (like Mac vs PC or BetaMax vs VHS)

seems like all these SAME notebook review links are being posted by the same person to inflate comment count...

Stupid Sony Noobs. They should've just saved the movies to the hard drive and put blank discs in the drives. Only Sony Marketing Noobs don't know how to lie good. MMMMMMM... Noob cake...

This movie is a Sony Pictures production; I guess there may be a legal exemption for their own internal copying since who would they sue? Still though, I agree the revelation further taints the Sony image.

After the rootkit issue, I decided not to buy Sony and wrote them a polite letter stating why. I see now that I have made the right decision.

You gotta be kidding me? Not only is it not a blu-ray disc but a Verbatim (admittingly a high quality blank-must be better than a Sony blank, huh?), I guess the name Sony is a big joke anymore.

SONY said that there were 2 laptops and one was playing the Blue Ray and one playing the other normal DVD this is why it is a Dual Layer Verbatim it is a uncompressed copy of the orginal DVD-9 they probly do this so they dont lose of distroy the orginal and since they are SOMY they have the right to copy it the Blue Ray disc was in the other laptop why wasnt there pictures of that one? I'm sorry but this was not a fake the reporters just never showed the other laptop which had the Blue Ray disc in it and SONY probly took it out right after the demo or maybe it was ripped to the HD so someone didnt steal it I mean lets face it if someone stole that disc it would not mean much to us but the S88t would hit the fan at SOMY

Is everyone on this planet fucking retarded? The first picture, the one with the huge looking laptop, is a fucking cake. Flour, sugar, icing, all that. A fucking cake. The fucking sign fucking says "Please do not touch the cake". Get it? Good. Moving on... The only thing worse than a fanboy is someone running around calling anyone who says anything pro-anything a fanboy. I call them antifanboys. Add one part fanboy and one part antifanboy to any discussion and you could power the planet for a year with the ensuing flamewar. As for the article that spawned this lovely discussion, it was already retracted, so discussing it further would be... meh. Now I expect to be called a Sony fanboy. Do I give a shit? No. I own several Sony products that I am pleased with. If that makes me a fanboy, well... what the fuck. I suppose I'm a fanboy then. By this logic I also qualify as a fanboy of every other company which has produced a product I enjoy (this would include Nintendo and Apple, two companies I'm sure a Sony fanboy would adore). End rant.

It's a single layer DVD. Did they recompress the original DVD movie (understandably a dual layer DVD) and make the picture quality look even more crappier than the Blu-Ray version?

Same-old, same-old. 25 years ago I was part of the team developing the Coleco "Adam" (remember that?). We did a trade show to show off the not-yet-completed box. Imagine my surprise to see a beautiful demo of the word processor - especially since I was writing the code and knew it wasn't ready yet! Turns out an IBM-PC was hidden in the desk running a BASIC program that imitated my yet-unborn code!