Dear Dave
Friday, 22 February 2008
HD-DVD RIP
Dear Dave,When I was small, my parents' TV had a remote control with a handful of buttons on it. You could turn the set on, select a channel (from a choice of three) and maybe even change the volume. It worked by sound rather than infra-red but it was probably pretty swish for the time. Pulling the curtains shut quickly did always switch the programme over to ITV, though. The remote apparently never functioned quite the same after I buried it in a bowl of washing powder, either. Oh, and we had to wedge a matchstick under the power switch on the set itself near the end. Still, getting to watch Button Moon was a simple affair: Turn on at exactly mid-day, insert matchstick, press button three. In the event of unwanted BBC news due to remote control failure, close curtains violently. Sit back and enjoy.
It was quite a contrast, yesterday, when Fraser rushed upstairs while I was giving the other two a bath and demanded to know how to pause Ben 10 so he could go to the toilet without missing anything. I suggested the old-fashioned method of waiting for the adverts and then making a mad scramble for the facilities. Unfortunately, he'd already wasted half the ad break coming to find me. I didn't want to leave the two younger ones alone in water, so I had to attempt to explain to Fraser what to do. This was tricky because the show was playing from the TiVo but he was watching it in the kitchen. The TiVo isn't in the kitchen. For the remote to work, he needed to turn on the video sender. Turning on the video sender was liable to switch the TV to the AV channel, though. This wasn't likely to go well.
The alternative was to fire up the TV in the lounge and control the TiVo locally. Except, of course, there was no guarantee that the lounge TV would be displaying the correct AV input. Also, the TiVo control in the lounge is kept out of the reach of children, so he'd need to fetch the one from the kitchen - if he could even be certain which was the TiVo remote from amongst the pile of five controls. More than that, we don't normally let the kids touch the TiVo remote in case they somehow delete things, so he would probably need to bring the remote to me, in order for me to show him which button was 'Pause'. Since he was unlikely to figure any of this out before the ads ended, I knew I would also have to teach him how to rewind. This was bound to go badly.
I told him to just go to the toilet and that I'd sort it out later.
Luckily, he had substantial business to attend to, so, before he was finished, I was able to safely nip down, turn on the video sender, rewind, pause and tell him how to get it going again. Phew!
Twenty minutes later, he came and found me to complain that the Wii wasn't working in the lounge. I realised the problem instantly. Since the video sender was on, the AV auto-switching was automatically disabled. He needed to switch the video sender off. He's not normally allowed to touch the video sender, however, because... Well, I don't know, he just isn't. I gave him precise instructions what to do. He came back and told me that the video sender had more buttons than I remembered.
I lost it a bit.
After I'd calmed down, I left Marie under a towel and went to check. Fraser turned out to be right. I switched the thing off, the Wii came on and Marie finally got dried. It was all a bit of a palaver.
Thinking about it later, I really shouldn't have got frustrated with Fraser. Babysitters frequently give up trying to get our AV equipment to show them anything other than blank screen, Mario or CSI. These tend to be what come up by default and viewing anything else can be fairly complicated. This is partly because we've got too many gadgets chained together but it's mainly because electronics these days can be very confusing.
Take our DVD player, for example. The remote control has forty-eight buttons. Most days, I get by with five of them. I normally only ever use sixteen of them. This means that two-thirds of the buttons I haven't touched since I was fiddling around with it on the day we bought it. (Actually, that's not entirely true - I have accidentally touched most of them a few times but I've always regretted it...)
I can only imagine that gadgets are designed by people who use short-cut keys. The kind of people who can press Control-Shift-#-K followed by Alt-Tab-Backspace-Q and then Escape-/-[-H and make their computer download The Matrix, burn it to DVD and print a label while they're still reading the online version of T3.
The average consumer doesn't use short-cut keys. I've been using computers for twenty-five years and I still save files by clicking on the menu. I was quite pleased with myself for utilising the 'Home' key the other day...
I like technology and I'm not stupid, so it makes me wonder how everyone else is getting on. How many buttons on their DVD remotes are they ignoring? Almost all of them, I suspect, and that's turned out to be very bad news for Toshiba.
Yes. HD-DVD is dead. Long live Blu-ray! The great high definition disc format war is over.
