Today’s post is different. Today is about the Google Android Operating System and specifically the Motorola Milestone (Canadian cousin of the Motorola Droid). This is my first product review, and the only reason that I’m giving it is that I bought this phone for my own personal use and have been using it for several months now.

I’m providing this review, not as an attempt to provide an unbiased snapshot of a product, but to provide an admittedly biased, personal view of a product that I’ve found that fits my needs. Take it with a grain of salt, and remember that this is the phone I recommended for myself after exhaustive research, but it might not be the right phone for you. There are also newer phones out, that I would buy instead, had they been available way back when.

I’m ready to give my opinion on the operating system and the specific phone. I’m going to begin by describing the criteria I used to choose a phone, and then how the phone I bought does or doesn’t live up to my expectations.

What I Wanted in a Phone

I need a cell phone for my job. I do a lot of travelling around and meeting with people. Staying connected is important, and I wanted people to be able to phone me or email me and be sure I’d get the message wherever I was.

I wanted a device that I could load audio, audiobooks and video onto, and be able to play media on a nice, clear screen. I wanted a device that could map locations and present information about geographic data.

I wanted a device that is simple, intuitive, and put together well. I wanted a device that had wifi and a good Internet experience. I wanted a device with a physical keyboard, because I really didn’t trust on-screen keyboards to be able to do the job.

I had a bias toward Google Android products as I began. I had heard a lot about this new phone operating system, and I wanted it to live up to the hype. I was particularly excited about the potential for a free turn-by-turn car-navigation program provided by Google.

Shopping

I was amazed when I began looking around at the phones available on the market, how few of them met my criteria. I have high standards, it’s true, but there were very few phones that were capable of doing what I wanted them to do. I fairly quickly narrowed my list to three possibilities:

1. The Palm Pre
2. The iPhone
3. The Motorola Droid

Two of the three were available in Canada when I began looking. The Droid wasn’t, and still isn’t, because in Canada Motorola now offers the Milestone instead. It’s a cousin of the Droid. Same hardware and form factor, with slightly different software and features.

I liked the Palm Pre. I thought it might win out at first. I’ve owned many Palm products in the past and have always liked them. Unfortunately, it soon became clear that Palm’s marketing efforts weren’t going to be able to get them back into contention. The iPhone and Android were going to be the two heavyweights and Palm, I’m sorry to say, comes up a little short. I would be very happy to be proved wrong. I really like Palm, and I hope they can get back in the game.

I was biased against the iPhone from the beginning, I’m afraid. Both of my brothers are Mac guys, and I just can’t picture myself on the other side. I like the iPhone. I was impressed with it, but I was glad not to have to buy one. Also, it didn’t have a physical keyboard, which concerned me.

The reason that I went with the Android operating system is the same as why I’ve always bought PCs. Android is produced by many different manufacturers, all of them working with a unified OS that I can easily upgrade. And, it had all the things I was looking for, although if I’m really honest, some of the things I was looking for I was only interested in because I knew they were available because of the Android OS.

The Android OS has been out for more than a year now, and there are phones from a lot of different manufacturers available. But, none of the phones that have come out thus far have really made me confident that they can live up to the hype.

The Droid was the first phone that really made me believe it was possible for an Android phone to live up to what was promised. Since I made my purchase, the Google Nexus One has come out, and there’s no question in my mind I’d take a Nexus One over my Milestone. The Droid X is about to be released, and I expect it will easily move into the top spot on my wishlist over the Nexus One.

I think Android is the future, and that’s why I bought one for my own use.

What I Like:

I like the screen. It’s bright and clear, and it adjusts to the appropriate level of brightness automatically.

I like the Operating System. It’s simple, it’s functional, it’s speedy, and it makes sense. I didn’t need to spend long getting used to this phone. A few things weren’t intuitive for me, but I was up to speed in five minutes and had everything figured out within the day.

I like the Apps. The Android Marketplace has thousands of useful and clever applications, many of which are free. Most of those that do cost money cost less than $5 and often have a free ‘lite’ version you can try out and keep if it does all you need it to.

One of the Apps I use is a guitar tuner. I’d have to pay $50 to get a good guitar tuner, but this one that I downloaded for free does an excellent job. Other apps suggest local restaurants, let me edit Word documents, or do something silly like light saber sound effects.

I like the Internet. Wifi is easy to set up. The browser that ships with the Milestone allows ‘pinch and pull’ zooming, which is great. That feature is really crippled throughout the Android OS for fear of lawsuits, but it’s nice to be able to use it at least on the browser. I’ve recently tried the beta of the Opera browser, and it is amazingly fast on this phone.

