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Television Media

Economist Looks at the Digital Home 118

Posted by CmdrTaco from the my-stereo-remote-confuses-even-me dept.
spisska writes "There is an excellent article this week in The Economist looking at the "digital home" and at what cable, telecom, internet, and hardware companies are doing to create the new entertainment nerve centers of the future. The article touches on what exists today (CDs, DVDs, etc), what is in production or preparation from various companies (MS MCE, IPTV, music downloads, etc), DRM, interoperability, and competing standards, among other topics. Although there is no mention of MythTV or Linux, it is a pretty solid analysis of the market as it is now and concludes that vendors are trying to hype a market into existence where there is no great consumer demand. A choice quote: "'If consumers even know there's a DRM, what it is, and how it works, we've already failed,' says Peter Lee, an executive at Disney". The article concludes: "As John Barrett, research director at Parks Associates, says, 'it seems that we've concocted a new variant of the 'paperless' office.' This, you recall, was the consensus a decade or so ago among technophiles (but almost nobody else), that computer technology would save our forests by freeing us from having to read and write on paper. Today's variant, says Mr Barrett, is 'no more tapes, CDs, DVDs, discs.' In other words, expect them to be around for a very long time to come.""
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Economist Looks at the Digital Home More

Economist Looks at the Digital Home

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  • We need truly portable solutions. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by CyricZ ( 887944 ) on Sunday September 04, 2005 @10:26AM (#13476748)
    For this non-paper media to truly catch on, we need digital devices that offer all of the benefits of paper: flexibility, portability, and inexpensiveness. While such devices exist, they are currently not widespread enough.

    These all-digital office will truly catch on once people have a piece of digital "paper" that they can use to send emails from, read specifications with, and even watch a movie with on the way home. Laptops are just too bulky for such tasks.

    • ...flexibility, portability, and inexpensiveness...

      Gas is about $1.35/litre in Ontario right now, and this price (if you convert it to gallons) is approx 3.785 litres in a gallon. That's $5.10 Canadian for a gallon. Converted to USD? $4.30/gallon USD.

      The point I'm making is that as gas prices rise, people will want to think about portability of everything, including entertainment. We won't want to go to the store if we don't absolutely have to. We will want to download to our computers, have items delivered
      • Here in Britain, what are high petrol prices for you North Americans are normal petrol prices for us. As such we've adapted. Many people here ride bikes. It's not uncommon to see somebody riding a bike with a wagon on the back, used to cart groceries.

        So while there will be some people who will try to limit their movement in order to reduce petrol costs, most people will adapt. They will bike to the cinema or to the video shoppe. They will bike to their local rugby or cricket game. In the end, they will ofte
        • I can walk to Blockbuster, the grocery store, and two (yes, two) drug stores; riding a bike to them itself would be a bit of overkill. Still, it's just as easy to stop in their parking lots on the way home except in the very rare cases where we need something in an emergency (sick child, absolutely positively have to get a movie tonight). Focusing on movie nights, I tend to stop by to get a pizza and sodas on the same trip home when we're getting a movie or two.

          In fact, were four out of five Blockbusters

        • Re:Gas & Distrobution (Score:3, Insightful)

          by jp10558 ( 748604 )
          The problem for the US (and Canada I would think) is we are much more spread out - Upstate NY, where I live, the closest work is often 25-40 miles away from where we live.

          This is why telecommuting is so attractive. But it may also rejuvinate the mom and pop (or at least small) stores in the towns that are closer.

          Gas prices like this will have a change on our society. Businesses that plan on having a store in a city to serve the surrounding community may see declining revenues as less and less people from th

          • Gas prices like this will have a change on our society. Businesses that plan on having a store in a city to serve the surrounding community may see declining revenues as less and less people from the outlying communities (that can make up 40% or more of the potential customers) will drive in to shop or whatever.

            However more people within walking distance will shop there. Usually when for whatever reason motorized travel is curtailed, in commmunities, small cities, and villages, town centers or squares a

          • This statement is completely circular. First you say you're spread out because the closest work is 25-40 miles away and defend it by saying that affordable housing is hard to find. Well here is one consideration, the housing wouldnt be so expensive if you didnt have a car or payment and the loads of gas you buy to traverse these insane distances. I have recently moved to a sprawled city and hate the amount i have had to increase my driving to get to work only because the public transport, i.e. buses are
            • That's not what I meant. I meant that it requires a car to get to work in this area.

              And many people who initially moved here and now are settled here because of housing costs being lower, do not have the money to move to a city where housing costs are often equal or higher than where they currently live.

              If they didn't have the money before, why would you expect them to have it now? And it's more difficult to save up, because of increased costs due to rising gas prices.

        • Here in Britain, what are high petrol prices for you North Americans are normal petrol prices for us. As such we've adapted. Many people here ride bikes. It's not uncommon to see somebody riding a bike with a wagon on the back, used to cart groceries.

          Unfortunately not enough but a lot of people in the US ride bikes too, I used to and knew quite a few others who did too. Though I owned a car I used to ride my bike more than 100 miles a week, however this ended when I had an accident while riding. Someon

      • What is funny is (Score:2, Interesting)

        by tod_miller ( 792541 )
        American prices come within prices in Europe, and everyone thinks it is the end of the world.

