SeanTech

Stop the Megapixel Madness!

With this post, I officially declare myself an opponent of camera resolution. What? Oppose resolution? But resolution is inherently good, right? It's like being against ice cream or puppies. Well, what if you’re lactose intolerant? Or the puppy is a rabid pit-bull?

Even good things become bad if taken to excess. And that's why I hate megapixels. We have too damn many of them. Big resolution is a pain for some obvious reasons -- bigger files require bigger, more expensive memory cards and suck up more hard drive space. Yes, yes. I've heard those complaints. But if more megapixels produced better pictures, I wouldn't care about those downsides. Quality is worth paying more.

Here's the problem, though -- more megapixels produce WORSE pictures. Yes, worse. You may have heard or read my rants on this before. But now I have concrete, saddening proof.

Last week I met with folks from Pentax and saw their new K10D digital SLR, which immediately won my heart. Pentax is no Canon or Nikon, but it makes very respectable little SLRs at good prices. If you don't have (realistic) pro aspirations (and most of us don't), Pentax is a great way to go. The K10D has Pentax's cool vibration reduction technology via an image sensor that "floats" in a magnetic field so that camera jiggles don't cause it to move around. (The technology premiered in the K100D and works great, according to my tests.)

But the K10D also has other fantastic features. For the first time, Pentax has attached a name to its image sensor: The Pentax Real IMage Engine. OK, it's a clunky name, but it has a nice acronym -- PRIME -- which undoubtedly came first. Why didn't Pentax name their processors before? Because they weren't THEIR processors. They just bought 'em from a chipmaker. (They wouldn't tell me which one.) One of the coolest things about PRIME is that it takes DDR2 memory. What does that mean? Unlimited shooting. Press the shutter, and the camera keeps taking pictures until the memory card fills up. I'm not certain, but I don't think ANY other camera does this.

Another cool thing -- a very sophisticated analog to digital converter. This takes the gobbledygook from the sensor and makes it into a package of nice ones and zeros for the camera to process. Analog has a virtually infinite range of values, and every time you convert it to nice little ones and zeros, you make some compromises in accuracy. But the K10D doesn't make many. It has a 22-bit converter -- meaning it interprets 2 to the 22nd power shades of meaning. Its previous cameras had a 12-bit converter -- ten orders of magnitude less refined.

There's just one problem with the K10D: Its 10-megapixel sensor. This problem can be measured. In low-light shooting, it makes the K10D only half as good as Pentax's old six megapixel K100D. While the K100D goes to ISO 3200 sensitivity, the K10D can only go to ISO 1600. Pentax confirms that the sensor is the problem. So, new processor, new digital-to-analog converter, and worse low-light performance. That's how much damage comes from trying to squeeze an extra four million photodiodes onto a sensor of the same size. They are so tiny and receive so little light that you need all this new processing power just to get an image that is not quite as good as that from the entry-level camera. Oh, what a shame. So now, I get almost twice as many pixels, but they are fuzzier. So I can make giant prints that look like they are growing mold, or I can hide the fuzz by making prints that are as small as or smaller than those from the 6-megapixel camera.

The K10D certainly has some benefits over the K100D. Speed for sure, and possibly better color processing - which the K100D badly needs on long-exposure shots. (We'll have to wait and see the K10D to know for sure.) But it's so sad that that one of the new camera's "features," the resolution, is actually a drawback.

Video Beat the Radio Star

While the music industry has reluctantly crept toward technology, Hollywood is sprinting to online distribution

Someday, I'd like to be able to download a real CD, with a high bitrate, high-quality mastering, and an album cover. Instead, I get dinky, flat-sounding MP3 files. But I can already download DVDs that can be burned to discs that run in a living room player, complete with menus, extra features, and cover art.

The process has been slow, but has steadily gained momentum. In late 2005, EZTakes began offering downloads of public-domain films – the only content they were able to get back then. The service has gradually expanded to offer some rather obscure indie material, exercise videos, horror flicks, and even a few winners of film awards. Those are international awards, of course, not Oscars. The big

Hollywood studios haven’t signed on with EZTakes. But they are starting a download experiment with CinemaNow. In addition to the few hundred films for download to PCs, CinemaNow offers a few hundred movies that can be burned to DVD.

