g r o t t o 1 1

Peeve Farm
Breeding peeves for show, not just to keep as pets
Brian Tiemann
Silicon Valley-based purveyor of a confusing mixture of Apple punditry and political bile.

btman at grotto11 dot com

Read These Too:

InstaPundit
USS Clueless
James Lileks
Little Green Footballs
As the Apple Turns
Entropicana
Cold Fury
Capitalist Lion
Red Letter Day
Eric S. Raymond
Tal G in Jerusalem
Secular Islam
Aziz Poonawalla
Corsair the Rational Pirate
.clue
Ravishing Light
Rosenblog
Cartago Delenda Est




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Friday, November 4, 2005
23:05 - Ships passing in the night
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,174605,00.html

(top) link
Sony presses forward its own front in the video democratization war:

Sony Electronics Inc. announced Thursday that it has expanded support for its LocationFree wireless multimedia network into its PlayStation Portable (search) handheld gaming devices.

The San Diego-based unit of Sony Corp. said that PSP owners will now be able to use LocationFree (search) to stream TV programs or movies over a broadband Internet connection into the gaming device.

In order to begin accessing the services, a PSP must be updated with the latest version of Sony's device management software, Firmware 2.5, which can be downloaded either wirelessly or over a PC.

The upgrade allows PSPs linked with LocationFree to access video and audio content via Wi-Fi (search) hot spots with broadband access, such as those now commonly found in hotels and airports.

Steven Den Beste sends this link, and asks:

What they're talking about is this guy:



Despite what this article says, it doesn't seem to support DVDs. What it
supports is "UMD" (Universal Media Disc), which is a proprietary Sony video
format on a proprietary 6-cm diameter medium. (Somehow or other they managed
to pack 1.8 gigabytes onto that sucker.)

However, it does have a USB 2 interface, and you can buy USB 2 DVD drives.
(I've got one, in fact.) With the right software, it might well be able to
play DVDs, and the display is big enough to make it reasonable. Anyway, UMD
video will be scaled for its display even if it can't play true DVDs.

The display is 4.3 inch diagonal, 16:9 ratio, 480*272 pixels, true 24-bit
color. I think that for portable video that would be more than acceptable.

LocationFree seems to be a WiFi/Internet gateway with a big disk on it. You
can store data on it, and access it via WiFi in your home. If you're on the
road, and can get WiFi Internet access with the PSP you use it to dial into
your LocationFree "base station" to access your data anyway. Description
here:

http://www.us.playstation.com/PSP.aspx?id=softwareupdate/PSP_250_update.htm
http://products.sel.sony.com/locationfreetv/owners/pspmini_faq.html
http://www.engadget.com/entry/3575038736183461/

My guess is that this is more or less Sony's equivalent of the Mac Mini.

So does Sony have a winning combination here? Does Apple need to be
concerned?


Maybe. I couldn't say for sure until I saw where Apple plans to go with the whole video thing. It's fairly clear that where things stand right now isn't the final realization of some grand plan. A 2.5", 4:3 screen is simply not a movie-watching solution, no matter how self-contained it is. And in that sense, the iPod Video isn't intended to compete with stuff like the PSP in the first place, just as it isn't intended to compete with portable dedicated DVD players. Nor do I think Apple wants to try to go head-to-head with something you have to hook up to an external DVD drive, or try to cram Wi-Fi into the iPod. (They got rid of FireWire presumably so they could shave off the volume consumed by that one extra chip on the board, and thus make it thinner still. Keeping the package small and the feature set streamlined is still the primary concern behind the iPod. Otherwise they could have just turned it into an über-PDA, like people have been suggesting since 2001.)

I persist in thinking the iPod Video is a sideshow, something to keep people distracted and happy while Apple readies whatever will be sold at www.apple.com/movies.
James Sentman writes:

There is one specific DVD player that I will not be unhappy to see replaced with an iPod with video! The portable unit that I carry in the car for long car trips with the kids. It's got 2 separate screen that you can attach to the back of the headrests so the kids can watch a movie. However, there is no good place to put the DVD player unit. You can't put it back into the case because it overheats, you cant lay it on the floor of the back seat because the kids will spill and drop stuff on it, you can't stuff it down between the seats as then you can't get to it to push buttons! I have already tested the video out from the iPod running the 2 little 7" LCD screens and it works great. So I'm copying all the kids favorite movies over to the iPod right now! Another thing the iPod has as an advantage over those in car DVD players, even the built in ones, are the controls. Have you ever tried getting through the previews and hitting the right menu item to actually get the movie to play in a car where the screen for the player is designed so that it cannot be seen from the front seat so that you wont be tempted to watch while driving? You can't do it while you're driving thats for sure. But if I have an iPod connected to the remote screens, I can select the movie and play it and then put it back into the arm rest or charger/holder or wherever and not have to worry about the dumb DVD menus.

The iPod is a fair site better than a DVD player in those applications.

While I wouldn't want to watch full movies on the built in screen, I'll be handing it to my daughter on an airplane soon and she will be happy to watch the latest episode of Rolie Polie Olie while we fly to see Grandma. And that means that I can keep my computer screen for my own use instead of just using it as a glorified DVD player while sitting next to her.

So for portable use, it excels!

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© Brian Tiemann