Control4 stinks

Back when my last company sold I was crazy busy flying all over the world and my wife decided to remodel the family room. I knew I wanted a better TV/sound setup so I upgraded from a 32" TV to a 55" but to get the speakers installed and the whole thing cabled with the components hidden I went with the recommendation of her interior decorator to use a local company, Sounds Good Corporation. They did a first class installation job but they made a critical mistake. They recommended a Control4 Home Automation system to control everything. It could handle the hidden components via RF and remote IR as well as handle MP3s etc. The system worked and worked well for a few years but it had one fatal flaw -- you cant manage it yourself.

Recently I finally broke down and bought an AppleTV (more on that an a different post) but when I went to connect it to the system I couldn't since end users are not allowed/able to change settings on it. I called Sounds Good and they said I need an annual contract ($150) and that covers one service call and each service call after that is $50. Thats nuts. My request was to change the input on the TV from input 5 to input 7 and they wanted $150. Mysteriously, right after I got their pricing on this and told them there was no way I was going to pay them $150/year, my system stopped working completely. Thats odd given the 2 years it worked fine up to that point. The timing is suspicious. Either way I was done with them.

Putting something in your home you can't update/manage yourself is a mistake for most people, and especially bad for me. Shame on me for letting it happen but my eyes were not on the ball at that point in my life. Sounds Good also made a terrible customer service mistake for wanting to charge for minor updates (that they can do remotely) as i'll never work with them again. They picked a product not necessarily because it was the best but because it guaranteed revenue in the future. A year ago I wanted an update for the system and they wanted $250 for a software update to it just so the software knew what an iPod was (that price excluded the dock). Thats just nuts.

So I did some research and found a Logitech Harmony 900 with the PS3 adapter that looked like it would do the job:



I ordered it from Amazon and it arrived for last weekend. It took me 3 hours to rip the garbage Control4 system out of my setup and install the remote and get it working with everything and tie wrap up all the cables nice and clean again. Since my devices are inside a cabinet and behind the TV and generally in odd places I got the Logitech Precision IR cables to go with it. Logitech's documentation generally stinks for figuring out how to control multiple devices with RF and how to reach them. The precision IR cables weren't even mentioned anywhere, I heard about them on the forums.

Anyway, now everything is hidden and I can control all the devices I controlled before plus my new AppleTV. The PS3 control is actually better since now I can control power too which I couldn't before. The Wii is the only unmanageable device but since its not my DVD player or multimedia player its not a big deal.

Good riddance to Control4. I'd never recommend that product and you should think twice about working with a company that recommends it.

Fall and leaves

Wow, my last post was August. Where did the time go?

Anyway, yet another weekend of leaves. I have my house and several barns. The one barn is 200' long, and the gutters are 30' up. Needless to say cleaning them is a pain. My mother-in-law gave me one of these last year and I finally had a chance to try it:



I have to admit, I didnt expect much out of it and mileage does vary, but it works. It saved me a ton of ladder moving today and I got the house and one barn done, one left to go (the big one).

I wouldnt advise running it when the horses are nearby though -- it does make a racket.

The big thing to remember is to go slowly and back up and go forward for the tough stuff. Lots of big oak trees near us so there's a ton of stuff in the gutters. It held up and ran for several hours and I ran out of time before it did.

If you have a lot of gutters or are just a gadget freak, give it a shot.

iPhone dilemma

Buried in my AT&T subscription page (why make it easy to find such a thing?) is the information that my 2 year AT&T contract expires on 7/11/2010.

I wrote in the past about issues with iPhone OS 3.0 on my iPhone 3G and it has been really bad since then. Apple seems to have designed iPhone OS 3.0 for the iPhone 3GS and they have done nothing to help those that didn't upgrade to the 3GS. I never upgraded to the 3GS because of their poor upgrade policy and my 3G iPhone has made me miserable.

There's plenty of news out about Apple's upcoming iPhone 4 release this summer. The big question to me is whether it will be on the AT&T network only, or if Verizon will be added either this summer or a bit later in the fall. Re-upping with AT&T for another 2 years doesn't excite me, especially with their poor network and all the dropped calls during my 45 minute commute on the Mass Turnpike. The news on Verizon support changes daily, but today's news is depressing. So it seems i'll be faced with the choice of iPhone 4 with AT&T OR some other phone on Verizon (current best alternative appears to be the HTC Incredible).