It started in May with films from Vivid Entertainment -- a purveyor of high-grade pornography. But as history shows us: Where porn goes, mainstream media soon follows. In July, CinemaNow started offering mainstream titles – about 100 movies and music videos.

It's fitting that pornography is leading the DVD download business, just as it lead the adoption of the original DVDs, their predecessor video cassettes, and the whole "home theater" movement. Porn is just one of the forces pushing video online at an unexpected rate -- and far faster than music has made the transition.

In the era of iTunes, it may be hard to remember how lethargic the music industry has been to embrace the Internet. But it's been roughly ten years from the emergence of MP3 Internet trading to the Beatle's announcement that they were finally preparing their music for online distribution. And that news came during their latest, and ill-fated, lawsuit against Apple Computer. (We're still waiting for AC/DC and Led Zeppelin to go online.) 

In comparison, the video business is streaming ahead. While burn-to-DVD titles are rare, PC-based downloads are abundant. In addition to its hefty porn collection, CinemaNow offers a good chunk of new mainstream releases. Could the quality be better? Sure, but that's true of online music as well. Are the prices reasonable? No. $19.95 is excessive for occasionally fuzzy video that is tethered to your laptop. "I would prefer to offer it cheaper," said Cinema Now's president, Bruce Eisen, whose pricing structure is dictated by the studios. Eisen is gunning for $10 per download, as is the 800-pound gorilla of online media, Steve Jobs.

Assuming historical precedent holds, Jobs will probably get his way. But even without Apple, online video will continue to explode because so many other companies are pushing it. The legal music download business is dominated by a mere two players: iTunes with about 61 percent of the market, and eMusic -- a distributor of mostly indie titles with about 12 percent. 

Providers of online video, in comparison, are legion. CinemaNow competes with two virtual alter-egos: MovieLink and Vongo. Google and Yahoo offer vast archives of footage, as do the until-recently-unknown companies YouTube, Revver, and Grouper. Plus new players keep popping out of obscurity. In June, a Usenet archive with the not-so-catchy name GUBA began offering top-tier current films and campy old TV shows from the Warner Brothers archive. In July, GUBA signed on Sony. And while iTunes doesn't provide movies yet, its half-year-old collection of TV programs is already overwhelming. I've watched entire seasons of Battlestar Galactica exclusively on my laptop.

Unlike songs -- which can be played dozens of times per week on traditional, satellite, and Internet radio stations -- TV episodes are limited to a prime-time debut and occasional runs in syndication. A decade ago, if you missed a song on the radio, you knew you would hear it again soon. Or you could buy the CD, tape, or LP. But if you missed a show on TV, you didn't know when, if ever, you could catch it again. 

That wasn't just bad news for viewers, but for the networks, too. They were sitting on huge archives of valuable content, with limited ways to make money from it. So reviving old shows on the Internet represents almost pure gain for them.

And unlike movie studios, TV networks aren't worried about "cannibalizing" DVD sales. Getting a series onto DVD is a slow process -- about a season or two behind the broadcast airing. That hurts viewership, because it's impossible for new viewers to catch up. (TiVo helps. But what if you first become interested in recording a show two seasons after it debuted?) If you make episodes available online shortly after they hit the TV, people can join in at any time and become dedicated fans. That's a lot different from music. Bands don't (yet) issue a song every week or two, stretching an album over several months. Nothing appears until the entire CD is ready. It's the exact opposite with DVD collections of TV shows.

Networks can even give the video away, because they can embed advertising. People are well used to commercial breaks in TV shows, but they wouldn't tolerate a message from the sponsor in the middle of a song. And unlike record studios, networks are producing new content just for the Internet. MTV Overdrive, for example, airs online "aftershows" that provide context and backstory to its broadcast programs like Laguna Beach.

Television networks are a lot different from recording studios. Both produce media, but networks are also responsible for broadcasting it. In the past they have used radio waves, cable, and satellite. Now they are adding Internet Protocol.

