Students Shun Legal Downloads
Posted Wed Jul 19, 2006, 10:38 AM ET
Students at Cornell, Purdue, George Washington University, and other schools won't download music from university-approved services even if it's free, according to
The Wall Street Journal. These and other schools began offering free (often meaning subsidized) downloads to prevent illegal downloads from attracting lawsuits and choking servers. But these experiments have flunked for several reasons. Onerous DRM restrictions are often attached. For instance, the download may be free, but transferring to a music player or burning a CD may not be. At Cornell, students lost interest in Napster when they discovered they'd lose the right to use their downloads upon graduating. The non-iTunes services have also met resistance from iPod and/or Mac users, the latter an estimated 20 percent of the student population.
HD DVD Fakes Film Grain
Posted Tue Jul 18, 2006, 9:19 AM ET
HD DVD has adopted a Thomson-developed technology that would insert simulated film grain into high-def movie releases. The problem: Digital video compression codecs tend to lose the natural grain in film-based cinematography. The, um, uh, solution: "Thomson has come up with a way that allows the film grain to be put back, or at least simulated, into the movie after it's been compressed and decompressed," says Gavin Shutz of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers. Film Grain Technology™ will appear in two HD DVD players from Toshiba and one from RCA. It has also found its way into Sonic Solutions HD DVD production tools. So even if you shun the fakery in players, it will still find its way into at least some movie titles. OK, I haven't seen it yet, but isn't fake film grain the aesthetic equivalent of artificial edge enhancement? What ever happened to the idea of reproducing the source as accurately as possible?
CableLabs Eyes IP-Based Video
Posted Mon Jul 17, 2006, 10:15 AM ET
CableLabs is working up a new version of the OpenCable Application Platform, according to
Cable Digital News. OCAP is the R&D program that gave birth to the CableCARD. The new Version 1.1 would support IP-based video and multimedia streams. That would give the cable ops a leg up in their coming struggle against the telcos, especially AT&T, which is rolling out IP video delivery. OCAP 1.1 would also mesh with mobile applications to be launched this fall by Sprint, Comcast, Time Warner, Cox, and Advance/Newhouse. It would support home networking, switched broadcast, advanced graphics, and other goodies. And it would allow cable companies to more easily insert commercials into VOD programming (
yippee). The technology would likely take the form of a new set-top box. Whether it would migrate directly into television sets is up to the TV makers, but for the moment, they're not thrilled with the
outcome of the existing CableCARD agreement.
M-Card Does New Cable-Ready Tricks
Posted Thu Jul 13, 2006, 9:51 PM ET
CableLabs, the cable industry's development arm, has certified the first multi-streaming CableCARD. The hip new Motorola M-Card "enables consumers of retail set-top boxes and integrated digital television sets to watch and/or record their programming from multiple simultaneous tuners using a single CableCARD (e.g., handling picture-in-picture or simultaneous watch-and-record of multiple digital video channels)," according to a CableLabs
press release. The M-Card is backward-compatible with existing unidirectional CableCARD sets and boxes, and will support only a single stream when used that way—but when paired with an M-Card compatible product, it will do all its new multi-streaming tricks. How far the M-Card will get in TVs (as opposed to set-top boxes) is debatable given the
sorry state of the existing CableCard standard. Major cable operators will deploy it within a few months, says CableLabs. Talk to yours for details.
CableCARD Cooperation Collapses
Posted Wed Jul 12, 2006, 9:48 PM ET
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Were you hoping that the CableCARD standard would enable you to ditch your cable box? Four years after cable operators and TV makers signed the historic CableCARD agreement, many consumers are still running into problems, according to FCC filings from the warring cable operators and TV makers. Each side blames the other for the snafus. And they're both worsening the problem: The initial standard is unidirectional, meaning no video-on-demand without the box, so some cable operators are obstructing CableCARD adoption by failing to support it at the head end. But the ever price-conscious TV makers aren't helping by eliminating CableCARD compatibility from their lines and walking away from the problem. For years the conventional wisdom has been that a VOD-capable bidirectional standard would someday heal all wounds. But the video-delivery landscape is changing and now CableLabs, the industry's R&D arm, is approaching digital cable readiness from some new angles. I'll report on them over the next few days.
