• Technology

    Blu Ray is Dead

    3/10/2008 - By 

    Yes, you read that right. HD DVD got it right, by bowing out now, because they realized that they are late to market. The concept of a larger optical format delivering higher quality content may have found success 5 years ago. However, in today’s environment, it is virtually a non starter. There are two basic and overpowering reasons why Blu Ray will fail:

    1. Pornography. Being from the technology industry, it is amazing to analyze the role that pornography has played in the adoption of new technologies. Before the VHS tape, there was no easy way to consume pornography except a small pornography store on the seedy part of town. But the VHS tape changed all of that, and millions of pornography lovers flocked to the VHS format, purchasing VHS players over the Sony Betamax players.

    Here’s the key point. Pornography is the tie breaker in the classic chicken and egg problem of content and players. Let me explain. The chicken and egg dilemma is a classic marketing puzzle. Consumers were hesitant to purchase betamax players because there were not enough betamax movies to play/rent. On the flip side, the movie studios were hesitant to produce and distribute more films in the new format since there were not a sufficient number of players to monetize. And then Boom. Pornography enters. For the pornography producers, it is a huge win since their prior distribution model was inefficient and limited the size of the market.

    Hence, in the 1980’s, pornography drove the adoption of the VHS standard. Fast forward 15 years, and a new standard emerges DVD. Fresh off their VHS success, the pornography industry jumps on the new efficient standard. DVD was a quantum leap in video quality, but more importantly, dramatically reduced production and transportation costs. Before the movie industry blinked, there were a large number of DVD players ready to break the chicken and egg paradigm once again. DVD was a huge success.

    Now shift to the present. The pornography industry was not moving to either the HD DVD nor Blue Ray. One simple reason the internet. The internet has already leap frogged either optical format. Despite the fact that Blue Ray is the sole HD DVD format remaining, it is hard to imagine a plethora of new pornography introduced in the new format. The reason is efficiency of distribution. It costs a lot less to distribute a movie over the internet than through an optical disk. The business risks are less, and the end user cost is also less. It’s just not going to happen.

    2. Video on Demand. On top of this Blue Ray has another huge competitor – Video on Demand. It’s over game, set and match. Video on demand allows one to watch a full HD movie without any new hardware of software. It is amazing! To watch a HD movie within seconds in your own living room that almost rivals the quality one gets in the movie theater.

    It is the esssence of efficiency. Straight from the movie studios to my house. They don’t have to stamp the movie millions of times and then place them in boxes, and then shipped out to individual stores. Think about all of the people that are eliminated from the distribution chain. Companies that stamp disks, companies that make boxes, shipping companies such as Fed EX, retail companies such as Walmart and Best Buy, and movie rental companies such as Blockbuster and Netflix. All of these companies will lose with the acceptance of HD Video on Demand.

    And who is the winner? We are! Due to the inherent efficiencies, Video on demand will be less expensive. But that’s just the beginning. The efficiency should also allow movies to be made available sooner. And in the longer run, a much wider selection will be available. This is a key point. There is a cost for BlockBuster and BestBuy to continue to carry an old movie like CaddyShack in their stores. In addition, there is downside risk for the movie maker if these units stay on the shelves too long. All of these issues disappear with Video on Demand. Even in the medium term, Video on Demand will have the best selection as well.

    I honestly see no way that Blue Ray can compete with these two large market dynamics. Rest in peace, Blue Ray.

    3 Comments on “Blu Ray is Dead”

    1. You make some very valid points. I think the only thing that can save Blu-Ray is the tight DRM restrictions that we are currently seeing in digital content. It’s getting better, however there are still some providers that limit the number of watches, or limit to 24 hours.

      In addition, easy access to the media room. There is Apple TV, XBox is making waves, Tivo is even making an aggressive move to put downloaded content right to your TV easily. Home theaters are becoming more and more popular, if digital media is going to win you have to give easy access, to non restrictive, high quality (HD) content. There are a lot of problems with this we face. Mainly the ISP’s restricting downloading, and wanting to prioritize traffic. It’s not going to work if this behavior is allowed. No one wants to wait 5 hours for a download, then face DRM restrictions, when putting in a disk is less painful.

      We will get there, but it will be painful.

