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Actually, mini cds can hold 185mb each

Take a look at the Philips Expanium. Looks pretty cool and should be pretty cheap. I don't really need 5gb of mp3s with me all the time. A couple of minicds should be more than plenty for me.

Philips Electronics Consumer Feedback

Why not start sending emails and letters to companies which work within the home CD recording market and express to them our concern with this development? Perhaps if enough of these companies begin to realize they are wasting their development budget and advertising budget on marketing technologies to allow listeners to control how they listen to their music, they might begin to speak up and fight this CD protection as well.

Philips has started to heavily advertise on TV their newest CDR home audio recording device. I want to know what thier reaction is to this development if all of a sudden their product no longer works as advertised. This movement within the recording industry pretty much makes their product useless.

Just bought a set of those today. Not earth-shattering, a simple subwoofer and 4 satellites, analog input only, but sound quality is excellent.

Unless you are a real audiophile, this might just be a set worth looking into. It cost me only HFL 399,- (somewhere between $175,- and $200,-), and it is definitely worth it. Here is the link in case you're curious: A.3500 Speaker Set. They also have more upmarket stuff using the same technology.

Hope this helps,

why not use a NON-proprietary standard instead of MP3 or WMA???? Why does everything have to be so controlled and so restrictive? They've obviously got a decent idea here (putting compressed digital copies of the CDDA tracks on the same disc as the music), but they've got their heads up their asses in the implementation.

It's not like CD's/CD players are non-proprietary either [see here], so complaining about the compression technology being proprietary seems a little bit off.

The difference here of course is that no matter what happens CD players and CDs aren't going to become free (because they have physical material costs), so no one notices that they're paying licensing fees. Of course, with the open source crowd they expect everything software to be free, even if a lot of research went into it to make it exist (and someone actually, *gasp*, intends to make some money off of that research).

My time spent with Philips Flat Displays in Philips Components allowed me time to see this and many other LCD-ish technologies. If you look here at the papers about Motion Compensation, that is the stuff I saw, and in fact, our group was working on the drive electronics to make it work. David Parker, one of the authors on a couple of those papers, is a very cool guy, as were all of the guys at PRL in Redhill, England.

Unfortunately, the LCD panel business slipped into commodity mode too quickly, where 15-inch panels and the displays containing them had to be super-cheap, and that was where Philips wanted to be, so we tabled the project. The simulations, though, showed a drastic difference is clarity and response time, resulting in sharp images suitable for television or video gaming.

As an aside, someone asked about applying voltage to get black. This works best with active matrix displays, while passives use the normally-black approach (apply voltage to get white). If you remember your old laptop displays from back then, dark vertical lines in dialog boxes and the like created vertical lines that ran the height of the screen thanks to voltage leaking to all of the dots in a column, which is not a big problem for actives.

There is a lot of cool stuff in the future of displays. LCD tech of today sorta sucks/ Look for some very cool stuff in multidomain displays and OLED/PolyLED displays.

Well, you point to my own post and I don't consider the question answered.

The materials I found on Phillips site don't explicity state that a requirement of licensing their technology is that your products must conform to the standard in any way.

The file I found describes what the general terms of the licensing agreement are (if you pay $ you are allow to do x).

I'm sure the actual agreement contains much more precise language about the licensee's rights, responsibilities and obligations. _That's_ what I think would definitively answer this question.

According to this, the "Compact Disc Digital Audio" logo can only be used "on discs complying with the CD-DA specification: IEC 60908 and/or the Philips-Sony Compact Disc Digital Audio System Description) also known as the RED Book)."

Head on over to the Philips CD Logo page and download the zip file provided there. Inside is a PDF which gives the official rules for using the Compact Disc logo. The relevant text is on page 8:

This logo may only be used on discs complying with the CD-DA specification: IEC 60908 and/or the Philips-Sony Compact Disc Digital Audio System Description (also known as the RED Book).

Unfortunately you have to pay Philips to get the actual Red Book specification, but if this protection system works by putting "bad" data in the subchannels of the disc, I'd say it's reasonable to assume that this violates the standard. So if you see the "Compact Disc Digital Audio" logo anywhere on the disc or its cover, you can complain to your record store either that the advertising is misleading, or that the disc claims to be compliant but isn't so it must be defective. :-)

This is what I was thinking, having that (the CD-Digital Audio) symbol means it can be played on devices that conform to the stardards set out by Phillips and Sony in this case.

