Incompatibility Threatens Digital Lifestyle

[Janak Parekh]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.infoworld.com/article/05/01/07/HNdigitalstyle_1.html?source=rss&url=http://www.infoworld.com/article/05/01/07/HNdigitalstyle_1.html' target='_blank'>http://www.infoworld.com/article/05...talstyle_1.html</a><br /><br /></div><i>"For the digital lifestyle to become a reality, consumer electronics makers need to overcome one major consumer frustration: incompatible technologies, a panel of experts agreed Friday. Many hardware makers at the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas this week are showcasing devices such as entertainment hubs, digital media players, gaming devices, cell phones, and digital cameras, as well as a plethora of multipurpose gadgets, but many of those products don't work together."</i><br /><br />No kidding; we could have told them. If I could highlight my main source of incompatible frustration, it would be DRM. :evil: It's frustrating that the most popular music player handles a DRM scheme that can't be used by my Pocket PC or Smartphone without cracking the DRM, and it serves as a reason as to why I'm sticking to a lot of legacy technologies -- like CDs -- and I'm a technophile! I can't imagine what the average consumer would think. But it's not the only thing (wireless, sync, and so on), and I'm sure you have your own "digital lifestyle" incompatibility stories. I wish companies would grow up and realize standards are actually good for them. :|

[szamot]

I agree with you but it seems that companies are trying to come up with their own “must have standard” and have everyone license it so they can make more money, in the end that is all that matters in Corporate world. Consumers are secondary.

[Sven Johannsen]

The great thing about standards is that there are enough of them that everyone can have one of their own. :roll:

[Jerry Raia]

If we could just get rid of the Sony Memory Stick the world would be a much better place.

[tourdewolf]

If we could just get rid of the Sony Memory Stick the world would be a much better place.


AMEN!
I have been able to completely avoid the memory stick until... this Christmas my wife fell in love :roll: with the cybershot W1. Guess what the second purchase was? :evil:
Oh and to top it off my 2yr old memory card reader didn't support Memory stick "Pro" so guess what the third purchase was?
All this and I have a drawer full of sd and cf cards and 2 unused card readers. :evil:

[Jerry Raia]

I feel your pain. I can even live with the MiniSD and TransFlash because they have adaptors.

[jlp]

If we could just get rid of the Sony Memory Stick the world would be a much better place.

I should add: get rid of all the 8 mostly incompatible variations of Sorry MemorySH!T formats (regular, Pro, Duo, Duo Pro, MagicHATE, Select, etc.) AND all the dozen of mostly incompatible variations of the MMC or SD card formats (miniSD, RS-MMC, MMCplus, MMC mobile, Transflash, etc.)

SD is small enough for ALL the current electronic devices: a total SD slot with rails and connectors only takes up a tiny 1 to 1.5% of a total device volume. In other words, putting a smaller slot only gains an insignificant volume, namely only about one half of a percent. The gain is ridiculous, yet incompatibility is intolerable.

For example, some cellphones feature MP3 playback, but the largest tiny card capacity is 256 MB, with rare ones at 512MB; Sandisk makes 2 SD cards with 2 GB; that's 400 to 800% more. However transfer speed of tiny cards is lower, max capacity is much lower (obviously subjet to get better but so will SD capacities in parallel, if not higher; see the increasing rate between CF and SD). Also prices are much higher up to twice as much for the higher capacity cards.

So for the same price do you prefer 512MB or one GB?! The answer is in the question :D.

Actual example: the Moto MPx-200 has a full SD slot, while the MPx-220 has a miniSD slot. And the whole device is the same size.

[jlp]

I feel your pain. I can even live with the MiniSD and TransFlash because they have adaptors.

Adapters are good.

However, for obvious reasons it doesn't allow you to put the millions of higher capacity, less expensive, easier to find, faster cards in a tiny card slot.

Let's say you have an SD card in your PDA, you want to get one with a higher capacity; what do you do with the older one? if all your devices use SD cards only, you can use it in, say, your new cell phone, MP3 player, digicam, etc. But you can't put it in a miniSD, TF, etc. slotted cellphone.

And there's no need to buy yet another 126-in-1 card reader :D.

Remember, one of the main reasons CDs took off was because of a unique CD audio format. OTOH video laser discs came 1-2 years before but never succeeded because there were 2-3 standards even tho higher image quality and friction less playing was like CD vs LP. Laser discs media prices vs tapes was comparable (at least like CD vs LP).

Speaking about video tapes, they caught on the market the moment VHS became predominant and editors only had to release their movies in one format and blank media manufacturers could make higher numbers of one single format such lowering prices, making them more attractive to consumers who didn't have to choose between incompatible tapes vs VCRs.

[JayM]

I agree! Everybody is in a huge push to get media to mobile devices this year, but formats, DRM issues and compatibility are hardly being addressed. It's going to be like a huge train wreck.

It seems a lot of people are going to buy a lot of gadgets hoping they'll work like they're advertised. Then they'll end up finding out they need extra software, hardware or worse new operating system.

Legacy formats are the way to go. I stick with MP3, MPEG/AVI formats for my media. My TiVo is a TV Tuner card with GUIDE PLUS and I use CF when I can – but I have had to use SD (for my smaller digital camera). I won't buy something that doesn't accept those formats.

My method may sound stoneage, but it's worked for a while now. Every morning when I wake up I have a 30 min capture of Headline News, Podcast and RSS feeds are on my Pocket PC waiting for me to take them and go. It's a pretty unique setup, but what else do I have to spend my money on? A new PVR...not! 0X

[ipaq_wannabe]

If we could just get rid of the Sony Memory Stick the world would be a much better place.

agreed!!!!

burn sony to the ground...

