bill@neothings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . www.neothings.com

OK, so I’m not trying to take on Engadget for CES show coverage or anything, but I would like to share my thoughts and observations on this years CES show.

Green Technology - There was a small collection of small companies displaying various green technologies, which attracted a disproportionately large amount of press people. Lots of video interviews going on amongst solar powered backpacks and intelligent power strips. My only real comment here is that it seems like green technology is not yet attractive enough by big manufacturers, but is something that makes for good TV.

Gaming - was big last year, and was even more so this year. Everyone from HP to Coolermaster had a live gaming network setup with players going at each other. I can’t help but to wonder if the writer’s strike has anything to do with this. Seems like there are more games being displayed than feature films at any given booth. There were lots of gaming chairs, gaming mice, gaming keyboards, you could even get owned (or in ‘leet speak, pwn3d) in a head to head with a professional gamer. Also worthy to note is the overall cinematic quality that some of the latest games are showing. Really justifies getting that 30″ PC monitor.

150″ Plasma - Yes, Panasonic really made this. There may be a new service industry born around this thing in roof removal and crane operators in order to install these things. I know this is a novelty item, but it is a strange race and I’m not sure there is a finish line.

R2-DLP - Now this is just silly, but I still want one. Not sure who made this, but in the TI DLP demo booth, there is a R2-D2 with an iPod dock, a DVD player, and a DLP projector. Any self respecting Star Wars fan recalls R2’s ability to project a hologram from the lens on his top dome. So really the question is, why did this take so long. Waiting for this 30 years, we have been.

I’ve also spent some time looking into the state of wireless HD video. There are a couple new products out, but so far no additional capabilities besides what has already been out there, just a few new faces in the game. A single link of HD video, with distances of 30-50 feet is still the limitation. Nothing that can solve the problem of whole house distribution. Honestly I don’t see wireless ever solving that problem. The whole house challenge, either analog or digital, will involve a physical connection from point A to point B.

Tomorrow will be a short day, then the mad rush for the airport. Thanks for tuning in!

This story has been all over the net for the last few days, but in case you’ve been unplugged…
Paramount and Dreamworks have announced that they would release HD movies exclusively on HD-DVD, and drop support for BluRay disc. Just when you thought the HD format war was settling down, it is rocked by this announcement.
Now the NY Times is reporting that (as we should have guessed) there is big money behind this, and it’s not a purely organic decision. Not sure how much impact this will have on disc sales directly, but I do think this is a polarizing maneuver that will have to be countered by other studios.
Personally I have no favorites in this fight. It’s just entertaining to watch how much money is spent to seize control of the ‘free’ market.

HDCP is something you should have never heard about. However due to all the issues it has caused with digital video connections in consumer electronics, it’s almost a household word. Just as the term is becoming a mainstream acronym, the case has never been stronger to eliminate it.

For those households that have not heard of it yet, HDCP is the encryption system used with HDMI and DVI digital video connections. It’s purpose is either to protect the valuable high definition content from video piracy, or if you are from the more skeptical crowd, it’s purpose is to cause the sale of more content by preventing casual video copying. Whatever you believe, it really has no effect on either.

HDMI and DVI are very high speed data pipes for uncompressed video. Handling this amount of data has pushed interconnect cables to their limit, and the task of recording video from this ‘firehose’ is not practical for consumers at this time simply due to the sheer volume of data. So for the video pirate, professional and fair users alike, the easier target is the compressed version of the video as found on the disc or in the transport stream.

Early this January, some unknown hacker has rendered whatever protection HDCP offered moot. ‘Muslix64′ created a tool to help rip HD-DVD content from the physical disc, and create unprotected copies on the hard drive of a PC. Since Muslix64’s initial work, it has snowballed from there to full HD-DVD and Blu-ray disc rips available on the file sharing scene. Although rather large and impractical for many to download, both HD-DVD and Blu-ray disc now are in the same camp as the good old DVD as far as copy protection goes. The bottom line to this development is that anyone wishing to make a copy of any content that is likely protected by HDCP over the HDMI link, is a million times more likely to grab that content direct off the disc. It’s just the path of least resistance at this point.