        What is ironic, is the government should have been taxing petrol up to this level for years, to pay for better education and reduce fuel consumption, and promote more healthier lifestyles.

        Low petrol costs damaged the countries coffers, damaged the countries health (and thus cost them), vastly inflated the transit economies, which will now crash.

        The whole system seemed on a knife edge. To think that all western coun

        • What is ironic, is the government should have been taxing petrol up to this level for years, to pay for better education and reduce fuel consumption, and promote more healthier lifestyles.

          While I wouldn't mind seeing higher fuel taxes, the money thus generated by these taxes should be applied to transportation not to education or other things. Higher fuel costs will reduce fuel consumption as well as make people keep in mind how they can reduce their driving, maybe encouraging them the walk or ride bike

      • Well the United States has fucked itself for not collecting appropiate taxes to build rails for transport of goods and public transportation to move people around. Our train system is a shadow of what it was 50 years ago and it is rapidly declining. We have only a dozen or so cities with significant public transportation infrastructure and many cities over a million people with nothing but buses.
    • While such devices exist, they are currently not widespread enough.

      I'm not sure they do, I have a PDA (which is what I assume you're talking about), and for note-taking, for example, they aren't anywhere near as good as pen and paper; even with systems such as Palm's Grafitti. They're getting better, no doubt and are useful for all sorts of thigns. But not as a replacement for paper, and they have a long way too go.
    • I'd like to point out some other benefits of paper you seem to have missed. You can copy it, you can lend it to your friend, anyone can write on it, anyone can read it, and nobody can change or destroy what's written on other people's paper. These attributes exist for digital media now, but the same cable, telecom, internet, hardware, and software companies that are creating our entertainment nerve centers of the future are trying their hardest to remove these benefits.

    • For this non-paper media to truly catch on, we need digital devices that offer all of the benefits of paper: flexibility, portability, and inexpensiveness. While such devices exist, they are currently not widespread enough.

      Paper more than likely won't disappear. The paperless office hasn't been realized because people want something physical to hold in thier hands. Then there are some like me who find it difficult reading long pages on a screen. I can read print all day but can only stand looking at a

      • That was his point. People want the high resolution, high contract look of paper. Once you can carry around a piece of "paper" that looks, feels, and in all respects is paper that is also a high powered computer then we might see the start of the paperless office.

        Sure we'll still have our computer paper, but as it can be reconfigured on a whim to display whatever we need then we'll all probably only need a few pieces.
        • Problem with computer paper, is that it's a computer. It needs electricity, it's not disposable and permanent.

          With a real document on paper, you can give it away, you can photocopy it, you can fax it without having to use the over-complex and unreliable Internet, you can pin it to the wall, you can write things on it, you can fold it up and keep it in your pocket, if it gets damaged you can replace it cheaply, you can rip bits off, it has a low barrier to entry.

      • For a paperless home, I'd be interested in digital media that won't hike up my electricity bill. Will this ever happen?

        • For a paperless home, I'd be interested in digital media that won't hike up my electricity bill. Will this ever happen?

          I doubt it. The thing is though is that while you don't see it conventional paper making is dirty and releases a lot of dioxin, one of the most carcinogenic manmade chemicals there is. Forest are also clearcut to provide the pulp for paper. Both of these problems can be corrected though. Dioxin doesn't have to be a byproduct of paper making and by using hemp as a source of pulp fore

          • You had me untill the hemp part. Why do you assume switching to hemp would SAVE forests? Experience indicates the opposite:

            What do we have more of, endangered spotted owls which we don't eat or ugly smelly tasteless cows which we do?

            • You had me untill the hemp part. Why do you assume switching to hemp would SAVE forests? Experience indicates the opposite:

              In 1916 the USDA [globalhemp.com] reported that hemp hurds could produce four times as much paper per acre as trees. With increased yields and improved technology this may now be higher. In addition, hemp paper is stronger. can be recycled more often, and lasts longer than tree paper.

              Benefits of Hemp Production [hempfood.com]

              ...
              Less than twenty percent of the harvest is used as raw lumber for planks an

    • I know saying this on /. is probably suicide, but Microsoft Office OneNote on a tablet PC is absolutely brilliant for working in a school/college/university. I cut 6 lever-arch files down to one tablet PC.

      Conversion is the time consuming bit. Find something you can start a 'digital everything' policy on such as a new project at work, and encourage other people to do the same. Eventually you convert old things you use to digital because it saves time, and eventually everything is converted without you notici
  • ...but I certainly find they had a point. I really don't archive much physically anymore. Virtually all my documents are archived only in electronic form.

    Still, of course I often still print 'em when I am going to read them through / pass them on. Reading on paper is still better, but processing and archival has been taken over by electronic documents. So, were the paperless people right to two thirds? :P

    • Safe data storage. (Score:3, Insightful)

      by CyricZ ( 887944 )
      You raise an interesting point: the secure storage of digital data over long periods of time.

      Indeed, traditionally when one must store a paper document of value (ie. a will, a deed, bonds, etc.) they are deposited in a bank's safety deposit box. There would have to be an equivalent for the digital world.

