LIVEdigitally

For all intents and purposes, TiVo “invented” the DVR. Actually, they didn’t, but it’s a fair statement that they first successfully commercialized it and brought the concept to the massess.  Further, they did it with competition (ReplayTV), which is often the exact thing that stalls new consumer technology adoption.  The company’s product was loved by those who used it (I had the original 14-hour Philips version), and switching from TiVo to another DVR was a painful process for those of us who had to go through it (for whatever reason).  But switch we did, as the company slowly got pushed out of dominance by failing to keep a healthy relationship with DirecTV (and Philips, Sharp, and others), and all other cable/sat co’s offered their own (mediocre at best) versions of the DVR.  And when a consumer is given the choice of an effectively “free” DVR (an additional $5/mo = free in a purchase decision-making process when already spending $50-$100 on a bill) versus buying one with an upfront fee and a monthly tally, it’s a no brainer.

Over the past few years, the company has slowly settled from being the leader in both installed base and most evolved product into a bit of obscurity with the mainstream (other than potentially owning the brand-category, which doesn’t do much good for running a business).  Their Series 3 and other launches in the late ’00s didn’t bring in a new rush of users, and last week’s launch of the Series 4 (aka TiVo Premiere) is at best a late entry in a crowded market, and at worst a product that massively missed the mark with modern day expectations. On the date of the launch, the company’s stock moved a little bit upwards.  Not too shabby, but also not too interesting.

The next day, however, proved much more interesting, with a 61% increase in value:

What happened? In a nutshell, federal courts found TiVo’s patents held up against a Echostar/DISH claim.

I’m not a lawyer, nor do I generally support the present-day patent system, but that’s not really the point here. What is more relevant is that TiVo appears to have drifted from being a pioneer in the digital home to being a patent player. Instead of betting on the strength of their product team, innovation, and marketing, they are now betting on their lawyers.  And I think that’s a sad state of affairs.

The digital home is a noisy, confusing place, fraught with terrible products. Further, most of the products I’ve seen on the radar or know are shipping soon are also now extremely impressive.  In other words, there’s tons of opportunity today and in the future to build (and monetize) exciting products.

I’d love to see TiVo make a change in direction here.  It’s time for the company to act like a startup again, and show real innovation like they once did.  Truth be told I know the TiVo Premiere is unquestionably a better product than my Comcast DVR (a truly awful product).  But as has been said many times before, and is unbelievably relevant in the convergence space, Good Enough is the biggest enemy of Great products. It’s going to take a heck of a lot more than “slightly better than the last version” for TiVo to regain a leadership position.  The company needs to rebuild it’s team with new innovators who can build on the legacy, and stop investing in “me-too” minor touches, “dongles”, and other things that won’t move the needles. CableCard? Still? Come on.

If companies like Apple, Palm, and so many others can attempt to reinvent themselves, I think TiVo can too.  Please try.

Back in the day…

• It was all Siskel & Ebert or the guy with the crazy hair + mustache
• The papers told you how long a movie’s been in the theaters
• You had more than a week to decide if you were going to see a movie or not before it disappeared to DVD
• If you missed it in the theaters, it was virtually impossible to know when you’d get to see it at home on tape

Today, we have amazing collaborative filtering systems (if you like Blah, then you’ll probably like Blah Blah), we know the exact gross a movie has made (even the ones that made, on average, $237 per screen), and every other little detailed stat imaginable.  And with the exception of reporting the revenue/gross of a movie, I think we’re mostly for the better.  These days, it only takes a little bit of trust “in the system” to weed out the good movies from the dreck. And as a father of two with virtually no movie-going times, choosing wisely is key for me.

Example one: picking a movie in the theaters.

I don’t even really think about the $10 (or more) to go see a movie as much the 2 hours of my life I’m about to commit to something.  So when a movie’s in the theaters, I check just one site – rottentomatoes (RT).  On RT I see an instant score, which is the aggregate of all reviewers.  Anything under 50% and I assume it’s not theater-worthy.  The truth is, I don’t put much stock into any given reviewer’s thoughts, but the power of RT is reminiscent of fivethirtyeight.com’s ability to pull together order out of chaos.  BUT, that doesn’t mean I’ll never see the movie…

Example two: watching something On Demand (or just DVRing something)

After a movie’s made the rounds, I tend to put a bit more stock into the community/viewership as opposed to reviewers.  Movies like Caddyshack, Shawshank Redemption, and others that I’ve liked did terribly with the critics, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t worth seeing.  This is where the Internet Movie Database (IMDB) comes into play for me.  Anything above 7 is definitely watchable, below 6 is not, and in between is a judgment call.  But I never, ever DVR something without checking IMDB first…

Example three: adding to the Netflix queue

Virtually everything in my Netflix queue came through the internal Netflix recommendations system.  It’s just plain awesome. I barely even look at the 5-star score, I have gotten so trusting of it.  Granted, I don’t take every recommendation, but I can browse the “Movies You’ll 8>” and just add and add away.

And there you have it.  Movie picks, courtesy of the Internet, no thought required.

