The Game, The Video
Death of the Disc
Content Kings
There has to be some illegal copying in the video game industry - it's pervasive
throughout the software industry and costs firms billions each year - but they
still pump out and push stand-alone and community games. They are already into
high def and broadband/wireless connectivity.
We're equally certain they go after pirates here and abroad. Difference is you
don't see the raids and lawsuits spread across the front page of your paper/websites.
You don't see them running to Congress with bags of money to buy a solution
to their problem.
But these content developers and provides also have something Hollywood lacks…a
strong connection with their customer community. As a result there is a high
level of self-policing that goes on. The sharing that takes place is done to
improve the quality of play - the user experience.
That connection is one of the things that has kept the Atari name and game play
alive.
How else can you account for teams of designers at the Parsons School of Design
in Greenwich Village working round the clock over a weekend in late March to
develop "super hot" games for the Atari 2600.
2600?
Yes…the game system that started it all! And surprise…there is an underground
that still buys/sells systems, repairs them, develops/sells software.
Today's Xbox, PS2, PSP and Nintendo systems have the potential of being more
than just ways for people - young and old - to develop and improve eye/hand coordination,
learn and enjoy the joys of winning and the agony of defeat. They could very
well become the servers for home and on-the-go entertainment.
IDC and other analysts see game hardware/software showing the way for complete
home and personal entertainment solutions (Figure 1).
Or to put it more crassly…they can become the big winners (Figure 2)
On the other hand, rather than focusing on the user/viewer experience and really
connecting with their customers we have the MPAA (Hollywood) and RIAA (record
industry). To them it is better to invest in congressional contributions and
lawyers. They are suing everyone (some already dead, some slightly above the
poverty line, some outright thieves). We'll have to wait and see how the Supreme
Court rules in the Grokster trial.
Not that it matters because if they lose they will probably just "withhold" their
content.
You'd think they would have learned from the past that technology was good for
them. But the obvious sometimes escapes lawyers and accountants.
There are precedents (that's a legal word) for our optimism.
In 1908 the Supreme Court said that people who sold player piano rolls weren't
violating copyright laws as long as they paid fee to the artist for each roll.
They "encouraged" Congress to set write such a copyright law. It was never
about banning technology advances…just serving up fair compensation!
Next there were similar issues with records, audiotapes and CDs. With each technology
advance, sales volume increased and so did the fees artists earned.
The MPAA luddites say the 1984 Sony decision - which said there were "substantial
noninfringing uses" -- doesn't apply in the case of Grokster and in fact the
Supreme Court really didn't get it right. All of this despite the fact that
the spread of VCRs enabled Hollywood to sell billions of dollars worth of movie
videos. They even dismiss the other revenues they received from rentals as not
relevant and that the VCR really was "the devil's machine."
Fact is though that as with game systems, content helped sell more hardware.
The more content people buy…the more hardware they purchase!
They also don't talk about the money they are making from their DVD releases
in the form of payments for rentals and sales. The fact is that DVD players
wouldn't have taken off like a rocketship if it weren't for the availability
of these better-to-view movies.
MPAA and the RIAA contend that music downloads are stealing directly from copyright
owners even though downloads (free and paid) represent only about 2% of the formats
people prefer (Figure 3). The more intelligent approach would seem to be to
focus on bulk pirates, help develop reasonably secure solutions and - silly boy
- price the content fairly!
Every time we've taken on a new technology (Figure 4, Figure 5) everyone has
enjoyed an increase in financial rewards.
That's why TV production libraries scrounge through the dusty stacks. They have
discovered there is money to be made their old content. People actually want
to buy stuff like The Thin Man, Johnny Carson Show, Petticoat Junction, Beverly
Hillbillies and a treasure trove of intellectual and mindless series.
But why think you "might be wrong? Lawyers and lobbyists need to be gainfully
employed too!
If they would examine the technology successes closely they will see that RealNetworks,
iTunes, SonicWallpaper and other sites do meet the consumer's needs…when the
prices are right.
More importantly, they would find that their distribution costs go down…dramatically!!!!
Are Discs Dead?
Speaking of buying discs, we found Robert Capps' article in the April issue of
Wired magazine to be "interesting." Ignoring the bipolar position of the content
owners, his contention is that discs - of any flavor - are dead and everything
will simply come to us over the network. The conclusion comes from the fact
that new, more efficient codecs are being developed. These will pack and unpack
our Hi-Def video. In addition, bandwidth will shortly be everywhere.
