The High Cost of High Definition
— -- Want HD? Buy a New PC
Gordon StuderThe Buzz: Are you thinking you can use your computer as a quick way to try out the new Blu-ray or HD DVD discs before committing to a living room player? Well, think again. Playing prerecorded HD movies on your PC won't be a simple matter of adding a new optical drive. In November we reported that most current monitors don't support the HDCP copy protection standard high-def content requires. Recently, news emerged that existing ATI graphics cards that had advertised HDCP support don't really have it. In fact, at press time no shipping graphics boards fully supported HDCP. Factoring in the cost of a new drive, a copy of Vista (XP won't support encrypted Blu-ray or HD DVD discs), A new graphics board, and a new monitor, PC-based HD is starting to look pretty costly.
Bottom Line: Anyone who's recently spent $500 on a state-of-the-art graphics board or $1000 for a wide-screen monitor deserves better.
The Buzz: Sony may be out of the household robot market--it killed off its Aibo robot dog this January--but our dream of a semi-Useless robot pet in every home isn't dead yet. The latest sure-to-be-hot robotic creation comes from Caleb Chung, one of the inventors of the Furby. Ugobe's Pleo, a little robotic dinosaur, uses over 30 sensors to explore and interact with its environment and features a number of distinct emotional states as well as some amazingly lifelike movements. The critter should be available this fall for around $200 (see www.ugobe.com).
Bottom Line: First we had a dog--then we had two dinosaurs (Pleo and WowWee's Roboraptor). So is it me, or are robots evolving backwards? RoboTrilobite must be just around the corner.
The Buzz: Not much is certain in this world. Death, taxes, ever-increasing hard-drive capacity, and--well, that's about it actually. The last of these will get a big boost this fall when Seagate bumps the capacity of its 1-inch hard drives to 12GB. Though flash memory is making inroads in devices like CompactFlash cards, small MP3 players, and cell phones, a 12GB drive is significant. That much flash storage won't be affordable for quite a while, and 12GB is enough space to make video storage on small devices practical.
Bottom Line: Seagate's pushing the drive for video-ready cell phones, PDAs, and portable media players. I'm just looking forward to an update to its 5GB "hockey puck" drive--no more juggling USB thumb drives for me.
Future Tech: A Cell Phone/Projector?
Generally I'm all for miniaturization. But when that means a 2-inch or smaller screen on a device that's supposed to play video, something's gone sideways. That's where Light Blue Optics' tiny comes in. The matchbook-size, laser-based projector can create a 15-inch-diagonal video image, and the whole assembly is small enough to be integrated into cell phones, portable video players, and laptops. Light Blue Optics' current prototype projects a monochrome image for that retro-PC-display look, but the company plans to have a full-color version ready by year's end.