Perception of digital rights management, or DRM, is changing too. Consumers and governments are waking up to the limitations. The argument of ‘what about the artists?’ is being outweighed by ‘what about my music and video I payed for?’ Things are starting to play out and the content owners are aware of what consumers want. Apple has taken the public stance of willing to bail out of DRM altogether. Steve Jobs has stated that Apple will embrace a DRM free world. And now, EMI records has reportedly been in talks to dump DRM. Could this same trend extend to video? I believe so.

Why dump HDCP? Because it is not well suited to the way video is used except for the most typical applications. The most typical application would be a set top box sitting on top of a big screen TV. Even in this scenario it has seen many compatibility problems. But moving outside of that simple application, things go sideways fast. Another piece of equipment that is typically in the middle of the set top box and the TV is the AV receiver. Initially merely a switch, now the AV receiver needs to intercept digital audio traveling over the HDMI cable. This ‘repeater’ function has also been a source of many incompatibility issues. Another downside to HDCP is the legal restrictions it puts on those manufacturers that sign the agreement that comes with it. The agreement prevents any digital video from being converted to high definition analog video. This is a concern to a few million consumers with first generation HD displays. It’s also a concern to product designers attempting to create innovative products that mix analog and digital video.

So if HDCP encryption were to suddenly go away, would there be rampant video piracy and a corresponding drop in video content sales? Of course not. Would there be greater compatibility between consumer equipment? In time, yes. Would the consumer be more likely to accept HDMI? Probably.

But who could effect a change like this? Who makes the decision on whether HDCP stays or goes? I can’t say I’m exactly sure. Silicon Image, the company that brought us HDMI, might be the right folks to spearhead the change. But was HDCP (created by Intel) really to satisfy the content owners as to the safety of an all digital video world? Was HDCP created to satisfy legal obligations created by agreements with the DVD-CCA or Blu-ray disc association? Perhaps someone with that specific knowledge can say for sure. If there is some requirement for end to end encryption, perhaps some common sense could be used in revising these agreements to remove the focus from pointless pursuits. This is really in the best interest of HDMI, since freeing ourselves of these issues will benefit all.

I think we are all wanting the same things here, nice crisp clean entertainment, and for all of our toys to interoperate smoothly. The great part is we know how to make that happen. It only takes some common sense consideration, and some minor modifications of existing agreements, and the consumer electronics industry will make the rest happen. HDCP can quickly become a footnote, and one less acronym for consumers to learn to get their equipment to work properly.

I frequently get questions from my customers on when I’m going to have digital video switches. My usual answer is “when it’s a stable enough technology”. However that answer usually comes as a surprise, so I have to explain how not all of this stuff works perfectly yet. I bring up acronyms like HDMI, HDCP, blame Hollywood studios, certain IC vendors, etc. I’m sure it all sounds like excuses and all, but it’s the truth.

The folks at arsTechnica wrote an excellent article that makes the point…

On occasion we hear reports of HDCP snafus, primarily from readers who are upset with HDCP/HDMI implementation on their cable boxes. As it turns out, this stuff doesn’t work reliably for even the basic stuff like showing video flawlessly, let alone securing outputs. I even have a HDCP/HDMI issue with my TiVo, which decides that my TV is no longer secure about once a month, requiring a reboot.

In my business, I am dealing with professionals that are installing a $50K system. If I sold them something with these kind of problems they would hunt me down.

At the very least, if the consumer electronics industry is going to go down the DRM path, they need to find a way to do it that doesn’t turn consumers in poor saps buying DRM-age Edsels and signing up for abuse from an industry whose primary purpose in implementing DRM is wringing every last dime out of you, crappy experience or not.

