Notable Sony products, technologies and proprietary formats

Sony has historically been notable for creating its own in-house standards
for new recording and storage technologies instead of adopting those of
other manufacturers and standards bodies. The most infamous of these
was the videotape format war of the early 1980s, when Sony marketed the
Betamax system for video cassette recorders against the VHS format
developed by JVC. In the end, VHS gained critical mass in the marketplace
and became the worldwide standard for consumer VCRs and Sony adopted
the format. While Betamax is for all practical purposes an obsolete format,
a professional-oriented component video format called Betacam that was
derived from Betamax is still used today, especially in the film and
television industry.

Early Sony products included reel-to-reel tape recorders and transistor

radios.

A Sony VCRIn 1968 Sony introduced the Trinitron brand name for its line of
aperture grille cathode ray tube televisions and (later) computer monitors.
Trinitron displays are still produced, but only for markets like India and
China. Sony discontinued the last Trinitron-based television set in the USA
Spring of 2007. Trinitron computer monitors were discontinued in 2005.

Sony launched the Betamax videocassette recording format in 1975. In

1979 the Walkman brand was introduced, in the form of the world's first
portable music player.

1982 saw the launch of Sony's professional Betacam videotape format and
the collaborative Compact Disc format. In 1983 Sony introduced 90mm
micro diskettes (better known as 3.5-inch floppy disks), which it had
developed at a time when there were 4" floppy disks and a lot of variations
from different companies to replace the then on-going 5.25" floppy disks.
Sony had great success and the format became dominant; 3.5" floppy
disks gradually became obsolete as they were replaced by current media
formats. In 1983 Sony launched the MSX, a home computer system, and
introduced the world (with their counterpart Philips) to the Compact Disc
or CD. In 1984 Sony launched the Discman series which extended their
Walkman brand to portable CD products. In 1985 Sony launched their
Handycam products and the Video8 format. Video8 and the follow-on hi-
band Hi-8 format became popular in the consumer camcorder market. In
1987 Sony launched the 4mm DAT or Digital Audio Tape as a new digital
audio tape standard.

In addition to developing consumer-based recording media, after the

launch of the CD Sony began development of commercially based
recording media. In 1986 they launched Write-Once optical discs (WO) and
in 1988 launched Magneto-optical discs which were around 125MB size for
the specific use of archival data storage.[15]
In the early 1990s two high-density optical storage standards were being
developed: one was the MultiMedia Compact Disc (MMCD), backed by
Philips and Sony, and the other was the Super Density disc (SD),
supported by Toshiba and many others. Philips and Sony abandoned their
MMCD format and agreed upon Toshiba's SD format with only one
modification based on MMCD technology, viz EFMPlus. The unified disc
format was called DVD which was marketed in 1997.

Sony DiscmanSony introduced the MiniDisc format in 1993 as an

alternative to Philips DCC or Digital Compact Cassette. Since the
introduction of MiniDisc, Sony has attempted to promote its own audio
compression technologies under the ATRAC brand, against the more widely
used MP3. Until late 2004, Sony's Network Walkman line of digital portable
music players did not support the MP3 de facto standard natively,
although the provided software SonicStage would convert MP3 files into
the ATRAC or ATRAC3 formats.

In 1993, Sony challenged the industry standard Dolby Digital 5.1 surround
sound format with a newer and more advanced proprietary motion picture
digital audio format called SDDS (Sony Dynamic Digital Sound). This
format employed eight channels (7.1) of audio opposed to just six used in
Dolby Digital 5.1 at the time. Unlike Dolby Digital, SDDS utilized a method
of backup by having mirrored arrays of bits on both sides of the film which
acted as a measure of reliability in case the film was partially damaged.
Ultimately, SDDS has been vastly overshadowed by the preferred DTS
(Digital Theatre System) and Dolby Digital standards in the motion picture
industry. SDDS was solely developed for use in the theatre circuit; Sony
never intended to develop a home theatre version of SDDS.

In 1998, Sony launched their Memory Stick format; flash memory cards for
use in Sony lines of digital cameras and portable music players. It has
seen little support outside of Sony's own products with Secure Digital (SD)
cards commanding considerably greater popularity. Sony has made
updates to the Memory Stick format with Memory Stick Duo and Memory
Stick Micro.

Sony and Philips jointly developed the Sony-Philips digital interface format
(S/PDIF) and the high-fidelity audio system SACD. The latter has since
been entrenched in a format war with DVD-Audio. At present, neither has
gained a major foothold with the general public. CDs are preferred by
consumers because of their ubiquitous presence in consumer devices.

The PlayStation 2In 1994 Sony launched the PlayStation (later PS one).
This successful console was succeeded by the PlayStation 2 in 2000, itself
succeeded by the PlayStation 3 in 2006. The PlayStation brand was
extended to the portable games market in 2005 by the PlayStation
Portable. Sony developed the Universal Media Disc (UMD) optical disc
medium for use on the PlayStation Portable. Although Sony tried to push
the UMD format for movies, major studios stopped supporting the format
in the Spring of 2006.

In 2004, Sony built upon the MiniDisc format by releasing Hi-MD. Hi-MD
allows the playback and recording of audio on newly-introduced 1GB Hi-
MD discs in addition to playback and recording on regular MiniDiscs.
Recordings on the Hi-MD Walkmans can be transferred to and from the
computer virtually unrestricted, unlike earlier NetMD. In addition to saving
audio on the discs, Hi-MD allows the storage of computer files such as
documents, videos and photos. Hi-MD introduced the ability to record CD-
quality audio with a linear PCM recording feature. It was the first time
since MiniDisc's introduction in 1992 that the ATRAC codec could be
bypassed and lossless CD-quality audio could be recorded on the small
discs.

Sony is currently touting the Blu-ray Disc optical disc format, which
competed with Toshiba's HD DVD. As of quarter three of 2007, Blu-ray Disc
had the backing of every major motion picture studio except Universal,
Paramount and Dreamworks.[16] [17] [18]. Since then, Blu-Ray has ended
up as the dominant HD media format, with Toshiba announcing their
defeat, and plans to stop supporting HD DVD on the 19th of February
2008. In December 2006 Sony debuted their first Blu-ray player, the Sony
BDP-S1 with an MSRP of US $999.95.

On September 10, 2007 Sony unveiled Rolly (Sony), an egg-shaped digital

robotic music player which has colour lights that flash as it “dances” and
has flapping wings that can twist to its tunes. Movements along with the
music downloaded from personal computers and Bluetooth can be set.
Rolly, which will go on sale in Japan on September 29, 2007, has one
gigabyte of memory to store tunes. Sony also developed dog-shaped
robots called Aibo and humanoids and Qrio.[19]

In summary, Sony has over the years introduced these standards: Umatic
(~1968), Betamax (1975), Betacam (81), Compact Disc (82), 3.5 inch
Floppy Disk (82), Video8 (85), DAT (87), Hi8 (88), Minidisc (~90), Digital
Betacam (~90), miniDV (92), Memory Stick (98), Digital8 (99), PSP
Universal Media Disc (~2003), HDV (~2004), Blu-ray Disc (2006).