I like the Maps. Google Maps is great, and being able to access it wherever I happen to be is fantastic.

I like the Onscreen Keyboard. I would have assumed that I would always be pulling out the real keyboard, but have been surprised how quickly I got comfortable with the onscreen version. I had heard that the Droid didn’t have ‘pop-up’ indicators to tell you which button you had pressed, but the Milestone does. I guess they figured they could get away with it in Canada, but might be sued in the US by the friendly folks at Apple for being too much like the iPhone. I still do use the full keyboard for longer messages and like it, but I’m comfortable with both keyboards, which really surprised me.

What I Don’t Like:

I don’t like that Google Nav was delayed in Canada. One of the key features I was looking forward to in this phone was the GPS navigation. In Canada, every GPS needs to be bi-lingual capable, and it took Google a while to get the French language figured out. Until they did, they were unable to provide the service. Fortunately, it’s now available, but the months spent waiting with no idea of the timetable and no hints when the product might be ready were frustrating, and par for the course with Google. They don’t under-promise, they don’t over-promise, they don’t promise at all. But they do deliver…eventually.

I don’t like that the auto-correct always moves my colons when I try to make a smiley face. I attempt to do a smiley face but auto-correct turns it into a garble by moving the colon to before the space: )   A small annoyance, but you would think someone would have tuned the auto-correct to deal with such a commonly-used combination of symbols.

The slider keyboard, which was a major factor in making my purchase decision, has started to get just a little bit loose. I’ve had the unit 6 months, which is about 1/6th it’s expected life. It’s nowhere near breaking, but it’s loose enough that I have started to go easy on it, for fear it might wear out before the rest of the unit. Had I to do it all again, I would certainly go with a phone with no physical keyboard. Ironically, the one thing that I absolutely insisted on to begin with may wind up being the thing I most regret insisting on.

I disliked the lack of Audible support for the Android OS, but I have good news. I happen to be a part of the beta-testing program for an Audible player for Android, and I can report that good progress is being made. I have no insight as to when a final product might be released to the general public, but I can testify that the team is working hard and the product is stable, which it wasn’t when I joined a little over a month ago. I think it’s possible they’ll have something ready by Fall 2010, and would be very surprised if it wasn’t ready before the end of 2010.

I don’t like the long delay in providing OS upgrades. Telus still hasn’t pushed out Android OS 2.2 Froyo to Milestone owners as of this writing, and it’s been available for some time on other handsets. I don’t know what the hold-up is, but I’m eager to get my hands on the new OS, and annoyed at the delay.

Conclusions

Knowing what I know now, I would still have picked up a Motorola Milestone when I did. Looking back, it was months before something was available that was compellingly superior, and then I would have paid a steep premium for it.

I would have preferred to be able to wait for the Nexus One, with it’s processor that runs at twice the speed. I would have preferred to wait for the Droid X, with it’s faster processor and dedicated graphics memory, but I needed a phone when I needed a phone, and given the options available at the time, I’m confident that I made the best choice for my needs of the available options.

I hope some day to upgrade to some super-snazzy new Android device which blows away anything on the market today. In the meantime, I’ll just be drooling over the Milestone X when it’s finally available for sale up here in Canada (sigh) until I can convince my wife my Milestone deserves a proper burial, and I can justify an expenditure on the latest and greatest once more. Then, I will exit the store, hold aloft the best mobile phone I can eke out of my budget and glory in the technological awesomeness… for the entire three weeks it takes until something new comes out that makes it seem old and out-dated.

Last Time, Our Blu Hero was…

Last time I made some predictions about the future of Blu-ray, I set some specific targets I saw as the direction that Blu-ray needed to move,  in order to enjoy some success. I said that if there was a $5 difference in the price of media and a $50 difference in the price of players, then it would be a no-brainer for the typical consumer to pay a little more for a jump in quality. I didn’t think people would pay double for better quality, though, which was where we were when I made that prediction. And yet the times, they are a-changin’.

Recently, I was at a store. I won’t say which one, but it rhymes with Bostco. This store often has high-end merchandise, but only high-end merchandise for which there is strong demand. This store doesn’t go in for fads on things like movies, it waits until there is an established market. Blu-rays have been on the market for years, but this store didn’t until very recently sell movies on Blu-ray, although they have sold the players for several years. This store typically sells DVDs of older movies for $10-$12. When I saw that they had Blu-ray versions of some movies for $15, I knew that the price barrier had finally been broken and things were looking up for Blu-ray.

