2004 International Consumer Electronics Show Coverage

Bye Bye VCR...

In a press briefing more befitting Wall Street than the gadget hounds, TiVo president Michael Ramsay pronounced the VCR as officially dead. He also unveiled a new way to "check out" movies from your TiVo onto your PC for editing. The technology requires that you attach a special TiVo security device (that looks like a USB version of the old dongles of yesteryear) to your PC and the demonstration showed how playback works with the dongle plugged in and how it goes blank when it's pulled out.

Amidst claims that it is critically important to keep the video secure for the consumer (something that wouldn't have occurred to me if I had been hit over the head like a lawsuit from the MPAA), TiVo demonstrated creating a recordable DVD with your secured data which was playable on any standard DVD player. Go figure! The dance between media companies and the technology providers they depend upon never ceases to amaze.

Along with this odd display of the future of TiVo they actually announced and demoed their HD-DVR250 product which will ship in February 2004. This dual satellite, dual ATSC digital satellite/digital recorder set top box that works with the DirecTV satellite TV service is actually a very impressive unit and COULD kill the VCR once and for all.

Not to be left out, DirectTV arch-rival Dish Networks is showing the long promised DishPVR 921 and is promising a March 2004 delivery date. This unit as well is quite impressive and offers nearly the same set of features as the competing TiVo unit, which is, of course, why TiVo filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Dish Networks parent company, Echostar, last week.

It all adds up to better TV for everyone regardless of which provider you choose. That is, of course, as long as you don't choose cable over satellite, because then you'll be stuck trying to hook up your neighbour's discarded VCR. If you had your heart set on one of the flat panels mentioned above, either DVR would be able to save and record the HD content you'd need to keep it happy, BUT unfortunately for now Australia will be left out of the fun since the DirectTiVo and the DishPVR921 are both US-only products.

Gizmo's, Gadgets and Oddities...

I've got to say that I've created an odd problem for myself. I'd like to extol the virtues of the wonderful new DSC-T1 camera that's just been released by Sony, but can't actually show a picture of it, since it's the camera I've been using for show coverage. Fortunately the folks at Let's go Digital have an excellent "first look" article. All I can add is that I like it too - so much I've bought one.

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