Rebirth of America, this is my era

Chapter 264 Two little noobs!
The news Julis brought was very brief but very explosive.

Today, on the morning of March 18th, Tokyo time, Sony Group Vice President Norio Ohga took a special plane to Frankfurt. If nothing unexpected happens, his destination should be Eindhoven.

After hearing the news, Ethan's first reaction was that Sony and Philips had joined forces due to historical necessity, but the next second, he felt something was wrong.

"Julis, is this the schedule Sony announced itself?"

"no."

"Then how did you know?" Ethan was very curious.

"Uh - Yamauchi Hiroshi just told me." Julis said, "He invited me to dinner tonight, and at the table, he told me the news in person."

As if she understood that her explanation was full of ambiguity, Julis quickly added: "After I came to Honko, I met him twice. The first time was when I first arrived in Kyoto. He welcomed me on behalf of Nintendo. The second time was today. He specially invited me to dinner."

"Because it happened suddenly and his behavior was very strange, I went to the appointment, and then I learned that the vice president of Sony went to the Netherlands."

"I rushed home after dinner and called you as soon as possible."

"That is now."

“…” Ethan was silent.

After a few seconds, the corners of his mouth curled up and he laughed out loud, "Hehe——"

"Yamauchi Hiroshi ah Yamauchi Hiroshi..." He muttered a few words and shook his head.

Although Ethan had reminded Julis not to have any contact with Nintendo when he assigned her tasks before, Kyoto, where Julis was, was originally Nintendo's territory.

Ethan knew with a simple thought that Julis' every move must have been carried out under the surveillance of Yamauchi Hiroshi, so before, when he hoped that Julis could keep a close eye on Nintendo, he asked Ballmer to find a way to pass the information by using local telephones in person.

When Ethan was already on guard against Nintendo to this extent, he didn't believe that Yamauchi Hiroshi didn't have his own ideas, and now, this guy actually took the initiative to pass the message through Julis?
And what he conveyed was the Sony he cared about?

Isn't this clearly telling him, Ethan Jones, that I, Yamauchi Hiroshi, have long known that you, Ethan Jones, have been keeping a close eye on me, so I will tell you the whereabouts of your opponent. In this case, will you continue to focus your energy on me, or will you go and deal with what has already happened?

Ok?
The straightforward hint made Ethan feel that this old man was really interesting. While sighing, he also asked, "Julis, how did you get home?"

"Yamauchi Hiroshi sent me back."

"Can you look out the window now?"

"Uh - sure, I can carry the phone over."

"Very good, now you can open the window and look out onto the street and tell me what you can see."

The strange request made Julis frown slightly, and when she followed Ethan's instructions, the black car parked on the side of the road made her pupils shrink suddenly. Not only that, the figure standing on the side of the road in a suit and tie with his hands behind his back made her feel extremely familiar...

Oh no!
That's Yamauchi Hiroshi!

"He's here, right?" Although there was no sound on the other end of the receiver, Ethan still said with a smile: "Please ask him to come up and answer the phone. This guy is really... interesting."

Yamauchi Hiroshi's behavior reminded Ethan of a sentence from his previous life.

'Real business wars are always so plain and boring.'

Yamauchi Hiroshi knew that Ethan Jones was wary of Nintendo, so after learning that his enemy Philips might join forces with Sony, which he was concerned about, he decisively sent out this news to distract his attention? Even if there was a domestic company among them?
This is really...

Shameless enough!
But what does this have to do with him?

Since the other party really wants to provide information, wouldn’t it be a betrayal of their good intentions if we don’t listen?
At Julis's invitation, Yamauchi Hiroya walked into her home with a smile on his face, picked up the receiver on the table, and said with a smile: "Mr. Jones? I'm glad to receive your invitation."

Although the two had never actually met, Ethan could fully imagine Yamauchi Hiroshi's polite and polite appearance. He didn't want to talk to him, so he got straight to the point and said, "Speak."

"Oh, Mr. Jones, don't you have anything else to say to an old friend?"

Yamauchi seemed very hurt.

"We haven't met." Ethan corrected the mistake in his words, "Unless you come to Los Angeles."

"Hahaha——" Yamauchi Hiroshi would never do such a stupid thing. When there is a conflict between the two sides, whoever goes to the other side's territory is a fool. "Okay, since you are so anxious, let's get straight to the point. I have learned about the Philips press conference at the beginning of the month. Their optical disc project is amazing. Similarly, I also know that you are very interested in Sony, and they... started researching optical discs four years ago..."

Yamauchi's information was very concise. He directly told Ethan the results of his investigation into Sony.

Like Philips and American Music, Sony also discovered the product of CD when it was manufacturing video tape recorders. Speculating that CDs had great commercial prospects, they officially launched a research and development project in 1975.

However, the laser disc patent was firmly controlled by American Music at that time, and Philips had also entered the game and reached a cooperation with American Music. Therefore, Sony, which had no advantage from the beginning, gave up the laser disc track and decided to directly research digital discs.