Then again maybe they were able to get this working with-in the standards for CD-Audio and Mixed mode CDs.

But if not I would say they either have to drop the symbol on the disks or make a new standard (or just extend the current)

-Torawk

Philips

Just incase anyone is interested, the DVD+RW specs are here.

Also, from the little I have read on zdnet it appears that DVD+RW is promising, being usable for video, data, etc. although not officially sanctioned by the DVD Forum (but with backers like HP, Phillips, Ricoh, Sony, Thomson MM, Verbatim, and Yamaha who needs the damn DVD Forum ;).

>> DiVX Legal: No

> Based on? How is a format illegal?

With all this discussion about copyrights, we often miss patents. A format can be illegal because it uses patented methods or processes. MPEG-4 (the core technology of the DivX ;-) family of video codecs) uses numerous patents, such as MPEG audio layer 3 (Fraunhofer). License royalties ($4 per hardware or software encoder or decoder for even MPEG-2 and likely more for MPEG-4) are generally out of reach for developers of free software or free(beer) proprietary software.

Philips is offering a free MPEG-4 player.

Get with the program, almost all decent CD players have skip protection. Philips says this one has 100 seconds of skip protection on the specs page.

I am writing in regard to your upcoming eXpanium 8cm MP3-CD player. I have already signed up for your beta test, and am quite interested in this product.

I would strongly consider buying it, but the killer feature for me would be Ogg Vorbis support. Ogg Vorbis is patent-free, and so I tend to support it on philosophical grounds; in addition, I have found in my own testing that it provides much higher quality at a much lower bitrate than MP3. This would allow me to store much more music on a CD.

I currently own a Diamond Rio 500 and am pleased with it, but use it less and less due to more and more of my music collection being incompatible with it (whenever I buy a CD, I rip it and encode it as 160kbps Ogg Vorbis). Additionally, I like the idea of an CD-based player because I would be able to keep music collections around permanently without having to reflash the memory all the time, but until now the size of such devices put me off.

Thanks for your time and attention.

That's Philips with one L -- the two-L version sells petroleum products. The Company is quite touchy on the subject.

The only program I ever found to use your laptop IRDa port as a remote was RemoconCon, which I never got to work on my laptop. Also the other problem I've read is that the IRDa LEDs are tuned to a different IR frequency than remote LEDs so an IRDa port has a very poor working distance of only a couple feet. You'd have to stand in front of the tv holding your laptop to use this. Kinda defeats the point! Another program to check out is OmniRemote for the Palm. While the Palm has the same IRDa/distance issues as a laptop, PacificNeoTek sells an attachment that "boosts" the signal and gives it decent coverage. It turns your Palm into a Pronto!

I've become intrigued by all this CD corruption and decided to get a better look at it myself. So I've been looking for Philip's Red Book standard for CD-DA and the best link i got was this Philips site. To download the documentation you need to be a licensed company. Anyone has ideas for where to look?

> There is no point in creating a standard (e.g. ECMA standard) if that standard can only be implemented by (or with the consent of) one corporation.

If I'm not mistaken, following that logic, ECMA's specs for CD-ROM (Yellow Book[?]) are pointless becaues the CD Book Standards can't be implemented without the consent of Philips / Sony ...

In any event, no matter how you feel about Vorbis, please let Philips know that you have absolutely no wma files nor any intention of using that format in the future!

If this article uses the first definition, it think you should have a look at the Philips homepage. There's a piece about their PolyLED (Polymer Light Emitting Diodes) displays.

If this article uses the first definition, it think you should have a look at the Philips homepage. There's a piece about their PolyLED (Polymer Light Emitting Diodes) displays.

Some company did this a while back, it was on slashdot actually.

Link The Philips 3D LCD has a much wider sweet spot, several people can see the effect at once.

I'd actually much prefer the Internet Radio being produced by Philips. Check it out at http://www.internet-audio.philips.com/main/.