Similar statements were made more than 10 years ago when PCs and networks became
ubiquitous in business. Viola…the concept of the paperless office was born.
Just don't tell that to HP or Epson because they make truckloads of money on
inkjet cartridges.
It's interesting to note a few facts that Mr. Capps overlooked: last year more than 2 billion floppies were sold worldwide and this at a time
when nothing fits on a floppy
Even in the U.S. the predominant download speed is 52K and it is worse in most
of the world
Much to Comcast's and Times-Warner's chagrin only about 60% of the homes in the
U.S. have cable
While color TV sets are ubiquitous, HDTV still has a way to go and in most instances
sets are HD-ready, not HD-enabled (Figure 6)
Even though less than 50% of the U.S. homes have Internet connectivity (of any
capacity) IPTV is just trying to get off the ground but content owners are throwing
up roadblocks that could cause it to take 10+ years before it is widely available MPAA and RIAA have a begrudging acceptance of disc-based content but they have
made it abundantly clear that they have no intention of allowing through-the-air
access to their "stuff" until they can be 100% certain all of us pirates won't
be able to rip off "their" content
Japan which sells almost nothing but Hi-Def TVs and hundreds of thousands of
expensive Blue-ray recorders still sells millions of content CDs and DVDs each
year because they are inexpensive. Korea which has cable and IPTV available
does the same. Worldwide more than 100 million DVD burners and recorders are
in use and those numbers are projected to continue to increase faster than Blue
technology recorders well into 2015 (Figure 7).
Why?
First is obviously the cost and the fact that you have to replace perfectly good
and inexpensive hardware/media with very expensive hardware/media.
Second is human nature. Drive down any street on a weekend and peek into the
garages that have open doors. Often they are filled with so much "stuff" the
car won't fit. Look at your PC's hard drive. You're probably about ready for
one of those Hitachi 1GB "upgrades." Look at your VHS, CD, DVD, CD-RW and DVDRW
libraries.
The minute we set down roots, we accumulate "stuff."
The final arrow in Mr. Capp's balloon is that it will be a helluva long time
before MPAA members and other content providers are convinced they can trust
you with "their" content.
Once they do, they will probably find out that it is much like the paperless
office…you'll buy more of their stuff and make it your stuff! Somehow we don't
see Verbatim, the world's leading writable CD and DVD producer, the other disc
makers and the hardware folks disappearing even in the distant future.
But we'll see at NAB!!!
Bigger, Badder Chips
The Wireless Life
Combine the efforts of TI, Broadcom, Intel, AMD, SanDisk, Lexar, VIA and a few
loose change others all bent on meeting Gordon Moore's 40 year old law (March
is the unofficial anniversary date) and what do we have? More chip power and
speed than we can handle.
But boy are we trying!
Chips aren't just for computers any more. They are in everything…doing more
and going everywhere. Do we really need dual-core chips in PCs? Do we need
our cars to be smarter than we are?
Today, wireless and cellular are the fast tracks industry analysts are encouraging
us to be on.
We're pretty happy with our wireless entertainment solution(s) at home. Should
be all sitting on a central media server but the truth is everyone in the family
has his or her "unique" solution. Cripes we can't even get people in our house
to share the inkjet printers.
It's only human nature that we want to freely access everyone else's content
and data but…ours is special, unique, sacred. That's why enterprise centralized
backup/archiving is such an uphill battle.
Our Digital Home
Intel, Cisco and the entire DHWG (Digital Home Working Group) are certain we
desperately want everything wirelessly enabled at home. And why not? IDC shows
that if we connect everything, "we" can be a huge market in the years ahead (Figure
1).
We're really not interested in our refrigerator telling us we're out of ice cream
or that the veggies are rotten. We'll find out next time we open the door.
If we miss Extreme Makeover, our ADS Instant TV will capture it to our system
and if we need to take the show with us we'll copy it to our Store 'n Go and
watch it on our notebook while we're waiting for the plane.
Face it, we can't stop the march of progress. Hardware, software and middleware
suppliers are all working on delivering seamless plug-and-pay solutions. Shortly
everything will be wireless -- our TV, our set-top box, our DVR, our digital
camera, our video game system, our audio player, our storage, our phone, our
car, our virtually everything.
When they get it right you'll never be out of touch with anything or anyone.