While media is adopting appropriate mass-consumer pricing, its still hard to find a Blu-ray player at a reasonable price. Players can be found for as little as $199, but that’s still a hefty premium over a bottom-of-the-barrel DVD player, as those start at around $50. Blu-ray Players still need to drop another $50-100. If they hit $100 by Christmas, almost everyone will find one under the tree, and Sony’s gambles will have paid off. It’s been a rough road, Blu-ray, but I think you’re gonna make it after all.

What is refurb?

There are a number of reasons why a machine might be marked refurbished. It might be that the item was returned to the store and sent back to the factory. As someone who worked on a return desk, I could tell lots of stories about items that were returned for no reason, or at least no good reason. If the factory determines that nothing is wrong with the item or that the problem can be easily corrected, then they will simply repackage the item and ship it back out as a refurb.

Sometimes an item is marked refurbished because it was damaged in shipping or while on the sales floor, and the damage is only cosmetic. A product can also be sold as refurbished because it was a demonstration unit. Clearance merchandise that hasn’t been sold or damaged can sometimes be marked as refurbished as well.

Whatever the reason it was marked down, refurbished equipment can be a good buy. It helps stores and manufacturers recover the cost of returned items and it can mean a great deal for you.

What you need to watch out for

Most stores have a different return policy for refurbished items. The return may be exchange-only, the window of time for returns may be shorter, or the item may not be returnable at all. Be sure you understand how the store handles refurbished returns and how they may differ from the store’s normal return policy.

Sometimes a store will sell refurbished equipment alongside the new stuff. This is an excellent opportunity to compare prices and return policies. For example, an MP3 player that would normally be $100 with a one month return policy compared with a refurb for $30 and an exchange-only return allowed for one week. Clearly the price is right, and if you aren’t picky, then this might be a fairly obvious choice. But, if you buy the unit and realize later that it doesn’t have a function you consider crucial or it doesn’t perform as you want it to, you might regret spending your $30 on something you’re not happy with.

Buying refurb makes sense when:

1. You’re sure about what you want and know that this model is the right one
2. There’s a deep discount in the price
3. You are comfortable with the return or exchange time frame
4. You don’t care about imperfections or cosmetic damage
5. You’re comfortable with the store’s reputation
6. They have several refurb items in stock, allowing you to choose the best of what’s available

I have purchased many refurbished items over the years. I tend to buy refurbished for items that I want but don’t need. When I’m buying something that I really rely on or a product that I don’t know much about, I tend to opt for new unless the discount is really deep.

The store you’re shopping at also makes a difference. If it’s a store that I shop at regularly, I’m more likely to trust the items they put on refurb. Putting an item on refurb is a judgement call on behalf of the store, and you want to make sure you’re shopping at a place where they exercise good judgement. A store with nothing to lose in terms of their reputation has no incentive to avoid unloading their junk on you.

There have been a few times that I’ve bought a refurbished product that I was unhappy with, but the same could be said of my new purchases as well. It can be easy to blame my dissatisfaction on the fact that the item is refurb, when it just might be that I got suckered by clever marketing on a substandard product.

Buying refurb doesn’t always make sense, but there are times when the deal is too good to walk away.

TV Channel Websites

Many television channels now have websites which distribute television programs over the Internet. Miss a show? Want to catch up before the next episode airs? Check out the channel’s website and you may be able to find the show you missed. The video players used tend to be somewhat clunky and not a very good experience. They’re usable, but only on your computer, not your TV. It’s funny, because these companies are flirting with distributing via the web, but it doesn’t seem like they want to make it so good and so convenient that it detracts from traditional television watching.

The real area where television is getting TV online right is talent reality TV shows. These TV shows are getting very proactive about putting their own content on Youtube. They’ve realized the value of letting anyone get access an entertaining clip from the previous night’s show of a dance, song or stupid pet trick. If someone who watched the show points out that clip to a friend who missed it, the friend who missed it is more likely to watch the show next week. For these televised talent shows which have very short runs to build an audience, free online content is an excellent way to build buzz and sustain interest between their runs.

Subscription Services

Subscription services began by offering DVDs sent through the mail. Pay a monthly fee, and set up a list of movies you want to watch. They mail you a few DVDs. You watch them, and mail them back. As soon as they receive the old one back, they send out a new one. It is an interesting model that challenged the traditional store movie rental paradigm.

