At the BroadbandPlus show, Sony introduced four new set-top boxes (STBs). All but the low-end model support DVR functionality (which can’t be good news for TiVo), and HDTV. They look interesting, but I won’t be buying until I know I can get to media I’ve recorded for personal use.

All four STBs incorporate Sony’s new “Passage” technology. Sony’s Passage site and whitepaper are shallow, but I believe that Passage is just Sony’s name for the OpenCable STB specifications. In other words, Sony is pulling an “i.Link” and co-opting a standard in order to confuse the press and consumers. The stories I’ve seen so far suggest that it’s working — the mainstream press thinks that Sony invented the standard, rather than just implemented it.

The OpenCable STB specifications mean that you can theoretically use STBs from any vendor on your digital cable system, meaning that you’re not stuck with the one that your cable provider offers. Why would cable companies want this? They don’t, probalby but the FCC Telecommunications Act of 1996 mandates that they do. | Passage site | Passage whitepaper | CableLabs OpenCable STB specifications press release

Ars Technica is running the first part of a series called Understanding the Microprocessor. Although it may sound a bit esoteric for less-technical readers, the article is well-written and does a nice job of easing into the details.

I’m a firm believer in the benefits of understanding your tools from both a Understanding the Microsoprocessor: Part 1

As non-desktop playback devices (PDAs, smart phones, tablet computers) change how we interact with digital media, now is as good a time as any to reflect on the origins of pardigms that have dominated for the last 20 years.

One important milestone was December 9, 1968. On that day, Doug Engelbart demonstrated an online computer system he’d been working on with 17 other researchers within the Stanford Research Institute’s Augmentation Research Center. To put it in perspective, this was almost a year before the first node of ARPANET (the precursor to the internet) was in place, and 14 years before the introduction of Macintosh (which popularized many of the concepts introduced on that day).

During the demo was the first public appearance of something called a “mouse”. As Doug says during one of the segments:

This demonstration was attended by about 1,000 computer professionals. Along with the mouse, attendees saw things like word processing (with cut/copy/paste), list/outline manipulation, hyperlinking, collaboration over a network, a “chord”-based input device, and a lot more.

It’s incredibly interesting and fun to watch what must have seemed almost like science fiction at the time, and to make the connections between the concepts and terminology in the demo and how they apply to our relationship with computers today. It’s sobering and inspirational to realize that today’s experience will appear at least as archiac 25 years from now. | Doug Engelbart 1968 demo

DV cameras and new avenues for video distribution — web and DVD — have ignited a revolution in independent filmmaking in the same way that PageMaker and the laser printer did in publishing. Jason Kliot says this in a Wired story:

Power to the people, man (and hopefully a little money, too). But it’s not just the independent filmmaker that’s realizing the benefits of digital media.

The revolution isn’t just about replacing film (which will be considered quaint by 2007), either. Once the world has some perspective on it, Spy Kids 2 will be seen as a movie that changed the movie-making workflow. Robert Rodriguez says this about his experience making that movie:

Cool! | Wired story | Interview with Robert Rodriguez

Webcaster Alliance recently published a three-part series, “American Injustice: HR 5469″, that documents the story of the Small Webcasters Settlement Act (SWSA). There are serveral audio interviews, some of which are very revealing in terms of how the RIAA tried to divide and conquer the webcasting community. | “American Injustice: HR 5469″ | The Register article

…Jesse Helms, who blocked the first version of the Small Webcasters Settlement Act (SWSA), and whose revised version was passed by both houses of Congress on 14 Nov. Although his motives were apparently to provide relief for small, conservative Christian webcasters, he’s inadvertantly provided hope for all small and non-commercial webcasters. Although the SWSA itself isn’t an adequate solution, it at least keeps the door open for one. | Salon.com

Loudeye — that webcasting/encoding company with the impenetrably odd name — continues their feeding frenzy with the aquisition of “Streampipe”, another oddly-name company (one friend found it somewhat ecologically menacing, another remarked that it sounded like a euphemism for a male body part) that does corporate and government webcasts.

Streampipe brings Loudeye an additional 80 customers, estimated to bring in an additional $1 million per year. Loudeye traded 7.9 million shares (worth a little less than $3.3 million at market close) and a $1.1 million secured note (due 1/1/2004) for the priviledge.

Finally! I’d suspected that tests of the Canon EOS-1D (11 megapixel) and the Kodak DCS Pro 14n (14 mgapixel) would finally put the digital vs. 35mm argument to rest, and they have — the new cameras easily beat 35mm in terms of noise/grain (by a lot) and resolution (by a little, for now).

Norman Koren discusses this in his great series, “Understanding Image Sharpness”. Part 7 of the series discuss sharpness/detail in the context of digital cameras and 35mm film. I learned a lot that’s going to be useful when I eventually trade up from my Norman Koren article

Today, MusicNet announced that they’ve signed Sony and Universal for their service. On Wendesday, Pressplay announced that they’d scored a license from Warner. As of today, then, the score is:

MusicNet: BMG, EMI, Warner Music (the three founders), Sony Music and Universal.

Pressplay: Sony Music, Universal (the two founders), BMG, EMI and Warner Music.

So everybody has everybody’s content (the labels continue to license their content to others to avoid the ineffectual but inconvenient Justice Department actions), and the services have figured out that they’re going to need to support CD burning and MP3 player portability if they want people to give them $10 every month.

Susan Kevorkian, an IDC analyst, said that IDC figures that there are half a million subscribers in total for all paying music subscription services. Kazaa, in contrast, has about 10 million users in the U.S. | News.com story

Roxio, known mainly for its CD-burning software, is getting its fingers into as many pies as possible before that core business is completely commoditized by OS vendors. (Toast remains useful if you’re making hybrid CDs for commercial products, but otherwise I find that the stuff that comes with Mac OS X and Windows XP do everything I need.)

This morning, Roxio announced that it’s buying the assets (but not the outstanding liabilities, of course) of bankrupt file-sharing service Napster. Basically, this means they’re buying Napster’s file-trading client/server software and promising t-shirt business.

Once the transaction is approved by the bankrupcy courrt, Roxio president and CEO Chris Gorog promised that he will “provide consumers and investors with a strategic vision of how Napster will expand Roxio’s role in the digital-media landscape, and enhance our offerings to consumers”. Duh. As if we haven’t figured out that the plan is to monetize music-related file-trading.

Can they do it? No. They’ll be going up against MusicNet and Pressplay, ventures owned by the labels themselves. Although I have no doubt that labels will license their content to Roxio (if just to avoid accusations that the services are a duopoly), it’s unlikely that they’re going to let Roxio gain a significant foothold in digital music distribution. This smells like a “bet the company” move, and I’m betting against them. | Roxio press release