      While the data could be dropped onto a tape or a hard drive, which is then deposited into an existing safety deposit box, such a solution would be less than ideal. Future technology may not be able to intera
      • Email.

        Yahoo, hotmail, and Gmail all offer lots of storage. That amount will only get bigger.

        I haven't lost any emails from any (I have accounts with all three - yahoo for 10 years (Shit! Getting old!), hotmail for about the same, Gmail for a year or less.

        No good (yet) for video, but handles everything else reasonably, particularly smaller files. Only real limitation is 2.5 GB storage (and counting) and network speed.

        However, it saves the probs of HDD failure, CD/DVD failure and degradation.

        Large companies
    • People take my picture a lot. Some of these pictures end up on the web and sometimes I run across them.

      A while ago I ran across a picture and thought my mother might like to see it, so I emailed it to her. She emailed back asking if I could print her hard copies.

      My first reaction was, "What for? It's on your computer. You can look at it any time you want."

      There is a digital divide even between people who have all gone digital. It's all in how you think about it.

      KFG
      • What would you do if you ran across a digital picture of another man's cock in your mouth, taken while you were piss drunk at a college party? Would you really want it to be digital? At least you could destroy a physical picture, and there's a fair chance the picture might be gone forever. But with a digital image it could have spread to numerous sites before you learn about it, and may be virtually impossible to eliminate.

      • "There is a digital divide even between people who have all gone digital. It's all in how you think about it."

        I have a iPod with thousands of songs and fifty or so Audible audio books. I have a PDA that has about 150 electronic books. I have a notebook with all of those, as well as all of my digital photos.

        Recently, however, I had to move yet again, and had to cart box after box of dead trees, CDs, and DVDs. Having all of those things on a couple of portable 100 terrabyte hard drives can NOT come soon e

  • Resistance from the paper/plastic industry? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by CyricZ ( 887944 ) on Sunday September 04, 2005 @10:30AM (#13476767)
    Is the paper/plastic industry putting up any sort of a battle against these media giants who wish to move away from the use of paper/plastic? Unless these paper/plastic companies successfully transition themselves into manufacturers of these devices meant to replace paper/plastic, they may take a significant financial hit.

    • is that there is too much case law on the books limiting the terms a vendor can demand of a purchaser of paper goods. Back in the 19th century a publisher tried to attach a "EULA" to a book and that's where the original "Doctrine of First Sale" came from -- they Supreme Court understood paper and smacked him, hard.

      The case law today is being made by judges who have swallowed the "digital is different" line and are allowing vendors to do with bits what the Bobbs-Merrill [wikipedia.org] Court wouldn't let them do with p

      • Re:The big problem with paper (Score:4, Informative)

        by cpt kangarooski ( 3773 ) on Sunday September 04, 2005 @01:27PM (#13477733) Homepage
        You misunderstand Bobbs-Merrill.

        In that case, the publisher asserted that their copyright gave them the power to control resale; it did not. As the Court noted, there was no issue of whether there was a contract at work in the case, which might have produced a different result:

        The precise question, therefore, in this case is, Does the sole right to vend (named in 4952) secure to the owner of the copyright the right, after a sale of the book to a purchaser, to restrict future sales of the book at retail, to the right to sell it at a certain price per copy, because of a notice in the book that a sale at a different price will be treated as an infringement, which notice has been brought home to one undertaking to sell for less than the named sum? We do not think the statute can be given such a construction, and it is to be remembered that this is purely a question of statutory construction. There is no claim in this case of contract limitation, nor license agreement controlling the subsequent sales of the book.


        In our view the copyright statutes, while protecting the owner of the copyright in his right to multiply and sell his production, do not create the right to impose, by notice, such as is disclosed in this case, a limitation at which the book shall be sold at retail by future purchasers, with whom there is no privity of contract.


        Where there is a contract -- which is what many courts have been finding in EULA cases -- then limits on first sale and so forth are entirely acceptable. In fact, the seminal EULA case, ProCD, dealt with public domain data, which as it was uncopyrightable, had to be protected by contract or not at all.

        EULA cases have nothing to do with machine-readable formats. They're more common in the software industry (despite typically being utterly pointless) more out of historical accident than anything else. But you can use them with paper, or other consumer goods, just as much as you please, as far as the courts seem to be saying lately.

        We'd be better off abolishing the practice altogether, however. It's dangerous.
    • Kodak is a good company to look at in this regard... Here's a forbes article [forbes.com].. Good summary - Despite the massive job losses, Kodak has managed to save some of its film plants by converting them to produce emerging technologies with its film emulsification know-how. It remains to be seen if the film can be adapted for other uses. It goes to mention how Kodak currently dominates the the US digital camera market with a 23.8% share. Kodak's going through some massive growth problems that's for sure.

    • Is the paper/plastic industry putting up any sort of a battle against these media giants who wish to move away from the use of paper/plastic? Unless these paper/plastic companies successfully transition themselves into manufacturers of these devices meant to replace paper/plastic, they may take a significant financial hit.

