Into Tech

Pressure Drop just rolled out JukeDock, a $100 system that lets you plug your iPod into your TV, stereo and computer, giving you some snazzy blinking lights at the same time.

Compatible with most iPods, its LED lights have three brightness levels that can bounce along with the music, cycle among various colors, give you a steady color or can even go into a psychedelic rainbow mode for those nights you feel like pulling out that Pink Floyd album.

This looks like a fun little device to which you can attach your iPod, give yourself some retro-deco lighting, and easily control with your existing stereo’s remote. Jump for more pics. – Charlie White

Product Page [Pressure Drop, Inc.]

Pressure Drop just rolled out JukeDock, a $100 system that lets you plug your iPod into your TV, stereo and computer, giving you some snazzy blinking lights at the same time.

Compatible with most iPods, its LED lights have three brightness levels that can bounce along with the music, cycle among various colors, give you a steady color or can even go into a psychedelic rainbow mode for those nights you feel like pulling out that Pink Floyd album.

This looks like a fun little device to which you can attach your iPod, give yourself some retro-deco lighting, and easily control with your existing stereo’s remote. Jump for more pics. – Charlie White

Product Page [Pressure Drop, Inc.]

Nielsen Media Research, that company that watches the TV watchers, did a study last month about Apple’s iPod and the amount of video that people are actually watching on it. The result? People are listening to a whole lot more music than they are watching videos on the portable players. Less than 1% of content played on iTunes or iPods were videos, and even among those who own a video iPod, only 2.2% of the content consumed was video. What does this all mean? According to the Hollywood Reporter:

Worst-case scenario: The panel is an early indication that TV and movies have limited appeal on iPods. Best-case scenario: While adoption of video may be proceeding more slowly than the hype suggests, there is tremendous upside ahead.

We’re thinking that people are using iPods so much, 2.2% of the huge amount of time spent with the things is still a significant number. But then, isn’t watching video on such a tiny screen a huge pain in the ass? I just spent over 50 hours in various airplanes watching all kinds of video on tiny screens, so let me tell you what I think, after the jump.

We’re thinking that people are using iPods so much, 2.2% of the huge amount of time spent with the things is still a significant number. But then, isn’t watching video on such a tiny screen a huge pain in the ass? I just spent over 50 hours in various airplanes watching all kinds of video on tiny screens, so let me tell you what I think, after the jump.

My impression of watching video on a small screen? It depends on how small that screen is and how desperate you are to be entertained. I’ve noticed that I have a personal threshold for the smallness of video that I can still enjoy. I tried a few different screen sizes in my informal field test, traveling half-way around the world and watching a lot of video. Along for the ride I had a Motorola Q which has a 2.25-inch 4×3 screen, an Archos 404 with a 3.5-inch 4×3 screen, and a Sony PSP with a 4.25-inch widescreen.
On a screen the size of the Motorola Q’s, it’s extremely hard to enjoy any sort of cinematic content, because it’s just too damn small. Trying to watch a football game in Los Angeles that I was receiving via EVDO using SlingPlayer Mobile was an exercise in futility, where the players all looked like tiny ants running around on the screen. About the only thing a screen that size is useful for is getting some talking-heads news information or something very simple. Either way, it’s hardly worth the trouble.

p://uk.gizmodo.com/archos_404aaa.jpg” width=”255″ height=”217″ />
Moving up to the next larger-size screen, the Archos 404’s 3.5-inch 4×3 screen was almost big enough for watching 4×3 content, but still leaves me wanting when watching letterboxed movies. It just seems like a waste of perfectly good video content to watch it on a screen that’s just 3.5 inches diagonal. The Archos screen had an unusually shallow viewing angle, not good if you want to watch a video with a friend. But this could have an upside, too—you won’t bother your prudish seatmate if you want to pull out that porn vid you’ve been meaning to watch but just haven’t gotten around to.

The Sony PSP is a different story. Its 16×9 screen is exceedingly sharp and is just big enough to enjoy movies. Of course, if you get suckered into buying a movie on the brain-dead UMD format, there is an upside to that: its video is exceedingly crispy-sharp. Even ripped movies from DVDs look like HDTV on this beautiful little screen. Watching movies on the PSP was far more pleasurable than with the other two examples I tried, and the audio sounds great with a decent pair of earphones, making me almost forget I was flying in a pressurized tin can six miles above the planet.