Wireless even though it is a work-in-progress has changed our work and home habits.
At the airport you open your notebook and set up office the minute you are through
security. When you get home from work as well as before you go to bed you check
your email. If your company's security is really good you plug in and work from
anywhere. Your cell phone - with its custom ringtones -- is on stand-by 24x7.
According to a recent study by IDC, the new technologies allow us to be more
productive and more effective in the workplace (Figure 2).
The challenge that we see from the IDC study is that the technically progressive
consumers have a difficult time separating work and play (Figure 3). It appears
that people who embrace these technologies first do it because they want to be
more productive in everything they do - at home, in the office, on the road.
Certainly some are interested in the status factor but most seem to opt in because
of the convenience and security wireless solutions provide.
The problem is that not everyone is ready - or willing - to take advantage of
the technologies. Our father has rejected the idea of our giving him a PC and
internet connectivity/training so we can email back and forth anytime. His response
- "you want to talk to me, pick up the phone!"
Let's face it, the technology also comes at a cost - fiscal and physical (Figure
4). The stuff isn't cheap. Then you have to learn how to use it because:
- it isn't intuitive
- most sales people can't or won't spend the time to teach you
- documentation isn't written for ordinary people to understand
- tech support, assuming you can reach a real person, isn't there
to help you learn how to use what you just bought
That sort of tells you that consumer training - at home and at the office - could
be the next career for you. Of course you can always do what we do…ask the kids
for help.
Cellphone Swiss Army Knife
Does a cellphone have to do it all? We don't think so but the chip folks keep
piling on more and more features, more and more capabilities. And we're using
more and more of those features/capabilities (Figure 5). They were widely used
at Pope Paul II's viewing and funeral to send/receive IMs, photos and video clips.
Industry analysts and experts somewhat begrudgingly agree that we want all of
this added to our cellphones so we can take our music, videos, games and friends
with us no matter where we go…even on the plane. Yeah right!
We prefer the sophisticated courtesy of the Japanese to the talk/scream, drive,
eat and shop approach practiced in the Americas. They have IMing down to a science.
They can eat, shop, ride public transportation, watch a movie, attend a lecture
and stay in touch without disturbing anyone. You hardly ever see one of them
with a phone in their hand and wire to their ear talking to themselves.
But everyone is bent on "serving" our pent-up demand. They are working on adding
more and more memory. The combined phone/iPod/MP3 player is practically here.
Beyond snap-and-send they are marching steadily to the 1940s videophone. Shortly
the porn folks will have their "services" available to cellphone users which
should be interesting since the screens are so small you're going to have to
have a great imagination.
All of this content - photos, music, video - is going to give memory (just another
chip technology) an even greater potential according to IDC (Figure 6). While
most of the memory cards will still go for digital cameras they estimate that
more than 808 million units will be sold in 2008, a CAGR of 42% over 2003, and
more than 116 million USB flash drives will be sold. And that doesn't even include
the forecasts for rush of USB pluggable 1-in hard drives like Verbatim's Store
'n Go USB 4GB HD and higher capacity units just standing in the wings.
This all sounds great...but!!!
Have you got really great encryption solutions that you use all of the time just
in case? You know just in case someone "borrows" your notebook from your office,
your hotel room, your house, your bag, your pocket? Just in case you accidentally
leave your phone somewhere? Just in case you lose that great (small) storage
device?
In a heartbeat your entire life - and identity - can disappear.
At least with the new high-speed chips it will go so fast you'll hardly feel
it.
Kids The Multitaskers
The computers, the phones…it is all about kids. Ordinary people can't (don't)
use 20% of their computing power. Regular folks don't run around taking pictures
with their camphones and IM only occasionally. They couldn't program the VCR
so what makes engineers believe they can program a PVR?
It's the kids that have the gadgets (Figure 1) and they use them…all! Their
entire room is a multimedia center. Spinning the yarn about the home entertainment
solution sounds fantastic but reality seems to be the same as corporate IT departments
attempting to develop the utopia of backing up everything on the network and
recentralizing company data (remember we used to have mainframes and terminals,
not hundreds of PC islands)…it's a great idea but my data/content is different,
special!!"
It won't happen.
According to a recent report by the Kaiser Family Foundation they use all the
things we buy for them - TV, videos, music, videogames, computers, cameras and
more. Kaiser found that they cram more media content into an hour than we ever
thought we needed. They watch a lot of TV (regular and recorded), listen to
music, use their computers on-line and off-line, play videogames, read and watch
movies and do much of it at the same time.