Its got the iM Networks turning service, as well as all the regular features of a boombox (CD Player, regular radio, tape player, etc). Unfortunatetly the beta period is over, but its something to look forward to. I played around with a demo model and it was leaps and bounds better than the kerbango.

- Jeff

I have been following this for a year or so now so this is basically what I've discovered: the answer is that little has happened in terms of a marketable product with wireless IEEE 1394. Several companies besides NEC including Zayante and Philips Semiconductor have been researching this recently. In addition, the 1394 Trade Association (over 100 powerful companies like Intel, TI, NEC, Phillips) has announced the formation of a group to promote wireless interconnectivity between the IEEE1394 wired domains and wireless domains for computer and consumer electronics equipment. I think it is only a matter of time before some products appear. A quick search of Firewire World reveals the following up-to-date articles on wireless IEEE 1394:

• FireWireWorld - Zayante's Wireless 1394 Demo at IDF
• FireWireWorld - 1394 Trade Association Forms Wireless Working Group

Philips Research Labs in Eindhoven, the Netherlands (aka "Natlab") is working on it for quite some time now. And it's looking quite promicing. They have a working prototypes now. But it lags on allmost every point: Computational speed, minituralization, and (for the moment) cost. The problem is getting it to market. It will NEVER compete with silicon on the computational speed bit (the conductance of plastic just isn't high enough) so they are aiming on the cost bit(cheaper than 0.05 euro a pice) which is theoretically possible. Result: Disposable computer chips... Mmm. I'll have a side order of PolyLED screens they're making.

Philips Research Labs in Eindhoven, the Netherlands (aka "Natlab") is working on it for quite some time now. And it's looking quite promicing. They have a working prototypes now. But it lags on allmost every point: Computational speed, minituralization, and (for the moment) cost. The problem is getting it to market. It will NEVER compete with silicon on the computational speed bit (the conductance of plastic just isn't high enough) so they are aiming on the cost bit(cheaper than 0.05 euro a pice) which is theoretically possible. Result: Disposable computer chips... Mmm. I'll have a side order of PolyLED screens they're making.

Philips Research Labs in Eindhoven, the Netherlands (aka "Natlab") is working on it for quite some time now. And it's looking quite promicing. They have a working prototypes now. But it lags on allmost every point: Computational speed, minituralization, and (for the moment) cost. The problem is getting it to market. It will NEVER compete with silicon on the computational speed bit (the conductance of plastic just isn't high enough) so they are aiming on the cost bit(cheaper than 0.05 euro a pice) which is theoretically possible. Result: Disposable computer chips... Mmm. I'll have a side order of PolyLED screens they're making.

Philips Research Labs in Eindhoven, the Netherlands (aka "Natlab") is working on it for quite some time now. And it's looking quite promicing. They have a working prototypes now. But it lags on allmost every point: Computational speed, minituralization, and (for the moment) cost. The problem is getting it to market. It will NEVER compete with silicon on the computational speed bit (the conductance of plastic just isn't high enough) so they are aiming on the cost bit(cheaper than 0.05 euro a pice) which is theoretically possible. Result: Disposable computer chips... Mmm. I'll have a side order of PolyLED screens they're making.

I'm afraid I don't know any of the details, but I think you might have much more success (that is, "do what you're looking for") by recording the data as Super Video CD (which I think is also known as Chaoji VCD) ... a company called Amoisonic makes a SuperVCD recorder for about $1200 / $1300 ... And I think you can encode them on your PC legally. Potentially useful links:

http://www.licensing.philips.com/partner/data/sl00 811.pdf
http://www.uwasa.fi/~f76998/video/svcd/overview/
http://www.amoisonic.com/vdr/VDR2000.html
http://www.twocom.net/dvdvcdmp3/vdr2000.html

The Philips eXpanium seems to do the same thing as this guy, for $100 more. Anyone know of any other differences?

Trinitron is old technology, indeed with those annoying lines. Nowadays there are lots of other spendid tubes that have aperture grille, and that look at least as good as Trinitron (but without the lines).

Philips is the biggest maker of tubes in the world (including television tubes), and many of them are excellent. An example is the 109P20 monitor.

Trinitrons aren't bad, (though Sony itself sucks because of bad customer service) but the're certainly not the only, or even the best choice if you want an excellent monitor.

