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Big Plasmas at Small Prices
Electronics | Jan 31, 05
Back on 11/30/2004 I told you I expected plasma television screen prices to continue to fall significantly as we move through the holidays and into the New Year (see that article here). Well, it does look like that prices are falling. Click on one of our PriceTrend graphs for almost any plasma or LCD set listed on this site and you'll see what I mean. Just a couple of random examples: Consider the Sony PFM-42V1/B, a 42 inch plasma that at the end of 2003 was going for around three grand, and which you can now pick up for a little north of $1500. The graph below is for 11/17/2003-1/24/2005, and the lowest vendor price on PriceSCAN.com is the green line (the red and blue lines are the high and average prices among vendors, respectively).
Or how about LG's DU-50PZ60, 50 inches of 1365x768 native resolution HD-ready plasma, price around $5000 before the holidays and today goes for about $3980. Here's the price graph from 3/22/2004 to 1/24/2005
Remember, you can always click the PriceTrend Graph link on each of our price comparison pages to see how prices have changed over time.
Interestingly, a casual inspection indicates some of the biggest screens haven't fallen as much, which is to say there has not been as much downward price pressure on plasmas of size 60 inches or greater. So if you want one of those monsters on your wall, it'll still generally cost you 5K or more.
Coming soon – a look at the LCD market. Stay tuned.
Posted by jeffrey.trester at 4:43 PM | Comments (0)
Digital Photographers Get New Ways To Torture Friends
Digital Cameras & Camcorders | Jan 26, 05
The Wall Street Journal just ran an article describing how everyone from Panasonic to Kodak wants to help you force those close to you to experience the "joy" of viewing those vacation snapshots, or your photo essay of little Billy's first piano recital (some might even let you share every mangled note as well). These torture devices run the price gamut, from Panasonic's TH-50PX25U/P series of plasma televisions, which allow you to insert memory cards and create slide shows with sound (around $4K and up) to the new Epson P-2000, a $499 palmtop-sized device that holds thirty-five thousand pictures (interestingly, the Journal says Kodak is about to release a $149 model that shows 150 pictures, and the NY Times just ran an article saying Kodak is trying to capture the low end of the market. But compared to other devices, is a buck a shot truly down market or just a lame deal – especially if the price of competing gizmos drops). And of course, there's Apple's iPod Photo, perhaps the most stylish and dangerous weapon ever placed in the hands of a proud grandparent.
Yet one wonders whether we really need all this "sharing". Cell phones' potential to annoy was probably elevated to crisis levels by the introduction of customized ring tones; was it truly necessary to make them the means by which you might at any moment be treated to a viewing of that new sweater your aunt knitted for her Chihuahua? And now it appears half the electronic devices in our lives are to be bent to the same questionable purpose. Sometimes it all makes me long for the days when my Grandfather used to pull out that slide carosel projector so we could all relive his trip to Hawaii. The show might be long, but the machine wasn't portable, and, in the dark, a kid had a chance of slipping away.
Posted by jeffrey.trester at 1:28 PM | Comments (0)
Mega-Storage: Ifs and Buts
Computers | Jan 26, 05
I remember seeing my first hard disk. It was in the middle 1950s and we regarded it with awe. After all, for a few thousand dollars/month you could have access to its tremendous capacity. I think it was about 4mb in today's terms.
These days, that's only enough capacity to store one decent still picture. Today we can easily use a couple of hundred thousand times the storage represented by one 1956 hard disk. An hour of broadcast TV, for example, is about 3.5 gigabytes, just about a thousand times the capacity of these old devices.
It is now a commonplace for machines, both desktop and laptop, to have storage measured in Gigabytes. And as individual users begin to build archives of photographs, videos, music and TV shows, storage requirements that approach Terabytes are not out of the question.
There seem to be three ways that this kind of storage can be made available in current systems. First, it can be built-in. This is simple and straightforward. These days if you buy a desktop machine that is described as a media center, or its equivalent, you will typically get somewhere between 200 and 500 Gigabytes of storage directly built in to the machine, just as you'd expect to find a hard disk configured. In a notebook, you'd expect to find 40 to 100 Gigabytes of storage. These numbers are reasonable tradeoffs between the desktop and laptop worlds, and the only additional requirement is that the disks involved rotate quickly enough to that it is possible to stream images off at a rate sufficent for display television. Current specs seem to indicate that 5400rpm is sufficient, while slower rotational speeds are not.