I did notice that the more desperate I got to be entertained on these interminably long flights (one was 18 hours long), the easier it was to tolerate the smaller screens. Plus, if the movie I was watching was really good, I could get so absorbed in the content that it didn’t matter much that I was only watching on a small screen. But this is only true with the PSP. Anything smaller than 4 inches, in my opinion, gets to be annoying to watch after a while, no matter what.

One other note: I found myself constantly wishing for some sort of stand or easel that could hold up each of these players on the tray table, because it gets tiresome to hold a player in your hand for hours on end while watching long movies.

Plus, when loading up the players with video, it’s quite an arduous process to convert a DVD into a movie that can be viewed on them, but that’s getting easier all the time, too.

Summing up, I believe there is a big market for location-shifting using portable video players, because people are sometimes desperate for entertainment. Plus, the threshold of pain varies from user to user; your mileage may vary. – Charlie White

Study: iPod video yet to play big [Hollywood Reporter]

By Brendan I. Koerner

Let me begin this week by paraphrasing the great customs inspector Herman Melville: Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth, whenever it is a damp and drizzly November in my soul, then I account it high time to get to 125th Street as soon as I can. For nothing puts a smile upon my face, nor sparks so many column ideas, as my travels among the ceaseless stores hawking camo coats, shea butter, faux alligator shoes, and, above all, really cheap electronics.

How cheap are we talking here? Well, I’ve waxed poetic before about 125th’s plethora of Discmen knockoffs and shelf systems that resemble Voltron’s constituent parts. But I think I discovered the strip’s cake-taker this past Saturday: a store near Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard had a sidewalk bin filled with $9.99 RCA Lyra 128 MB MP3 players.

A low price, to be sure, but a real bargain? If you break it down logically, the answer is definitely “no way.” But I can see what the store’s proprietors were thinking: they’re hoping the Bandwagon Effect will help ‘em clear some inventory. A semi-coherent definition of said effect after the jump. PLUS: The Van Morrison lyrical debate heats up!

Let’s start with a little mathematical breakdown here. Those ten-dollar Lyras are offering a meg’s worth of storage for approximately 8 cents. Compare that to this one-gig player from Kinamax, which gives you a meg for about half that price. Since features on low-end digital audio players tend to be pretty non-existent, storage capacity is the one spec that really merits attention. Better to save up $20 and go for the better bang-for-your-buck deal.

But if you’re stuck on a sub-$40 budget, does it really make sense to go all digital in the first place? The superior deal is a Discman descendent that can play MP3s. They go for about $15 nowadays, and assuming that you max out each disc to its full 700 MB capacity, that’s a real bargain—about two cents per meg. Can’t get much more low-end than that, now, can you?

Such calculations are rarely made by us cheapo consumers, however. We want something that inexpensive, sure. But rare is the bargain hunter who wants to be left in the technological dust. We know we’re not gonna be getting top-of-the-line equipment, but we also don’t want to feel we’re settling for yesterday’s news. In other words, we’ve got egos, just like the rest of humanity (save for those who’ve attained Nirvana, and the late Larry “I Had an Ego Death” Hagman).

With iPods and their ilk way out of the low-end price range—you know how long it takes me to make $200?!?!—that means we’re stuck with the likes of the Lyra. Sure, there’s a nagging internal voice that lets us know the player’s a rip-off at its core. But the temptation to join the future is strong among low-enders, even if it’s only a symbolic gesture such as rocking an MP3 player in lieu of a CD unit. And upon seeing that one can join that glorious digital future for the low, low price of $9.99, well, forgive a skinflint for experiencing a little irrational exuberance.

Alas, it’s all a mirage. Once the buzz of going purely digital wears off, one realizes that he or she’s saddled with an inferior product that earns one derision, not respect, from the geek crowd. Sort of like that time you really, really wanted some Air Jordans, but your dad bought you some counterfeit Reeboks instead—you think you’ve accrued enough footwear cache to impress your schoolyard pals, but they just end up ripping on you nonetheless. (Yes, I’m speaking from experience here.) The urge to hop on the bandwagon is quite strong, and leads to low-end consumer decisions that rarely have the intended effect. I shudder to think how many Jazz cameras have been sold to low-enders with a gleam in their eye.
Can’t blame a discount electronics merchant from trying to take advantage of this impulse, I guess. Not can I blame him for not affixing warning labels to each Lyra that read, “CAUTION: May not be as high-tech as you think, and will probably get you laughed at on the subway, thereby destroying your illusions of having joined the digital elite in some small way.” But then again, perhaps the momentary high of the purchase makes up for inevitable disappointment. For some people, ten bucks is a reasonable price to pay for a few minutes elation—an axiom that Pablo Escobar knew all too well.