The only problem with the above statement is that it’s not the CE industry that is pushing DRM. The CE industry is being pushed into DRM by many content providers, and providers of DRM solutions. Content providers may be paranoid about piracy, or possibly not understand the new market of the internet, but what they are not is security experts. For that they look to large solution providers (you know, the ones that make CPUs and OSes) who are happy to get involved in a proprietary encryption scheme that will generate royalties, and will be forced on the CE industry and it’s customers.

It’s a really big chess set, to say the least.

Well that’s it. Day 4 ends up to be a waste for most people. You get to the show late because you’re packing your stuff and checking out of the hotel, and then they close the show early. If you are lucky and skip lunch, you can get about 3 hours on the show floor.

In summary, I took away the following observations.

Displays - 1080p seems to be the must have feature if you are making displays, however most of the content shown was 1080i. There was even some emphasis placed on how the displays and associated video processing equipment handles DVD content. In the Meridian/Faroudja demo the even made the point that there are over 500,000 DVD titles to date, and it is going to be a long time before we can say the same with the library of HD content, in whatever form it takes. So the message I see coming from the display folks is more diverse about other features such as contrast, color, upscaling, light output, not just resolution.

Control - Small handheld touchpanels are becoming more and more sophisticated, and growing outward towards control systems, rather than just the input device.

Distributed audio/video - Distributed digital audio is getting to be a popular product. The existing players have added many new features and capabilities with online services, and there are several new competitors in that space. No new breakthroughs on distributed digital video however. The technology is there and ready to go, but there are some uphill challenges roadblocks placed upon this industry by the video content owners.

Denver - CEDIA will be here for 2 more years. It’s a bigger venue where they can get almost everyone into one big hall. Downtown, the hotels, the airport, are all better suited to handle the 25,000 people that come every year. I think next year will be even better now that most have understood the lay of the land.

Thanks again for reading my 2006 CEDIA coverage. I don’t normally post everyday in this space, but if you subscribe to the RSS feed you can be alerted when anything comes up that I write about.

-Bill

First stop today was to see the Sony Pearl, aka VPL-VW50. The demo material was a Blu-Ray disc of movie trailers. Everything looked exceptionally good. Some minor concerns was Sony’s choice of screen material for the demo. They used a Stewart Firehawk ‘gray’ screen that was supposed to have 1.1 gain. The gray materials theoretically improve the blacks, but the screen did have gain. Not sure what I should make of that, if anything. It’s just that most other demos were on a whiter screen, which will make things look different.

I also had a chance to see the Optima HD81, a 1080p single chip DLP projector. It was shown with an anamorphic lens for 2.35:1 screeen ratio, on a 13 foot wide screen. It really had a film like image, very natural. However I am one of those people that sees the DLP rainbows, and on certain scenes I was distracted by this.

Overall, I would say the performance differences between all the contenders I have seen in this price catagory are minimal. Which one you buy will come down to brand preference, technology preference, and minor feature set differences. The Sony is cheaper, but at this price level I’m not sure this so much of a cost decision. Either way, I think that the upgrading from 720p projectors to 1080p will start to happen for a lot of home theater buffs.

Some quick notes on Tivo series 3. The dual tuners are flexible enough to tune an NTSC or ATSC station, and the other tuner can send signal to both cable cards. Should be no reason to miss a show now, at least due to lack if tuners. The remote control got some tweaking with backlighting and better ergonomics. Tivo has not really been a participant in the custom installation market, and I think this show was educational for them as to what features the CEDIA crowd wants. They really don’t have any way to control the unit besides IR, but they had a lot of requests for a two way RS-232 protocol. If they do this, then perhaps the control system vendors could pull out program info and integrate that into the home system.

Slim Devices, the creator of the Squeezebox streaming music player, has a new box they call the Transporter. This thing really caught my eye. It has such a fine fit and finish, and sleek industrial design. Dual graphical vacuum flouresent displays show song information and meter movements. The center knob has a force feedback system so if you’re navigating a list, it clicks between items, but when the multi function knob is adjusting volume, it is smooth. It looks like they really spared no expense, and got everything on the interface perfected. Price is about $2K, so it’s not for everyone, but I still want one.