I’ve been told I’m a ‘long format blogger’ – most of my posts are fairly long (typically overly so). As a result my posts tend to take a while to write, which means I need to block out (too much) time to get them up.  And I seem to have less and less free time all the time these days, plus by the time I’m writing something, it seems like a thousand others have already written something related to what I’d write.  While I know I shouldn’t feel biased by others’ writings, at the end of the day I feel that if I’m not saying something original, what’s the point?

So in an effort to get some thoughts across, I’m going to try to do the occasional “roundup” post on a few topics all at once.  This is the first of said posts.

1. Rock Band, Beatles Edition
   I’m not sure which game I’m more excited about, this or Modern Warfare 2.  I love The Beatles music, and I love Rock Band, so that’s a huge win. Plus I like the idea of a non-hard core version of Rock Band.  If you haven’t seen the preview, check it out here:
2. Social Gaming
   The new enhancements to the Xbox Dashboard include integration with Facebook and Twitter.  I have a feeling most of the features will be overkill and rarely used by the majority of Xbox owners, but there is a clear improvement needed to integrating social networking and gaming.  The key missing element in my opinion is an easier way to find your friends within the Xbox Live experience.  Hopefully direct integration with the services I use for networking will help me find and connect with people in my gaming world.
3. beeTV
   A startup raised another $8 million to provide recommendations for watching TV shows.  This is now 10 consecutive years of me watching companies try to enter this space and fail.  Further, these guys are doing deals with cable and set-top companies, two segments notoriously perilous for relying on for a business to succeed.  Who knows, maybe these guys will find that magic touch, but my hunch is (a) there isn’t a real problem in this space, and (b) making a sustainable income stream will be extremely challenging.
4. Crunchpad
   I applaud the crunch team for their efforts on building the Crunchpad.  But I have concerns over the device itself.  First, the market – I don’t see a web tablet (at any price) effectively replacing a laptop for simple surfing, it doesn’t make sense.  Second, the usage – it’s either going to be tiring to hold it up, or it goes into the lap, which again, brings the laptop back into the scene.  Ultimately I see it as a “bread machine” type of gadget (purchased, used for a little while, then slowly migrating out of daily life until it gets regifted). I’ll be curious to see what comes of it.
5. Palm Pre
   Reviews are saying it’s solid. Sprint’s said they anticpate a shortage. I believe both statements are accurate.  But I also believe it will never supplant the iPhone or BlackBerry, and I also believe the initial orders placed by Sprint are in low volumes relative to those products.  I think the product is probably going to be pretty solid, but I think it’s too-little, too-late for Palm.  I know back in the day I didn’t think people would switch to AT&T for the iPhone (I was wrong), but I can’t imagine iPhone people switching to Sprint for the Pre.  Maybe I’ll be wrong again…

Well, that’s my first attempt at a “ripped from the headlines” kind of post.  Feedback, comments, and spirited debate are very welcome.

Just read David Carnoy’s piece on “9 reasons why Blu-ray will succeed“.  I like David, but I couldn’t disagree more with his post (though not the individual points, as you’ll see below).  And since (as of yesterday) it’s feeling like we’re in a free country where I can say what I want (again, at last), I’ll run through my counterpoints really quick:

1. “Digital downloads will not eliminate the need for discs anytime soon.” – I agree, but this doesn’t point to Blu-ray success.  Despite the rise of downloadable/streaming content, people are still buying disks.  But for how much longer?  I think even people who’ve never heard of things like Hulu are aware that the inevitable next step of content acquisition is file/stream based, not physical media (though they’d probably not use those words).
2. “Having one clear standard is a big advantage.” – agreed, it’s called “DVD”.
3. “Blu-ray isn’t going to be replaced by another disc format anytime soon.” – agreed.  In his post, David references a piece that compares early complaints of DVD to current complaints of Blu-ray.  In this example, the more apropo statement is “just like CDs, DVD isn’t going to be replaced by another disc format anytime soon.”  Er, wait, hang on – I’ll go fire up my SACD player!
4. “Prices for large-screen HDTVs will continue to drop.” – agreed.  But with an estimated third of the country already on HDTV sets, their amazing-looking upscaling DVD players aren’t about to get replaced.  Key here – there is not a dissatisfaction problem, in the slightest, with current content.  There was with VCRs.
5. “Prices for Blu-ray players will continue to drop.” – now we’re talking!  Buuuuut, I still don’t see people rushing out to get them, even at $99 or $49.  There’s no incentive to do so, and (as I’ve said before) consumers do not purchase new technology just because it’s cheap.  In fact cheap Blu-ray players might cause as much negative enthusiasm as positive (“this thing was, like, $399, like, only last year!  they must be, like, doing badly, like, or something. dude. like.”)
6. “Prices for Blu-ray discs will drop to near DVD price levels.” – see previous point.  Plus, people just aren’t into replacing their existing DVD collection.  Check the Amazon Blu-ray home page. I see deals for… wait for it… The Scorpion King 2.   End of Days.  Miami Vice (ooh, director’s cut!).  I think I’ve seen these titles in the $6.99 bin at Walgreens.
7. “Sony will sell lots of PlayStation 3 game consoles.” - will they?  Not from what I’m reading…
8. “Sony can’t afford to have Blu-ray fail.” – they also can’t afford to not be the #1 plasma vendor.  Oops, too late.  They also can’t afford to make terrible terrible laptops that have industry folk lamenting about constantly (yeah, I went there, but you kinda knew I would).  Oops, too late.  They also couldn’t afford to have UMDs fail.  Or memory sticks.  Or mini-discs.  Oops too late.
9. “Sony and its partners will figure out a way to have Blu-ray resonate with the public.” – and, no.  Sony’s being run by a team stuck in the 1990s, still hoping somehow Morita’s coming back.  He’s not.  And his replacements are just utterly out of vision.  They let Samsung, LG, and a suite of other no-names take over the consumer electronics industry, and the best branding they can come up with today to sell me a plasma is based on deception.

