October
2002
I have written
before about the vagaries of DVD drives, media, and the different
number of writeable formats that are available to choose from. This
whole situation is about to get a bit more fuzzy with a brand new
technology that is about to become available. It is called, EVD or
short for Enhanced Versatile Disc. This new technology is different
for quite a few reasons and one is that it is created not by the
Japanese but by the Chinese. What makes it different is that the
video definition will be five times greater than DVD. It will also
integrate a high-definition digital program player to support hi-fi,
Karaoke, and computer systems. They claim that the Extract Audio
Copy (EAC) will provide an audio frequency better than that provided
by Dolby’s AC-3 technology.
Interestingly
enough, what is driving this new market and technology is not really
the technology but more because of politics and economics. The
Chinese DVD producers didn’t want to pay what they claim are
exorbitant royalties to international DVD patent holders. Six
foreign DVD companies, Hitachi, Panasonic, Matsushita, AOL Time
Warner, Toshiba, and JVC have all filed royalty claims against
Chinese DVD producers since June 1999.
They are asking for roughly $14 for each DVD player that is
produced in China where the latest numbers show that they produced
around 15 million players in 2001 of which a majority is sold
overseas. If they can convince their own market to go with the EVD
players, they expect that royalty number to drop to around $4 per
player.
So, will the
EVD players hit it off, and are you very likely to go out and buy
one in your future? Not very likely. Even in China, to use one of
the players will require a high definition television set to see the
quality that it is capable of producing and these sets in China
still cost over $1200, well out of the range of most Chinese. Also
causing a problem will be the lack of international acceptance for
two major reasons. One being that the submission of the EVD to the
International Electro-technical Commission (IEC http://www.iec.ch/)
was opposed by Japan. The second is the fact that a consortium of
nine companies from Japan, Korea, Holland, and France/US have
developed their own successor to DVD called the “Blue-Ray Disc”
which is a denser with up to 27 gigabytes of capacity, a blue-violet
laser-based medium not compatible with current DVD systems. Look for
its production to begin in 2004.
Do a Google search on “Blue-Ray Disc” for more stories
and information.
As prices of
DVD players come down to reasonable levels we will begin to see this
cycle start all over again with the new technology.
Short
Takes
A
problem we are starting to see is with the new high speed CD Burners
or Writers, people are using CD media that is not fast enough for
the drive. Especially true if you have some old unused CDR discs or
older CDRW discs that you have had for more than a year. You need to
check the media to see what speed that you can write to it. To
backtrack a bit, when you get a CDRW Drive to create your own
CDs, there are three numbers on the drive. In my example with my new
drive, it is a 40X24X40. The first number tells you how fast it will
write a standard CDR disc, in this case, 40 times. This is a disc
that you can write to only once and these types of discs are good
for making copies of data or music CDs. The second number is how
fast it will write to a CDRW disc, these are the discs that you can
erase and re-use over and over. The final number is how fast it will
simply read a CD just like any old plain CD drive. So the problem is
that today, if I look at my spindle of CDs that I bought a few
months ago. I see that are labeled to go from 1X to 32X. What that
means is that you can use them in a CD Writer drive at up to 32X. So
what will happen is that if I try to use those CDs in my writer at
the top speed of 40X, I will end up with a bunch of coasters that
are worthless. What I have to do is to tell my CD burning program to
slow down the write speed to match my discs. What is even worse is
that the original CDRW discs I bought with my first HP Writer
aren’t even labeled and I bet that they are no more than 4X in
speed. Those I save for when I have plenty of time to burn a CD.
Finally, if you are going shopping for new CDs, stick
with the brand names like Sony, 3M, HP, and Verbatim.
Wireless
Networking
It seems like a
lot of the wireless networking companies are now getting their act,
and more importantly, their software drivers, working to the point
of making it a useful technology for those needing network access in
tight locations. A couple of things to watch out for when installing
a wireless network would be the signal strength and how open your
wireless network is. Unlike a closed wired local area network, a
wireless network is by definition open to outside access. How else
do you expect all these Starbucks Coffee houses to make themselves
available to people just walking in (or in some cases, sitting in
their cars outside of the buildings). It will soon be that for the
price of one of their coffees, you can surf the net for 15 minutes,
and they are planning on rolling this out to all of their stores in
the near future.
So, if you are
installing a network, be sure to change the login passwords, the
SSID or workgroup names, and you should also make the traffic
encrypted. Also, pay close attention to the instructions before
setting up the wireless network. For instance, if you use the D-Link
hardware, you have to install the software before installing the
cards in either your laptop or desktop computer.
New
Princeton Flat Panel Monitor
If you are
looking for a high end flat panel monitor, you might want to take a
look at the newest from Princeton.
The SENergy 981 model boasts a 170 degree viewing angle and a
very bright and crisp screen for a 19 inch monitor. It has a
contrast ratio that is 500:1, higher than any that I have seen
lately and is super bright. It will sell for around $1200 but for
professionals that need to keep a close eye on a monitor, this might
be the one to go with. Visit them at www.princetongraphics.com. What is interesting is that they use a variety of new display
technologies like sRGB and
what they call “Premium MVA Technology”.
In a nutshell, the sRGB, or standard Red Green Blue, is a way
to better match the color that you pickup off the screen, image,
digital camera, and scanner to match with what you will print out.
They have their own web site at srgb.com.
the Premium
Multi-Domain Vertical Alignment (MVA) Cell Technology is even cooler
in that it really uses chemical technology to give you a better
viewing angle, higher contrast and resolution, and better color
control. It is way over my head but you can take a look at that at
www.fme.fujitsu.com/products/displays/lcdvatech.ht
Robert Sanborn
is an Independent Personal Computer Consultant, and a contributing
editor for the Indianapolis Computer Society. Reach him through the
net at indypcnews@indy.rr.com