And do you know why? It's because modern TVs are too complicated for the assistants in electronics stores to operate.
Let me explain. HD-DVD had a head start and cheaper players so it really should have done better than it has. A million machines sold globally? That makes the Dreamcast look successful. The problem is, an HD-DVD player is pointless without a high definition television. So, before Toshiba could convince us to buy HD-DVD players, they had to convince us to buy HD-TVs.
That really hasn't gone hugely well. For a start, television technology has already changed a couple of times in the last decade, with both widescreen and integrated digital taking off. The kind of people who want a large TV have shelled out for one relatively recently and don't necessarily have space and cash for another. On top of that, there's not much high definition stuff to watch and most of what there is involves significant extra expense. HD-TVs aren't the obvious objects of desire that manufacturers thought they would be. We need them sold to us. Heck, it's only about five years since I was watching Buffy recorded Long Play onto VHS from a fuzzy aerial signal. That was good enough. Now I can watch Galactica on DVD in widescreen. It's like a cinema in my own home! How much difference can HD make?
Which is where those assistants come in. I should walk into the electronics section of a department store and be blown away by the clarity and resolution. For some reason, however, most places that sell HD-TVs don't seem to think it necessary to set up their display models properly or to feed them with an HD source. In fact, most of the sets usually look like they're showing something recorded on Long Play VHS. Considering a decent HD-TV costs two or three times what I paid for my pin-sharp 'normal' telly, this doesn't make for a hugely tempting purchase. And that's before getting into the nitty-gritty of contrast ratios, response times, pixel counts and AV sockets.
I barely go out, I'm a keen gamer and I watch DVDs all the time - I'm a prime target for being sold a high definition entertainment combo. Admittedly, I was never going to be in the first wave of those buying HD-TVs but, if I'd got one a year ago, I might well have also got the HD-DVD add-on for my Xbox 360. That I haven't got an HD-TV yet was always going to spell HD-DVD's doom.
Sony meanwhile (at great expense) has slipped Blu-ray into ten million homes via Trojan PS3s. Sure, PS3 games look better on an HD telly, but you don't need an HD-TV to give a PS3 purpose. Sony is hoping that, as people get round to buying new TVs, they'll discover the joys of the Blu-ray player that's already in their living rooms and start buying discs in a big way.
I'm not so sure that's going to happen, though. Just because HD-DVD has lost, doesn't mean Blu-ray has won. Not yet, anyway.
I'm curious as to how many people are playing Blu-ray movies on a standard TV via the composite AV output of their PS3 and are wondering what all the fuss is about. Word of mouth from that can't be good for future sales.
Even those who know what they're doing may not make Blu-ray the success which Sony hopes. Personally, when I do finally get an HD-TV, I'll almost certainly get a PS3 now because they're still relatively cheap as Blu-ray players and far more versatile. I'll even rent some Blu-ray discs. I'm not going to buy many, though. Replacing my DVD collection isn't worth the expense and DVDs are more useful anyway. We have at least nine devices in the house capable of playing DVDs. I can watch DVDs everywhere apart from in the shower. More importantly, I can sit the kids in front of a DVD anywhere, whether we're at home or not. I can't see Blu-ray replacing DVD. Yeah, it will be nice for a bit on the big telly in the lounge but I'll still be using DVDs most of the time, right up until digital downloads finally take over.
The only way Blu-ray will survive long term is if digital download devices remain a complicated faff to use. However, if Toshiba can quickly turn their resources to producing some really simple ones, they may have the last laugh yet. How simple? Well, let's just say that the testing should involve a harassed adult two floors away from the equipment relaying operating instructions to a seven-year-old who desperately needs the toilet. If the thing functions correctly without inducing frustration, sarcasm or warm dampness in any of the test subjects then they'll be onto a winner.
I'd be in the first wave for that.
Yours in a woman's world,
Ed. Thoughts? Responses? Got a funny story about your children? Add your comment here. 9:30 AM - Permanent Link - 2 comments - Post comment - Links to this post
Wednesday, 10 October 2007
When years turn into decades
Dear Dave,OK, Sony are getting really desperate to sell me a PlayStation 3 now. They know I'm absolutely their target demographic and they're trying their hardest. A price cut on my birthday, though? That's below the belt. Pretty soon they're going to start ringing me up at three in the morning to find out why I haven't bought one yet. Unfortunately for them, after three children, I've already been driven mad. A little bit of sleep deprivation isn't going to make me mistake GAME for the trouser department of John Lewis next time I head to the shops. (Well, not again, anyway). Still, a price cut... on my birthday... Can't say I'm not tempted.