"Hollywood is definitely moving faster" than the music business, said Jeremy Allaire, whose company Brightcove develops the Internet video distribution systems for TV channels such as MTV and The Discovery Channe "They are launching new businesses left and right, building direct digital channels with their TV networks, and doing digital media licensing deals all over the planet." 

  In some cases, Hollywood is pushing harder than the technology and legal constraints will allow. I spent days trying to download one of the Vivid Entertainment DVD files. First my PC's security software blocked the download. Later, I was able to retrieve it, but the digital license required to make the file play wasn't delivered. So I had to start over again. And quality is not quite as good as that on a regular DVD, but it is close.

Licensing is also a roadblock. Rights for most movies and TV shows were negotiated long before the Internet, and renegotiating for online distribution is tedious. One of the stickiest matters, in fact, is securing the rights to music used in programs. But many other players are also involved -- far more than for a typical song. "We've had a bunch of meetings where you see a ton of excitement from the studios," said Rob Bennett, the general manager of entertainment and video for MSN. "Then the needle gets scratched across the record when someone says 'What about the Director's Guild? What about the Actor's Guild?'"

Despite these glitches, online video is quickly moving forward. New licensing deals for movies and TV shows are incorporating Internet rights. And while  Hollywood players are still frustratingly cautious on some matters, they recognize that they can't keep their content off the Internet, so they might as well play an active roll in getting it online. In this matter they owe a huge debt to the recording studios, which clearly showed them how not to react to a new technology.

Life without TV (sorta)

As an experiment, I'm trying to go for a month without turning on the "TV" in my apartment, and instead am getting my video only from the Internet.

It's been about a week now, and I really miss TV. Mainly, I miss the aimless way of watching TV - just "having it on" in the background. I'm a bit of a news hound, and I've gotten used to tuning in CNN in the morning. OK, I end up hearing a few stories twice, and lots of the "news" is just fluff. But I like having the company.

To fill the gap, I've been listening more to the NPR affiliate, WNYC. Now, I've long known that public radio provides better news than TV (especially when it channels the BBC). But I used to like mixing the two -- radio on the alarm when I first get up, and TV with breakfast. Now it's just radio, and WNYC switches to classical music at night, so I'm out of the loop in the evenings.

Yes, CNN has streaming video on its site, but I don't like hunting for video clips. I like watching TV in the aimless, brainless way of just letting it play. "TV" and "thinking" are not two words that I usually use in the same sentence. (And my laptop screen is too small to comfortably fit a video window and anything else.)

When I do watch "TV" on the Web, it is more purposeful. I have already confessed my Battlestar Galactica obsession. Now I'm jazzed to hear that 24 is available for download. I never caught the show on old-school TV, so the downloads will give me a chance to catch up (without having to hassle with Netflix queues). So now I'm thinking about, even planning, what to watch.

Purposeful veging -- an odd concept to me. But maybe the way of the future?

Whether it's cable or DSL, we still love traditional TV

Internet video is growing fast - not just in the number of business ventures promoting it, but also in the number of real people watching it. I have that on anecdotal evidence, anyway, based on how many people either tell me about their Internet watching or send me links to clips that I must check out.

Along with the ability for anyone to watch anything, the Internet also promises the ability for anyone to create and upload anything. I even wrote in an article for the September 2005 issue of Wired magazine: "On the Net, where production costs are minuscule, indie producers and video bloggers can compete alongside the studios and networks."

Having watched a lot more Internet video since then (and having just written an essay for Slate), I can elaborate on that thought. Network TV is certainly not in danger from indie video competitors. Traditional TV and Net video are two very different creations -- both of which have bright futures.

One main difference: Internet-only video is always short content. Long form is still the province of the studios. But this is not for the reason that many people think.

The popular wisdom used to be that people only watch brief videos on computers because the online attention span is shorter: People are used to quickly absorbing information and then moving on. Some also suggested that watching "TV" on a desktop or laptop computer is just too uncomfortable to do for a long time.

But I don't think that's true. iTunes is showing that people will not only watch long video pieces on a computer or handheld, but even pay good money for it. I'm now one of those people.

