Ranting Kenya

Xbox 360 Blu-ray console shipping by September?by Thomas Ricker, posted May 2nd 2008 at 2:12AMFor all of Microsoft’s denial, the Xbox 360 Blu-ray console rumors just will not die. In fact, they are getting more and more specific. The Chinese language Economic Daily News is reporting that Pegatron, an OEM subsidiary of ASUS, has won the order from Microsoft to assemble the Xbox 360 with Blu-ray Disc ROM drive — shipments are expected to being in Q3 of this year. Now come on Microsoft, just come clean on the matter, we won’t tell anyone.

Xbox 360 Blu-ray console shipping by September? - Engadget

Honestly, even after getting burned by HD-DVD, I’d probably get one.

Tags: hd, blu, ray, xbox, 360, xbox 360

There’s been a number of rumors re-surfacing in the last couple days about Blu-Ray drives coming to the Xbox 360. Microsoft said a few weeks ago after HD-DVD officially died that they weren’t talking with Sony about it. What that really means is “we’re thinking about it, and as of this moment we haven’t contacted anyone.” So are they going to do it? I think so.

I don’t think there’s any question that the future of the DVD/Blu-Ray is limited by digital downloads. We’re already seeing a number of services available that provide just this service. Microsoft’s Xbox Marketplace, iTunes Store/Apple TV, and the VooDoo box are a few. Plus you can watch so much online for free now straight from the internet browser. And of course, there’s still Video on Demand (VOD). VOD could be a real competitor if they’d just fix the quality issue.

Anyway, many have speculated that Microsoft won’t do a Blu-Ray (BR) drive because they want people to move to the download model. This is about half true in my mind. Yes, absolutely, they want people to do digital delivery. However, the Xbox division main goal is to sell Xbox 360 consoles and Xbox 360 games. Would adding a BR drive (either internal or as an add-on à la HD-DVD drive) be an added incentive to buy Xbox 360 consoles? I believe so. Many people bought a PS3 solely as a BR player. The PS3 continues to be one of the best and most flexible BR players available.

However, should Microsoft make such a drive available, it would surely sell at least as well as the HD-DVD drive did. All those early adopters are bound to jump on it since the format war is over. True, Sony would benefit from licensing fees, but at least Microsoft would get a cut on the players. It’s also another bullet point on the Xbox 360 box (BR capability), which would eliminate the major difference between PS3 and Xbox 360.

Plus, you can look at Microsoft’s track record with the Xbox 360. They’ve bowed to the community’s pressure on multiple occasions. The HD-DVD drive was in a way, bowing to consumer pressure. As was when Microsoft released Xbox 360 consoles with HDMI ports (their story before hand was that nobody needed HDMI). And perhaps less due to consumer pressure and more media pressure, the warranty extension to 3 years for all the red ringed consoles. Is there any reason to believe Microsoft won’t flinch and release an external BR drive? I don’t think so. The only reason in my mind that Microsoft hasn’t said there will be BR drives for the 360 is they may be waiting for the cost of the drives to get low enough to be able to offer an external drive at the $199 price point.

Why exactly would I “upgrade” Windows Home Server with Vista Ultimate?

Now that my new computer has arrived, I’ve had a chance to play around with Windows Media Center included with Windows Home Premium. I have clicked around Media Center before, so I had some idea of what to expect. I would also like to preface this by saying I haven’t used a TiVo before.

Media Center immediately makes me mad angry at my cable provider. I can’t get the digital channels, and obviously that includes the HD channels. That is a huge let down, because this product is excellent. It has features for every possible contingency. The guide is snappy, the interface is efficient and good looking, the program loads quickly, it’s generally very good all-around.

One thing I’ve noticed, is that the PVR functions are working without any hitches. On my Motorola 6416 PVR, which works just good enough that I don’t run it over in my car, pausing usually skips a couple frames, same for pressing play afterwards, sometimes the sound goes down, or the picture goes wonky. None of that happens in Media Center. It’s very polished by comparison.

Sports

As a sports fan, I suppose I could complain since there’s not dual tuners for PIP or using two channel buffers. However, this is pretty much as good as it gets with only one tuner. In the sports section, you get to watch a sporting event in a “windowed” screen. But, around the reduced size video, is a ticker of the other sports games across the top. So you may be watching the Calgary Flames game, but you’ll have the instant updates for other NHL games, the NBA games, MLB, NFL, Tennis, Golf, whatever is on. If you click on one, you go to that channel to watch the game.

Also, accross the bottom, there’s a news ticker. It’ll scroll news that you’d see on Fox’s sports website. You can scroll down and click on it, and it’ll take you to the article within the Media Center interface. This is excellent since it doesn’t launch a browser so you can read it all from your couch using just the regular remote control.

