According to wikipedia, planned obsolescence is

… is the process of a product becoming obsolete and/or non-functional after a certain period or amount of use, approximately, as planned or designed by the manufacturer. Planned obsolescence has potential benefits for a producer because the product fails and the consumer is under pressure to purchase again, whether from the same manufacturer (the same or newer model), or from a competitor.

Sony’s vehicle for planned obsolescence is Profiles. Changing profiles and incompatible hardware means consumers get screwed.

Blu-ray may have the studios, and the hardware sales, but those 21k units that moved in the first part of January won’t be able to utilize Profile 2.0 features. So consumers will have to buy a new Blu-ray player to use those features: planned obsolescence. This fall the fan-boys who are gloating about the Warner offensive today will be crying that thier Transformers Blu-ray can’t get online tomorrow … unless you use a PS3. Blu-ray appears more and more each day to be Sony’s way to sell more PS3s.

Sony’s planned (or unplanned) obsolescence by virtue of profiles probably occured as a result of its rush to market to compete with HD DVD and could very well spell certain doom for Blu-ray and possible HD Movie formats. Yes, Blu-ray has more studios, but the home video market is not a market where planned obscolesence is familair to consumers. Movie viewing consumers want their media and are content with that format fo long periods of time (VCR -> DVD). Users want technological improvements – not incremental updates that are not backwards compatible with the same format. Planned obsolescence in the home video market is foolish. If consumers fail to adopt HD DVD because of lack of stuido support, they could also fail to support Blu-ray because of an uncomfortable feeling that their $500 player will be worthless. Such rejection of tangbile media would speed up adoption of digital downloads. Unless, of course, you do what Sony wants and buy a PS3 …

This is one of the reasons we love HD DVD – its a complete spec. Any updates are mere bug fixes or improvements to the player that do not affect the ability of the player to actually play all features on the disc.

Fear not consumers … the HD DVDs you buy today will be fully compatible on all future HD DVD hardware!

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