I've recently become an embarrassingly enthusiastic fan of the sci-fi series Battlestar Galactica. (The new version. Although I did love the old 70's series when I was a kid.) But I've never seen the new show on a TV. By whim, I purchased a random episode from iTunes and was immediately hooked. Recently, I paid the rather extravagent sum of $15.99 to download the entire miniseries that preceded the weekly show. I started watching around midnight and couldn't stop until I had seen all 3 hours, four minutes, and nineteen seconds. Then I picked up a free copy of Episode 01 from the first season on peekvid and watched that before finally turning in.

I watched it all in low-fi video quality on a laptop with headphones. Was it as comfortable as on a TV? Oh god, no! But it was good enough, and I was enthralled.

I'm yet to do anything like that for indie video, and there really isn't the option to. Long pieces are very rare, with the 47-minute fanfic classic Star Wars: Revelations being the standout example. The reasons are simple ones: cost and expertise. A short clip of a kid playing Jedi master is entertaining, but it's a lot harder to make a film running near an hour. (Shane Felux, who produced and directed Revelations, has years of professional video experience, and he recruited a team of CGI experts owning expensive hardware and software to create the special effects.)

I am in no way pooh-poohing indie video. I have seen some great, funny (and very often a bit dirty) clips on iFilm, YouTube, and Grouper. But I still love "old-fashioned" TV. So far, that's still the only thing that will keep me up all night.

And I don't think I'm alone. At this writing (Sunday, May 07) only three of the most-watched items on the ostensibly "user-generated" video site YouTube were actually indie creations. The rest were bootleg clips from big-money TV or snippets from video games. However, both number 1 and number 2 were indie pieces.

Ultimately, I think old-school TV will continue to go strong, and indie video will keep getting bigger. Nothing's going away. We're just going to have more to watch.

Technology Hall of Fame

Another article that fell victim to the demise of Cargo magazine would have been their first annual Hall of Fame for great tech products. I wrote half of it, and here are the entries. I have spent time with these products, and they are all quite great.

Media Player: Apple iPod

So many people rave about the iPod, you have to wonder if they are just lemmings following the Apple marketing machine. But we say the praise is justified.

Not only is the current iPod a fantastically sleek, sonorous music player, it has also launched the portable video revolution. The new, wider LCD screen is impressively crisp and colorful -- making even a miniature video fully engrossing. And only Steve Jobs had a reality forcefieled strong enough to draw Hollywood into the portable download business.

Unfortunately, the included white earbuds don't match the new glossy black models. (See. We can be critical.)

30GB $299
60GB $399
www.apple.com/ipod

MP3 Sound System: Klipsch iFi

iPods aren't just for commuting. Many companies (including Apple) make boom-box style speakers with an iPod dock to boost the player's sound beyond headphone quality. But Klipsch went all out, building a full-on stereo system with enough big, clear sound to fill the room.

The iFi's dual-driver satellite speakers deliver buttery, distortion-free audio for any genre from acoustic to noise pop. (To get the most of this system, feed it high-quality MP3 or AAC tunes ripped at a data rate of 192kbps or higher.) The system performed equally well with the throbbing, ominous soundtrack from a Battlestar Galactica episode downloaded from the iTunes store. And despite its imposing dimensions, the subwoofer generates subtle, measured rumble that doesn’t overpower the finer notes.

Still, the iFi could do more. Treble control is a conspicuous omission. And while the tiny RF remote is cute, it's rather Spartan with just play/pause, forward, back, and volume controls. How about iPod menu navigation?

$399.99
www.klipsch.com

[Note: Including this item was my editors' idea. While this is a great product for what it does, I'm dubious about the need to spend so much money on an iPod speaker set. Better put that money toward a good audio system and plug the iPod into one of the audio inputs, or buy an AirPort Express for wireless streaming.]

Cell Phone: Motorola Razr V3c from Verizon

Motorola redefined cell phones with the Razr -- transforming them from necessities to objects of desire (for a wider audience than just uebergeeks). And unlike other fashion phones, the Razr actually works well --delivering solid audio quality for such a slim model.