Second, there are storage devices that connect to machines via firewire and/or USB 2.0. This configuration differs from the built-in configuration principally in that it is easy to move the disks from one computer to another. Typically all that need be done is for the cable to be moved. These days 250 to 400 gigabytes of such storage is (physically) quite portable, so it becomes a natural way of carrying a huge amount of storage from one system to another. And the speeds which can be achieved in the connection channels are of sufficent power that the transfer of information can proceed at a comfortable rate. In this case a "comfortable rate" can be defined as a rate sufficient to keep up with the display of images on a TV screen.
Third, there is Network Attached Storage. These boxes share many common properties with the portable disks just described above, but in addition they have enough computational capability that they are able to support the interpretation of a file structure and an IP node. Thus, instead of hooking up to a machine, they hook directly on to the net, and stand ready to serve any of the machines that have access to the net. All of the security issues are dealt with just as one would expect on a network.
The economic analysis of these devices can lead to some strange anomolies in cost. This is probably just the effect of the information about alternative devices and capabilities as it flows out to the marketplace. It was regarded as a giant breakthrough when the price of a terabyte of storage dropped to $5,000. Now it is available, in a very convenient form, for about $1 per Gigabyte, or $1,000. And the price continues to drop.
The cost of this kind of storage has two components. One is the raw cost of the storage. This applies to those devices that connect via a USB port or through Firewire. If we are talking about Network Attached Storage then there is some additional cost of providing the hardware that effects the management of the network and its relationship to the storage devices.
Sometime this leads to strange design decisions. For example, Linksys has a Network Storage Link which is supposed to take USB devices and convert them into Network Attached Storage by performing the appropriate translations and providing the appropriate interface. It does, indeed, do this, but in doing so it insists on reformatting the storage to its own specification. This, in turn, means that the storage devices become useless unless they are attached to systems via a NSL. Thus the storage no longer has any value on a stand-alone---where we might want to run without any net---or in moving from one system to another, unless we are willing to move the NSL as well.
Given the number of machines that are sitting around these days, it seems that a more practicable solution is to simply devote some old machine to the role of attaching one or more storage devices to the network. I would imagine that lots of users have now accumulated some ancient machines which they would be willing to sacrifice to this role. It would seem to be a superior way to connect things up.
In any case, this kind of storage is now both accessable and affordable. It's not a bad approximation to assume that you ought to be able to get lots of storage at about $1/Gigabyte. That means that for about $1000 you can buy a terabyte of storage and have room for a week's worth of TV, a year's worth of Music, or a lifetime worth of photos.
Posted by david.ness at 11:43 AM | Comments (1)
E-I-E-Io?
Electronics | Jan 14, 05
On the whole, I'm a Logitech fan. I have a Logitech wireless (Bluetooth) Keyboard and Mouse on one of my systems, and it has the best 'look and feel' of any of my keyboards and mice. It is a bit expensive, perhaps, but the feeling of the mouse and keyboard make up for that, and it seems to work well.
Apparently as a registered Logitech user I just recieved a promo for the Logitech Io2, and I must say that the description of this device leaves me---for the most part---bewildered.
If I understand the description properly, the Io is sort of a pen-scanner that, working in conjunction with some form of special paper, allows me to write stuff and get it entered into my machine "directly". That is to say that the information I write is remembered in the pen, and when I place the pen in a docking station on my computer, the information will be transferred.
What bewilders me, I guess, is that I can't see anything superior to this scheme than to just using a normal ball-point pen and then scanning the information in to the computer. Indeed, the Io seems to me to be inferior to that very simple scheme on several fronts:
I'm unclear what accepting these restrictions buys me. If it's the recognition software, one would have to believe that this software would do just as well with things scanned in as with data entered via the pen.
But maybe I'm really missing the point, and I should be happy to pay $200 for my pen. It sure better fit my hand well to be worth that kind of money, and at the rate that I lose pens, it might become an expensive propostion if I were to find the device useful.
At the moment, though, that doesn't seem likely.