      Some companies are already making transitions. Lat year Kodak annouced they were fazing out thier film cameras and increasing their digital capabilities. There's a debate in the photo

  • Failure (Score:5, Insightful)

    by overshoot ( 39700 ) on Sunday September 04, 2005 @10:32AM (#13476775)
    If consumers even know there's a DRM, what it is, and how it works, we've already failed,

    In other words, the whole plan depends on defrauding the customer into buying something other than what they were told they were getting.

    • Re:Failure (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Stevyn ( 691306 ) on Sunday September 04, 2005 @10:39AM (#13476820)
      There is nothing inherently wrong with DRM. I think this guy is saying that DRM should always work in that if I pay for something, I should be able to play that file without having to worry about DRM. The problem, however, is that currently DRM doesn't work this well.

      I have no intentions on purchasing any DRM music any time soon. I want to be able to play music files on Linux, xbox and my ipod. Currently, MP3s do the job well and I have no intentions on using anything else.
      • The only way to be completely certain that a consumer does not have to worry about DRM-related problems is to not use DRM at all.

        • Exactly. DRM is about putting restrictions on technology. If the customer never runs into any restrictions, then why use DRM at all?
        • yes, scrap the DRM and the broadcast flag along with it. People should be allowed to use the hardware and software of their choosing, not have their choices of hardware restricted by the software they think they have to use. I don't want to have to buy a DRM compliant video card that's compatable with my monitor using some other DRM and my tv and dvd playes using yet other forms of DRM. The best way to not have everything work together is to restrict everything, which happens to be what DRM is. Fortunately
      • Well, his statement is certainly ambiguous, isn't it?

        This challenge is daunting because DRM technologies should not only be compatible today, but for all eternity. Otherwise, consumers will be afraid to pay for content, and will stick with CDs and DVDs, which seem painless and safe by comparison. "If consumers even know there's a DRM, what it is, and how it works, we've already failed," says Peter Lee, an executive at Disney.

        So ... is the desire to hide DRM driven by the need for transparent compatibilit

    • Only a foolish customer would allow themself to be defrauded. An intelligent, wise consumer always investigates before making purchases. And such a consumer would very likely run into discussion concerning such DRM. Thus, such a consumer would not purchase said product. If this happens on a large scale, then the producer will not do well financially. They will either fold, or produce an unencumbered product.

      • ObQuirk! (Score:3, Funny)

        by overshoot ( 39700 )
        An intelligent, wise consumer always investigates before making purchases.

        I think Disney is prepared lose a handful of sales worldwide.

        • Re:ObQuirk! (Score:3, Interesting)

          by CyricZ ( 887944 )
          Well, you could do your part by informing your non-technical relatives and friends about the dangers of DRM. Even making an effort to tell three people, who in turn tell three people, etc., will lead to the knowledge progressing.

          Best of all, most people have experienced DRM, be it in the inability to play a CD in certain players or the inability to fast forward through commercials on a DVD. They'll know what you're talking about, and may even be more than willing to learn and then spread that knowledge.

          Teac
          • So basically, someone should make a chain mail for this:

            "This is not a joke.

            Apparently, there is now a new virus called DRM. If the store you goes to offers you movies or music with DRM, DO NOT BUY IT. It WILL destroy your TV and computer if used.

            Don't ask the store clerks about it, as they think it is a feature instead of a virus. Just say no, and go to another store.

            Forward this e-mail to all your friends!"
      • Hence the worldwide revolt against Macrovision and CSS.

      • Consumer behavior (Score:3, Informative)

        by sg3000 ( 87992 ) *
        > An intelligent, wise consumer always investigates before
        > making purchases.

        Although your idea to get more "intelligent consumers" is admirable, it's misplaced. Basic understanding of consumer behavior indicates that "investigation" does not necessarily proceed the purchase, regardless of the "intelligence" or "wisdom" of the consumer.

        There are considered to be three types of decision making processes for consumers:
        a. Extended problem solving
        b. Limited problem solving
        c. Habitual or routine

        Extended pr

      • Only a foolish customer would allow themself to be defrauded. An intelligent, wise consumer always investigates before making purchases.

        Unfortunately John Q Public many tymes doesn't investigate before making a purchase, it's only after the fact when they do.

        Falcon

    • Re:Failure (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      What he meant by that was that for the customers to be conscious of the incredibly advanced procedures going down when they just want to watch a poop-joke DVD would be a strike against any development they've made.

      i.e.: Windows Media Player explaining that the DVD you bought can't be played because Windows Media Player can't verify the DRM, etc.

      He's saying that it needs to be seamless and invisible in order to be effective.. The less a consumer feels the presence of the 'law' in their home, the better that
    • No the whole plan relys on providing a solution that is "transparent" to the end user. Coping songs from iPod to a computer that I own is not possible at the moment. In a world where DRM works, the iPod would know that the device that I'm trying to copy to is either mine, or one that I can use exclusively. Since it knows that the target is "trusted", it would allow the operation. As far as sharing music goes, DRM that worked might let me "lend" music to a friend or give them a period of time in which they c
      • if DRM is done well, it might not be as bad as everyone thinks

        It is possible for them to put you in music heaven to temporarily get you to go along with a sweet deal that involves strong DRM, cheap songs and a EULA that lends you back some freedoms, but then after enough people have bought into it they can just change the terms of the EULA to something really draconian at any time without even telling you that they have done it. That leaves you, the consumer, with very little leverage.

