RonAmok!

Just when I think I’ve seen it all — the stupidity of old media grabs a megaphone and hits me with a resounding “Not so fast, Ron!”

Last night, I found the following message waiting for me on my DIRECTV box.

Effective April 15, 2008, DVR recordings of PPV movies will be available for up to 24 hours of unlimited viewing after purchase. Major movie studios have required that satellite and cable providers alike may no longer allow their customers to view these recordings for longer than 24 hours. During the 24 hour viewing period, you will continue to enjoy all of your DVR features such as pause and rewind.

Okay, let me get this straight. If I rent a movie via my satellite carrier and download it to my digital video recorder, I must watch it within 24 hours or it turns into a pumpkin?

I first experienced the renting of self-destructible movies with my AppleTV. At the time, I thought the AppleTV terms were bad, but in hindsight, they make DIRECTV’s look Draconian. At least with AppleTV, I have 30 days to start watching the movie — leaving me with 24 hours to finish it after that. The experience is annoying, because sometimes your schedule doesn’t allow you to watch a movie within 24 hours. Have you ever started watching a movie late at night, got sleepy, and decided to watch the rest of it the following evening? Well sorry folks. With AppleTV and DIRECTV, you can’t do that anymore.

A DVR is about time-shifting. It’s about the ability to watch programming on my time, on my schedule. To shackle recorded content with scarcity-driven time limits can only serve one purpose — to aggravate the DVR-enabled consumer.

But there’s another thing that’s bothering me. This from the DIRECTV FAQs:

Could a Pay Per View movie expire from my playlist before I get around to watching it?

Yes, the 24 hour viewing period is triggered by your purchase of the Pay Per View movie, so make sure to plan accordingly. If you are not sure you will be able to watch your selection within the 24 hour viewing period, use your “record/buy later” function available on DIRECTV Plus DVR or DIRECTV Plus HD DVR receivers.

Sure, this makes sense. Take all the convenience of the DVR, which gives me control over my schedule, and then force me to calculate when it’s best for me to order your product.

Methinks there is something else going on here. Right now, there is a price difference between renting a movie in SD or HD. When given that choice, I always pay the extra buck, and the movie studios know this. Let’s take this known behavior to the next step. By putting a 24 hour limit on our movie rentals, the industry sets a precedent. Then, when we complain, they’ll roll out a new set of upgrade choices, under the altruistic guise of “listening to our customers.” The new upgrades offer us an a-la-carte choice of SD, HD, and length of time we’d like to hold onto the content.

When will old media learn that the more restrictions that they put on their content, the less money that they’ll make in the long run?

Tags: DIRECTV AppleTV Old Media Scarcity self-destruct content ronamok

I remember a conversation that I had once had with my grandmother. We were talking about our favorite movie stars. Hers was Claudette Colbert. A quick check of IMDB shows that Claudette Colbert received a credit in 87 endeavors in a career that spanned 50 years, from 1927 through 1987.

So, why would a New Media Evangelist bring up an actress from a bygone era? Well, this morning I turned on my television and saw a black and white film called Three Came Home. This isn’t an uncommon experience. For as long as I can remember, if you flipped through the television channels, the odds are that you’ll always find an old movie. However, there was something different about this particular movie — because it was in High Definition (HD).

In the past, we’ve always been able to watch old movies on our standard television sets. But lest we forget, these old classics were intended to be projected onto the big screen, and therefore were filmed at a much higher resolution than our generation is used to viewing them. We have been deprived of the original beauty of these films, not because of a limitation on the original content’s part, but rather on the limitations of our viewing devices. Today, that limitation is gone.

One of my favorite bloggers is Mark Cuban. Back in July, Mark put out a challenge to recommend new Programming for HDTV. To me, the answer is obvious: start digitizing the warehouses of great content that have been lost to generations of consumers. It would be a monumental effort, similar to what Google is attempting with books, but one that would serve the public well, by reconnecting us with the richness of our storytelling past.

Tags:Claudette Colbert Mark Cuban Blog Maverick Movies Hollywood Google HD HDNet High Difinition digitizing ronamok

In 1954, an Industrial Arts teacher from Long Island came to speak at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology about his new invention: a breadboarding system that he proposed could be used to teach electronics. Arthur Jubenville had patented this system and started a company called Science Electronics, Inc. (SEI). During the conference, he was introduced to a Cambridge-based electronics company by the name of General Electronic Labs(GEL), which was developing RADAR countermeasure technologies for the Department of Defense. In this chance meeting, SEI became a wholly-owned subsidiary of GEL and with funding, SEI went began marketing Jubenville’s invention.