They even cite CAD/CAM uses. Naw, all they got is a mirror trick. They're just Edmunds Scientific for the infobaun.

For Darwin's sake, they have a long long long way to go before they have a product that even does anything interesting, and usefulness...well that's dubious. They'll need a mess of LCD projectors, and even then the resolution of their object, which is spread over a surface area, will be questionalble.

I'm afraid 3d TV and a Britney Spears you can almost touch is a little further off. The best canidate I've seen for that was from a EE research professor from Berkley (IIRC). She used LTZ glasses and pairs of lasers to get a "pixel" to flouresce. I really should have written something down, but it was a seminar, you don't have to take notes in those things. I anycase she had a special hunk of glass, shine 2 lasers, where they cross: a glowing monochromatic dot. She made a circle in a chunk the size of a sugar cube.

But this is nice too.

Phi lips 3d LCD (older but interesting)

Science ain't for wussies.

This

A few of these

AMD 760 MP

Two of these

A fridge with a padlock

Oh yeah, and huge pectoral muscles!

Unless you count the way I drive in my Highway 17 commute, in which case anthracite is just fine.

--

The latest line of webcams from Philips contains the ToUCam Pro. This puppy can do 60 fps, but in order to do that and a game at the same time, you're going to need some sweet processing power...but it definitely should prevent lag.

Sorry 'bout that link. Dynamic site, so this is the best I can do...

i just don't get it. what exactly is so unusual outrageous, cool about this?

Go read the books Neuromancer by william Gibson ISBN 0-586-06645-4 and Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson ISBN 0-14-023292-3. It's cool because (respected, quality) science fiction is turning into fact, albeit it isn't quite there yet. (I'm still downloading 3Dsia ...)

displays are still two dimensional

Displays are mostly 2D, but affordable 3D displays are available.

Finally, it's not too bad a user interface metaphor. Many people can happily run around huge virtual worlds (Doom Quake), so squirrelling away data in rooms, picking up and dropping tools might work well when we're knee deep in data in a decade or so.

I'm with Arthur C Clarke (Songs of Distant Earth) - keyboards will be with us for a thousand years - as will the command line. We'll just walk up to 1 zillion polygon models of teletypes and dumb ttys and type away on them.

Does anyone make a Plasma, rather than LCD display for computers?

Philips does, but you'll need a big wallet and a pretty big desk as well. Check here and go to Products-Monitors-420P10

Sorry, can't link directly as it is a dynamic site.

Troll eBay looking for either an SGI 1600SW or a Radius Artica ($1500-$1900) - both are the same device: 1600x1024 resolution, wide screen, awesome image quality, uber geek. Only two cards that I know of drive it directly; the now defunct Number Nine Revolution IV or the current 3Dlabs Oxygen VX1-1600. Looks like Xi Graphics have decent X support for both. Otherwise you can get the SGI multi-link adapter ($495) that will take analog DB-15 or DVP/DVI digital inputs and drive it that way. Though, whatever you do, get 100% digital from video card to display. DVI is the current standard in the PeeCee world with support from Matrox, nVidia, ATI on the video card side and more flat panels are coming out that have a DVI-D connector (i.e. Philips 150P) - see Tom's Hardware for a good write up.

I got one and I love it.

If you have anything beyond a trivial A/V setup. this is for you!

I couldn't help but notice the display was a single color.

That bothered me, too, but when I clicked on the link to download a high-rez version of the picture, I noticed another picture available whose caption described a technique for achieving color displays.

The possibilities of a flexible display are intriguing: Imagine a large-form-factor display, say 4' by 3', that you could unroll like a windowshade or a portable film projection screen. And if this stuff is orders of magnitude cheaper than LCD, maybe I'll be able to have a really huge desktop (1.6 m x 1.2 m) that's really my desktop! :o)

• First A 64 x 64-pixel Polymer-Dispersed Liquid-Crystal Display (PDLCD) used to demonstrate the operation of a polymer-based active-matrix thin-film transistor (TFT) driver in two complementary states. The display has a size of 3.5 by 3.5 cm2.
• Second Same.
• T hird Semiconducting polymers sandwiched between two electrodes can be used to make large areas that generate light of any colour. The production process (spincoating) is simple, safe and inexpensive. In the photograph are shown the different polymer materials, and their solutions (top), a glass plate with the polymer thin film after the spin coating process (bottom) and three operating displays of two different colours (in the middle)
• Fourth Example of a display based on polymer LEDs
• Fifth Life time test of polymer light-emitting displays and backlights.
• Sixth Flexible 3-inch polyimide foil with a variety of components and electronic test circuits. The circuits still operate when the foil is sharply bent
• Seventh Complete radio-frequency identification transponder integrated on an antitheft sticker.