Along with news stories that appear on the bottom, it’ll also have game highlight updates from other channels. Things like “Sidney Crosby Scores”. When you click on that, it takes you to the appropriate channel. If you’re paying attention, you’ll be on that channel before the televised replay. It’s an excellent feature.

Searching

My Motorola box also has searching, but it’s really an exercise in patience to use it. In Media Center, searching is easy. The numbers on your remote work like the numbers on a phone. Each number has about 3 letters. As you type, you get real-time results. So you can just type until you see the show you want, saving you the most amount of time possible. Excellent.

Searching allows you to look for shows and movies by a number of categories. Title, keyword, genre, actor, director. What’s neat is say you search for “Sean Connery”, not only to you get the movies he’s been in that are playing in the next 2 weeks, you get all the movies he’s ever been in. You’ll see all the cover art for all the movie boxes, which is much nicer than scrolling through a list of text. Now, seeing all the movies at once doesn’t sound very useful. Who cares if he was in “Dr. No” if it’s not going to be on. Well, Media Center allows you to mark shows that aren’t necessarily on in the next two week to record eventually when they are on. I believe this is a stupendous feature. I could program Media Center to record the world movie premiere of whatever movie when it eventually comes out. I don’t have to think about it.

Online Content

Now I haven’t clicked on all my options here yet, but I did find some excellent features. For instance, you can find other related videos to certain content on the web. So, in my case, I was able to find some post-game sports interviews to watch. They stream right off the web. Awesome.

Media Center Extender

I have an Xbox 360, which I’ve finally been able to use as a Media Center Extender. I didn’t know exactly what it was going to be like, especially since I’m running my 360 wirelessly now. If you look at the network connection on my Xbox, the wireless signal is only 3 out of 4 bars.

This, however, was enough for me to stream HD content (on an 802.11g wireless network) to my Xbox with no frame rate issues whatsoever. It was actually quite exciting that it worked so well.

You can stream live tv, recorded shows, pictures, and music to your extender. There are really only two limitations to this interface. You cannot stream DivX videos with the media center interface. You can play DivX videos on the actual computer in media center, or through the Xbox (but not in the media center extender mode).

The other limitation is that you can’t stream a movie from a DVD in your media center computer to your Media Center Extender. But the Xbox 360 has a DVD drive already, why would I care about this? Well, I was hoping that would work because then I’d go buy a Blu-Ray drive for the computer and I’d have Blu-Ray movies on my big screen. Unfortunately, I was not that lucky. So close!

In Conclusion

I’ve really only had my computer hooked up to the analog cable for a day now, and I’m already really impressed. I’m wishing I had another Media Center computer to hook up to my cable box and then eliminate the need to use the cable-box’s software. I’m also wishing that Canada would go cable card or something similar so that I could get my HD directly into my computer. It’s when I see the potential of things like this that I wish I lived in the US.

All in all, I’m going to be looking forward to getting a flatscreen TV and a comfortable couch/chair in my computer room.

Now that the music industry is allowing it’s content go out DRM-free, the music battle is more or less over. I believe that soon, music will be avaiable from all the major labels on all the major services. Apple pioneered the industry, Amazon was the first to fully nail it (in my opinion), and now there’s a baseline from which to judge the rest.

But what about video?

Well, the newest player out there (as of yesteday) is Apple. They started the music revolution (or was that Napster?), and now they look to duplicate that success for movies.

There’s another gorilla out there too, Microsoft (have you heard of them). They’ve been doing this for a while now on Xbox.

Amazon has their unbox service, which has already gone through some major revisions.

Aren’t we on the tail end of a format war right now?

So what’s the deal with all these services? From what I can tell, here is the list of similarities between them:

• They all use some form of DRM.
• They all work on different devices.
• They’re all rental services.
• They’re all unique, just like all the others.

So here are my quick thoughts on each service:

Apple

Pros

• Apple’s biggest advantage is that it’s Apple. Their computers continue to sell, iPods are huge, iPhones are even bigger. They have a highly desirable brand in the public consciousness.
• In a close second place, it’s next biggest advantage is that they have all major movie studios onboard. That’s better than the iTunes music store, and a great place to start.
• The quality of the HD video that Steve Jobs outlined sounded excellent. Finally the Apple TV will have some HD content, and also 5.1 digital audio.
• You can rent your movies through the simplicity of iTunes, or another excellent Apple interface via the Apple TV that you access from your couch.