And that multitasking also includes hanging with the parents, talking on the
phone (surprise!!), physical activities, hobbies, schoolwork and chores. Added
to that is being in school, commuting and sleeping. BAM!!!! They suddenly
packed 27.5 hours in a 24-hour day.
Maybe - just maybe - kids aren't so bad. Just a little busy. A little preoccupied
digesting their content. If only they could expand their multitasking to cleaning
their rooms!!!
Time for the Big Game
Forget about the NCAA's big hoopla about March Madness. We're talking about
a serious game that is measured in billions of dollars of sales and hundreds
of millions of dollars in sales.
The battle of the titans is between long-time leader and apparent underdog Nintendo
and home player, come from behind Sony.
In typical fashion Sony has whipped the market (and media) into a feeding frenzy
to get ahold of the new PSP (Figure 2). And yes it's a pretty good portable
game system.
It is "almost" as good as the Atari Lynx (Figure 3) we helped the Trameils launch
eons ago. In 1989 it had an insanely great color display. It had some of the
best games available like Ms Pac-Man, Roadblaster, Gates of Zendocon, Blue Lighting,
Slime World and more. Surprisingly, the system still has a huge loyal following
of men and women who develop and trade games. There's a whole underground of
people who repair and nurse systems back to health.
Granted the Lynx didn't (and doesn't) have games you can play with 10-100 of
your close, personal friends around the globe. But you pull one of those little
suckers out - even today - and you can draw a crowd of young and old alike. That's
because it was a game system…not a world of entertainment.
In addition, how do you get all of those other gamers to join in? Send out a
game rendezvous message from your WiFi Sony Vaio? Or call them on your all-in-one
Samsung or Sanyo cellphone?
Just as with ultralite notebooks, DVD burners/recorders and cam/message/video/cellphones,
once the initial "new and sexy" has worn off it's all about the software. If
more people are designing for Microsoft and the XBox than for Sony and the PS2
there will be fewer options for died-in-the-wool gamers and their portables.
Rather than their Universal Media Disc (UMD) for their movies (2 ½-in cartridge
disc with no write-once or rewritable media in the offing) why didn't they do
what some of the studios are doing and use miniDVD technology that already is
widely available? Simple, it would cut down on their control, their royalties.
Of course you can also use the PSP as a slightly bulky music and photo player…as
long as you use their proprietary memory stick format rather than SD or even
their regular memory stick. The Sony Hydra still doesn't talk to itself so Sir
Howard has his work cut out for himself.
For each generation there is a time…or in this case a game system.
But the Lynx is still a helluva system!
Hollywood, Broadcast Speaks With Forked Tongue
Dan Glickman, who has taken over as CEO of the MPAA from Jack Valenti (Valenti
is still chairman), has got to get his organization's story straight.
At ShoWest he said theater admissions had risen over the past few years.
He and the studios announced that the sale of a bunch of the movie releases on
DVD have hit record numbers.
Of course that's not going to stop Jack from working behind the scenes in Washington
with his old cronies to protect consumers from themselves and get legislation
to protect his kingdom. And his lawyers have access to the deep pockets to "enforce"
the laws of the land.
The sales were so good (super profits) that broadcasters are dusting off their
old series all the way back to "The Beverly Hillbillies" for gawd sake and they
are racking up millions (if not billions) in unrealized, raw profit.
Recently we "found" Fox TV's series "24" even though it's in its third season.
Ok, we're a "little" slow. The wife and I like it so much she bought me the
first three series on disc for our birthday. We hadn't missed missing those
shows but since we have them we watch two or three when there is nothing worth
watching. We can only handle two or three because we're exhausted after watching
the fast-paced action drama. It's great!
She also bought us the La Femme Nikita series last Christmas. We have both watched
all of the discs. We wouldn't have recorded each of either of these shows because
that would have taken planning (ok we also can't figure out how to use our system's
time shifting capability but that's another issue).
But all of the series developers have suddenly realized that there is a ready
market for those DVDs (some large markets, some small). So they've crept back
into their dark, damp vaults to mine their treasures.
Do these people really care about protecting their content when HD viewing finally
comes mainstream?
They might be able to convince Congress but the rest of us?