• First A 64 x 64-pixel Polymer-Dispersed Liquid-Crystal Display (PDLCD) used to demonstrate the operation of a polymer-based active-matrix thin-film transistor (TFT) driver in two complementary states. The display has a size of 3.5 by 3.5 cm2.
• Second Same.
• T hird Semiconducting polymers sandwiched between two electrodes can be used to make large areas that generate light of any colour. The production process (spincoating) is simple, safe and inexpensive. In the photograph are shown the different polymer materials, and their solutions (top), a glass plate with the polymer thin film after the spin coating process (bottom) and three operating displays of two different colours (in the middle)
• Fourth Example of a display based on polymer LEDs
• Fifth Life time test of polymer light-emitting displays and backlights.
• Sixth Flexible 3-inch polyimide foil with a variety of components and electronic test circuits. The circuits still operate when the foil is sharply bent
• Seventh Complete radio-frequency identification transponder integrated on an antitheft sticker.

• First A 64 x 64-pixel Polymer-Dispersed Liquid-Crystal Display (PDLCD) used to demonstrate the operation of a polymer-based active-matrix thin-film transistor (TFT) driver in two complementary states. The display has a size of 3.5 by 3.5 cm2.
• Second Same.
• T hird Semiconducting polymers sandwiched between two electrodes can be used to make large areas that generate light of any colour. The production process (spincoating) is simple, safe and inexpensive. In the photograph are shown the different polymer materials, and their solutions (top), a glass plate with the polymer thin film after the spin coating process (bottom) and three operating displays of two different colours (in the middle)
• Fourth Example of a display based on polymer LEDs
• Fifth Life time test of polymer light-emitting displays and backlights.
• Sixth Flexible 3-inch polyimide foil with a variety of components and electronic test circuits. The circuits still operate when the foil is sharply bent
• Seventh Complete radio-frequency identification transponder integrated on an antitheft sticker.

• First A 64 x 64-pixel Polymer-Dispersed Liquid-Crystal Display (PDLCD) used to demonstrate the operation of a polymer-based active-matrix thin-film transistor (TFT) driver in two complementary states. The display has a size of 3.5 by 3.5 cm2.
• Second Same.
• T hird Semiconducting polymers sandwiched between two electrodes can be used to make large areas that generate light of any colour. The production process (spincoating) is simple, safe and inexpensive. In the photograph are shown the different polymer materials, and their solutions (top), a glass plate with the polymer thin film after the spin coating process (bottom) and three operating displays of two different colours (in the middle)
• Fourth Example of a display based on polymer LEDs
• Fifth Life time test of polymer light-emitting displays and backlights.
• Sixth Flexible 3-inch polyimide foil with a variety of components and electronic test circuits. The circuits still operate when the foil is sharply bent
• Seventh Complete radio-frequency identification transponder integrated on an antitheft sticker.

• First A 64 x 64-pixel Polymer-Dispersed Liquid-Crystal Display (PDLCD) used to demonstrate the operation of a polymer-based active-matrix thin-film transistor (TFT) driver in two complementary states. The display has a size of 3.5 by 3.5 cm2.
• Second Same.
• T hird Semiconducting polymers sandwiched between two electrodes can be used to make large areas that generate light of any colour. The production process (spincoating) is simple, safe and inexpensive. In the photograph are shown the different polymer materials, and their solutions (top), a glass plate with the polymer thin film after the spin coating process (bottom) and three operating displays of two different colours (in the middle)
• Fourth Example of a display based on polymer LEDs
• Fifth Life time test of polymer light-emitting displays and backlights.
• Sixth Flexible 3-inch polyimide foil with a variety of components and electronic test circuits. The circuits still operate when the foil is sharply bent
• Seventh Complete radio-frequency identification transponder integrated on an antitheft sticker.