Still, if you want to watch a particular movie tonight, a mail-based service doesn’t help so much. The obvious next step would be to offer the same monthly-subscription service, but instead of mailing out DVDs and receiving them back, just deliver the content over the Internet. No waiting, no hassle. It’s even more convenient than the store rental model, as long as you’re willing to watch content on a computer, not a TV. The ideal would be to be able to watch content from the Internet right on your TV. To make that happen for the non-technically inclined, you need some sort of device to gather the content and present it on your TV with all the ease and comfort of your cable service. We call that sort of device a ’set top box’.

Set Top Box

Devices to make it easier to play content on your TV are becoming common. Starting below three figures, these devices collect video off the Internet and format it properly for your TV. Some of these device-makers have arrangements with subscription services to provide content. So, these inexpensive  convenient devices allow you to watch what you want when you want it without hassle or delay on your TV.

Internet Enabled TVs

Some new TVs that are coming out skip the set top box and build the functionality to pull video off the Internet right into the TV itself. These are TVs that can surf the web and play video content from subscription service providers.

I would be hesitant to jump into one of these TVs with Internet built in too early over concerns about upgradability. The advantage of sticking with a set-top box for now is that if the technology changes or advances, you can just buy a new box and you’ve only wasted the $100 it cost to buy the box. Buying a whole TV that includes a service that becomes obsolete becomes a very expensive proposition. Not that I’m expecting these services to fail necessarily. I would only recommend these devices for early-adopters who need the latest and greatest and can afford to gamble with such a large purchase.

MiniDV

MiniDV, or Miniature Digital Video, was a breakthrough for home video enthusiasts. The format used analog tapes, but encoded a digital signal. This is like the old style modems that sent a digital signal over telephone lines. When it first connected, you heard that series of squeals and beeps that was the sound of digital information being communicated in an audible format. These cameras are all able to transfer video to a computer through a Firewire cable. This technology ushered in the era of desktop video publishing. Software to edit video has become a standard feature for operating systems, and many excellent software video editing packages are available at a reasonable cost.

MiniDV is on the way out as a standard format, and the cameras are starting to get rare in stores. But, no other format has emerged which completely surpasses MiniDV in every respect. Every other format that has come out since MiniDV is also digital, but instead of storing a digital signal on an analog medium, the new formats store a digital signal on a digital medium, like a Hard Drive or Flash Memory. This makes a difference, because analog tapes have way more room for information than a Hard Drive or Flash Memory. That means that MiniDV required very little compression to make things fit. It’s able to store video information that hasn’t been shrunk down to a lower quality. Newer formats, because they have less space to work with, need to compress video down to fit onto a digital medium.

Compressed video isn’t a problem if all you want to do is play the video back. But, if you want to edit the video, then that compression means that you have less raw material to work with. When you apply effects and transitions, a compressed signal is not going to produce as nice a picture as raw video. For most people who just want to capture video of the kids as home movies, this isn’t a serious issue, but if you want to make a short film, you might want to pay attention to how much compression your video camera is putting on the video you capture, and what options the camera has to reduce that level of compression if you want video that is higher quality.

MiniDV tapes can stretch or become caught in the camera mechanism, but on the whole it is still a good option for Standard Definition, because it stores uncompressed video on an inexpensive medium, and the cameras are getting dirt cheap…if you can still find them.

Mini DVD

Mini DVD, which annoyingly has almost the same name as MiniDV, is an all-digital format. DVDs are highly compressed, and the minature discs don’t hold a lot of video. This format is most suitable for those who do not wish to edit video at all. If you primarily want to record and be able to watch the video on your DVD player without having to bother with editing it on a computer, then this might be a good option for you.

The primary drawback of this format is that discs need to be ‘finalized’ before they can be played on a regular DVD player. The process of finalizing a Mini-DVD can take up to twice as long as the recording time. This means that if you shoot an hour of video, it could take the camera as long as two hours after you finish shooting to prepare the DVD for a DVD player. Different cameras do better or worse at cutting this time down, but be aware this can be an issue and read some reviews on the camera before taking the plunge. This format is also on the way out, and while the discs are cheap right now, the cameras are getting rare, and are only available in Standard Definition models.

Hard Drive

Hard Drive video cameras are currently the popular choice. A 30-40 GB Hard Drive will store several hours worth of recording, and offloading it is quick and easy. MiniDV transfers video information in real time. This means that if you want to transfer an hour of video to a computer, it takes an hour to copy it over. Mini DVD takes a long time to finalize a disc. The advantage of a Hard Drive camera is that it stores computer files on a Hard Drive, just like the files you would store on your computer, so when it comes time to transfer from camera to computer, it only takes a few minutes to move those files, just like you were transfering a file from one computer to another. Quick and easy.