        If you don't beli

    • "Seamless" and "transparent" DOES mean "deceptive" (Score:4, Insightful)

      by dpbsmith ( 263124 ) on Sunday September 04, 2005 @11:00AM (#13476924) Homepage
      The comments about how he just means "seamless" and "transparent" are nonsense. DRM is always seamy and murky. It becomes seamy and murky at the exact point when you try to lend your friend a recording and it won't play on their machine.

      Or when you buy a new computer, copy all your stuff over, sell your old one, and find that you can't play your stuff because your new computer isn't authorized, and you can't authorize your computer because your old computer hasn't been deauthorized, and you can't deauthorize your old computer because you haven't got it.

      What "transparent, seamless" DRM does is to conceal the real nature of the bargain from the customer until it is too late for it to affect their buying decision.
      • What "transparent, seamless" DRM does is to conceal the real nature of the bargain from the customer until it is too late for it to affect their buying decision.

        Bingo.

    • Re:Failure (Score:3, Insightful)

      by The_Rook ( 136658 )
      a significant problem with drm is that while 'Big Media', its prime beneficiary demands it, the same 'Big Media' doesn't want to pay for it. for example, the entire cost of implementing the broadcast flag was expected to be born by electronics companies and consumers.

      i don't think electronics manufacturers would care more or less about drm if Big Media was willing to pick up the tab. and why should consumers pay extra for drm when all it is likely to give them is annoyance at best and aggravation at worst?

  • It's not going to be the technology (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Stevyn ( 691306 ) on Sunday September 04, 2005 @10:32AM (#13476779)
    It's going to be how little people have to work to use it. Nobody wants another gadget that they can't figure out how to use. That said, nobody wants DRM that won't work properly. Everybody (including geeks) wants things to work out of the box and that's where these companies should focus on.

    They should make lots of mockups. They should get people to let them install this crap in their homes and see how they like or dislike it. The company that rushes some central media player that can only do what my modded xbox can do now isn't going to do well. It's going to take a lot of testing to get the final product done right.

    My guess is Apple might come out with some interesting products and I'm going to be watching out for what they do.

  • Knowledge of DRM (Score:4, Informative)

    by kfg ( 145172 ) on Sunday September 04, 2005 @10:38AM (#13476813)
    "'If consumers even know there's a DRM. . . we've already failed,'"

    Well Sparky, you kinda let that cat out of the bag when you forced people to watch ten minutes of ads every time they just wanted to watch a DVD, didn'ch'a?

    KFG

  • WIndows XP Media Center: inflated sales alert (Score:5, Interesting)

    by dpbsmith ( 263124 ) on Sunday September 04, 2005 @10:52AM (#13476879) Homepage
    A friend of mine recently saw a really good deal on a Dell PC. He bought one for his uncle and is thinking about buying another for himself.

    The funny thing was that although they were priced about $300 lower than other roughly equivalent home PC's, these were bundled with WIndows XP Media Center instead of Windows XP Home.

    They had no video-relevant hardware other than a DVD-burner.

    It took my friend an extra half-hour to make his purchasing decision because he was going crazy on the Dell and Microsoft websites trying to find out exactly what Windows XP Media Center was and to convince himself that it was not ''missing'' anything in Windows XP Home Edition.

    Oh, yes, the bundle included a 15" flat-screen monitor. So, the bundle contents were put together by someone who does not expect the PC to be connected to an existing TV. And with a 15" monitor, I don't think they expect it to be used in place of an ordinary television receiver, either.

    These PCs are definitely not going into living rooms.

    Keep this in mind the next time Microsoft starts trumpeting the great sales results it is having with WIndows XP Media Center.
    • Had I run into such a scenario, when I cannot find information regarding the product within a reasonable amount of time, I would have decided not to buy the product.

    • These PCs are definitely not going into living rooms

      Maybe not, but people will still be using them for creating media. Thay have more input than output, don't they?
    • The digital home is hampered by a lack of an open digital standard for devices to communicate. I built an MCE box for our entertainment center, and it works wonderfully with our simple combination of media usage and sources. A friend's more complex MCE install failed to work correctly with his larger selection of TV sources, which don't have the option of a standard digital interface and the ability to inform the MCE box of their capabilities. Unfortunately, there is no consumer friendly way to get MCE to i
    • Oh, yes, the bundle included a 15" flat-screen monitor. So, the bundle contents were put together by someone who does not expect the PC to be connected to an existing TV. And with a 15" monitor, I don't think they expect it to be used in place of an ordinary television receiver, either.

      It does feel like MSFT and other companies are trying to get products into the living room before they're completely ready. Reminds me of a technology manure spreader. Keep throwing crap out there and hope something stick

    • These PCs are definitely not going into living rooms.

      I'll second that. I recently helped my brother pick out a box for transfering loads of home videos. He wouldn't take my recommendation for a Mac, so we went to Microcenter. The best thing there for what he wanted was a Sony with ridiculous muscle -- p4 3.something hyperthreading, 800 FSB, the whole lot for about $1000, and running MCE.