Will the Apple fan leave Apple in disgust of AT&T and Apple's own support of the iPhone? Are the alternatives any better with Verizon restricting features on their network and with the poor desktop integration other vendors have? Stay tuned.

iPad Charging Issues

Really, I don't go looking for these things, but I found another issue with the iPad recently. This looks like some kind of hardware flaw. There are documented stories out there on the net about the iPad being plugged into a USB source and not charging and sure enough I hit that issue. Evidently Apple knows about this problem too and they mention this problem:

“When charging, make sure you’re using the 10W USB power adapter that came with iPad (fastest) or the USB port on a recent Mac.”
They also say that USB hubs may not work:

"iPad may not charge when connected to the USB port on an older Mac, a PC, a keyboard, or to a USB hub.”

I don't know about you, but I have 8 USB things plugged into the MacPro that I was trying to charge the iPad on. Some just aren't a good fit for a hub (USB TV Tuner). If Apple made a device that can't work on a USB Hub well then they made a serious design mistake.

Meanwhile I found a use for the iPad. My wife found it can do Sodoku and the games on it are reasonable. So she's been clocking hours on that. I'm not sure of the economics of a $800 Sodoku device, but at lest its getting used...

iPad for Media

Well from this string of posts you're going to think I hate the iPad, but lets just say i'm calling it as I see it and i'm not blinded by the light of Apple.

On the way out on my vacation I watched a movie (X-Men Wolverine) on the iPad. The screen size and weight are perfect for video on the airplane. But there were a few problems. First, since its a touch device the large screen is littered with fingerprints, smudges etc. Its a pain to clean such a large screen and whole sites and products are springing up discussing this issue. They claim the iPad has a fingerprint resisting oleophobic coating on the screen, but mine is quickly littered with fingerprints and smudges. So when you go to read a book or watch a movie it must first start with a cleaning session. I never had to do that with the old DVD players I carried on the plane or my laptop (whose screen I had no reason to touch). The second, is since Apple chose a glossy glass screen, all light is reflected back at you. On a plane, during daylight hours, this makes it hard to see stuff on the screen. For these two reasons, the iPad is not great as a video device unless you have oil free hands (they have cures for that) and only watch movies in the dark. 

On the way home I wanted to try an eBook. My had had been reading Lee Child's Gone Tomorrow, currently #7 on the NY Times bestseller list and I figured i'd give that a try. I started with Apple's iBook's application and looked in the store. Gone Tomorrow is episode #13 of some character (never read any of the others). iBooks had 4 of the 14 books in that line and Gone Tomorrow was not one of them. Then I went to the Kindle store. They had all 14. With content, its either there or it isn't. The iBook store, missing current bestsellers, is currently a nonstarter. This wasnt the first book i've looked for to find missing there.

Next I read the first 6 chapters on the iPad with the Kindle sample. That went well and was enjoyable enough. But with the smudges (mentioned above), the limited portability of an iPad (I wouldnt dare take it to a beach or have it next to me at the pool while the kid splashes), and the inability to share a good book with a friend I find that eBooks have less value than real books, yet cost more. My Dad had given me his paper copy so after chapter 6 I switched to the "real" book and i'm back on track.

I love gadgets, but they have to be built for a purpose. My experience so far is that the iPad was built with no conceived purpose, but with the hopes that others would figure one out. Thats a sad thing to do to your customers. Build products with a purpose, if you find your customers use it for something different then adapt and do it quickly. 

Traveling with the iPad

Well I made it through a week's vacation without turning on my MacBookPro. That was partially because vacation came at a good point, but also because the iPad filled the gap well enough. In using the iPad more over the last week i've had some additional observations. My main conclusion is that its a great platform that has a lot of promise but most of the promise has yet to be fulfilled. In a year or so perhaps it will really become what it should be.

One thing that shocked me on the iPad when I went looking for things I assumed were there because they're on the iPhone was that they arent there. There's no alarm clock on the iPad and there are no free ones yet that I saw. The iPhone has it, the iPod Touch has it but the iPad doesnt. What was Apple thinking there?

Also, in this highly visual touch device, the iPod app has no Coverflow support. Whats that about? Even the iPod nano has coverflow.

Then originally I had my email (google apps based) setup using the Active Sync approach. I found for email accounts setup this way you cant do anything at all when offline. I switched mail over to IMAP and it seemed to let me do some offline mail etc while I was on the plane. 

