Finally Joined the Blu-Ray Owners Club

Well, I finally broke down and bought a Blu-Ray player. I've been following the technology pretty closely for the past several months, especially after the demise of HD-DVD. I finally settled on the new Sony BDP-S550. In addition to having great picture and audio quality it supports all the latest features like Profile 2.0 and can either bitstream or internally decode all the new lossless audio formats such as TrueHD and DTS-MA. The setup was probably the easiest of any DVD player I've owned too. Watched Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk tonight...both were awesome! The interactive features on some of the titles are a bit of a disappointment to me, at least when compared to some of the HD-DVD titles I am familiar with. Not sure if this is an issue with with the BD spec or just the content, though.

The other thing that bugs me is how long it takes to load and navigate through a disc. Again this is not an issue specific to this player, and in fact the Sony fares much better in this regard than other BD players. But with HD formats and all the bits that have to be transferred between the disc and player, navigation is noticeably slower than with normal DVD's. And hearin lies the problem with Blu-Ray and physical media in general. In this day and age of DVR's like Tivo and internet-based on-demand services, the whole process of physically loading a disc into a player and waiting for it to spin up seems so archane, and I'm finding myself getting extremely impatient since I've come to expect instantaneous feedback. And the interactive features are extremely excruciating to navigate through at times. This is why I think that perhaps Blu-Ray may ultimately fail in the end and lose out to some type of internet -connected, media sever type of device, especially when higher speed (> 5 Mbps) internet service is more the norm.

T-Mobile G1 - No UMA!

After my last post regarding Android and the G1, it occurred to me that T-Mobile and/or HTC decided not to include support for UMA on the device.  That's a real bummer, as I am finding UMA to be a great feature on my Blackberry 8320.  Quick simply, UMA allows one to make mobile calls and related data access (e.g. text messaging) using Wi-Fi, and also allows one to seamslessly roam between GSM/GPRS networks and Wi-Fi, particularly handy in cases where cellular coverage may be spotty.  T-Mobile is the only US-based carrier that supports it, and they've made it available on several of their newer devices.  In my particular case, I use the UMA feature quite extensively whenever I travel overseas.  While in my hotel room or overseas office I simply disable access to the local mobile network and use Wi-Fi exclusively.  This means I can make mobile calls back home without incurring any roaming charges since T-Mobile doesn't appear to have the ability or desire to trace calls by IP address.  And this also means all of my text messages and Blackberry email do not incur any data roaming charges either.  I've also read on Blackberryforums that some users are claiming that T-Mobile doesn't even log some of the UMA calls, so those users aren't even being charged for the minutes against their account.  So...I'm wondering if the UMA ommission from the G1 was a major oversight on T-Mobile's part, or maybe a purposeful ommission given the folks like me that leverage it in order to save on their monthly charges.

I am Intrigued by Android

I've been a die hard Blackberry user for nearly 10 years now, sans the week or so I played around with a T-Mobile Dash last year. I currently use the Blackberry 8320, which is the best Blackberry device I've used to date. My friends and family always ask me why I don't use the iPhone since they know my penchant for gadgets and figured I'd always have the latest hot thing. There are actually a few reasons why I haven't jumped on the iPhone bandwagon yet:

1. Push email if vitally important to me, and my corporate email address is not MS Exchange based.
2. I need the ability to get push email for all of my email accounts
3. The Blackberry allows you to create server-based filters, so that I determine which emails to be sent to the device and which ones I can just read later when I'm on my laptop.
4. Ability to type easily - nothing beats the tactile feel of a real keyboard.
5. Cost - Right now I pay $79 a month for 1000 minutes, unlimited email, data and SMS, and T-Mobile Hotspot.  The equivalent set of services if I were to move to an iPhone would probably cost me an additional $50 a month with AT&T

As everybody knows by now, earlier this week T-Mobile and Google announced the new Android G1 device which will be available in late October.  I read several of the reviews, and I have to say that I'm quite intrigued by Android and this could be the platform that finally gets me off Blackberry once and for all.  With built-in push email support for Gmail accounts this will address most of my email requirements.  The G1 also has a full keyboard, and the monthly cost would actually be lower than what I'm paying right now for the equivalent set of services.  Plus, I am hopful that Android will really take off as a development platform and that we'll see a ton of cool 3rd-party apps developed for it.  To be honest I'm getting really tired of Apple's heavy handedness these past few years, and we're seeing that once again with their App Store.  I mean come on, not allowing an app to run in the background?  If that is such a big concern to Apple then their stinkin' OS should be smart enough to lower thread priority and/or swap the app out if it becomes too resource intensive.  

The G1 may not be the sexiest beast out there, but it's the first of what I hope to be many new Android-based devices to come.

Now, for a Self-Serving Post on Wigix

For the past year and a half or so I've been involved with a startup called Wigix, where I am the CTO and co-founder. In a nutshell we are a serious alternative to eBay and offer a number of advantages including a "stock market" style of trading, product research information and community contributed content a la Wikipedia. Our goal is to build the world's largest structured catalog of products and to be the de facto product search destination on the internet.

Here's a funny and short video that we recently produced:

Powered by Wigix

I invite anyone and everyone to join Wigix and see what we're all about. Thanks for reading!

Bob

Join Wigix Now!

Oh Slingbox, How I Love Thee

I've got to say that my Slingbox has turned out to be one of the most useful gadgets I've picked up over the past several years. By now most of you know what a Slingox is - basically it's a small device that sits between your television and one or more video devices, typically a Tivo or some sort of DVR. Using a small piece of software (SlingPlayer) that you load onto your PC, Mac or Smartphone you are able to view video content located in your home (or wherever you have your Slingbox device located) from anywhere on the internet. I've traveled quite a bit these past few years, much of it internationally, and I can't count the number of times I've watched my favorite TV shows from thousands of miles away while traveling in Europe or Asia. I happen to be a fanatic of The Sopranos, but it just so happens that I was in Shanghai during the much discussed the series finale. I just had to watch the episode while it was showing "live" in the States. No problem...just fired up the SlingPlayer software at 9am in Shanghai and watched it along with everyone else. And as I write this posting I am sitting here up in Lake Tahoe watching my favorite sporting event of the year, the Tour de France, using the SlingPlayer since I have limited television access from up here...very cool!

Surprisingly, though, what I found to be even more useful than accessing my video content remotely was accessing the content while at home. I do most of my work from home, and before my Slingbox I used to frequently turn on the TV and tune into CNN or one of the other news channels while working so that I could listen in on the news of the day. But now with Slingbox I have no need to turn the TV on at all. Instead I just keep a small Slingplayer window open on my PC during the day so I can monitor the latest news while I work. In fact, I can't even remember the last time I actually turned on the TV in my bedroom. So, in my case the Slingbox can actually take the place of one of my TV's, and I'm sure if there was a way to calculate it you can even quantify the savings in my electric bill by not having to turn the TV on at all.

I bet the makers of Slingox never realized its potential for being a green solution :-)