A couple years ago (7/07) I wrote:

I think the digital book will be dramatically different from the 1999 eBook.  The hardware will be much more appealing to book worms - possibly with digital pages that actually flip - and the fonts and rendering technology will be wondrous.  The dedicated device will be connected to the net for instant download (via an iTunes-like store, probably provided by Amazon.com and B&N) of new books, magazines, newspapers, and other types of content.

Digital Books and the Trade-in Model

In other words, I had a vision of the Amazon Kindle – and as I typed this up, they were working on it (pretty cool).  I also wrote that I wanted to replace all existing paper books with digital books in the year 2012.  But I’m thinking of moving that up by a few years now that I have about 40 new books on shelves that I didn’t have back in 2007.  Books are starting to overwhelm our living space (just like CDs did for years) and it’s time for me to do something about it short of adding more square footage.  So here’s my plan:

1. Remove all books from my public Amazon wishlist and move them to a private “Want to read” list.  Having received close to 20 books for Christmas this year, I think I need to get serious about this.  I’m walking distance to the Microsoft Library and can get books delivered to my office whenever I want them, so owning books is starting to feel a little silly.  Where it makes sense, I will replace the physical book with the Kindle version once that’s possible.
2. As I read books I already own, I will take searchable notes (in OneNote) where applicable.  Not going to do that for Twilight or Tom Clancy of course, but I’ll definitely be doing it for psychology/business motivation/productivity books where things I want to remember are covered in detail.
3. Once finished, I’ll add those books to another list, “Books I’ve read” just in case I want to refer back to them at some point (or just remind myself that I actually read them).  This will address the packrat need in me.
4. Then, I’ll sell the book.  De-clutter.

If I ever need to refer back to the book for some reason, I’ll either get it delivered from the library, listen to the Audible version, or buy the cheaper Kindle copy.  This assumes two things:

• I get a Kindle.  In order to go digital, I need a great reader.  I’m assuming that the new Kindle on February 9th will be one.  The DRM still bugs me but if over time enough people complain, they’ll have to do what Apple just did with iTunes and let people strip the DRM.
• I can sell books without dealing with selling the books. I have a used book store around the corner from me, but the best value I’ll get from selling books will come from Amazon or another online retailer.  Except I really don’t want to deal with shipping books every day (or posting them to begin with).  So I need to find a cost-effective and efficient way to do this, possibly by hiring a virtual assistant.  Ideas are welcome.

And just for fun, I’m going to learn how to speed read finally so I can get through all of this a little quicker.  Most of the books I read are perfectly “speed readable”.  I’ve found some resources on this but I’ll spend some time over the next couple of days digging up some more.

So just like CDs and paper in our home, in a few years most books (with a few exceptions) will be replaced with digital versions or gone completely once I get the value extracted from them.

[Omar and I are giving a talk on Getting Things Done at Microsoft at TechReady next week.  The funny thing is that one of the benefits we tout of applying a system to your inbox and task list is that you start to systematize everything around you.  This is one odd example of me doing that!]

For almost three years I've used my Xbox 360 just about every day - yet I haven't played a game for more than 10 minutes since 2006.  We use it in our house for renting movies (great quality, skimpy selection), watching DVD/"old" HD-DVD movies, streaming Zune Pass and WMA/MP3 music from the PC upstairs, and about once a month, streaming photos for a traditional slideshow for guests.  In our house, the 360 is our entertainment hub - we could almost care less that it plays games too.

Yet I have to admit, when I was in the Apple Store amidst all the chaos the other day, I yearned for an Apple TV.  The visuals are great, but the thing that almost had me is the selection of content (movies mostly, which is what we care about in our house).  Xbox Live Marketplace just doesn't have the same quantity/selection.  Yet did I really want yet another set-top box?  Remote?  Wi-Fi endpoint?  Not really.  I wanted my 360 to just *do* this.  Because no matter how great the Apple TV would end up being for us, we would still need to use the 360 for the Media Center capabilities + the WMA Lossless support, and adding yet another piece of hardware to the fold always complicates things for me.  With my luck, it would crash and destroy my router like the last time I tried connecting something.

Well... Wish granted two days later.  I love technology.

The 360 will have an all-new dashboard (check out the video) updating it's slightly dated look with snazzy new visuals, avatars, and an all-around more immersive experience.  But the kicker: Netflix queue integration.  Add a movie to your Netflix queue on the web and it appears in the queue on your Xbox with direct streams that start in 30 seconds.  It doesn't look like it's HD quality yet, but it's something - and I can't imagine HD is too far off.

This is cool stuff - I seriously thought my 360 would be obsolete by 2008 (I bought it in 2005) but it looks like it's getting another BIG upgrade.  It'll feel brand new again (although the fan is still too loud!)

Read more:
http://www.xbox.com/en-US/community/events/e32008/articles/0714-nxe.htm

And a great write-up:
http://venturebeat.com/2008/07/14/netflix-comes-to-the-xbox-360-did-microsoft-just-destroy-the-apple-tv/

Back in September 2006, I wrote about moving to an ala carte model for television instead of relying on the increasingly expensive and unreliable cable companies to provide content for us.  With each passing day, I get more anxious about the fact that we're not doing this in our household - because we watch even less TV now than we did before, and we're still paying Comcast monthly for the privilege.