Yep, the birthday season remains upon us. Marie had hers, then Sarah and now it's my turn. (Thanks for the parcel of pig entrails and the CD of train noises, by the way. I'm sending you some out-of-date yogurt and a dead squirrel for Christmas).
Nobody escapes the birthday hat...
I have reached another milestone. I have indisputably moved from my early-thirties to my mid-thirties. I have also, it seems, reached an age where mere years are no longer long enough to efficiently mark the passage of time - I'm beginning to work in chunks of decade.
I guess it's a logical progression. When each of the kids was born, I spent the first day counting their age in hours. Then, for the next fortnight, I counted their age in days and, after that, it was weeks and even half weeks until they were two or three months. Months turned into years around about the time they reached two but they were seldom just two, they were two-and-a-quarter or two-and-a-half or 'nearly three'. I still do this kind of thing with Fraser's age sometimes and he's nearly seven-and-a-half. (See what I mean). I imagine it will peter out once they're nine or ten. Then it will be simple, whole-numbers of years for evermore as far as I'm concerned. No more faffing about. In later life, Marie will introduce her fiance and the first thing out of my mouth will probably be something like, 'She's thirty-seven. We thought she was never going to move out.'
It's just payback, really. I've lost track of the occasions on which my children have told random strangers in a lift or on the bus how old I am. I'm looking forward to following Fraser around on a Saturday night when he's a teenager and telling all the bar staff exactly how old he is while I sup happily on my own beer.
Yep, there will come a time when I find the kids' ages nice and simple but I suspect that's when they will start to get a bit cagey about the whole thing. From my own experience, just because my parents have been happy to blurt out my age to all and sundry for years, doesn't mean I always have. There was a brief period in adolescence where I tried to pretend I was older than I was and then, after a relatively brief period of youthful maturity, I passed twenty-seven or twenty-eight and things began to get vague. I wasn't twenty-nine, I was 'in my late-twenties'. I'm guessing that, once I'm much past forty, things will start moving in decades. It's only when I'm up to around ninety-six and going for a high score that I'll start telling people my age again. ("I'll be a hundred and eight this October. It's all down to fresh air, hard work and marmalade. 'Course the key thing is where to put the marmalade but I'm not telling you my secret, laddie.")
Oh, what the heck, I'll come clean. I'm thirty-four.
I haven't had an urge to buy a motorbike yet. Three years ago, I did purchase a whole stack of games with little plastic figures on eBay, though. It was down to a desire to regain my lost teenage years by rediscovering the hobby which helped lose them in the first place. I only managed to paint a couple of ratmen, however, before Marie's insatiable desire to stay awake became apparent and my amount of free time plummeted. One day...
This time, obviously, the thing to buy myself to keep the gaping void of middle-age at bay is a PlayStation 3 but, also obviously, I still don't need one and they're still too expensive. Even the price cut won't work. My local independent games retailer actually had an equally good deal in the window a couple of weeks ago. I very nearly bought one. Sure, I can play all the games I want to play on my Xbox 360 but a PS3 was tempting as a Blu-Ray player (you know, just in case our old telly mysteriously breaks and we have to get a sparkling new HD one) and there are bound to be some decent PS3-exclusive games soon.
As I said, I almost bought one but then I went into town and looked in the big retailers. I ended up in the basement of HMV. There was plenty of shelfspace for the 360 and all the Wiis were sold out again but the PS3 was shunted to the back, next to where the room had been divided off with opaque plastic sheeting, presumably to allow some remodelling to be done. There was a vast PS3 display stuck up the corner, complete with HD telly and comfy seats but no one was paying the blindest bit of notice apart from two men in suits who were eyeing the situation with exasperation. They looked important and I quickly recognised them from one of my previous letters. Pretending to browse magazines, I listened in on their conversation.