Posted by david.ness at 10:30 AM | Comments (0)
Kodak Lets You Print Photos From Anywhere in the House
Digital Cameras & Camcorders | Jan 13, 05
Again from Vegas CES: Kodak has unveiled an 802.11b WiFi card for its Easyshare Printer Dock Plus. With the card inserted in the dock you can send pictures from a docked Easyshare camera across your wireless network, allowing you to share, display or print anywhere the signal is strong enough. The dock also becomes a wireless printer for any 802.11b-enabled computer or Easyshare camera. It should be available in June for just under $100.
So not only does Kodak not want you to go to Wal-Mart to print your photos, they don't even want you to walk over to your computer and plug your camera in. This may fall into the category of giving us what we didn't know we needed, or just giving us what we don't really need, but either way it's a strong attack in the ongoing American war on physical activity. Its been interesting watching Kodak reinvent (and save) itself as a digital imaging company, and it's good to see that process involves innovation and not just massive layoffs.
Posted by jeffrey.trester at 4:13 PM | Comments (0)
It's A Camera! A Camcorder! An MP3 Player! (Huh?)
Electronics | Jan 13, 05
It's the DXG-305V, and of all the new digital photo technology rolled out at the Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas this week, this one stands out as than the usual "Look, we've hiked resolution by another tenth of a megapixel" fare.
It's a 5 in 1 combo: camcorder, 3.0 megapixel camera, MP3 player, voice recorder and PC camera, and it comes in a case of credit card width and length (and it comes in cool colors like iridescent blue, hot pink, lime green, and sleek silver). It should be available in February and it'll run you $129. Now perhaps you never thought you needed to listen to music on your camcorder, but then again there was a time when we were all silly enough not to realize we needed to take photos with our phones.
Posted by jeffrey.trester at 3:38 PM | Comments (18)
Apple's New Stuff: Cheap Mac, Cheaper iPod
Computers | Jan 11, 05
Confirming rumors reported here by David Ness on 1/5/2005 ( see "Is There A Mini-Mac in Your Future" ), next Saturday Apple will start selling their Mini Mac computer for $499. It comes sans keyboard, monitor or mouse, but if you have those things lying around and your looking for a cheap way to download and backup your iTunes, here it is. Perhaps even more intriguing, Cupertino also unveiled an iPod for less than $100. It's the iPod Shuffle, and it's the size of a key chain with flash memory replacing the hard drive (it comes in 512 MB or 1G models that hold up to 240 songs). It has no display, so to program play order you have to plug into your computer's USB port and use the iTunes Autofill; otherwise you can play your songs in random or "shuffled" order, hence the name.
Between these two machines Apple is offering entry into the consumer music market at bargain-basement prices, without sacrificing style. If they can keep up with demand, and if the music industry continues to tolerate Apple's proprietary standards (see "Steve Jobs, Lord of the Dance" ), then the folks who brought us the Newton may have a winning combination here.
Posted by jeffrey.trester at 4:20 PM | Comments (0)
TV Software: Gates' Guys don't know how to do that either!
Electronics | Jan 7, 05
I have two systems that run Windows Media Center. So far in their short life (about 7 months for one, 3 months for the other) they have managed to screw up much more often than all of the physical TV tape recorders that I have had over the last couple of decades. This isn't an impressive record.
And I can say, without qualification, that if my (hardware) TV recorder screwed up as often as this software, it would either have been returned, tossed out of a second story window, or used as a target to help release my anger and frustration.
I would be happy to tell you what is wrong. But I'm afraid that I can't. I can safely say it has nothing to do with time shifts in the schedule of TV broadcasts. I am willing to accept them, although in an Internet Age really smart software should be able to even deal with them. But, I'm willing to accept that neither the hardware or the software is quite ready for that.
When the screwups that I am talking about occur I am generally left with a little red dot that has an exclamation point in it on my toolbar. If I try to inquire further about the difficulty, the gist of the message that I get is "Something went wrong. You're screwed." Not much more than that. I have no clue what it is that went wrong, or why I have lost some TV hours that I was at least interested enough in to try to record them.