The inherent drawback of a Hard Drive camera is that the Hard Drive is sealed inside the camera and you can’t swap it out for another when it gets full. If you’re out shooting for a day or two then returning to your computer, it’s no problem, just offload the files. But, what happens when you go on a two-week vacation? Unless you have a laptop, you might run out of space pretty quick.

The answer is flash memory. When 2GB memory cards were the only reasonably-priced option, buying a dozen of those and swapping them out regularly would be a terrible hassle. But, now that 8 or 16 GB cards are getting into a decent price range, buying several of those cards gives you the flexibility to significantly increase the amount of recording time available on a Hard Drive video camera.

The good thing about Hard Drive cameras is that many of them are available in High Definition formats. This means that they can record in 720 or 1080 resolution. The tricky thing is that the abbreviation for Hard Disk Drive is HDD, and the abbreviation for High Definition is HD. So, there are a lot of letters stamped on the side of one of these units and you need to look closely to see whether it’s a HDD unit, yet only Standard Definition, or both HDD and HD. In order to be able to shoot in HD, a lot of these cameras will significantly compress the image they shoot and often will only offer 1080i resolution (interlaced) which alternates lines of video, not progressive, which displays each line each time. See earlier posts for a further explanation of the difference.

Flash Memory

The next step is to entirely skip the Hard Drive, and only use flash memory. As memory becomes less expensive, this becomes a more attractive option. Without a Hard Drive, the bulk of the unit can be significantly reduced and the power required takes less of a toll on the battery. These cameras can often take High Definition still images, and the line between where Flash Memory camcorders ends and regular Digital Cameras begin blurs a little. This is especially true since some regular Digital Cameras are now offering High Definition video as an option.

If I’m just taking a short video that I want to upload to Facebook or YouTube, then I just use a point-and-shoot Digital Camera. It is able to record at Standard Definition, the video responds reasonably well when I put it into a desktop video editor, and the result is more than enough resolution to look good online. If your job is posting to the Internet, you’ll want a real video camera, but if you’re just having fun, a regular digital camera is really all you need. Some Digital Cameras even come with a ‘YouTube’ mode, which records in the format YouTube uses, to make it easier to upload your videos.

Digital SLRs

Some Digital SLR (Single Lens Reflex) Cameras have begun to offer video. This is a huge development, because the ability to change lenses and control focus directly is really what separates consumer video cameras from professional equipment, and the price difference is HUGE between the two. Now that DSLR makers have started to add in video, they have been able to offer a product that gives amazing control over video shots for thousands of dollars less than professional equipment.

Early DSLR models that offer video do so with some limitations. The units that have just come out tend to overheat if used too long. The auto-focus these cameras use is often designed around taking still pictures and hasn’t yet been optimized to be effective when shooting video, so manual focus tends to be a better option. That manual focus is possible with these cameras is a real positive, but there are times when you just want the camera to do its thing. DSLR Video is still a very new thing, and some of the limitations that currently exist will soon be overcome, but this is a very exciting development and will soon become the must-have tool for those who are serious about shooting amateur video.

Standard Definition

A Movie DVD contains compressed video at what we refer to as Standard Definition, 480 lines of resolution. DVDs introduced progressive video, which was an improvement over older interlaced signals. Instead of alternating odd and even lines, progressive video presents every line every time. This results in a smoother picture than older television systems were capable of producing.

High Definition

Television has now moved beyond the limits of standard definition. 720p and 1080p dramatically increase the number of pixels displayed on a screen. Screens can display better images, but the medium that distributes the stuff you want to watch lags behind. DVDs are stuck at Standard Definition.

This isn’t the first time that there has been a lag between the ability of a TV to display a better picture and the lack of a medium to store video. VHS (Video Home System), the most popular form of VCR (Video Cassette Recorder)  could only display 240 lines of resolution. I was recently attending a seminar delivered over the course of several weeks, and each week we watched a DVD. There was a problem with the group who had lent the DVDs, and they needed them back. The organizer managed to borrow an alternate copy, but it was a set of VHS tapes. I was amazed at what a difference it made to go back to the old format. Faces were fuzzy and indistinct. I never had a problem with VHS 15 years ago, but once you get accustomed to something better you realize the difference and going back is painful.