Sony Europe Exec: The free games and extra controller don't seem to be working.After that, I gazed at the display a little longer but I wasn't exactly reassured about spending all my pocket money for the year on what's still very much an extravagance. Fortunately, this meant my resolve was already reinforced when the official announcement came out. I will just have to come to terms with my encroaching decrepitude without retail therapy. I will continue to resist.
Sony Marketing Bod (watching a tumbleweed roll past): The games are getting pretty cheap second-hand now and maybe we shouldn't have let on we've got new controllers with added rumble coming out after Christmas.
Exec: Pah! Who cares about rumble anyway? That's so last-generation.
Bod: Yeah, but only until after Christmas. Then it's the next big thing again.
Exec: It is?
Bod: That's what you said last week.
Exec: Right, yes, of course. I've been saying all kinds of things
lately; I'm beginning to lose track. Have I changed my mind on the importance of backwards compatibility yet?
Bod: No... I... Er, what do you mean 'yet'?
Exec: What? Did I say that out loud? Oh, sorry. I was busy thinking we should make the console more affordable.
Bod: A second price cut in just over six months? That's insane. We'll annoy our loyal customers who bought one at the initial price and make everyone else think we're desperate and... (He trails off as an HMV employee emerges through the plastic sheeting, accompanied by a few flurries of snow. There is a brief glimpse beyond. No building work is visible but the icy expanse of Narnia stretches away into the distance, trees and hills covered in more snow. Except they aren't hills. They're huge piles of PS3s. Mr Tumnus' hooves poke out from under the nearest one).
Exec: It's not a price cut and neither was the previous price cut. If you remember, we merely added value to the package by including extra content and, as you've already made clear, the worth of that extra content has been slowly decreasing over time. This has, in effect, meant the price of the console itself has been steadily rising for the last few months. How many other consoles can claim that? Even the Wii hasn't got more expensive and look how popular that is. I think the time has come, however, to reverse the trend, throw down the gauntlet to our competitors and make a minor adjustment to the RRP.
Bod (recovering as the plastic falls back into place): What level of 'adjustment' were you thinking?
Exec: £125.
Bod: What!? After six months! The early adopters will lynch us. And it's not even economically viable anyway.
Exec: We'll bring in a new model that's cheaper to produce.
Bod: How's it suddenly going to be cheaper to produce?
Exec: We'll leave bits out. We could start with the glove compartment and a couple of the coin holders.
Bod: You mean the multi-card reader bay and the USB slots.
Exec: Ah, same difference, it's not like anyone is using them. How about a third of the hard-drive and backwards compatibility as well? The ability to play PS2 games isn't so important now there'll be sixty-five games out for the PS3 by Christmas.
Bod (looking at his feet): Yeah, but one of those is Pirates of the Caribbean and another is Untold Legends.
Exec: The important thing here is choice, not quality.
Bod (his voice rising as he suddenly realises that the floor is made of PS3s): OK, OK, so we sell this 40GB model for £300. What about the current 60GB model?
Exec: Let's say £350 with a couple of games.
Bod: Only £50 more for two games and extra features? That means the new model will look both over-priced and under-equipped. Meanwhile, the price cut will look confused and panicked rather than dramatic and attractive.
Exec: But don't you see? It's not a price cut. If we cease production of the 60GB model, it's a specification downgrade coupled with a stock clearance. There's nothing desperate or confused about it. The product is £125 cheaper and the price hasn't been cut at all.
Bod: I, er... I'm not sure... That's not offering quality or choice. I... Hang on. You just changed your mind on the importance of backwards compatibility.
Exec: Took you a moment to notice, didn't it?
Bod: Very smooth. This might work. Still doesn't have rumble, though. (They start to leave).
Exec: That's such last-generation technology.
Bod: Until after Christmas.
Exec: Yes, yes, of course, after Christmas... but we'll have the 120GB Freeview model with built-in camera and etch-a-sketch to worry about then.
Bod: What?
Exec: Oh, don't worry. (He puts his arm around the other man's shoulders as they disappear behind the curtain). I've been assured that that one will definitely be able to make toast...
What to do to celebrate my birthday, though? A meal? Some cake? Or a session juggling hammers next to the telly?
Hmm... Maybe I should give my credit card to the children to look after for the rest of the day...
Yours in a woman's world,
Ed.