That's right.

Sony wants to overtake others.

By the second year, in 1976, they had already achieved results.

In 1977, they had already demonstrated their digital audio CDs to the outside world. In 1978, which was last year, their digital CDs could already copy 150 minutes of content.

"Uh - wait a minute." Hearing this, Ethan interrupted and asked in confusion: "You said Sony had already demonstrated their digital audio disc to the outside world as early as 1977?"

"Yes." Yamauchi Hiroshi said affirmatively: "At the International Audio Expo."

"Then I want to know, why hasn't this news been spread?"

Ethan was very confused at the moment. "If they had made digital discs a long time ago, how come we didn't know about it? If they released digital discs before Philips, then Philips's demonstration at the beginning of this month shouldn't have attracted everyone's attention!"

"This is a very simple question," said Yamauchi, who had heard the inside story. "Sony's research on digital optical discs is very biased. They pursue the ultimate sound effect. After they convert the analog signal of the laser disc into a digital signal, they focus on solving the errors when burning and reading the signal."

"This behavior prevented them from developing the storage function of CDs. A CD with a capacity of 150 minutes is not much smaller than a vinyl record. When they wanted to replace vinyl records with CDs, their release at the Audio Expo was naturally boycotted by the community of interests. Therefore..."

“People just don’t care about their releases.”

“So, the world was really shocked when Philips released the miniaturized optical disc earlier this month.”

“…” Ethan was speechless.

Although he didn't understand technology, he knew how outrageous Sony's research direction was.

They were pursuing the ultimate sound effects in the early days of the development of digital CDs. They went to the audio expo with digital CDs that were almost the same size as vinyl CDs and wanted to kill vinyl CDs?
This is truly a courage that even Fish Leong cannot give!

Not to mention that the vinyl record, which was born in the 1940s, has already had a lot of interest groups in the decades of operation. The size of the digital optical disc displayed by Sony alone is enough to make people at the audio expo laugh to death!

If the storage capacity of a CD is related to its volume, then what are its inherent advantages?

Is it not easily damaged?
Nonsense! CDs, like vinyl records, are afraid of wear and tear!
Is it cheap to produce?
CDs haven't even been officially commercialized yet, so the cost estimate is unlikely to be lower than that of vinyl!
Is the sound quality good?

Even decades later, there is still no final answer to this question, because from various technical perspectives, all indicators of CDs are far superior to those of vinyl. But even so, there are still people who like vinyl and like the feeling that what they hear is the original music.

In this case, sound quality is a hotly debated topic.

When Sony invented the digital audio disc, which had no advantages in the field of audio, it was a miracle that its release could attract attention! And after Sony made a speechless and stupid move...

Philips' launch of miniaturization was a revolution that shocked the world!

Then, this month, when Sony, which was making great progress in the field of digital optical discs, discovered that there was a competitor in the world, they decisively communicated with it and wanted to explore the other party's research results.

"And then……"

"Sony's vice president Norio Ohga went to Eindhoven this morning."

After hearing the news from Yamauchi, Ethan decisively asked Ballmer to look for information about the audio expo in the past two years. When he learned that Sony had really been ridiculed by those in the music industry in the past two years, he immediately labeled Yamauchi's information as authentic. Because humans cannot make up too outrageous false news.

That's the difference between life and fiction.

The former does not require logic, but the latter must have logic.

When everything Yamauchi Hiroshi said was true, Ethan told his sister the latest situation, wanting to hear her thoughts. After Evelyn listened to the ridiculous history of Sony's digital disc development with a confused look on her face, the girl with a twitching mouth also gave her own judgment.

"If everything Yamauchi Hiroshi said is true..."

"Then Sony must have flown to the Netherlands to seek cooperation with Philips."

"Why?" Ethan was puzzled.

Although Ethan can easily make the judgment that Sony and Philips will definitely join forces based on his memories of his previous life, he has suffered losses on the issue of memory and no longer relies on memory to make development plans.

When he himself became the wings of a butterfly on South America, the memories of his past life could only serve as a reference.

Now, all judgments must be analyzed rationally before being made.

His question prompted Evelin to pull out a newspaper from a few days ago. After briefly scanning the professional media's reports on Philips digital discs, Evelin said, "Because the directions of their research are obviously different."

"Or in other words, Sony's technology and Philips' R&D complement each other."

The girl shook the newspaper and said, "From the media reports on Philips, Philips' research direction is how to cram more information into a miniaturized optical disc, while Sony's research direction is how to solve the problem of information loss during input and reading. This is the defect of the laser disc that Robert showed us before, the audio may be interrupted and the picture may be jittery."

"When two people from different fields come together, cooperative research and development will definitely bring about the effect of one plus one being greater than two, so for them, cooperation is the best choice."

"And if all these analyses are correct, then Robert's guess is correct."

“Although our project started late, the progress should be the fastest.”

