X3 Digital Film

In two weeks, at PMA show, Sigma is to release the SD-14, the third version of a Foveon X3-based digital camera. Foveon has been around for a number of years, failing to capture meaningful market, despite the superior sensor technology they offered. Let us have a look at it from several angles.

X3 is a digital camera sensor technology. Its layered concept resembles the way old photo film works and is very much in line with what most people expect from a camera sensor. X3 captures all colors in every pixel. Isn't it obvious, you'd ask? Well, what most consumers do not realize is 99% of digital cameras are black-and-white. Yes, that is true, with the exception of Foveon/X3 based (only Sigma cameras...). What you probably do not realize is your state of the art 10-megapixel Canon/Nikon/Sony/You-name-it is a black and white camera. At least its sensor is black and white. They capture colors using color filters. In front of every pixel is a filter - red, green or blue. So some of your 10 million pixels capture the intensity of red light, some capture green and some blue. What is worse, the pixels sit side by side. That means if you have a small green dot that happens to be just in front of a blue or red pixel, it won't be visible at all when the picture is taken. If you have a white dot small enough to be just in front of a blue pixel, it will be blue, not white on the picture. You feel cheated? That is how stuff works... Foveon X3 is the only design being able to deliver the truth. X3 pixels also capture "just" red or green or blue colors, but instead of sitting side by side, they sit one on top of another. Thus a "combined" pixel captures all colors. Small green dot will be visible and green, small white will be white, not blue. True colors. Or direct image, as they call it.

SD-14 is a third X3-based release from Sigma. The first one was SD-9, then came the SD-10 and now we have SD-14. It is not an ideal camera, for today's standards. But it has far more goodies than its predecessors. Personally I was considering the SD-10 several times, but all the time when I was realizing there was no built-in flash, I decided to wait for the new model. SD-14 does have a flash. And the latest generation 14-megapixel X3 sensor. And loads of other features. I think, being version 3, it may be close enough to the competition (feature-wise) to capture a good portion of the market. Not to mention its fundamentally superior technology - X3. With all it is, it just confirms "the law of version 3". It says the third version of anything is what really delivers. But will it be enough for Foveon to grow hundredfold? Probably not yet.

Foveon X3 pixel - stacking technology has one extremely important parameter. Its pixels are bigger. Being stacked instead of lying side by side, their area, relative to the sensor side, is big, much bigger than what we have with traditional sensors. What does that mean? Of course being bigger they capture more light, so potentially X3-based sensors are more sensitive, with less noise. But there is one even more important factor - lens resolution. What is the biggest image sensor market today? Cellphones of course. Are we happy with the cellphone image quality? No! Why? Not because we do not have 3-or-more megapixel camera phones. But because the resolution of lenses being used in camera phones is below what should be accepted. Driving the pixel count up and keeping the size, we are shrinking the pixels, and keeping the lens small and light we lose resolution. That is why the quality is still not there. Foveon has an ultimate advantage here. Bigger pixels. The lens resolution required by X3 sensors is far less than what is needed for traditional sensors. Foveon is readying specialized camera phone sensor. This is their holy grail, being inside Nokias and LGs and Samsungs and iPhones. So get ready. This company has an extreme upside potential , empowering mobile phones (Teleputers?) to finally replace yet another device - a digital camera.

CRM - Car Rights Management

This week the debates on DRMs continued. I really like the recent piece by Wired explaining by example what DRM brings to the table. Looks like we are not happy with the restrictions on the use of content we purchase. Once we buy a song or a book (in electronic form), we expect to "own it" rather than just "having a right to use it". Think about cars. You buy a car and you do not expect anybody restricting you what to do with it. When I think about cars recently, I come to the conclusion the idea of selling cars is still from the old ages of vinyl records and paperback books. There is a huge potential for the entire car industry, once it moves from the current "buy to own it" model to the modern DRM-like "buy to have a right to use it" model. And actually these days buying a car could actually resemble buying a license.