• First A 64 x 64-pixel Polymer-Dispersed Liquid-Crystal Display (PDLCD) used to demonstrate the operation of a polymer-based active-matrix thin-film transistor (TFT) driver in two complementary states. The display has a size of 3.5 by 3.5 cm2.
• Second Same.
• T hird Semiconducting polymers sandwiched between two electrodes can be used to make large areas that generate light of any colour. The production process (spincoating) is simple, safe and inexpensive. In the photograph are shown the different polymer materials, and their solutions (top), a glass plate with the polymer thin film after the spin coating process (bottom) and three operating displays of two different colours (in the middle)
• Fourth Example of a display based on polymer LEDs
• Fifth Life time test of polymer light-emitting displays and backlights.
• Sixth Flexible 3-inch polyimide foil with a variety of components and electronic test circuits. The circuits still operate when the foil is sharply bent
• Seventh Complete radio-frequency identification transponder integrated on an antitheft sticker.

• First A 64 x 64-pixel Polymer-Dispersed Liquid-Crystal Display (PDLCD) used to demonstrate the operation of a polymer-based active-matrix thin-film transistor (TFT) driver in two complementary states. The display has a size of 3.5 by 3.5 cm2.
• Second Same.
• T hird Semiconducting polymers sandwiched between two electrodes can be used to make large areas that generate light of any colour. The production process (spincoating) is simple, safe and inexpensive. In the photograph are shown the different polymer materials, and their solutions (top), a glass plate with the polymer thin film after the spin coating process (bottom) and three operating displays of two different colours (in the middle)
• Fourth Example of a display based on polymer LEDs
• Fifth Life time test of polymer light-emitting displays and backlights.
• Sixth Flexible 3-inch polyimide foil with a variety of components and electronic test circuits. The circuits still operate when the foil is sharply bent
• Seventh Complete radio-frequency identification transponder integrated on an antitheft sticker.

Prepare to witness the most concerted and massive engineering effort -- both social and technical -- ever undertaken by mankind: The digital equivalent of damming the ocean.

I wrote about this on Slashdot almost a year ago, in the vague hope it might become a featured article: The music and movie industies are working very hard to prevent you from using your lawfully-obtained material in any way they don't want. To that end, they have formed the Copy Protection Technical Working Group (CPTWG), which is working hand-in-hand with a ton of high-tech companies to bring pervasive copy protection measures to your PC.

I saved my original screed on the subject, and it's reproduced below, with appropriate updates. Bottom Line: Do not let them sneak this garbage past you or your friends. If you find that a product contains copy protection, don't buy it, and encourage others to do likewise.

____________________

Recent stories on Slashdot have told of the ongoing "tennis match" between digital content providers versus consumers and technically skilled people. The recent cracking of DVD's Content Scrambling System (CSS) lent ammunition to the opinion held by computing professionals and users that copy protection systems are doomed to fail. The effort has been likened to building a dam against the ocean; a foolish and useless exercise. In Slashdot discussion fora, the point has often been raised, "If you can perceive it, you can copy it. What are they going to do, encrypt the bits all the way to the speaker/electron gun?" If the Copy Protection Technical Working Group gets its way, that is precisely what's going to happen.

I received a piece of email spam today, which actually turned out to be useful (probably the only time that's ever happened anywhere). It directed me to a flat panel display industry group. Among others, one of the links pointed to the California Display Network, which had a link pointing to technical info on flat panel technology. Since I currently earn my living writing graphics card and display drivers, I clicked through to see what I could learn.

I found an entry for an overview of digital visual interfaces, provided by Silicon Image. As I reviewed the headings of the slides, one entry stopped me cold: Conten t Protection Status. Content protection? In a flat panel?? Yup: "Implementation of DVI content protection is suitable for PCs and monitors." [emphasis mine]

Thus began an evening of link clicking and Google searches to find out what this off-handed remark could mean. The slide made mention of the 'CPTWG'. This is the Copy Protection Technical Working Group, a consortium of content providers (movie companies), consumer electronics manufacturers, and players in the IT industry. This is the same group that developed CSS for DVD players.