I just looked at my Comcast cable bill.  We have HD support but none of the special channels like HBO or Showtime.

$68.23 + $6.80 taxes & surcharges (approximated since my Internet access is on this bill too).  Add $10.75/month for Tivo (annual prepay) and you have an astounding $85.78/month just to watch TV.  If I were to translate that into iTunes or Xbox LIVE purchases, you're talking an average of about 42 television shows/month for that price.

Yet I think we watch about 8-12 shows monthly depending on the month (Smallville, The Sarah Connor Chronicles, The Office, and maybe a few others).  Seriously, why in the world are we paying $85/month when we could just drop $2-3/each to watch the shows we want to watch when we want to watch them?  How could things NOT be moving in this direction over the next couple years?

The catch for me is that sports content isn't available through either iTunes or Xbox LIVE - which means I'm either relegated to watching baseball on my laptop through MLB.TV or not watching it at all.  Neither is acceptable - so until there's a solution to this problem (and I suspect it will be in the next 24 months somehow) I won't be able to switch completely.  And of course, neither iTunes nor Xbox have Smallville... and iTunes doesn't even have TV shows in HD yet :(

So the dream will probably be on hold for a short while.  But I'm really looking forward to the day when I'm not paying $85/month for less than 8 hours of television watching.  Ugh.

It's been a few months since I last posted about photo tagging and asked "how should I use metadata on photos?"  There were some great responses, both in person as well as in the comments, and I filed that task away for a future project.  Well, the future is now.  We took over 1700 photos in the last couple weeks alone (having an 11-week old will do that to you) and our "filing system" is starting to show its age.  Not having things like ratings, dates, or even the basics like "this is a picture of Stella and Mike" is starting to bug me since I'm spending a few hours each week just dealing with photos.

So this is what I'm going to do with our entire gallery, starting right now:

1. Keep the photos organized by event in folders.  So "Christmas 2007 in Seattle" remains - it turns out that's how my wife and I like to browse our photo collection, and since I'm not a hardcore photographer (yet) it's easiest for us to keep it like this.
2. Rename all the files to something like "Title (#) mm-dd-yyyy" where title is the name of the folder (i.e. Christmas 2007) and the # is the sequence number. 
3. Make sure all the photos have the capture date set.  Since some of them are scans or were taken with a 9-year old 1MP digital camera, there's a good chance dates aren't captured across the board.  So I'm going to correct this.
4. Make the title on the photo the same as the filename for now.  There are some instances where I'll type more than this like "Stella laughing at her zebra toy", but just to be consistent I'm going to keep it simple in the default case where there's nothing better to use as a caption.
5. Add creator and copyright metadata.  The creator will be something like "Torres Family" and the copyright is used just in case the photos find their way onto the web.  I know it doesn't actually protect anything, but since it takes 2 seconds to add it, why not?  I'm also going to use the creator tag to indicate who took the photo since I have rolls from just about every family member over the last few years.  So instead of using sub-folders for this, I'm going to use the creator tag and filter on that.
6. Add two basic ratings to photos - 5 star for amazing, 4 for great.  I may have a few that use 3 as well, but to me that's the equivalent of not having a rating at all.
7. Flat out delete all poorly shot or blurry photos while I'm doing this.
8. Convert BMPs to JPGs since I have a bunch of images from the mid-90s using the bitmap format.
9. Opt to write all the XMP data to the file of course!

And finally: 10.  Apply tags to all the photos!  Talk about tedious :)

I realize that a few months ago I said "I'm not going to go crazy with this and spend hundreds of hours applying tags to previous photos"... but I rethought that [I know Jay is laughing right now thinking "I knew you would"].  But the photos we had pre-baby are all actually pretty easy to apply metadata to, and being the neat freak that I am I knew I wouldn't want to have half of my photos cleaned up and the others just sitting around unusable.  So I came up with a very basic tagging scheme based on what I've seen others do online.  I'm going to use hierarchical tags (even though most apps including Windows Live Photo Gallery don't visualize them like this) and I'm going to use capitalization and spaces in the tags.  This is the basic format I'm going to use:

1. Places -> Seattle, La Grulla, Glen Ridge, etc.
2. People -> Full name
3. People -> Stella Torres -> Birth, 0-3 months, 3-6 months, Smiling, Yawning, Sleeping, etc.
4. Nature -> Flowers, Landscape, Ocean, etc.
5. Things -> Car, Plane, Bike, etc.
6. Portraits -> Pregnant, Fitness, Funny, etc.

To perform all of the steps above, I'm going to use Adobe Photoshop Lightroom since bulk edits like these are cake in that tool... and any changes I make, including applying tags, will immediately appear in Windows Live Photo Gallery for basic viewing/editing.  As I get more serious about photography (and trust me, I'm really not that serious) Lightroom is becoming an essential part of my workflow.  I love how I can use Lightroom to do all of this and not only does my desktop software (WLPG) pick up the changes immediately, but Media Center does as well!

To illustrate how slick this is, soon I'll be able to pull up pictures of any family member sorted by date in 3 seconds on the HDTV in my living room thanks to Xbox 360 and Media Center.  Love it!  It's like magic.