But Verizon helped the Razr reach its full potential, with the upgrade from VGA to a one-megapixel camera, plus a needed software overhaul. (Now you can assign more than one phone number to each name in your address book.)

It also liberated the Razr from the GSM phone system -- which is painfully slow in the US --and brought it to Verizon's zippy EV-DO data network, making fast Web browsing and streaming video possible.

$199.99 with one-year contract
$149.99 with two-year contract
www.verizonwireless.com

Beginner Digital SLR: Nikon D50

Moving up from a point-and-shoot to an SLR doesn't just make you look cooler, it makes the photos better, too. SLR's have comparatively gargantuan image sensors that produce crisper, cleaner images. And because they take interchangeable lenses, SLRs can keep pace as your skills grow.

Canon and Nikon offer superb entry-level models, but Nikon's D50 wins out. At $760 (with an 18-55 millimeter zoom lens), it beats Canon's $999 Digital Rebel XT on price. And because it takes SD memory cards, which you may have lying around from your point and shoots, the Nikon could save you even more. The D50 is also easier to operate, with its bigger handgrip, more-intuitive menu and button layout, and larger LCD screen.

$760
www.nikonusa.com

Music Networking: Sonos Digital Music System

Music comes from nearly everywhere today: computers, CDs, iPods, Internet radio. And Sonos pulls it all together elegantly.

Similar to other music streamers like the Apple AirPort Express or Slim Devices Squeezebox, the Sonos ZonePlayers use wireless networking to bring music from your computer to other parts of the home. But Sonos goes far beyond the competition in both where it gets music and where it sends it. Using a special wireless network, Sonos can accommodate up to 32 zone players, spread around even the largest of homes. Any player can grab not only digital music from PCs and Macs, network hard drives, Internet radio stations, and Rhapsody's streaming music service, but also analog input from devices like iPods and CD players. A single remote -- with an iPod-esq scroll wheel and menu system -- lets you browse and cue up music from any source, then send it wirelessly to any or all ZonePlayers around the house. You can play different tunes on every device, or link any or all of them together to play in perfect synchronicity, without any echo or delay.

The new, $349 ZP80 players connect to self-powered audio systems, such a stereo or home theater. The ZP100 units ($499) include amps and require only basic, unpowered speakers (like a $179 pair by Sonos).

$349 for ZP80
$499 for ZP100
$399 for Controller CR100
$999 for Controller and two ZP80s
$1199 for Controller and two ZP100s
www.sonos.com

Technology Standard: The SD Card

You shouldn't have to care about memory card formats; and Secure Digital makes that possible. In the year 2000, Panasonic, Toshiba, and SanDisk introduced the SD format to a world of flash-memory anarchy and aggressively promoted it as a standard that today is endorsed by over 800 technology companies and accounts for about 50 percent of all memory cards. Resisting its archrivals Panasonic and Toshiba, Sony persists with the Memory Stick format. And camera makers Fujifilm and Olympus push the obscure xD card. But products from most other companies -- ranging from cameras to PDAs to laptops to televisions -- feature SD slots. Some portables even support SDIO, which powers SD-sized devices including GPS receivers or Wi-Fi radios. The memory format also scales down to miniSD and microSD for ultrathin cell phones.

www.sdcard.org

Cargo Magazine Just Folded

This is kinda tech related, since Cargo had a big personal technology section -- from which I will no longer be getting contracts :-(

Apparently the word just went out around an hour ago, and virtually no one on staff knew -- even, according to rumor, the EIC.

I'm not sure about the rumor, but I did just talk with Tom Samiljan, the former technology editor, who confirmed that Cargo is closing and that it came as a complete surprise to him and his co-workers.

Farewell Cargo, we will miss you!

Sure it was a little flashy and pretentious. But it was a very quick read with some really good advice on everything from wine to hair gel to bluetooth. I actually worked for one magazine, IDG's Digital World, that very consciously borrowed stylistic ideas from Cargo. Of course, Digital World folded even sooner.

The real sadness here from a technology standpoint is that good sources of consumer advice on tech are fading away just as technology becomes truly pervasive.