Pay the Buck, Lose the Ads
Posted Tue Jul 11, 2006, 9:46 PM ET
On-demand movie viewers are happy to pay an extra dollar to avoid ads. And they prefer conventional to convergent delivery media. Those are the conclusions of a
DIGDIA survey. It grappled with two questions at once. Given a tradeoff between advertising and price, how would viewers prefer their movies: with ads for a buck less, or without ads for a buck more? Also, what on-demand (or on-demand-ish) delivery medium would they prefer: TV, PC, or DVD? Here are the results:
- 44% would pay $3.99 to watch on TV with no ads
- 27% would go for the DVD
- 17% would pay $2.99 to watch on TV with ads
- 9% prefer PC download/viewing for $3.99, no ads
- 3% prefer PC download/viewing for $2.99 with ads
The name of the survey is "Turmoil in On-demand Viewing Creates Opportunities," and if you have to ask the price of the full document, you can't afford it.
Open-Source CD Database May Die
Posted Mon Jul 10, 2006, 9:40 PM ET
Freedb, a key player in open-source CD databases, has succumbed to tensions among its founders. The
site is still up but its future is uncertain. If you didn't already know, CD databases provide metadata lookup services to the likes of iTunes and the Windows Media Player, enabling them to display artist, song, album, genre, etc. Without them your iPod would not be nearly as versatile at organizing music. The grandpappy of them all was CDDB, founded in 1993 as a volunteer-driven project. When CDDB went commercial in 2000 as Gracenote, Freedb and other groups split off to maintain their own open-source databases on a nonprofit basis. The open-source services appear most often in PC-based software including rippers, taggers, and players other than iTunes and WMP. Freedb is also used by
AudioReQuest, a consumer-level high-end server product. Freedb is survived by
Musicbrainz, another open-source database. The biggest commercial databases are All Music Guide's
LASSO (used by Windows Media Player and MusicMatch) and the category-leading
Gracenote (used by iTunes).
Monster in a Box
Posted Fri Jul 7, 2006, 9:39 AM ET
The other day Federal Express summoned me to the front of my building. What delight awaited? It was Onkyo's HT-S990THX. Some would call it the first THX-certified home theater in a box though the Onkyo and THX people prefer the term "integrated THX HT system." HTIB or not, all 143 pounds of it were literally
in a box, one box, only 14 inches shorter (and five inches wider) than my refrigerator. My building has elevators, but there are five steps between the ground floor and the sidewalk. The FedEx guy and I stood on the curb staring at one another in dawning horror.
What memories this evoked for me—specifically the day when a surgeon made three incisions in my belly, inserted into one of them a video camera on a stick, and used the other two holes to install the piece of plastic mesh that now holds together my lower left abdomen. This is called laparoscopic surgery and it's rather miraculous. I went home later the same day. But I couldn't so much as open a window for weeks after the hernia operation. Simply standing or sitting up caused intense pain. Surprise!—that's what your abs are for. And yes, it was a piece of audio equipment that did me in.
We decided to make the Onkyo a three-man operation, reducing the weight per man to less than 50 pounds (incidentally, this is my oft-stated weight limit for all review samples). A doorman pulled the handtruck up the steps while the FedEx guy and I lifted and pushed from below. We all survived, but I endured a number of withering looks, and this packaging will buy golfing vacations in Scotland for many a hardworking sawbones.
Why ship seven speakers, a sub, and a receiver in one gut-ripping carton? Wouldn't it be safer to split them up? One reason, Onkyo replied, is that two boxes would cost more to ship (presumably not including the cost of surgery, missed work, and weeks upon weeks of excruciating pain). Also, dealers like the inventory simplicity of a single SKU (storekeeping unit to you non-retailers). The company added that another reviewer once delivered a "tongue-in-cheek rebuke" for shipping an HTIB in two boxes—proof if any were needed that critics can be criminally stupid.
