Engadget have a great page on the ongoing Blu-ray vs HD DVD battlethat seems to have reached a critical point.
Microsoft’s public statement, in support of HD DVD, cites Blu-ray’s lack of support for managed copy and HD DVD’s better backward compatibility as the reason they are supporting HD DVD.
Both of these claims look shallow. Backward compatibility could easily be achieved if the drives add a second (red) laser and optical pickup – dirt cheap to do. Managed copy can also easily be implemented in Blu-ray’s existing AACS content protection system – it’s just not part of the underlying disk format.
So what’s the real reason why Microsoft won’t back Blu-ray? A small footnote in Engadgets page hints:
The Java platform is mandatory on Blu-ray as it’s the standard for menus/multimedia (i.e. all Blu-ray systems must support JVM) (1)
In other words, to support Blu-ray, Microsofts player would have to use Java to render the Blu-ray disks user interface – interactive menus etc (current DVDs use pre-rendered MPEG menu elements with very simple control interfaces). Does Microsoft want to depend on a Java Virtual Machine for anything? Like hell they do.
This week TG Daily report that HP have appealed to the Blu-ray Disc Association to implement two missing features: Managed Copy and oh, this other little thing called iHD. What is iHD you might ask? It’s the XML based interface definition format used by HD-DVD. It would not require players from vendors like Microsoft to use Java.
As the article above clearly states, HP have completely changed their position on both issues and its not half obvious there is a Microsoft gun stuck in their back. The question is why would the rest of the Blu-ray Disc Association listen to this demand/request when they know it is really from Microsoft who, having backed the competing horse, are now desperatly trying to hedge their bets? I’d imagine there is some amount of horse trading going on between members of the Blu-ray Association Board but Sony are sitting is a very enviable position. At best they will freeze Micrsoft out of the Blu-ray player market, at worst they might concede on iHD and compete on a more level playing field.
Today, Sony hold the tactical advantage over their biggest home media competitor.
(1) More info in Wikipedia
aehso tech
Interesting concept – VMWare have released a free lightweight (28Mb) distribution of their virtual machine engine that just plays pre-built OS distributions. Nice way for vendors to distribute demos/trials of their software, and I’m sure big shops will use it internally to run old machine images.
I must give it a spin at the weekend, their browser appliance virtual machine is probably worth a look for the hell of it. From what I gather it contains a stripped down Ubuntu Linux withFirefox, GAIM, BitTorrent, and a Terminal Server Client.
aehso software, tech
Anyone working at the coalface of the IT industry tends to absorb new devices and interfaces that confuse or scare the hell out of most end users. Trying to explain how an iPod can really store 10,000 songs by mentioning things like compression and gigabytes usually draws a short 3 second blank stare ((“but….the CDs?”), followed by an abrubt change of conversion. (Another good example: try asking your one of your parents to switch off your iPod with no further instruction and you’ll see how ‘user friendly’ the iPod interface is.)
Users get uncomfortable when they can’t comprehend how things work and I occasionally get that sensation too – when I do, if I get a chance I’ll at least hit Google and go learn more. But sometimes, I stumble across new devices that just makes me go “wow” and I draw a line in my mind that says “you don’t want to go in there, it’s beyond you”.
Today’s “wow” came from Toshiba’s 4Gig 0.85″ hard drive. Look at the size of that thing! It’s impossibly small! I know Intel & co have ICs that contain millions and millions of transistors that are way smaller but this drive is smaller than my finger tip and it’s got real moving parts (and an electric motor) that operate to incredible degrees of precision, unimaginable to us.
Wow. (I know, I know, I’ll read this in five years time and laugh helplessly)
aehso tech
IBM have decided they need to add some hardware to WebSphere to handle some of that heavy XML processing load and they went out and bought DataPower. Hardware XML messaging processing make a whole lot of sense for relativly static and stable WSDL defined services, as long as the hardware integrates well with existing authentication and authorization respositories (LDAP etc). I’ve no experience with DataPower’s product but it all looks sensible:
It will be some time before IBM have it all integrated nicely with WebSphere – I presume they’ll have to produce yet another version of Websphere Server that is pre-configured to run behind this hardware.
Interesting, I don’t remember there ever being a similiar hardware device for CORBA/IIOP – perhaps that was a contributor to CORBA’s failure on the internet. IBM must have learned a little (even if they were not at the forefront of the CORBA market).
aehso tech
Sony have hit a sweet spot with their new W900i
This phone is the functionally what Apple were aiming for with the ROKR but they missed by a long shot.
The highlights:
- 1/2 Gig RAM (expanable with memory sticks)
- 240 x 320 display – the same resolution and colour depth as the new iPod, different orientation
- MP3 player and FM tuner (take note Apple).
- HTML browser, RSS feed reader (sweet!)
- 2 Megapixel camera, with video streaming from the phone – I wonder which video codecs it supports, and can it stream via bluetooth?
- Java MIDP2
The only thing this is missing is 802.11 support but I suppose if you want that you really want to buy a 950i
A bit chunky – 148g, compared to 98g for my trusty t610i (and more than 5mm bigger in each dimension to boot). I’ll have to hold one before making up my mind but I’m nearly sold on the spec alone.
aehso tech
Keep half an eye on the reports coming out of Gnomodex – if reports are anything to go by there will be at least two major announcements…
aehso tech
I’m clearly in the wrong job – I have just realised you can charge $1500 for a makey-uppy “report” on such a “critical” industry sector as Podcasting. Said report includes sections like “Receiving a Podcast” and even a figure purporting to forecast “U.S. Podcast Users: 2004 – 2010.” All this despite the outline stating
the podcasting market is too immature to identify clear product market segments and create profitable podcasting-specific products and services
The fact is by 2010 the number of worldwide users capable of listening to timeshifted digital audio streams will be 600million+ but that won’t be because of the iPod or Podcasters – it’ll be enabled by the number of 3G smartphones in peoples hands. (of course they won’t all want to use their phones for this but they will be _able_ to. Provided the wireless networks behave themselves and allow the phones to download at a reasonable cost (including jumping onto 802.11 networks), Nokia and SonyEricsson will eventually have Apple’s lunch.
But of course there is no mention of the possibility of this even in the outline of this report?
aehso tech
Quite literally – here’s a demo video (via Gizmodo. Little glass tiles representing Maps, Video, Controllers etc, all interacting via what appears to be a hardware desktop interface. Now who says OOP isn’t da bomb!
If the tiles were resizable it’d be more interesting 
Actually, now that I think of it, It’s a wonder that there isn’t a computer desktop frameworks that support this type of dynamic binding of controllers and model widgets and windows? Programmers are thought to decouple models from views and controllers, yet the controllers always seem to be muddled on top of the view in UIs. Hmmmm.
aehso tech
PCWorld’s Best Products of 2005 (hey, we still have 6 months left to go, and the possible arrival of the XBox 360!).
aehso tech
The Nokia 770 looks very interesting, very very interesting – Debian Linux, WiFi & Bluetooth, Opera browser, RSS, PDF, Flash, VOIP and IM. All for sub-$350!
maemo.org is hosting the development platform – the script kiddies will have fun with this…
Odd for Nokia, it’s not a phone.
aehso tech
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