Your Washer is Calling and the Dryer is on IM

netbuzz writes "Laundry Time, an eight-week pilot program from the Internet Home Alliance, begins next week with three Atlanta families and the technology and services of Microsoft, HP, Panasonic, Proctor & Gamble and Whirlpool. The idea is to allow family members to receive alerts and control certain laundry functions from their PCs, cell phones and TV sets, presumably so they can spend more time with their PCs, cell phones and TV sets." I am all for tech for the sake of tech, but I'm pretty sure this is one of the signs of the Apocalypse Nostradamus prognosticated.

Comments

Tag: greatheadline

[Anonymous Coward]

That is a great headline, just gotta say!

Re:Tag: greatheadline

[Anonymous Coward]

Blu-Ray's only real advantage was bigger discs - yet they can't manufacture 2 layer discs yet! Now add a "DVD compatibility layer" and you'd need 3 layers to really have 2 for high def, and I can't manage to do that anytime soon seeing how much trouble they have already. (Not to mention that using recent codec's like H.264 defeated the whole point of Blu-Ray as the movie would fit on a plain old, regular DVD media)

Blu-Ray uses Java. HD DVD will use iHD. That's a huge difference! Blu-Ray will need some highly paid expert programmers, will need to license JVMs - which will most likely end up deferring and having compatibility problems and what not [mobile phones anyone?] Creating even trivial stuff becomes a complex endeavour. On the other hand, iHD is simple XML based mark-up (somewhat like HTML), which is something most people know nowadays. It's simple, and will be standard. There's even some simple examples [msdn.com] already available for you to see. So simple and elegant.

Blu-Ray is way overpriced. HD DVD players are already expensive at 500$ (might be even cheaper by xmas time), but Blu-Ray is twice that, putting it out of reach for most people (too much money for a player). Not to mention that the burnable media pricing is even worse - 60$USD for a blank Blu-Ray disc! That's enough to buy 400 blank generic DVDs at Best Buy on special (over 1.5TB worth), or a fair sized HD. And if anything will help one format willing, it'll be sales. And everybody knows sales are directly related to prices (just look how much 20$ Apex DVD players they're selling!)

Blu-Ray is Sony. DRM and Root kits. Failed proprietary formats. overpriced junk electronics (you just pay for the brand name). No thanks! I'll take M$-based stuff over it as the lesser evil(!)

I can't see the heavily delayed PS3 change the situation that much. The people who usually buy those consoles are gamers (that often don't spend too much time watching movies and rather spend their hard earned money on games instead of movie DVDs). And the PS3 will cost at least as much as a HD DVD player (recently announced at 600 euro in EU). And likely a HUGE portion of PS3 buyers don't even have a HDTV in the first place. The real High Def enthusiasts - those who DO have a HDTV and will buy movies - won't wait for that to get a player (especially seeing how Blu-Ray sucks all around). And if you want to include gaming consoles, there will be a HD DVD drive for the Xbox360 (wait for E3), and there's already like 4.5 millions of those sold.

And HD DVD has managed copy too (movies on my video server, using the touch screen yay!).

I used to really like Blu-Ray, but it's already lost the battle. They don't have a single advantage anymore - much the inverse. Likely more PCs will ship with HD DVD drives too (except perhaps a handful of Sony VAIOs), especially seeing how MS & Intel are pushing for it.

Blu-Ray will go the way of all the Sony junk: BetaMax, MiniDisc, ATRAC, MemoryStick, UMD, etc.

Re:Washine Machine

[MrNougat]

I see that someone modded the parent "Funny."

That's not funny.