Leaving comments across the blogosphere…
How Blu-Ray Can Avoid Failure
The thing is Blu-ray players are backwards compatible with DVD. If they market that better, folks may move their existing DVD player into the bedroom and get Blu-ray for the living room. Without having to immediately, or ever, replace their DVD collection. Making it a very different transition than tape to optical disc.
If I were to recommend a Blu-ray player today, I’d say get a networked Samsung (capable of Netflix and Pandora streaming) or PS3 – more bang for your buck.
Blu-ray: Why it Will Stay Blue
Actually, what hurts Blu-ray most is “Blu-ray” – From a branding/marketing perspective, it would have been better for “HD DVD” to have won. It should be immediately clear to most what that is and why they’d want it.
Streaming the inauguration
Yeah, but what about that Slingbox iPhone software… When can I get it? And how much? And do we know that Apple will even approve streaming over 3G? Hopefully the minimal data requirements of a 320×240 broadcast won’t worry them or AT&T too much. However, as a Sling owner, I’d much rather see you guys finally bump up mobile video resolutions on the devices that can handle it.
Keep that laptop data safe and sound
Of course it depends on the protection scheme/software, but “professional” or “enterprise” grade encryption (i.e. not the built-in Mac stuff) will probably stop everyone who isn’t a government entity. Maybe them, too.
Most personal stuff probably isn’t of interest to would be thieves, but corporate espionage is another story. In which case our employers need to take appropriate steps, the responsibility to protect should be on them. Although some of my prior employers couldn’t even get SSL going on Exchange web access, letting all my fellow SBUX customers read my work email. Ah well.
Our Plan To Fix The New York Times (NYT)
I was quoted in the Sunday NY Times a few weeks ago. It cost me $5 to buy a copy. $5 for a newspaper?! I think those rates are high enough. Although, subscription rates are probably structured differently. Somewhat related, on the radio today I heard I can get the Sunday edition of the Washington Post delivered for only 77 cents a week. As a non-subscriber, I’m suddenly contemplating paper for the first time in years.
As it turns out the Washington Post deal came with a phone number to call. Which isn’t how I operate. When visiting their web site, I got a better deal: 26 weeks of Sunday paper/delivery for a mere $0.49/wk. It’s worth that just to have someone else climbing the four flights of stairs. Wonder if this is a promotional rate which will increase? Hm.
$5 for a newspaper sounds like a ridonculous amount to pay for a little ink. No wonder they’re not selling papers. Most of the daily papers in the bay area are priced at 75 cents, but I think it’s a buck fifty on Sundays. I like reading the paper while I drink coffee in the morning, but subscribing seems like too much of a hassle. Not only is it one more unnecessary expense, but after a couple of weeks, the old papers start piling up. It’d be a shame if we don’t have actual newspapers one day, but if I had to choose between having paper or the net, it wouldn’t even be a contest.
The LG BD300 is a better player than the Samsung or PS3.
It sells for about $300, which is 25% less than the PS3.
It has discrete IR commands for on and off, neither the other two do.
The BD300 loads discs faster — I’ve not confirmed this myself.
It will bitstream all the codecs, which the PS3 can’t do.
The only advantage the BD-P2500 has over the BD300 is upscaling, but with most BDs encoded at 1080p24 this is only useful if you watch a lot of DVDs, I don’t.
I currently use a Toshiba HD-A2 player as my primary DVD player. Yes, I still have a good collection of HD DVDs in the house. I don’t plan on getting rid of them because they still work and I’m not going to purchase my movies again.
I do own a PS3 and am very happy with it. When we were looking for a Blu-ray player it was the least expensive one available. Not only is it a Blu-ray player, but I can play my GTA4 on it as well. I’ve never had a problem with it and it seems to load in a decent amount of time.