:twisted:

:D

[WyattEarp]

It took a whole Panel of "Experts" to agree on that. :? I wonder how long that debate was. :?: ...Maybe that's the real problem. No one looks beyond their own front door. All these formats just to make a $1.00 yet the only ones really making money are the SD and CF formats. Sonys' memory stick was horrible from the jump start but they refuse to let it go and keep unsuspecting consumers stuck with inferior technology. This is really sad.

Standards are nice, but it doesn't really matter because some company will always go out on their own and make something different. Sometimes it will actually be better but most of the time it's not.

[whydidnt]

The worst part about all the various DRM technologies is that few, if any actually do what their supposed. Almost all have been cracked in one way or another, so the criminals still steal the content and resell or trade it.

The only thing DRM seems to do,IMO, is make it harder - a LOT harder for those of us that want to legitimately use the stuff we want to buy. I bet their are a lot of people who received a shiny new media player for christmas who are pretty ticked that they can't legally (at least in the US) bring along their one of the DVD's they own, and to do it they've got to resort to installing extract software to "crack" the encryption of their DVD.

If there were only one, or perhaps two easy to use Content Protection schemes (A real standard) we'd all be able to understand them and more people wouldn't be afraid to use this stuff with DRM. Until the proprietary stuff goes away, it is going to seriously stunt the growth of electronic content.

[Jonathon Watkins]

I just don't see the whole DRM situation getting any better. :|

It's the main reason why I won't buy digital music. I'll buy the CD and rip it in exactly the format and quality I want. MP3 are a legacy format??? :lol: I suppose so.

I won't buy a device that does not offer one of the 'Holy Trinity' of media cards: CF, SD and Mini SD.

I know what you mean about SD being good enough JLP, but the C500 had a Mini SD slot, so I can live with it. :wink:

[WyattEarp]

The worst part about all the various DRM technologies is that few, if any actually do what their supposed. Almost all have been cracked in one way or another, so the criminals still steal the content and resell or trade it.

Unfortunately as with all security related technology if a person created it then another can break it. That can not be changed or helped. It would be nice if MS and others would impliment DRM in a more user-friendly and standardized way that actually makes sense.

[Jerry Raia]

When I got my Sony laptop guess what came built in?? Yep a Memory Stick slot. Of course my camera, PDA and cell phone at the time all used the standard SD card. So I had to get a PCMCIA card to shove the SD card into.

Now one of my MPx220 uses miniSD and my v710 uses TransFlash. So I have adapters for each one of those. Like I said earlier I can live with it, but just the act of typing it out here makes it seem even more stupid that I have to live with it!!!!! :roll:

[jlp]

The worst thing is that Sorry notebooks only come with a MemorySTINK slot, whereas Acer, Toshiba, etc. have SD and MemorySICK slots !!

[jlp]

Can you tell I Magic(ly)HATE those MemorySTING and MemorySINK stingies :twisted: ?!

[greenmozart]

Haven't posted in forever but this is an issue that gets my blood boiling and I'm afraid it won't get any better... instead it'll keep getting worse. Every other month there is a new "standard". I will never buy another Sony product again... PERIOD! Imagine if you could only call people who had the same brand of telephone as you! Imagine if all the networks had their own brand of television and you had to buy a different TV for every station! Imagine if each car manufacturer made their own kind of proprietary gas and your car would only run on their gas. Imagine if one company made the operating system for 95% of the world's computers... oh wait, that happened. ;)

Seriously, everyone is in it for the money grab - they see what happened with VHS vs beta and they want to be the one left standing. The consumers are the victims here. I'd be happy if the manufacturers would agree to adopt 2-3 options (standards) and use them where appropriate. People say the market will dictate who survives... that's partly true, but the market is so saturated (how many different formats are there now?) and people are so ignorant about how all these new devices CAN co-exist that they don't ask the question before they buy the newest cool gadget. So they run out and buy the Sony "Frigtastic" camera and the Apple "Licklicious" music player and the Daewoo "McJackemo" PDA and eventually realize that they all use different media cards and now they must go out and buy the 126-in-1 media adapter previously mentioned, as well as 3 separate cards to use in each device. Talk about getting fleeced!

Then the poor bastards come to us and ask "Can you help me use all these things?" every Xmas holiday... :devilboy:

[Darius Wey]

I can understand the rampant "bashing" of the Memory Stick. However, over the coming years, you will see Sony move toward supporting the more "standard" flash memory such as CF, and perhaps SD. It's taking a while, but they'll get there. ;) Also, you'll soon see tighter integration with the MDs as well.

[Jerry Raia]

Remember those Sony CD Burners with the Memory Stick slot in them??? What about the Sony Mouse with the Memory Stick slot!!!!!!
:rotfl:

Talk about desperately pushing something!

...wait, is that a Memory Stick slot in my shaver??

[Darius Wey]

Remember those Sony CD Burners with the Memory Stick slot in them??? What about the Sony Mouse with the Memory Stick slot!!!!!!
:rotfl:

Talk about desperately pushing something!

It still exists... Just a little more portable now, that's all: MPDAP20U. ;)

And so does the mouse...

[jimski]

Standards are a good thing. If developed properly they can accomodate a broad range of possibilities. What happened with adhering to a standard and making your product better and more marketable than the competition. Problem is this is harder than just dumping "new and improved" (actually just different) upon the unknowing consumer.

What about the light bulb. Standard socket, but available in; clear, frosted, soft white, bright white, flourescent, colors,etc. etc. etc. And the price difference between the "no name brand" and "top of the line brand" is probably about 100%, but everybody makes a profit because of marketing, reputation, etc. Most people (except those who shop at W******) still recognize quality and support it.

[mv]

argh... MP3 and SD forever!! he he...