Cons

• However, unlike the iTunes music store, Apple will have a much harder time since other companies are working on the digital delivery model too. iTunes was revolutionary, but others have seen the virtues of Apple’s product and business models.
• Media companies are getting more savvy, and more wary of Steve Jobs. Many feel that he unfairly compensated the recording industry with his low prices. He has been hailed for negotiating some of the most lucrative business deal for his own company (hello AT&T and the iPhone).
• Another problem, you have to purchase an Apple TV to enjoy these videos from your couch. Another couple hundred dollar investment.
• Figuring out what you can do with these videos is also a problem (but not unique to Apple). Here’s an example from Engadget.

Microsoft - Xbox Live

Pros

• Microsoft’s biggest advantage is probably that there is already 10 million Xbox 360 consoles in the wild. As far as getting content from the net to the TV with some propietary box, Xbox 360 is way out front.
• Similarily, they’ve already been selling videos (both HD and SD) on their service for well over a year now. In the Xbox 360 vs PS3 battle, a headstart is clearly a big advatage to have.
• An Xbox 360 console does far more than an Apple TV. It’s not a dedicated media extender/set-top box/service. It plays games, plays HD-DVD (with appropriate attachment), plays DVDs, and a whole lot of other stuff.
• As much as it doesn’t hurt to be Apple, it doesn’t hurt to be Microsoft. They’re huge, they got fingers everywhere, they have excellent technology, huge amounts of cash, and they’ll be in the for the long haul no matter what.
• Xbox 360s, when connected correctly, can upconvert it’s output to 1080p. This is a minor destinction to most, but not all.

Cons

• However, Microsoft lacks full studio support. Content is clearly king.
• You need to have an Xbox 360 console, and it’s more money than an Apple TV.
• You have to use these “Xbox points“. And it’s not a 1:1 ratio with real money. And you have to buy them in bulk. They’re annoying.

Amazon

Pros

• TiVo integration. What could be better than having your videos already waiting for you on your TiVo?
• Amazon got music right. Low prices, DRM-free, huge collection.
• They also have a working video service right now. As far as I know it’s PC only, but they’re in the game.
• I also think that Amazon has some unique possibilities regarding sales. They could sell you the DVD copy, while allowing you to rent or buy a digital copy that you can watch before the DVD arrives in the mail. This also eliminates that whole rental/purchase issue.

Cons

• How do you get it to the TV?
• Doesn’t have the brand recognition in this space of a Microsoft or Apple.
• There is no HD as far as I’m aware.

Final Thoughts

All in all, now that HD-DVD seems to be on its deathbed (at the hands of Blu-Ray), we’re really on the beginning of another “format war” of sorts. How are you supposed to pick between services? Some work with some ipods, some only with specific hardware, all have strict DRM schemes, none of them have anything to do with purchasing content, none inter-operate either.

However, I believe that this is a battle that we can’t afford to sit out. I’m sure if the movie studios see no sales in this digital space, it will delay the roll out of truly good download services by years. Money really is the only motivation that us as consumers can provide for large companies to develop technology and delivery methods that work for us.

This is also essentially the problem the music industry just went through. How do we trust our customers and allow them to enjoy the content they purchase the way they want?

*laughs* Actually, wouldn’t cable card solve a lot of these issues?

I finally got my hands on the iPod Touch at Best Buy the other day. It was a rather impressive device. I didn’t have any headphones, so I didn’t check out sound quality or anything like that.

My first impressions were that the screen was impressive. I have seen posts showing the superior screen of the iPhone, and I could see the iPod Touch’s screen limitation, but it was nevertheless a good looking screen.

The text entry was difficult for me on the narrow screen. The first time I tried to enter a url, everything that was typed from my left thumb was one letter off. I continued typing trying to “trust it” but it was way wrong. The wide keyboard was way easier. I did get better however in a few minutes. Not good, but better.

Scrolling through lists and using coverflow was surprisingly awesome. I was skeptical before, but it’s quite efficient.

But seriously, how awesome is the web browsing on that device. I personally have a Motorola Q. I’ve used Microsoft Deepfish, and the regular IE. Safari on the iPod Touch blows it out of the water so completely, I can’t even compare them. Some of the sites I visited loaded very quickly, others less so. I think the WiFi was a little sketchy in the Best Buy so I’m not convinced that the slowness was necessarily the iPod.

If I had any gripes about it, it would be that moving from some of the applications back to the home screen was sluggish at times, also switching from landscape to portrait or vice versa wasn’t as snappy as I would’ve liked.

All in all, when the iPhone comes to a carrier in Canada that is good (i.e. NOT Rogers), I will seriously consider it based on the iPod Touch. The web browsing alone is enough to sell me. The integration that I’ll be missing (potentially) with my computer and Windows Mobile 5/6 is the lesser evil when compared with the impressive web browsing.