Labels: children, computer games, corporate madness, PS3
Thoughts? Responses? Got a funny story about your children? Add your comment here. 10:30 AM - Permanent Link - 2 comments - Post comment - Links to this post
Wednesday, 18 July 2007
The bread bin strikes back!
Dear Dave,Happy PlayStation 3 price cut in the UK day!
Well, sort of...
You were thinking about whether to buy a next-generation console and I'm not sure the choice has got any easier. What are Sony doing? That exec has been at it again. I can only imagine the meeting went like this:
(Two men sit in a large, spacious office. The Sony Exec sits at his desk, frowning at some papers. A member of the marketing team sits opposite, squirming).I'm still not buying one and you might be worth holding onto your old PS2 for a while yet - things aren't going much better for the competition, either:Sony Europe Exec: I don't like the look of these sales figures. We need to stir things up a bit. How about we knock the price down to £350.
Sony Marketing Bod: We can't knock seventy-five quid off the price just three months after launch. That sends all the wrong kinds of signals - like we have enormous warehouses full of stock that no one wants to buy.
Exec (looking shifty): Yes... I mean, no... I mean... Er, no we couldn't possibly have them thinking that... But we do need to sell a few more units.
Bod: True, but the videogame industry is driven by confidence. No one wants to buy a console that's failing. They want to back the winner to ensure a continuing supply of good games and thus protect their investment. They buy the console they think everyone else is buying. A price cut boosts sales in the short-term but may only bring in customers who were going to buy one anyway and were waiting for the cut. Others may just be made more nervous. They may wait longer to see who's going to win the console war.
Exec: We are going to win it, obviously.
Bod: Yes, I know - it's my job to say that.
Exec: Then why aren't you saying it?
Bod: Because this is a strategy meeting and we need to separate fact from propaganda. (Sighs). Besides, you're never going to buy one anyway, are you?
Exec: Of course not. I haven't tried one yet where the thing actually makes toast properly. (He motions over to a corner of the room where a number of dead PS3s are heaped. Some of them have slices of bread poking out of the disc-drive. One appears to be leaking the remains of a Pop-Tart). Let's keep that secret, though. Don't want to put off any consumers, do we?
Bod: Not a problem, I for one certainly haven't been talking-up the PS3's ability to warm bread products. (Notices two PS3s being used as bookends on a shelf). We do, however, need to figure out a way to sell more of them. Some way that doesn't involve an early, desperate price cut.
Sony Exec: Well we won't actually cut the price - we'll bundle lots of extra stuff with it. How about another controller and a couple of games?
Bod: So people think they're getting better value for money.
Exec: Exactly. We can claim it's a large price saving while keeping the price the same.
Bod: That might work. People like to think they're getting a bargain. It'll still cost £425 but with £115 off extra content. I can sell that.
Exec: And when we sell the console on its own in November for £350 we can claim we're so confident of success that we're actually putting the price up.
Bod (holding head against the pain): Because... the box will be £75 cheaper but contain £115 less stuff?
Exec: People will buy it because it's cheaper but be confident that demand is high because it's become more expensive. They'll rush into the shops just to make sure they get there before we slash prices even more.
Bod (Shifts himself uncomfortably in his seat. Realises it is made of PS3s): Maybe a simple price cut is the way forward after all. It's what Sony America have done.
Exec (going over to a drinks cabinet): They've reduced the model with the 60Gb hard-drive by a hundred dollars and introduced the 80Gb model at the old price. I've had a word with them, though, and they're going to discontinue the old model as soon as they've sold all the ones they already have.
Bod: That may take a while.
Exec: It's possible. (He opens the cabinet. There is a bottle of whisky inside, a handful of glasses and a rip in the fabric of space and time. Through the tear can be seen a mountainside on which stands a monumental stack of PS3s. At the base of the monolith two apes are fighting. They are whacking each other over the head with consoles). Drink?
Bod (in shock): No thanks.
Exec (closing the cabinet and returning to his seat): Technically, it's not a price cut, it's a specification upgrade coupled to a stock clearance.
Bod: I... I... I'll go see about bundling those games and that extra controller. (He hurries away).
Exec (calling after him): Good lad. Let me know how it goes. (He opens a drawer of his desk. Inside is a PS3. Molten cheese is oozing out of it from every port and socket). Damn, there goes another one.