I haven’t really looked that close at Universal Electronics’ Nevo remote before, so this may not be news. But since I covered the Pronto and Harmony, I figured I would give UEI equal time. The Nevo has a nice large color touch panel and several hard buttons. They have a new high gloss black finish version show in the picture. I got a quick demo on the programming software, and was fairly impressed. They support bmp, gif, jpg, and png graphics for people that want to custom make their own images. Being UEI, they have a very large library of IR codes already in the database, so there is a good chance you don’t have to capture any IR, but you can if you need to. I would say that this is easier than using ProntoEdit. I would be worried for Philips and the Pronto being overrun by this Nevo, but I think Pronto is going to make a comeback and get all their software and hardware up to date soon.

Tomorrow is a short day, ending with a rush to the airport, but I’ll see what I can find in CEDIA’s final day. Thanks for reading.

I didn’t take as many pictures today, but did see some good looking products.

There are several people commenting on the new ‘cheaper’ Kaliedascape system that is about $10K. Cheaper than $22K, that is. The new model server is an attractive 1RU server unit, with expansion options up to 2.5 Terabytes. They are also jumping into the music only server product market. There have been many other products in this catagory, and it is becoming very crowded. I think they might have one of the highest priced music systems.

A new company on the scene has made their big spalsh, Savant AV. They have a complete whole house audio video system they call “Rosie” including displays, media servers, touch panels, etc. They guy I talked to didn’t have enough product knowledge to tell me too much, but did say it is Linux based. The main server has the biggest touch panel they could fit on the front, which makes a bold impression. The server has a unique midplane design, with all custom plug-able board modules. I call tell they have put a lot of work into this design. No pricing or ship dates though.

Worthy mentions are TI’s DLP demo booth. They had a rear projection display that had a LED lamp instead of the usual UHP bulb. The benefit is a larger color gammut, and less need to ‘tame’ some of the green/blue The 1080p unit on display looked great. Not much if any rainbows to be noticed.

JVC rented a small theater down the street to demo their latest displays. In the main theater they had a side by side of the DLA-HD2K and the DLA-HD10K (both 1080p). Both looked really really nice. This is LCOS technology, similar to Sony’s SXRD. The real star was a prototype 1080p projector, which is currently nameless, and should be in between the HD2K and HD10K. Colors and contrast both looked awesome. Price range is around $8K.

The other projector people are talking about is the new Son’y SXRD ‘Pearl’. Price is $5K, half of the ‘Ruby’. Since this is also a 1080p device, it gives JVC and everything DLP a run for the money. I will look into that unit tomorrow.

This is not the end all guide to the CEDIA show, but just some stuff I observed that I found interesting. If you want somne more comprehensive coverage on new products, check CE Pro’s site.

So first up, ReQuest has a new audio distribution system, the iQ. A server, a CD ripping unit, and zone players, nothing new right. Well now the system has an amplifier, and they have broken into the touch panels too. They have a small in wall 2-gang sized unit with something like a 3″ screen, and a larger table top touchpanel, about 12″. So now one stop shopping if all you need is whole house audio. I think there was a handheld too, but I didn’t good take notes.

Logitech has a new Harmony remote in a mini tablet form factor. It has about a 3.5″ touchscreen, and features all the easy setup that has made the Harmony line so sucessful. I do find it odd that they only had one unit to show, which only had a canned set of four screens. Nothing actually interactive, and they claim they will be shipping by the end of October. Me thinks that if they can’t even show a working demo, they are more than 6 weeks away from volume shipments. However I think for the Harmony fans this will be a nice upgrade.