      My brother lives in the Dominican Republic, and I know he'll never use the MCE part of the pckage -- there is no decent

  • What's the magic of paper? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by psb777 ( 224219 ) on Sunday September 04, 2005 @10:57AM (#13476915) Homepage
    My next laptop will not have a CD reader/writer. E.g. To load a new O/S I'll download the bootable image onto a USB key. Or netboot. My music CDs are never taken out of their cases anymore. Same will happen to my DVDs, sometime. So all that off-line media which is only machine-readable will go. The article is wrong.

    But paper? I carry a notebook and pen and will do so for a long time to come. No PDA for me. The article is right.
    • The only problem with your vision (which, I might add, is perfectly logical and if left to whatever passes for a free market nowadays in the U.S. would almost certainly come to pass) is that the MPAA and the movie studios are squarely against it. Anyone that wants to build and sell a box capable of ripping and storing entire DVDs will run into a world of legal hurt. That also doesn't mean that one whole lot of people aren't already doing just that ... they just can't market it as a product.

  • DIY Digital Home (Score:3, Interesting)

    by canuck57 ( 662392 ) on Sunday September 04, 2005 @11:02AM (#13476934)

    First, skip the DRM... it is a pain and is something that adds no value to the consumer thus will eventually die. Those systems that will survive will not have DRM, or deal with it so smoothly the user will not know it exists, and be cheap. Consumers are not going to pay billions or closed, proprietary DRM when they can DIY for a fraction of the cost.

    The recipe is only older PCs, or perhaps small PCs like Sokris and a wireless card.

    A list of such sites you might want to visit include:

    http://www.mythtv.org/ (entertainment)

    http://www.soekris.com/ (custom controlers)

    http://openwap.org/ (Customized wireless access point)

    http://fedora.redhat.com/ (General server for hold those mp files)

    http://www.atheros.com/ (You can get Linux/BSD drivers for the 54g wireless stuff, eg. DWL-AG650/AG520 or perhaps a prizm 54g chipset)

    http://www.bbdsoft.com/iocard_digital.html (digital I/O cards for signaling, security and control

    http://www.zorg.org/homeauto/index.shtml (Get X10 and interface to it)

    http://www.dlink.com (Get a video cam or two)

    • Consumers are not going to pay billions or closed, proprietary DRM when they can DIY for a fraction of the cost.

      Heathkit [heathkit-museum.com] is twenty years dead. The DIY market in consumer electronics is microscopic.

    • Problem with that, not everyone wants a PC in charge of TV and DVDs and music. You'll probably need to mess about upgrading and installing software. Only an option for computer nerds I'm afraid.

      1. Computers are expensive. Second hand ones are a liability and probably won't work with any hardware you want to use in them. Again you need to know about obscure computer terms.

      2. They're unreliable. Want your 'TV' crashing during the World Cup final? Want the picture freezing because the computer is doing some he
  • What is a marketing claptrap?

    • Re:Need British translation (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      From the OED; claptrap:

      Language used or sentiments expressed only to elicit applause; pretentious but empty assertions; nonsense.

      All marketing is claptrap, so marketing claptrap is a tautology.

    • What is a marketing claptrap?

      Bollocks. Shite. Twaddle. Crap. Bull. Balderdash. Hokum. Hogwash. Rubbish. Baloney. Gobledegook.

      Putting 'marketing' in front of the 'claptrap' makes it a little redundant.

  • Today's variant, says Mr Barrett, is 'no more tapes, CDs, DVDs, discs.' In other words, expect them to be around for a very long time to come.""

    They exist only as source data in my home. The first thing done with any CD is to rip it, the first thing done with any DVD is to rip it. CDs get put into iTunes then streamed into my amp via an Airport Express, DVDs get converted to MP4 and streamed via an Elgato eyeHome. I have a (UK, so Series 1) hacked Tivo which handles VCR-type needs and then some. With a fe

  • I've got computers in nearly every room in the house. Every one has a tuner. Every one can pause, fast forward, rewind live television. Every one can access all the shows I've recorded. Every one has access to my collection of over 400 movies I ripped to divx. Every one has access to my collection of over 1200 CDs. I've had this system in place for years. Why is it taking so long for everyone else to catch-up?!
    • Perhaps because the average guy goes home, plops on his living room couch, and watches what's already prepared for him on TV. If he's sick of TV, he goes to his DVD collection and pulls one out.

      If this imaginary person wanted what you have, he'd buy a Media Center PC - they're not too expensive anymore. But they're not selling, which makes me think people on the average are not that interested in what it does.

      Now, I own an iPod and play all my music digitally. There's a huge difference between music and
      • "What kind of hardware/software setup are you using for your home?"

        I build my own computers. So after a few upgrades, e.g., a new motherboard here a new graphics card there, pretty soon the only thing keeping me from building a "new" computer out of the old parts is the lack of case. Which can be obtained cheaply.

        One of my systems is based on an ancient 550 Mhz PIII. I have one based on a 800Mhz AMD Athlon. Then I have a 1700+, a 3200+, a 1800+, and a 2600+ AMD XP systems, rounding out the rest. They a
    • "Why is it taking so long for everyone else to catch-up?!"