The breadboarding system was unique because it allowed students to assemble electronic circuits without the use of solder. The kit came with various electrical components, such as resistors, capacitors, diodes, vacuum tubes, loudspeakers, transformers, each mounted onto a module. The bottom of these modules contained evenly spaced “pegs” that fit nicely onto a supplied pegboard. After the student had placed the components onto the pegboard, the next part was to hook them up, with these clever little “Jiffy Clips,” wires with simple clips on either end that snapped onto module posts.

Not only was SEI looking to get this system into schools, but it also felt that there was a home market for it. “We all grew up on Erector Sets,” Arthur Nelson, co-founder of GEL said, “so we decided to set up a meeting with the AC Gilbert company.” A contingent from SEI went to “Erector Square” and left with an agreement. SEI licensed the system to AC Gilbert for marketing to the home user, and the “Erectronic” (Sometimes called “Erec-tronic”) was born.

Since that time, many companies have built upon the original idea of the Erectronic. I remember getting my Radio Shack Electronic Lab, where I built crystal radios, motor control circuits, and sound effects generators that chirped with the sounds of phasors, machine guns, and explosions. I’d follow instructions to build circuits that came with the set, or try to invent new ones myself — with most of those experiments leading to smoke.

Although I never bought anything from it, I’d spend hours looking over the HeathKit catalog, filled with all sorts of projects to build using nothing but patience and a soldering iron. I played around with the Basic Stamp microcontroller and then in 1998, another toy manufacturer jumped into the game. Lego released its Mindstorms product, where not only did they place a microcontroller into a Lego Brick, but they packaged it with other special bricks that contained sensors, motors, and stuff. During the past fifty years, there have been leaps and bounds in the sophistication of Mr. Jubenville’s idea. And they are just about to take a quantum leap again.

As a hardware guy, I’ve always been a little jealous of the software guys. I mean, all software folks need is computer, a compiler and a six pack of Red Bull to start creating stuff. Hardware guys on the other hand? We have to set aside a space for test equipment and power supplies and all sorts of components to build anything beyond the toy-level stuff. Don’t get me wrong, I love Lego Mindstorms, but if I have an idea that’s worthy of investment, I don’t want to go traipsing into a VC’s office with an assortment of interconnected red, blue and yellow plastic bricks.

But what if I offered you a breadboarding system like the Erec-tronic, but instead of a just a pegboard, we embedded an ARM11 processor into it? Heck, since we’re just dreaming, what if instead of a pegboard with an ARM11 processor, the pegboard was transformed into a palm-sized breadboarding system that contained a Linux-based computer, complete with WiFi, Ethernet, USB, USB-OTG, and a slew of others? And imagine that instead of simple components like a resistor or diode mounted onto a little module, we add some pizazz — like a GPS module, a touchscreen module, a 3G module or a digital camera module? What if the platform was totally open, such that users around the world are not only free to hack it, but they are encouraged to do so through open APIs. And lastly, imagine that through the use of New Media tools, a community could be built around it, to collaborate with one another, to share ideas, to invent new things? How cool would THAT be?

Well, I need to tell you that this isn’t a dream. It is a reality and the company, Bug Labs is about to release pricing on its Bug Product Line [consisting of it's Bug Base (Linux Computer/Breadboard) and its Bug Modules] before the end of the year. I’m going to be watching this release very closely because it has the potential to change hardware design as we know it, through the combinatorial use of New Media and Open Source.

This product has the potential to drop the barrier of entry for hardware development to that which is closer to software development. Imagine if a Venture Capitalist walked into a struggling startup with ten Bug Bases, dumped them and a plethora of modules onto the table, and told them to start developing? Imagine the devices that’ll emerge.

I love this idea, and I’m really hoping that it works as well as advertised.

If you wanna see the Bug in action, checkout the following video interviews by Robert Scoble, where the BugLabs CEO, Peter Semmelhack, demonstrates the device and a few modules.

Erectronic Photos courtesy of Allan Jayne Jr.
Bug photos courtesy of Bug Labs.

Tags:

Erectronic Science Electronics Robert Scoble Peter Semmelhack Bug Labs buglabs.net