They're making all of their money in the "after-market" arena. You know; DVD
sets, theme songs as cellphone ringtones, tie-in merchandising, soundtrack albums,
etc. The theater release is like slot machines in Vegas. It covers the cost
and the rest is money in the bank.
While we're at it, before you do run out and buy a new HighDef set (not to be
confused with HD-ready) you might want to take see what you're getting into by
taking a look at
www.onhd.tv. These folks are brutal in their reviews of theHD experience. After reviewing their good/bad list --
http://www.onhd.tv/thelist.htm- we've decided it probably isn't worth the $500+ to upgrade our HD-ready to
full HD.
There won't be enough HD recorders/burners out there to capture their breathtaking
content until 2010 according to In-Stat and IDC and even then there will be less
than two percent of the total DVD burners/recorders in the market.
If we were content developers certainly we'd lust for HD/BD solutions because
it does look a little better than DVD in HiDef. But the price of the HD camcorders
isn't going to get down to the point that the casual videographer will be ready
to join the HD revolution for years…and years…and years. These babies are designed
for serious videographers who "make all the big bucks and get all the gals/guys!"
We'll find out what the most recent projections are when we attend IDC's Directions
05 conference in a few weeks. But we'll still bet that there will be container
loads of $79 DVD burners and $149 DVD recorders sold over the next five years
compared to whatever wins in the "we're better" Blue contest.
No matter what they tell you, 50% of the total potential market doesn't have
a DVD burner or recorder yet. And even though quality DVDR and DL media like
Verbatim's is remarkably affordable, the volumes are only just now catching up
with CDR.
CeBIT in Hanover is head and shoulders the world's largest tech toys show for
business and consumer alike. They may have flopped in the U.S. but at home they
are supreme even though it is nearly impossible to get a place to stay and downright
impossible to see the entire show.
This year set new records with 6,270 exhibitors and "only" 480,000 visitors who
must negotiate the 308,881 square meters of displays to find products they want
to OEM, integrate, sell, cover for their audience. Companies build their big
launches around the show with firms like Philips, Panasonic, Seimens, Thomson,
Sony, Toshiba, Samsung, Hitachi and other global leaders having huge pavilion
buildings they use only once a year.
Just as Silicon Valley used to get out-of-town when Comdex was on, Taiwan streets
have to be silent with 702 firms from the area hawking their new wares. If it
tells you anything, 1,600 of the companies came from the Pacific Basin.
The statistics aren't nearly as spectacular as the new toys like breathtaking
new TV screens; home wired/wireless networking; next generation DVD and storage;
big and little computers; OS and applications software; units that do everything
and remotely look like mobile phones; and tech toys of every shape, size and
gender. Everyone was on the forefront of delivering technology the consumer
was demanding!
CeBIT is Huge Business
You definitely don't want to take the show directory with you as you trudge the
aisles.
Everyone at the show was bullish because according to the recent GMIPoll (Figure
1) people around the globe have an insatiable appetite for more technology.
Everywhere in the world - except the U.S. - people want more PC power (Figure
2) followed by TV and mobile phones.
What will they be buying (Figure 3)? Cameras still lead the popularity race
followed by wireless, home printing and DVRs. Cameras may pull printing along
but they certainly haven't helped to date as people take zillions of photos only
to fill memory cards or stuff them in non-descript folders on their hard drives.
People might be getting a clue though because there is an upswing in the sale
of stand-alone and bundled software that arrange photos for writing to CD. In
addition, mall and photo shop digital kiosks are getting a lot of traffic.
All of these product areas got a lot of attention at CeBIT.
While IBM may have sold most of their storage products to Hitachi, they certainly
didn't sell their technology. It's going to be a couple of years away but their
1TB MEMS (micro electrical mechanism system) is what dreams are made of for system
designers (Figure 4).
Toshiba blended its technologies together beautifully with home wireless AV networks,
their version of next generation DVD (the HD camp) player and slim PC drives.
NEC their ally in the push showed prototypes of drives that burn and play HD-DVD,
DVD and CD.
The BD camp wasn't to be outdone as Panasonic, Sharp, Samsung and Sony showed
recorders and burners they were already selling in the Pacific Basin and will
be offering shortly in the Americas (at a hefty price point).
While Panasonic showed the "world's largest mass produced plasma" 65-in, Sharp
hawked a similar sized LCD TV. With homes relatively small throughout Asia,
we're not certain how people get far enough away to enjoy the 10-ft experience.