      Reply

    2. I have Die Hard 3 on DVD. I really liked it. It was better than I thought it would be. I watched “Elizabeth” The Golden years in HD Saturday night. Good movie. However, It is not any better than the movies in SD DVD played in the correct screen format!! I have viewed a few movies of the Blue Ray DVD’s,

      They are substantially better in quality! I mean they rock!! The first thing you will notice is that everything is way sharper, and because of the sharpness the picture has great depth, almost like your are looking into the picture rather than just looking at the picture. HD on demand will succeed purely because of convenience, provided they get the pricing right. But for those that want quality, Blue ray will succeed also. I think your blog is inaccurate about the success of VHS. The success of VHS was not mainly because of pornography, In the beginning, I believe VHS was developed by Matsushita, division of Panasonic. (I could be wrong) Then Sony had there betamax technology already working in the commercial field for a few years. Movie Studios liked the idea of selling there movies after the box office run, So, they approached both Sony and Matsushita on marketing under both formats. However, (here in lies Sony’s mistake and Matsushita’s smart marketing, Sony refused to license their Betamax technology to other electronic Mfg’s. Matsushita however sold the hell out of there licensed VHS technology to anyone who wanted it, and at a very attractive price I’m sure. Because in a very short time the market was flooded with VHS Recorders and players many portables also, I know I had a camera, portable recorder/player and a separate VHS recorder in my family. It was so much better that 8mm movies. So with the proliferation and price crashing do to competitiveness, Sony lost big time.

      So to some up the VHS thing: It was the ability of Home Made Family Videos, plus being able to record your favorite movies and TV shows (Unheard of at the time), Commercial Market (Corporate Training, Duplicators and Marketing tapes), then, the movie studios stepped in big time. Everyone wanted a VHS tape recorder/player. Soon afterwards the movie rental market was born, Rental is why and when pornography on VHS was born! There was no internet back then, so distribution was difficult, once Mom & Pop video rental stores exploded in growth, and this happened fast, that’s when the Pornography market started to proliferate. So they were a small player in the big picture of things. How do I know that? I had my own company Microright back then and I marketed our software to video rental and retail stores. I worked all the VSDA (Video Software Dealers Association) shows in Vegas for 4 years. 90 percent or better of the people marketing to the existing rental and retail stores were from the Commercial and Movie Studios. With only a few booths from the pornography market. As the years went on you began to see more and more pornography at the show. So I really doubt that pornography had anything to do with driving the adoption of VHS, just the opposite.

      Here’s my take on Blue-Ray: Blue-Ray will only succeed if the pricing and technology of players will be both attractive (under $200.00) and available from a plethora of Electronic MFG’s. I just found this out, Sony does not own or did not design Blue-Ray, it was Panasonic. So Sony wanted that technology in there Playstation 3 player. They are the ones spending the money to push the blue-ray market. Not sure how the Blue-Ray market or how Sony’s cards are in the mix of things in regards to Panasonic selling the Blue-Ray technology to other mfg’s., that is critical to success in my opinion. Then you have the computer market which is a whole other market unto it’s self.

      Reply

    3. Great points as usual, Rob. I think eventually the disc will go the way of the cassette tape, but I think that’s a ways off. I think the market for DVDs is going to be around for a long time.

      First, people like to have libraries of movies they can just put in whenever. That seems to be more convenient for the masses right now when it’s a physical DVD as opposed to a huge hard drive. Plus DVDs are more portable, easier to share, easier to play in your car on a long road trip.

      Second, there’s a huge segment of the market that doesn’t have access to on-demand video yet, cannot afford the level of service that brings HD on demand to their TVs instantly or they are uncomfortable with using it.

      Third, services like Netflix have shown how people like to have DVDs coming into their homes that they can view whenever in the 21 seconds it takes to put the disc in and get it going. When the delivery system becomes very reliable and ultra easy to use — think netflix where you click on a movie and it zaps down to your TV in stunning HD quality.

      There is still mongo cash to be made of the Blu-ray format even if it’s big-profit lifespan is only 5 to 10 years.

      Reply

    Leave a Reply


  • Technology

    The Future of the Internet

    1/28/2008 - By 

    I’ve had many thoughts and discussions about the internet and its enormous untapped potential. It’s been a little over 10 years since the internet boom began. Yet, the internet has just begun to impact and influence our lives. No one can predict with any accuracy the future of this technology, but I hope one day, people will read this article and say that I got it right.

    The internet is still extremely PC centric. PCs have evolved substantially in the last 10 years in order to accommodate the new demands of internet applications. PCs have more memory and hard drive space to accommodate sound and video which has now become ubiquitous. More importantly, broadband velocities have been following Moore’s Law. Cable is being replaced by fiber as the fastest and most reliable broadband options, opening up even more potential.

