Digitalwerks

An interesting bit of news from the doom9 forums.  As anyone who is testing the Windows 7 beta has discovered, and as the above photo shows, Microsoft is breaking with their tradition and including more codec support in the upcoming Windows bundle.  Previous Windows versions did not even include MPEG-2 decoding, which proved to be quite mystifying to many users trying to watch a DVD in their computers for the first time.  And, needless to say, Microsoft stayed far away from any of the more esoteric codecs, including the key MPEG-4 ASP implementations such as DivX and Xvid.  

However, the beta of Windows 7 includes the ability to play back DivX, and Xvid, and even the next generation MPEG-4 AVC, better known as h.264.  Why is this important?  A couple things.  First, if anybody needed further proof that VC-1 is essentially dead in the water, this is another nail in its coffin (to mix macabre metaphors).  Secondly, and more importantly, it appears that Microsoft is jumping on the bandwagon of broad interoperability, allowing Windows users to play back a range of video formats right out of the box, something that will surely be a boon to less sophisticated users who just want to be able to watch something without having to even know what a codec is, much less a container format, audio stream, etc.

Even more intriguing is the news that Microsoft may be working on an implementation of the matroska container, or mkv for Windows 7 (according to madshi and haali on doom9).  For the file-trading community, this is quite significant.  H.264 has a ton of “legitimate” uses today, notably in higher quality Flash videos on YouTube and elsewhere.  MKV however, is almost exclusively used currently by pirates, particularly those sharing HD video.  Blu-Ray rips and high def TV captures are generally distributed as x264 encodes with AC3 audio in mkv containers (both 720p and 1080p), and while HD video content is still a small minority of what is shared relative to standard def video, it is growing and is likely to become the dominant format before long.  Maybe Microsoft is just getting back at the movie studios that went with Blu-Ray instead of the MS-backed HD-DVD formats, but regardless, it would be good news if mkv support signaled that Microsoft was thinking about their users first, and video business strategies second.

It’s been an incredible time for the boxee team, coming off their triumphant CES showing.  They also just got a very favorable article in the NYTimes.  From my own experience working with them in Las Vegas, I can attest to the fact that there were many, many people eager to partner with boxee, some of them representing consumer electronics hardware manufacturers.

So, it’s not very surprising that boxee’s CEO Avner recently threw open the question of whether or not his team should pursue a hardware solution for the boxee software.  Currently the software only runs on Linux and Mac computers and AppleTV’s (although in a somewhat crippled mode because of the specific configuration of that device).  Clearly, that is a relatively limited demographic and to expand boxee needs to get on more hardware, whether it will be PC’s (the Windows version is expected soon) or on stand alone devices, of which there are many currently, including Popcorn Hour, Mvix, Western Digital, Netgear, Neuros, Roku et al.  None of them has been overly successful, and most industry observers think that there is little mainstream interest is such media extenders.  As has been demonstrated by the failure of the AppleTV to really take off, somewhat ironically for boxee.  

Extended functionality such as playing back local/networked content in a variety of codecs and containers, or streaming Internet video is still somewhat computationally complex, at least to do so in an attractive and user-friendly manner as boxee currently does.  And that means it requires a beefier chip or CPU than exists in any of the currently available media boxes, in fact many of them off-load a good deal of the decoding and/or menu generation to a PC, like the DivX Connected solution does.  But again, that has not proven popular, particularly outside of the bleeding edge early adopter crowd.

My opinion is that boxee should just ignore hardware for now.  All the things that make boxee unique, such as its complete openness and the very cool social networking features would probably be the exact things that would have to be cut in order for it to work on a low cost standalone device.  But more crucially, the unique promise of boxee rests entirely in its singular focus on the user.  Flexibile, customizable, responsive to a committed user community, and Open Source to the core, those are the terms that apply to boxee and essentially to no other comparable solution available today.  The truth at the heart of boxee is that no company could possibly stay ahead or even current with all the needs or desires of its users.  There is no way even the best, most intelligent, or largest team of developers could predict all the sources of content that I explore on a daily basis, much less do the same for thousands or millions of other users.  And that’s why boxee fundamentally works best as a software application on top of a general purpose computer, regardless of operating system.  Increasingly powerful console gaming systems are a different story, as a PS3 running boxee would be pretty cool, and somewhat funny considering the XBMC-roots of boxee, but it’s unclear how feasible that is right now.

In addition, having met and spent time with the boxee team, clearly their strengths are really in software.  That’s not to say they couldn’t do hardware well too, it’s just that they embody the small-h hacker mentality, fired more by the challenge of solving problems than by making things polished and perfect.  One of them told me, semi-jokingly to be sure, that boxee was becoming almost too corporate and not innovative enough for him already.  boxee currently has 11 employees.  ;)  They should stick to what they are doing now, and doing better than anybody else out there.

At my last job I had a company phone, a Blackberry Pearl, which I enjoyed using quite a bit.  It was small, well laid out, had a decent screen and the keyboard was suprisingly useful, even though it was not a full sized QWERTY like the larger Blackberries.  Just getting email on to your phone is a killer app, and the massive success of Blackberry attests to that rather clearly.  Heck, look at how tenaciously Obama is clinging to his “Crack”berry.

Alas, I am no longer with my old company, so I had to rush out and get a new phone.  