      Because even now that represents a pretty fair chunk of change that others are probably spending on neccessities, investing for retirement, or using in the raising of their children?

      • No it doesn't. One of the computers I use is an old 550 PIII. Despite what the industry is telling you, to better part you from your cash, you DON'T need the greatest and latest computers to run video or MP3s. Any old computer you could find cheap at a garage sale could probably do it, with a few cheap upgrades.
        • Didn't you say you had a tuner card in every machine? What kind and how much did they cost? Is that P3 the greatest or the least of those machines?
          • The PIII was the first and is the least powered. Several years ago it had a Rage Fury Pro VIVO. One day for a lark I connected a VCR to the input and started watching TV. I hit pause on my Remote Wonder. It actually paused the TV. Pushing play started it back up again. I was hooked and bought an All-In-Wonder the same day.

            The Winfast cards are cheap, at the time you could get them from Newegg for under 50 bucks.

            If you shop around you can find off brand All-In-Wonder cards for around 90 bucks. (I noti
    • Because your system takes significantly more work than "Turn on and it works", which is what all consumer electronics need to have to be accessible to the mass market. Early adopters are different. I was the first kid in school with a web page back in the day where anyone could write a daily journal, provided they knew how to format HTML properly and understood an FTP interface -- now even my mother has a blog, but she never has to deal with anymore more complicated than "type out my thoughts and hit 'pos

  • From TFA... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by payndz ( 589033 ) on Sunday September 04, 2005 @11:32AM (#13477118)
    There is a third possibility. This is that the wars continue, but consumers continue not to care.

    DING! We have a winner! Almost everybody will go right along buying individual components as they always have done, and not caring if they're interoperable or not. How many people even bother to buy a universal remote to replace the four or five you'll find in most homes now? (TV, DVD, VCR, CD, cable...)

    'Convergence' of entertainment devices in the home has one very big problem - "What if it breaks?" Since the PC has a reputation of being the most complicated and troublesome gadget in the home already, piling in all the functions from every other box is not going to make people feel safe.

    If your DVD player packs up, you buy a new DVD player - these days, you can pick them up from the supermarket with your groceries for little more than the price of an actual DVD. But if the DVD player in your super-duper Media Center PC packs up...

    And if the computer itself packs up, then you lose all your entertainment systems in one go, not just one element. And what if, in this fabulous all-digital future, you've bought music, movies, TV shows, etc, that exist as nothing more than data on a hard drive? Are they all lost too?

    MS can go on about 'educating' the consumer all they want (and the line from some MS guy along the lines of 'the consumer doesn't know what they want until we show them' really was a perfect example of that company's arrogance), but most people are unwilling to put all their eggs in one basket. Especially with hardware that is associated with the words 'crash' and 'virus'.

    • (and the line from some MS guy along the lines of 'the consumer doesn't know what they want until we show them' really was a perfect example of that company's arrogance)

      There is truth in the MS guy's statement, but it's a truth that doesn't reach the conclusion he'd like it to. The industry shows the consumer all sorts of things that we didn't know we wanted until we see them. On the other hand, they show us a ton of crap that we instantly know we *don't* want. People like the MS guy like to sweep the cr
    • MS can go on about 'educating' the consumer all they want (and the line from some MS guy along the lines of 'the consumer doesn't know what they want until we show them' really was a perfect example of that company's arrogance)

      Just Microsoft? This is precisely my problem with a lot of open source software. I ask how to do something specific, and am told that the software can't do it, and moreover never will because I ought to do it this way instead. E.g. a command line interface is more efficient for

      • With OSS you get a straight, honest answer. It may not be the answer that you want, but you know where you are standing.

        With commercial companies you get marketing bullshit that tries to hype the pros while hiding the cons of a give product (that is their job, isn't it?).

        I know what is why I prefer, no matter how much "arcane" text commands I have to type.
  • In my work environment, (the planning/engineering department of a very large company) there was a shift away from paper documents starting in the late 1990s. In 1997, I was printing, copying, and mailing a 20+ page document to several dozen people each month. By 2000, anything equivalent would have been completely electronic. I bet I got my last printed memo in 1999 or so, and any news piece smaller than a corporate-wide 4-color glossy went to the web by 2002.

    PCs had been ubiquitous for several years, b

  • Targetting the wrong market (Score:5, Interesting)

    by plusser ( 685253 ) on Sunday September 04, 2005 @11:46AM (#13477197)
    The problem with the consumer electronics market at the moment is that they are now targeting a mature and saturated entertainment market. In addition they are concentrating on extracting more money from "old" content, much of which has been in existence for years, if not decades. There will come a point where the consumer will demand a lot more from the products they are offering, before they upgrade their existing system.

    It could be argued that DRM is actually nothing new. If you think about it, subscription based television services, in particular those like Home Box Office and Pay Per view are effectively a form of DRM, in that you have to pay a fee to the broadcaster in order to view the content. In addition much of the content on these systems has been restricted using macrovision to prevent viewers from recording the programmes on their VCR.