The NY Times' Circuits section was eviscerated a while ago. PC World (where I once worked) is far smaller than it used to be. I'm not sure of PC Magazine's numbers, but it is hitched to the financially disastrous millstone of Ziff Davis, so that's not a good sign.

Sync, a magazine that tried to be like Cargo but was far dorkier, did exactly what its name sounded like.

C/net is always reorganizing, and it closed sold off Computer Shopper -- which was thicker than a phone book back in the dotcom 1.0 days. It took a while after the acquisition for c/net to murder Shopper, but it finally succeeded. And then c/net lost a bunch of people to Yahoo's upcoming c/net-esque reviews site. I suppose that's the only sing of growth - Yahoo.

OK, gotta go check the help wanted ads…

Quality - Maybe it just doesn't matter?

As a product reviewer, tech geek, image aficionado, and budding audio snob, I have come to see quality as the paramount characteristic of a device. And I'm awfully fussy. I can barely stand the sight of most digital cameras, LCD TVs, or people wearing the crappy earbuds that come with iPods.

And I often find myself having to explain to folks exactly why most products are so bad and how much better the experience could be with the right equipment. But lately I've been thinking: Why spoil their fun? Everything was fine for them until I came by complaining. Perhaps ignorance is bliss, and I should just shut up?

These thoughts crystallized a few nights ago when I went to a friend's house for a movie night and witnessed one of the worst video setups imaginable. He had a new 32-inch LCD TV, but not a brand known for quality. It wasn't adjusted very well (or at all) - with way too much light output for a dark room. For example, there was no such thing as "black" on this screen, only a very light gray. And the hookup was literally as bad as possible. The DVD player didn't have digital, component or even S-Video outputs. It provided only a little yellow composite output - 1950s video technology for a digital set bought in 2005. Oh, and the TV sat before a wall of windows, with the shades up to let in a steam of ugly light from several maddeningly bright streetlights. I thought I would need a new eyeglass prescription by the end of the evening.

But of the roughly dozen people there, I was probably the only person perturbed. Everyone else was totally engaged in the show (a great BBC documentary series called "7 Up" that follows a group of people through - so far - half their lives by checking in with them every 7 years). In fact, even I forgot about the technical and aesthetic problems for a while. The content was more important than the presentation.

Aficionados are, by definition, rare. If more common, they wouldn't be called aficionados, just "people." So I suppose it's understandable that most products are not made for us. Just as tech gear for the blind is extra expensive because of the relatively low volume, so gadgets for the opposite - people who see too much - are correspondingly pricey. And no one is an aficionado in all things. My foodie friends are appropriately horrified at how many of my meals come from the freezer, by way of the microwave oven. And most of my furniture is second hand, at best (sometimes scavenged from the curb). Nor is most of what I read remotely literary. But I'm generally content with all those things, even though I know that something better is out there.

Furthermore, sometimes aficionados focus on the wrong things. Fine, nuanced audio may be important if you are listening to opera CDs, but when you're throwing a party, all you really need is loud speakers and a thumping subwoofer to rock the house.

Likewise, I used to go mad over "pixel noise" in photos - colored speckles that appear when a digital camera tries to shoot in low light. But I've come to see as far more evil the interrogation-light glow that comes from a camera flash. So lately, I've been turning off the flash to get nicer colors, and have accepted the noise as a pointillist artistic touch, rather than a defect, as in this picture of my adorable niece Brooke. (Click photo to enlarge.)

So, have I concluded that quality doesn't matter?

No, but I have a slightly different perspective on how and when it matters. Most people don't notice subtle improvements, but they do remark how changes accumulate over time. One of the reasons that people aren't fussier about digital cameras, for example, is because even today's crappy models are exponentially better than even the high-end cameras from a few years ago. And today's top-end will become part of tomorrow's mainstream. So I will keep pointing out the best in any class - both to serve the small percentage of people who appreciate it today and the vast majority of people who will appreciate it in a few years.