The Contenders Vie for the Crown

DVD has not yet been succeeded by another format. HD-DVD and Blu-ray were two new formats that were meant to replace the DVD. One is now defunct, and the other is struggling to gain traction. There is speculation it will never become popular enough to truly replace DVDs. One reason why Blu-ray struggles is that DVDs are really, really inexpensive. This is partly because those who sell DVDs see the end of the line and are rushing to make all the money they can before the gravy train ends. This doesn’t make a whole lot of sense because they’re the same people who want to Blu-ray to take off. Making DVDs dirt cheap changes people’s expectations of what a movie should cost, so the movie industry is shooting itself in the foot.

Fortunately, the people behind Blu-ray have announced plans to lower costs for the new format in the near future to kick-start the transition. Let’s hope that happens.

The Conversion Experience

Upconverting DVD players are the other reason Blu-ray hasn’t taken off. Older DVD players didn’t always look all that great on the new high-resolution screens. This is because the screens are so precise. To illustrate, let’s assume that you have a bar with 4 lights on it. The lights flash according to a pattern. If you want to display that same pattern on a bar that has 8 lights, it’s easy because you just double the pattern, and wherever light number 1 was flashing, both 1 and 2 now flash. Wherever light number 2 was flashing, both 3 and 4 flash, and so on. The pattern translates easily, because it’s just double. But, what if there are only 6 lights? Now, you can’t just double the pattern, you need to make choices about which lights will flash when to best represent the original pattern, but you’ll never get a pattern that identically represents the original pattern because the math doesn’t divide evenly.

One of the great ironies of Digital television is that it is so precise, it shows up flaws. Older, analog TVs could fudge an image and come out looking OK. It is important that that you feed a Digital TV a properly formatted signal so that it displays correctly. The better the TV the better a good signal will look and the worse a bad signal will look. It cuts both ways.

An upconverter improves the way your existing DVD collection looks on your big screen TV. An upconverter doesn’t improve the resolution, it still works from 480 lines of resolution because that’s all that’s available on a DVD, but it takes the original image and stretches it smoothly over the larger space, fudging the numbers to keep things looking smooth, despite the fact that the numbers don’t translate evenly.

To understand the difference, imagine a balloon with words written on it. Before the balloon is blown up, the words are small and clear and you can read them. An old DVD player playing on a big screen TV is kind of like stretching the balloon with your hands to try and make it bigger. The image will be uneven. An upscaler or upconverter stretches the image smoothly, like blowing up the balloon. The even pressure causes each part of the image to be smoothly stretched as the balloon increases in size. It’s still the same image, starting small and stretched big. Nothing new has been added. High definition is like printing in a large font on a piece of paper. There’s no need to stretch the paper image, it’s already as large as the words on the balloon when the balloon is blown up, and it’s going to be a clearer and sharper than the stretched balloon. Even if the balloon has been stetched smoothly by blowing it up, there’s only so much ink to spread out, and it won’t be as crisp and clear as the printed page, but will still be better than stretching by hand.

In addition to smoothly stretching the image, an upconverter can output video via an HDMI cable, which is a digital cable. Older DVD Players are only able to output analog video. This means that the digital signal from the DVD gets converted to analog for the cable, then when it reaches a digital television, it gets converted back into digital. The conversion process to and from analog reduces the quality of the video signal. By using a digital cable, an upconverting DVD player maintains the digital quality of the picture from start to finish, resulting in a better picture, as long as your TV can accept HDMI.

So, an upconverting DVD player provides a smoother, clearer image on a big screen TV by stretching the image smoothly and delivering it to the TV in a digital format.

Pyrrhus of Epirus

Pyrrhus of Epirus was a Greek general who attacked Roman Republic forces around 280 BC. He won the battle, but won very narrowly and couldn’t effectively hold on to what he had taken. Today we call a victory that doesn’t actually result in a positive benefit a ‘Pyrrhic Victory’. Winning the battle and then having to limp home leaving the prize behind isn’t very satisfying.

VHS vs Beta

In the late 70s, Videotape devices were introduced, and they became very popular in the 80s. The two main contenders were VHS from JVC and Beta from Sony. Beta was clearly superior technologically, but VHS was cheaper and while Beta was establishing itself as the choice of the elite, VHS won the day by grabbing 70%+ of the market share, soon making Beta irrelevant.

The Birth of the DVD

A new battle started in the early 90s with formats for video discs. The obvious idea was to create something the same size as a CD which could hold enough information to store a movie, and several companies had ideas about how to do that. Thanks to some behind-the-scenes wrangling by some IBM executives, the two competing formats were brought together at a very early stage and were merged into a single format, taking the best parts of each of the original two formats that were being developed, and the result was the DVD.

A minor skirmish broke out when recordable DVDs appeared. The two camps divided into DVD-R and DVD+R, but devices soon came out which would read both, and the format war was aborted by device manufacturers who gave people the option of using either format. The DVD is a huge commercial and technological success, so it only makes sense that large corporations would learn this lesson from history and act cooperatively to develop a new format to replace the DVD, right? Not so much.

HD-DVD vs Blu-ray

HD-DVD and Blu-Ray were two competing formats to replace the DVD, which only offered Standard Definition resolution. Sony designed Blu-Ray and Toshiba developed HD-DVD. Both did essentially the same thing: playback high quality video by offering much more storage capacity. But, they couldn’t play nicely. Sony had learned a thing or two with Beta. Sony priced its products competitively, built its new video game system around Blu-ray, and made back-room deals with other movie companies.

In early January 2008 HD-DVD was defeated when Sony got official backing from a strong majority of movie studios with exclusive deals. The HD-DVD camp declared defeat by cancelling an event at a major trade show. Remaining HD-DVD stock was sold off at fire-sale prices.

You would think that was the end of the story, but no. Sony learned the importance of the battle from previous conflict, but apparently it hasn’t read about poor old Pyrrhus. A year after the death knell sounded for HD-DVD, Blu-Ray still hasn’t gained enough market share to be considered ‘locked in’ as the logical replacement for DVD. Blu-Ray isn’t competing with HD-DVD anymore. It’s competing with DVDs, which have dropped dramatically in price. Why buy a Blu-Ray when DVDs are ‘good enough’ and dirt cheap.

Where is Blu-ray At?

Blu-ray has been in development since the late 90s and it’s been on the market since 2003. That means they’ve been working on it for 10 years and selling it for 5, but it still hasn’t achieved significant market penetration. As 2009 arrived, there were a virtual chorus of bloggers predicting the marginalization of Blu-ray. Worst of all, when I talk to people about Blu-ray, I still have to explain what it is most of the time.

Personally, I don’t see any other obvious options on the near horizon, so I think it’s too early to call for the marginalization of the format, though that’s likely to change by the end of 2009. There are several scenarios that seem possible to me, but it’s hard to say which one will win out:

1. Sony will read all the bad press and lower licensing fees making it cheaper to buy the players and discs. This will close the gap between the cost of buying DVDs and Blu-rays, and the market will take off, because most people will pay more for better quality, but not a lot more. When it’s less than a $50 difference per player and a $5 difference per disc, upgrading to the better version becomes a no-brainer and Blu-ray becomes the new standard, replacing DVD.
2. Sony won’t get it and will leave the expensive fees in place, because they feel they have the right to make some serious money off Blu-ray as the prize for killing off its primary competitor. Another format (probably some sort of downloadable content) will come in and steal the market away from Sony, leaving Sony to gnash its teeth in dismay yet again.

Whatever happens, there’s already a lot of content available for Blu-ray drives. They also play DVDs and CDs, so it’s not like you’re going to get stuck with an obsolete product if you buy one. Blu-rays are coming down in price and as of this writing they’re still the best (and pretty much only) way to watch commercial content at 1080p on your fancy new television set.

I don’t see buying a Blu-ray player as a bad investment, unless you spend too much. Fortunately, they are getting more reasonably priced. But you should know that if you buy one in early 2009, you’re still an early adopter and the format’s future is murky. It may turn out that Sony has expended great effort to vanquish a foe for a prize they can’t hold on to. That right there is the definition of a Pyrrhic victory.

Digital

HDMI cables are the best option available for connecting your TV to Disc players, cable boxes, satellite receivers or gaming systems. HDMI stands for High Definition Multimedia Interface. An HDMI cable will carry a 1080p signal and 5.1 surround sound audio together on a single cable, without losing any audio or video quality because the cable is digital.

Digital audio cables transfer audio (not video)  in a digital format. If you have a home theatre system (external speakers), it is best to run a digital audio cable from the television to the stereo system.

Component

Component cables are the second-best option if HDMI is unavailable. These cables are a bundle of five wires that have RCA plugs on the end. RCA plugs are the type that you might use to connect parts of a stereo system together that plug into the little red and white donut-shaped holes on the back of your CD player. The five wires in a component cable are divided into three for video (Red, Green and Blue) and two for audio (usually Red and White). The video wires transfer red, green and blue video signals separately and the audio wires transfer left and right audio. Because the video colours are kept separate, or in components, they produce better images than composite cables, which mix (compose) all three colours into a single signal passed over a single wire.

