Apple - Cinema Displays



It's about time apple gave up on their "all in one" ACD used DVI like the rest of the world.

I confess, i got confused by the dual link thing and actually thought that Apple was resorting to using two standard DVI ports to drive it. No, the 30" monitor does NOT take two separate DVI inputs. I mean, really, this is Apple we're talking about here. They put signal, power, usb 2.0, AND firewire 400 into a single cable to this monitor just to make sure that there were no extra cables cluttering up the place. Would they really go for a solution like that. No. All "dual link" really means that the device uses all 24 pins in the DVI spec for a total bandwidth of 2x165 MHz instead of only 12 for a grand total of 165 MHz.

I'm pretty tempted by the 23". Not only is it going to match well with the black and aluminum motif i've got going with my laptop and docking station today, but it's native resolution matches the native resolution of my Insperion 8600. Too bad they're not available in my local apple store yet.

HBO turns on CGMS/A

And I hear that Showtime has done the same. Look, just because you bought a digital video recorder doesn't mean its going, you know, just record anything you tell it to! This is the Digital Millennium my friend, and in in the Digital Millennium, the $500 Digital Video Recorder (or better still the $2500 HTPC) you paid for for takes orders from the "content owners" first, and you second.

After all, "you are able to purchase the DVDs in attractive box sets with special features such as out-takes and directors' notes." So stop your complaining!

I for one welcome our new Content Owner Overlords!

Creative Labs Zen Touch 20 GB MP3 Player



Amazon of all places had the best pictures of this thing. $270 for a 20GB mp3 player seems mighty steep when i consider that i got my 40GB Zen Xtra for that much. E and i really like our Zen Xtras and use them a lot. One of the things you find yourself doing with a 40GB mp3 player quite a little bit is scrolling through lists of play lists, albums, and tracks. In fact i find myself doing this more than a little bit i find myself doing this a lot. The Zen Xtra's little rocker switch is definitely superior to the orriginal Zen's rocker switch, but neither of them are what you would call "good". During my brief time as an iPod owner i REALLY dug the touch scroll wheel. It was just plain fun. There were a number of things i didn't like about the iPod, enough that i opted to return it and get the Zen. Once E had seen the Zen she ditched her iPod for one as well and we've been quite happy with them ever since... Except i stil want that scroll wheel. I'm thinking i'm gonna have to give this thing a try and when they come out with the 40GB version, i might have to pick one up. Yes, its larger than the ipod, no it doesn’t have an address book, no i can't play solitaire on it (hell even it's clock is buried 3 menus down). But you know what it does do? It works with my PC and plays back my mp3 files with non-typical encoding options perfectly. Unlike my incredibly stylish and ultra swanky iPod which used to hang when trying to play these files at which point thanks to the genius who decided "we don’t need no stinking hard reset!" the only thing i could do was to wait until the battery to run out. I know everyone in the world is 100% over joyed with their iPods, but it just didn’t work for me... Hopefully the Zen slider will be as cool as the touch scroll wheel.

DVD Jukebox has been disappeared

Of course we all knew there was no way something cool like this was going to be allowed to live. Now the only question is, how completely screwed is the poor author of this thing? I suspect the guy is probably facing some pretty scary legal action right now.

Kaleidescape System

This is the system dvd jukebox was trying to build.

The Kaleidescape System Kaleidescape Movie Server can rip bit-accurate DVD clones (meaning all menu and interactive features are left intact) and store them onto its internal hard drives for playback or streaming on a wired home network to multiple players. What’s more, DVD cover art, rating, running time, cast, director, and movie synopsis information are automatically downloaded from the Kaleidescape online database for every stored movie.

Movie Guide Service

Kaleidescape's proprietary Movie Guide service augments your collection by adding a wealth of information about the movies you own. Movie Guide information includes attributes like title, genre, rating, cast, director, and synopsis, helping you find a movie that fits your present mood. Find all the movies starring Tom Cruise or directed by Steven Spielberg, or choose a title from all your comedies or action flicks. It even provides bookmarks into your movies, so you can skip opening content like promos, trailers and DVD menus and go right to the start of the feature.

From Projector Central:

Pricing will depend on the amount of movie storage as well as the number of viewing zones. A base Kaleidescape System lists for $27,000 and includes a Kaleidescape Server with sufficient storage for 160 DVD movies, a Movie Player for playback in a single zone, and a DVD Reader for importing DVDs. The storage capacity can be easily expanded to over 400 movies for less than $6,000 and an unlimited number of Movie Players can be added for $3995 per zone.

That's a little rich for my blood. But the pricing is interesting since there is probably only about $1500-$2000 in off the shelf hardware here. So the question is, could we ever see a $5k "consumer" version of this system be available? My guess is no. This is the device the DMCA was written to prevent because if i own a systme like this whats to stop me from renting my favorite movies at block buster and just keeping them forever? Nothing. You could argue that there is nothing stopping me from doing that now with my $500 home computer. But rest assured that your government is working tirelessly to make sure that this is not the case for much longer.

So how does this system get away with it? Are we just assuming that people rich enough to buy a $27000 movie player aren't going to bother to steal movies? My guess is that one of the reasons the price so high is because what you are basically doing is pre-paying directly to the MPAA for movies which you will eventually put on this thing. And i'm guessin if you want to add more space to this thing you have to pay for it and activate it through the same service that gives you all that cool listing content.

Its a shame really, because an affordable system like this could be extremely popular. Especially as systems like the TMT HomeRAN that allow highspeed networking to piggy back on existing coax become readily available.

HDTV TiVo for DirecTV

I know this is old news, but i only just got digital cable. I had been content with my Tivo2 + standard crappy cable, and was getting to the point where i probably watched only about an hour of TV a week. But then i go to wiggy's Memorial Day BBQ and everyone there wont stop talking about how freaking cool On Demand is. I didn't believe them at first and thought they were talking about HD Pay Per View, but they insisted that they were talking about honest to goodness On Demand. "With pause, rewind AND fast forward?" i asked incredulously. "Totally, although FF isn’t all that fast, its like 2x and there are are no chapters to skip ahead to..." they assured me. It sounds too good to be true, but the next day i order me up the all you can eat super digital extravaganza. Good lord! This stuff is amazing! Seriously, i feel like Rip Van Winkle or something where i nodded off and suddenly woke up in freaky future land. How the heck am I getting high def 16x9 video with 5.1 surround PLUS high speed internet PLUS regular cable over a single line of coax cable? My only complaint at this point is that the menu system on the receiver is complete crap, at least compared to Tivo. Its ugly slow and stupid (it often forgets what channel i'm currently on and simply dumps me into the list at channel 1 which wouldn’t be so bad except now i have 500 gazillion channels). There are several glaring problems with the way their UI works, but i wont even bother going into them because i an 100% confident that Tivo will fix them, which is why i want to know when can i get an HD Tivo that will work with cable box? The thing has firewire, so i'm pretty sure the bandwidth it needs is there. Also i would like the HD Tivo i buy to not cost $1000. Thank you.