Of course, this is going to take me quite a while.  But just like I did when I ripped 900+ CDs, I'm going to take it week-to-week ;)  I'll spend about 30 minutes each Sunday working through 5-10 folders until I'm finished with everything.  It should only take a few months provided I'm disciplined about it.  And then I'll never have to do it again; it just becomes about new photos at that point, which is much, much easier.  And if it's anything like my encoding all of my music, it'll be boring and tedious... but I'll be pretty thrilled when it's all done.  Just in time for CES 2009!

Speaking of CES, be sure to watch Bill's keynote at 630 Pacific at www.microsoft.com/ces!  This is my favorite time of the year - CES and MacWorld... geek heaven.

Where will you soon be able to get music from all of the major labels, without any DRM restrictions, at moderate bit rates?  Amazon MP3 of course.  Fantastic.  Sony BMG has finally entered the fold.

I've spent years berating DRM and buying nothing but CDs, which feature both higher quality sound and zero restrictions on how they're used.  But Amazon's MP3 Downloads have me slowly thinking about sacrificing a little quality (most songs are 256kbps variable rate) for convenience [of course, I do wish they would support lossless formats].

I'm not sold on the design of the store - it feels a little bit too much like Amazon.com and not enough like a fun place to hang out (see Zune for this) - but all things considered, it's the best store on the block.  As their catalog grows, I can't see anyone favoring the current iTunes model over straight cheap, DRM-free MP3s.  The subscription model is still a better value (and I expect music junkies will still use that to sample music) but for ownership, Amazon is doing a fantastic job.

I've spent the last day and a half playing with my wife's red Zune 8 (with a burning heart tattoo on the back) and I love the thing.  Yes, I know it's technically my wife's and not mine (I'm holding out for the 80GB) but she's letting me play with it since I ordered it and set it up for her.  Yesterday we held the Zune up to my year-old iPod nano which I was so excited about last October, and the difference is remarkable.  The iPod with its arcane menu structure and tiny little screen seemed just as outdated as iTunes does compared to the Zune software these days.

Granted, the new iPod nanos aren't last year's model... but all things considered, I think the Zune 8 is a much better value, better device, and better looking than the "small, fat" new nanos.  I've always been a fan of the candy bar design.

The things that have impressed me so far:

• Wireless sync on my semi-complicated Wi-Fi network (WPA2 security, hidden SSID) took 2 minutes to setup and works like a charm.  This totally surprised me.
• Video is surprisingly watchable on the tiny screen, and it's crystal clear.
• The music that comes on the device isn't half-bad.  I find myself listening to it.
• The synchronization model is great.  I grabbed some video of Stella off of our camcorder yesterday, edited it quickly in iMovie on the Mac, and moved it onto my PC.  The Zune software immediately found it and was able to play it, so I just dragged it onto the little red Zune to sync it - and 10 seconds later, I was watching videos of our daughter on the Zune.  This is exactly how it's supposed to work.
• Radio for watching TV in the gym.  Love it.
• The Zune now supports WMA Lossless so you can get the highest fidelity music possible onto the device.  Unfortunately, I have yet to figure out how to do the auto-conversion to a lower bit rate that WMP11 lets you do with portable devices.  This is unfortunate but it could just be user error.
• The desktop software is still gorgeous and the most intuitive player yet.  I've heard more than one person compare iTunes to Excel after seeing it.
• The device software is slick and easier to use than the iPod's in my opinion.  I felt this way about last year's Zune too, but unfortunately it was a brick.

All in all, I'm really impressed with the new Zunes.  Unlike last year, no one can argue that they aren't a viable alternative to the iPod this holiday season.  They have a ways to go in terms of mindshare, but this is a huge leap forward with respect to capabilities, brand, and design.  A lot can change in one year.

OK, I take back every disparaging thing I ever said about the clunky old Zune device and buggy player software.  The new software (oddly named just Zune - not Zune Player) is without a doubt the most aesthetically appealing client application I've used in a long time.  Maybe ever; although Windows Vista's Media Center has to be up there.  They just got so many little things right.  I mean LOOK at the thing:

See that huge transparent image of Chris Brown behind the tracks?  The player has those kind of touches everywhere, even for the most obscure artists.  Along with subtle animations that make the thing feel "alive", six great artistic themes, the coolest type-down search I've seen yet, and a super-simple sync model with the Zune device.

I don't know if I'm going to use this all the time for playing music as it's still missing some of the basics like mini-mode, smart playlists, advanced metadata, and visualizations.  But I do love looking at it.  I'm holding out for the Zune 80 and it looks like it's not in stock anywhere yet, so it will be a few more weeks before I can really put things through their paces.  But according to the reviews I've been reading, the Zune under-promised and over-delivered overall this time with a lot of people saying they prefer it to the iPod classic and nano.  Personally, I'm just looking forward to watching Smallville (for free Apple!) and listening to TWiT on the Connector bus in the morning.

If you haven't tried it, download it at www.zune.net.  Not only is it beautiful to look at, it's also light years easier to use than it was before.  It makes iTunes look complicated.  I dig.  If the Zune Pass is really this easy to use, I may never buy music again.