I think a standard licence for a car "personal edition" should cover driving one person within the city limits, not exceeding 55mph (90km/h), not more than five days a week. Then you would have a "business edition" extending the personal by allowing different people sit at the wheel. The "carrier edition" would even let you drive around the country. On the other hand there would be a "sport edition" to let you accelerate to 110mph (180km/h) or may be more. And for the most demanding the "ultimate edition" to give you the freedom you have today, but probably for twice the today's price. All this for one year only. On the 366th day the ignition simply would not start, unless you have extended your licence. Of course there would be a plethora of individual extensions. Even pay-per-incident multipacks (like speed up to 150mph five pack). Or an additional driver extension pack. I am sure this model will drive the entire stagnating automotive industry to the new highs, why only software companies should benefit from this model?

Then of course we would have the entire new branch of the industry (probably Microsoft + the leading car makers) releasing better and better systems designed to force us to "comply" with the license. Think of the number of GPS chips and telemetry transmitters alone sold just to control the compliance. Even the security chips (TPMs) would rise rom the PC motherboards and walk over to find their place in the car DRM systems (or CRMs). And eBay would be filled by offers to "mod" your car to let your wife drive your car without paying an extra licence (or a drunk-driven-home five pack). Just look how many new jobs we can create with this simple idea...

What really worries me, this all idea can really one day be implemented...

eMusic

DRM is dead. Finally somebody has admitted that. Actually it was Steve Jobs himself, in his open letter. What is it all about? Well it all started with the advent of writable CDs in 1990's. Before you could buy music only on CDs. And of course you could copy it to an analog cassette tape. While the music studios were not happy about that, the disadvantage was simple: your copy was an analog one, with much worse quality and it could not be used with much success as a master to make another copy, as the quality kept on degrading. Then we got CD burners allowing us to make exact digital copies of audio CDs (I use a CD burner myself to make copies of records for listening in my car). The music studios were upset by that fact, as they feared their earnings would drop as people will start burning and distributing music without paying the royalties. Well... at that time they probably did not see the MP3 and Internet revolution. Their problem at that time was nothing compared to what they face today, when potentially anybody can "share" their music collection with others over the wire. This is obviously illegal, but technically unstoppable, as an MP3 file is just a file, so you can make a copy and give that copy to somebody else. That is why various DRM technologies have been introduced.

DRM stands for Digital Rights Management. While the concept itself is quite broad, it has become a synonym of various technologies preventing us to copy music. It reaches out to other digital media, such as video, but due to the size of the files, video is not yet at the stage when it is effortlessly distributed across the Internet (it still takes some time to download a movie, while music can be downloaded within seconds). While many efforts have been made to make DRM work (ie prevent us to copy music files), they all have failed. Failed, because they did not prevent the bad guys from finding successful workarounds - music and movies are still available on various peer to peer networks. Failed, because all the protection systems have been cracked (recently even the latest high definition video systems - HD-DVD and the BlueRay). And failed, because they make the lives of the good guys a nightmare. As Bob Cringley points out - "Digital Rights Management is really just an ecosystem for selling our own stuff to us again and again.". So true. You have an iPod. You buy a song from the iTunes store. The your iPod dies and you want to try "the other side" and you buy Microsoft Zune. What about the songs purchased from iTunes? They are still there, but you cannot move them to your new player. Hey, wait a minute! Have I paid for being able to place the song on the iPod or have I paid for the rights to listen to that song? So should I buy again? Well... this is the way DRM systems work today. Not stopping the bad guys while hurting the good guys. And there ain't a solution on the horizon.

Personally I hate DRMs. I hate when somebody tries to restrict my freedom. There is this notion of fair use. When I buy music (and I do a lot), I assume I buy the rights to listen to it anytime, anywhere, on any device. If I buy it on a CD, I expect to be able to make a copy to use in my car. CDs are expensive, and they wear out and scratch, so that is one reason why I use copies. And I do not want to carry the CDs I like the most with me all the time, to listen at home, in the car, at work and so on. I rip the CD and put it on my iPod. And the same ripped content goes to my Slimserver. Do not worry, dear Studios. I will not be listening to all of them at once. I have just one pair of ears, and cannot listen to multiple songs at the same time. I do not trust systems that try to restrict my freedom. Even if they say they will let me make five copies or so, I always fear this is not always the truth, there is some fine print saying I cannot do this or that. So I religiously use only open formats and open systems. Clean JPEGs for photos and clean MP3s for music.

