Home Theater View

Format Wars II: Revenge of the DVD

Tekrati picked up my post last week on the death of VHS, and implied that I said that Blu-Ray and HD-DVD killed off VHS.  Nothing could be further from the truth!  I often question whether there's any mass market demand for a high definition format in the first place (and before I get flamed, yes, there is strong enthusiast demand.  I certainly want to go beyond 480p).  But only 11% of households have an HDTV, and anamorphic ("enhanced for widescreen") DVD looks pretty darn good on those sets.  We're also going into the format war without clear and massive support from the content providers (many of the titles expected to launch this Christmas season for HD-DVD have been pulled).  In my opinion, the real key will be Sony's PS3, which is supposed to have a Blu-Ray drive.  Will it ship on time?  Will it be affordable?  Will it be a huge hit based on its gameplay, and build an installed base of Blu-Ray players with consumers who would be reluctant to buy a high definition disc player on its own merits?

Regardless, the Blu-Ray/HD-DVD format war is a fiasco of the first order, and doesn't affect existing formats in any way. Plain old DVD killed VHS. DVD sales are slowing, but that's just a natural consequence of format saturation; in other words, once people build up their initial library of DVD titles, they stop buying as often.  But we aren't seeing consumers holding off on DVD purchases because they anticipate the high definition release of the material. 

I was somewhat surprised that Beuna Vista's backing away from VHS didn't receive more press.  But this week Video Business reported that LucasFilm is releasing Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith on DVD only.  It seems that the recent Star Wars movie releases performed spectacularly on DVD, but did so poorly on VHS that many retailers sent back their VHS stock to the distributor and had to be destroyed.  Also worth noting: Video Business says Buena Vista will eliminate VHS entirely next year; I expect the rest of the studios to follow.

-avi

Format Wars: A Format Dies!

Yes, at long last, the industry is consolidating the number of media types for pre-recorded movies... unfortunately, it looks like both Blu-Ray and HD-DVD will be launched as is, without any compromise.  This really isn't all that unexpected, given the jockeying back and forth lately: Blu-Ray announced that its media can be manufactured inexpensively (which was supposed to be a key HD-DVD advantage) and HD-DVD announced 45GB capacity versions (nearly matching Blu-Ray's 50GB storage, which was supposed to be a key Blu-Ray advantage).  But the two formats are fundamentally different at a technical level.  For example, the laser reads a different depth for each format.  It might not be impossible to create one player that handles both discs, but it turns out it is impossible to merge the two formats themselves.

So what's dead? VHS.  I know I haven't rented VHS since the dawn of DVD almost nine years ago, but I'm an early adopter; established formats generally take a long, long time to die.  However, Beuna Vista (a Disney subsidiary) has announced that Herbie: Fully Loaded will arrive on DVD on October 25th, and on VHS... never.  Keep in mind that this was a moderately successful family film, the type of title that often makes most of its money on video sales and rentals, if not at the box office.  This is the type of title that keeps full frame versions alive.  This is the type of title that traditionally sold well on both VHS and DVD.  And yet, Beuna Vista plans no VHS version.

May the VHS format rewind in peace.

-avi 

Engadget's Walk Down Memory Lane

Engadget unceremoniously posted a version of its witty, sardonic take on all things gadgety (including some home theater content) circa 1985, as if Engadget started out as a BBS (Bulletin Board System - a pre-pre-pre-cursor to web sites).  Was today April 1, and I missed the memo?  This is brilliant, brilliant stuff. 

Of course, there wasn't much of a home theater industry back in 1985 - which in and of itself is interesting, showing just how fast this market has grown.  The best you could do then was HiFi VHS and a 35" TV -- RPTVs were just too dim to work well for most, and front projection was even more unusual.  (No flames, please - yes, I know Runco and several others were around, but this was still before the dawn of Dolby Pro-Logic surround sound).  The big home theater news was getting the new VHS VCR to stop flashing "12:00," now that VHS vs. Beta was effectively over, and the quick rise - and even faster consolidation - of the mom and pop video rental business.

