The Richter Scale^®

Last night I tried an experiment to see if I could get relatively inexpensive (sub-$300) HD-DVD playback going on my PC. The components of this experiment, other than the PC, involved an Xbox 360 HD-DVD Player and Cyberlink’s PowerDVD Ultra software.

I’m pleased to say the experiment worked. The $199.99 Xbox 360 HD-DVD Player (which I raved about here) is a USB 2.0 device. I merely plugged in the HD-DVD drive, waited for Windows XP to recognize it (I allowed Windows to go to the Windows web site to look for drivers too), and after around a minute or two, the drive was fully installed and usable as a DVD drive.

The next step was to install the $99.95 Cyberlink PowerDVD Ultra software. The current version of the software (pictured above) installs for either HD-DVD or Blu-ray Disc support - you have to choose, although company officials tell me that as soon as next month, a free upgrade will be made available to all purchasers of the current version which will support both versions for folks fortunate enough to have both HD-DVD and Blu-ray Disc drives in their PC.

The PowerDVD Ultra software comes with a tool called HD Advisor, which scans your system for compatible drives and to ensure your system is powerful enough to do a real-time decode of the high definition formats. The minimum requirements are actually not insubstantial, as processing high definition content requires a lot of CPU and graphics horsepower. However, if you do have a suitable system, it works very well. The only minor annoyance I found was the inability to turn off subtitles, but I suspect that is user error (or at least a lack of reading relevant documentation).

The other nice thing about this combo is that you get a free copy of the remake of King Kong in HD-DVD (at least as of last week), and a spare Xbox 360 remote control (not much use on your PC, but maybe you can sell it on eBay or use it with your Xbox 360 if you have one).

So, for $299.94 (not including any possible shipping costs or sales tax), you can watch HD-DVD movies on your PC. Not a bad deal at all (assuming your PC is powerful enough, of course).

I know over the years I have subjected many of my readers to the “woes” of living on Bonaire, a small Caribbean island with, among other things, lousy TV service, and obviously no U.S. ZIP code. You might ask why TV is even important when living in paradise, and would answer that mindless entertainment is needed even here.

The reason the ZIP code (or more specifically, not having one) is important is because it means we cannot get Electronic Program Guides - EPGs - see my post on “TV Time Shifting in Paradise” from over a year ago about this.

I have managed to cobble together a partial EPG on my new HP z565 Digital Home Entertainment Center (a Windows XP Media Center Edition PC that’s designed to sit in your living room) by using a Miami-area ZIP code, and then renumbering and deleting channels as best I can. It at least works for three major U.S. networks, Cartoon Channel, HBO, Showtime, and Disney, and has already been useful. As an added bonus, I can stream recorded shows to the Xbox 360 in my bedroom should I choose to.

However, an acquaintance recently reminded me that I am paying for an expensive business connection for DirecTV in my office in Marshall, Texas, where I only spent a few weeks last year, with the TV there being unwatched the rest of the time (and I only watch it for background noise in the evenings when I am there). The Samsung DirecTV decoder also has an 80GB driver and TiVo service. But, still it’s rather expensive per-hour viewing cost.

Around the same time as I was reminded of this, a couple of other friends mentioned that they had installed Slingbox devices so they could watch their home TV signals remotely while traveling. Ding ding ding - bells went off in my addled brain.

So, during my most recent visit to Marshall a few weeks ago, I installed a Slingbox Pro box (ordered from Amazon.com - about $218), and I couldn’t be much happier. The Slingbox Pro device takes video signal input in the form of either a cable TV signal, composite video or S-Video plus audio, or HDMI (with an optional cable) digital input for HD signals. I plugged in my DirecTV TiVo box, hooked up the infrared transmitters that come with the Slingbox Pro so they could control the DirecTV box, and I was off.