Bill Gates contemplated buying Norway to hide all the faulty Xbox 360s that have been returned displaying the three red lights of death. It turned out in the end to be (fractionally) cheaper to admit the problem and extend the manufacturer's warranty in those cases to three years.
Nintendo have sold so many Wiis that their president, Satoru Iwata, is now too busy counting cash to actually authorise the production of any new games worth playing. They're drafting him some help but it's going to take them a while to clear the backlog. (And that's before Pokemon Diamond and Pearl go on sale in Europe).
This console war is still wide open. The PS3 is good value if you have an HDTV and want an HD movie player. The Xbox 360 is cheaper to start with but you have to pay extra for HD movie playback, wi-fi and online gaming (a lot extra). The 360 has a much wider choice of games at the moment, though. The Wii has a handful of fun games but nothing to really keep you playing for long. The graphics aren't much better than a GameCube either.
My advice - buy a second-hand Xbox or GameCube and hoover up some dirt cheap pre-owned bargains from your local GAME or Gamestation. That should keep you busy long enough for the future to become a bit clearer (and less expensive).
Happy gaming!
Yours in a woman's world,
Ed.
Labels: computer games, corporate madness, PS3, Wii, Xbox 360
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Friday, 23 March 2007
Darth Vader's bread bin
Dear Dave,Happy PS3 Day!
Yes, the PlayStation 3 is finally released in Europe today and, in worrying news for Sony, I haven't pre-ordered one. I haven't even forgotten to pre-order one. I'm simply not getting one. Considering I have enough games consoles to be running low on fingers when counting them, this is something of a surprise to everybody.
It's just too expensive.
This is a shame really, since it's actually the best value for money of the new consoles - it's the most powerful, it has built-in wi-fi, a large hard-drive and an HD movie player. The thing is, though, all I really want to do is play games and almost all the games on PS3 I can already play on my Xbox 360. A PS3 would be an extravagance at half the price. (And at half the price it would still be more expensive than a Nintendo Wii).
As I said, this is not good news for Sony since I must be fairly near the top of their target demographic:
- I'm an avid gamer.
- I've bought their previous consoles.
- I'm mysteriously drawn to sleek black gadgets.
- I have a fair stash of pocket money lying around because I seldom have the opportunity to go out and, let's face it, when I do have the opportunity I'd rather stay home and play games.
- I'm a sucker.
So, to sum up, I'm not buying a PS3 and I'm not going near one, just in case. How did Sony get in this mess? Once again, I can only imagine the planning meeting:
Sony VP: How are we going to get people to buy Blu-ray players?
Sony Exec (newly arrived from my last letter): Let's put them in all PS3s.
VP: Making the PS3 more expensive than any other console and driving down sales.
Exec: Yes, but once they have a Blu-ray player in their homes, people are bound to start buying movies and HDTVs and we'll make the money back.
VP: Er...
Exec: Come on, it's a PlayStation, people are bound to buy it.
VP: Maybe, but how can we make sure? How are we going to get people to buy PS3s?
Exec: Ah! That's obvious! We'll put Blu-ray players inside them all.
VP: Er, sink two birds with one stone, kind of thing?
Exec: Yes, yes, exactly. We'll sell the PS3 cheaper than any of the stand-alone Blu-ray players...
VP: By losing money on every one we sell...
Exec: Yes, but once they have a games console in their homes, people are bound to start buying games and we'll make the money back.
VP: So we're going to use the PS3 to sell Blu-ray and Blu-ray to sell the PS3? Isn't that a little... risky?
Exec: Not as risky as covering ourselves with jam and prancing naked through a swarm of termites.
VP: Quite, but what exactly has that got to do with...
Exec: Don't worry. Everything will be fine. (He exits the room by pulling extremely hard on his own bootstraps and launching himself spectacularly through a skylight).
VP: That was amazing! We'd better do what he said. Everything will be fine...
I'm not saying I'm never going to buy one. (With my track record, that would be foolish). I'm just not going to buy one for a while. A long while. Probably not before Wednesday, 23rd September, 2009, anyway.
That will be Marie's first full day at school. My resistance will be low that day.
Yours in a woman's world,
Ed.
PS Please send trousers.
Labels: computer games, PS3
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