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Gemstar Ebook Crashes, Burns
Robotech_Master writes "In a lengthy announcement on its ebook catalog page, Gemstar, owner of TV Guide and the Rocket/Gemstar eBook, has announced it is going out of the ebook business. Gemstar will not be selling any new devices or ebook content after July 16th. Of particular interest to those who purchased the newer Gemstar eBook models that eliminated the ability to install free content directly on the devices: 'We will also continue to provide the newly released Personal Content feature available through the web bookstore at least through July 16, 2006.' It's too bad, really; I've heard that the Gemstar has one of the most legible displays of any of the ebook alternatives available. They could have done quite well as general-purpose reading devices, if Gemstar had not locked them directly to its own overpriced content in a stunning demonstration of self-proctology."
Gemstar provides the TV Guide-like listings for my ATI AIW video card. Will this still be operational?
I've been using my Franklin EBookMan for 3 years now. I love the backlight, I can read in bed at night and not bother my wife. It's also facing the same problems as the Gemstar.
I was really excited and taken in by all the hype several years ago. I like to read books. I also thought there was unlocked potential in the Rocket(Gemstar) or something similar for technical manuals. I frequently use Many different technologies(HPUX, AIX, WinNT, Oracle, SQL, Shell, ASP, Cold Fusion etc. etc.) in my consulting business. I always thought these devices would be great for carrying multiple reference manuals instead of those 10 pound books.
As long as the current copy protection mechanisms (of which Lawrence Lessig talks about in his excellent free_culture are in place, ebooks will not become common. Or I should say I hope people can see how useless they are and opt to not use them.
When you think of what the technology could do... You could have access to the digital version of any book, there would never be problems with acquiring a copy of a book. You could always get the book you wanted instantly from your local library, even through the net. Right now, the only thing they have is "gee-it's-new-technology"-effect, and they're really just severely restricted versions of real books.
But it's all inevitable. Even if every library in the world will decide to buy these pathetic excuses of a book, the unrestricted versions will come. They just won't be in the library. They'll be in p2p. Because we all know the ebook protection is fundamentally flawed.
It would be nice if they put out the specs on everything so some enterprising and bored guru could find a way to stick a teeny version of linux on it and make it a reader again. Why waste a good display?
I've not seen one with that kind of battery life, but I'd be interested to know which one does. My Toshiba gets 3.5 hours on the stock battery, 5 hours on the larger replacement, and is pretty much par for the course.
Where it does come in ahead of a laptop is weight (2 lbs vs. 6+ lbs), price (~$600 new instead of ~$1K+ new), and picture/sound quality. Find me a 2lb $600 laptop that can output a progressive scan picture to an HDTV and output Dolby 5.1 and DTS, and we might be in business.
It seems to me that a PDA would fill the same need. I have a Palm IIIxe and have no problem reading eBooks with it. Not to mention that I can also read PDFs with it...something dedicated readers can't.
The low-end model is/was? ~$79...
Palm sells a refurbished IIIxe for ~$89...
And acording to this link, the Gemstar has 8MB of memory...the same as the IIIxe...less if you count the extra memory available from the Flash ROM through an app like JackFlash...
Keeping in mind that the screen on the IIIxe is very legible and features many functions not available through the Gemstar and that battery life can be increased on the palm by underclocking the CPU with one of the apps available for hackmaster...why would anyone want to buy a single function handheld over a PDA???
Not to mention that the PDA market itself has weakened signifigantly in recent years...
And might I also mention that if you want to get involved in helping PG, we have a wonderful Distributed Proofreading project. It's now the main route through which books go to get only DP, and we're almost up to 1500 books processed. Anyone can join -- we need all the proofreaders we can get!
-- Help Digitise the Public Domain at DP.
I was all set to buy the RCA - until it came out and it was discovered one could not put his own content (i.e. gutenburg etexts, web pages, etc.) on it, which is often over half my use for the thing. So I waited for tablets - too expensive, too heavy. I believe the tablets will eventually be the lightweight comfortable multipurpose thing I desire... maybe next year.
I have the entire series of The Wheel of Time in hardcover (and a few very tattered in paperback). Its my favorite fantasy series and I re-read it often.
:).
I was lucky enough to "stumble" upon the entire collection OCR'd, proofed, and converted in nicely formated HTML (with chapter icons). Some fans put a good amount of time to produce these files and I'm thankfull for it.
I'm in the middle of the series again. Some of it was read via paper. Some of it was read on my PDA. The PDA actually makes a very handy format, available where ever I am and needing to kill some time. And it has its own backlight (no reading light needed). I tried to go from PDA to book a few times and found myself simply sticking with the PDA more often than not (although right now I'm back to paper as I've not had much oportunity to read at work, etc.
So where does this lead the publishers? Have they missed out on sales? Perhapse. I've bought the entire series in expensive hardcover - even when I had access to the illicit data versions (as well as old papperback). So there's no loss of sales there. But then, they could have made another sale by offering me a one-stop, inexpensive location to purchase a proofed and nicely formated electronic version. Especially if they offered it in a cross-platform, open standards based format that enables me to use the data I paid for in whatever method I have available.
Sounds like the *decent* thing to do is for them to release a txt/html/pdf converter to the general public for their soon-to-be-abandoned product.
Odds are they won't though. Bastards.
You are in a twisty maze of processor lines, all alike.
There is a lot of hype here.