I'll admit that I was expecting to be let down by this announcement after Apple's big iPod push.  But I've soaked in all the data I could over the last 30 minutes about the 2nd generation Zune and while I'm not blown away, I'm happy with what we're offering.  There are a few things about the new Zune that caught my eye, especially considering I don't see a viable video player in Apple's lineup right now.

First, the Zune 80 has a huge (3.2") screen and 80 gigabytes to work with for $249.  Those three facts working together can't be underestimated; it means you can carry around full length movies, TV shows, and tons of photos alongside what's probably most, if not all, of your music library.  And you get a nice big screen to watch video on for less than $250.  Second, the device supports WMA (of course) including (I expect) automatic downsampling which is important if you're weird and use WMA Lossless to archive your CDs like I do.  But perhaps more importantly, it supports automatic synchronization with recorded TV via Windows Media Center.  The ability to take Sportscenter on the Connector bus everyday is just too cool to pass up, especially because it'll synchronize automatically over my Wi-Fi network!  And the long awaited podcast support has hit the Zune too, so there will truly be no need for iTunes anymore in my house.  Finally.  And since you can exchange podcasts via Wi-Fi, I expect I'll learn about new programs from co-workers.

Zune 2 also carries over the FM radio support - which sounds pretty uninteresting until you consider it's the only way most gyms broadcast sound from the TV sets.  Not having FM built into my iPod nano has frustrated me more than once while being stuck on a treadmill.

One thing I'm cautiously excited about is this new ZunePad thing.  Touch screens are nice, but I've heard from just about everyone I know who has an iPod touch that not having direct control over the volume is a total PIA.  And of course, the screen gets smudged.  Now, I don't know how this ZunePad will work in action, but there is a great video of it on the Seattle PI blog.  This may be the only Zune 2 video out there.  It looks like fun - and I especially love the album art.  But it could suck if it doesn't work exactly right, we'll see.

All in all it's a solid, while not revolutionary, v2.  I don't expect the new Zune to win over a ton of iPod fans, but having 80gb of recorded TV, podcasts, and automatically downsampled WMA music in my pocket, synchronized over the air while I am sleeping, is probably enough for me... and it probably will be for a lot of people.  Again, there isn't a similar model in Apple's lineup at all - the closest thing is the comparatively insanely expensive 16GB ($399) or 8GB ($299) iPod touch.  $399 for 16GB or $249 for 80GB...  Hmm...

So I expect I'll get a Zune 80 for the bus - and maybe a small, cheap ($149) one for the gym or for my wife.  Employee discount service, get ready!

Read more -> Microsoft unveils new generation of Zune

The "nesting instinct" has kicked in for both my wife and me with the bebe arriving any day now.  While she's focused on the nursery, strollers, and clothes, my focus is in the digital realm.  I'm getting ready to share photos and videos of our first born, of course!  So far we've upgraded our cameras (and entered the world of digital SLR photography, which before this weekend I knew nothing about - thanks Trevin!) and figured out how we're going to get photos to our family distributed all over the U.S.

But the nut I haven't cracked yet, now that this project has grown beyond its original intentions, is how we're going to organize the billions of photos we're going to take.  To-date, our organization system is really pretty simple: when we import photos from our camera, they get a name + date which maps to a folder (something like "Boat ride, August 2007").  We have 805 of these folders now since we've been taking digital photos and scanning others since the late 90s.  But is it enough?  Will we ever want more than this?

Windows Live Photo Gallery supports tags, ratings, and captions, writes this data to the file via XMP, and has a "truth is in the file" mentality so you can rest easy that metadata you add to your photos today will be useful tomorrow or in another application like Photoshop or SmugMug.  This leads to local photos being the "master" copy (aka digital negative) since you can apply captions and tags once, and then use them elsewhere with no additional effort.  Spaces doesn't support this yet, but I'd bet people are talking about it in the halls.

Photo Gallery even makes it easy to do this when you import - check it out:

Which leads me to my question: how should I use metadata on photos?  I'm not going to go crazy with this and spend hundreds of hours applying tags to previous photos (at least I don't think I am) but I do want to come up with a mental model that works so that when I find a photo that I want tagged, I can tag it on the spot without cluttering some other view up.  This is what I'm thinking:

• Use the folder name as a title/category (i.e. "Christmas Party, December 2007")
• Use the file name as the "name" of the photo (i.e. "Jay and Robin")
• Use the caption as the "description" of the photo (i.e. "Can you believe she's gotten so big?")
• Use tags to describe the contents of individual photos (i.e. skyline, smiling, happy, funny)
• Use tags to indicate who is in the photo (i.e. Mike Torres, Jay Fluegel, Trevin Chow) using standard names.  Of course I don't know if multiple words is part of XMP but I'll find out.
• Use geotags at some point in the distant future to describe location (once GPS is as prevalent as Wi-Fi as I'm not doing this by hand) In the meantime, use tags for location (i.e. Seattle, L.A., New Jersey)

So the question is: what am I missing here?  I'm not even sure this is right.  Should the caption be the name and the description be something else?  I don't know.

I just finished watching the Apple keynote from earlier today.  Two things occurred to me while I was ooohing and ahhing over the iPod nano, iPod touch and the amazing $200 price drop on the iPhone (wow to you suckers who just bought one!  It's fun to be an early adopter these days!)