So what’s to be done for dear old Blu-ray?  Is it as dead as I prognosticate, or no?  I think the best step is to change our expectations and mindsets on it.

People are buying buckets full of Blu-ray disks.  They are available for rent by every major company, and all the new top films are coming out on Blu-ray.  So if the definition of “success” changed from “Blu-ray will replace DVDs as the dominant format of physical media and we will have Blu-ray players in every home” to something more like “Blu-ray will be the last form of physical media consumers adopt, it will get adopted by enough of the population to show profitability, but will always be perceived as an also-ran” then we’re doing okay.

More than 80% of US homes have DVD players.  Put the target for Blu-ray around a third of that, tops, and then we’ve got a win on our hands.

eStarling makes several WiFi connected digital photo frames, and I’ve been playing with their Impact V for a bit.  I’m impressed.

From the moment you open the box, eStarling does a pretty good job holding your hand and making use of the frame pretty simple.  You have all the usual options for displaying pictures that past digital frames have lead us to expect, including memory card slots that accommodate a couple different card types (SD, MS, MMC.)  But what’s way more interesting to me is the wireless and social mechanisms for displaying pictures.

When you pull the device out of the box, a greeting card immediately invites you to plug in the frame and connect it to your wifi connection (beware: this frame is much cooler if you have a wifi network.)  Once you’re connected, the frame prompts you to visit their website and activate your account.  Once you do you will get an email address dedicated to your frame, and you (or your friends and family) can email pictures to your frame.  You can also log into your account on their website to upload pictures from your computer to your eStarling account – these will then appear on your frame (it took my pictures about 15 minutes to show up.)  One of the neatest features is the social component – you can link your frame to a variety of social websites and services, including Facebook, Flickr, Phtobucket, Picassa, Twitter (not sure about this one), YouTube and more.   In addition to these services, you can also subscribe to RSS feeds – popular ones like National Geographic or even a user-designated feed.  You can also post small videos to play on your frame if you so choose.

I did have some issues with some of the social services.  For instance, I linked my Flickr account to my eStarling frame.  It was a pretty simple, one-click connection which presumably links up eStarling’s service with Flickrs API.  Two issues presented themselves though:

1. After clicking through the Flickr to link up the accounts, instead of a “Success, awesome job, well done!” screen, I was presented with a page full of gibberish.  There was no message to tell me whether I had successfully linked the account.  I didn’t know for sure until photos started appearing on the frame.

2. When those photos did appear, they weren’t mine.  They were photos of friends mine, people to whom I am linked on Flickr.  But none of my own photos made it into the frame.  Now, I like my friends and all, but I don’t need their photos on my frame.  Whether it’s going to sit in my home, or in my parent’s home, I want my own pictures on my frame.

Ultimately I was forced to use the “custom RSS” feature and take my Flickr account’s own RSS feed and manually link that with my frame.  Even after doing that, only my most recent set (about 20 pictures or so) showed up on the frame.  I don’t really know how to pull specific sets or additional photos from Flickr into the frame.

The frame has an eight inch display (800×600 pixels) and the clarity is pretty darn sharp. (Any blurring in the images in this post is due to the photographer, not the frame.)  It’s a touch screen interface, and there are light-up touch screen buttons along the right side.  You must use the touch screen in order to connect to the wireless network, but almost everything else can be accomplished through eStarling’s web portal.   The touch buttons let you skip through photos, or jump back to menus to select specifc photos, or access settings for the frame.  But I found the touch buttons a little finicky to use – fortunately the included remote also allows you to control action on the frame.

Lastly, there’s packaging.  In the unboxing I discovered very little wasteful or non-recyclable material.  There was one small piece of closed-cell foam for padding, and a foam sleeve for the frame.  Everything else was cardboard, including the majority of the boxe’s padding.  5 gold stars for being conscious of the environment.