The Slingbox software, which maker Slingmedia calls “SlingPlayer”, was easy to set up - both to control the Slingbox itself, as well as provide the necessary controls on my notebook to view my TV signal. I also had Linda try it back on Bonaire after I set it up, and she was able to get it going there too. The really neat thing about SlingPlayer is that it knows all about the particular DirecTV decoder I have, and even has a virtual remote control (looks identical to the physical remote) that I can manipulate with my mouse. That in turns means I can access all the TiVo functionality of the box remotely too. And it all works over an Internet connection. The more upstream capability you have to send out a signal, the better. In my case the DSL connection at my office in Texas offers 768Kbps upstream, sufficient for a pretty reasonable 640x480 video stream from the Slingbox.

After I got back from Texas and CES I went and set up Slingplayer software on the HP z565 in my living room, and can now watch live TV from Texas in my living room. Full screen on my 61” TV is too grainy and jumpy, but I can get a decent image at about 24” diagonal, which is just fine to catch up on missed shows and programming I would otherwise not get. It also means I can stop paying $1.99 for missed episodes of Grey’s Anatomy, Desperate Housewives, and Lost. And, I can also watch it from any PC with the SlingPlayer software. And for certain handheld devices, there’s even Slingplayer Mobile version for mobile phones and PDAs running the Windows Mobile operating system.

I’m also considering installing another Slingbox at my in-laws in New Hampshire so I can watch their TV signal here on Bonaire, kind of as a back-up of sorts (no TiVo there yet, though, but I can fix that too).

My biggest regret with the Slingbox is that I didn’t think of getting one sooner.

My next issue to solve is how to get a video signal from the output of my big screen TV in my living room to the small TV in my kitchen without running cables (my wife hates cables across the floor or ceiling). We have concrete walls, so there’s no good way to run them inside the walls. The concrete walls also effectively destroy my use of a wireless AV transmitter - those really need to be line of sight, or at least through a wood/drywall panel, not eight inches of concrete in order to have an interference free image.

However, if I wait long enough, Sling Media will be selling the SlingCatcher - a box which will let me use my network connection (wired or wireless) to receive TV input from a Slingbox either in the same building or anywhere else there’s a Slingbox I have access to.

I give the Sling Media Slingbox Pro a 9.5 out of 10.0 on The Richter Scale.

Well, in addition to now being closely associated with discussions on the future of HD-DVD and Blu-ray standards, in particular with respect to the adult entertainment industry, a recent interview of mine has made it to the web (not YouTube yet, though).

Take a look at this clip, shot during a media luncheon at Pat Meier-Johnson’s Lunch@Piero’s event. It’s a five minute interview dealing with commentary on multimedia convergence and the future of tangible media (e.g. CDs, DVDs).

As 2006 came to a close, Microsoft did a lot of chest thumping to declare themselves the winner of the next generation console battle, touting console sales (over 10 million Xbox 360s sold) and content (160 high definition Xbox 360 titles). Disregarding the fact that the next generation console battle is really just starting in earnest, and Microsoft merely had an early lead, the 160 titles proclamation puzzled me. After all, I think I am probably one of Microsoft’s best individual consumer clients - I have three Xbox 360s and a couple of dozen Xbox 360 packaged titles - and I add another few every month as they are released, and I did not realize I was missing well over 100 games in my collection. Nor have I seen that many games on shelves at BestBuy or GameStop. So, I asked my media contact at Microsoft for a current list of high definition Xbox 360 titles, and this is what they sent back:

2006 FIFA World Cup
A Train HX
Amped 3
Aqua Zone*
Assault Heroes*
AstroPop*
Bankshot Billiards 2*
Battlefield 2: Modern Combat
Bejeweled 2*
Bionicle Heros
Blazing Angels: Squadrons of WW II
Blitz: The League
Blue Dragon
Bomberman Act: Zero
Bullet Witch
Burger King: Big Bumpin’
Burger King: Pocketbike Racer
Burger King: Sneak King
Burnout: Revenge
Cabela’s African Safari
Cabela’s Alaskan Adventure
Call of Duty 2
Call of Duty 3
Chanbara Beauty X
Chromehounds
Cloning Clyde*
Condemned
Contra*
Crystal Quest*
Culdcept Saga
DEAD OR ALIVE 4
Dead or Alive Xtreme 2
Dead Rising
Defender*
Dig Dug*
Disney/Pixar’s Cars
Doom*
Dynasty Warriors 5 Empires
Earth Defense Force 3
Enchanted Arms
Eragon
Everyparty
F.E.A.R.
Far Cry Instinct: Predator
Far East of Eden ZIRIA
Feeding Frenzy*
FIFA 06 Road to World Cup
FIFA 2007
Fight Night Round 3
Final Fantasy XI
Football Manager 2006
Football Manager 2007
Frogger*
Full Auto
Galaga*
Gauntlet*
Gears of War
Geometry Wars Retro Evolved*
Gun
Hardwood Backgammon*
Hardwood Hearts*
Hardwood Spades*
Hexic*
Hitman: Blood Money
Import Tuner Challenge
Jewel Quest*
Joust*
Just Cause
Kameo
Kengo ZERO
King Kong (Peter Jackson’s King Kong: The Official Game of the Movie)
LEGO Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy
LMA Manager 2007
Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle Earth II
Lost Planet: Extreme Condition
LOVE FOOTBALL
Lumines Live*
Madden NFL 06
Madden NFL 07
Major League Baseball 2K6
Marble Blast 2*
Marvel Ultimate Alliance
Moto GP 2006
Mutant Storm Reloaded*
NBA 2K6
NBA 2K7
NBA Live 06
NBA Live 07
NCAA College Hoops 2K6
NCAA College Hoops 2K7
NCAA Football 07
Need For Speed Most Wanted
Need for Speed: Carbon
New Rally X*
NHL 07
NHL 2K6
NHL 2K7
NINETY-NINE NIGHTS
NovaDrome*
Open Season
Outpost Kaloki*
Over G
Pac-Man*
Perfect Dark Zero
Phantasy Star Universe
Pimp my Ride
Prey
Pro Baseball Spirits 3
Pro Evolution Soccer 6
Project Gotham Racing 3
Project Sylpheed
Quake 4
Ridge Racer 6
RoboBlitz*
Robotron*
Rockstar Games Presents Table Tennis
Rumble Roses XX
Saints Row
Samurai Warriors 2
Scramble*
Senko no Ronde Rev. X
Shin Sangoku Musou 4 special
Small Arms*
Smash TV*
Sonic the Hedgehog
SPECTRAL FORCE 3 INNOCENT RAGE
Star Trek Legacy
Street Fighter II Hyper Fighting*
Super Robot Wars XO
Superman Returns: The Videogame
Tenchu Senran
Test Drive Unlimited
Tetris Grand Master 3*
Texas Hold’Em*
The American Civil War
The Conveni 200X
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
The Godfather The Game
The Outfit
Tiger Woods 2007
Tiger Woods PGA Tour 06
Time Pilot*
Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter
Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Vegas
Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell Double Agent
Tomb Raider Legend
Tony Hawk’s American Wasteland
Tony Hawk’s Project 8
Top Spin 2
Toryumon
Totemball
Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3
Uno*
Viva Pinata
Wik & the Fable of Souls*
World Championship Poker 3
World Series of Poker: Tournament of Champions
Wrestle Kingdom
WWE SMACKDOWN VS. RAW 2007
Xbox Live Arcade Unplugged Vol. 1
X-Men 3: The Movie Game (aka X-Men: The Official Game)
Zegapain NOT
ZEGAPAIN XOR
Zoids Infinity EX Neo
Zuma*

Okay - I am not into sports games, certain car racing games being an exception - I love Burnout: Revenge, although calling that a sports game is a real stretch. But sports games make up a healthy percentage of the titles on the list. There are also a number of games on the list that are only available outside the U.S., including Bullet Witch (Japan for now, U.S. in the next couple of months) and Chanbara Beauty X. And a few others appear to not be shipping yet anywhere as best I can tell (e.g. Super Robot Wars XO).