1. The iPod Touch is great with a nice big screen.  And the 160GB model with the tiny little screen is great too - for music, not video.  In order to really be an adequate video + music device, they really need to have one device with both a large screen AND large storage capacity.  I don't see how only one of these is at all sufficient for a real video + music device.  It's a strange choice considering how great the devices are otherwise.  I would have preferred a slightly thicker device to accommodate 50GB+.
   
2. The real killer application for video (provided #1 is addressed) is to take television shows with you on-the-go FOR FREE.  Having to pay some ridiculous fee for a show you're already paying your cable company $59/mo to watch is crazy - but if you can use Tivo or Windows Media Center to record a show and (wirelessly?) transfer it automatically to your portable device nearby, that would be truly great.  Forget iTunes lock-in.

Now, I have no idea what's in store for Zune 2.  But I think there's an opportunity with Zune to get some of these things right before Apple does.  The shareholder in me hopes we can do it because it could be a real differentiator.

Side note: I wish Apple just ditched Wi-Fi completely on the iPod Touch and instead just partnered with AT&T for a cheap data-only plan (i.e. $10/mo).  I almost never used Wi-Fi on my PPC-6700 phone for the year that I had it - I had NO need for it whatsoever with 3G built into the thing - and EV-DO was far more ubiquitous, fast enough, and much easier to use.  It's a total pain to get onto most Wi-Fi networks ($5.99 hourly fee?  Type a 128-bit WEP key?!) but getting onto a cell network is a breeze.  I'm sure Apple has something up their sleeves with this (namely bypassing the carriers) but Wi-Fi is just too limited; I wonder how many people will ever use Safari on the iPod Touch.

Also: speculation.  Is the reason they called it the iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store because it won't work with the iPhone over EDGE?  It's pretty dumb to name a product after a protocol codename - will they also have an iTunes EDGE Music Store?  Or iTunes HSDPA Music Store?  Or is the "one last thing" Steve forgot to mention that the Wi-Fi Music Store will only work if you're connected via Wi-Fi?  If so, that would be ridiculous.  Anyone know?

The future of books is digital.  That much is obvious.  There are many people out there who think this is an impossibility, but those folks are probably the same people who once said MP3 would never make it because people "like having CDs".  Digital books have so many advantages over paper books - readability, instant search, automatic updates to the content, portability, instant purchase, and so on - that this game will be over much faster once it really kicks in than the migration to digital music was.  The technology is just now catching up with the desire, so I expect that over the next decade people are going to switch to digital books en masse.

Note that I don't say "eBooks", because I think the digital book will be dramatically different than the 1999 eBook.  The hardware will be much more appealing to book worms - possibly with digital pages that actually flip - and the fonts and rendering technology will be wondrous.  The dedicated device will be connected to the net for instant download (via an iTunes-like store, probably provided by Amazon.com and B&N) of new books, magazines, newspapers, and other types of content.  Have you ever been on the isle of Bora Bora, where there isn't a bookstore in sight for miles, and run out of reading material 4 days before boarding a plane to go home?  I have.  Never again.

Of course, this will only be a pleasant transition if used book stores, retailers, or "web 4.0" startups figure out how to provide trade-in value for existing books.  As someone who has purchased 100+ books over the course of the last decade, I have no desire to repurchase them just to convert them to the digital format.  Instead, I want to be able to drop off the books at a used book store and be given a credit towards the digital book for download.  I want to replace all existing paper books with digital books in the year 2012 but I don't want to pay retail for the privilege (although $.50/book would be fine)

Sound familiar?  It's essentially what millions of people have been doing with CDs.  We've been ripping, mixing, and burning for a while now and many people are finally at a point where 100% of their music collection is digital.  It's fantastic not to have CD clutter lining the walls of my home any longer; the CDs I still have are in a CD book filed away in the closet.

If the transition to digital books supports a trade-in model, it could potentially be accelerated.  Let's not make people repurchase their books again.  This is assuming there isn't some crazy iTunes-like big brother DRM attached to every book, of course.  I wonder if there's a business model hidden in here for someone.

Sidebar: there's at least one relatively decent reader out now from Sony with a very crisp display.  I'm sure there are others as well, but the "iPod" of digital books is probably a few years out; the device that makes it so painfully obvious why digital books are the way to go.  For some people, this might just be the iPhone, a Windows Mobile phone, or the equivalent - something with a nice-sized screen, Internet connectivity, and always in your pocket.  For others, it may be a dedicated device.

Update:  Chris Morley, Director of Product Development from Velocity Micro added a comment below: "You're absolutely right, we definitely can do a better job of pointing out the basic HDCP requirements on our website, I'll will have something up today.  And your changes shouldn't be a problem at all.  If it is, just ask for me."  I also got an email this morning from my sales exec reiterating this.  As expected, these guys are standup - it isn't their fault Cable Labs doesn't understand their customers.  The fact that Chris is reading blogs and commenting reminds me of what I said when interviewed for Shel & Scoble's Naked Conversations: you never know who's listening :)

Thanks guys!

