Can't We All Just Get Along?

[Ishiyoshi]

Consumer Technology;

Can't We All Just Get Along? Consumers of digital entertainment face a fundamental problem: incompatibility

Sarah McBride. Wall Street Journal. (Eastern edition). New York, N.Y.: Jul 18, 2005. pg. R.9

MONICA PARTRIDGE, a Los Angeles-based Web master, loves her iPod music player but hates the iTunes music store and organizer.

"When it rips music," or copies songs to her computer, she says, it "rips them in that weird format" that only iTunes uses. This makes the songs hard to transfer to any other computer unless that hardware has iTunes software. So, Ms. Partridge skips iTunes altogether.

Digital music and movies have rapidly become the building blocks of the future entertainment industry -- in part, because of the potential ease with which they can be delivered, played and moved about. But potential is the key word here: So far, they've come with new kinds of restrictions, incompatibilities and frustrations never dreamed of in the analog world.

While music represents the most widespread compatibility problem, there are countless others. A memory card that works with one brand of digital camera won't necessarily work with another. A Sony PlayStation game won't run on a Microsoft Xbox. Many owners of DVD recorders have had to learn to buy discs in the correct format for their machines -- DVD RAM, DVD+R, or DVD-R -- although, thanks to new recorders that work with more than one format, this is less of a problem than it was a few years ago.

"People assume it's going to be really easy to utilize the products," says Dave Morrish, senior vice president for merchandising at electronics retailer Best Buy Co. When it's not, he says, they get frustrated and often end up returning the products instead of figuring out how to make them work.

So, what's behind all this incompatibility? Anybody who tries to upgrade a home entertainment system or a portable player quickly runs into roadblocks from two formidable groups. First, some consumer- electronics companies that offer both hardware and content -- like Apple Computer Inc., creator of iPods and iTunes, and Sony Corp. -- are attempting to lock consumers into their products by making devices that play music and movies only in the formats that the companies sell. A second roadblock: There are so many piracy protections on digital music and movies that even limited copying or transferring to other home devices is at best difficult, and sometimes impossible.

Both groups -- hardware makers and content providers -- need to take action to alleviate such conflicts soon, or the confusion and frustration could lead consumers to skip a lot of the new technology that so many manufacturers are anxious for them to embrace.

Worse, a failure to resolve these problems quickly could drive more people to download pirated movies and music -- just because they are easier to transfer from device to device. If consumers want songs that they can copy and play anywhere, the best source is usually a file- sharing network where it's simple to find almost any song title free, even though trading most songs this way is illegal.

This is a major reason why legal downloads add up to only single- digit percentages of any music company's sales, says Eric Garland, chief executive of BigChampagne LLC, a Los Angeles-based online media consultancy.

"More locks is not a viable strategy for growing this business," says Mr. Garland.

But electronics and entertainment companies sitting at the tops of their markets don't see it that way. After all, if your product is No. 1 in its category, keeping your technology proprietary makes for an extremely lucrative strategy.

Take Apple. About 75% of digital music players sold in the U.S. are iPods, according to New York-based market-research firm NPD Group. And seven of every 10 songs sold online come from the iTunes music store, according to Nielsen SoundScan. When asked why his players aren't compatible with songs acquired from most other online music stores, or why songs bought on iTunes won't work with most other players, Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs typically tells questioners that having control over the technology allows the company to innovate better.

Some competitors do seem determined to horn in on Apple's strategy. Last year, Seattle-based RealNetworks Inc. launched a technology called Harmony, which allows users to download songs on its music service and play them on an iPod. On July 29 of last year Apple issued a statement accusing RealNetworks of adopting the "tactics and ethics of a hacker." In the same release, Apple also threatened that future versions of iPods might not work with Harmony. So far, RealNetworks has managed to tweak its software to counter Apple's attempts at sabotaging Harmony on its newest iPods.

Microsoft Corp., meanwhile, is attempting to lessen the confusion. Last year, it launched "Plays for Sure," a marketing program that tries to make it clear to consumers which music players and providers are compatible. Under the program, participating companies -- those that license Windows Media compression and rights-management techniques -- label their products "Plays for Sure." The idea is that consumers should look for the slogan on both the players and the music they buy to be sure they will work together. But while a number of player makers -- such as Dell Inc. and iRiver Inc. -- and online music stores -- such as Yahoo Inc.'s MusicMatch and Napster -- are participating, the concept has been slow to catch on with consumers.

