Media Technologies

Blu-Ray discs - after a senseless few years of competing formats (R.I.P. HD-DVD), the video industry has settled on this format for high definition program distribution. The benefits include 1080p widescreen video, lossless multi-channel sound, and more interactive content. The hardware and discs are still pricey at this writing (7/08), about $400 per player and $30 per disc, but that is certain to change as demand increases.

DVD are still one the best ways to watch movies at home! Starting in 1996, they reshaped the video industry and proved that people DO actually buy videos. Before this, videotapes were primarily priced for rental at nearly $90 each, and videodiscs never got beyond being a relatively expensive videophile technology. Even with Blu-Ray and Internet delivery technology threatening to displace them, DVD remains the most affordable way to experience the movies. Make sure you have a widescreen TV and an upconverting DVD player, and use those digital connections (HDMI, DVI, Coax/Optical digital audio).

Media Technologies - Digital Media is growing every day. Come in here to learn more about digital devices for everything from reading to TV.

Note: (7/30/08) The remainder of this page is a dated overview, circa 2004, of media technology. This is a FAST moving area of development, so nearly every area has improved substantially. Cable TV has made a resurgence as the best way to get local high definition programming, combined with high speed Internet access and phone service all delivered over one cable at a bundled price. DirecTV is the best choice for high quality HDTV delivery, but cannot yet deliver local HD channels to smaller markets like Charleston. Dish Network has distinguished itself as a provider of broad international programming choices, but also nearly rivals DirecTV for HD. Digital Music is now ubiquitous, and Apple's iTunes music store is the number one music retailer in the USA. There is a strong move away from protected music formats like Apple's AAC and Microsoft's WMA, and even some motion toward lossless formats as well. Sadly, electronic book technology has languished, with no particular agreement on format or devices. Amazon has made recent inroads with their new Kindle, and Sony with their eReader, both of which use innovative eInk display technology. Lastly, portable devices have brought together convergence across phone, music, video, book and Internet technologies, all on small devices like Apple's iPhone, Microsoft's Windows Mobile devices (various manufacturers), and Research in Motion's Blackberry line. It's an exciting time!

Satellite TV:

There are two major kinds of Satellite TV available today - Direct Broadcast Satellite (DBS) and big-dish (lovingly called BUD). DBS is all digital, uses one or two small (18-24") dish, and is available from two major providers in the United States:

I've used both services, and currently favor DirecTV. You can get either delivered and installed for next to nothing, but watch out for the details. Most deals include a 1-year commitment, and some include payment up front before getting the rebate that makes the deal "free".

What's so great about DBS:

Hundreds of channels
An intuitive and helpful on-screen menu system for choosing programs, built-in
All digital - crystal clear picture and sound on every channel
Dolby Digital sound on some channels (currently Starz and PPV)
Programming packages to fit what you want, with prices comparable to cable, and changes can be made instantly over the phone - no visit from a serviceman in an 8-hour window!
Sports packages - every NFL, NBA, NHL, MLB, or college basketball or football game. These can be expensive because you usually buy the whole season at once, but are worth it for many people.
Multiple feeds of some channels - missed that movie on HBO at 8 pm - it will be on again on HBO West at 11 pm!
Local channels are available, usually about $5/month. These usually include your local ABC, CBS, FOX, NBC, and PBS National, but not WB, UPN or other local channels. Dish Network has WB and UPN stations as part of their standard lineup.

Why DBS instead of cable?

QUALITY - most cable systems that I've seen have lousy quality on at least a few channels, and sometimes on all. Does your ABC/CBS/NBC channel ghost or have herringbone distortions? Not on DBS. Do you get stereo sound with HBO on cable? You always do on DBS.
The cable Digital lie - I tried AT&T Digital Cable, and tossed it. Why? Because all of the channels I watched were actually sent analog to me, which meant the quality was less than wonderful. On my system, this meant that everything below channel 100 was analog.
Lousy user interface on the digital cable box. Sorry guys, but when I bring up the channel guide, I want to start with my current channel, not channel 2 everytime! It's a small thing, but completely annoying.
Lousy sound connections. The box said Dolby Digital, but there was no digital connection to my Dolby Digital receiver. The sound quality was all over the map. My Sony DBS receiver has an optical connection which provides rock-solid audio, and DBS Dolby Digital receivers provide the full DD 5.1 soundtrack to your receiver digitally (if the channel provides it).
Stable rates
Reliable customer support
Websites

Oddly enough, you may choose to use an antenna for your local channels together with your DBS dish. I've used the "lifeline" cable offering, about $12 per month, for years so I don't need to worry about the antenna. There are some good things about cable - read on.