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I love the Media Center support in Windows Vista Home Premium + Ultimate editions.  Love it.  I think it's one of the slickest applications this company has ever built and I can't wait to finally use it.  When I first played with it at CES 2006, I think I got goosebumps.

Now, the system I use at home is a 5 1/2 year old Dell that has been reconfigured into an XP Media Center 2005 - but given the specs of the system (you don't even want to know), I haven't even thought about installing Vista on it.  Instead, I did what all geeks do after that much time has passed; I bought a new PC.  A Media Center to go with the new office we have in our place.

I sprung for a Velocity Micro CineMagix Grand Theater Entertainment System - a mid-line media center and one of the few that already supports the CableCARD 1.0 standard for HD viewing & recording.  I only got one tuner (they're pricey) but figured that since this was for an office PC, just being able to watch and record a single HD show would be good enough for now.  I started to get giddy thinking about watching HDTV upstairs while cranking out a spec, dragging and dropping Smallville onto a Zune or laptop to take it with me on a flight, or using Orb to stream SportsCenter to my Motorola Q while sitting on the bus. 

Alas, it wasn't meant to be.  Because CableCARD and HDCP, quite frankly, are the most confusing and limiting technologies I've ever encountered.  Instead of rehashing my email to Velocity Micro, I'll just include it here and let you know the outcome when I do.  In short: I'm downgrading the system.  If they accept the changes, the system will no longer support CableCARD and HDCP which means a) no broadcast HDTV, and b) no "special" cable channels like HBO.  Which is fine considering most TV I watch will be in a window while working.  It's a small price to pay for control over where and when I can watch recorded shows, plus it saves me the additional "Comcast tax" and visit from a technician during the convenient hours of 10-4 just to "rent" the CableCARD to begin with. 

Man do I loathe DRM.  1997-quality standard def television, here I come!  Of course, I'm still excited to use Vista Media Center in all its glory despite the lack of HD.  Anyway, I'm sure Velocity Micro will do the right thing; they seem like a stand-up company.  Here's the email:

Hi XXXXXX,

We spoke last week about order #YYYYYYY.

Since I placed the order, I’ve learned quite a bit about how CableCARD works – basically how it limits the transfer of ALL recorded content from the PC’s hard drive to portable devices (including the Zune) and other PCs, how recordings can’t go to network attached storage devices, and how you need an HDCP-compatible monitor to even view the content at all.

To be honest, this fine-print should probably have been clear to me – but it took 4-5 hours of scouring the Internet to decipher it all. All three of these things are non-starters for me as I intend to use a Zune and a laptop in conjunction with the PC, I use a NAS exclusively, and I don’t have an HDCP-compatible monitor.

For what it’s worth, I couldn’t find an explanation of any of this on your website, which is disturbing as I don’t see how people who are less technically inclined could possibly grasp the intricacies of all of this. I would recommend posting an FAQ on CableCARD and HDCP immediately to avoid confusion and further customer dissatisfaction.

I’m still interested in the system, but I would like to see if changes are possible given this new information. Although the website claims that systems are non-refundable 3 business days after the order is placed, I’m still hoping that despite the total lack of information on this, that this change can be made free of charge.

The change is simple really: I’d like to revert the ATI TV Wonder Digital Cable Tuner (with CableCARD support) to the ATI TV Wonder 650 Pro HDTV/SD/FM and then add a 2^nd tuner, the same ATI TV Wonder 650 Pro HDTV/SD/FM to the system.

Based on the details I can gather from the web site, this should only be a -$5 price difference as I’m removing the $155 DCT and adding another $150 basic tuner. Please let me know if this is feasible. From the looks of it in the online tracker, the system hasn’t been configured yet.

Thanks,
Mike

Of course, this solution will only work so long as my cable provider continues to broadcast shows in standard definition.  I'm confident it will be a while before they go HD-only.  I'll cross that bridge when we get to it.  In the meantime, let's see what VM does with this.

More information on CableCARD, HDCP, and Windows Vista: http://msmvps.com/blogs/chrisl/archive/2007/06/10/954764.aspx

I have to admit, I don't long for the current generation Zune; I actually went out and bought an iPod nano in October instead of the Zune and love it.  The current Zune is just too big to fit in my pocket and I have no real need for video on-the-go most days.  Having said that, I think the team did some great things with the first version of the device and I have very high hopes for subsequent versions.  I think the "platform" of Zune is much, much more interesting than the device sitting on store shelves today - and platforms can take a long time to get right.

Regardless, I freakin LOVE the new commercial for the thing.  After watching this commercial, I immediately knew what made the Zune different from the iPod (big screen video, FM tuner, Wi-Fi sharing) and the spot even used a fun, catchy, popular song to boot.  All around, this commercial is a definite improvement over all the Zune marketing I've seen to-date and I'll bet it actually makes a difference to some discerning buyers.

Zune TV Spot

 
Video: Zune TV Spot

Which reminds me: I was out to dinner with some friends a few weeks ago and the conversation turned to iPod vs. Zune.  While I was pretty honest about the fact that I couldn't recommend the Zune over the iPod yet, a friend of mine said that a co-worker of his swears by his Zune.  He says he uses it on flights every week for video and absolutely LOVES the thing.  He even said that the last time he was on a flight, a song transfer popped up on his Zune - and when he looked around to see where it was coming from, there was a guy about 6 rows up smiling and nodding over the seats.  They spent the rest of the flight trading tunes.  Now THAT is a commercial in the making right there.

