<i>The following is the 2nd installment in our ongoing </i>Tales from the Front Lines <i> war coverage series by investigative reporter Fred Manteghian, currently embedded with the 1080th Progressives (not really) division, somewhere near the front lines.</i>
Annoyed because that Rhapsody purchase won't work on your iPod? You'd love the new copyright law about to be enacted in France. Legal downloads would be required to operate on all devices, and consumers would be allowed to defeat DRM while making file conversions. Unauthorized downloads would still be illegal, carrying a file of 38 euros, and the penalties for selling illegal file-sharing software would be really stiff, at 300,000 euros or three years in jail. Prompted by France's need to bring itself into compliance with new EU copyright regulations, the law is getting attention because it's more unabashedly pro-consumer than bills being mulled in other EU nations. An earlier bill that would have legalized file sharing for a flat monthly fee has been dropped.
A successful format needs both hardware and software. Unfortunately for HD DVD, the software expected for the format's official March 28 launch date has just turned to vaporware. Warner Home Video announced that titles won't make it to the church on time due to unnamed technical problems. The delay may be only a week or two—"we just don't know." One possible explanation would be a delay with the content security system used, in some form, by both HD DVD and Blu-ray. The rumor mill said it hadn't gotten completed on time. A subsequent report said an interim agreement would let both formats move forward. And now—well, who knows? Though Paramount and Universal have also announced HD DVD titles, they’ve never provided a hard date. How this will affect Blu-ray's May 23 software launch remains unclear. Oh, one more thing—Disney is hinting it may support both formats, which would be welcome news in the HD DVD camp.
03/17/2006 Last weekend I went shopping for a protective jacket for the iPod Nano I bought recently. (Yes, even Sound & Vision reviewers buy gear at retail.) The buzz was that the Nano's high-gloss finish was more easily scratched than the finish on earlier iPods, something I can't verify.
Half of electronic product returns happen because the products are just too complex for the consumer. That's the conclusion of a thesis published at Eindhoven University in the Netherlands. The study by Elke van Ouden found that American consumers are willing to spend 20 minutes on how do you work this thing before giving up. Even professionals—product managers from Philips, no less—had trouble when confronted with unfamiliar products. The researcher found that the single biggest problem was "product definition." It appears many consumers don't even know what they're buying. Maybe they should spend more time reading Home Theater. Just a suggestion.