Composite

Composite is a word used to describe a variety of cables. Coaxial cable is the old style of television cable with the screw-in end that you attached to the back of your TV on the threaded silver post that stuck out the back. RCA cables that had three wires (Red, White and Yellow) passed audio on the red and white wires, while all the video passed through the yellow wire. S-Video had a round plug with four wires positioned inside. All of these cables are called composite, because they combine the three colours into a single wire. They should be avoided if at all possible, because they do not produce as good a picture as the newer styles of cable.

Resolution refers to the number of dots of light on a screen, and says nothing about the size of the screen. Imagine you were bringing a tray of cupcakes to a party. If the only tray you had was a one foot by one foot tray, and you wanted to bring enough cupcakes for 30 people, you’d need to make very small cupcakes to pack them all in. But, if you only had a three foot by two foot tray, and you only wanted to bring 6 cupcakes, the tray would look very sparse. Matching the appropriate size of tray to the number of cupcakes makes for a good presentation. In the same way, you want enough dots of light, or pixels, to be well-spaced on the screen. The larger the screen, the more pixels you need for them to be well spaced. If you pack too many pixels onto too small a screen, the pixels would be too small to be seen from any distance.

Standard Definition

SD, or Standard Definition, is the old type of television, and it has 480 lines of resolution (TV resolution is measured by the number of vertical lines). If we were to measure TV resolution in Megapixels, like we do for digital cameras, standard definition would be 0.3 MP (640×480=307,200 total pixels).  Two new formats have emerged, both of which are considered High Definition, because they are greater than the old Standard Definition. 720 is the equivalent of 0.9 MP and 1080 is the equivalent of 2 MP. High Definition is not a single level of resolution, but simply means anything more than the old standard. That’s why some manufacturers have taken to calling 1080 ‘Full HD’ to try to differentiate it from 720. Of course, they’re going to regret calling it ‘Full HD’ when they decide to make something with higher resolution.

Digital televisions start at 720 lines of resolution, they don’t make them in the old Standard Definition format (at least, not that I’ve ever seen). 1080 screens start at around 40” in size. Why don’t they offer them in smaller sizes? The answer is distance from the screen. TVs are designed to be watched while sitting on a couch 10 feet away.

Getting in Close

When you want to see the detail on a painting in an art gallery, what do you do? You go closer. The closer you are, the better able you are to see the fine detail. From further away, the detail all blends together. You are magnifying the image by getting closer. The same thing happens with TV. The closer you are, the more detail you can see. A 30” television that offered 1080 resolution would be indistinguishable from a 720 television of the same screen size from a distance of ten feet. The dots would have to be so small to be packed into such a small space that you wouldn’t be able to see the fine detail of that image unless you were very close to the screen. You aren’t likely to be watching from that close, so it would be a waste of money to pay for the extra resolution.

The larger a screen is, the easier the detail is to see from further away. The easier it is to see from further away, the better able you are to pick up the fine details on the screen. On a 50” television, 1080 resolution makes a big difference. The screen size is big enough that the pixels are stretched over a large enough area that having the extra resolution really improves the image quality in a noticeable way. Manufacturers still offer 50” screens in 720, and they look OK, but they aren’t ideal and they’re becoming more rare.

Between 40” and 50” its a judgement call whether you want to move to the highest resolution available. 1080 resolution starts at about 40” in screen size and you don’t pay much of a premium for the highest level of resolution at that screen size. The difference at the time of this writing is as little as $100 more for the higher resolution at a 40″ screen size.

Finding the Right Content

To further confuse matters, very little content is available at 1080 resolution. Almost no one broadcasts television at the highest level of resolution. Virtually all cable and satellite television at the time of this writing is 720. So, if you buy a 1080 television, you are essentially future-proofing, getting ready for the day when having the best resolution available will actually matter for main-stream content. Unless you make your own content or you have a Blu-ray or HD-DVD player (more on what that is in a future posting) it doesn’t matter yet what level of HD resolution you have because the companies that deliver content to you have had such a hard time agreeing on how they’re going to deliver high definition video to you.

What’s the Bottom Line?

The bottom line is that if you have a TV below 40” in size, 1080 isn’t really available. For that size 720 is your only option and all you really need. For screens above 40” in size, 1080 will make a difference if you have a video source capable of delivering 1080 resolution to the screen. If your screen is 50” or higher, a 1080 screen is definitely worth spending a little more on.