    So that’s the good news, but there is a key evolution that will take place. The internet will begin to address non PC devices, as it continues to add information and productivity into our lives.

    One transition is already happening. The cell phone. Personally, I find my cell phone more of an annoyance than a productivity tool, but I know that I am definitely in the minority. Cell phones are in its infancy of internet adoption. In the longer run, the actual phone calls will occur over VOIP and all of the cell towers will be internet towers of which voice is just one of its function.

    That said, the cell phone is limited from an internet perspective. LCD clarity is also on Moore’s law, and the number of pixels per inch continues to grow. My latest portable has a 12″ 1280 X 800 screen. It is very nice and clear, but it is difficult to imagine a 1024 X 768 3″ screen on a cell phone. Therefore the cell phone will not play a primary role in the evolution of the internet.

    But there’s another development that is begging to happen. The television. The TV and internet have yet to intersect. In fact, it is infuriating to move content from one medium to another. Even today, if I make an HD movie, there is no straight forward way to play it on my HD TV. Yes, I could pluck down $2000 for an HD PC, and another $1000 for a HD DVD player, but it should not be this difficult nor expensive.

    The reality is the TV is begging for the internet to arrive. Imagine a world where we can download any movie any time. Pay for it, and you are watching instantly. The hold up is the content providers. It scares the crap out of them to provide content over the internet. Although this hesitance has delayed the adoption of the internet on the television, it cannot stop it it. Once this happens, PC sales will go DOWN. The reason is that many of the things that people do on the internet, they will now be able to do with their television Get the weather, sports scores, and stock prices. It is easy to imagine a day, when you are watching your favorite TV show, and there is a customized ticker with your personalized latest news on the bottom.

    The key to the success of this category is the user interface. A television does not have a keyboard, and the keyboard will never be a main stream feature for a television. Therefore, the mouse and keyboard paradigm must be adapted to a TV remote control. There will be some innovative small company that finally figures this out. This will enable a PC to finally get integrated into the television.

    At this point, the amount of incremental cost to add a PC is small. First, remove all optical devices. Next, the processor does not need to be a power house since the television will not be doing much computing. Use the latest flash technology for storage, and pronto you are done. Over time, it should not cost more than $25-50 to put a PC into a television.

    Once this happens, a special breed of internet sites will begin to spring up made specifically for TVs.

    The other dimension is the cars. Much of the same type of thinking will apply, but the screen real estate will be much smaller than a 1080i television. I do believe that in the next 2 years, it should be possible to make a 1024 x 768 5 inch screen, which is roughly the same size as a GPS. But of course, it does so much more. This device will replace streaming FM radio with streaming internet. It will replace the GPS, and of course, customized news, stock quotes, and traffic all on your car. It will bring the GPS to a whole new level.

    I grew up in the PC business, but the PC business spawned a new business called the internet. And now the internet will spawn some new and beautiful businesses for the television and the car PC. I can’t wait.

    One comment on “The Future of the Internet”

    1. I think your comments are insightful. What occurred to me while reading them was the idea of putting the Wii motion-based controller interface into TV remote controls so you could use them to point like a mouse.

      Reply

    Leave a Reply


  • Music - Technology

    MP3 Sparks

    12/9/2007 - By 

    Recently I wrote about Amazon.com’s new MP3 download site. I still like it, but I tired of it quickly because the selection of music is lacking. In the space of a month, I downloaded all of the music I wanted, but I wanted more, and they didn’t have it. For example, everyone was talking about the Eagles latest CD, but Amazon did not have it.

    Which brings me to MP3 Sparks. This is an AWESOME site. They have an amazing collection of music. Every genre of music including Brazilian music. They have it all. Then all of their music is in MP3 format. This is the most important point. I want to listen to my music on ALL of my musical devices. And lastly, their cost is dirt cheap. I download at 192 kbps, and the cost is about $2 / CD. That’s about 1/4th the price of Amazon, and 1/5th the price of iTunes.

    The the huge question is how can they sell the music so cheap and is it legal? The answer is YES, it is legal. This site is based in Russia, and they are exploiting a loophole in their contract with the record labels. Instead of paying a fixed royalty, they are a paying a percentage. Hence they are able to drop their prices. Basifcally, the record labels made a huge mistake, but it is not illegal.

