At CES, we helped to preview the new Malata Diva, a combo DVD player, WMA/WMV9 player, and PVR recorder that writes directly into Windows Media Video 9 and will be sold under the Polaroid name later this year. Shown at the Windows Movie Maker 2 booth, this player answers questions from those of you who have been asking when you can start burning data CD's with DVD-quality WMV9 and play them in a DVD player.  It's also networked and there's mention of playback of your music, video, and downloadable movies.  I can't vouch for the final product as I'm not a reviewer but I did see solid WMV9 playback.

The scenario is this:  You want to create home movies with Windows Movie Maker 2 but don't want to pay $5 and spend hours converting video to burn a DVD disc (and that's if you have the DVD burner).  Soon, it will be cheaper to get a DVD player that plays back WMV9 natively. Just burn a CD-R with the movie and play it in your WMV9-compatible DVD player.  If family want copies- they can play the same discs in their PC until they get a DVD player that supports WMV9. I expect I'll be replacing family members' DVD players next Christmas so they can enjoy higher quality home movies and highlights- today DVD is just too time-consuming and expensive. Malata may be first out of the gate but others are on their way.

I'm back again. I just spent the last week at the MIDEM Music Conference in Cannes, France. It was a great time, met a lot of interesting people in the industry and realized that heads aren't in the sand like others might think.  We were showing how over 20 music services work with 60 portable music players in the market, offering the widest range of personal choice in digital music delivery available today. I'm still using Napster w/ my own money and loving the Media Center Edition UI.  They should do more to demo that- people were enamored with it at the show.

I took my Dell Digital Jukebox with me and it never needed recharging. With up to 16 hours of play and ~10,000 songs (at 64kbps WMA9), this is the device to beat.  I also had my 256MB Nomad MuVo which we were using in a pinch to transfer files and carries music conveniently in your front jeans pocket.  That's choice.

Now I just wish that one of the portable music player manufacturers would work a deal with CarToys or Circuit City etc. to install an adapter to existing cars so you can plug your new toy in- forget the cassette or radio adapters- they sound horrible.  It costs about $80 to get just a simple cable installed- I have to think the retailer would do gangbusters with a solution like this. 

So in all, the event was great, you can see some pictures up on my MoBlog. The food was phenomenal, the weather cold, but the parties were hopping.

At CES, one of the big hits were the WMV HD demonstrations and sampler DVD being given away.  WMV HD is just Windows Media Video 9 Series optimized for High Definition playback with 5.1 to 7.1 surround sound WMA. This was also shown at Bill Gates' keynote, and the clips are now available for download.  Over a dozen IMAX films will be coming out in WMV-HD for your viewing pleasure on a 2.5Ghz+ machine.  Why IMAX?  The film is actually much larger than traditional motion picture film and captures more detail- a great demonstration of the technology of Windows Media delivering HD quality at a fraction the size of “traditional” HD broadcast and 6x the quality of DVD.  Just imagine how many HDTV channels could be broadcast over cable and satellite through the use of this technology, not to mention with the new HD consumer DV-cameras hitting the market.

Check out http://www.wmvhd.com for more samples
Interested in creating your own WMV HD clips?  Check out Ben Waggoner's Zero to HD in 60 Seconds How-To Article.

I'm off to CES tomorrow.  Had a big snowstorm here earlier today that slowed down everything, and it was really hard to VPN in when half of Microsoft is trying to do the same from home.  I went in for a few hours and snapped a few photos of 520 covered in snow which I'll have to share.

If you're at CES, swing by the Microsoft Plus! booth and say hello on Thursday.  We'll be showing some neat technology like Plus! Photo Story 2 authored content playing back on the latest Pocket PCs and Smartphones ;)

We're back from Christmas vacation on the East Coast.  One word for parents of young children flying coast-coast: Benadryl.  Our Dr. recommended it for our son Ryan to help him with the trip. He slept most of the way out to NJ and back on his schedule.  I don't condone drugging your kid in any way but Ryan had a cold and this helped him (and us) out quite a bit. Other parents with screaming kids were giving us the stink-eye because he was so quiet.

