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Second Time 'Round - the Zune Flash In-Depth
J Mallard writes "Ars Technica has an in-depth review of the new Zune Flash. The overall verdict? An improvement over the original, with some caveats. 'I suspect there's a special shotgun in Redmond passed around ceremonially to the different divisions so each can shoot itself in the foot. When the shotgun arrived at the Zune team HQ, it appears to have been directed squarely at one of the most promising new features the device has to offer: autosyncing of recorded TV content ... [Specifically,] DVR-MS support for unprotected standard definition TV recordings from Windows Media Center. HDTV and protected recordings are not supported.' Let me make sure I understand this: at this point, a consumer has purchased a PC, Vista, a tuner card, and a Zune, but still can't be trusted with high-def content? Nice.'"
But will it run Linu^H^H^H^H rockbox?
Probably not.
ccalam - acoustic versions of new songs.
The again, Microsoft's been screwing the HD content crowd for a while now. No clear QAM support (except for Cablecards, which is pointless), the Cablecard limitations, no DirectTV support (it's been "coming soon" since like early 2006), and so on. Even their MVPs are starting to lose their patience.
Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
That idea is sorely underrepresented in a lot of discussions about "media content". Even ignoring the ad breaks in TV shows, there's still product placement within the shows. If you haven't seen it yet, either you don't watch TV or you haven't been paying close enough attention.
When you really evaluate what's going on in media companies, it's clear that even a lot of content that you pay for is still designed to serve as advertising. The music and movies you buy are rigged and designed to get you to buy into related brands and merchandizing. Listen to a record executive for a few minutes, and you'll realize that what they're really interested in is branding, marketing, merchandizing. The music is an advertisement for lifestyle products, clothing lines, etc.
So the business model, under this light, is the consumer as a customer. The content owners/producers are providing a service, but you aren't the customer, you're the product. The customer are the huge companies who produce loads of crap that no one really wants or needs. The service being provided is to convince you (essentially the product) into believing that you want and need crap that you don't actually want or need.
I wouldn't call it the only negative part of the review.
My one sentence summary of the review: "It's a pretty neat devise that mostly does what you'd expect a music player to do, but there are some stupefying design decisions, and it doesn't really offer anything that will allow it to make significant inroads into the iPod dominated market."
Because you have the line in your own post: "...and they are an obvious choice for anyone who loves subscription music services." Music subscription services are such a small part of the online music market as to be a joke themselves. If you want to be an iPod-killer, you don't focus on a market that even Napster is giving up on.
I live ze unknown. I love ze unknown. I am ze unknown.
The old one is now a great bargain. I have the old 30gb model, I won it at a charity auction. I always liked the thing, but with the new firmware and software it's really nice. I've seen them for $85 online with free shipping (in the U.S.) Not bad for a 30gb player with wireless and video!
Lucy promises to placehold the football so Charlie can kick it. He falls for it every time and she never fails to pull it away at the last second (I keep hoping there's one strip where she doesn't pull it away, but I never saw it.... anyone?).
There was an episode of American Masters on PBS a couple weeks ago about Charles Schultz, and his wife said that some time after he'd finished the final cartoon he'd said something to the effect that "Drat! I ended the strip and he never did kick that football!"
So no, it never did happen.
The current business model is that the viewers pay with their time, the time they watch unwanted portions of the broadcast. And a few pay with actual dollars, pay per view, DVDs etc. But those who pay with money are swamped out by those who pay with their time. As it is the internet pipes are getting fatter and pretty soon it will be possible to stream in all the content one wants to watch through the internet connection, may not be in real time, but in something like a DVR or AppleTV that downloads content is will show you when you are ready. As people desert the pay-with-your-time model and switches to pay-with-dollars model, there will be a seismic shift in the broadcast TV industry.
Income distribution is very skewed. 80% of the income is with the top 20% of the people. The disposable income is even more skewed. 90% of all the disposable income in the country is in the hands of 10% of the people. If the broadcast TV loses just the top 10% by disposable income viewers to internet-to-dvr model, the remaining viewership will be 90% of the original by numbers, but with just one tenth of the purchasing power. 10 years from now, the broadcast TV industry will be just a pale shadow of what it is today. The big money is in the content-producers to dvr via the internet model. Content producers will have to be wooed over. Apple is trying with iTunes and AppleTV and other content sale business. MSFT is muscling in. That is why there is this fight to carve the field into mutually incompatible DRMs to lock in a steady revenue stream.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Accually there is a strip,fairly old one though-I have it in a book where brown gets sick,and Lucy promises not to pull away the football if he gets better.He gets better and when Dharlie brown goes up to kich it he kicks Lucy instead.