Overall I was impressed with the frame.  The picture clarity, the simple setup, and the social components were all fantastic.  I love that it’s wifi, and I dig the fact that I can update the photos remotely, up to and including if the frame is in another state (or country.)  However, I do think the web interface and tools need a little refinement.  They are feature-rich but lacking in the fine points of usability.  Some improvements could include better feedback to user actions (letting you know if you succeeded in linking an account), and better fine-tuning of services (to include / exclude friends’ photos, etc.)  They don’t need more options, they just need to refine and improve the ones they’ve got.

eStarling Wireless Digital Photo Frame on 12seconds.tv

Daniel Lim at Slashgear also wrote a nice review of this frame.  If I were forced to give this frame a numeric rating, something which I am loathe to do, I would give it an 8 out of 10. They did a good job.  I just hope they keep improving the little sucker, especially the web interface and options.

This post is also available on 1TO10REVIEWS.

Disclaimer: We know, love and work with the people from 12seconds.  Impartiality is severely dented, if not discarded outright.

Today 12seconds.tv did a few cool things:

1. They’ve re-designed their website – cool new look and feel, with a strong focus on video consumption
2. They’ve concluded their invite-only Alpha phase and opened up in a public Beta where anyone can register and use the site
3. They’ve had their iPhone application approved and launched in the iTunes App Store (for $0.99)

I’m happy for their progress from Alpha to Beta, and I think the re-design looks great.  But I’m most excited about the iPhone app.  You all know (both of you) that I’m an iPhone user, and one of my few frustrations with the device has always been the lack of a video recorder.  Apple steadfastly refuses to release one, and there’s no third-party video recording application available (unless you choose to jailbreak your phone). This annoys me.

12seconds did not manage to sneak a video recorder through Apple’s QA team.  But they did create about the best possible workaround.  App users will take 3 photos (or choose 3 from their picture library), record twelve seconds of audio, and then post their creation to their 12seconds account (unregistered folks can create an account on the fly, in their phone.)  Somewhere in the cloud, the pics and audio are combined and then spit out as a twelve second video slideshow.  Users can email a link to their video directly from their phone  Each video has it’s own unique URL on 12seconds.tv, and can be emailed, embedded (as HTML) or downloaded onto your hard drive.  Here’s a demo video on how to use the app.

iphone app for 12seconds.tv from Sol Lipman on Vimeo.

One thing I really like about this app is the story telling aspect.  The series of pictures with audio narration really give you that James Earl Jones feeling of comfort.  Also, if you flub the audio and need to re-record, you can do so as many times as you like.  With traditional video, if you blow it, it’s blown.  The moment has passed. Here’s one video I recorded with a trial version of the app.

Cold Cuts – Chinese Food Style on 12seconds.tv

The app is a first draft.  It works, and it’s intuitive, but there are some features I’d like to see added, including wanting better flexibility in choosing photos and saving drafts.  But on the whole I think the app is very usable.  There’s just room to improve.

Kudos to the 12seconds team on a great launch and a cool app.  This is the best solution to the video-recording conundrum that Apple’s created that I’ve seen yet.

Related Posts:

MG Siegler at VentureBeat

Greg Kumparak at MobileCrunch

Rodney Rumford at FaceReviews

This post is also published on 1TO10REVIEWS.

While I’ve always liked Netflix, I’ve remained dubious as to their potential for long term success.  Even when they hit their first million subscribers I thought little of it.  From my perspective, with tens of millions of customers, I figured sooner or later Blockbuster would just wipe out Netflix’s market share and opportunity. Instead, Netflix is en route to 9 million subscribers, and I’m more than a little surprised.  A conversation last night with a good friend of mine helped me understand why this is happening.  It’s a few parts Innovator’s Dilemma, and a few parts just plain bad business.  It’s a Cinderella story.  Outta nowhere.

In looking back on Blockbuster, their major rise to success happened during the VCR boom.  New movies were priced prohibitively for purchase ($80+ for a movie was not uncommon), so rentals dominated.  Blockbuster utterly mastered the art of creating a retail facility to rent video tapes.  In doing so, I believe they set the groundwork for their failure to convert to a successful Internet business.

First, it’s important to look at Blockbuster for what it truly is: an excellent Retail Business, whose product is Renting Movies.  Initially the format was VHS tapes, then as the shift to DVD occurred, the company adjusted.  If the next step was Blu-Ray (which it isn’t), and the primary market was consumers needing to rent content, Blockbuster would, hypothetically, be poised for a rosy future.  But that’s clearly not the case.

The DVD market saw a major change in pricing strategy for the content industry, with movies averaging $19.99-$24.99, and often much less.  This meant the movie rental business saw its first shift to the movie sales business.

Next up, due to the form factor, sending DVDs in the mail was a viable option, enabling Netflix to exist.  While Blockbuster has “toyed around” in the area of mailing DVDs, it’s a fundamentally different business than the Retail operations the company mastered.  In fact, when considering Netflix it’s very important to recognize their core strategy of distributing content based around personal recommendations.  Netflix is actually an excellent Movie Distribution Business, whose product was primarily Mailing DVDs.

As we look at the present, the world of Retail Businesses have seen enormous change, mostly due to e-commerce.  Additionally, the world of Movie Distribution Businesses have faced not just format changes, but also the massive decay of physical media formats.  Which is why Blockbuster has responded so poorly, and is so poorly poised for the future.  In a nutshell, Blockbuster isn’t about movies, it’s about retail movies, a world whose time has come.  Whereas Netflix isn’t about retails or formats, it’s about movies, and as the variables in that world change, Netflix can more easily change with them.