Merry Christmas/Happy Hanukkah/Happy Kwanzaa everyone!

I must be about :30 too young to really appreciate Battlestar Galactica as an original series.  After watching last week's SciFi channel remake as a mini-series I have a few thoughts:

- Edward James Olmos was good, but looks funny without a mustache.  He was also a bit too brooding for my taste.

- Oh gee, it's the “father has a pissed off son” thing again.  Moving on...

- Stephen Spielberg's “Taken“ was a miniseries, Battlestar is a 4 hour TV movie

- The ending sucked. Let's just leave the whole thing hanging. Any more loose ends and this thing would have been rated NC-17. They should have warnings at the beginning of mini-series like this that state, “Warning: This 4 hour television event is:

a) a new series idea from SciFi that we weren't ready to commit to so you're our test audience.

b) the first of a long and drawn out set of movie-like “events” we'll release every few years like Babylon-5 was relegated to.

c) what we were able to patch together after we burned through 1/3 of our budget in that really cool scene with the new Cylons. Oops- budget's too high, cast a “hot chick“ as the evil one.  That hasn't been done in 6 mos.

Don't get me wrong.  It was enjoyable for some really well done FX but I barely lifted my head from my laptop during most of it. Bummer.

A friend recently sent me an email pointing to this blog, with a compilation of the worst album covers ever.  Good luck finding these on any online music store. Ever.

Here's a collection of How-To articles and project ideas such as how to make the most of Plus! Photo Story, throw a holiday party with Plus! Party Mode as the DJ and much more. 

In other news, MSN Entertainment just added movie trailers to Plus! Sync & Go so all you Pocket PC owners can download and play on the go! ;).  I swear this feature doesn't get it's due- you get to watch NBC's Today Show or NBC Nightly News on-demand on your Pocket PC, or listen to NPR news and many more.  All without a subscription fee other than the $20 it costs to buy Plus!

I just got one of the latest smartphones for testing- the HTC Voyager aka Orange SPV-E200.  It has 2003 OS, Bluetooth, and a built-in camera.  I'll write more once I've had a chance to take it through it's paces.

I'm not sure if Chris or Robert have seen this yet but it looks like TextAmerica, the famed site of free Moblogs/Photoblogs is requiring logins to leave comments. I'm hoping that TextAmerica will change this- they offer such a cool service but my family members aren't going to sign up for yet another username/password just to leave comments on pictures. It would be REALLY cool if they'd implement Passport as a mechanism. 

Buzznet is looking better and better, except for that single hokey template they have- can't find any way to change.  TextAmerica still is #1 in customization and services.  Hell, I'd pay a small fee just to remove the ads and allow anonymous/non-passworded comments.

Anyone out there using Buzznet for Photoblogging (moblogging)?  I'm curious how it compares to Textamerica.

In this month's PC Magazine, Bill Machrone, VP of Technology and Senior Editor at parent Ziff Davis writes:

”Please fasten your safety belt. This column is a paean of praise to an almost unheard-of product—Microsoft Plus! Photo Story. It's one of eight applications in the Microsoft Plus! Digital Media Edition pack ($19.95), and it's worth the entire price of admission—and then some.”

Bill goes on to extoll the virtues of Plus! Photo Story noting, “Photo Story bests professional tools, because it hides all of the complexity involved in image animation, resizing, resolution, compression, and output. If Photo Story had a timeline, the application would be just about perfect... Whether you accept its defaults or push its limits, Photo Story will help you make presentations that will have 'em cheering for more.”

Thanks Bill! Since you wrote your column, we've added Video CD burning for watching your creations on most home DVD players, a better picture chooser and support for editing and saving projects (like a family history documentary). All of this is available in the free update to Plus! Photo Story 2 for existing customers.  We're busily working on the next version of Photo Story- we're always looking for suggestions.  If any of you have feature suggestions or a cool Photo Story to share, please let me know!