At the other end of the spectrum there were enough hand-held personal video players
and video-empowered cellphones to satisfy kids who simply must have their MTV!
Little Skype got tons of attention though with their capabilities and plans
for VoIP and cellphones. But we'll hold off talking about phones till we discuss
the CTIA show.
All of the PC folks were excited about showing their newest and shiniest. As
Intel's Pat Gelsinger said at IDF we're about to embark on our second billion
computers. While that sounds like a big number, Computer Industry Almanac recently
reported (Figure 5) there is not only still plenty of room to growth but also
a pent-up demand.
The results show why the U.S. is the biggest target for Dell, HP, Lenovo/IBM
and the hundreds of clone makers in Taiwan and Mainland China. Wireless networking,
multi-system homes and notebooks that to sell must have superb graphics, minimum
40GB HD, minimum 512MB RAM, WiFi, DVD burner and at least AV production are driving
the sales. Toshiba, HP and Sony have set the pace with systems that have screens
way better than Panasonic's TV and complete (yes, complete) entertainment capabilities.
CTIA Beauty Pageant
In less than two years this industry has come from being a backroom event to
a fashion runway event where it's important to see and be seen. Phones are no
longer phones. They are fashion statements that are bent on doing it all - steaming
audio, MP3 playback, mobile TV, web browsing, IM, email and the occasional phone
call.
It tells you something about the show though when Kodak shares the stage with
Sean "P.Diddy" Combs who just happened to bring along his new clothing collection.
We received a message on our phone at the show from an editorial friend asking
where we were at. We knew but didn't know our phone even had messaging capabilities!
We still haven't read the manual to figure out how to use messaging but we did
fumble through and delete the message (after calling him).
Ok so we're not the target customer for most of the service and phone providers
but all we want is a phone that works darn near everywhere and say 12-18 hours
of calling battery life. Our wish list would also be the ability to sync up
with our email service, more (maybe even removable) storage and our calendar.
That implies a keyboard designed for people with "normal" size hands. Yes we
did look at the Treo and look at it again in its next generation because it's
getting close…ok closer.
The rest of the features that excited people at the show were added for young
people who have grown up not knowing a cellular phone used to be a 5-pound brick
with a battery sidepack.
Cingular and Verizon got a lot of coverage because they announced they were going
to connect their picture-messaging networks so their nearly 100 million subscribers
could send bad photos back and forth. It must be a hot area because the phone
folks are starting to deliver camphones with 2 and 3 MP cameras. Great but the
screen is still the size of an old-fashioned matchbook cover.
When your kids tell you they have to have a phone because "everyone" has one,
they aren't stretching the truth. In fact 44% of the tweens and teens in the
U.S. have cell phones (Figure 6). They are heavily into text messaging (82%)
according to Sorrent (a firm that develops and markets products and services
to this market) and 84% play mobile games and 83% use ringtones (no wonder it's
a multibillion dollar industry!)
Everyone was showing off the newer and better phones we'll expect to see … soon. Motorola that had to pull the plug on their iTunes ready phone at CeBIT did show
their new clamshells that included speakerphone, instant messaging, MMS, 2-3MP
cameras, VGA camera, MMS and push-to-talk features. NEC, Nokia, LG, Kyocera,
Samsung and the others showed a wide array of new units that had CDMA and GMS
world phone service.
We liked some of the GPS capabilities but what the H*** for? Hey, it's a phone.
If I'm lost I'll call for directions!!!
The bigger news was all of the services you could tap into with your phone.
Hollywood, broadcasters and everyone is bent on "serving you better." Even Larry
Flint (Hustler) announced an adult service. Satellite radio, video on demand,
email and the other services that will be introduced will only do one thing…drive
up your phone bill. If you think a theater ticket is expensive, imagine paying
for a movie to your service provider.
Here in the states monthly bills have started to rise (Figure 7) after years
of decline. The services don't count for all of this - there has been consolidation
just in case you haven't noticed. But there were rumors of tiered services much
like your cable system at the show. Good because we didn't want to watch your
TV show or movie nor listen to your music anyway and paying for something we
don't intend on using seems counter-productive.
But the two shows give every indication of renewed vitality. The big winners
seem to be the software and service providers.
As for us? We've got a great digital camera/camcorder, a cellphone that does
more than we know how to do but we do have our eyes on a great new ultralite
notebook with all the bells and whistles!!!
Blog about CD and DVD Burning. Latest industry changes, software reviews.