I was checking out the new Dell lineup (on the Dell Canada website) of Inspiron laptops and desktops this morning when I noticed something interesting. When you upgrade either machine from it’s default OS of Vista Home Premium to Vista Ultimate, the upgrade prices are different.

Here’s a screenshot of the laptop (Insprion 1720):

And of the desktop (Inspiron 530):

You can click on either image to see a more complete screenshot.

Can anyone explain the $200 to $170 discrepancy? Does this mean that Dell is asking you to pay more for the same OS on a desktop computer instead of a laptop?

First, everyone goto the iPhone guided tour and watch the 20 minute video demoing the iPhone.

Now let me state that up until now, I haven’t been super jazzed about the iPhone. I felt it was a superior phone (assuming the keypad and network are good, and the battery lasts long enough, and the interface is as snappy as the video portrays), but I haven’t really gotten excited about it. That’s probably good since it won’t come to Canada for a while yet anyway.

So what’s changed about my opinion of this device? A lot. Here are my thoughts as I watched the video:

1. I hope the screen looks that bright outside.
2. The UI gestures look really really good.
3. Are there only a handful of engineers in America (perhaps worldwide) that can make these “Apple-esque” products? Why is it that the Mac and iPod haven’t really been matched yet?
4. Following my previous point, why did the Motorola Rokr fall so far short of even just the music capability of the iPhone?
5. I hope the phone actually runs the internet that quickly.
6. Now that Apple’s released Safari for Windows, basically as a developer platform for the iPhone, will Safari’s standards compliance spill into more websites? Could the iPhone be the device that finally forces every designer and every company to be standards compliant? Will that carry to Microsoft and Internet Explorer (pretty pretty please)? Or conversely, will Microsoft get caught at a standstill (it’s starting to look that way)?
7. The iPhone touchscreen looks real nice. What’s Microsoft’s counter again (no PUN intended)? It’s a whole table? It’s functionality is based on a huge device recognition system that’s doesn’t exist yet? It costs ten thousand dollars?
   
8. Windows Mobile Smartphone 5 and 6 look pretty sad now. Forget the touchscreen functionality, OS X blows it out of the water.
9. The earphones have a mic built-in. Sweetness (maybe this is the standard, I’m not sure).
10. Looks like the iPhone can stay in my pocket while listening to music and answering calls. Nice! And I don’t have to rely on vibrate or a super loud ringer to realize that someone’s calling me while I’m on the bus.
11. I hope the iPhone camera takes photos that look that good.

Now I’m kinda looking forward to ending my current cell contract. Maybe I’ll catch the second revision of the iPhone. You know, the one that will work with EVDO, in Canada.

On a total sidenote: Why is there no Canadian traffic data available in realtime? Is no company planning on doing this in Canada?

For all you smartphone users that are forced to use Pocket IE (like me), this is a product to check out. I’ve tried installing minimoz, with no luck, and I don’t want to pay for Opera’s mobile browser. So I’ve been using Pocket IE exclusively for the last year. It’s pretty… meh..

Microsoft Deepfish however is another story. For those of your all excited iPhone’s web browsing ability, you should check out Deepfish. I remember seeing the video on the web for Deepfish before the iPhone announcment. So I don’t know if Apple or Microsoft came up with the idea for the method of web browsing.

Basically, rather than needing to load the whole page, and scroll left and right, up and down, it loads the entire web page in a zoomed-out view. Seems the rendering engine is FAR superior to pocket IE’s. The pages look like they should most of the time.

In the zoomed out view, you can then move a box around the page, and that is the area that you can zoom in on. Images look good, pages basically stream to you, but you save so much time not scrolling around trying to figure out where Pocket IE put the link you needed.

I’ve only been using it for a short time, but so far I’d give it a thumbs up. I’ll post again with further impressions in the near future.

It has afflicted me, finally. I’ve had my Xbox 360 since December 2005, no problems. I finally fix my media streaming from my PC (that’s another story), and it freezing and dies. 3 rings of death. Anger.

I called Microsoft, it’s out of warranty. 168 dollars to fix, plus I have to pay for shipping. So here’s my dilemma… Halo 3 beta in less than a month, Mass Effect very soon, Forza 2 in May, and apparently it’s 6 weeks turnaround to get mine fixed.

So I’ll buy a new one. But, should I get a Core system, or hold out for an Xbox Elite? It’s killing me.

On a separate note, I noticed today that suddenly my DS lite has the crack on the hinge problem. This is not a good electronics week for me. My computer also crashed.