"Philips and Sony can be said to be starting from scratch, but our researchers are the founders in the field of optics. As long as you make a request, they know which direction to research in."

"after all……"

"Patents are not something you can get just by thinking about it."

"Especially since Robert and his team obtained the basic patents for digital optical discs and optical disc players."

"Oh——" Ethan understood.

"Perfect!" He smiled and snapped his fingers.

Ethan has always been worried about one thing, that is, Philips and Sony are faster than them in the research and development of optical discs. If Sony and Philips release their products first and cultivate users' usage habits, then even if they launch better products, it will be difficult for them to catch up.

Because CDs are different from games. The latter win by content, and excellent content can make up for all problems, but the former relies on preemptive strike. Whoever releases it first has the advantage. Unless you monopolize music and film and television resources, it is not easy to suppress others with content.

And monopolize excellent music and film and television resources?

Apart from anything else, in North America, he had to at least buy out several major Hollywood giants.

This kind of thing is just a pipe dream.

That is why Ethan kept a close eye on Philips and Sony. He would be very nervous at the slightest sign of trouble. But now, he can finally put his mind at ease after years of worry.

Since Sony and Philips' progress is not as fast as theirs, and they also have patent advantages, the ones who should be anxious now should be Sony and Philips.

And Ethan's judgment...

On March 18th, Tokyo time, Sony's vice president Norio Ohga went to the Netherlands.

On March th Central European Time, Norio Ohga flew to North America.

On March 21, Pacific Standard Time, James Russell called Ethan and said that Sony's Norio Ohga had contacted him and wanted to buy the patent or obtain authorization. Before negotiating the price, he had already told the other party that the Destiny game had been authorized, and then -

Norio Ohga was very shocked, because before this he had no idea that there were other people in the world who were researching CDs, and digital CDs at that.

Late at night on March 21, Robert Hall also called Ethan and said that Sony's vice president Norio Ohga had arrived in Los Angeles and handed him a visiting card, wanting to meet with him.

From the other party's anxious perspective——

“They simply can’t get around our technology.”

"so……"

"Sleep peacefully, child."

“I may not be as famous as Fred in the engineering field, but my skills are just as good as his.”

This fact made Ethan laugh a few times.

After hanging up the phone, he lay down on the bed comfortably.

Staring at the ceiling in the dark night, the corners of his mouth curled up in a graceful arc.

"I thought they were all strong opponents..."

“I didn’t expect it was all colored pencils!”

“How dare you develop without a patent?”

"Ah--"

“Who gave you the confidence?”

In Ethan's opinion, when he has the right time, right place and right people, as long as he continues to maintain stability and develop in order, Philips and Sony will no longer have any chance of winning.

As long as he can launch digital CDs into the market before the other two companies, with games in the left hand and computers in the right hand, will Philips and Sony still want to promote their own CDs?
Dream on!
It’s all in the dream!
Just when Ethan thought that the life-and-death battle over CD standards in his previous life would end directly due to his development in this life of making a fortune in silence, on March 22, Ballmer suddenly told him that Sony Vice President Norio Ohga came to Palo Alto and wanted to meet with him.

"?" This situation made Ethan a little puzzled.

"What is he here for?"

"According to him, he came to seek cooperation."

"Doesn't he understand the situation? We are far ahead now! Why should we cooperate with him?"

"Uh - I don't know." Ballmer shook his head.

Ethan wanted to wave away Ohga Norio's inexplicable visit.

But before he could do anything, he gave up his arrogant thoughts.

After all, there is a saying that goes, despise the enemy strategically and take the enemy seriously tactically.

Ohga Norio has already come to my door, it would be a waste if we don’t have some communication.

"Forget it, since he is here, just let him come over."

Note: ① Sony's research history on digital optical discs comes from Sony's official website, Sony History, Part 1994, Chapter 5 'Making Digital Audio a Reality'. Sony did release digital optical discs earlier than Philips, but their research direction was biased, so it did not attract attention. It can also be said that they were ridiculed. This was written by Sony itself. ② The cooperation between Sony and Philips is indeed complementary. This comes from the oral history of Sony's digital audio optical disc developer Nakajima Heitaro in an interview with IEEE on May 24, . Both Sony and Philips' products have technical defects. In reality, Philips cannot solve the problem of player self-checking and error correction, and Sony's optical discs are too large. Their cooperation is inevitable. And war is also inevitable, because after solving the technical problems, no one is willing to make concessions. ③ About the problem of Philips and Sony developing without obtaining patent authorization. In reality, they did just that. Both parties claimed that their products did not need James Russell's patents, denied infringement, and refused to pay. It was not until that they reached a consensus with James Russell and obtained authorization. It is very common for large companies to infringe on individual patents. If you don't have a big fist, they will not bother to talk to you. You can infringe first to grab the market, and then spend money to delay the legal issues. This must be cheaper than obtaining authorization directly.

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(End of this chapter)