Now that CES has more or less wrapped, and I've sifted through a good deal of the reporting therein, I thought I'd share some of the things that have jumped out at me.
- News about the iPhone is impossible not to come by, and after Apple's stock leaped (full disclosure: I own some myself), people started to question the logic of the device: Why Cingular? Why no third-party software on the phone? Why such a high pricetag for a device that is essentially being sold into a commodity market? Even asking for 1% of a market that is saturated with cheap hardware -- and one where, in a way, the hardware isn't even really the issue anymore; it's the quality of the networks and the service offered across it -- seems like they're asking too much. But I suspect this is simply a loss-leader, foot-in-the-door measure by a company that wants to break into a new space -- the way Microsoft lost money upfront with the first iteration of the XBOX but are now very solid players in a space where they were initially seen as being wholly unwelcome and unwanted. Now if they can just resolve the nasty lawsuit over the name....
- The HD-DVD and Blu-ray Disc camps are getting all the more entrenched:
a) Warner Brothers' hybrid HD/BR disc. Apparently many of their HD titles will be in this format only, as a way of consolidating SKUs and saving on manufacturing costs. I'm still a touch leery of the idea if only because of the way Sony tried similar tactics with HDCD (blech), but the two situations really aren't as analogous as it might seem.
b) Triple-layer HD-DVD and beyond. Toshiba claims they can push the capacity of an existing HD-DVD to 50GB+, which would kind of negate any immediate advantages afforded by Blu-ray. What's not clear is how feasible this is with the players that have already been put onto the market -- would they be able to accomodate such discs with nothing more than a firmware upgrade?
c) The porn factor. In my opinion the idea that the porn industry could decide which format is the victor is so myopic it isn't even funny; it's just wishful thinking based on a loose analogy about Beta vs. VHS. One joke I heard before sums this aspect up nicely: In what format do people want their porn? Any dang way they can get it. - Microsoft's "home server", which sounds a bit like Windows Media Center Plus. One of the things I have always been annoyed about is Microsoft's lack of a server product that was intended for home or even home office environments, and that didn't cost a ton of money. Among the ideas being tossed around for what this thing is for: network-wide automated incremental backup, central data repository, media streaming, and most likely firewall/network filtering too. It's also clear that it won't be a standalone software product (unless you're a system builder), but a bunch of hardware boxes offered by different manufacturers loaded with a custom version of Windows Server 2003. RTM for the software is scheduled for June 22, so I'm guessing we'll see the hardware itself in the fall. Hewlett-Packard is going to be one of the first manufacturers to offer such a device. But, again, at what price? (The fact that the system is supposed to ship without and run without a display or a keyboard -- it's a "headless / lights-out" configuration, in other words -- will cut some dollars off by default. My guess is that it won't appear for less than $500, which is a lot more than what you could pay for a simple desktop machine with no display ... but then you'd have to configure it all yourself. And that's presumably what people are shelling out for -- the luxury of not having to do that.)