One paragraph from the above page is particularly disturbing:

CPTWG has focused until now only on "casual piracy [sic]", characterized as what a grandmother can do in her home with her DVD. Piracy [sic] requiring even the level of expertise (and equipment) of her grandson, who might be an EE student, has been excluded from consideration. There is a growing awareness that a broader content protection effort may be necessary.

The most recent meeting of the CPTWG was yesterday, 8 December, 1999. Their meeting announcements may be found here. It costs $100 to attend. According to the site, their last meeting was on 11 April 2000. It's not clear if additional meetings have been held at regular intervals.

The attendance roster from the April meeting (RTF file) lists a very interesting, and possibly worrying, mix of organizations. A partial list of representatives included:

• MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America),
• AFMA (American Film Marketing Association),
• Sony Pictures Entertainment,
• Universal Studios,
• Warner Bros.,
• Disney,
• Paramount,
• CEMA (Consumer Electronics Manufacturers Association),
• MEI (parent company to Panasonic), makers of consumer electronics,
• Pioneer, makers of consumer electronics,
• JVC, makers of consumer electronics,
• Philips, makers of consumer electronics and VLSI components (including video encoders),
• Sony, makers of consumer electronics, computers, and displays,
• Toshiba, makers of consumer electronics, computers, flat panels, disk drives, digital cameras, copiers, and laser printers,
• NEC, makers of computers, displays, printers, and telecomm equipment,
• Hewlett Packard, makers of computers, printers, and testing/measuring equipment (oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, etc.),
• Quantum, makers of disk drives,
• IBM, makers of computers, disk drives, and bunches of other stuff,
• Compaq, makers of computers,
• Apple Computer, makers of computers,
• ATI Technologies, makers of PC graphics cards,
• Dolby Labs, creators and licensors of audio enhancement technologies,
• Intel, makers of microprocessors, motherboard controllers, and graphics and peripheral chips,
• Microsoft, software market monopolists,
• Dow Chemical (I have no idea why they're here),
• DVD-CCA, licensors of CSS, and currently in court trying to prevent the spread of DeCSS,
• A number of law firms.

If you download the roster and read closely, you'll see every major piece of your computer represented. There is no doubt that at least one part of your computer -- your CPU, your RAM, your disk drive, your graphics card, your monitor -- is manufactured by one of these companies.

If you look further still, you'll see there are no consumer advocacy groups listed.

What are they all working toward? Quite simply, to prevent you from using your lawfully obtained digital material in any way they don't want.

Here's one example of how they'll do it: If you've visited Fry's or CompUSA recently, you'll notice that full-size flat panel displays are starting to appear. Currently, most of these displays are based on the old VGA analog signals, which are converted into the digital signals needed by the panels. The Digital Display Working Group is working on a new connector and signalling standard called Digital Visual Interface (DVI) that will allow computer displays to go all-digital. You won't need a DAC on the video card; the digital signals will be fed straight through to the display. Image fidelity will be much higher, since there won't be any intervening DAC/ADC conversions. Version 1.0 of the standard has been published and is available for download (PDF format). The DVI spec currently does not stipulate copy protection measures. However, plans are in the works to incorporate it.

Intel is one of the primary contributors to this effort. On Intel's developer site, they have some papers on copy protection for IEEE 1394 (Firewire) digital streams. In two separate articles, 1394-based Digital Content Protection: an Intel Proposal, and Content Protection for IEEE 1394 Serial Buses (the latter being a Powerpoint presentation masquerading as a PDF file), Intel outlines its proposal for protecting digital content over Firewire. By using cryptographic authentication techniques, a device offering digital content will "handshake" with other devices on the bus to assure that digital data is only received by, "compliant devices." In a revised overview of the proposal, IDF Talk: Content Protection for the IEEE 1394 Bus, Intel offers concrete implementation details, including:

• DSS (Digital Signature Standard)
• Diffie-Hellman key exchange for device authentication,
• Blowfish cipher for content encryption, with a keylength of 32-128 bits,
• Digital watermarking techniques to declare "rights" (right to playback, right to copy, etc.) to the receiving device.

