Thinkcorps

(11.2003) Londer Vineyards is a boutique winery in California’s Anderson Valley. Provided: Marketing consulting services.

from Reuters via Wired News: Digital Networks: PC to Stereo

Just reading this article gives me a headache. The gist? There are a lot of crazy options for listening to your digital music collection throughout your house. The article is a simple rundown of devices, with no advice as to which is best, or what to consider when building a home media network. In short, it sucks.

It’s perhaps the reporter’s conclusion that gets me, however.

“Of course, music fans without thousands of dollars to spare could run Belkin’s Audio Y Cable Splitter ($7) between the computer and the stereo—a cheap, if inelegant, solution. ”

What’s “inelegant” about a solution that’s cheap, functional, and doesn’t require fumbling with a manual, file formats, downloading software upgrades, antenna jostling, head-thumping, and cursing?

There is a perception—mostly in the media—that all new ‘gadgets’ are good. This is because writers are paid to create stories regardless of their importance, and because they don’t test the products, or even need them. There is no perspective, no context. No pushback.

Let’s get down to it: gadgets are worthless. They’re eye-candy, trinkets. What you really want—what you need—that’s called ‘gear’. Maybe I’m being too subtle?

I don’t believe that there’s any one ‘best’ solution, and I don’t believe that expensive begets quality. Every user’s situation is different: their equipment, goals, experience, and budget. A truly ‘elegant’ solution should fit a person’s needs, not the needs of Best Buy.

The home media landscape is extremely complex—read the article again, then ask yourself, What should I do when building my home media network? So many technologies and devices are popping up, providing us all so many different options, that I think it would behoove us all if we actually tried to provide these manufacturer’s some feedback, not only on the devices we’ve tested, but on the features we’d like to see integrated into the next generation.

I guess that’s what I’d like to begin doing here on this site. It’s time for a little pushback.

Grado Labs SR-60 (http://www.gradolabs.com/)
About the best headphones (open air) that you can buy for the money (~$65). Sweet cans, good for home/office use, where you don’t want to block out ambient noise. The cable is quite thick on these, making them less than ideal in portable situations.

Shure E2c (http://www.shure.com/psm/earphones/default.asp)
These sub-$100 ‘phones have been getting nice reviews. They’re on my list. Because they are in-ear, they block ambient noise very well. I’d be a little cautious taking them out walking (some times, hearing traffic is a good thing), but many folks swear by these for traveling.

Etymotic ER-6 (http://www.etymotic.com/)
Comparable to the Shure E2c’s, Etymotic also makes superior in-ear headphones.

Have a superior product you’d like to recommend? Add your comments below.

Good point here by John Battelle/O’Reilly about the future being in networked applications. And if John is right, and the best networked apps are media-centric, then how should that affect our digital devices?

The current push (led primarily by media co’s) is to lock down our device hardware and DRM our content. I have to believe that these initiatives significantly diminish possible network effects.

O’Reilly on Tech/Media Future

CNet reports on the FCC’s approval of the broadcast flag proposal, which prevents cosumers from sharing ‘pirated’ copies of digital TV shows. This applies to digital TV and new equipment must be able to read the broadcast flag.

Apparently, you haven’t heard: I have a 1.6 Gigahertz processor in my PC —and I’m nothing but old news. I have 100+ Gigabytes of storage and 512Mbytes of RAM. And again, my equipment blows.

Bear with me as I gase into my crystal ball. Someone, probably in Finland or the Ukraine, is going to write a nice little Linux app which gets ported to Windows in 3 days and blogged and Slashdotted and then makes the New York Times which has crafted some oblique and not all that well reported angle on where did all the good TV go now that everyone is an Internet pirate? And this app is going to rip that broadcast flag right out of the data stream, perhaps even re-encoding the entire file, which just isn’t a big deal because that little application is built around a batch function, so I just crank it up, feed it the 12 new episodes of Smallville, CSI, or whatever else garbage I happen to have found that evening, and let it run ALL night.

Did I mention that I have Gigs of cycles and bytes to spare?

FCC moves to squash digital TV piracy online | CNET News.com

There’s a new kid on the block, Audio Lunchbox. Cast in the same mold as Apple’s Music Store but tailored to indie labels, Lunchbox sheds a slightly clearer light on the whole a la carte MP3 business model (no Apple worship).

Now, I really like the presence of Lunchbox in the market—diversity is good. Their site has some design issues, but those can be worked out, and its library is small, but that will grow. My main issue is that I just don’t think their product is that good a value.