Resources:

http://www.dbsdish.com - a great source about the DBS world

http://directv.com

http://dishnetwork.com

Digital Music:

You can record, store and playback any kind of music or sound on a computer or dedicated digital recorder. You can have great quality (CD) or small space. The big formats are MP3 and Windows Media. As an ex-Microsoft person, I favor Windows Media, but MP3 is good too.

Resources:

http://www.mp3.com - Some free music. The "My MP3" service allows you to retrieve the contents of the CD's you have wherever you are - you prove to them that you have a disc by putting it in your CD drive, and they add it to your catalog. This can save you time if you don't want to rip everything yourself.

http://napster.com - They're being sued by the music world because you can get anything you want from someone else on the Internet for free, and they help you find them. The best reason I've seen for using this service is to get digital copies of your old albums. Converting from LP or cassette is possible, but time consuming and difficult. You are legally entitled to have "backups" of your music, which technically can mean that they're in a different form. I still have hundreds of LPs, with almost no place to play them - yes, I still have a turntable!

File-sharing Services table from Dallas Morning-News

Electronic Books:

One of the coolest new things that hasn't caught on yet is Electronic Books. This is the future of reading, count on it. What seems to be holding it back is twofold - the publishers and the screens. Microsoft has a free book reader package that lets you download and read books on your PC, and has built a secured purchasing system that lets you buy a book that nobody else can read. Today, the prices are too high for most of these, and the publishers only allow two PC's to be able to read a purchased book. Hopefully that will change.

In the meantime, there are many free books available, and you can create your own from text files, web pages and Word documents.

You can read books with Personal Digital Assistants (PDA's). The PocketPC includes a version of the Microsoft Reader software, so you can download a book to your PDA and read it wherever you are. The Compaq iPaq has an excellent lit color screen, so you can read in the dark too. A typical book is about 300K, so you can store many books on your PDA.

There are many eBook formats available today.

Microsoft LIT
HTML
CHM (help file)
Palm
RocketBook
plain text
PDF
more ...

I've come to favor LIT format - a typical book is heavily formatted, even if you don't realize it. LIT, HTML and CHM all allow that formatting to be captured accurately. LIT is a single file, non-revisable format based around XML, and can be encrypted. There are tools for creating LIT files directly from Word documents, or more sophisticated documents using HTML and graphics.

Resources:

http://microsoft.com/reader - Get the Microsoft Reader software to read LIT books, and tools for creating LIT documents

http://bn.com - Barnes & Noble sells various formats of eBooks, and has many available free in the LIT format

Ebook Library at the Elecronic Text Center, University of Virginia - UVA has created LIT versions of thousands of public domain books, and their collection grows daily

Microsoft Reader Books - the CE Windows website has collected loads of LIT books that will work properly on the PocketPC (which doesn't support the encrypted format that the new Reader software supports)

PalmaServ Documents for the Palm Computing connected organizers - tons of documents and books in the Palm format.

PROJECT GUTENBERG OFFICIAL HOME SITE - INDEX -- Free Books On-Line - This ambitious project hopes to convert 10,000 public domain books to plain ASCII TXT format, to let anybody have an instant library on CD. These people are awesome, and need your money! Many of the books you'll find "free" elsewhere started here. They are well along the way, with a few thousand books done already.

eText Station - Links to books free and otherwise all over, and software to automatically make HTML versions of Project Gutenberg texts.

netLibrary - Home - Books in HTML format, available on a subscription basis or free. You can only get a page at a time, so can't download the whole book and read offline (or convert it).

http://readerworks.com - Software for creating LIT format books.

Pocket PC:

This is my favorite toy, and really much more than a media technology. More soon.

Revised 07/30/2008.