Everybody loves YouTube. Every where I go I get somebody asking me if I saw this video or that video. For folks like me that have a hard time staying in the loop, there is the WatchYouTube Toolbar. It gives you all the fun of YouTube right in your browser….

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Uninnovate.com hasan interestingarticle on Apple's new support of 'Reverse syncing' of content with the iTunes7 release yesterday:

Today, Apple released iTunes 7.0,among otherthings. In earlier versions of iTunes, Apple didits best to prevent users from being able to copy music from an iPod back to adesktop computer. Now, Apple has changed course and is marketing “ReverseSyncing” as a new feature of iTunes 7.

But there is one giant catch:

1. Music and media not purchased from the iTunes store only syncs one way, fromyour computer to your iPod.

This is uninnovation in its most frustrating form. It’s easy to spot and avoid drm-saturatedjunk, but these kinds of subtle limitations in an otherwise great product frustrateusers and drive them to alternative applications.How about trusting the user enough to let them get at their own files without thesechildish restrictions?

WMP11 added reverse filetransfer support back in March which works with purchased, and clear content.(It’s also had album art matching in WMP9, dramatically improved in WMP11). I thinkthe author is being a bit overzealous however in his claim of “uninnovation”- it'salways been easy to transfer music off your iPod, it's just a little hidden. Here it’s a little less hidden.

I’ve seen lots of chatter on iTV - Apple's Media Center Extender-esque device forstreaming video to the living room.  It feels like we’ve been here before. LongZheng at istartedsomething.com hasa good recap of the relative strengths and weaknesses of products in this space.  It seems a bit odd that Apple would break from long-time tradition and givea 'sneak preview' of a product that won't be available for at least Q1 '07, particularlywhen they could have held the announce to availability around MacWorld in January.It's clear they had to do this to try and spur purchase of movies from theirnew store- with no rental model, people just don't want to buy movies towatch on their portable players. Tell them they'll be able to play it in other placesas well around the home and their likelihood of purchase is higher.  It’s the battleof cognitive dissonance - buyer's remorse. After all, you're already dealing withthe psychological barrier in that the user is buying an intangible good, somethingwithout physical form that perceptually has less value than physical media such asDVDs. But... you're going to charge about the same as a physical DVD. Without theBonus DVD content.  Oh and the 640x480 video quality people are downloading isgoing to be between VHS and DVD quality (which offers 720x480p).  Never mindthat it will be potentially less for letterboxed content since the new iPod doesn'tsupport 16:9 (widescreen) display.  In the time it will take most customersto download one of these movies, I could have gone to the store, bought the DVD, popcorn,a 6-pack of Coke, dinner, come home, cooked dinner, and be ready to watch. Ina rental model, all of these issues can be forgiven for immediate gratification anda lower price, as witnessed by the popularity of Video On Demand and InDemand services.

The challenges in streaming TV from the PC aren't just the hypothesized need for higherspeed wireless (802.11n) which should be provisionally approved in early 2007. This might be delaying their launch, but streaming 640x480 video across the home hasbeen possible with Media Center Extender for just about two years now.  A challengeis going to be convincing consumers to buy and set up yet another single-purpose devicein the living room, another remote, another input on the TV for this thing.

Today, you can get an Xbox 360 that includesMedia Center Extender at no additional cost. Over 16 million Media Centercustomers can use this today, no additional charge. Even if you don’t have a TV tunerin your PC, you can connect a USB tuner and record TV or HDTV (OTA today, DigitalCable with equipped PCs with Vista). No additional fees.  As announced at CESlast year, multiple HDTV manufacturers are putting Media Center extender into theirdesigns, something that costs less than a night at the movies to implement.

As for another box in the living room, the Xbox 360 does HD gaming, DVD/HD-DVD Playback,Music, Photos, Video, TV/HDTV playback, runs rich media apps from a multitude of providers,and delivers an increasing amount of media content via Xbox Live, including HD.  And it's going to get significantly better with WindowsVista Premium's Media Center features – automatically updating your Xbox 360 tosupport in the family room with the same level of animation and experience. 

Either way, a saying comes to mind: “A rising tide raises all boats” and for thatI welcome Apple's foray.  But if Apple's iTV costs the same as an Xbox, offers nothing more than a 'simplified remote' and fewer mainstream features whichreally makes more sense when competing for  consumer dollars outside the Job'sfaithful?  With Sony and Nintendo's Wii also vying for that same space, it'sabout to get a bit more crowded. Or perhaps just noisy.  So begins the 'Great FamilyRoom Battle of 2007'.

(Disclaimer: I used to work on Media Center, but haven't for over a year, andspeak only for myself.)

MSN Video Download  apparently went live today with a choice of two membership types  Premium and Basic.  Premium is $19.95 a year and has more content than the free Basic membership.  Not wanting to commit myself to a membership yet I signed up for the Basic membership, thinking I could load some videos on to the miniSD card in my smartphone....

Sign up was easy, I used my passport account, agreed to the terms and installed the download software.  The download status page showed content was downloading from Fox Sports.  In order to sync content to my phone I needed a smart playlist so I followed the instructions to download one.  This was the first problem, the instructions used Windows Media Player 9 and I'm using Windows Media Player 10, a little strange, but not a huge problem.  With the smart playlist in place I thought I'd be good to go...

That wasn't going to be the case though.  I started by trying to play a video in Media Player directly and got prompted for a username and password which was being requested by 'admin.theplatform.com' not 'msnvideodownloads.com'.  I tried my Passport email address and password which might not have been a great idea, but it didn't work anyway.  Meanwhile I could see that Activesync had been trying to sync the content to my phone so I checked the Sync page in WMP.  Nothing had been synced, instead  there was an error message 'Windows Media Player can not synchronize the protected file.  Protected files can not be converted to the required quality level or format'.

Now I have almost half a gigabyte of content (and it's still getting downloaded) and I can't watch any of it.  If anyone gets this working I'd love to know how.

I bought a Microsoft vx-6000 because it promised to do 1.3 megapixel video. Well... it does do 640x480 at 30fps it does 800x600 at up to 15, and 1280x1024 at 15. So this is not the cheap build it my slef HD Cam I was hoping for. Still a cool camera, and not bad for $99, but I have seen better cameras, that have less noise, and offer IR-LED's for low light.

Have you found a problem with the documentation? Have comments or suggestions on new content? We are listening! On every page of our documentation we have a link to submit feedback. And guess what.......there are real live people (like me!) sitting on the other end waiting! We triage every request that comes through and respond within 24 hours (usually quicker)! As we move more towards a continuous publishing model, your feedback is incorporated and released much quicker! 

Wanna see how easy it is to provide feedback? Read Young's posting or watch this video...

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