Digital Home Thoughts - News & Reviews for the Digital Home

"It may have been a bad idea to begin with and Dell finally seems to have realized it. The company says it has now abandoned plans to launch a digital media player tied to an online store. Dell had planned to launch a MP3 player this year that could potentially compete with Apple's iconic iPod line and Microsoft's struggling Zune player. But the company could have done well to learn from Microsoft's experience with the Zune before it started on its venture."

Oh un-named Dell music player...we hardly knew ye! I can't say I'm all that surprised at this - in order to compete with the iPod, a music player needs to have great hardware and great software...and when's the last time you saw Dell crank out any great software? Yeah, exactly. The Zune is a credible option to the iPod because it has quality hardware, and a solid desktop software experience. I can't see Dell doing anything in this market to compete with either the iPod, or even the Zune.

"First, Intel decided to go with Linux for its MIDs, and now it's giving the bird to Microsoft again by revealing a contender to the Zune's social music aspect. TuneWiki, a “social media player” software based on Intel's Atom processor integrates music and video with synchronized lyrics and a social network. Besides using a wiki-based community to contribute content, TuneWiki also displays real-time music popularity lists, the locations of other TuneWiki users based on your favorite songs and artists, and the ability to check out music from other countries with translated lyrics. It's an interesting new app for the (MID-using) international crowd, but will it take off States-side?"

Although I've had my doubts about the social aspects of the Zune, the fact that it is getting copied leads me to believe that they might just be on to something.

DecalGirl has been around for a while now providing high quality skins for your various gadgets. When I was looking for a way to dress up my Asus Eee PC, they were my first stop. I was pleased to see that they offered 55 different designs for the Eee. They've got designs to suit most tastes and the coordinate nicely with both the black and white models. I chose the “Bones” skin pictured above. After the break, we'll will get it installed and see how it looks on my black Eee. Read more...

"Microsoft's just slapped together a pair of special edition Zunes for both the Republican and the Democratic National Conventions and they look pretty damn great. The one for the DNC is awarded for the winner of the "Green Delegate Challenge", which is contest for delegations that "demonstrate the highest level of commitment to offsetting their carbon footprint from attending the Convention.". Theirs has a nice looking tree on the back. The RNC's, on the other hand, just has the blurb about environmental stuff as well as the picture of the RNC logo. Oh, and it's red, not green."

As we reported back in April, Microsoft is going to have quite a big presence at the 2008 US conventions, with Surface tables and customized Zunes aplenty. This is an interesting strategy in tying these currently "hot" events into Microsoft's hipper product lines, and it's something you definitely wouldn't see Apple trying to do, but is it the right move?

Click through to Mobility Site to see both of the designs in full.

"Why is DRM so contentious? Surely it's designed to protect the rights of artists and record companies in a climate where, as one international music industry body claims, illegal downloads swamp legitimate music store downloads by a ratio of 20 to 1? The problem is DRM doesn't affect the pirates, who upload and download DRM-free files often ripped directly from CD. Instead, it affects legitimate buyers in a range of deeply irritating ways. The first roadblock comes down to Gates' talk of "simplicity" and "interoperability", or rather the lack of both"

I think most people who know anything about DRM hate it. They hate dealing with the limitations of the technology, both intentionally built-in or as a direct result of poor technical planning/implementation. Unlike a good protection scheme which is invisible to the end user, DRM is too limiting to the average customer, and does nothing to stop hardcore music pirates. Plus, when a store goes down and its licenses stop renewing, the customer is the real loser. Sure you can burn your songs to a CD and re-rip them (or do it virtually), but the process is time-consuming and you lose audio fidelity. Another option is to free your purchased music using tools like FairUse4WM (above) or Hymn, or just buy DRM-free in the first place. Check out the article if you need yet another reason to hate DRM.

"Use with any audio source that uses a 1/8"(3.5mm) headphone jack-iPod, Sansa, Zune, portable CD players, you name it. Recharge iTrip universal's internal battery in any USB port (no more replacing batteries!), then connect to your player with the included stereo audio cable. Three user-programmable presets save the best frequencies so you can access them quickly later. User selectable stereo/mono output. Wherever you go, iTrip Universal is the perfect partner for your portable audio."

If you want to broadcast the audio from your MP3 player, phone, or anything with with a 3.5mm headphone jack to a nearby FM radio, this looks like a great solution. The battery in the iTrip Universal is only 180 mAh though, so I take their statement of being able to broadcast for "hours" to mean "more than one hour". It's a bit surprising they don't have an actual rating for the battery life.

"It may be hard to believe, but from what we've now heard from multiple sources, it's true: the fourth-generation iPod nano will look like... a Microsoft Zune. Well, sort of. Contradicting speculation that Apple was planning to transform the new nano into a miniature iPod touch, complete with a smaller touchscreen, we've been told that this year's nano upgrade will go in a different direction. Described by one source as looking like "a Zune Flash... or whatever it's called," the new nano has a vertically (tall) oriented display with a Click Wheel underneath, preserving the button-based control scheme that users have found easiest to use without looking down at the screen. The new nano's screen will gain the same 1.5:1 widescreen aspect ratio as the iPhone and iPod touch, versus the 1.33:1 ratio of the prior iPod nano and iPod classic, and you'll rotate the device to watch videos on it."

Does this surprise anyone else? It doesn't surprise me. The design of the Nano "fatty" never seemed particularly appealing to me - the screen was too small to be useful for, well, really anything. And it's not like the second generation Nano was too big - I liked the design it quite a bit, which is why I like the design of the Zune 4/8 so much. It's a nice balance of screen size and functionality, and about the only way I'd improve the outer design of the Zune 4/8 would be to make the screen bigger, nixing that huge bezel. I'm not convinced that a wide-screen aspect ratio screen is appropriate for a device this size - what do you think? I really want to see the Zune 80 gain a wide-aspect ratio, WVGA resolution screen, but on a device as small as the Zune 4/8...would you want to watch movies on it?