So even as we see Blockbuster dabble in the digital distribution world, the company needs a fundamental sea change in order to survive.  Interestingly, I don’t think there is anything that would prevent Blockbuster from digital success.  Per the NY Times article, there are plenty of other collaborative filtering tools to give them a great recommendations system.  They already have all the relationships and licenses in place in order to be able to offer literally identical services to Netflix.  They also have an incredibly strong brand to leverage, not to mention a massive customer database and distribution facility.

All they need to do is choose to operate a Movie Distribution Business, instead of running a Retail Business.  I think the simplest solution for the company is to create a spinoff entity, one not hampered by the P&L necessities of the retail organization.  This new entity should be run like a startup, be well funded, and given a couple of years to succeed.  They should have full access to the marketing vehicle that is Blockbuster, but none of the constraints or burdens of that organization.

Until then, I’ll enjoy getting my Netflix movies by mail.  I’ll watch it streaming on my Macbook, Xbox 360, or boxee setups.  If there’s a new release I can’t find within this setup, I’ll buy it through iTunes or through my HDTV cable box on demand system (something Comcast does extremely well, btw).  In the digital age, there can be many more than only one, but only time will tell if Blockbuster will be one of them.

On a scale from 1 to 10, the Netflix / Xbox experience is slathered in weaksauce.

I have an Xbox 360. When I heard about the new Xbox Live experience (new UI, new architecture, more features, more customization, etc.) I thought it sounded really cool. I’ve always thought it was a neat product, but I also thought there was a better interactive experience waiting to be enjoyed, if only someone would come along and develop it. Last Thursday, November 20, 2008, that experience became available for everyone.

One of the features I was most interested in was the Netflix streaming directly to your Xbox 360. I believe that digital home media have a long way to go. Networked media PC’s are a pain to set up, streaming media servers even more so, and Apple TV (even with Apple’s vaunted user-experience) isn’t an elegant or simple solution. But I have an Xbox 360, a computer (for all intents and purposes,) already hooked up to my television and with an HDMI connection.   Netflix streaming directly onto my TV? Sounds excellent.

I even resurrected a membership for this. I had Netflix a long time ago, and ended up canceling because I just didn’t get enough value from it. I get lots of movies from the Library (I know, laugh all you want, but’s it free) and I felt like I was always forgetting to return the Netflix discs and just throwing money away on the membership. So I canceled. But this Xbox partnership seemed like a good reason to renew the subscription, because of the ease, convneience, and my sheer exuberance at the prospect of streaming it right on to my Xbox. Then reality set in.

I just re-subscribed to Netflix, activated my account on the Xbox, and added (hang on) 39 movies to my queue. Thirty-nine movies. Of those, not one is available to stream the Xbox 360.  Not one.

Now that, my friends, is weaksauce.

And before you retort smartly, let me say that this is not just a bunch of brand new, extra fun movies.  Among others I have indies (Run, Fat Bot, Run – 2007), thrillers (Revolver – 2005), TV (How I Met Your Mother Season 1 – 2005), Action (Blade – 1998), Sci-Fi (Resident Evil: Extinction – 2007), and comedy (Forgetting Sarah Marshall – 2008) to name just a few.  There’s a good blend, in my opinion, of older and newer, hotter and less-hot choices in my list.  And none of them are available to stream.  That’s not acceptable.

After searching diligently I did finally find one movie, National Treasure 2, that was available for streaming to Xbox Live, and I wasn’t wholly opposed to watching it.  It worked flawlessly.  I’ve never watched any of the National Treasure movies, but my wife convinced me that I might like them, so I gave it a shot.  Truthfully, I enjoyed the movie.  Low expectations help a lot, and the history is a lot of fun.  But more importantly, the Netflix experience on the Xbox 360 was fantastic.  Moments after adding the movie to my queue, the Xbox Live page displayed it as available.  I asked to watch the movie, and in 15 seconds it was ready to go.  The picture quality was excellent, and the controls all worked perfectly.  I was REALLY satisfied with the experience of using Netflix.   Unfortunately, there’s not much for me to watch.

Netflix and Xbox have bragged that there’s a library of 12,000 shows to choose from and stream to your Xbox 360.  That’s not real helpful, if I don’t want to watch any of them.  I am sadly unimpressed, and if I were forced to give this a numeric rating between 1 and 10, right now it would get a 4.  I like the idea and the service worked well, but there’s no content I’m interested in seeing.  No bueno.

Some Related Stories & Links:

News 4 Gamers

Gizmodo

CNET News

Tom’s Guide

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Update 11/30/08:

I’ve been thinking about this situation some more.  Jivebotic and Wunder both left very good comments (on 1to10) about what movies are available, and the benefits of the Xbox / Netflix experience.  I agree with both of them.  The way I see it, there are two major problems:

1. There’s still not enough good content available on the Xbox.  Jivebotic pointed out some good movies that I can watch, sure enough.  But they’re still not the ones I want  to watch.  I don’t know why that rubs me the wrong way, but it does.  Out of 40 or so movie titles that I want to watch, I should have been able to find a couple that were available.   For me, there was not one.  