I'm very much looking forward to the day when I can say "buy a Zune - absolutely" without a twinge of regret.  I know it'll happen - Microsoft is taking this market seriously and when we do that, I know great things are around the corner.  But for now, at leat we finally have some cool commercials.

I almost missed this one.  According to Webware, "ABC.com has launched a new full-screen, 'HD' quality video player, and the 'broadcast' looks shockingly good".  How cool is that?

ABC is now offering Lost, Grey's Anatomy, Brothers Sisters, and other top shows for free on ABC.com in HD (or at least almost HD) quality.  Guess I don't have to use iTunes afterall ;) Of course I will probably end up on iTunes if only to keep from having to click "continue" during commercial breaks - and to go truly full-screen, removing the browser chrome.  It's the little things.

BTW, those saying I'm a Microsoft fanboy on Scoble's blog (and here) need to realize that I've been a Mac user at home for over 5 years now.  I'm writing this on a MacBook Pro connected to an Airport Extreme with an iPod on the desk in front of me.  Sure, I do run Vista on it... but not all the time :)  Besides, it's not the first time I've been accused of cheerleading by folks who don't read my blog regularly enough to know better.  Take a look through the 2.5 years of archives; it's never been all glowing praise of things MSFT.  And you should have seen my last blog!

My critique of Apple TV has nothing to do with my employer... it's my truth.  And the Apple fanboy in me hopes they do up the quality of those iTunes videos soon to make that $299 purchase make sense to those of us who don't just want to watch Rocketboom or fiddle with BitTorrent.

I anticipated this here.

I swung by the Apple Store today to a) buy a charger for my nano and b) checkout the Apple TV since Scoble and others were raving about it.  What an utter disappointment.  The interface looks like a weak version of Media Center and the video quality was so poor I couldn't even make out Capt. Jack Sparrow's grin in Pirates from less than a few feet away from the TV.  I must be spoiled by HD - or even DVDs - because I'm at the point where picture quality that looks straight out of 1975 just doesn't interest me anymore.  Blurry TV isn't always better than nothing at the price of this thing + the price of the show.  I expected more from a company that pushes the envelope on HD in other areas (displays, iMovie HD, etc.)

Having said that, I find myself wanting to buy videos from iTunes more and more just because it's convenient.  As mentioned a few weeks ago, iTunes saved us when our Comcast DVR ate an episode of Lost.  And now that we're approaching the end of Season Two of Grey's Anatomy, we need a way to catch up on Season Three before the DVDs come out 6+ months from now.  iTunes provides crappy quality shows at a relatively high price, but it provides them instantly.  Which is something.  So I may find myself buying a season pass to Grey's Anatomy (wishing the whole time I could do this from the Xbox).  Blurry faces and all.

Someone has to do better than this.  Someone has to provide direct-to-the-screen commercial-free HD television immediately after the show airs.  Comcast OnDemand doesn't do it well enough and Xbox doesn't have a big enough TV library yet - when it does, I will be all over it; it's HD quality, it's easy to use, and it's already wired to my TV and surround sound system.  And it's a much better value than a standalone set-top like Apple TV.

Anyway, now I'm going off on a tangent.  The point is: I won't buy or recommend an Apple TV to anyone.  If you want to know what the picture quality is like, do a couple Tequila shots, spin around a few times, bang your head against the floor, and then watch broadcast TV on an old 19" JVC.  Don't skip a step.

BTW, expect a series of posts about Windows Live Spaces coming up soon.  I have a bunch of stuff piling up in my head to write about.

My woes with the Comcast DVR have been beaten to death by this point (#1, #2); so I'm going to to try and go easy on the little guy this time.  Even though it doesn't deserve my mercy because this is the fourth (maybe fifth?) box we've had and it's still skipping on HD playback, not playing any audio every third Tuesday, and worst of all, forgetting to record season passes.

When the last episode of Lost was missed inexplicably by mi pequeño amigo, I decided to just download the show off of iTunes and eat the $1.99 charge so we'd be able to watch the show on our flight yesterday.  Since this is a new MacBook and I hadn't purchased any iTunes content from it, I had to type in my Apple ID and password and then update my credit card.  About thirty minutes later the show was downloaded to my drive despite my brand new Apple Airport Extreme rebooting three times during the process (also inexplicably; and a subject for a future post about the state of wireless routers supporting Windows, Xbox 360, and Macs with WPA/WPA2).

I packed my laptop in my bag thinking we were going to have an hour of Jack, Kate, and Sawyer to keep us occupied on our flight.  About 20 minutes into the flight, I setup the laptop with two sets of headphones (for my wife and me) and double-clicked Lost from iTunes.  iTunes balked.  It couldn't play the show because the machine hadn't been authorized yet, and since I was on a flight and didn't have an internet connection, it couldn't be authorized.  Someone doesn't want us to watch this show.