But, the other group of games I was surprised (or maybe not) to find Microsoft touting as high definition games were Xbox Live games for the Xbox 360. They may be high definition, I guess, but in Bejeweled 2 that only buys you nice looking cut scenes and prettier sparkles. I guess, however, they really still are high definition titles. And Microsoft never said 160 “packaged” titles, did they? (Although that’s what I thought was implied.)

For now, I guess I actually have all the games that I want and can easily get my hands on and be able to play/read - my Kana and Kanji skills are lacking, so I prefer games in English. And I am eagerly awaiting Lost Planet, which arrives here on Bonaire for me in less than a week. Not that I will have much time to play it. One more thing to delegate to my kids, I suppose.

I have spent the last week setting up over a half dozen new UPSes, a new multimedia receiver, and three high end Windows XP Media Center Edition computers - two fully loaded Dell XPS 710 systems and an HP x565 Digital Entertainment Center. Seeing as these were new installations, I decided to bite the bullet and go ahead an accept Microsoft’s Automatic Update suggestion to install Internet Explorer 7 (IE7).

Well, one of the other things we do here at the Richter high-tech household is use a central file server (running Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3), and that file server includes some applications we run on local systems. Well, Microsoft, in it’s desire to help the average user avoid running bad programs has implemented additional security features as part of IE7, features that get really annoying for more advanced users. In particular, when you run applications off a server on a LAN, IE7’s default settings cause a dialog box to pop-up entitled “Security Warning”, and asking you to verify you really really really want to run the program in question.

One application we use in turn spawns calls to a Windows version of the PERL scripting language, dozens of times, and each time we’d get a warning.

We used Google to try to find a solution, and the closest we got to a solution was here. But the real answer was in the comments to that blog post, and not the blog post itself.

In any event, if you have a similar problem, including for the error “Publisher Code Not Be Verified”, try this solution to see if it makes it go away. A concise summary of the solution follows.

First, get to the Internet Options control. Three ways to do this: 1) Start -> Settings -> Control Panel -> Internet Options; 2) Start -> Settings -> Control Panel -> Security Center -> Internet Options; and 3) IE7 -> Tools -> Internet Options (works only if you have the menu bar enabled).

Once there, click on the Security tab at top, then in Local Intranet, click Sites, and then unclick “Automatically detect intranet network”. Voila.

Nice of Microsoft to make it so easy to locate and resolve. Not.

Those who have followed my writing over the years know that I have a strong belief that the adult entertainment industry drives a lot of technology forward. The adult industry is credited with making VHS a successful standard resulting in Sony’s Betamax losing the video tape recording standards battle. Likewise, the first profitable commercial uses I witnessed of streaming live compressed video over a network connection (ISDN) were of on-line interactive peep shows. And arguably, multimedia PCs, with speakers and CD-ROM drives, were driven by the adult industry’s foray into MPEG movies, and interactive adult titles.

And now the issue of the importance of the adult industry’s adoption of technology (or the lack of adoption a technology) comes to the fore again with the standards battle between HD-DVD and Blu-ray Disc.

For those not familiar with HD-DVD and Blu-ray, they are competing standards for high definition (HD) content on discs similar to DVDs. But they offer many times the resolution of traditional DVD on a properly equipped high definition television or display. From personal experience I can tell you that the imagery is incredibly crisp with both HD-DVD and Blu-ray, and I now find myself cheated when I have to watch a normal DVD because it seems so grainy and fuzzy.

HD-DVD is supported mainly by Toshiba on the hardware side, while Blu-ray comes from Sony. Each side has its exclusive hardware supporters, as well as exclusive studios which support that format, and there are a few companies that are “bi-definition” - they support both formats. Both sides want the other to just go away. Blu-ray is technologically superior to HD-DVD, but HD-DVD is cheaper and has some perception issues in its favor (I’ll post my Richter Scale column from TechWatch over on http://www.RichterScale.org in a couple of weeks that explains this in greater detail).