For a couple of weeks now I have been using the emusic.com service. While it has not the greatest selection of songs, it has the best licence for what you download. According to their FAQ: "eMusic is the only major digital music service to deliver music in the universally compatible MP3 format, the most popular and versatile digital file format. eMusic is the only service that allows you to burn an unlimited number of CDs. You can also transfer music to any computer as well as any portable music player or digital device that supports MP3s (including the market leading iPod).". Hey, finally sounds like freedom! The basic idea behind the eMusic is fair price. For around 10 EUR a month (approximately the price of a single CD) I have 40 downloads. About 4 times cheaper, and that is without going to the shop, ripping the CD and so on. Just click and listen. 2007 will probably be the last year of buying regular CDs. The switch is coming. The Internet is in, the DRMs are out and fair price services will finally rule the world. Of course the only thing I lack is the integration with Pandora. I would love to have an option on my Squeezebox: "download this track from eMusic to my local Slimserver". Wonder if they would team one day or will Pandora enable downloads option? Will see...

Slimserver

After ten months I am still very happy with the Pandora personalized music service. Most of the time I use the Squeezebox to stream Pandora radio at home. But treating the Pandora like radio does not stop me from listening to CDs. This is a funny story, as I do not play a CD more than once after I buy it. The first thing I do after unboxing a CD is ripping it to a harddrive. It may or may not be legal, I do not care. By all means it fits my sense of fair use. I buy the CD, but actually I do not want a CD, I want the music that is recorded on this CD. And I put the music on my harddrive for convenience. Sync to the iPod, play on a notebook and play on my home stereo. But if you like shuffling music like I do (this has a lot in common with shuffling moods...), and if you are as lazy as I am, you must admit taking a CD from a shelf, putting it on a tray is far too complicated. So this is the primary reason why I rip my CDs. Having them on a computer is having them all in one place and being able to select ANY song in a second.

But there is one gap. Between the harddrive and the speakers. You can theoretically connect your PC to the amplifier, but this has several drawbacks. First, PCs are noisy. Second, I do not actually have a PC, as I use a notebook. And I like sitting with in in an armchair and reading news and such. Carrying a cable from the notebook to the amplifier and speakers does not seem to be the best idea in the wireless world we live in. Of course there is stereo Bluetooth (A2DP). But for the same reason I bought the Squeezebox to free the Pandora from the arms of a PC, it is a great idea to use the same Squeezebox to play music stored on a local drive. Squeezeboxes can do this. They need an access to a software called Slimserver, running somewhere on the local network. So you need something to run the Slimserver on. Being written in Perl, Slimserver is one of the ultimately portable pieces of software I know of. I even managed to run it on a small NAS (Network Attached Storage) server called Slug. But as the name implies, the Slug was slow and thus annoying in practice. So recently I finally decided I need a full featured server at home. A machine that is up all the time, fast enough to at least run the Slimserver software and compact enough to be stored in some well hidden place. And of course I would not want to spend a fortune on it. Thanks to a friendly service called Overto (auctions aggregator, currently only in Polish), I found a second hand, lunchbox - style machine. Lunchbox means just a standard PC, but with built-in LCD screen and a handle to carry. It is an old Dolch PAC 65, Pentium II/400, 256 RAM, standard 3,5" harddrive and 5 PCI slots. $80 for the lot seemed like a good deal, the MAPS Windows XP licence was in fact worth more... (btw I should finally learn how to put Ubuntu or Fedora on these things...). After putting a WiFi card inside and installing all the software I took the server down to the basement and plugged into the mains socket. It is very convenient to have a server box with just one cable (power). No external screen, network is wireless, clean and elegant. A bit noisy fans, but in the basement... who cares...

Slimserver - the perfect bridge between the harddrive filled with music and an amplifier.