My fan interests lay in the Philips products. They have a new Pronto out with a full VGA screen, and WiFi communications. They claim they have worked out some methods to reduce latency and misc delays inherent with WiFi, so for example you don’t end up turning up the volume to 11 when you only wanted 5. They also have a 1 U rack mount case that is the Pronto extender. This unit has several IR blaster outputs, relay outputs, and 4 RS232 outputs. This turns the Pronto into a fairly serious entry level control system, complete with two way comms. Also they have a deal with Escient so that their music server can feed back meta data to the remote. The whole solution, minus the Escient, is under $2K

Sony announce a new HD prosumer camcorder on Tuesday, the FX7. Honestly I don’t see a lot of difference between this and the FX1. It is $300 cheaper though. In either case, they are both 1080i cameras recording to HDV tape, and Firewire ports for dumping to computer. I believe that cameras like this are ultimately going to produce more HD content than what is available from Hollywood, and maybe we’ll see some decent low budget and indie films. If you give a million monkeys a million Sony FX7s, eventually you will have made all the worlds greatest movies.

The Meridian/Faroudja/William Phelps team has created another masterpiece with thier latest front projector design. It is a 1080p LCOS unit. They also have a nice anamorphic lens system for constant height projection. Honey, this is my 5 year plan.

After the show we headed out for food and drink. Downtown Denver is a pretty nice place, I would say better than San Diego. They have a lot of nice looking architechture, and it would seem that most of metro area is well restored and taken care of. There are several shops, stores, bars, and restaurants to choose form, all in walking distance. They have a free hybrid electric bus, and a light rail system that has good coverage. The rail system is being extended to the suburbs right along the freeway. They do seem to have a giant bear problem though.

I try and post some more tomorrow, but no promises.

Software entrepreneur turned billionaire turned media mogul Mark Cuban is fresh out of ideas on how to promote a movie economically. He describes in his blog how the major Hollywood studios will spend in the neighborhood of $10 per ticket sold on opening weekend to market a movie, hoping to make it up in the long run. Currently Cuban markets like the big spenders in Hollywood, with TV and print ads, viral marketing campaigns on the internet, sending the stars on talk shows, etc. However he also adds the uphill challenge of trying to convince theater owners to show the film at all, while he simultaneously releases the DVD for some features.

Rather than bring in teams of marketing experts, he turns to his blog fans. In his latest post The Movie Business Challenge, he solicits ideas…

So if you want a job, and have a great idea on how to market movies in a completely different way. If your idea works for any and all kinds of movies. If it changes the dynamics and the economics of promoting movies, email it or post it. If its new and unique, i want to hear about it. If its a different way of doing the same thing you have seen before, it probably wont get you a job, but feel free to try.

Perhaps Cuban didn’t anticipate the level of response he got, but 3 days into the blog post, the comments have grown to over 800. These are no short ‘me too’ comments, but full on essays. Over 190,000 words spanning more than 400 pages, according to my word processor. Many answers to his questions are pretty predicable such as free babysitting, lower prices, better popcorn. Some answers are more creative than others. I can’t even say that I’ve read them all, there are simply too many of them.

Mark Cuban can take away a few things from this insane response to his proposal.

• Some good ideas for marketing movies, as he was searching for.
• Figure out how to turn a hot button issue like this into advertising for his latest movie. If only he had thought to have all the commentators focus on promoting one of his current films, the gears would already be turning.
• Take a second shot at creating a new TV reality contest show, The Marketeer, featuring the top 12 posters from his blog comments all competing for the job. Each team gets a movie marketing project for one of Cuban’s upcoming Magnolia Pictures films, and the opening box office ticket sales determines the winner. This one might just work better than simply giving away one million dollars as in The Benefactor

And that is how you promote a movie without the million dollar ad budget.

In the past month or so, I have started seeing some peculiar behavior coming from the RIAA, the MPAA, and the Television industry. Their collective battle, of course, is copyright infringement. They have made many efforts over the past several years to stop this, and bad publicity has surrounded these efforts. The technical press loves to jump on stories of the RIAA suing grandmothers that don’t own computers, and 12 year old girls. I wish I could see the balance sheets of these efforts. How much money do they put into it, and how much are they successful in recovering?