Sometimes a big box is unavoidable, especially when it contains a big object. A dealer selling giant plasmas or certain kinds of high-end gear (or refrigerators, for that matter) can handle predictable big-freakin'-box related problems with suitable manpower. But the power of surprise can turn a large carton into a serious hazard. A consumer who buys a mass-market compact system might reasonably expect the product to be easy to handle, whether in the parking lot of a chain retailer, or in the front yard of his house. If suddenly challenged, he might then do something impulsive. And regret it. How can anyone, in good conscience, allow such a thing to happen?
Universal Rethinks the CD Jewelbox
Posted Thu Jul 6, 2006, 10:36 AM ET
A major label will soon offer European customers three different tiers of CD releases, each with its own distinctive type of packaging. Universal Music Group announced that top releases will get a deluxe box (über-jewelbox? treasure chest?) potentially featuring bonus DVD, extra tracks, expanded notes, and other attractions. Mid-tier releases will get "super jewelboxes," a with round corners, stronger hinges, and heavier build quality. They sound a lot like the boxes already used for SACDs. Bottom-tier releases will get cardboard sleeves, though I'm not sure if that means a Digipak-like package (paper gatefold enclosing plastic spindle) or an all-cardboard "wallet" type. A competing budget label, Brilliant Classics, has had great success with wallets, marketing cheaply packaged but delightful boxed sets up to and including the now legendary 160-CD
Bach Edition. Pricing for the Universal tiers will be €19.99, €14.99, and €9.99 respectively. As of this morning, a euro costs $1.28, so none of the tiers is cheap by American standards, though there's no telling what will happen if Universal brings the scheme across the Atlantic. Why this, why now? "We can grow the CD market," said a Universal executive—or at least, "slow its decline."
French to Apple: We Surrender
Posted Wed Jul 5, 2006, 9:43 AM ET
The French senate and national assembly have voted to approve a copyright law revision that ostensibly requires music players and downloads to be interoperable across all platforms. At least, that is the way mainstream media are reporting the story. Inexplicably described as a defeat for Apple—which is grimly determined to keep iTunes purchases playable only on the iPod—the
compromise nonetheless contains enough wiggle room to undermine its main premise: (1) If record companies agree that iTunes downloads must not play on other devices, Apple's Fairplay DRM will stand as is. (2) Rivals seeking to make iTunes downloads playable on their own hardware must first prove to a French regulatory agency that there will be no conflict with Apple patents or other rights. These two loopholes will ensure that iTunes downloads and iPods will remain joined at the hip. Of course the law isn't specifically about Apple. The same loopholes apply to any would-be monopolist seeking to bind hardware and software together. Apple just happens to be the most successful one. However, Jobs will have to keep looking over his shoulder. The interoperability movement is also rising in Scandinavia, Britain, and Poland.
DVD Review: 21st Century Vinyl
Posted Fri Jun 30, 2006, 9:25 AM ET
21st Century Vinyl is better described by its subtitle: Michael Fremer's Practical Guide to Turntable Set-Up. The heart of the program is a series of segments in which Fremer turns three uncrated turntables into functional music machines. Along the way he encounters problems but keeps his cool. In so doing he sets a good example for 21st-century vinyl neophytes who are attracted to the musicality of vinyl but intimidated by the mystic art of getting a complex mechanical device up and running and sounding its very best.
In the name of full disclosure I should point out that Fremer and I share a common employer, are on friendly terms, and a few dollars of his found their way into my silken pockets when I was pruning my LP collection. Let me add that I kept 95 percent of my vinyl holdings—it's the collection I've culled least ruthlessly. It's also safe to say that Mikey is one of the audio industry's media celebrities, buoyed by his column "Analog Corner" in our sister publication Stereophile, hardware reviews for that mag and Ultimate AV, and music reviews on his own website musicangle.com. He was the official spokesperson of the recent Home Entertainment Show 2006, treading the show floor with a cell headset attached to his skull.
What a character he is! This turntable tutorial begins with your guide standing in front of his record collection. He starts off loose and funny, his usual mode of operation, going through samples of various novelty formats that have not stood the test of time. The main point of this segment seems to be: Hi, this is what I'm like. For those who have not met him up close and personal, this is a necessary icebreaker. The shelves of vinyl towering in the background are a powerful visual and become part of the message: Enter here and find treasures.
Having casually but carefully defined his character, not unlike a good novelist, Fremer takes us to Sterling Sound, where he chats with mastering engineer George Marino about the mysterious process of LP mastering. This segment further binds the receptive viewer to the format. It says, look, the guys who make these things really care about their work, and this specifically is how their caring goes into the process that turns master tapes to black vinyl grooves to be read by the trembling needle.
Having served two rounds of cocktails, Fremer moves on to the appetizers: setup accessories. He discusses stylus pressure gauges, both analog and digital (and prefers the digital kind, horrors!). Tools for the horizontal alignment of cartridges may be anything from a paper protractor provided by the turntable manufacturer to the fancier Wally Tractor, with the tracking arc laser-etched onto mirrored glass. More mundane but just as crucial are the little things, like an adjustable lamp and a mini-magnifier to help you see what you're doing. To make sure the tonearm is parallel to the playing surface, Fremer recommends a simple sawed-off ruler. And of course you'll need some needle-nosed pliers to fit those teeny clips onto the pins in back of the cartridge. Did you know you can loosen the clips with a toothpick? Cue Johnny Carson saying: "I did not know that." Fremer also defines the steps of the setup process.
Finally he serves the main courses, setting up a Pro-ject RM-5 turntable with a Sumiko Blue Point Special cartridge, a Rega Planar 5 turntable with an Audio-Technica AT-OC9ML/II cartridge, and a V.P.I. Scoutmaster turntable with Lyra cartridge. For each turntable he installs the cartridge, sets vertical tracking force, fiddles with horizontal geometry, and sets anti-skating. A lot of people (myself included) never get any further than that. But for best results you should also follow the instructions on vertical tracking angle and azimuth.
These segments are delivered in long takes. Rather than conceal the difficulties of turntable setup with slick editing, Fremer just lets you watch him cope. It's a testament to his skill and experience that he surmounts every difficulty while discussing it in detail (when I set up a turntable, I surmount every difficulty while swearing a blue streak). He has made no attempt to edit factual errors out of the program. Instead, quick spot graphics correct and explain, like visual footnotes. They go by so quickly that you may need to back up to catch everything. More crucial visual aids—like the animation showing how the tonearm, cartridge, and stylus should align with the groove—stay onscreen longer. There's also a PDF file at the end that serves as a catchall for various minor issues but the video covers everything significant.
The end result is part premeditated and part improvised, just like real life. It's also practical—Fremer repeatedly points out that approximate settings are OK because grooves are so wildly variable. And it's leavened with humor, some brown sugar and raisins for your oatmeal.
21st Century Vinyl is a helpful bridge between the first flush of analog enthusiasm and a longterm survival strategy. Have you rediscovered or inherited a good collection? Or found a hot flea market full of $2 discs? Worried about what'll happen when you're face to face with the contraption that plays them? Quit fretting. When the moment of truth comes, just set up a worktable in front of your TV (or vice versa) and go through the setup process step by step with a master. The path may be winding and narrow, but your feet are stronger than you may imagine.
21st Century Vinyl is available from stereophile.com, acousticsounds.com, amusicdirect.com, elusivedisc.com, and themusic.com. Price: $29.99.
Mark Fleischmann is the author of the annually updated book Practical Home Theater. His other book, Happy Pig's Hot 100 New York Restaurants, is now a free resource on the web.
Will Burned CDs Soon Be Toast?
Posted Thu Jun 29, 2006, 9:44 AM ET
"Unlike pressed original CDs, burned CDs have a relatively short life span of between two to five years, depending on the quality of the CD," said Kurt Gerecke, a storage expert at IBM's German outpost, in an interview with
Computerworld. Closer to two for off-brand cheapies, he added.
Other estimates vary. I regularly use a CD-R of test tracks burned in 1999. Whatever their validity may be, these warnings apply only to dye-based recordable CDs. Prerecorded CDs are more durable (if they weren't there'd be riots) though no one really knows how long they will last. More bad news: Hard drives are also vulnerable. Their Achilles heel is the disc bearing, a mechanical part that wears out over time. Magnetic tape can last 30 to 100 years, according to Gerecke, though I recall some audiocassettes that didn't last a decade. Fortunately there's a hot new medium that freezes music forever in unchanging grooves of black plastic. The disc is read with a diamond stylus suspended in a web of magnets and can last a lifetime (or more) if treated carefully. It plays on all devices in the format, completely free of DRM. This format of the future is called VINYL. See tomorrow's blog for more details!
Let the Reader Beware
Posted Wed Jun 28, 2006, 9:59 AM ET
As a longtime gizmo critic, I was fascinated by a
scathing commentary on my tribe by Mr. Media Coverage (I'm not sure who that is) of GameDaily.com. Working for advertiser-supported specialty media has its limitations. And while many of us do a great job within those limitations, others may recognize themselves in Mr. MC's "7 Reasons Why Questionable Facts Go Unchallenged." The two that caught my fancy are: "We sometimes want to believe the questionable facts." Just like little kids. Still worse: "The lies make better stories." OK, I'll cop to it. At least where this blog is concerned, I'll fix on any idea that makes a pretty paragraph. But I'll have to watch my step!
Who You Callin' Ugly?
Posted Tue Jun 27, 2006, 9:40 AM ET
Do these Sharp MP3/WMA/FM players look ugly to you? That's what the good folks at
Engadget said when they picked up this new product announcement from
Akihabara News. For my own part, I think the Sharps look pretty spiffy. And where can you find an iPod all in shiny red, huh, huh, huh? Well, all right then. It's clear the Sharp folks were determined to avoid looking like another iPod-wannabe and I'd say they succeeded handsomely. The player is available in three colors and two capacities (512 for the MP-B200 and 1GB for the MP-B300) but only in Japan. Come on, Sharp, let us have 'em.
Tivoli Celebrates Radio Pioneer
Posted Mon Jun 26, 2006, 9:33 AM ET
Radio pioneer
Reginald Aubrey Fessenden should be more widely celebrated for his place in media history, argue the folks at Tivoli Audio in their "100 Years of Broadcast" campaign (complete with free shirt and emblazoned
SongBook radio for freeloading members of the press like myself). On Christmas Eve 1906, nearly a century ago, the Canadian became first person to broadcast music and speech over the airwaves. Marconi is often celebrated as
the father of radio but telegraphy was his actual innovation. He was not the first to transmit music or even speech—he transmitted the letter S in Morse code. Fessenden's idea was to transmit music and speech as continuous waves. Edison listened to the idea and laughed it off so Fessenden pursued it alone. Since there were no radio receivers then except for ships at sea, the first-ever music broadcast went out from the coast of Massachusetts to ships in the Atlantic, as Fessenden played a Haydn recording and his own violin. Tivoli and a handful of tech historians assert that this broadcast became the basis for radio, television soundtracks and (if one overlooks the later leap from analog to digital) even music downloading. After all, Fessenden was the first guy to move music and speech from point A to point B without using a disc, a cable, or some other physical object. Tivoli's latest new product is the
iYiYi, another iPod-docking compact system, and I hope to get one in for review when it becomes available in the fall for $299.
Panasonic Proposes Center Solution
Posted Fri Jun 23, 2006, 9:09 AM ET
"Where am I supposed to put the center speaker" is a question increasingly asked by new owners of flat-panel sets like say, oh, Panasonic plasmas. Above the screen? Below the screen? No, to the sides, insists Panasonic, but the company proposes going beyond the usual "phantom center" surround-processing solution. The idea is to keep the center as a discrete channel but move the drivers into the left and right speakers. Each tower has a separate enclosure to hold the center-channel drivers, as you can see on the righthand side of this speaker, which I denuded before anyone could stop me. See more pictures and details from yesterday's Panasonic press event in the
Gallery.
Will Netflix Go Non-Postal?
Posted Thu Jun 22, 2006, 7:55 AM ET
Netflix is eyeing the movie-download market, according to
Variety. Eric Besner, VP for original programming, told a movie- and TV-production conference in LA that a new service would download movies overnight into a proprietary set-top box. Pricing may be the same as existing subscription fees for hard copies by post. Though
scrapping with Blockbuster to shore up its existing business, Netflix sees the writing on the wall (and the profits in the rack).
Various services are already bidding to replace videodisc rental. One of them, Movielink, is reportedly up for sale. The 800-pound gorillas are
Verizon and
AT&T, whose set-top boxes may ultimately become ubiquitous for movie downloads and dozens of other uses—but only if they cut the right deals with Hollywood. If Netflix wants a piece of the movie-download pie, it'll have to move fast. Besner said the service may begin before year-end.
World Rejoices Over New Disc Format
Posted Wed Jun 21, 2006, 9:44 AM ET
Meet AVCHD, the latest disc format from Sony and Panasonic. No, they're not throwing another body into the moshpit that currently includes Blu-ray, HD DVD, and a few others. AVCHD will be a camcorder format that records 1080i or 720p images using existing DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD+R, and DVD-RAM media. Panasonic will also use it to record onto SD memory cards. The AVC in AVCHD is the MPEG-4 AVC video compression standard, also known as H.264. This highly efficient codec is the presumed heir to MPEG-2. It's already being used by DirecTV to transmit high-def signals and will also be supported in Blu-ray and HD DVD. No word yet on availability of AVCHD products.
How Reliable Is Your iPod?
Posted Tue Jun 20, 2006, 9:48 AM ET
A product as wildly successful as the iPod inevitably produces a few bad Apples. Anecdotal evidence of consumer unhappiness like this
British newspaper report are common. Then again, so is evidence of consumer happiness, as in my
torture test of an iPod case—the nano inside it survived repeated abuse. The only reports that should be taken seriously are those involving enough people to be statistically meaningful. That's why this
survey from MacInTouch is compelling, if not exactly conclusive. It covers more than 4000 users and nearly 9000 iPods in the field. Please note that the methodology is loose. Among other things, it doesn't factor in time, and you know everything fails eventually. The good news for nano owners is that flash-based players, not surprisingly, are more reliable. In fact I'm rather pleased to discover my 2GB nano is twice as reliable as the 4GB (now I can stop feeling inferior). The bad news is that hard-drive players are more failure-prone, though the newer video models do quite well. The good news about the bad news is that the hard drive may be not dead but merely
disconnected. For
safety reasons, our lawyers would probably have me add, have a qualified service person do the work.
You Want This
Posted Mon Jun 19, 2006, 9:49 AM ET
Do you want your home fed with the highest bandwidth for HDTV, Internet service, and telephone? Then you want this. It's an optical network terminal, it goes with Verizon's fiber-optic FiOS service, and the company has begun installing them in 14 states (seven with video delivery service) as part of a nationwide rollout that will take many years. Not that I'm their publicist or anything—as a matter of fact, I'm a
former Verizon customer—but no other company has set itself such an ambitious task. AT&T is Verizon's leading competitor, but that system is a hybrid of copper and fiber, while Verizon brings fiber right up to the wall of your house. Of all the digital pipes that might feed your home, a pure fiber-optic system is the most capacious. This particular wall belongs to a demo house at Verizon's R&D and network facility in Waltham Massachusetts. For more details and plenty of pictures see the
Gallery.
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