For all that Apple has stripped functionality from the iPods and iPhone in delivering the iPad they've delivered little new other than using the larger screen space. In addition they've opted for up selling you on features that make sense for the platform like their iWork products. 

It almost seems like the iPad is an experiment on how big a fan base they have rather than delivering a product that really is well rounded and meets market needs.

So yes, I skipped powering on my MacBookPro and it was a great video device on the plane but I still had to carry my MacBookPro with me because I the iPad isnt a computer, its an oversized, but stripped down, iPod.

iPad/Google Reader Update

After more searching around I found out that you can get Google Reader to work with the iPad although why it doesn't work out of the box I don't know. Here's the link:

http://www.google.com/reader/i

They also updated Gmail for the iPad but because of their constant confusion between Gmail and Google Apps Gmail it only works for Gmail and not for Google Apps.

I'm not a fan of the current Google Reader for iPad interface but it does work and you can see everything etc. That means I can now catch up on news and its a nail in the coffin for the overpriced NetNewsWire for iPad.

MiFi

Now being stuck with a portable but not cell connected device I began to think about the lack of free wifi access everywhere. Especially in airports and the sticks where I live. A friend told me about the MiFi and it sounded like a good idea. I've had an aircard (USB thing that gives you internet access on your computer anywhere you have cell coverage) for years. I pay $60/month and its on Verizon so I get decent coverage and speed. The speed is like DSL speed. Since my contract was up, the day I got the iPad I went to verizon to ask about an upgrade. Because of the contract expiring etc I moved to the Mifi for a whopping $3.00 after the rebate.

The MiFi is great. Now instead of USB connection its wireless and supports up to 5 devices. It came just in time since my company was having serious internet issues with our T1s (turns out that was verizons fault, seems to be justice in that somewhere) and a bunch of the guys jumped on my MiFi while we were in pain.

And now my iPad is on wireless, through a decent carrier, wherever I want it to be. That makes the iPad more useful.

Better yet when the family is stuck at an airport now all 3 of us can jump on the net and surf etc.

MyPad

So if you're reading along here you were probably asking yourself if I went ahead with the plan on the iPad. Well, the short answer is Yes. I'm an iPad owner. Unlike others that pre-ordered and waited impatiently last saturday for FedEx to arrive, I got up around 9am, drove to to the mall with the Apple Store, walked right in and picked it up. Was in the store for all of 2 minutes and had it hours before the pre-order friends I have.

The first experience is amazing. It really is a new device and you are instantly enchanted by it. For me that lasted about 2 hours. After that I started wondering if the thing would really be useful long term of if its another toy. The best way to describe it is a large iPod Touch. Minus most of the applications. And minus the portability, but add in the honking big screen and better battery.

Despite what Apple says, the iPhone apps don't look good/work well on the iPad. At least all my favorites were just supersized versions of the iPhone ones and were ugly. So bad I uninstalled them. They also only worked in vertical iPad orientation from what I can tell (more on orientation later).

There are surprisingly few iPad supporting apps out there despite the long hype. There are even less free ones. There seems to be a current trend to charge for iPad apps where the iPhone ones are free (NetNewsWire) or charge more for the app on the iPad. Some even charge you twice for the app, once for the iPhone version and once for the iPad one. This leads you to even less apps on the iPad. I described it as 2 screens of apps (that are spaced very far apart for some silly reason). One screen of the stuff that is actually useful and runs on the iPad and another because you wanted more stuff and thats the best you could find. 

So whats good?

• Email. I found the vertical orientation of the app to be frustrating with the odd mailbox behavior. The horizontal one is a charm. In general i've found most apps are better looking/work better horizontally. I wonder if thats intended?
• Web. Safari browsing sites etc is really nice
• Big iPod Touch. Nice big pictures, cover art, movies, music you name it. Its a fancy ipod with great graphics and a nice interface

So what isnt?