Much of movie file swapping has moved to BitTorrent networks, with the popular Pirate Bay site run out of Sweden as the home for the torrent trackers. Our set of laws doesn’t fully reach overseas however. As in the US, in Sweden it is illegal to host copyrighted material, however it’s not illegal to point to where the copyrighted information is kept, which is what a torrent tracker file is. Pirate Bay claims that they are squeaky clean because they comply with all of Sweden’s laws. A couple of weeks ago, the long arm of the US law was able to reach into Sweden, arresting and seizing the Pirate Bay creators and all their servers. However that only lasted a few days, and the creators and their website are back in operation. Although they have not directly taken credit for this action, the MPAA was quick to make a press release claiming victory.

Time will tell who exactly pushed for action, and how they were able to convince Swedish authorities to make arrests in what essentially is a civil matter. In any case, this could be looked at as a mission failure that sends a completely different message than what was intended. I suppose the parties wishing to sink the Pirate Bay were hoping that successful intimidation would cause them to take down the site voluntarily, or perhaps that the police action would cause irreparable damage to the site and it’s followers. However poor planning and research has resulted in a huge exposure of the Pirate Bay to a larger audience, and the site diversifying their operations to multiple countries. It also sets the precedent that large sites with torrent trackers are free of prosecution in certain countries. I would say at best, that it was a bold move for the MPAA, that backfired severely.

And now the RIAA has a new battlefront of their own - amateur music videos. Just as MySpace.com has exploded with millions of tweeners posting pictures of themselves, YouTube.com is exploding with amateur videos of crazy kids dancing for their PC’s webcam, with their favorite song in the background. Problem is that some of these kids are creative, and can get hundreds of thousands of views of their video. The RIAA sees that as a copyright infringement case.

To the letter of the law, they are 100% correct. Hundreds of thousands views goes beyond fair use, beyond a simple video message to some friends. And the RIAA can’t choose to not chase these issues down, because that would create a legal precedent and ultimately some infringer’s defense in court. So the logical path in the legal process is to send cease and desist orders to YouTubers that are making their own music videos, and that is exactly what they have started doing. For the legal process and the RIAAs lawyers, this is what they need to do. For the music industry, this is the worst thing they can do. Take the video below for example - a funny girl doing her interpretation of Liam Lynch’s “United States of Whatever”. Liam who?, you might have just said. Same thing I said. I showed the video to my wife. She liked the song, and is going to buy the CD. That is how viral marketing works. Check out the video, before this 20 year old gets a C&D from the lawyers and YouTube has to pull it.

Not to leave out the television industry, they have their own faux pas to report. I’m not a huge Saturday Night Live fan these days, but a clip from the program made it’s way onto YouTube and Google Video and swept the nation. The clip was a rap parody called the “Chonic What? -les of Narnia” where comedian’s Chris Parnell and Andy Samberg do a Beastie Boys style rap on their way to see a movie. It was pretty funny, and as a standalone viral video skit had everything including product placement (Mr. Pibb + Red Vines = Crazy Delicious, apparently). Beyond that it was good promotion for SNL, which has lost a lot of fans in the past couple of years.

But again, the cease and desist letters flowed, and one of the funniest viral videos of the year got yanked. For the new fans of the video and SNL, quite a backlash has occurred. Many are so unhappy with NBC that they have gone so far as to duplicate SNLs efforts in their own parodies of the parody. I spotted at least a dozen. A while later NBC got somewhat of a clue, and posted the video on their own website, if you can actually find it.

The media content owners seem to know their business and their legal options pretty well. However in my opinion they don’t consider the Internet as part of their business. They have their network of distribution setup for their products, in a way that works for them, despite the Internet. So the Internet becomes a battleground for them where they fight to protect the way they do business.
For the movie copyright holders, the last couple of weeks has dealt a serious blow to their efforts. For the music industry, their new push into battle has left the flanks wide open. For Television, it’s as if they are black and white fighting color. If this were a real war, I would have to say the content owners are losing, and there is more fighting to come.