The full proposal (currently version 0.91), with lots of technical detail, is mirrored on CPTWG's site (the links to Intel's site don't work).

Intel's proposal also recommends that the copy protection system be field-upgradeable to thwart ongoing attacks, and that it should be possible to revoke (read: disable) a device determined to be "compromised." (The tone of the proposals is also interesting. It's previously been thought that, because of USB, Intel is hostile to IEEE 1394. Yet these proposals suggest that Intel's quite enthusiastic about 1394... Once copy protection is incorporated.)

Intel's proposal mentions only IEEE 1394. However, it also mentions that there's nothing preventing the technique being applied generally to any bi-directional link. So for all occurrences of '1394', substitute 'DVI', and you've got an idea of what to look forward to in your new digital monitor. And your new DVD player. And your new HDTV set. And your new USB speakers.

Intel goes even further in their paper, A Framework for DVD-Audio Content Protection. In it, the author suggests that DVD-Audio recorders permanently remember the IRSC (International Standard Recording Code) of every song the device is asked to copy, so that it may only be copied once, period. They go on to suggest that the recorder could have a modem built-in to authorize (read: purchase) the ability to make additional copies.

In short, through this industry consortium, Hollywood proposes to exert control over every link in the digital chain, from the digital camera, to the disk drive, to the CPU, to the graphics card, to your display. They will decide what rights you have. Even if a court decides Fair Use includes multiple copies for personal use (such as assembling a video montage), it won't matter. Your computer will still refuse to make the copies (and probably fink on you, as well).

This coordinated effort is ostensibly to combat unsanctioned copying (which the industry chronically refers to incorrectly as 'theft' and 'piracy'). However, no one has ever been able to provably quantify the value of unrealized sales due to such copying. All dollar estimates that have been published are just that: estimates, based on idealized extrapolations of what-if scenarios. Moreover, although the industry claims to "lose" billions every year, they continue to post record profits. Finally, despite the proliferation of CDR drives and the Internet, most unrealized sales are the result of organized mass counterfeiting rings, not casual copying. None of the proposed methods I've seen appear to thwart mass counterfeiting at all. So clearly there's some other reason for all this.

The thing that puzzles me most is why the computer and consumer electronics industries haven't told Hollywood to take a hike. Intel's copy protection proposals state, in bold letters, "No content protection = No Hollywood content." This belief is taken as axiomatic by all the players, and appears to be the driving force behind the entire effort. This belief is also false.

Audio on CDs are recorded as plaintext, and the music industry continues to earn rapacious profits. Even the with the advent of CDRs, no music industry executive in his right mind would suggest dropping CD sales and going strictly with cassettes and vinyl. If nothing else, the manufacturing costs for CDs are lower than those for cassettes and vinyl. Likewise, DVDs are tremendously cheaper to produce than videotapes. Videotape duplication is a labor-intensive process; DVDs can be stamped out automatically. The savings in cost-of-goods alone would more than balance against any unrealized sales from casual copying. Corporate shareholders, always mindful of the bottom line, will also demand that the studios move to the cheaper, higher-quality process, copy protected or not.

The fact is that the computer and electronics firms are in the driver's seat, and are free to dictate how the new digital formats will work. Hollywood will use whatever format becomes popular, whether it has copy protection or not. They may grumble about it, but they'll use it. The economics afford them little choice.

We are only now beginning to explore the social and ethical consequences of a Star Trek-like universe where everything can be infinitely duplcated at zero cost. We have no idea where things will end up. But now is not the time to start erecting electronic walls and imposing artificial scarcity. The ignoble and richly-deserved death of DIVX showed -- fairly unequivocally, I thought -- that consumers want to make free, fair use of their digital media, without interference from outside. I believe its death reinforces the future toward which we've been pushing for centuries: Increased abundance at reduced cost. We can only hope that the lesson of DIVX will be repeated until it is learned.

Schwab

Here's a link to the high-resolution pictures on Philips' web site that bypasses the "Registeren nieuwe user" registration form. (What's that?--some kind of Jar Jar babble?)
--

Warning! Pictures are > 500kb each!

(Bypasses pointless `registration' on research page)

Philips Rush mp3 player

Philips Xenium 939 mobile phone