Electronic device manufacturers and content producers have
got to back away from internet loans forest and see the light filtering
throught the trees. Consumers want to control the content
they purchase and want to be able to use their electronic
devices together without restrictions placed on them.
Standards and interoperability will have to come to digital
devices, just Broadbandcom Google co-founder Larry Page said in his
Consumer Electronics Show keynote speech setup streamyx email he introduced
Google Video. Right now, only those video's purchased through
Google Video that are NOT copy protected will play on video
iPods and Sony air asia malaysia - the rest only work on Google Video.
http://www.google.com/press/podium/ces2006.html
That news about Google Video and Networking Broadband Rights Management
(DRM) standards of interoperability had me fuming about my
inability to use my content (photos, movies, music) on
devices made by different manufacturers or between cell phone
providers. Today I streamyx fast across a story about an Anti-DRM group
in Britain campaigning to demand an end to DRM.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/01/18/drm_consumer_opposition/
Obviously I'm not the only one disturbed by the fact that I
cannot move digitally recorded movies from my Tivo to my DVD
recorder (purchased for exactly that reason, but before I
knew it wouldn't work) I only found out that I couldn't
record movies from the Tivo to the DVD recorder when I called
Pioneer customer support to ask why the recorder wouldn't
record my movies. It seems that I can only move digital
movies from the Tivo to my computer (which I found I could do
with free Tivo Desktop software when I called Tivo customer
support.)
So instead of recording directly from my Tivo to my Pioneer
DVD recorder, I have to move the movie over to my computer
via Tivo Desktop software, then burn a DVD from my computer.
Very smart move on Tivo's part, as it means I definitely
won't buy the DVR from my satellite TV provider because they
don't support skipping commercials, nor do they support
moving movies to my computer.
This also means I don't NEED my Pioneer DVD recorder - so
their DRM which stops Tivo digitally recorded movies from
recording to DVD means that I won't use that Pioneer DVD
recorder and will now sell it. The other DVD player connected
to my other television will suffice. If I want to record
something, it goes on the Tivo because it is so easy to use
and works so extremely well. I'll use the free Tivo Desktop
software and move it to my computer and burn DVD's of my
recorded television and movies there.
Clearly Tivo is doing all they can to make their device
consumer friendly - but they are being besieged by television
and movie content producers, who are screaming at them to
stop the "piracy" of their users. Tivo now disables the 30
second commercial skip button daily (which you have to know
how to program - Select, Play, Select, 3-0, Select). They do
this via automatically updated internal software because
advertisers screamed at them for several years about the
consumer ability to skip commercials. The result is that I
reprogram that function daily anyway - annoying, but not
nearly as annoying as not being able to control my own device
the way I want to.
I'm convinced that content producers will lose this battle
over the long term and I'll do all I can to fight them
myself, like supporting anti-DRM groups wherever I Broadband Signal them.
And I'll research more thoroughly before buying products
which contain DRM to make certain they will work with my
existing devices - meaning no Sony CD's or DVD's. There have
been rumors that Apple is creating a set-top box and service
similar to Tivo and I'd buy one in a split second as I'm sure
I could use my iPod, iMac and iPhoto seamlessly between all
devices.
Maybe they'll make a phone with a Mac OS and a PDA as well (I
actually used to own an early Apple Newton PDA and oh, how I
wish they had continued to develop that wonderful little
thing). I'm happy to use anything Apple produces - but I
won't switch cell providers or switch my Satellite TV
provider. Interoperability and standards are essential to me.
It's about choice. Pioneer limited my choices and lost a
customer and Motorola lost my ROKR iTunes phone business
because the device is only available from Cingular.
Obviously, I'm a Mac user and had studiously avoided
purchasing Windows machines until I had to buy a Windows box
to run business software not available for my Apple machines.
So I bought an extremely cheap $299 PC to run the three
programs that won't run on my Mac. That cheap machine now
serves as my DVD burner for movies (with a cheap external
hard drive as movie storage drive). Pioneer lost a customer
because they don't allow me to record movies to DVD from my
Tivo. How about a Tivo/Apple partnership? That would be a
marriage made in heaven due to the customer-centric design
and usability so elegantly addressed by both companies.
I'll put up with Apple's walled garden (iTunes and
proprietary AAC files) and their own DRM only as long as
everything they make works seamlessly together. Apple
products always have worked elegantly together and probably
always will. Somehow kuala lumpur travel guide third party software seems to
interact well with everything else on the Macs. The moment
Motorola makes that ROKR iTunes phone available through MY
cellular provider, I'll consider buying that phone.
Being in the market for a phone, I had been looking at a Palm
Treo 650 phone/PDA and was excited when they introduced the
new 700 model, just as I was about to make that purchase. So
I read a few reviews and discovered to my horror that Palm
just fell victim to the dominance of Microsoft and replaced
their own well designed Palm operating system on that new
Treo 700 with a buggy, slow and cumbersome Windows OS!
In the process they lost another customer, because I can't
stand the clunky way one must navigate with Windows
(reviewers agree) and refuse to buy that machine now, the
same way I avoided all other PDA's running Windows for the
past 10 years. This is all because Palm couldn't port
Microsoft documents and Windows related bits to the Palm OS
when corporate users required that interoperability. Thanks
to Gates & Company, Palm lost another customer - and their
own elegant OS.
If mainstream electronics device manufacturers continue to
take the path of least resistance by kowtowing to content
producers, lowest common denominator software and stifled
functionality and interoperability, then consumers will
eventually find a way to take back the control. We'll avoid
buying products (CD's & DVD's, "rented" music) that don't
work with their existing devices (Tivo's, DVD recorders,
PDA's, iPods) and will find companies that make all of this
stuff work together and buy from them - but only so long as
ALL devices and ALL content work with each other
interchangeably.
Mike Banks Valentine is a Search Engine Optimization Specialist and blogs about web content at: http:// weblogs.Publish101.com and distributes articles about business at: http:// Publish101.com while operating a small business ecommerce tutorial at: http://WebSite101.com
KUALA LUMPUR, Sept 5 ?Police who raided a karaoke cum mini discotheque in the city early this morning, found 37 revellers under the influence of drugs.
What was shocking was that more than half of the revellers inside the mini disco were Muslims who were either drunk or under the influence of drugs and showed no respect for the Holy month of Ramadan.
No comments:
Post a Comment