MINE OR MAN: Several commenters have disputed the Van Morrison quote I cited in last week’s column. The general argument is that Van and his brown-eyed girl don’t take their transistor radio down to “the old mine”, but rather down “the old man”—”man” being slang for either a California highway or the Mississippi River.

Is there any way to settle this definitively? Does anyone know if Van ever commented on the lyrics? (Can’t say I trust lyrics sheets from any “Best of…” compilations, so please don’t cite them.) I did a little Google fight between the terms, and I still think it’s “the old mine”. I mean, hey, Van’s from Belfast, and I can totally see him and his girl drinking lager and heavy petting in some open-cast mine on the outskirts of town. Wait, does that make any sense? I’ve been to Belfast several times, and can’t remember seeing any mines, just lots of political murals and tumblers of Bushmills.

Help! Leave definitive evidence of “mine” or “man” in comments, or drop me a line. Can’t rest until I know the answer.

Brendan I. Koerner is a contributing editor at Wired and a columnist for both The New York Times and Slate. His Low End Theory column appears every Thursday on Gizmodo.

Read more Low End Theory

Now that we know what the Zune can do, let’s take a look at how big the Zune actually is compared to the iPod. You may have seen the size comparison before, but not everybody has a latest generation iPod, so here’s how the 30GB Zune stacks up to the 5G, 4G, and 3G 30GB iPods. Plus an iPod Nano thrown in for fun.

Some additional thoughts after the jump.

The Zune is taller and thicker than the current 30GB iPod, but has the same width. The Zunes didn’t feel heavy at all, and was actually pretty nice to hold. As you can see from the graphic, it took Apple a few tries to get the iPod down to 0.43-inches for a 30GB model, whereas the Zune is doing fairly well at 0.58 inches, which about the same as a 4G iPod.

Also, since this Zune is a Toshiba OEM, it’s carrying some extra weight. The second generation, in-house Zune, should shape up to be a bit slimmer. – Jason Chen

Thanks to Sizeasy!

Further reading: Zune Review, Zune Gallery.

Photo Credits Richard B, Ben Longo.

–Brian Lam

NYT Breaking News Again: Loud Music Makes You Deaf [Giz]

Photo Credits Richard B, Ben Longo.

–Brian Lam

NYT Breaking News Again: Loud Music Makes You Deaf [Giz]

Photo Credits Richard B, Ben Longo.

–Brian Lam

NYT Breaking News Again: Loud Music Makes You Deaf [Giz]

Hey, today’s the iPod’s fifth birthday, born October 23, 2001. We’d sing Happy Birthday, but copyright law prevents us from doing so unless we pay the owner of that song. So instead of crooning that hackneyed ditty, we’re going to spread the haterage about the iPod.

The iPod gets so much adoring and worshipful press—we ink-stained (pixel-stained?) wretches are fawning over it 24/7—so we figured it was high time somebody took it down a notch or two. As my Gizmodo colleagues hide in the closet, they’ve shoved me out into the limelight to take the heat, offering my Top 10 Reasons Why I Hate You, iPod. So get your flamethrowers ready. Here goes:

There’s no FM: we have some great FM stations around these parts, one jazz station in particular that I listen to all the time in the car. I can’t do that with the iPod. How much more would it cost to put FM in that thing, maybe two bucks? Get over it, put the damn receiver and there and be done with it.

More haterage, after the jump.

Scratches: Yes, the new aluminum iPod nano is allegedly scratch-resistant, but it’s retro, looking kinda like the old mini. We don’t like going backwards. Our first-gen iPod nano looked like a skating rink on day two, and we were coddling it in microfiber most of the time. What, does it have a wax coating? What good is a beautiful design that gets all scratched up if you touch it? Meh.

Battery life: We still haven’t forgotten about the first-generation iPod whose battery wore out quicker than a prematurely-ejaculating teen. Plus, it was nigh on impossible to replace there for a while. Now, the batteries still won’t last long enough, even in the newest models. There are cheap Taiwan knockoffs that last twice as long. Fix that.

DRM: Digital rights management is shit, no matter how you slice it. Sure, Apple’s DRM, called FairPlay, gives you a little more leeway, but we’d rather not have anyone telling us what we can do with music we’ve purchased. Makes us want to steal it.

iTunes is janky: iTunes is weird, and although we have no trouble using it, we’re getting tired of teaching our grandparents all of its intricacies. We thought this was Apple, where everyone could use it and it would be easy. iTunes is not easy enough, and doesn’t follow Windows conventions closely enough.