And quality has a way of not only improving existing applications but also of spawning new ones. I remember well telling someone over a decade ago that color screens on computers were superfluous. And that's true, if all you do is type a letter in Microsoft Word 2.0. But now we use computers to watch DVD movies and Internet videos, to play frighteningly real-looking games, and to show off photos. In fact, I almost never look at pictures on anything but a glowing screen. Who prints photos anymore?

In a more recent example, I didn't immediately get the value of taking choppy, grainy videos with pocket cameras. But now some cameras shoot video that matches (or even exceeds) that from a "real" camcorder. Without intending to become videographers, many of us have done just that.

So yes, quality does matter, but I don't expect everyone to think about it all the time. Hopefully, because engineers, designers, and critics (like I) obsess over it, other people won't have to.

Multimedia PCs - The Good and the Bad

I just packed up nearly a dozen Media Center PCs that I lived with for several months while working on an article for Cargo magazine. I'm both encouraged and discouraged at what I saw.

For background: Media Center refers to a version of the Microsoft Windows XP operating system designed especially for multimedia. You can use a PC with it like a normal computer. Or you can press a button and get a "10-foot" interface similar in style to what you get with TiVo or a digital cable program guide. In this setup, you can operate the PC via a remote control to cue up music, play DVDs, and channel surf or even record television. Since it came out in 2002, Media Center has mostly been a curiosity, as in "That's cool. Now what do I do with it?" The systems are generally more expensive than separate DVD players and TiVos, and frankly, the quality wasn't that great.

Well, Microsoft and the PC makers have nearly solved one of those problems.

I was amazed at how good the video from some of the new PCs looked. It often matched and sometimes exceeded what I got from a very respectable new DVD player. Same goes for audio. With a digital output to a nice receiver, these things sound great.

Some of that credit, at least on the video side, probably goes to Microsoft hiring an outside company called the Imaging Science Foundation to clean up the performance. The initial goal, at least, was to produce high-end "ISF-certified" PCs for the rich and famous (or for people willing to drop a lot of money on A/V gear).

I just evaluated one of the two PCs that have been certified so far. It worked! The video looks darn good. But more important for most people is the trickle-down effect. In working with Microsoft and especially the graphics card makers, ISF appears to have made it possible for all PCs to look better. The graphics companies have developed new software (called drivers) that shows much more respect for the idiosyncrasies of video and the demands of high definition.

I saw a few PCs that don't have certification and don't cost nearly as much as the premo models, but that also look pretty darn good. However, it's hit and miss, and that's one thing that I find discouraging. I hope that, in the future, it will be a given that all PCs produce good video. The tools are available.

Another discouraging thing is that Media Center PCs are still awfully expensive. Even a low-price (and not that great)  model goes for $1,500. You would have plenty of change left over if you spent that money instead on a very nice DVD player and a TiVo (or a digital video recorder that you rent from your cable or satellite company).

And sadly, most of these PCs don’t support high-def TV. Those that do can get it only from antenna broadcasts, although the cable companies finally agreed to make it possible for PCs to receive high-def feeds sometime before the end of next year. Given how sluggish cable cos have been with other innovations -- such as the little decoders called CableCARDs that plug into the back of TVs in lieu of a set top box -- I don't expect a fast and painless implementation. So here you have a real irony -- the most wired people, willing to spend a comparative fortune on their A/V setups, can barely get HDTV.

Despite all the drawbacks to such computers, the rumor mill is convinced that Apple will follow Microsoft's lead. Apple recently dipped its toe in the multimedia waters with a simple Media Center-esque program called Front Row (complete with remote control). Now the scuttlebutt says Apple will release a full-on media PC sometime in 2006. If the past is any guide, once Apple jumps into something, the world will follow.

I saw a lot of MP3 players before the iPod arrived. But the iPod was the only one I found worth buying. That's because Apple took a floundering product idea and made it into something that actually worked and was fun to use. Way to go, Apple!

But if the same thing happens with media PCs, I may actually feel a bit sorry for Microsoft. That company has put so much effort into making these products work -- effort that Apple can certainly take advantage of. With that and a good ad campaign, the Windows Media Center PC could go the way of the Rio MP3 player.