• Some apps from Apple arent on the iPad. Remember Remote? Stocks? Odd that Apple didnt even port their own apps to their new platform
• A major use case for me was going to be reading/keeping up on my RSS feeds. Well, NetNewsWire is a whopping $10 (way overpriced), but Google reader (mobile or non-mobile) doesnt work on the iPad. You cant scroll/get at stuff in the non-mobile one and the mobile one is tiny. So to me I cant do RSS feeds on the iPad until NetNewsWire gets reasonable (or I get less cheap) or Google fixes things for "the other mobile OS"...
• Once you have a bigger platform you want to do more. That means task switching. Well the iPad doesnt do that any better than the iPhone so you're missing multitasking, multiple windows etc. Shame to have such a nice screen/device with a single threaded interface. Could you imagine sliding windows around, pinch zooming etc? Sigh.
• Many of the apps that are on the iPad are skin-deep in beauty. They look good for the first screen or two but lack any real depth. There's great potential there but a long way to go. Especially for them to be worth money to the masses.
• Apple for some reason tried hard to make some of the apps (Calendar, Contacts) look like a physical calendar/address book. This comes off as cheap and it wastes a good platform. They could have done much better in this area. 
• iTunes has no ability for you to sort your apps by their support for your device. So if you're like me and have 100 apps for your iPhone and want to only install those that work on the iPad on the iPad, you will be doing a lot of grunt work in figuring that out. They did it right on the App Store, but blew it in iTunes.
• Major apps that make sense for the device, like Facebook, haven't been ported. Sure the web page looks great on there and thats a plus and you can make a shortcut on the iPad desktop etc. But still. 
• No camera. Yes we knew it in advance, but a user-facing camera for Skype would have made it an ideal "chat with the parents while on the couch" device. I'm still stuck at a keyboard for my video calls. How lame is that?

So will I invoke my plan to give it to the wife? Well, I asked her. She asked about using Word and PowerPoint. I had to explain there were different apps on the phone. She asked about accessing her files on her iMac. I had to explain there was no synchronization with her iMac but she could port her files to the Apple apps (Pages etc) and then keep them on the (slow) MobileMe. Then she asked about facebook. I gave up. So far the device is failing my "basic user test".

The kid meanwhile wants the new laptop. So I have a nice toy I play with a bit but cant really use much because the things I want to do arent there yet. The apps I use arent ported or are no longer free. Perhaps i'll break down and buy a few. So far the only app I ever bought was OmniFocus for a whopping $20 and i've regretted it ever since since its such a slow piece of junk. Give me more trial/demo apps and then expire them or something. I want to use NetNewsWire before I shell out $10. Especially after how they ruined the iPhone app.

BTW don't get the stand and the case for the iPad. If you put the iPad in the Apple case it wont go in the stand. But yes, Apple will gladly sell you both at the same time without mentioning that. Fortunately they also take back the stand after you find that out :)

So I have an $800 toy (32G version (friend talked me into more room for movies), Applecare (1st gen product and potential to be abused by wife), and case/dock). I hope someday some enterprising developers will make it the product it has the potential to be. It is a game changer, I just wonder if Apple will win the game or just tip people off to how its played?

Hello RedBox, goodbye Netflix

I was sick as a dog last weekend and since I wasnt good for much but the couch I decided to watch some movies. Pay-per-view is expensive, regular stuff on TV was junk (even in my drugged state), I had my one NetFlix movie to watch but the wife wanted me to wait to watch it with her so I needed another option. I figured it was a good time to give RedBox a shot finally. I went online, created an account, and found a couple movies and reserved them. A short trip to the local DropBox location (2 miles even where I live out in the sticks) and the machine regurgitated my movies, charged me $2.12 and off I went. While my movie selection was bad, $2.12 for 2 new movies was a good deal. The location was convenient, had what I wanted, and I got the movies for a little over 24 hours.

According to FeedFliks, my average movie cost for NetFlix is $4.12:

148 DVDs returned since September 2000
 You have rated 181 titles*
 Most recent return: 23/Mar/10 i.e. 3 days ago
 Average time you keep DVDs at home: 23 days
 Movies/month: 2.7 by DVD | 0.3 by IW
 Your 1 at-a-time (Unlimited) plan costs $10.99/month
 Your cost: $4.12 per DVD | With IW: $3.66
 89% of FeedFliksers pay less than you per movie
The above stats reflect your activity over the most recent 3 months 

Thats significantly above the $1.06 price from RedBox. Yeah from the stats above, i'm not the ideal NetFlix user. What can I say? I'm a busy guy :)

Whats missing?

• BlueRay - RedBox doesnt offer them. NetFlix charges me extra for them
• RedBox has a terrible website. No queue to "remember" movies to watch, no way of rating them, getting recommendations etc. Over the last 10 years i've rated many movies, but their suggestion algorithm leaves a lot to be desired. They should take a page out of the Music Genome project.