    In fact, it is great. At $2/CD, you look at music totally differently. Even if you are not sure whether you might like it, you download it anyhow. At $2/CD, it’s always worth a listen. At dinner conversation, I am always quick to ask people what music they like. Then that night, I download all the music, and have a listen the next day. I love the immediacy of MP3 download. No getting in a car, and driving to the store. You just buy and less then 5 minutes later, you are listening to music.

    Of course, the record labels HATE this site. In fact, it used to be called AllofMP3 in 2006. The record labels were unsuccessful in shutting them down. But they applied pressure on the credit card companies, and eventually allofMP3 was unable to accept credit card payments. I personally thought they had shut down, until a friend told me last month of its reincarnation into MP3 Sparks. In fact, my user name, and balance were still in tact! I still had a $28.00 balance, which is right about 14 CD’s.

    Although I love this site, their business model is flawed. They really should raise their prices. First, they need more money for marketing. Their awareness is poor, and a little money could pay back in spades. Second, their business model is unsustainable. At some point, the record labels will rightly close the loop hole, and they will need to raise prices. Either way, the artists are not receiving a fair compensation for their efforts. If it were me, I would raise my prices and over pay on my contractual obligations to the record labels.

    Check out the site. Their infrastucture is very solid, and I have never had any problems downloading music. Note: I did have some problems using Amazon’s downloader one time. Who knows how long they will be around.

    17 Comments on “MP3 Sparks”

    1. I’ve been using mp3sparks for a few years now. I’ve spent so much money there, I can’t even believe it. Anyways, they stopped their payment options for a while, and then were able to accept Mastercard and diner’s club. Having a Mastercard, I was happy. However, today, I wasn’t able to make a payment with this card and their payment options appear to have changed again. It appears (once you click on either Mastercard or diner’s club) that Visa is also an option again. I tried both visa and MC, and had no luck.

      Do you know if it’s a glitch or if they no longer accept these cards?

      The reason we were unable to pay with visa for a while was because the record companies applied pressure to Visa and Visa decided they would no longer let people use their card for purchases from this site. I wonder if MC is doing the same thing.
      Thanks! If you know the answer, please send me an email.

      Reply

    2. Hi everyone and thanks for visiting my site.

      I believe that right now, MP3 Sparks is having some problems. I cannot get it to work. However, I found a new site that works with Visa just fine. MP3fiesta.com . Check it out and enjoy.

      Reply

    3. Hi
      I have got money in my MP3 Sparks account but cannot access the site, do you know of any problems

      Reply

    7. The site seems as though it’s back up and running. Can’t see any information on their site as to why it was down for several weeks, but glad to see it’s up and running again. The remaining balance I had on my account prior is still available. Haven’t tried to replenish my account so not sure how that will go.

      Reply

    8. Tried to load CC at Mp3 sparks today to see if it would work, Nope. Are you still using MP3fiesta.com without problems?

      Reply

    10. Thanks for the info. I’ll try that website instead. Any music recommendations? I have an ecclectic style that includes Jesse Cook to Reggeaton to Country. Always looking to add to my collection of unknowns.

      Reply

    11. My mate says he thinks the music quality from Fiesta isnt as good as mp3 sparks. Anyone agree?

      Reply

    12. I’ve switched from mp3sparks/allofmp3 mp3fiesta as there was so many problems with payment methods with sparks.

      Fiesta is fine but I’ve found they lack the depth of music and new albums aren’t released on it as quickly as sparks.

      But they take debit cards so its all good!

      Reply

    14. Ok, enough of this crap. While you guys seem to be happy buying stolen albums, all you have to do is do some research on MP3 Sparks and its affiliates to realise its run by the russian mafia. Why do you think all the major record companies sued them for over $1 trillion dollars? These idots have strong links with phishishing scams and child pornography and if any of you fools have given your credit card details to MP3 Sparks then you people deserve all the shit that comes your way as your card details are probably cloned by now.

      Anyone who supports MP3 Sparks is an idiot especially the dude that wrote the main article as he clearly has no idea what’s going on. I for one hope MP3 Sparks gets closed down ASAP, and you are all the more stupid for accepting a cheap download, specially due to the links with organized crime which this company clearly has.