Sometimes it looks like the problem arose because the software couldn't reach the net. Since I have already told it what to record, it is not clear to me that any interaction with the net should be needed. Other than that, all that I can imagine is that the software truly screws up in the sense that it has memory leaks or other problems that cause it to eventually fail after being 'on' for some time.
All I can say is that this whole mess makes me lust after TiVo or some other nice hardware solution. The software just ain't up to it.
Posted by david.ness at 12:21 AM | Comments (0)
Walmart.com's $498 Laptop - Are You “Linspired”?
Computers | Jan 6, 05
Yeah, you read right. For just under five hundred bucks a Linux-loaded laptop from Wal-Mart is yours. It's the Balance CN4949 and it comes with a VIA C3 1 GHz microprocessor, a 14.1 in LCD display, a 30 GB hard drive, 128MB of RAM and an office suite from OpenOffice.org. And, oh yes, the Linspire Linux operating system, which is to say this is the Colossus of Little Rock's demonstration of just how inexpensive computing can be if one breaks out of Microsoft's orbit. The interesting question here is whether so low a price point might actually persuade PC users to try life on the Linux side. There are those who argue that the cost of paying Linux support firms like Red Hat, coupled with the Linux learning curve, present daunting obstacles which keep this free operating system the preserve of servers and system admin types. But Walmart.com is clearly gunning for the client side laptop user, banking on Linspire's user-friendly implementation and a dirt-cheap price to break through the Linux fear barrier. If it works, count on Dell, HP & Co. to take note, and for Redmond to find itself with a hell of a headache.
One other note – its interesting to consider Wal-Mart's move in the context of Apple's rumored pending release of an ultra-low-cost Mac (see David Ness's piece on this below). If this machine materializes it may demonstrate that cheap boxes can be born of even the most proprietary hardware and operating system technology. Perhaps there's a lot more room on the low end in the Windows world as well, albeit at the cost of slimmer margins.
Posted by jeffrey.trester at 9:46 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
TiVo a Go-Go
Electronics | Jan 3, 05
I do my Media work with a standard cable hookup which feeds an HP Media Center and, at another site, a Sony equivalent. Thus I can't comment specifically on TiVoToGo, a new TiVo facility. However, since this product, and others like it, share a "problem space" with existing Media Centers, it is at least possible to discuss them philosophically.
All of these new capabilities seem to be zeroing in on the general problem that we might call portable TV access and storage. While this general capability has actually been around for years, until recently costs prevented the individual consumer from being able to afford any of these systems. Now that it is simple and cheap (say $1) to write disks that hold an hour or two of TV, this has all become quite a practical thing.
First, let me say that I think that this stuff deals with a real problem for which there is a broad market. It is curious that I have had conversations in real life that happen to be reflected in the advertisements for the TiVoToGo product (the topic was getting access to some episodes of "Desperate Housewives", an example they happen to use in their ads.)
Second, the broad acceptance of this technology would certainly create a nightmare for some copyright issues. At the moment only a relatively small proportion of the population has all of the necessary capabilities available. But computers are now dropping below $500, which should increase their presence in households dramatically. As cable or satellite TV becomes more and more available the interest in these capabilities might grow quiickly. If people find them useful and, more important perhaps, comfortable to use, they may actually begin to fuel the growth. While no one may really be concerned with copyright when the numbers of users are small, one can expect the equivalent of the RIAA to begin to take a real interest if the number begin to rise to any significance.
However, there are at least a few "flies in the ointment". Most of these have to do with cross-system compatability and DRM issues. While it is certainly conceptually straightforward to move these files around from system to system, I can say that at this point I have failed utterly to be able to get disks I write on one of my Media Centers to play on the other. There could be at least two reasons for this.
One is simple ignorance. To which I will plead guilty. In my defense, though, I have decades of experience with computers and a technical education that was substantial. If these systems require that kind of background, then we are talking about a very limited market indeed. It is surely not the target of the major computer manufacturers, who will have to make this equipment work simply enough to satisfy the needs of people who don't care about the technology, they only want to use it. So even if it is my ignorance that is interfering with my use, one has to expect it.
It is difficult to guess what economic impact the existence of this technology will have. It would seem that in many cases the existence of iPods and MP3 players have increased people's interest in purchasing music, rather than the reverse. The same might well be the case here. Indeed, as I think about it, it occurs to me that I might rather have a local "DVD" store do the long-run storage task for broadcast TV. Each night the five major networks produce about 15 disks. That's 100, or so, disks per week or about 5,000 per year. Even given their density, I don't really want to bother to store all that much.
