Microsoft made the Zune because partner hardware "sucks"

Thanks to yet another Microsoft antitrust suit in Iowa, subpoenaed emails have revealed a moment of candidness and clarity at Microsoft in 2003 when Jim Allchin (Co-President, Platforms & Services Division, depicted left) and Amir Majidimehr (Corporate Vice President, Consumer Media Technology Group) had an email thread that basically summarized the portable media device playing field then, and for the most part, now. Some choice quites from the email back-and-forth:

Jim: title "sucking on media players"; regarding a current Creative player (probably a Nomad, perhaps a Zen Touch): "My goodness it's terrible... What I don't understand though is I was told the new Creative Labs device would be comparable to Apple. That is so not the case."
Amir: "Now you feel our pain." He suggests giving cash bonuses for partners that come up with decent devices. In the instance that doesn't work: "it is time for us to roll up our sleeves and do our own hardware."

And of course so they did, with great hype and great failure to immediately capture market share, the Zune was born many years later -- far too late by most accounts, but hey, you've gotta start somewhere. Still, it's funny to think that for these guys rolling up their sleeves and doing their own hardware means taking an off the shelve portable media OS (PMC 2), getting Toshiba to make a modified Gigabeat, and cutting some seriously anti-consumer deals with major labels.

HD DVD Turns It Up To 51GB With Triple Layer Goodness

We don't know what we were expecting the specs on the AppleTV to be—nothing extraordinary, we're sure—but what we see now is kind of deflating. The ATV has a 1.0GHz Pentium M-based chip which is down-clocked for a 350MHz bus and has 2MB of L2 cache. Not the type of powerhouse you'd want to hack and put Linux on. The peripherals aren't that impressive either. There's a 40GB, 2.5-inch PATA hard disk, an nVidia G72M with 64MB of DDR2 RAM, 256MB of 400MHz DDR2 main system RAM, and 802.11n compatibility (it works with Airport Extreme). We suppose the meager specs are why the machine costs only $299, but it makes us wonder how well it'll handle Apple's 1080 HD trailers.

Sex sells but not on Blu-Ray

The deciding factor in the case of HD DVD vs. Blu-ray may be this: who will work with the porn industry?

According to some bloggers, the makers of X-rated material are leaning toward HD DVD, saying Blu-ray is too expensive and doesn't have the market share.

And that may be the way top Blu-ray backer Sony wants it. A leading porn director told German news site Heise that Blu-ray manufacturers in the U.S. had told him Sony would pull their Blu-ray licenses if they made porn films.

Blog community response:

"It does not matter how you stand to porn. It is here and it is a massive business. It is also an industry that is an early adopter for new media technology. VHS might not have won with out the adult film industry adopting it."
--SGKnox.com

"Porn was a huge factor in VHS winning the VHS/Beta format wars even though many people don't like to acknowledge it. Porn, like gaming, pushes tech adoption."
--kdawson on Slashdot

"I've tried my best to avoid making cheap Betamax/Blue-ray comparisons, because I thought it pigeonholed a new technology that had promise but little real world exposure. This comparison, however, is an unavoidable direct parallel. At this point the story is still rumor...and I really can't imagine Sony making the same mistake twice."
--Gizmodo

LG is about to get it right...

So LG has announced their dual-format HD DVD/Blu-ray player? Fantastic. Time Warner goes so far as to create dual-format discs? Pop open the bubbly. But you know something? It didn't take long for my initial feeling of elation to give way to 100% certified organic bile.

Absolutely none of this was necessary. Remember DVD, the little media format that could (and turns ten in a few months)? It seems like ancient history now, but it took some time for the various companies to agree on a single format back then. While it's something of a cliché to mention the Betamax/VHS videocassette format war these days, in the mid-1990s Sony had only just closed up the Betamax shop. I'd like to think that, with Sony still smarting, retailers unhappily clearing out excess Betamax stock and Betamax owners angrily trying to figure out what to do with their machines and tapes, the companies realized things go a lot smoother when everyone agrees at the outset.

It's hard to argue with the result. The DVD format was adopted pretty quickly and has gone on to remake the movie and home video industries; and we've now gotten to the point where DVD utterly dominates the home video landscape.

Then, just in case anyone though that was DVD's uptake was a fluke, there came the DVD+R/DVD-R debacle, where consumers had to decide which format they'd commit their data or video archives to. When Sony came out with the first multi-format burners, consumers breathed a collective sigh of relief.

All of which is a roundabout way of saying that the entertainment and tech industries had plenty of evidence to show that just agreeing on a single format is best for everyone involved, saving a lot of time, energy and money. But no, they had to go off into their separate rooms, and the results of that intransigence -- including the eventual appearance of dual-format players -- were predictable.

Years ago, Simpsons creator Matt Groening related his frustration with trying to make a Simpsons movie in the nineties. As he related it, during one of the meetings with all the%

LG's Super Multi Blue GGW-H10N: a Blu-ray writer and HD DVD reader for the PC

LG is all over the dual-format optical game this next week. In addition to the HD DVD + Blu-ray combo player they just announced, they also touting a new Super Multi Blue dual-format drive for PCs. Not only will the GGW-H10N playback your Blu-ray Disc, DVD, CD, and HD DVD media, it'll also record -- yes record -- up to 50GB of data to dual-layer BD-R/BD-RE media. You also get 4x recording to 25GB single-layer BD-R discs -- doubling the industry's standard rate. The drive is also the first to support "SecurDisc" technology co-developed with Nero. That gives you the ability to secure your burns with password encryption, digital signature, checksum integrity checker for sharing data securely and with peace of mind. Expect the new drive to ship before March in the US for about $1,200 -- a worthwhile, convenience premium when compared to purchasing a $760 dual-layer Blu-ray burner and $199 Xbox 360 HD DVD drive (and all appropriately applied magic) separately. No pictures yet (that's their older, Blu-ray burner pictured) but will slap one up as soon LG sees fit to release them

Toshiba unveils SD-H903A HD DVD burner for PCs

Hot on the heels of all this last minute, pre-CES HD DVD-related action is the SD-H903A, which Toshiba touts as "the world's first dedicated PC-based HD DVD burner" that writes "to all main optical discs." Aside from the obvious (albeit expected) hand-to-the-face to BD-Rs in that last claim, the burner does manage to write nicely to HD DVD-R (single and dual-layer at a measly 1x), DVD +/- R, DVD-RAM, DVD +/- RW, CD-R, and CD-RW. Additionally, it'll include an 8MB buffer, and if all goes well, should play back all your precious HD DVD titles without complication. While we've no idea how much coinage will be required to pick this (admittedly sluggish) drive up, sample shipments are scheduled to take off this month, and we should get a good look at just what it's capable of at next week's CES.

Toshiba to Roll Out Cheaper HD DVD Players Next Week?

Toshiba is taking the gloves off next week at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, where the company might introduce a third line of HD DVD players that will be even cheaper than its current versions. Toshiba chief Yoshihide Fujii offers this tantalizing hint: "At first I thought the price threshold is $499. Maybe coming next is $399 and after that is $299."

Perhaps Fujii isn't aware that Toshiba's much-improved HD-A2 player (pictured above), released a couple of months ago, can now be found on the web for $399. But that $299 price could be a number that opens the floodgates for HD DVD player sales. We'll be at Toshiba's CES press conference on January 7, and we'll bring you details as they happe