I've mentioned before that I'm a fan of the "watch it when I feel like it" approach of NetFlix, but from the math above I can keep every RedBox movie for at least 3 days and still come out ahead. Between the higher cost, slower delivery time (5 minute run to the RedBox or 2-3 days of snailmail) and the poor/very old selection that comes from Netflix streaming I dont see how NetFlix can survive unless they change significantly.

Goodbye NetFlix, you're dead to me.

Bluetooth audio

I posted a while ago about issues with Acura's Musiclink and since then i've been on the quest for a better way to connect my iPhone to my 2007 Acura MDX. For the last year or so i've been using a standard audio cable plugged into the aux RCA ports near the back seat with the radio on AUX. That allowed me full control of the iPhone while getting good audio quality over the stereo. Music still paused with incoming calls but other than volume I had no control through the stereo and a cable to deal with. Today, while at the Apple store, I saw a Belkin Blueetooth Music Receiver hanging on the wall. At first I thought it may not work for me because it required A/C but then I remembered that my car has an A/C plug in the center console. So I bought it and stuffed the whole thing in my center console, fed the current audio cable into it with power and now i'm happily bluetooth streaming in my car with my iPhone 3G. 

So far one negative is that each time I get back in the car I have to go to iPhone preferences and specifically tell it to connect to the belkin device. Thats annoying but at least its cable free.

iPad?

Being the Apple fan that I am you may be wondering if i'm going to get the iPad. Despite the blog, i'm not a consumer of everything Apple produces. While products like the Lisa, Newton, AppleTV and others were innovative in ways, they show that Apple doesnt get every product right and there's a cost to their consumers for their learning. I bit on the Newton but skipped the Lisa (used it at work) and so far i've resisted AppleTV. So what is the iPad?

Normally i'd skip this one too. I either want something very small that fits in my pocket (iPhone) or a full blown computer (MacBookPro 13" or MacPro currently). Something thats too big for my pocket and not good enough to do everything isnt a fit for me.

But it just so happens my daughters PowerBook 12" is finally on its last legs. Its wireless broke years ago, its got a CD jammed in the drive, the batteries are all shot and she's beaten it to death. My wife inherited my MacBookAir but only uses it for facebook and email from various rooms in the house (mostly just before she goes to sleep). So i'm faced with upgrading the kid to a new Mac or using this as an excuse to get the iPad. Move the wife to the iPad, the kid to the MacBookAir and they'll both be happy and I get a new toy to play with. Seems like a plan, we'll see.

Meanwhile, my thoughts on this whole netbook/tablet craze is that it all just has to go away. The thing I want is a full computer/OS that fits in my pocket and has all my data. Then I want to wirelessly attach it to keyboards, mice, monitors wherever I go. That way my computer travels with me and is always with me and I avoid syncing data everywhere, getting used to new interfaces, etc. All these other products are just killing time until the technology can get there. 

Of course there's the alternate reality approach where Google has all your data and applications and you just use a web browser to get at it all. I dont drink that cool-aid. While online apps have come a long way and you can even get REAL games online now through a browser, I think we'll get to the real portable computer before everyone hands their data over google to take care of for us.

Home Media Servers

The battle has been raging for a while on who owns a device near your TV. My bet is one of the consoles is going to win as they have the video quality, compute power etc. A while back I remodeled my family room and since I didnt have much time at the time I hired a company to do the sound piece. The speakers etc worked out fine and i'm happy. What i'm not happy with is that they installed a Control4 unit as the controller for the whole system. There's an attached drive to load media on. This system is dated by today's standards and you can't make any configuration changes without calling a dealer to support it -- yes you cant manage a device you own. Some day i'll rip it out of my system and get a better approach. What a waste.

Anyway, using it for video playback doesnt work, it supports music (poorly) and pictures (also poorly) (perhaps the $250+ software upgrade would make things better but im not going to find out). Basically anything you do with it costs serious money which means it has to go.

I got a disk of the first season of 24 for Christmas and I wanted to watch it but not be feeding disks to my playback device constantly. I had the idea to rip the disks and then do video-on-demand within my home. I already have Cat5e cabled networking and a GigE switch between the major computers and my family room so bandwidth wasnt an issue. I had the ripped files and needed a way to serve them to the TV. I use my PS3 as a DVD player since my old DVD player died and as it also does the BluRay disks too. Unfortunately the PS3 disk is tiny. 