Does this sound ridiculous to anyone else?  I bought the show off of iTunes with my account... why wasn't the machine authorized at that time?  I could use this opportunity to describe just how broken the state of DRM is today if this is the best option we have, but instead of doing that, I'm going to hope a cheaper HD Tivo is actually in the plans this year so I can use Amazon Unbox with Tivo and ditch both iTunes and the Comcast DVR at the same time.

The Xbox 360 really should have been called Xbox HD.  It sounds cooler and it's a lot more descriptive of just how pervasive HD content is in the new Xbox world.  Games are in high-def, DVDs are in high-def with the HD DVD player add-on, and starting today you can download HD movies, trailers, and television shows.  And it works exactly as it should - it's simple and any rights management on the content doesn't interfere with the experience.

The only nits I have are consistent with most others: the use of Microsoft Points totally confuses me (why doesn't 240 points just map to $2.40?!?) and the hard drive is way too small for game demos, game add-ons, and HD downloads.  I expect both of these things are just short-term pain points and will be corrected in some way soon.  And no, I don't care that it doesn't work with the Zune (yet) as I pretty firmly believe that watching video on a 3" screen is something people think they want - and once they have it, they never use it.

This past weekend I got my hands on an HD DVD player for $159 using the freely available (via Live Search) Circuit City $40 off coupon.  The picture quality is outstanding; I almost didn't believe my TV was capable of that kind of color richness before watching King Kong in HD.  And the sounds were so realistic, I think my cats thought a huge gorilla was coming to eat them... they bolted up the stairs at 125mph as soon as Kong showed up.  HD DVD was surprisingly MUCH better than standard DVD.  No contest really.  And to say that $159 is a steal would be an understatement compared to very pricey standalone HD DVD or Blu-ray players... including that overpriced PS3 thing ;)

Update 9:31pm: It's true.

Holy... mother... of...!

This may sound a bit familiar to those paying close attention, but on November 22nd -- the year anniversary for the Xbox 360 -- Microsoft is announcing something fairly momentus, not for the gaming community, but for the CE industry. The Xbox 360, along with Akimbo, will be among the first mass-market devices able to download high def television programs -- and the first we know of in the states able to download HD movies. The service is called Xbox Live Video, and the fall update enables customers to spend their Microsoft points on standard and HD television from CBS, MTV, Comedy Central, VH1, Turner, and UFC, as well as HD movies from Warner Bros., Paramount, and so on.

Source: Microsoft's Xbox Live Video: HDTV and HD movie downloads for your 360 - Engadget

Disclaimer: I have absolutely zero information on this.  I don't know if it's true or not. 

But let me say that if it is, this is the single biggest consumer electronics announcement this year, bar none.  Forget that puny little iTunes format (640x480?) and that silly little iTV set-top box.  This would be huge news.  HDTV and HD movies on the Xbox 360?  MAN.  I talked about this a little bit back in September - this is what I use my Xbox for 95% of the time already, but I'm limited to movie trailers and game videos.  With this potential announcement, TV shows and movies will be available in SD AND in HD?  This is truly game-changing.

And if the launch titles are to be believed, they know me well - 50 fights from the UFC, M:i:III, and Superman Returns?!  I almost don't know what to say.  I just hope this isn't some joke.  Either way, if you don't have one, go get yourself a 360 ;)

Now, I wonder what this means for the Zune -- the Microsoft device optimized for video launching next week?  Hmmm...

A year ago (wow, was it really that long ago?) I talked about how cool Orb is.  It's still incredibly cool (although it hasn't changed much) but I'm beginning to wonder if the Slingbox is the better bet for people who just want to watch television.  Orb is great for music, photos, and home videos - but from what I've seen of the Slingbox over the past year, it's highly optimized for TV whereas Orb flakes out the second you try and rewind/fast forward or drop signal for a second.

Both Orb and Sling Media really do demonstrate the power of Windows on the desktop and on mobile devices.  On10.net has some great Sling Media videos if you're interested:

Watch Part One
Watch Part Two

The demo of the SlingPlayer Mobile on a Sprint Pocket PC phone in Part Two is mind-blowing.

On the Windows Mobile front, I also found a fantastic write-up of Live Anywhere (in this case, it's placeshifting for games).  Check your friends list, view gamercards, compare achievements, etc.  Too cool.

Read about Live Anywhere here.

I lied the other day when I said I would stick to DVDs over using the iTunes Store. Because if our Comcast DVR keeps *skipping* on HD recordings and *forgetting* to record things on a weekly basis, I might actually be motivated to pay someone other than Comcast for the right to watch a television show and ditch this horrible, horrible set-top box.  Right now, the only place to buy quality television is the iTunes Store.

When I said I hated the Comcast DVR over a year ago, I wasn't kidding. Now I loathe it and abhor it and want to throw it off my balcony.

But it did get me thinking about pay-as-you-go television. What if us folk who don't actually watch $50 or $60 of monthly television could still watch (and "own") their favorite TV shows by purchasing them online as they're aired and get right of cable completely?  Speaking for my household, we would *easily* be net positive by doing this - there's no way we watch 30 hours of television each month. We watch a few shows regularly: Lost, 24, Smallville, Entourage, and The Sopranos. Given an average of 15 episodes per show per year, we'd end up paying approximately $150 annually to stay up to date.  Which would cost less than just *three months* of HD cable (without the quality).  Wow.  Something to think about.