So TiVoToGo offers some tantalizing prospects. I don't think it will take long for them to either fizzle out or to become very important. By this time next year I'd expect to know a lot that is only material for speculation today.
Posted by david.ness at 11:46 PM | Comments (0)
Is there a Mini-Mac in your future?
Computers | Jan 1, 05
We appear to be floating on a sea of rumors about the pending release of an 'Under $500 Mac'. What the rumor mill is less clear about is the purpose that such a machine might serve. Will it be a "full" Mac or rather some limited version (paralleling, ugh, the difference between "real Windows" and "Windows CE")? Is the purpose to deliver a general purpose cheap Mac, or is it fill some new niche (Home entertainment, for example) which so far has been pretty much outside of Apple's domain. Or is this all an homage on the part of Steve Jobs to the Newton, since he had a reputation as the Newton-Killer?
Let's take a look at some of the possible positioning of such a product, if it is to exist.
First, there is the Mac Design. In recent times the only "miss" in Apple's design was the iMac. While some people loved it, they were pretty much Apple apologists. The rest of the world met the lackluster design (How could you design a machine at that time that didn't have a wireless mouse. The ads made it look like it had a wireless mouse, but it didn't). Ugh. However, other than that the record has been good, and I (no Mac apologist) like the look of the whole iPod package a great deal. The design is simple, effective, and distinctive enough that people actually stop you on the street and ask "How do you like your iPod?" Apparently they recognize it from the tell-tale white earplugs and wires. One role for a new Mac might be to simply carry this distinctive design into a wider equipment offering.
Second, there is the Mac PDA. If the current rumors are correct, and the device lacks a display, then it is unlikely that it is being targeted for this market (unless there is a simultaneous annnouncement of a pocket-sized display unit). While this could happen, it is far enough down the tree of assumptions to make it difficult to say much more now, in anticipation. This discussion, if relevant, can take place after the announcement. Since the PDA market seems to be collapsing on its own, it would be unusual for this to be the target market.
Third, there is the Game Mac. In this marketplace it really seems that size matters. The marketplace is quickly divided into desktop/TV monitor sized game environments, and small self contained portable environments. As is the case made in the PDA discussion above, it seems unlikely that Apple would be interested in creating a device small enough to compete with the hand-held game devices. It certainly would be possible to compete with PCs here, but, again, that would seem like a relatively low-margin proposition, at least until a substantial user community is developed to create enough demand to be worth it.
Fourth, there is the Media Center. This would be a tantalizing possibility. First, it has always seemed strange that Apple has left TV pretty much out of its picture. It clearly has lots of software and hardware capability devoted to sound processing, and to the processing of both still and animated images. Yet it has never had any particular link into the TV world where so much time and money is spent. At the moment, most of the PC based devices that occupy this market domain cost $2,000 and up. While these costs are falling dramatically as we write this, there is still a considerable opportunity for profitable entry to this market, and no one seems to have cornered this market yet. The current battle seems to be between Sony and HP, as the major manufacturers, a;ong with lots of speciality small firms that occupy most of the surrounding market territory.
Fifth, there is the Cheap Mac. Perhaps this is all in response to the growing number of PCs which occupy the $500 and under marketplace. However, this would be a more complex move for Apple than it might be for many of its competitors. The PC exists in a world where there is a lot of free software, and in this world the cost of hardware is a very componenet of overall cost of operation. In the Mac world, software tends to be more expensive, and thus hardware costs are a lower proportion of the cost of ownership than would be the case for a PC. As a result, cheap hardware, while always attractive, may not be as significant drawing point as would be the case.
Sixth, there is the iPod Manager. And this may be the most attractive of all. The iPod has been a stunning success, and where there is a lot of competitiive product nipping at its heels, no one has yet been able to take a very substantial bite of the marketplace. While it looks like the Photo iPod is turning out to be pretty much a failure, there is still a lot of opportunity to build systems that use iPods as the head end.
Posted by david.ness at 9:51 AM | Comments (0)
