Sony Electronics U.S. chief Stan Glasgow basks in Blu-ray victory but sees tough road ahead

I joined a roundtable yesterday with Stan Glasgow, president of the U.S. division of Sony Electronics. He was happy that Blu-ray has won the next-generation DVD format war against HD DVD and has seen a significant bump in demand for Blu-ray players.

Glasgow can be funny. Asked if Sony would give consumers a discount on a Sony Blu-ray player if they turn in their Toshiba HD DVD players, he said, “I won’t make up for Toshiba’s sins.”

But he reiterated his concern that the tough battle is now just starting. The tough job is convincing consumers that Blu-ray is much better than standard DVD and also, for the videophiles, better than upscaled DVD players where DVD video processors scale an image up to 1080p resolution.

“It DVD took ten years to get where it is,” he said. “Blu-ray is two years or three years into its launch, depending on when you are consider the start to be. There is a long way to go for Blu-ray.”

Right now, DVD players sell for less than $100 while stand-alone Blu-ray players are selling for $399. At that price, Sony isn’t making a profit on the hardware, Glasgow said. By the end of the year, he expects those prices to fall to $299. Meanwhile, while he doesn’t speak for the Sony games division, he said that the PlayStation 3 has obviously gotten a boost from the Blu-ray victory. The $400 and $500 versions of the PS 3 have built-in Blu-ray players.

Glasgow said Sony has recycled 1,000 tons of equipment since September in a partnership with Waste Management. There are 90 sites and Sony probably needs 500 over time. The goal is to recycle one pound for every pound it sells and to get a recycling site within one mile of 95 percent of the U.S. population. Sony is paying for it and encouraging its competitors to do it as well. Sony’s running a test in Colorado to see if consumers will return equipment for recycling if they get a coupon to buy Sony goods.

“I’m hopeful over time it is the right thing to do,” Glasgow said.

He isn’t, however, all that concerned about digital downloading of movies. Right now, it takes hours to download high-definition movies and most of those aren’t in the highes-quality 1080p format. Sony is investing in video downloading and believes it will happen, but not at the expense of physical media such as Blu-ray disks.

“Downloading will grow,” he said. “But it won’t grow disproportionate to the physical media.” (more...)