Reports by Consumers

So Jen finished up the painting. I must say that adding a bit of paint made this place feel more like home. We hung our LCD television on the wall, and it looks pimp.

Fast forward a few years. iTunes (and other similar music services) have now made the game fair. You pay for what you want. But the game is still unfair in the world of movies. Why should anyone pay over $20 (for two; even more for families) for watching a movie in a theater when you can watch it for much less a few months later on DVD or on-demand. And if you are patient enough, you can watch it on television for free later on.

Well, recently, Anne and I purchased a home. With every home these days, you must have a television. In my quest for a “smart home”, I have purchased the parts for an HTPC (home theater personal computer). I told Anne about the idea, which she didn’t seem very wild about. I’m not sure if I just didn’t explain its full purpose and capabilities. Anyway, she gave me the okay to buy a new computer with some money that I’ve earned. So, I decided to build an HTPC for the house, instead of a new computer for me. Hopefully Anne likes it as much as I (already) do. I am still waiting on the parts, but I will try and take some pics of it and put them on here.

ID theft is, according to FTC figures, the most popular and fastest growing form of consumer fraud. Over 2004, the FTC reported ID thieves took over $100 million from financial institutions, or an average of $6,767 per incident. For individual consumers, the numbers are even more staggering. As reported by Janet Wu of by Boston television station WCVB-TV, money stolen through identity theft amounted to over $50 billion in the United States last year. In other words, nearly $200 per US citizen was somehow stolen due to identity theft.

VOOM customers, despairing over the loss of their HD service, which goes dark at the end of this month, have been thrown a lifeline by DIRECTV. DIRECTV is offering a $200 mail-in rebate on its HD equipment exclusively to VOOM customers who will be without service when the company ceases operation on April 30, 2005.

AS IF SPOTTING A COMET that's heading for earth at some future date, Forrester Research is predicting an ad-spending downturn to hit in 2007, when more than 50 million U.S. households will be using either digital video recorders or video-on-demand services. Helping to fuel the coming downturn, according to Forrester's survey, authored by analyst Eric Schmitt, television advertisers are frustrated with standard 30-second advertising because of audience fragmentation. In 1960, the average U.S. household had access to 5.7 channels; today the same home has more than 100. Secondly, ads are becoming more expensive, Forrester found. Between 1995 and 2003, the cost to reach 1,000 TV viewers in prime time increased 68 percent.

My first day on the job at EFF was at the first meeting where they were negotiating the Broadcast Flag, a set of rules for restricting the features of digital television devices to those that were approved by the Hollywood executives who tried to ban the VCR. The rules set out to ban the use of Open Source/Free Software in digital television applications, and to require hardware components to be designed to be hard or impossible to create open drivers for. Fox exec Andy Setos told me that we were there to create "a polite marketplace" where no one...

Harmony Remote's SST-768 universal remote control uses Smart State Technology, pioneered by Intrigue Technologies, to control your home theater devices through commands focused on activities rather than on the devices themselves. Just scroll through the Harmony's screen and click with the convenient thumb wheel to choose an activity such as "watch television" or "watch a DVD," then let the SST-768 figure out how to configure your entertainment system for your desired activity--you don't have to first program the device with complicated macros.

Broadcasters are reluctant to have their customers' screens go blank. Consumer electronics firms, on the other hand, are delighted to replace all those 284 million analog units with slick, flat panel and HD-ready digital sets. (The CE people point out that digital TV sales are booming, with some 20 million units expected in 2005, but a new digital divide is clearly on the horizon.)

Nearly half of all consumers plan to make their next television purchase a high-definition (HDTV) television set, according to a new consumer survey released by the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) today. The survey results reinforce CEA’s market research projection that total digital television (DTV) unit shipments will surpass analog television sales for the first time in 2005, based on the “digital tuner mandate” issued by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). The first time that dollar sales of digital television surpassed analog television was in 2003.

Sling Media, Inc., and Texas Instruments (TI) today announced that the companies are working together on the newly introduced Slingbox Personal Broadcaster, the groundbreaking product from Sling Media that won numerous awards at the 2005 International Consumer Electronics Show. This cooperative effort involves commitments to technology integration from both companies and audio and video technology from Microsoft Corp.

The Slingbox enables consumers to watch their TV programming from wherever they are by turning any networked laptop or desktop PC into a personal TV. The Slingbox redirects, or “placeshifts,” the TV signal from any cable box, satellite receiver or personal video recorder (PVR) to a viewer’s location and device of choice, whether in another room in the home or remotely with a high-speed Internet connection. An elegantly designed compact box that fits neatly into a user’s existing TV setup, the Slingbox will retail for $249 with no monthly service fees. The product is due to ship in the first half of 2005.