MSN Messenger 6.1 has been released with some nifty new features.  One I noticed under the hood is the ability to send messages to an MSN Direct-enabled watch or device. I just want to know one thing- what if I get an alert and set it to go to all devices at once?  Do my wrist (watch), my pocket (PC), my desktop (computer), and my smartphone all alert me at the same time? Now I'm going to have to set an alert to remind me to put on my watch before I leave the house...

Don't get me wrong- I love the MSN Direct watch idea. I'm just starting to become too accessible.  When my friend is IMing me on his US smartphone from Paris, France on his honeymoon, we're getting way too connected.

I love stories like this.  Microsoft and the USO have partnered up to provide Xboxes and Xbox Live kits to enable troops overseas to play video games and chat in real-time with family members serving overseas.  I can't help but smile and thank the Xbox and USO folks for making this happen.

Techdirt has a funny story about a guy who was about to have his car towed for not being registered.  While the cop was back writing his ticket and calling the tow truck, this smart-thinking citizen got online (with the helpf of a friend) and registered his car.  Read the whole story to hear how he fought the law and won.

PVRBlog has a pretty good roundup of the new Gateway Connected DVD player that makes it easy to share photos, music, and some video on your TV (as well as progressive-scan DVD playback).

They miss one major issue however: where's the WMA/WMV support (as well as Quicktime which the reviewer asks)?  What about the millions of consumers who have ripped their music into these formats?  There's dozens of DVD players from Toshiba, Panasonic, Apex and others that support WMA. I certainly hope future versions of Gateway's device support this.

Earlier this week, I filmed a segment for PBS' High Tech Home TV show.  The segment covered some of the really cool advances in digital photography available for Windows XP users.  Michelle from the Digital Imaging team showed me some really phenomenal new features in Digital Image Suite 9 which I never would have found on my own - the product is just so feature-rich now.  Here are a few tips:

Find Similar Pictures in Digital Image Library - Select a photo (such as a beach shot) and from the top menu, select Tasks, Find Similar Picture. Up pops similar photos organized by similarity.  This is using technology from Microsoft Research and works pretty darn well.

Remove an object (or person) from an image with Smart Erase - This feature in Digital Image Pro 9 blew me away.  I was able to remove an unknown child from a friend's picture seamlessly. The child was running across a lawn with hedges and shadowed bushes.  Everything exactly the way it should be.  Now this isn't magic- you have to play with a bit sometimes but it takes a huge amount of legwork out of it.

Remove blemishes, scars, and more- So far, I've removed drool from my son's chin, as well as scratches and splotches from his cheeks where his tiny fingernails have scratched him.  Red eye reduction has saved more than a few pictures as well.

As a long-time Adobe Photoshop user, I have a new favorite suite of tools for family photo editing and management.  I'll still use Photoshop for typography work and really advanced stuff, but Digital Image Suite 9 really hits the mark for everything else.

You can also create lite Photo Stories from Digital Image Suite 9, but you'll want to get the full version of Photo Story 2 in Plus! DME for sharing slideshows in email, on your Media Center PC, Pocket PC 2003 device or even on your DVD player with the free update that adds Video CD burning.

Version 1.5.3337.0 of dasBlog was posted over in the GotDotNet workspace this morning.  This release fixes a number of bugs, includes a number of little fixes and now search features :)  

Dell's W1700 wins TechTV's Pick of 17in TV/monitors. Though a meager 3 devices were included, they cite impressive video and audio quality, an included remote control, DVI and component inputs among their favorite features. At $699, this monitor/TV may just become my next dream device.  Especially with 16:9 aspect ratio for properly watching HD WMV content.

And for all you Dish HDTV fans waiting for an HD-PVR, Gizmodo reports they just received word that the Dish Network is getting ready to unveil a satellite receiver with a high-definition digital video recorder built-in. The Dish Player-DVR 921 will have a 250GB hard drive for holding up to 180 hours of standard definition programming or 25 hours of high definition programming, and dual tuners for recording two programs at the same time. Should be out within a couple of weeks or so.