No Bluetooth: How hard can it be to put Bluetooth in the iPod? Then we could get rid of all those wires with their auto-tangle feature, seemingly wrapping around themselves while you’re not looking, requiring an untangling session a few times a day. Bring on the Bluetooth.

Thief magnet: This is not really the iPod’s fault, but the damn things are so popular, if you’re wearing white earphones, you might as well have just painted a big target on your back. At least release some official black Apple iPod earbuds, or various colors…? Maybe that’ll throw the muggers off for a little while.

My kid wants a new one every six months: Steve Jobs himself talked about how iPods must often be replaced. Sure, any consumer electronics device that’s cutting edge will be obsolete quickly, but at least you can make them less appealing to my kid, whose nagging me for a new one on a regular basis.

No widescreen: You’re making the mistake of the Microsoft Zune, sticking with that old-fashioned 4×3 aspect ratio. We want wide screen; that’s the way of the future. While you’re at it, give us better than 640×480 video on iTunes.

No WiFi: speaking of Zune, you could’ve put WiFi on the iPod a long time ago, and not crippled it seven ways to Sunday, too, as Microsoft is about to do. Another missed opportunity.

Oh well, happy birthday anyway, iPod. – Charlie White

Hey, today’s the iPod’s fifth birthday, born October 23, 2001. We’d sing Happy Birthday, but copyright law prevents us from doing so unless we pay the owner of that song. So instead of crooning that hackneyed ditty, we’re going to spread the haterage about the iPod.

The iPod gets so much adoring and worshipful press—we ink-stained (pixel-stained?) wretches are fawning over it 24/7—so we figured it was high time somebody took it down a notch or two. As my Gizmodo colleagues hide in the closet, they’ve shoved me out into the limelight to take the heat, offering my Top 10 Reasons Why I Hate You, iPod. So get your flamethrowers ready. Here goes:

There’s no FM: we have some great FM stations around these parts, one jazz station in particular that I listen to all the time in the car. I can’t do that with the iPod. How much more would it cost to put FM in that thing, maybe two bucks? Get over it, put the damn receiver and there and be done with it.

More haterage, after the jump.

Scratches: Yes, the new aluminum iPod nano is allegedly scratch-resistant, but it’s retro, looking kinda like the old mini. We don’t like going backwards. Our first-gen iPod nano looked like a skating rink on day two, and we were coddling it in microfiber most of the time. What, does it have a wax coating? What good is a beautiful design that gets all scratched up if you touch it? Meh.

Battery life: We still haven’t forgotten about the first-generation iPod whose battery wore out quicker than a prematurely-ejaculating teen. Plus, it was nigh on impossible to replace there for a while. Now, the batteries still won’t last long enough, even in the newest models. There are cheap Taiwan knockoffs that last twice as long. Fix that.

DRM: Digital rights management is shit, no matter how you slice it. Sure, Apple’s DRM, called FairPlay, gives you a little more leeway, but we’d rather not have anyone telling us what we can do with music we’ve purchased. Makes us want to steal it.

iTunes is janky: iTunes is weird, and although we have no trouble using it, we’re getting tired of teaching our grandparents all of its intricacies. We thought this was Apple, where everyone could use it and it would be easy. iTunes is not easy enough, and doesn’t follow Windows conventions closely enough.

No Bluetooth: How hard can it be to put Bluetooth in the iPod? Then we could get rid of all those wires with their auto-tangle feature, seemingly wrapping around themselves while you’re not looking, requiring an untangling session a few times a day. Bring on the Bluetooth.

Thief magnet: This is not really the iPod’s fault, but the damn things are so popular, if you’re wearing white earphones, you might as well have just painted a big target on your back. At least release some official black Apple iPod earbuds, or various colors…? Maybe that’ll throw the muggers off for a little while.

My kid wants a new one every six months: Steve Jobs himself talked about how iPods must often be replaced. Sure, any consumer electronics device that’s cutting edge will be obsolete quickly, but at least you can make them less appealing to my kid, whose nagging me for a new one on a regular basis.

No widescreen: You’re making the mistake of the Microsoft Zune, sticking with that old-fashioned 4×3 aspect ratio. We want wide screen; that’s the way of the future. While you’re at it, give us better than 640×480 video on iTunes.

No WiFi: speaking of Zune, you could’ve put WiFi on the iPod a long time ago, and not crippled it seven ways to Sunday, too, as Microsoft is about to do. Another missed opportunity.

Oh well, happy birthday anyway, iPod. – Charlie White