But back to the adult industry. A year ago the big production companies in the adult industry were all for Blu-ray - they appreciated the greater disc capacity (50GB vs. 30GB for HD-DVD) and the quality reputation that Sony has. Fast forward one year later where all the top adult studios are now declaring for HD-DVD as their next generation DVD standard.

Why? Well, in speaking with management at two of the studios - Wicked Pictures and Digital Playground - they could not find anyone to replicate their discs in Blu-ray. Joone - an award winning director and manager of Digital Playground told me that Sony forced him to go HD-DVD because they have an agreement with their replicators that they will lose their license to make Blu-ray discs if they duplicate adult content. The head of marketing at Wicked, Jackie Ramos, said much the same thing.

At a meeting I had with Sony Pictures last week during CES, I asked Don Eklund, Vice President of Technology, whether this was true. Eklund indicated that while the three replication facilities Sony itself owned indeed were under agreement not to replicate adult content (see this Computerworld article for more), he was not aware of this restriction applying to the other handful of Blu-ray replicators out there.

One adult publisher - Vivid - appears to not be facing the same issues, or maybe not yet anyway. Vivid plans to release their first high definition disc title ("Debbie Does Dallas Again") in both HD-DVD and Blu-ray format. I was unable to reach Steven Hirsh of Vivid to get more insight into how they are able to claim to do Blu-ray when everyone else that counts in adult entertainment is not able to do Blu-ray.

One thing is for sure, though. The legend of the Adult industry breaking Betamax and making VHS did make an impression on at least some members of the HD-DVD camp, as Wicked’s Ramos disclosed to myself and fellow journalist Dan Nystedt (see here and here) for his article (with quotes from yours truly) during a meeting with Ramos.

Ramos said that in the Fall of 2006 his company was approached by someone in the HD-DVD camp to adopt the HD-DVD format, and once that happened, all sorts of previously closed doors opened up for them. So, after months and months of no progress, they finally got started for earnest in November and last week released their first HD-DVD title - “Camp Cuddly Pines Powertool Massacre”, an HD-DVD re-release of the 2005 AVN Award winning movie by the same name.

Folks in the Blu-ray hardware camp are certainly not making similar overtures to the adult entertainment industry, and it may ultimately be Blu-ray’s downfall.

However, content is still king, and the best weapon Blu-ray has against HD-DVD is exclusive content, such as movies from Disney. Will this become a popularity contest between Disney and adult movies? Time will tell.

One of my many other projects is an e-commerce web site called Patent Fetcher, which provides a way for folks to download complete PDF files of published patents and patent applications. One of the early challenges I faced was finding an easy way to accept payments for these downloads, for which I wanted to charge less than $1 per document. Enter Bitpass.

That was in July of 2003. Since then Patent Fetcher has used the Bitpass payment platform, which worked much like a prepaid phone card, but for on-line purchases, exclusively for the Pay-As-You-Go Patent Fetcher PDF download service, at 65 cents a download. And while the 15% cut that Bitpass took on all purchases was a bit steep, they tended to be very responsive to my unique requirements, adding numerous features to Bitpass for corporate use (as a large percentage of Patent Fetcher users are law firms and large corporations).

However, they were either before their time, or had grander aspirations (and expenditures) than their revenue stream could support. Plus, as their focus was media, they found themselves in competition first with Apple’s iTunes, and then later a bevy of other services which sold content for small amounts of money.

Regardless of the of cause of their demise, last night at 5:52pm EST, I got the following e-mail from Bitpass:

Dear Valued Bitpass Merchant,

We want to thank you for your past business, however due to circumstances beyond our control, we are discontinuing our operations. 

We have partnered with Digital River to provide operational support during the period prior to shut down.  As of today, January 19, 2007, all Bitpass Buyers with US dollar denominated accounts are being notified that they will have seven (7) days to spend any amounts that currently exist in their Bitpass Account. 

During this seven day period, US Buyers will not be able to add additional funds into their account. 

On January 26, all US Bitpass Buyer accounts will be closed and we will begin the process of refunding all unspent monies to the accountholder.