As devices add new functions, the restrictions often worsen. Sony's new PlayStation Portable, for example, plays PlayStation games, video and music -- either MP3 files or downloads from Sony's Connect store, which sells music in formats that play only on Sony devices. But attempting to watch a movie on the PSP can be troublesome. Forget loading a DVD -- there's no DVD player. Instead, Sony wants its customers to buy a new proprietary disc, the Universal Media Device, or UMD, which works only on the PlayStation Portable. Just a few movies are currently available in the UMD format, and they cost around $20 each. A Sony spokeswoman says the company wanted to develop a small, light alternative to the DVD with more copy protection.

Movies in other formats can be transferred from a computer onto the PSP -- but only after some complicated steps. The movie must be converted to MPEG-4, the only format the PlayStation Portable will accept, and then uploaded to the unit using a USB cable, which costs around $20. But first you have to attach to the player a portable storage device called a memory stick with enough capacity to hold the movie, and such an item could run a few hundred dollars.

The Sony spokeswoman says the PSP was designed for games first, with music and movies as fringe benefits. "We haven't had consumer feedback that [the music and movies component] is hard to use," she says. "In fact, quite the opposite. As far as consumer feedback, it's been nothing but positive."

Sony's eagerness to build a closed system is fueled in large part by its ownership of both a movie studio, Sony Pictures, and a record label, Sony Music. But all of the major entertainment companies have dragged their feet on any technology they believe might foster more illegal copying of songs and movies, and all have put restrictions on their digital music and movies that people purchase, too. Movies on DVD are encrypted to prevent copying -- although tech-savvy people know how to circumvent that protection. A buyer on iTunes can make no more than five computer copies of a song. And many new CDs are coded to prevent unauthorized copies, which infuriates their owners.

"If I pay for the CD, I should be able to rip MP3s as I please," says Ms. Partridge.

The story is the same for movies. Studios banded together to launch a legal downloading service in 2002, Movielink LLC, in large part to stave off illegal movie downloading.

But a Movielink movie, or one from a rival service like CinemaNow Inc., can't be easily moved around the house. If it comes from a major studio, the movie is for use only on the computer you used to buy it; you can't download it on your laptop, and then decide you would prefer to move it to another computer. Technophiles with networking equipment can send the movies to their television sets, but the process is clunky.

Portability "is a very significant market going forward," says Curt Marvis, chief executive of Marina del Ray, Calif.-based CinemaNow. The major studios for the moment are too scared of piracy to allow downloaded movies to move freely around buyers' homes and portable devices, he says. They're also afraid of cannibalizing DVD sales, he adds. But all of that will change, he believes. "Studios will become less reticent about hurting their DVD business when they see there are real revenues being produced by the digital distribution space," Mr. Marvis says.

Some executives believe a similar relaxing of the status quo will come on the compatibility side, too. "The manufacturing community is beginning to understand that having their own scenario is a disadvantage," says Best Buy's Mr. Morrish, who adds that other products have failed in part due to proprietary technologies. An example: the throwaway DVDs known as Divx, which worked only on certain players.

Still, at least one more large experiment in proprietary technology is heading our way, in the shape of a war between two rival formats for next-generation DVDs, which will play high-definition movies. Sony and Walt Disney Co. back a Sony format known as Blu-Ray, which is expected to launch next year. On the other side, Time Warner Inc.'s Warner Bros., Viacom Inc.'s Paramount, and General Electric Co.'s Universal Studios Inc. all back a format known as HD-DVD, which is expected to launch before the holidays. Discs in one format won't work on players of the other format.

Ross Rubin, a New York-based consultant at NPD Group, argues that if one format doesn't quickly become dominant, technological advances will resolve the issue within a few years. Mr. Rubin predicts, "By 2007 or 2008, we'll see quite a few [electronics] companies have dual- format players."

---

Ms. McBride is a staff reporter in The Wall Street Journal's Los Angeles bureau. She can be reached at sarah.mcbride@wsj.com.

*Discuss accordingly

[Breepee2]

Yep, that's why companies should be forced (through legislation or boycot) to comply with and develop new OPEN standards, so that everything and anyone can interoperate if they wish.

[shigzeo]

Yep, that's why companies should be forced (through legislation or boycot) to comply with and develop new OPEN standards, so that everything and anyone can interoperate if they wish.

