Joost In Time

Joost is this month's hot topic. And it will be for a while (or longer). Looks like the Skype guys have overtaken Google, Apple, Microsoft and a few others again. I have been using (or watching) Joost for a few days now and have to admit this is what I have been waiting for in terms of on-demand Internet television. The service is simple, just a couple of steps:

• Get invited (this is early beta, invitation only at the moment).
• Download and install the client software.
• Start the application, and you are in!

Joost feels like TV. It streams full screen video on demand, giving you the freedom to cruise the channels, pause, restart and - of course - search for things you are interested in. On top of that there are a few gooddies designed just to let you spend a whole day in an armchair. There is an RSS ticker, so your personalized feeds scroll in the background. And there is a Jabber / XMPP communicator built in, so you can log in using your Google Talk credentials and have an online chat or two while watching TV. The communicator also supports "inviting" friends to the show you are watching, so you can chat and comment on a movie or race or whatever is in your shared interests.

To be honest I have only two things on my Joost wishlist:

• Support for the Playstation 3 (or Nintendo Wii or Apple TV, I will stand another console...)
• Pandora - like rating system (thumbs up - I like it, thumbs down - I don't like it)

Joost is the harbinger of the new ways we will watch TV. That is why I see PC-less platforms like Apple TV or Sony PS3 in the very center of a living room. TV sets will be just TV sets - screens to display the image. But an intelligent, connected device like the PlayStation will run all the entertainment activities, from games through digital pictures to high definition movies and Internet TV.

On May 10th Joost closed a $45M financing round from five leading VCs, including Sequoia and CBS and Viacom. This constellation of partners guarantees Joost will have the right content and bright future. The Skype P2P experience guarantees they will thrive even with the current state of the Internet - for technical reference see the Joost P2P presentation by Calm MacCarthaigh. Well done, folks, keep pushing, I love this!

4G - do we really need it?

Last week I was traveling a little bit. On most (if not for all) business trips my faithful ThinkPad T41 laptop goes with me. I have entire office on this machine (after several upgrades I have 120MB hard drive and a new WiFi card). Having a schedule that was not too tight this time, I decided to measure real life performance of my Internet connections. Most of the time I was on a hotel or office wireless lan, but one particular day there was no WiFi available, so I had to use my Samsung SGH i600 as a modem. The results, based on speedtest.net are here on the right.
There is a clear pattern - most networks allowed me to download at around 1Mbps and upload with about a quarter of that speed (that is 256Kbps) with latency of 100ms. What surprised me a lot was the connection over my cell phone was not the slowest. In fact it was second fastest, scoring 1236Kbps download and 285Kbps upload with 150ms latency. And just to remind you, this is not a theoretical maximum speed, this was actually a real - life application - level performance. I have never had that high download speed over a cellphone before.

There is a technology called HSDPA or High Speed Downlink Packet Access, responsible by that level of speed. HSDPA has been adopted by many 3G mobile network operators. To achieve the demonstrated level of performance HSDPA employs several technologies (adaptive modulation, fast packet scheduling and fast retransmissions), most of them implemented at the Node B's or UMTS base stations. HSDPA has an impressive roadmap as well, with speeds reaching 40Mbps and more. While being such an advanced technology, it has one extremely important feature. All the chipsets supporting HSDPA are backwards compatible with GSM standards. Therefore any HSDPA phone or modem will work over GPRS or EDGE, when the UMTS/HSDPA is not available.

Having said that I wonder what is the reason companies like Sprint go for competing technology, namely the mobile WiMax. According to Sprint, the mobile WiMax network they are settinng up will allow for 3-4Mbps downloads and 512Kbps uploads. And they call it a 4G network. Where is the beef? To answer that question it is best to quote the recent HSPA GSMA document:

While confusion and hype abound concerning the real merits of WiMAX in the mobile environment, one key point receives less attention: true mobile broadband services are already here today.

Nothing more to add. Unless 4G gives me 10-fold improvement (that would mean some 20Mbps or more), I am not willing to trade my HSDPA/3G-UMTS/EDGE/GPRS phone for some 4G WiMax device.

PS3: Sheer Power

So it is here. Shining black, sitting by my TV. The new Sony Playstation 3. A game console or a supercomputer? According to Wikipedia, the processing power of PS3 is 2 Teraflops, on par with the latest 80-core prototype CPU by Intel. The potential processing power of the PS3 can also be anticipated by looking at its power supply, rated at 380 Watts.

I must say I am surprised with this gadget in many ways. A few years ago when I bought my old XBOX, I didn't have any need for something more powerful to just do the games. But there was one thing I underestimated a little bit - the high definition TVs, about to hit the market. Sony PS3 is all about high definition. It is the first console to have HDMI port built in and it really shines when connected to a true 1080p - capable TV (1080p means the screen resolution is 1920x1080, or 2 million pixels). But the most important thing about the PS3 is, this time Sony did practically everything right. Below is a list of features I like a lot in PS3:

• Built in HDMI (already mentioned). This means absolutely hassle free setup - just one thin cable and one plug from the console to the TV, carrying both audio and video, with automatic detection of TV capabilities, so the PS3 automatically configures itself).
• 1080p resolution. Practically the highest available today (be careful when buying a TV, as most are "only" 720p, but this does make a difference, as 1080p picture has twice as many pixels as 720p).
• Built in and silent power supply. This was the primary factor why I did not decide to go for an XBOX 360. XBOX has an external "brick" (and I do mean brick) power unit and is famous for the noise it generates. I hate cable mess and I hate noise. So much for the XBOX.
• Built in WiFi. I do not know how many of you have Ethernet ports by your TV, but Microsoft designers for some reason have not equipped the XBOX with WiFi. WiFi is the de facto standard at homes. While we may have Ethernet cables lying around our offices, we hate them at home. I think 90% of DSL-connected homes have WiFi and this is the target market for the new game consoles. As WiFi chip costs probably some 5$, the lack of it in XBOX is hard to understand.
• Standard connectivity ports. This is something like no Sony. There are four STANDARD USB ports at the front. There is a CompactFlash socket. There is a Secure Digital socket (both standard and mini SD)! There is of course a Memory Stick socket as well. But the presence of CF and SD made me look twice at the Sony logo... And these ports just work. Just plug in a CF or SD card from your camera for an absolutely jaw-dropping experience of browsing pictures on a 50-inch, 1080p screen. I would say the built - in photo browser (when matched to a big screen and high resolution) should be used as the primary marketing vehicle for the console. Many adults just do not understand their kid's games, but having seen the high definition photos served by the PS3 they should have less of a problem shelling out a few hundred dollars. The USB implementation is so standard, it works even with an iPOD...
  
• System - wide Bluetooth. Another brilliant move by Sony. Wireless controllers (BTW the controllers are charged over standard mini-USB cables!) are great, showing absolutely no lag, and I was even able to pair a standard Microsoft Bluetooth Mouse with PS3 for improved navigation (especially when browsing the Internet). Of course you can pair other devices, like keyboard etc.
  
• Built-in Blue-Ray drive for high definition movies. PS3 supposedly is the best Blue-Ray player on the market now and for the price equal to other Blue-Ray players you get all the "console" stuff included. Again trying to compare that with XBOX 360, leaves Microsoft in the dust, as 360 requires an add-on HD-DVD drive (another box, another cable...) to play HD movies.
  
  

Taking all the above into account, I must say it has been a long time (if ever?) that I had such a well designed device in my hands. Hardware - wise, there is probably not much more I could wish for. May be UWB for wireless USB, but this has not been yet fully standardized across consumer devices.

So is there a weakness? Definitely not in the hardware. But the software lags far, far behind. The number of games is fairly limited, and when selecting them, be careful. I love racing games and my first one has been the Ridge Racer. It has wonderful smooth graphics, even at the highest resolution. But the second one - the MotorStorm is only 720p and feels slower, probably the screen refresh rate is a bit below 25fps. Spiderman 3 has been criticized all over for the sluggish performance, so when shopping for a game, read the reviews first. The online experience is far behind Microsoft's now, but we know Sony is working on some interesting projects like the Home.

The final and probably most important (in the long run) thing worth mentioning is the open software platform. Again "like no Sony"... We have both huge community of enthusiatst and the big ones like IBM (see "An introduction to Linux on the Playstation 3") standing behind.

The PLAYSTATION 3 is unusual for a gaming console for two reasons. First, it is incredibly more open than any previous console. While most consoles do everything possible to prevent unauthorized games from being playable on their system, the PS3 goes in the other direction, even providing direct support for installing and booting foreign operating systems.

A few weeks ago I posted on the Apple TV, pointing to the need on an open TV platform. With PS3 it just looks like we have already found one... Now it is time for the software developers to prove the real power of PS3 will be in its software.

RIAA dead cat bounces

Yesterday Pawel wrote a good post inspired by the recent moves by the labels. We are both fans of Pandora. Or I should say we used to be... As starting May 4th, 2007, Pandora restricted access to its site to allow only US-based IP addresses. The move is extremely disappointing for me, as I used to listen to the Pandora personalized music stations for over a year. And now when I go to www.pandora.com, all I get is this: www.pandora.com/restricted. Of course this is not the original idea of Tim Westergren and his team. He has a gun pointed to his head. It really looks like the RIAA and the Labels still believe in their region codes and old economy. Hey, wake up, we have 2007 already and have not you heard about things like the Internet and global economy?

These guys are so scared, they simply do not understand the impact of services like Pandora. Pandora, thanks to its unique music genome attributing system, introduces its listeners to a galaxy of unknown bands and performers. It does this even better than classic radio stations, as being personalized, the new proposed artists fit the preferences of the listeners. So what happens next is they go and buy new CDs. Myself I bought over 100$ worth of music last year, that I would never have bought without hearing the stuff on Pandora. It is unbelievable how such and unimaginative, uncreative approach is taken by a supposedly creative industry... It just looks like they stopped thinking, may be they are simply so scared they can no longer think? You bet they are scared. The revenues coming from record sales are dropping fast. But to recover they have to think forward. Accept the new world and figure out the right business model. You cannot stop the Internet. They learned that lesson hard (again!) last week when trying to hide the news about the AACS crack.

The whole AACS is just another idea from the past. A pure example of security by obscurity, something that will never work. The fundamental flaw in every AACS-like copy protection system lies in the fact that the media (discs) must come with the keys used to decrypt it somewhere on the device or on the media itself. The keys may be hidden here and there, but ultimately people will find them. And due to the nature of the Internet, the world will get the message within seconds, no matter how hard they try. So where should they go?

Professor Charles Nesson of Harvard Law School has a good message, they should listen to. "We need not condone infringement to conclude that 19th- and 20th-century copyright law is poorly suited to promote 21st-century knowledge. The old copyright-business models are inefficient ways to give artists incentives in the new digital environment." - he writes, pointing to the fresh Harvard spinoff - the Noank Media and its motto of "limitless legal content flow". While we cannot be sure Noank will prevail with its concept, it is definitely a forward - thinking example. The attitude and strategy RIAA and the likes should adopt. Otherwise they have just a few more dead bounces left before they will be dead for good.