Bitpass Merchant Accounts will be available for viewing until February 28, 2007.  At that time any funds that you have on account or owed to you will be refunded or paid.  All account records and materials will be retained for 60 days and available upon request. 

Again we would like to thank you for your business and support. 

Matthew Graves
Chief Operating Officer
Bitpass Inc.

Our long time customers got the same message at approximately the same time. Talk about a Friday night surprise for all of us. Bitpass was a good thing while it lasted, but giving merchants more notice than consumers would have been greatly appreciated and desired. Instead, Bitpass merchants like myself have to scramble to communicate with our customers and deal with a sudden and near instant loss of revenue until alternatives can be found.

I ended up spending much of Friday evening trying to come up with a stopgap measure that would still allow my customers to use Patent Fetcher, and be able to continue to charge them for the downloads. Most important was to ensure minimal problems for Patent Fetcher users, so I made the service free of charge until I can develop an alternate payment platform. And this time I will bite the bullet and just do my own credit card processing instead of relying on an expensive, yet convenient, proprietary third party solution. On the bright side, this failure of Bitpass forces me to develop and complete some long overdue functionality for Patent Fetcher and should make it a much better service in the coming months.

Lesson learned: Don’t rely exclusively on proprietary technology, no matter how cool.

I admit (and am sure have admitted before) that I am an Internet junkie. Call it an obsession. That’s why I have two data phones (a Blackberry for Bonaire, a Sidekick 3 for everywhere else), a monthly subscription to T-Mobile Spot and Boingo (for WiFi), a T-Mobile GPRS/EDGE data card for my notebook, and Cingular’s GPRS/EDGE service built into my notebook. The latter two services work fine, but they are slow to connect, slow to disconnect, and just slow in general. Enter Sprint.

I had been seeing ads for Sprint Mobile Broadband for some time in USA Today and on the recommendation of good friend and networking guru, Daniel Senie, I committed to the Sprint Mobile Broadband service while in New York City the week before Christmas.

The Pantech Wireless PC Card that the Sprint store on Broadway sold me (net cost about $65 for set-up, with a $59.99/month fee for two years) installed easily in my notebook, and a few hours after I purchased the card I was on-line in my hotel room at Times Square. All I can say is “Wow!” - the download speeds I was seeing were about as good as the wired Internet connection in my room (which was $14.95/day). And while Sprint’s detractors have suggested that Sprint’s coverage is lacking, I’ve found no such problem in all the places I have wanted to use the card: New York City, La Guardia airport, Boston, San Juan, Las Vegas (daily this past week), and Miami (right now).

The only place the card was sluggish was during a press conference at the Sands Expo in Las Vegas about five days ago during the Consumer Electronics Show, and that was no doubt due to many others on the same cell using the service. In my hotel room in Vegas the Sprint data connection performed flawlessly, at high speeds - saving me $11.95/day for hotel room Internet access. And here in Miami, I’m able to watch my Texas DirecTV connection via my Slingbox Pro (more on that in another post) without problems on the Sprint Mobile Broadband connection.

And. on top of that, the time it takes to plug in the Sprint PC Card and establish a data connection is typically less than 30 seconds, compared to 1-2 minutes at least for the Cingular data service built into my computer. Same goes for shutdown when I want to hibernate my notebook (like when the flight attendants give me stern looks to suggest that NOW is the time I need to shut off my notebook in preparation for take-off).

I think it’s time to cancel my $80/month Cingular data service. And perhaps my Boingo service too, as less and less places seem to allow roaming with Boingo. T-Mobile’s a keeper as it works at just about all Admiral’s Clubs (although in San Juan, the Sprint Mobile Broadband connection is faster), Starbucks, and Borders Bookstores, among others. The T-Mobile unlimited data service is only about $30/month, so as a back-up which will work overseas, that’s not unreasonable. I understand that Sprint will not work overseas.

It should also be noted that the Sprint PC Card I have supports the Sprint EVDO data network, using the EVDO Rev. A system. The previous generation EVDO Rev. 0 system is not as fast, which is another thing to look for if you decide to follow in my (large) footsteps.