←

I am not sure that 'forcing' a company to comply with 'open' standards is such a beautiful thing. it reminds me of several mishaps involving the wonderful 'free world' trying to impose its freedom on those who suffer intorably under a different type of government.

at least it is all digital now, easy to move or play with, we are not reeling tapes together or tweaking our vinyl player's line out to move to 8Trac or something. i suppose that if i try to stick my memory stick in my toaster and expect the beatles to come boppin' out of my hi-fi, the problem lies in me the consumer. there has never ever been compatibility across the entire line of audio/video/cooking devices and why should there? if so, let's get all the cars in the world to drive american style, with big round buttons that everyone's grandma could read from 200 paces.

that then is the beauty of 'free market'. whoever plays completely stupid and stabs themselves in the foot by trying to support too many formats will probably suffer in the end, and we as consumers just need to pretend that we are not really that stupid and can figure out that a slice of toast, though flat and crisp, is not food for DVD-Audio players. Nor is it an older form of biodegradeable MD.

that line of thinking nothing but toast

[ROMBUSTERS]

little known fact:

during the development of the CD-ROM Sony and Phillips weren't always buddy-buddy. In fact they both developed different optical disc formats. Sony's were the conventional 12cm discs we have today, while Phillips were 11 or 11.5cm. There was such a disagreement over many portions of the project that ALL companies that knew about the project decided to boycott it unless the companies worked together to avoid another betamax vs vcr fiasco. These boycotting companies included all major record labels, motion picture studios and software/hardware makers such as Microsoft and IBM.

Eventually the specifications of the disc were finalized with Sony's 12cm disc being chosen (to provide 74min instead of 60min), Phillips optical disc technology (pits/lands setup, etc) with Sony's error correction and tracking software (Eight-to-Fourteen Modulation (EFM) and Cross Interleaved Reed-Solomon Code (CIRC)).

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I firmly believe that companies need to do this once again as I am NOT going to pay for two optical disc based systems and then have one suddenly go obsolete.

[Syrius]

Imagine what it would have been of HDTV if a similar war had erupted. Screw them. I'll just stick to regular DVD until the storm settles.

[tekdroid]

"When it rips music," or copies songs to her computer, she says, it "rips them in that weird format" that only iTunes uses. This makes the songs hard to transfer to any other computer unless that hardware has iTunes software. So, Ms. Partridge skips iTunes altogether.

Ms Partridge should familiarise herself with Preferences in iTunes. Shame that technology cannot help a clueless user.

What I find most amusing is people paying top-dollar for crappy lossy files. Some nice surprises instore for them if they think it's all smooth sailing. Right now it's about incompatibility...err, 'innovation' and companies striking while the iron is hot, hoping to enforce some 'standards' in a new market. Good on 'em.

It doesn't mean I'll be biting.

I think an informed public is the most important thing, and that's always lacking (on the whole).

Things like compatibility will burn many people, and so will generational loss as they try to convert their lossy files to another format (assuming they even find out they can be converted). Makes the CD sound like bigtime progress (it is...)

[shigzeo]

Ms Partridge should familiarise herself with Preferences in iTunes. Shame that technology cannot help a clueless user.

I think an informed public is the most important thing, and that's always lacking (on the whole).

Things like compatibility will burn many people, and so will generational loss as they try to convert their lossy files to another format (assuming they even find out they can be converted). Makes the CD sound like bigtime progress (it is...)

←

I have got to agree with this almost completely. Maybe completely . My father the other day was talking about the new iPeg, and I am pretty sure he meant iPod. Certainly, it plays mpeg files and plays them well and iTunes' default encoder m4a or whatever AAC format it is, has been proven to smoke up what once was our pride and joy of high-compression MD codec, LP2.

Certainly, as MD users, we don't really have much room to droll on about imcompatiblities as every single one of our units happen to be the most incompatible of modern/popular digital players. We are only getting the crumbs from under MP3's table, a table of which has been stabbed over and over by many MD users for poor sound quality. Haha, then came blind listening tests and now we need it.

The preference panel is helpful in iTunes for sure, or 3rd party Lame Plugins etc turning it into a very powerful and compatible jukebox. Someone must tell her of the blood, sweat and tears we have all shed in titling, accidentally erasing disks, TOC errors, loss of remotes and most importantly, the inability to transfer any MD-recorded song to any non-MD piece of hardware and have it play... other than the toaster.