Now despite all the talk of market-making for digital audio downloads, we’ve really got 3 camps: Apple DRM, Microsoft DRM, and no DRM. And these 3 camps can really be broken down into 2: proprietary and open formats.

The Apple Store sells protected AAC files, which only work through iTunes or on the iPod. Not so flexible, even with the loose DRM. You also can’t resell your tracks, which is HUGE.

Buymusic.com, Musicmatch, and others all sell protected WMA files, which don’t work in iTunes or iPod and pretty much lead you into the waiting arms of Windows Media Player 9, which I’ll let others argue about. The DRM here can be more restrictive than Apple’s.

Now, for my money, the best of the lot are Emusic and Audio Lunchbox, both of which sell unrestricted MP3 files. Emusic used to have a monthly “all you can eat” plan, now a monthly fixed # downloads plan (which is still damn good). Lunchbox is a la carte—.99/track and $10/album on average.

On quality, I can speak only to these two stores, since I have yet to find an album I want on Apple’s store. Emusic sells VBR MP3’s which tend toward 160Kbps (my experience only), while Lunchbox sells 128Kbps MP3’s (no VBR).

Of course, I also like the indie bands and labels these two services cater to. If you’re a BigMusic fan, then you’re out of luck. Still, you should take the time to peruse their aisles, you still might dig up something good.

Can you float my boat for .99 cents?

When choosing where I shop, I have to rule out the stores selling DRM-protected files.
1. Proprietary formats preclude me from using files on whatever device I choose. MP3 is the most open solution right now. Hopefully, Ogg will follow.
2. Cost is just too high. I will pay $1 for my musical freedom in a CD.
3. Quality is questionable. Why not sell higher bit-rate files (or higher quality in general)? Fear. The industry is still short-changing you, you just don’t realize it. I will pay $2 for the best available quality song.

So, I’m pretty much back buying CDs now. I hate myself for saying this, but check out the online shop at MTV.com. They actually have some really good deals on CDs (<$11 for some titles).

For downloable music, I like the Emusic model best. It fits my tastes, my budget, quality is good, format is ubiquitous, and my consumer rights remain intact.

I am kinda bummed that I’m not doing NanoWriMo - national novel writing month – this year. I did it last year, and it was quite good. Not that I’m into the commiseration, yahoo groups and all, I just liked writing every day. I think I only missed a couple days over the course of the whole month, and if you’re budgeting 1500 words per day, missing a day adds up fast.

I still haven’t read (completely) what I wrote and I probably never will, but that’s ok. I wrote 50,000 words in a month. And I can do it again, too, dammit. Don’t push me. :)

A short analysis on the US Copyright Office ruling that Lexmark cannot prevent reverse engineering of its printer cartridges under the DMCA, since by selling its printers, the company made its printer/cartridge control chip “readily available”.

The suit isn’t over yet, but it’s nice to see that the judge applied the concept of interoperability which, suprisingly enough is protected under the DCMA. [Ouch! Lexmark, that musta hurt.]

Let Reverse-Engineering Go Forward

Many people are surprised by this, but I have to agree with Jobs, there’s little market for media-center PCs, outside of dorm rooms and cramped manhattan apartments—both of which are awash in activities far more immersive than watching taped sitcoms on a 17” LCD.

The truth, for Apple at least, is not so much whether an iMediaPC would be cool, it’s whether it would make $$. Consider the Gateway DVD player with the streaming media functions—it’s $200, people. Apple can’t beat that.

The point being that it is extremely easy to design new circuit boards and pop chips on them. And upgrading functionality through firm/software (read: Linux) is easy too.

It’s becoming clear that the PC, though still necessary as a central management/storage device, is actually too complicated for most media applications. An entertainment center is ruled by the remote—if you can’t fit your interface on it, forget it.

Apple says could move to Intel, but happy with IBM

I like this item by Jeff Jarvis, in which he expounds on the possibilities inherent in a world where AOL subscribers are spending 60-70% of their time with audience-generated content.

I think most will agree that the foundation of this “citizen’s media industry” is already in place—blogging tools, search engines, digital cameras and cellphones. But what’s most important is the implementation of social-type networks—increasing not only the ease, but the importance of linking resources together. Hell, I’m doing it now with Movable Type using html links, xml, and trackback.

And for a change, all this power doesn’t come at a huge price. These technologies are all democratizing the space for individuals. Even I get a little excited wondering what’s next.

The citizen’s media industry