From PVRBlog, Comcast is saying that 90% of their customers (millions of people) will have access to this Motorola box by the end of next year, and this device will serve both HDTV and DVR functionality. The box looks like it can pause, rewind, and fast forward both regular TV and HDTV siganls, though recording appears to be confined to an analog MPEG encoder and it appears it will do HDTV as well as SDTV but with an 80GB HDD, how much can you really store?  Not a whole lot.  Too bad, they could get at least 2x the HD channels on the network and on the hard drive with Windows Media Video ;).

It's the holidays again.  Five years ago, my family thought I was nuts when I declared my holiday wishlist would be online, and I would buy all gifts on the Internet. Then a year or so later they were online, and for the past two years, we've been using Wishlist.com, a free service for creating holiday wishlists that family members can view and update as items are purchased.  What's really great about the site is that it supports just about any online store for linking in your wishlist.

But therein lies it's greatest weakness- while Wishlist tries to intelligently pull in details including price and product details, it still takes a lot of work.  Alternately, sites like Amazon.com do a fantastic job, but you're locked into their experience.  To add salt to the wound, Wishlist hasn't had any perceivable updates in just about 2 years (just look at the 2002 copyright on the bottom of the site).

Just as XML and RSS have opened doors for open communications, I really wish e-commerce providers would open up their wishlist formats and create a unified format for the aggregation and sharing of holiday/birthday/wedding/baby registry's and wishlists. I think this is one of the most overlooked areas in e-commerce today. 

Am I missing something?  Are there better wishlists that will take the pain out of the process?

While I eagerly await the arrival of my Red vs. Blue DVD, word is that there's a new Halo book on the horizon called “First Strike“.  This one is by Eric Nylund, who wrote the first authorized book, “The Fall of Reach”. I discovered a 3rd (middle) book called “The Flood” by William Dietz.  

I really liked The Fall of Reach when I read it about a year ago.  While a bit amateurish in a few spots, and the proofreading could have been better on the printer side, it explained a lot of back history on Halo.  Now, as we eagerly await Halo 2 to arrive sometime next year, let's play a little more Halo for Windows baby.

Oh and santa, this isn't on my Amazon.com Wishlist but I'd really like to have a Halo long-sleeve T-shirt for Christmas. :)

Wired provides a glimpse into the new real-time music sharing experience being tested by Media Lab Europe (MIT Media Lab's eurpoean partner), called “tunA”.  Works over Wi-Fi, the idea is that you can tap into what others are listening to in real-time on cell phones, PDAs etc.

Interesting idea but not new.  Three Degrees does something very similar and includes a community aspect.  Besides, look at PDA's today- they have buttons to turn off WiFi.  Well, if the rumors are true and there's a new wireless WiFi chipset on the horizon that sips electrons, I'll be more apt to consider this scenario.  I have enough trouble finding contacts on my Sony Ericsson T610 phone (another reason why I love my Windows Mobile Smartphone).

Gizmodo has a good story on the Mirra, a personal network attached storage device designed to be file server on your home network. I also noticed at Fry's that more external Hard Drive manufacturers are offering USB2, 1394, and Ethernet connections- a trend I expect will continue. After recently discovering it would take 25 DVD-RW discs to back up my media collection, I'm ready to get something to distribute media around the house, sucks less power than my main PC. 

My question is this: are there any home-friendly network attached storage (NAS) devices out there today that run on Windows Embedded? Any on the horizon?  I'm going to keep looking.

Welcome to my new blog!  I'm busy moving in however you'll see from the design here that the site is designed to be much more user-friendly. Why the move?  Well, after blogging at erablog.net for a good long time, I decided it was time to run on my own domain and server to get rid of the banner ads, and have more control over the system.  So with that, I've moved providers, and am running this site on dasBlog on a Windows Server 2003-powered system.  More details to come...