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Switched On: The 2007 Switchies, Home Products
Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about technology, multimedia, and digital entertainment. The last Switched On presented the Switchie awards for portable products. This special edition of Switched On highlights the award winners for home products. The "Hi-Def Heaven" and the Home Product of the Year goes to the TiVo HD. It's not so much that TiVo's DVR functionality has advanced to become that much more compelling than those of cable-supplied DVRs. However, TiVo has evolved into a jack-of-all-trades that integrates traditional programming sources with Internet content and even homebrew applications when it has access to a PC. TiVo also wins points for enabling the Lifetime Subscription Transfer option, which unfortunately does not enable the reincarnated to take TiVo into their next lifetime.The "Great Googoloplex" award goes to Vudu Labs' Vudu for a device that virtually obsoletes the video rental store, offering thousands of movies with instant access and an expedient way to navigate around them. Honorable mentions in the broadband set-top box category go to Apple TV and the Netgear EVA8000 -- the former for integrating a sync-and-store process that removes the vagaries of network performance and the latter for its support of high-definition content and Internet services.The "Blue in the Face" award goes to Samsung for the Samsung BP-U5000 dual format Blu-ray and HD-DVD player for its attempt at reconciling the high-def disc format wars. The player's embrace of both camps' interactivity standards and lower introductory price has lent strength to the argument that two formats are sustainable.
Switched On: The 2006 Switchies -- Home Products
Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about technology, multimedia, and digital entertainment: Last year marked the first annual Saluting Wares Improving Technology's Contribution to Humanity awards, also known by its laboriously contrived simpler name, the Switchies. The Switchies honor some of the year's best products by coming up with a category to fit them into, since great products often break out of the accepted boundaries. This year saw so many product introductions that I'll be covering the awards in two columns, focusing on home and portable products. With that said, let's roll out the red carpet for the former: The "Setting Things in Motion" award (and Device of the Year) goes to the Nintendo Wii. Navigating between the Scylla of Sony and the Charybdis of Microsoft and accused of relying too heavily on its stable of retro-friendly character franchises, Nintendo built upon its maverick strategy success with the Nintendo DS to buck the trend of the graphics wars. It also followed my advice to bundle in Wii Sports with the console. Company insiders admit that they wish they could have accommodated high-definition graphics with the Wii, and it remains to be seen whether gamers will tire (perhaps physically) of the novelty offered by the Wiimote control scheme. For now, though, Nintendo has not only recaptured the respect of its rivals, but is offering innovation at a price that resonates with the sweet spot of where the console market has long been. The Wii's channels and WiiConnect24 features could achieve everything from an affordable way to get photos to grandma to the functionality of WebTV without the monthly fee.
