ross rubin
Latest
Switched On: Battling the boombox bust
Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about technology, multimedia, and digital entertainment: While portable digital audio player sales have soared over the past three years, sales of other audio components have seen double-digit declines in the same period. The CD has not only reached saturation, but has proven a beast to manage in a music library. Home audio components such as receivers and floor-standing speakers have taken refuge in the audiophile-friendly confines of specialty retailers, while the low end of the market has to some extent done the same in the bargain basements of mass merchants. That low end has has the following hierarchy – shelf systems at the top, boomboxes in the middle and clock radio at the bottom. Last year's Brookstone SongCube (pictured at right) was one of the few shelf systems to include a hard drive. However, the boombox has been even slower to come into the digital age as a standalone music device even though several models – even inexpensive ones – have MP3-CD capabilities. Clock radios lack even these, although there is an MP3 alarm clock offered in Europe that can use SD cards In addition, of the three, boomboxes are most apt to be used outdoors, and have not been hit as hard by the iPod as portable CD players have been..
Switched On: Apple TV deletes DMA deficiencies
Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about technology, multimedia, and digital entertainment: When Apple first released details about what is now called Apple TV, I wrote that it would create a DVR dilemma for the Cupertino company, one that it decided by bypassing DVR functionality (at least for now). The result will be a product that avoids many setup foibles and complexities of digital video recorders while allowing use of the increasingly versatile streamlined Apple Remote. There are three main reasons why Apple's digital media adapter will trump its predecessors, but it may not yet be enough to catapult digital content into the living room the way the iPod did into our pockets. First from a technology perspective, Apple TV is one of the first digital media adapters to support the draft 802.11n standard. If the PCs from which it is obtaining media also have this fast a connection, Apple TV should be able to obtain digital content much faster than previous products. 802.11n should certainly be fast enough for standard-definition compressed video and reliable enough to carry movie trailers from Apple's Web site without stuttering.
Switched On: Come together... but not in 2007
Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about technology, multimedia, and digital entertainment:
