|
|
|
Most Screen Savers $ 14.95 each plus shipping and handling. Sales Tax applies in some states.
|
The City Lights Reporter Online News Journal January 2002 -Volume 5 Issue 1 CES
… The Consumer Electronics Show Portability,
Interoperability, and Compliance
By James I. Neusom, II Last week Las Vegas hosted the international CES Consumer Electronics Show. With 126,000 attendees browsing a record 1.2 million square feet of exhibitor floor space, CES is recognizably one of the largest electronics conventions in the world. The buzz this year was portable devices that allow you to exchange rich media (music, pictures and movies) between computers, stereos, and personal digital assistants (PDA). The trick is getting your new CD or MP3 file to play on your wristwatch or iPod while still operating normally in a standard player, while all the time complying with SDMI anti-piracy standards. For example, pop in the new CD “Celebrity” by “N Sync” into an ordinary CD player and with no problems you’re listening digital quality high-fidelity music. But if you put the same CD into your computer, laptop or one of the new DVD players, it’s a whole different story: total silence. Let me give you another example. You’ve got your brand new laptop loaded with Windows new XP. Your good buddy records some music for you utilizing RealNetworks media player. Guess what, it won’t play in your Windows XP Media player, unless, of course, you have several hours (or days) to spare and a degree in debugging computer software! Although the ongoing digital revolution in music, video and photography promises greater flexibility and choice for the general consumer, the electronics manufacturers, camera, film and record companies are fighting tooth and nail to maintain the status quo. Even if the status quo means cutting the consumers’ (and their own) throats in the process. With the advent of Napster, MP3 became a household word. Digital photography is now so popular that regular film cameras are going the way of typewriters and Xerox machines. Video rental stores now carry more DVDs than they do standard VHS tapes. But the question still remains; will the MP3 song I recorded on my brand new CD recorder play in my car stereo, are the pictures I took with my new Sony camera compatible with my imaging software provided by AOL, can I make a copy of my home movies on my new iMac and play them on grandpa’s PC? The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and the Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI) was created to preclude this type of industry confusion and protect the general consumer. The DMCA is a congressional law set up to cover intellectual property rights and the digital distribution of rich media over the Internet (MP3, webcasting, liquid audio and such). SDMI is an industry forum that brings together more than 180 companies and organizations representing information technology, consumer electronics, security technology, the worldwide recording industry, and Internet service providers. It was a great idea with one small glitch. How do you get 180 companies with 180 different agendas and technologies to agree to anything? Shortly after they began to meet and establish an open standard that would prevent piracy, as well as ensure consumers convenient access to new media, there was an in-house revolt, a mutiny! Microsoft was the first to go, soon followed by Sony and AOL. Now, as with all good politicians and salesmen, each manufacturer has the new Digital Music Access Technology (DMAT) trademark on its equipment, products and packaging. But what does that branding actually mean? (Hmmm, that’s a subject for another article!!) The music and film industry have chosen to march to the beat of a different drummer. The entertainment industry has wants to maintain their monopoly on entertainment products even if it means degrading the quality of the end product or inconveniencing the end user/consumer. In an effort to stop illegal, albeit widespread duplication and distribution of rich media products, while still allowing the consumer their legal right to make copies for personal use and enjoyment, the industry has implemented a myriad of copy protected formats. This is odd! In view of the standard practice of giving the industry a royalty fee on every CD burner and every CDR blank disc sold. The industry seems to be robbing from themselves when you stop to consider that their efforts may only result in discouraging and confusing the general consumer! It was evident at CES that consumer electronics manufacturers were looking to cash in on this new digital revolution, regardless of SDMI compliance issues. Build it, and they will come...(come = buy). Let them figure out how and where to use it later. So let the buyer beware, least he find himself in the position of Betamax owners of old. Stuck with devices that are obsolete or worse yet, don’t do what they want after a year. Here are just some of the latest and greatest on display at CES.
Compaq IPAQ Music Center - With the remarkable iPAQ Music Center, Compaq
ushers in an
Samsung
Nexio wireless PDA -
Vivastar RS-121 External DVD Recorder - Vivastar's innovative DVD-R
Recorders set new Last
but not least, the Winner of the 2002 Consumer Electronics Show Innovations
Award! Motorola’s Car Kit with Bluetooth™ Wireless Technology
Entertainment media products in our lifetime have gone from vinyl to tape to compact disk. The reverse side is that consumer electronics have gotten smaller and mobile. The new common link and instigator of this new digital movement is the home computer. Most home computers reside in a study or home office, while the preferred way to enjoy music or videos is in the living room, kitchen, or bedroom. Portable CD, MP3 or DVD players help to bridge the gap so that digital media files can travel on airplanes and trains, or to the gym and college dorm. Eventually, new media products will merge. Then everything from cable, satellite and radio receivers to tape, CD and DVD players will all reside in an “All-In-One” box. If the electronics industry does not address the issues of portability, interoperability, and compliance then they are doomed to failure. By keeping the consumer tethered to the PC portability remains unaddressed and that’s what the consumer wants … to be freed from the two-foot zone. If the consumer is not given some reasonable assurance that they won’t have to install two or three different programs to listen to their music or view their videos they will reject these new “wiz bang” gadgets and demonstrate their anger with slow or no sales. The consumer electronics industry must evolve, organize and agree on a standard to protect against piracy, or the consumer will continue to seek the path of least resistance by indulging in and supporting free but illegal rich media trading services on the Internet. You'd think industry would have learned by the experiences of the cable industry and make rich media affordable enough to take the profit out of street corner, and black market sales. Having
said all the foregoing, the question remains...How will we ever achieve the
grand but elusive promises of the digital revolution?
I submit by addressing the three horsemen of, Portability,
Interoperability, and Compliance. Only
then will the industry achieve healthy user-friendly growth, creating new
services, new markets and new conveniences for us in this new digital
millennium.
TOP OF PAGE NEXT PAGE PREVIOUS PAGE [Home] [Reporter] [Products] [Services] [About Us] [Reseller Info] [Policies] [Contact Us] Developed and Maintained By: InterServe Networks, Inc.
|
RCA
Lyra and Rio Riot MP3 Players - RCA's new Lyra MP3 player has a 10-gigabyte
hard drive, and Rio's Riot player has an incredible 20-gigabyte drive yet it
only weighs a few ounces.
Simplefi”
Wireless Music Network - There's a new company I really like called,
appropriately enough, Simple Devices. They've collaborated with Motorola to
produce a really useful home music player called “Simplefi”. It's a wireless
networking device that plugs into your living room stereo and lets you access
all the MP3 music files from the PC in your office or anywhere else in the house
up to 150 feet away.
entirely
new era of audio entertainment for music lovers. The size of a 17" standard
home-audio component, the iPAQ Music Center is a digital music storage device
organized with PC intelligence. This organized music database allows you to put
all your music in one place.
SanDisk
Duel-Slot Memory Card Readers- SanDisk, which makes flash-memory cards,
unveiled a portable storage device that plugs into a PC's USB slot and accepts
one of four memory card capacities: 32MB, 64MB, 128MB or 256MB.
Samsung
announced that the Nexio, its new PDA powered by Windows CE, is on sale in
Korea. The unit’s 5-inch, reflective LCD has 800x480 resolution, enough to
display Web pages properly without reformatting the content to fit the screen
(as is the case with Palm and Pocket PC screens). To get your Web content,
there's a built-in, data-capable CDMA cell phone, an Intel StrongARM processor,
32MB of ROM, and 64MB of RAM power the Nexio.
standards
in technology and design.
-
Imagine holding a conversation on your Bluetooth wireless phone while
entering a car that has a Motorola Bluetooth car kit. Your phone conversation
would automatically transition from the phone to the communication system within
the car. You could toss the phone into your briefcase and seamlessly continue
your conversation via the communication control panel installed within the car.
When the conversation ends, you could choose to initiate another call by using
voice dialing features or select to play music from a Bluetooth enabled MP3
player that's also inside the car.