Mari Silbey

Mari’s tech career started when she became the default “IT guy” in her first job out of college. Since leaving help-desk duties to the experts, she’s focused on trends in technology as a consultant, writer, reporter, analyst and at-home gadget tinkerer. Her current paid gig is with the non-profit organization US Ignite where she focuses on how networks and digital technologies impact smart cities. All posts on ZNF represent her own opinions and not those of US Ignite. Mari is a sucker for anything in the digital media space and covers interesting happenings in cable, telecom, and whatever else she feels like. Find her on Twitter at @msilbey.

The Latest IP Phone

I’m a few days behind in my news reading after a week of lounging on the beach, so I just caught Engadget’s Samsung’s IP phone post. Supposedly it shows TV on its miniature screen, allows video conferencing, plays music and offers access to online shopping. Since I love the Verizon IP phone Dave and I saw demo’ed back in July, you’d think the Samsung version would tickle my fancy. Not so much.

Both with the video and the music, you’re not getting either great quality (big screen/nice speakers) or the convenience of portability. And shopping on this phone while my PC is nearby? I can’t imagine it.

Mari Goes on Vacation

Vacation is always a good thing, but it’s made even better with every technology advance. Here are the top five ways tech will be improving my trip to the beach this week: Portable DVD player to keep child happy in the car GPS to the beach rental Wi-Fi at the beach (no kidding – it’s … Read more

Light Reading’s Exclusive Fire-to-the-Node Coverage

How often does Light Reading get to strut its stuff with exclusive photos? Not often. (It’s a telecom rag!) So enjoy the slide show Phil Harvey has put up showing a blown-up, AT&T fiber-to-the-node (FTTN) cabinet. This thing was charred to smithereens. And Light Reading has the before and after evidence – a full 18 … Read more

The Challenge in Building that Perfect Entertainment Box

Building the perfect DVR/video-entertainment device is hard, which is why cable or telco TV plus a Netflix or Blockbuster + Movielink service is probably your best bet right now. But lest ye be sitting in your living room bemoaning the state of your set-top set-up, let me offer up a bit of context on why building the perfect box is so hard.

There’s the leased set-top model used by cable operators. In an effort to make those set-tops as cheap and efficient as possible, a lot of constraints are applied. There can’t be too much storage or processing power, too many added features or too much open access for modification that could muck up the service for everyone. Not an ideal situation, but on the other hand, these operators bring DVR to the masses.

There’s the retail model, which is owned by TiVo. People who have TiVo tend to love TiVo, but relatively few people have it because of the price. Plus, there’s the issue of plugging TiVo into your cable or telco network. Either you need a separate set-top from your service provider or you need a CableCARD. CableCARD certification is a serious technical challenge (more than I think most people realize) and it still doesn’t provide access to two-way services like video-on-demand and switched digital video.

Finally there’s the Internet model. All those media extenders that made big news early in the year, and P2P services like Joost (the box here being your computer). Here the problem is both content and bandwidth. Not enough appealing, timely content to keep people happy, and/or not enough bandwidth to keep content flowing efficiently.

So what’s on the horizon?

PC World and the Fat Pipe

I don’t read much in hard copy anymore, but I did leaf through the print version of PC World while on the beach last weekend. One article caught my attention as much for what it didn’t say as for what it did report. The piece, Early IPTV Uses Only a Little of Its Fat Pipe, missed a few critical points. And having made my own share of mistakes and errors of omission in the blogging business, I thought I’d make some amends by adding in information where I do have a little knowledge.

First, the IPTV story profiles AT&T and Verizon, but it does so without making the distinction that AT&T delivers all-IP TV, while Verizon uses RF with an IP return path. Essentially Verizon has chosen to use IP only for certain interactive services, and actually more closely emulates a cable network architecture than AT&T’s offering.

Slacker vs. Pandora

Knowing my love for Pandora, Dave sent me a link to Slacker a couple weeks back with a little nudge suggesting I try it out. The service has been getting ridiculously positive press reviews, and apparently the company will be launching its own hardware devices in the near future.

So how does Slacker stack up? The Web application is fabulous. It is extremely easy to set up customized radio stations based on any range of musical artists. Any artist in your list also brings up recommendations for other artists in the same genre that you can choose to add to your station. Then there’s a nifty little function called fine tuning. Fine tuning lets you decide the levels of music discovery you want to include in your channel, as well as how popular the songs should be, how often your personal favorites should be included, and what musical eras can be referenced. It sounds complicated, but in reality the fine tuning function is simple, fast and very powerful.

I’ve had some issues with Slacker crashing on me, but not enough to deter me from using the beta application. My bigger issue is that right now, I’m addicted to the Squeezebox and being able to access customized radio without my PC. We’ll have to see what happens when the Slacker hardware comes out later in the year. Whether I think it’s worth converting to Slacker will probably depend on two things:

Verizon’s Lost Suscribers

A couple weeks ago I referenced the fact that Comcast’s basic cable subscriber numbers have declined of late. Now it turns out that Verizon’s DSL subscriber numbers are also slowing, with Verizon only signing up 85,000 DSL users in the second quarter, down from 329,000 a year ago. Some of that loss is due to … Read more

Media Extenders in 20% of Broadband Homes?

Emerging Media Dynamics has a report out claiming that 20% of broadband homes (roughly 12 million households) will have media extenders by the end of this year. Anybody else astounded by that number? The report is including in this category devices like Apple TV, the Xbox 360 and Sling’s SlingCatcher. All of these products are … Read more