Without any real home theater industry to catch my interest, my focus was on the hot technology of the day - the PC industry.  These were the days of the Coleco Adam (with daisy wheel printing and proprietary tape drives), the Macintosh launch with MacWrite and MacPaint in shades of gray, and Compuserve. When Bill Gates really was as young as he looked. The incredible move from 12" floppies to 8" floppies to 5.25" floppies to 3.5" floppies. Making your fingers forget WordStar keyboard shortcuts to learn WordPerfect keyboard shortcuts. Borland. TRS-80. Atari vs. Intellivision vs. Colecovision.

The comments section on Engadget's 1985 entry shows a clear generational divide: those who remember the era fondly, and those born too late, who are puzzled by the quaint specs and outrageous prices of the day. In its own way -- new companies, rapid obsolescence, completely new technologies -- the PC industry in the 80's was just as exciting and fluid as home theater or even the mobile phone/music/imaging/game/GPS/PDA market is today. The key difference is that those of us who remember the tech of that era were, well, geeks. You had to actively seek out information about the latest chipset or software company, mostly in industry-specific press or at trade shows (tough, but not impossible, to do when you were in high school).

The biggest difference today is not the technology, but the culture, which often takes longer to change. Today, there are Personal Technology columns in every mainstream newspaper. My mother has an LCD TV, Wal~Mart sells several Home Theater In a Box systems, my wife has a cameraphone, and I can't go to the synagogue without getting pestered with questions about which smartphone to buy or where to position surround sound speakers.  Displays and mobile devices are evolving faster than most folks can keep up with them - the product lifecycle of a cell phone is brutal. But if you're in the market today for a 42" plasma TV or a converged phone/iPod/camera, you aren't necessarily a geek - just a regular consumer.

-avi

Media Center PC, Part 2: Logitech Harmony 680

This is the second in a series on experiences using and enhancing Windows XP Media Center for home theater.

To control my Media Center, I have two remote controls: one for the audio system, and one for the Media Center itself. (As mentioned last time, I also use the media control buttons from the Logitech DiNovo media pad as a remote of sorts).  While this is an extremely basic setup - no plasma TV, no audio receiver, no light control - it still seemed like two remote controls for one desk was overkill, and I had a Logitech Harmony 680 on hand to consolidate things.  The 680 is billed as a Media Center PC remote control, and it has a few buttons dedicated to peculiarly Media Center tasks - a big green button to launch the interface, and an "info" button, for example.  Like all Harmony remote controls, the idea is that the remote programs itself based on an online questionnaire you fill out.  This limits the market for their remotes somewhat to people who have Internet connections, but that's certainly not an issue for an XP Media Center remote!

In a brilliant move, the Harmony 680 works as a stock XP Media Center remote control straight out of the box - no connection to a PC required, no configuration.  You do need to put in the batteries, but, in another nice touch, those are also included in the box.

Connecting to the Internet and programming the remote did not go quite as well.  After installing the PC software, and registering and creating an account online, I had trouble getting the site to work properly at all until I noticed that my pop-up blocker seemed to be interfering with key messages the site was sending.  Pop-ups enabled, the software tried to upgrade the firmware on the remote, but ran into problems.  After bouncing around through the "troubleshooting" option, the culprit was discovered: the version of the PC-based software (which connects the remote to the web site) needed to be upgraded, too.  None of this is all that unusual when setting up PC products or interacting with rich web sites, but it is a hazard of combining the two.

That accomplished, the next step was testing the setup. There were two main problems.  First, the remote simply didn't work for listening to the radio using the Media Center.  It seems that the "Listen To Radio" activity defaults to only three or four buttons programmed, which makes changing stations impossible.  This was easy to fix once I found the right menu option in the web setup; all the commands are pre-programmed, they just aren't assigned to the buttons for this particular activity.  Odd.