I give the Sprint Mobile Broadband service a 9.5 out of 10.0 on The Richter Scale. The only thing that could make it better is a lower price. Bravo Sprint!

One of the more creative PC game input devices I have seen in some time (and first reported on here), is the Novint Falcon.

At CES here in Las Vegas this week, Novint finally announced a ship date and pricing for the device. The Falcon will ship on June 18, 2007, and is available for pre-order now in a limited edition bundle at http://www.novintfalcon.com for a price of $189. The pre-order bundle includes the Novint Falcon game controller device, a copy of Newton’s Monkey Business (a set of mini-games strangely reminiscent of Super Monkey Ball on the Nintendo Wii), a free game download from Novint’s Online Game Service and membership in the Falcon First Club.

The full retail price of the Novint Falcon will be $239 when it ships in June.

What makes the Novint Falcon so different is that it is a haptic device, meaning that it provides physical feedback. For example, in the Half-Life 2 demo I tried, I could actually feel the recoil when firing various weapons because the Falcon would jerk up and to the right, just as a real gun would. Similarly, when opponents were firing upon me, the controller would jerk in a direction to indicate the force of being hit, allowing me to quickly locate the source of attack. The use of the Falcon is very intuitive, although I suspect that with extended game play my arm would tire. Although, arguably, that means it might be good exercise too.

The launch price for the device is significantly higher than the $99 price Novint had bandied about last May at the E3 Show in Los Angeles, but for a haptic device of this complexity, probably not unreasonable. The biggest challenge that Novint faces is getting game developers to support their device natively in PC games, but they assured me that they were working on that effort.

I certainly look forward to playing with it when it ships because it really is one cool device. And I hope they overcome the market hurdles such innovation and uniqueness tend to face.

This morning, here in Las Vegas at the start of the Consumer Electronics Show, LG Electronics announced that they will be shipping the first multi-format DVD player during the first week of February, 2007 via retail channels including Best Buy and Circuit City.

The new LG BH100 player, which goes by the decidedly cryptic name of “Super Multi Blue Player”, will retail for $1,199, and offer playback for HD-DVD, Blu-ray, and standard DVD media using a single tray. Full 1080p output, HDMI out, and support for a variety of codecs (VL-1/H.264, DDH, DTS HD, and True HD) is also included. The new player uses a sophisticated beam mirror system (pictured above) to direct the different color laser beams required by the various formats.

LG’s Chief Technology Officer, Dr. H. G. Lee, said that it has been widely perceived that there has been much slower adoption of high definition DVD players, and that LG believes unification between the competing HD-DVD and Blu-ray standards is possible. LG believes their new BH100 player is a first step towards that unification, and should help consumers overcome the hesitation in committing to high definition DVD playback, because now they don’t have to choose (although they will need to pay a small premium, of course).

LG also announced the GGW-H10N Super Multi Blue Drive, an external drive for use with PCs which features support for reading and writing Blu-ray media, DVD, and CD, and can also play HD-DVD. This unit will be available for $1,199 as well, sometime later in Q1 2007.

While the price of the BH100 is not insignificant, it is still cheaper than buying two separate standalone players (and about the same price as buying both a PS3 - which features Blu-ray, and an Xbox 360 with HD-DVD drive separately), and no doubt the price will come down as volumes increase and as other vendors release multi-format players. I only wish LG had chosen a better and more descriptive name, like “Universal High Definition Disc Player”.

There were already a number of hints last week that LG would be announcing a multi-format player at CES. Companies and people who had opted to support one of the two HD formats exclusively had guarded comments, but in some cases expressed concern that LG’s product would further delay the eventual success of their chosen standard, and the demise of the competing standard. The same concerns rang even louder when Warner Bros. last week also announced a dual media disc - the Total High-Definition Disc (or THD), which will play in both HD-DVD and Blu-ray players.

Both products are excellent for consumers, however, and as consumers are the ones who fund the consumer electronics industry, it’s wise to provide products which make consumers happy (or at least less reluctant to adopt new technology).