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There is nothing like two
back-to-back cross country flights to make you think about what should be the
next best immersive environment for personal entertainment. Especially when you
are crammed into a middle seat between the Constant Squirming Woman and XL Man.
So in the interests of
science and research, and in the anticipated hours of ensuing boredom, I took
with me various tools to test out last week: a video iPod with a couple of Lost
and Desperate Housewives episodes, an iAudio mp3 player with several dozen
songs (just for variety's sake), a Palm with the Sudoku program and a couple of
books. What I found out is interesting and timely.
It was timely, because my
trip came during all this news from theatrical owners. They seem to be taking a
page from the recording industry in What Not To Do With Tech. First, the
theater owners are feeling a bit peevish and threatened by the efforts of Mark
Cuban and others to eliminate their exclusive release window, the delta time
between first run and DVD sale.
http://www.blogmaverick.com/entry/1234000127044892/
On top of this, several theater
chains are making big investments in digital display technology over the next
couple of quarters. They intend to get projection equipment installed that
almost is good enough when compared to analog. You won't be able to tell the
difference, they say.
Note to theater owners:
you are wasting your money with the new digi toys and with fighting Cuban's
efforts. Zero release windows are going to happen, just like illegal copies of
first-run movies now show up within hours on the streets of Hong Kong, Bangkok,
New York and Paris. Invest some money in providing good food that can be
inexpensive but still profitable, cleaner auditoriums, and the needed security
to eject rude patrons. Bring back bargain matinees and double features so
patrons will want to come and won't spend a small fortune bringing their
friends. And while we are suggesting things, let's require all Academy members
to attend at least ten regular shows per year, rather than special screenings.
When the industry insiders have to sit next to the rest of us in the dark,
maybe they will understand what we all have to go through to watch their work.
But this isn't a column
about the miserable theatrical experience; however popular it may still be.
What all the various digital device makers are trying to do is recreate
something on the personal entertainment level that can deliver the "ah
ha" of watching a great movie in a theater. They have only partially
succeeded.
I was surprised at the
video quality of the new iPod -- it is crystal clear, the images are mostly
bright enough to view in most situations other than bright sun, and I was
comfortable enough watching the shows that now I am hooked on Lost (yeah, about
time, I know). But instead of ordering more episodes from the iTunes store, I just
got the DVDs from Netflix.
That is a telling comment:
distribution is still the weak link in the portable video chain. Discovering, downloading, and dealing
with the different video compression formats is still a chore. Much easier to just
pop on over to Netflix and key in what you want.
The Palm/Sudoko
combination is addictive, more addictive than just doing Sudoku on paper. One
of my seatmates, XL Man, was doing Sudoku the old fashioned way and wasn't
interested in trying out my Palm PDA. He didn't say why, and I was too busy
trying out all my tech to really care either. But all told, I probably didn't
do more than an hour per flight on the Palm. It gets tiring doing puzzle after
puzzle, and eventually the wow factor wears off
And the MP3 player was
terrific in letting me catch up with some of my favorite podcasts, along with
entertaining me on some favorite tunes during the flight. The nice thing about
the iAudio is that you can copy mp3 files to do without having to deal with
iTunes. It is just another removable storage device and for ad hoc listening
where you don't want to carry your entire library of tunes with you, it is
great. Plus, it runs on a single AAA battery which is easy enough to replace.
Speaking of batteries,
this is the major challenge when taking all this gear on the road. My
pre-flight checklist now has me charging up various things, collecting the
right kind of batteries and making sure I have cables galore for everything.
Both the portable players
sound systems were made much better by a set of good headphones that had some
noise-canceling features. I was using ones from Brookstone but there are better
and more expensive ones from Bose. If you do a lot of flying, these are what
truly turns the personal audio/video player into an immersive environment,
because the headphones cover your ears and block out some of the plane noises,
including crying kiddies, annoying seat mates, and that loud rush of air going
by the outside of the plane.
So who won my little
portable bake off? The book, hands down. I found out that a good book will
trump any tech toy, no matter how cute and geeky it might be. And when you
consider the number of hours I spent with each toy, the book trumped all of the
electronics by a factor of two or three. It isn't any mystery -- the book can
be read on takeoffs and landings, doesn't depend on batteries, and can be put
down and picked up without too much of a break in the action.
Granted, there is some
bias here. I am a voracious reader, and can finish at least one book on a
flight. But sometimes you want to leave all that tech behind you and just get
involved in a great book.
Happy
holidays to one and all, and here's to a great 2006! Yes, I am still doing my
job search, and yes, I am still in Los Angeles, despite the vanity cell number.
Take care and have a nice break, and there will be plenty of Web Informants to
come in 2006.
David
Strom
+1
(516) 554 6290
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