The other problem is the way Harmony tracks the "state" (on, off) of your components.  With traditional macros (a memorized string of commands), the whole sequence gets thrown out of whack if your DVD player happened to be on when you initiate the "watch a DVD" macro.  The Harmony tries to manage the state of things so that it knows what to turn on, and what not to.  If there's something out of whack, Harmony's narrated help button ("Is your DVD player on?") puts things back in order.  This is one of Harmony's best qualities for controlling a big, dedicated home theater setup, but on a Media Center PC, it was infuriating.  With a Media Center PC, you tend to bounce around a lot between activities, jumping from music listening to recorded TV watching and back. There's really never any need to turn off the "amplifier" (powered speakers, in this case).  In fact, for a PC-based system that's also used as a regular PC, shutting things down is counterproductive - when you're finished with a music or movie session, you still want the speakers on for email alerts and other Windows sounds. 

Shutting down the 680's urge to shut down was similarly easy to do online, once I figured out where in the menu setup this particular option lay.  In fact, that's my primary problem with the Harmony system: initial setup is easy.  Tweaking is actually easy, too.  It's just hard to navigate - the whole system is like a classic PC branching text adventure game from the early 1980s (yes, I know, I'm dating myself).  If you follow the path, you might get where you want.  Or not.  There's no way to see the list of choices and what options reside in which paths.  Logitech needs to spend a little more time working out the user interface kinks of the online site.

With the remote finally set up just the way I wanted, it did indeed replace two separate remote controls, and, thus far, I'm finding it about as easy to use as HP's Media Center remote for basic control.  Some of the HP's remote's buttons are easier to find by feel - the Harmony's buttons are arranged nicely, but all have the same glossy pearl feel to them, so until your fingers learn which button is where, you need to look down at the remote before pressing things. 

Conclusion

The 680 is clearly overkill for my system.  But for a larger system where the Media Center PC is the central hub,or just a small part of the home theater, it may be mandatory.  There are few real competitors: most universal remotes don't have the right button and command structure to control a Media Center PC, and touch screen remotes are both more expensive and far more difficult to program.  Logitech's online setup system does need a little work to make tweaking systems a bit easier, but the basic approach is sound.

In fact, the Harmony approach allows users to control an XP Media Center without explicit programming - just select the Media Center as a device in the questionnairre, and it will work with the 680, or the 688 (which also has dedicated skip forward buttons for use with a TiVo or ReplayTV) or even the new 880 (with a larger and more flexible programmable color screen).  The 880 may be preferred when using a large, widescreen monitor with a Media Center PC, as the soft buttons and screen are used to provide aspect ratio control - another button most universal remote controls lack.  (We have a Harmony 880 in from Logitech; a full review is planned.)

-avi

The XP Media Center PC Experience

This is the first in a series on experiences using and enhancing Windows XP Media Center for home theater.

When I needed to upgrade my home office PC earlier this year, I chose to buy a Media Center PC because of the endless testing possibilities it offers.  At the time, the Orb service, which lets you stream content from your PC to any Internet connected device, only worked on Media Center PCs (it still requires a PC with a TV tuner card to be compelling).  Media Center extenders require a Media Center PC as a hub (though I currently use an omnifi streaming media player, which will work on any Windows XP PC).  And previous experience showed that Microsoft's 10 foot user interface was the most functional and elegant solution on the market.

The Media Center PC I purchased, HP's 1095c, comes in a full sized vertical case, not a living room friendly horizontal case.  It would not fit in well with a living room based on noise, either - a fan is constantly running.  The box came preloaded with XP Windows Media Center 2003; a coupon was provided for an upgrade to the much-improved 2005 version.  The upgrade process was relatively smooth and uneventful, but required a tremendous number of stops and starts and restarts (installation babysitting). 

Since then, I have had only one area of difficulty - burning recorded TV content to DVD.  For whatever reason, Media Center appears to think that the DVD recording drivers are not installed, and gives me error messages.  Loading third party tools - such as Roxio's excellent Easy Media Creator 7.5 did not help (despite coming with its own DVD burning engine).  I also had trouble simply opening up the recorded TV folder within Easy Media Creator 7.5; the program routinely crashed.  Roxio assures me that they're working on identifying and fixing Media Center glitches in future versions of the software. 