      Reply

    17. Maybe goulash works for the RIAA 🙂 I’ve used more then one credit card with mp3sparks/allofmp3 and never had any problems. I’ve never heard, until you made the claim now, that they are affiliated with any mob activity. The only claim I’ve heard, as was explained in the article, is that they are NOT an illegal site and at worst, are operating in a gray zone, and eventually the laws will probably be changed and they wont be able to operate this way anymore. I have to admit I’m kinda pissed off at them. I haven’t been able to add any money there for over a year and they basically haven’t done crap to try and make it easy for me to do so. All they have is a link to allpay.cc and the whole site is in russian – you’d think in this whole time someone there could put up a page in english explaining how i can give them my money through allpay if they cant manage to accept credit cards. I’ve basically given up on mp3sparks. It’s really too bad – i really like them. but they really dropped the ball.

      if you want a cool website for buying music that’s actually fair to the artist, check out magnatune.com. You can pay $10/mo for all you want downloads or download albums at $5 a pop. You can get whatever format you want including uncompressed WAV and HALF the money goes to the artist. If you want to screw the RIAA legally and not screw the artist, this sounds like a good way to do it.

      Reply

    Leave a Reply


  • Technology

    Two Great Technologies

    11/12/2007 - By 

    The beautiful thing about technology is that it has a constant and incessant need to continuously improve itself. I am happy to say that two new recently announced technologies are awesome, and give us a glimpse of how technology will further influence our lives.

    My Yahoo Beta. I have been a user of of My Yahoo for close to 10 years now. Well after 10 years, it is certainly worth the wait. I use My Yahoo at least 2-3 times a day. It is my prefered way of getting news, sports scores, weather reports, stock quotes, financial news, and currency rates.

    The new My Yahoo beta adopts many of the latest Web technologies particularly Ajax and Javascript. This gives the application a much newer look and feel. In addition, Yahoo as added many new themes making the application far better looking than its predecessor.

    If I had one complaint about My Yahoo was that there was a lot of wasted space. Since I use the application so frequently, I want all the information easily accessible and well organized. The new My Yahoo beta does all that and more. I chose a 3 column layout, that displays a ton more information than my prior layout. In addition, each section is actually a widget, that you can drag and drop anywhere on the page. This makes it a snap to rearrange the page so you can put the most important information where you want it most.

    Yahoo also added better email integration. I don’t check my secondary email account (chengrob@yahoo.com) because I get so much spam, but now the email is integrated directly into the application so I only have to open the email client when I actually have an email!

    But I saved the best for last. This version also supports RSS feeds. I am now able to track the news of all of my favorite bloggers from my home page. Each new blog entry shows up with all of my other news as it is written. One little thing that shows how technology keeps me more productive and informed.

    I am also excited about Amazon’s new MP3 download site which, to my knowledge, is the only one of its kind. I have never used iTunes and now I never will. The reason is iTunes is only good for playing music on your PC and on your iPod. Anything else is difficult if not impossible. I want to play music on my stereo in the US and also in Brazil. Plus in my BMW and my Astra. So instead of iTunes, I went to the local Best Buy every month and bought several CDs and then ripped them as soon as I got home.

    Amazon’s new service is AWESOME. You can download all of the music in MP3 format and without any restrictions. This saves me a bunch of time, allowing me more time to listen to music rather than ripping it. But it does not end there. Amazon has done a great job organizing the music to make the shopping process more pleasurable. When you search an artist, they have detailed biographies about the bands and artists. They are all very well written and give an inside look on the lives of the musicians.

    The cost of each CD is somewhere between $7-$8 for a whole CD or $.89 for a particular track. That’s right, it costs close to 1/2 what you pay in Best Buy, and $.10 less than what you pay at iTunes.

    In addition, Amazon makes it really easy to purchase and download. They integrated their One Click technology into the MP3 download site. So literally, if you see a disk that you like, you click and 5 minutes later it is in your PC ready for listening.

    You can also preview any of the songs directly from your PC without a download. Plus just like all things Amazon, the site is very well organized and one can view recommendations based on previous purchases, the most popular artists, albums and downloads.

    I have literally spent hours on the Amazon site downloading MP3’s because the process is so enjoyable. I find myself listening to more music and certainly spending a lot more money. Great job, Amazon.

    Leave a Reply


  • Photos - Slide Show - Technology

    PC Pitstop goes to Boston

    10/10/2007 - By 

    Since PC Pitstop is a virtual company, twice a year everyone gathers for the company meeting held in a difference locale. This fall we had the company meeting in Boston. We had three days of meetings and the team outing was a Red Sox game right before the playoffs began. The weather was close to perfect although it showed a little toward the end of the game. The photos were taken by Sheila and Sandra. Sheila wrote all of the captions and then I put it all into LyteBox. Cool.

    One comment on “PC Pitstop goes to Boston”

    Leave a Reply