I looked around and found MediaLink which turns a mac into a media server for the PS3 (They have a version for the XBox 360 too). That works great, I can now browse my pictures, music and video from iTunes, iPhoto or on folders on my drives and play them back on the PS3. The PS3 could use better menus/controls but it works and the software was $20.

So now my video library is on a TB hard drive in my basement and streams to my family room when I need it sure beats the DVD shuffle.

Only problem is Snow Leopard broke it. See next blog entry.

Google Voice Rocks

I got a free Grand Dialer account early on when it came out. I never made much use of it though. Then it was bought by Google and still it sat unused for a long time. This week, though, I had a thought. 

A while back I wrote about home phones and cell phones. To summarize, even if I could cancel my landline and move the number to google (you currently cant do this) I need to keep a home phone connection for:

a) Our home business uses that number and its been known for 10+ years and its in publications etc

b) We have an ADT system and it needs to dial out

c) 911 is better with a landline

The problem, though, is that with 10+ years at the same number and as a landline we get spammers calling constantly. The result is that we never answer the phone and our voice mailbox fills up. Sometimes its important stuff but because of the fear of the spammers (yes, i've put the number on all the do not call lists I can find) we delay in getting back to people and we can't really be reached through that number.

So what was my Google voice thought? Forward my home number to my google voice number. From there use google voice to manage the traffic. You can upload your address book (new after the google acquisition) including the groups. Then on a per-group basis set the desired behavior. 

So here's my setup:

1) Home phone always forwards to google voice

2) We have 3 cell phones, one for me, one for the wife, and one for the barn

3) Depending on the address book group a person falls in it will ring 1, 2 or 3 of those phone numbers. 

4) Also depending on the group the person falls in it may prompt them for their name first so we can decide if we want the call (they hear ringing until we accept)

5) If they're in no groups, no phones ring. They get to leave a voicemail if they want (spammers dont, but if they did google has some answers for that)

6) If someone like my dad calls, all 3 phones ring, if someone picks it up and its for the other person you can transfer to the other cell phone with a google voice command. 

7) Voice mails come in email with (weak) transcriptions. You can listen to them from your email (even on the iPhone!) and you can forward them to each other. You can also manage them in the order you want to -- no more wading through 17 useless voice mails to get to the one you want. (the transcriptions are amusing though)

I turned all this on a couple days ago and its magic. We've received NO unwanted calls and we're now easier for people to reach. Call one number (our home #) and you'll reach who we want you to reach.

I'm not sure this is the use case Google Voice envisioned, a family google voice line, but as I did with my email, i'm using Google as an advanced spam filter and they're great at it.

I think about people with multiple houses that they travel between and think how this can solve their problems too. Forward those land lines to google and then use it to route to where you want when you want. With remote management through google you have total control.

Next steps? Perhaps change my cell # and route everyone to my google voice number or my home number. I'm getting a lot of spammers on the cell phone now. Problem with handing out the google voice number is that you start being really tied to google voice versus the solution it provides. Handing out the home number though could get messy if google voice ever went away. I'll ponder that a while before I change my cell #. 

My guess is that i'll just change it and hand out a google voice #, I like living on the edge :)

EveryTrail

Just got back from a bike ride with the kid. Got to use my new iPhone attachment for the bike and EveryTrail iPhone app. Thats a nice combination and lets you keep track of rides.

Ride with Lydia

Widget powered by EveryTrail: GPS Geotagging

Netflix, Flexplay, and RedBox

I'm currently a Netflix subscriber (cheap plan, 1 out at a month unlimited with Blu-Ray = $10.99/month). I average about 3 movies a month. This means each movie costs me about $3.65 to watch. Whenever possible I watch them in BluRay format. 

The other day I noticed how many RedBox outlets there are around where I travel. Gas stations, grocery stores etc. With RedBox you pay $1/night and you can reserve movies. They have pretty current movies, but no BluRay options. There's no subscription fees and you only pay for what you use. This could possibly drop my monthly cost, but i'd have to know in advance that i'd be able to watch a movie in a given night or i'd end up paying for an extra night (and feel the pressure to watch soon). The fact that the price can stack up if you don't watch it once you take it out puts me off. The lack of BluRay is disappointing too. 