    The problem arises in a market where companies are trying to increase their profitability margins by placing more restrictions on the product in the hope that the consumer will want to pay out more of their cash to view the same material on a new piece of equipment. The old term "money for old rope" applies here. Unfortunately, unlike in the 1980's when CDs were introduced and music lovers purchased CDs to replaced well loved but worn out vinyl, most of the current new consumer devices offer nothing new with regard to improving the entertainment experience, apart from perhaps making your music a little more portable in the case of MP3 players.

    I for one used to subscribe to Satellite television (Sky Digital here in the UK), but stopped subscribing when the quality of the television content nose-dived, while the cost of subscribing went up. Instead, I decided to subscribe to broadband, which I find much more interactive and stimulating. I could go back and subscribe to Sky at some point in the future, but you know what, I think I would prefer to spend the money on going out to the cinema instead. At least if I don't like what is on offer, I don't have to go.

    The rise of High Definition Television will possibly be a draw, especially as it has the potential to offer the cinema experience at home. The only problems I can see at the moment is that the equipment is an expensive luxury, is not yet available in the UK (until next year) and that I haven't got a big enough room to get the benefit.

    Too be serious though, rather than produce devices that provide me with more entertainment, I would be far more interested in devices that either require less energy to operate, or save me time. How about integrating a WiFi system with the heating and home security systems? Surely then the system could be given a nice easy to use interface that could be operated from the web browser of my computer, and it could even decide how to heat the house based on the whether report for the day (downloaded from the internet). It could even ensure I've locked the house up properly in the morning when I've gone off to work.
  • If there is one thing that history teaches us, it is that the technology that always wins in the market place is always among the least proprietary. Not the fastest, not the best, not the prettiest, and not the most well engineered.

    This is because the free market is 10000 times bigger than even the biggest company. And now that the 3rd world is getting into the picture it is making that even more true.

    The truth is, many of these companies don't want convergence, what they want is a proprietary lock in of
  • As long as DRM is restrictive the consumer will always know what it is. Even the tunes DRM restricts the user to using the Ipod if they want to (legally) play music from ITMS on a portable unit.
  • We need our homes to be like Walden once in a while. There's this places called outdoors, that we should explore on occasion.
  • After all, popping in a DVD, say, is so easy and works so well. By contrast, getting a digital home up and running promises several lost weekends of fiddling with manuals and settings, and hefty expenses in new gear.

    Could someone explain to me why this continues to be put out there by the media? Last I checked, a wireless router at Best Buy and their counterparts was under $50 for the basic model, and USB-WiFi adaptors are not much, either (if your PC doesn't allready have a WiFi adaptor built in). XP sea

  • The article is absolutely spot on - nothing more to say. All these companies are falling over themselves thinking of how much money they're going to make, but in the consumer world all people want are simple, cheap (this isn't the business PC world remember - none of those margins here) devices that actually damn well work most of the time. Even if the digital home is made a reality, consumers want it cheap, cheap, cheap and there are nowhere near the margins that IBM, Intel and Microsoft have enjoyed in th

  • The same was true in the 50's and 60's about TV. Gosh... am I *that* old already?

    What is symptomatic about the present discussion is the fact of talking about the home consumption of electronically transmitted/recorded entertainment. Just like in the old days when the then-pundits discussed fiercely if TV would eventually kill Theatre, Cinema, Newspapers and Social Life as a whole.

    Well, it didn't. The very same is true about the digital home, which is already a reality. Some use it extensively, some not
  • I'm not sure why, but all the HTPC companies are going about it way wrong. First off, most have pentium 4's. Wrong answer right off the bat, they use to much energy and create to much heat. Second off, they have video cards. Most people who play video games and/or would by an HTPC already have a XBOX/PS2 or Gaming computer. Integrated video is fine for most people, and saves a lot on cost. Finally they are craming to much crap into it, and adding uneeded cost. I have constructed one for home use using Chai
  • The convergence products that are being designed are very very massive. The future of home entertainment resembles aerospace in its complexity. Instead of 1 company designing and shipping 1 product, there are consortiums of 10 or 20 companies designing 1 product. Dozens more companies are hired to implement modules in these single products.

    If every feature on a modern convergence product was documented in the manual, the manual would be thousands of pages long. While previous devices may have had 10 or

  • This is off the narrower topic of entertainment appliances but on the larger topic of appliance intercommunications and home networking.

    One area where it would be beneficial for consumer appliances to communicate is an area where most consumers (except for a few home automation or alternate energy buffs) don't yet realize the need (not that many consumers aren't ignorant of the potential benifits of entertainment appliances interoperating seamlessly) And in many ways, energy is the more important area

  • I think it was slashdot that first referenced this speech Cory Doctrow gave to a Microsoft audience about DRM:

    http://www.craphound.com/msftdrm.txt [craphound.com]

    Briefly, he urged that the digital-media market would go to the machine that 'plays everybody's records' - urged them to give up on hopeless DRM and indeed break everybody else's with their players.

    Wonderful set of anti-DRM arguments.
  • I went paperless in 1997 and aside from network and systems configuratin information that may or may not be available when I walk up to a system, haven't gone back. That information is kept in a notebook thoughtfully provided by Veritas. New books are bought in the paper format but with the current, I won't call if flood but it is singnificant, release of various titles to electronic formats, I read books as much on my computers as I do in book format. My computer rests on a desk beside my bed so I can r

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