As a PC, the XP Media Center is an able performer - fast, and versatile.  I have not tried any hard core gaming or graphics tests, but I have done video editing on it using Adobe's Premier Elements software.  As a home theater component, it is somewhat lacking, largely due to the limited screen size (currently a 19" Samsung LCD).  Audio is not a problem: I have hooked up both Klipsch's 5.1 THX ProMedia speakers and Logitech's latest Z-5500 THX 5.1 speaker systems (separate review coming soon). 

I was actually most surprised by its capabilities as a "media center."  This was unexpected, as I have reviewed XP Media Centers several times before, as dedicated home theater components in our basement (several early HP iterations of XP Media Center), and as "stereo cabinet replacements" in our living room (Gateway's sadly deceased but not forgotten 610 system).  I'm certainly familiar with the basic functionality.  But I found myself using the system far more than I anticipated - in full 10 foot Media Center user interface mode - while working five feet away on my corporate notebook.  I find myself taking work breaks by watching pieces of The Simpsons, skipping through commercials and large chunks of the programming at will.  The Media Center is jukebox central, with playlists culled from (legal) downloads and several hundred CD's burned to the hard drive.  I also queue up FM radio stations and skip through commercials (if the station has been "paused") or simply bounce around among multiple choices.

Finally, to control all this from the other desk, I have one of two choices always at hand. One is obvious: the Media Center's infrared remote.  But I also use Logitech's Bluetooth DiNovo keyboard, which splits out the numeric keybad on a separate unit.  The satellite keypad contains several useful items, including a full calculator, notification of new email messages, and media control.  I keep the QWERTY section of the keyboard in front of the Media Center (with the mouse next to it in my undersized keyboard tray), and the satellite section on the other desk next to my notebook as a remote control/information center/calculator.  The DiNovo is expensive, and was intended to be a statement of style.  However, the form factor and flexibility makes the price tag justifiable without aesthetic considerations.

Coming up:

• Adding ATI's HDTV Wonder to the Media Center PC
• Another Logitech method of remote control: the Harmony 680
• Dual purpose monitors
• 5.1 THX speaker system showdown

-avi

Woot.com Sells $1.3 million in TVs over 22 Hours

Woot.com has built on its relationship with InFocus and yesterday the one-item-per-day online outlet store flexed the power of its unique retail model: it sold out an allotment of 450 new (not refurbished) 61" ultrathin (6.85" deep) DLP RPTVs over 22 hours for $3000 each.  InFocus sweetened the deal further with a $500 rebate.  This TV typically cost $5,000 - $8,000, and includes 2 ATSC tuners, an NTSC tuner, a Windows CE-based web browser, and all the trimmings.

With woot's flat $5 shipping, this leads to some remarkable statistics:

Item Quantity: 450
Item Price: $2,999.99
Total Sold: $1,349,995.50
Last Order time: 10:05 PM Central Time (new items are offered at midnight, Central Time, so that means the entire sale took 22 hours)
Order Pace: a $3,000 TV sold every 2 minutes, 55 seconds, or $61,094.47 an hour.
Shipping Cost: $5
Shipping Total: $2,250
TV Weight (w/ stand): 189.5
Total Weight: 85,275 lbs
Rebate by Infocus: $500
Infocus Payout: $225,000

Obviously, Woot will be paying a bit more than $2 grand to ship 85,275 lbs. of merchandise direct to customers' homes. 

In marked contrast to most Woot items, the order pace started slow - very few items moved in the first hour, as customers digested the information about the set and asked spouses for permission.  If you follow the flow of conversation in Woot's forum, you find a clear pattern: initially, woot regulars whined about the high cost of the item (some Woot items sell for as little as $10 or $20).  Then, as word got out about the deal, a flurry of new customers posted their excitement and celebrating their purchasing savvy (or impending divorce due to differing monetary priorities -- in one case, if the poster is to be believed, marriage counseling would be a far better use of his $3,000 than an HDTV). Woot appears to be following the Costco model and broadening its customer base by offering higher end products to be found in what was always designed to be a bit of a treasure hunt.

The key question other retailers must ask is how this will affect pricing going forward.  Will consumers tune out Woots as one-time sales - almost like a lottery win - or will this drive down pricing as customers expect to find "finds" going forward?

-avi