Shortly after running into RedBox I noticed a 48-hour self destructing DVD option at Staples called FlexPlay. It chemically self destructs its playability (in a way that doesn't break your DVD player) 48 hours after you open it. Staples generally sells the disks for $1. The outlets aren't as convenient (in this case tied to Staples store hours) and the movies aren't usually as new as Netflix and RedBox (or updated as frequently). On the positive side your expense is capped at $1/movie and you can "queue" them up by buying several and having them handy and watch whatever suits your mood. If you rent via their web site they "rent" the movies at $4.99, they're not going to win the war with that kind of pricing. At $1 and with more outlets I can see how they could be competitive with RedBox. With the limited availability, older movies, and poor pricing direct they're out.

Ok, you're probably wondering why I dont just do video-on-demand and pay just for what I watch. A couple reasons, my bankruptcy-declaring cable company charges $5.99 per rental (HD). Thats more than my average cost via NetFlix. In addition, their movie selection is worse than Netflix and RedBox. And finally about 50% of the time there are issues with the video on demand playback.

Currently NetFlix appears to be the best option as it gives me the most flexibility when I play the movies and the quality/availability of what I want. Its largest downside is the fact that I have to wait 3-4 days after watching one to watch another. I could pay more to have more flexibility but given how few I watch it doesnt seem worth it. If someone could deliver HD video on demand at an equivalent cost to NetFlix then i'd switch but given where I live and the monopoly of the local TV provider, i'm stuck for a while.

Sirius XM almost folded

I 'm on a roll. First I wrote about Apple and the DRM challenges forcing me to buy from Amazon MP3, a short while later Apple went DRM free. Then I wrote about XM radio and its flaws for me, and then they narrowly avoided bankruptcy. Perhaps if the Sirius fools han't done a $500M deal with Howard Stern and other questionable business practices they wouldn't have come so close to losing it all.

As with so many other things, companies need to study and learn their about their customers preferences, likes and dislikes etc and then work with a total focus on meeting the needs of those customers. I'm just one voice with my own set of preferences, but there are common things to learn and do if you study analyze and get to know your customers. Apple, Sirius and others, take note or perish.

Circuit City

Must be my week for silly things in the mail. I got a Circuit City Advantage (their extended warranty) renewal form in the mail with choices of 1, 2 or 3 years. I always question the value of extended warranties, but in the case where a company has filed for bankruptcy you'd have to be just plan nuts to sign up for this.

With the loss of CompUSA and now Circuit City I wonder if we're heading to an age where there will be no instant gratification for electronics and you'll be relegated to the internet and the good, but not quite as instant, services of NewEgg and Amazon

XM Radio

The concept, advertising free radio you can receive anywhere with high quality, was good. The execution has not been. In multiple cars by multiple providers i've seen poor XM radio reception. And when digital radio doesnt come in it goes out completely, not just fuzzy, but gone. This is on main roads (route 495) in Massachusetts so this isn't an edge case. Its not under a bridge, in a tunnel, its on open highway. 

Then look at stations like XM station 11 (Sirius 61), its full of advertising. Why am I paying to be delivered ads? Oh because SOME of the stations don't do ads. I see.

And now the ultimate insult, they're raising their prices. 

Don't get me wrong, XM has entertained me for my 2+ hour commute for the last few years, but when the 1 year subscription I paid for runs out in May i'm not renewing. While Pandora Radio finally caved in to ads at least its a free service. 

I'm thinking iPhone 3G with a audio out cable and Pandora and i've got my replacement for XM better tuned to what I want to hear. If I want ad-free I buy songs online at $1 each and play the playlist. At the rate I buy songs its cheaper than XM.

Another broken business model. 

GPS Updates

Today I got an ad in the mail for a GPS update for my Lexus. The GPS update is $265. Sure the Lexus is a luxury car and you should expect to pay more when its involved. But $265 for a $0.50 DVD that they're mass producing? And one thats out of date the day its produced? Thats getting a bit crazy. You can't even plug in addresses while you're moving, it has no traffic updates etc.

Lets see for $247, I can buy a high end Garmin Nuvi 760 or dozens of other types for that or much less and most include more advanced features than the Lexus GPS. You can get a decent portable GPS for $129 these days.

So I could have a GPS that moves with me from car to car and I could buy the latest version every year or I can pay for a DVD from Lexus.

What are they thinking?

Along the same lines, those portable GPS's sell updates for $80. So you buy a GPS for $129 and the software update is $80. 

Folks its time to figure out the model and drop the price and get more people to do the upgrade. 

I, for one, am not paying for GPS updates when they don't make sense.

(p.s. its my wife's car anyway!)