2. Netflix needs to add some kind of serach and identification mechanism, and that right quick.  Currently they do identify their “instant” titles, but there are 4 or 5 different “instant” mechanisms for streaming movies, and not all titles are available for all mechanisms.  I need a way to search for Xbox-compatible films, they need to visibly tag those films with an Xbox logo, and they need to quickly add more titles if they want to keep my business.  

This post is also available on 1to10reviews.

My insufficiently geeky readers probably won’t get the 42 reference, so I’ll assume you read this reference before continuing. Of all the convergence I’ve seen that bridge gadgets with Web services, I think the implementation of Pandora’s free Internet radio service onto the Sonos music system is probably the best.   The single “snag” in the entire system is that you actually need to (1) have a Pandora account, and (2) own a Sonos.  If you don’t, I recommend correcting the situation immediately.

In a nutshell, Pandora works by building “radio stations” based on artists and/or tracks you like.  If you pick Frank Sinatra, boom, you have a Frank Sinatra Radio Station.  Add other artists, and create your Smooth Crooners Radio Station.  If you don’t get it yet, well, go to Pandora and set up an account, it is free after all.  The super delicious part of the story is how well they integrated with Sonos.

On your Sonos, you simply need to add your Pandora username/password, then you have access to virtually all Pandora features.  Key to it is how easy it is to use on the Sonos, including bookmarking content and creating new stations.  One of the softkey (programmable) buttons is labeled “ratings”, the other “Pandora”.

Click “ratings” to rapidly Like, Dislike, or Not hear a song for a month.  Perfectly logical, works just like Pandora on the Web does.  This feature is one of the key parts to how Pandora works – while you can’t specifically pick songs to play, the collaborative filtering system (recommendations) works extremely well.

The “pandora” button allows you to add the given song or artist to your current radio station, or build a new station based on the song/artist.  Again, this implementation is exactly how it should work.  Within minutes I created five different stations, all in different genres, with practically no effort.  You can similarly bookmark content to retrieve later at pandora.com.

I’ve ripped my 800+ CD collection into MP3.  We have access to tons of other streaming Internet content.  I can say without hesitation that 90% of my Sonos listening will now be over Pandora (and my new house has 7 Sonos zones planned).  Amazing job to both companies.  BTW, Sonos also introduced an iPhone app, but since I’m not an iPhone guy I’ll let the pro’s talk about how great that is instead…

In brief: TuneUp (500 song cleanups for free, $12/yr subscription, $20 lifetime license) makes it easy to find missing metadata for songs and missing album art.

I bet your music collection is a lot like mine used to be: a hodgepodge of mp3s, m4as, and other types of audio files that you’ve acquired over the years and ripped using various shareware products of dubious quality, resulting in hundreds or thousands of tracks that are misspelled, missing album names, and are generally a mess:

Sad Snippets of my pre-TuneUp music collection are coupled with…

… an even sadder dearth of album covers.

Sorting your library in iTunes yields a list of songs named “Track 01 – Insert Song Name Here” or “Kanye West Christmas Album 02: Jingle #(@*#ing Bells.” You’re missing album art, your genres are a mess. And, since doing a file-by-file fix would take hour upon frustrating hour, there’s no prospect of things getting better any time soon.

But don’t lose hope, because TuneUp (Windows only, Mac version coming this fall) is here to help. Launched earlier this year by the TuneUp Media, TuneUp offers a dead-simple way to scan audio files and correct missing or corrupt meta data, including album cover art. Its back-end is powered by Gracenote’s music fingerprinting service, which boasts a database of 80 million different tracks and 6 million albums.

Cleaning up your wayward tunes is easy – drag incomplete tracks to TuneUp’s interface, and the program returns results in a few seconds. Click to approve the suggested changes to update the file information, or reject suggestions or undo changes if you see a mistake.

In addition to scrubbing features, TuneUp offers a “Now Playing” companion that suggests YouTube videos, merchandise, and concert schedules for the song that you’re scrubbing or playing.

So what’s good?

• It works: I threw nearly 400 songs at TuneUp, and it found the correct track name, album, artist and genere for all but 2 – a godawful techno remix of Boys of Summer (like you don’t love DJ Sammy), and an instrumental version of the New York Mets theme song (my favorite ringtone). That’s 99.5%, for you stats geeks. TuneUp claims a standard 85% – 90% success rate, with most misses coming from remixes, unreleased live concert tracks, and the most obscure of obscure songs.
• It’s easy: Drag, drop, click. Done.
• If you don’t have a ton of music to fix, it’s free: TuneUp offers a free trial version that will clean up to 500 tracks.
• “Added value” is actually added value: The “Now Playing” section offers a fairly comprehensive list of videos, concert schedules, related music, and more. The merchandise and ticket auction sections feel like you’re having a bunch of referral links pushed at you, but they’re easily ignored.

What’s not as good?