The Pearl had limitations of course.  Its relatively tiny screen was not really designed for multimedia, nor was the software for video and/or audio very effective.  Third party software in general was lacking, and what stuff there was often cost far too much, imo.  Ultimately the software I found myself using the most was the Opera mini-browser and Viigo, an RSS feed reader.

The fact that my most used apps were about web surfing really speaks to how having a smart phone, even the Pearl, changed my habits.  I really, really like having access to the web no matter where I am.  Sick?  Addicted?  Maybe, but once you have that instant always-on experience, the prospect of going without it is rather horrifying.  So needless to say, as the reality of handing over the phone back to the company sunk in, I rapidly began to consider my options to replace it.

iPhone?  Nah, I’m too much of an Apple skeptic to jump on that bandwagon at this point, no matter how good it is.  Plus it’s pretty expensive and I’m trying to economize.

Another Blackberry?  Possible, but the really interesting Blackberrys right now are the Storm and the Bold, and they are still pretty damn expensive.

My mind very quickly went to the G1 Android phone from T-Mobile.  I was a pretty easy mark for this, as the openness and intense focus on the web, plus a QWERTY keyboard and a decent screen for video was all very compelling.  Not to mention I found a deal for it at a very good price, $149 with a monthly charge of around $60.

So, how’s it been?  Generally it’s been very good.  Certainly far from perfect, and I cannot compare it to the iPhone (or the soon to be released Palm Pre), but I’ve enjoyed it a lot.  3G is spotty where I am in San Diego, wifi has also proven to be sporadic, the build is probably not super great, and the fact that it can’t actually edit Google Docs is maddening.  But the interface is slick, I’m loving the apps I’ve found on the Android Market, and it really does provide a far better web experience than the Pearl did, which is the real key decisive factor for me.  And the tight connection to the Google apps is very, very effective.

I had great plans to blog with it from the show floor at CES.  It proved capable of it, which is a pretty amazing fact when you think about it.  The ability to take pictures (of low quality to be sure), create text and upload it all to one’s blog all on the move is very, very cool to me.

Overall, I’m definitely a convert and am excited to see how the Android platform develops in the future.  And it will develop, as the openness at the heart of Android is precisely the approach more consumer electronics will have to take in the future.

From First

Ok, the original plan was to blog from the show floor of CES, but honestly, it was so hectic and exhausting I quickly had to give up those plans.  I don’t know how those pros from Engadget, Gizmodo, Boing Boing Gadgets, Ubergizmo and dozens more are able to do it.  Probably not also working a demonstration booth does help though. Read more…

Nothing too crazy to report from CES day T-minus one.  Did get to spend more time with the boxee crew.  Very impressed, with both the team and the technology.  Having spent a considerable amount of time working in the networked media space, trying to figure out what works and what doesn’t (sadly), it takes a lot to excite me, and boxee does.  They have a very cool product, a great group of developers, and maybe most importantly, a real community of committed users.  Obviously, they have major obstacles to overcome and a lot things will change in rapid fashion, but I do believe that whatever becomes the standard for delivering content from the internet to the living room is going to look a lot like what boxee are doing right now.  Maybe they will be the ones to do it, maybe not.

The ease of use, the obvious focus on what the user wants (and not what the software or hardware maker wants to sell you), and the open philosophy at its heart, all make boxee very compelling, even for a skeptic like me.  It also ties very well into what I heard Reed Hastings talk about at the NewTeeVee Live conference.  Ultimately, what you will see on your TV will be the web, but accessed and controlled with a remote.  And boxee is a big step in that direction. Stay tuned to some very cool announcements from boxee tomorrow.

Also got to meet the team from Bug Labs today.  Another very cool product, although much more of a targeted item.  Looking forward to playing around with it more during the show.

Stay tuned for more coverage tomorrow after the doors of the show open…

So, this was not exactly what I was expecting. I am doing some freelance work at CES for StageTwo, including helping boxee. Guess who they were placed next at the Unveiled press event?

Who else?

D’oh!

At the SD airport waiting for short flight to Las Vegas for CES. Needless to say, there are a quite a few people there with the intent to blog, but I’m going to just try and find a few things of personal interest to me: HTPC related stuff primarily, but also anything Android.

A key conceptual question for me will be the place of P2P in CES. Hope open will the CE companies that benefit from the massive file-sharing of content be about their interest? Can they be honest about it? If not, how will they talk around it? Time will tell…

Ok, based on the last post, which happened to be my umpteenth try at getting the G1 to work as a mobile blogging platform, it seems we are a go. I can take photos, write up a post, and then get it uploaded all from the phone.

What does that mean for you? It means I should be able to actually live blog with photos from CES, which should make for some interesting content. Or at least that’s the idea.

Pic test

I know, I know, just what the world needs, a new techyish blog. It’s not as if there aren’t already a billion others, for which it is already way too difficult to find the time to read. My Google Reader subscriptions are completely insane numbering over 580. Needless to say, I don’t actually read them all regularly, or even sporadically. Not to mention the hundreds of twitters I follow. So, in other words, I’ve just started out this blog with mostly reasons not to subscribe to it.

Still, my hope is to provide a somewhat different perspective on what is going on in the tech world. I came to tech from a very unlikely background and I suspect my opinions have been relatively cock-eyed because of it. Maybe that explains why I was recently laid-off. Hrmm.

But stick around, and let me know if anything I post is of value to you. The first week alone should be good, as I am about to head off to to Las Vegas for CES…