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September 26, 2005

Anti-Convergence

I cannot remember who it was that said that we human beings don't like convergence, and that it is something of a common sense matter. I'm thinking about this upon consideration of the following muttered by some dude who works at M$.

While Nintendo advocated a paradigm shift to attract new gamers, Bach and his colleagues also saw a 'revolution' coming, but focused on convergence in the living room. The Microsoft executive's primary position was that "Xbox 360 will be the ultimate digital amplifier for the digital entertainment lifestyle", and the 'hi-def' nature of Xbox 360, much used as a buzzword by J Allard during his 2005 Game Developers Conference talk, was again a major keyword.

Oh. Now I remember. It was the Economist that I bought two weeks ago. Anyway, I've found some interesting things with regard to having purchased a Treo 650 last Christmas. Some things it does very well, and some things it does redundantly. I used to say that the fact that the Treo allows me to go places without my laptop made it worth the 600 I paid for it. Nine months later I have a different set of ideas.

Redundancy is Good
I can play DVDs on my current XBox as well as about half of the computers in my house. My T41 does a pretty good job as well on the road. But my old XBox died and between the time I replaced it I relied on a good old fashioned DVD player with VCR for about 150 bucks. It doesn't make sense for me to spend a premium for all in one functionality. I'd rather have overlap with cheaper components. The XBox can't be hooked into the stereo because I need clunky wiring to send the audio to the TV and the pre-amp. So when I play XBox DVDs, I can't kick in the Infinities. I can live with that. I just use the cheap player which routes into the Tivo and that goes into the preamp. Someday I may buy a switchbox to allow them all to hook into the preamp but that only means I'll be hearing Dead or Alive 3 at 7am on Sunday morning.

On the mobile end of things, it's a little different. As much as I love cargo pants, I do have a limited amount of pocket real estate on an average day. As well, I have to have a reasonable weight limit for carry ons. What do I give to get? By combining a camera, a phone, and an mp3 player as well as a browser and email client, the Treo is next to perfect. However the camera is decidedly low-fi as is the monaural mp3 player. It's practically a tease, although I'd rather have the weakly implemented features than not.

Posted by mbowen at September 26, 2005 12:47 AM

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Comments

Posted by: Scott Chaffin at September 28, 2005 05:11 AM

Posted by: Cobb at September 28, 2005 07:51 AM