• Clear the schedule: While TuneUp identified tracks quickly (2ish seconds apiece in my run), writing the metadata and album art was not. My 400 songs took nearly 15 minutes to find, 40 minutes to write.
• It’s not that I don’t love you, it’s just that sometimes I need some me time: Like a needy, whiney, insecure significant other, TuneUp won’t let you start iTunes without TuneUp tagging along. There is no feature in the preferences to disable this, and a forum posting on the topic doesn’t contain any reassurance that it will be coming anytime soon. Without uninstalling the program, I couldn’t find any obvious way to prevent TuneUp from loading.

As for my results? Take a look:

If you’ve got an eyesore of a music library that seems to taunt you every time you try and find a mislabeled track, you would be well-served by shelling out an Andrew Jackson to give TuneUp a try. It does what it says it will do, and does it well. As long as you’ve got a couple of hours to kill and don’t mind an application that loads every time you run iTunes, you will be rewarded with a music library that is so pristine that it looks like you actually paid for every single one of your tracks.

Update: The San Francisco Chronicle also provides a write-up of TuneUp, and contains a brief discussion of the Picard Project, which offers a free alternative to TuneUp. I haven’t tried Picard.

Editor (JT)’s Note: While I have both a personal and professional relationship with the TuneUp team, I did no edits whatsoever to this review, nor provide any direction or insight into the content, tone, etc.  My only involvement was to provide an introduction between Dan Rubin (article author) and the individual providing reviewer support at TuneUp.

One of the greatest challenges of building consumer electronics devices is dealing with that awkward timeframe between announcing new/next-generation products and ending the lifecycle of current ones.  Sales tend to plummet and huge price incentives are thrown at customers to try to get the units off the shelves instead of in the dumpster.  Naturally as a CE manufacturer you typically want to keep that window as short as possible, as it is otherwise harmful to pretty much in the foodchain, often including consumers.

I was, therefore, quite surprised to read an interview with a Samsung exec predicting the demise of the Blu-ray format within the next 5 years.  I can’t see any possibly upside to this statement for Samsung, content makers, other device manufacturers, etc.  As I’ve blogged about before, I’m still far from being sold on Blu-ray as a “winner”, but I guess that needs more context.

The NPD Group puts home DVD players at having penetrated 85% of US homes.  That’s a win, unquestionably.  It seems highly unlikely that Blu-ray will ever get to the same level.  I’ve yet to hear/see any real positive word-of-mouth happening for the format, and the reasons seem similar as when I blogged about it last time.  Here are my biggest reasons against mass-adoption of Blu-ray as a format:

• Without extremely big, high-quality screens, it’s challenging to see the “ooh, ahh” factor of 1080p over even an upconverted standard DVD.
• Upconverting DVD players are pretty much the standard already, and are available at extremely reasonable price points.
• Consumers are still enjoying their 720p (the current HD standard) content, so seeing something “marginally better” doesn’t make too much of an impact.
• Small content selection at a high price point.

Finally, I also believe we’re going to see an “iPodification” of video.  In the 90s we were well on our way to replacing the CD as format, with SACD and DVD-Audio as possible follow-ups.  Both offered vast improvements in sound quality that were pretty apparent with a decent stereo.  Today, however, the average person is listening to music at worse-than-CD quality, on their iPods/iPhones, home stereos, Sonoses (or is that Sonii?), etc.

It seems fairly likely that the same pattern will occur with video, based on the combination of iPods, mobile video (cell phones), YouTube, Hulu, Amazon’s new service, and anything else that brings low-to-medium quality video to our eyes on a recurring basis.  Don’t get me wrong, the big flat panels will still make it to the common living rooms, with glorious 5, 7, 11, or 2834-channel surround sound systems.  But the time invested in these playback experiences is already in a questionable state (some say its on the decline, though there’s little real-world evidence as of yet), and all things being equal, seems unlikely to grow.

My hunch is the DVD as we know it today will be around for a long, long time, and the replacement format for it won’t involve physical media.  TVs with built-in streaming capabilities are coming to store shelves (I’d probably avoid the first generation if I were you), and we’ll see a new generation of set-tops and gaming consoles with higher quality video when the time is right.  Blu-ray definitely beat HD-DVD, but I still don’t believe it’ll ever be a dominant format for the masses.

I recently had a phone interview with Lou Lenzi, Sr. Vice President, Product Management with Audiovox Accessories and he gave me the statistic that 13 million homes in the US currently use an antenna to receive television signal to their main TV. Then there is another 6 million that use and antenna to receive signal to one or more of their extra TVs. Lenzi explained that people have TVs in the spare bedroom, basement, or out in the garage, all fall into this category. That means that come February 17, 2009, there will be about 13-16 million TVs that will stop working unless some actions are taken. Some of you are saying 13 million plus 6 million is 19 million, but there are some small markets that are not required to kill their analog signal.

For those of you that want answers to every digital TV questions, here are some resources. DTVanswers.com, DTVtransition.org, and here is a video created by CEA that explains everything. For everyone else, here are the basics.

There are 2 different OTA (over the air) TV broadcasts. NTSC (National Television System Committe) and ATSC (Advanced Television Systems Committee). There is no such thing as a HD antenna, all antennas can pick up the ATSC signal, or the NTSC for that matter, it is just that the rabbit ear antennas aren’t able to pick up a strong enough digital signal. Each of the signals need a tuner to correctly interpret the signal for the television.

Everyone that has an older TV with a rabbit ears antenna, will have a couple options. The first is to pony up the money and pay for cable or satellite service on the TV. If you want to keep on receiving free television, your next option is to purchase a newer TV that comes equip with a digital (ATSC) tuner. If you want to keep your old TV, you will need to purchase a converter box that has a digital tuner. With both of these free TV options you will also need to purchase an antenna that is built for the ATSC signal, and is strong enough to receive the signal in your location.

For all of the options above there are some pros and cons. First of all, anytime an antenna is used there is the possibility of what is called “drop off”. Meaning, if the signal drops too low for the tuner to display the TV picture, the picture freezes or skips. There is no fuzzy picture that happens, which is the case when the analog (NTSC) signal is not strong enough. If you don’t have the correct antenna for your location, this problem may occur many times during a show or game, and become very annoying. The big bonus of using an antenna for HDTV is that the OTA signal is uncompressed. So if you receive a clean signal with no drop offs, you will have the potential for the absolute best picture possible, pending your TV display. If you decide to go with cable or satelitte, you will receive a 100% uninterupted signal (unless you have Comcast, but thats another issue all together), but the picture could be highly compressed. You will also be paying a monthly fee, where as with the antenna, HDTV and/or converter box, you will just be paying a one time fee. Finally, most of the indoor antennas are bulky and pretty much the eye sore of you entertainment center. Enter the RCA ANT1500.

Front view of the RCA ANT1500	Front view of the RCA ANT1500 with DVD case for size reference
Top view of the RCA ANT1500 with DVD case for size reference	Back view of the RCA ANT1500 with DVD case for size reference

This new antenna from RCA is a compact, multi-directional, HD optimized antenna. With its small, form factor, you can lay it flat on top of entertainment center, hang it flat on the wall behind your TV, or in theory, stand it upright on a shelf.

Before anyone goes out and purchases an antenna to use with their digital tuner, they should check out AntennaWeb.org. Here you can type in your address to see what channels should be broadcasted in your area, and what type of antenna you should be able to use to receive them. After you find out what antenna you should be able to use, I would purchase one at a retailer with a good return policy, in case the antenna doesn’t work quite as well as you’d like.

I live in an apartment near O’Hare airport creating 2 factors that are big downsides for digital reception. AntennaWeb.org says that I should use a powered multi-directional antenna. I tested this ANT1500 with my ATI HD Wonder card in my PC, and a 24 in widescreen monitor. I loved how small and compact the antenna was, I was able to shove it in the corner, out of the way of all of my A/V gear. I just wish I could have kept the antenna in the corner out of the way, all of the time. In fact, I had to move the antenna between 2 different locations depending on the channel that I wanted to watch. I think if the antenna wasn’t hard wired with a 6 ft. coax cable, I would have been able to attach a longer cable, and find a single location farther than 6 ft away from my tuner, that would be able to receive all of the channels successfully. With the antenna in the correct location in order to get a good signal, I would still have “drop off” about 3-4 times in a 30 min program.

RCA ANT1500 Back Stand

Besides having a hardwired coax cable, the only other design flaw is the “stand” that comes with the antenna. As you can see, there is a C shaped metal attachment that goes into 2 holes at the bottom of back of the antenna. The only thing is that, the cable comes out of the bottom as well. There is no notch or anything for the antenna to safely avoid bending at an awkward angle, making the antenna look like it is ready to fall over. I think the stand should have been thought about better, or just removed from the package altogether.

After reporting my not so awesome reception to AudioVox, they went ahead and sent me a Zenith converter box, saying it should work better than my HD Wonder card. Using the converter box was super easy, I connected the antenna to the box, and RCA cables from the box to my video and audio. The box automatically scanned for channels and was able to display programming details. Again, I had the exact same problems, needing to move the antenna between the 2 different locations, and 3-4 “drop offs” per 30 min program. My apartment might be one of the worst scenarios when it comes to digital reception.

If you live in a location where a non-powered multi-directional antenna will receive most of your channels, I highly recommend this antenna. Its small form factor is a huge plus in the world of antennas, because most of them are so darn ugly, and HUGE. Example A, B, C, D and E. Again, I would recommend trying the antenna out in your setup before you throw away your receipt.

I know some of you might be saying, with all this hassle of signal, and “drop off” why would I even want to bother with this whole HD antenna deal? As mentioned before, the two positives are no monthly payments, and uncompressed HD quality. But the real question is, whether or not either of those two are worth it, if your signal drops out every so often, especially during the big game. If you can receive a 100% free, crystal clear signal, with limited “drop offs”, I would say it is, for sure worth it. This digital transition, can be as costly or as not so costly as you want it to be. Hopefully this information can help you make the best decisions.