MWSF: HD Announcements
Posted on Tuesday, January 11th, 2005 at 16:29.
Several product announcements have me intrigued. This year has been a great year for awesome product announcements at Expo, particularly for high-definition. It’s here folks and, as Emerson has been preaching since I arrived, there is no life left in standard definition programming.
- Elgato EyeTV 500 adds digital cable support: This means that if you buy this product before July 1, 2005, you will be able to record high-definition broadcast television and do whatever you want with the recordings. After July 1, 2005, unless Congress acts, no digital broadcast signals will be able to be captured without very restricting DRM. Buy one of these TODAY to enjoy forever free use of HD broadcast content and then write a pissy letter to your Congressmen to halt the digital broadcast flag rollout.
- FinalTouch HD offers Quicktime color correction: This expensive color correction software allows for real time high-definition color correcting. It’s hott and it’s worth the money, especially if you’ve ever had to sit through *days* of Final Cut Pro re-rendering all of your video just for color correction.
- PURE offers accelerated rendering on Mac OS X, G5: One PCI card replaces a whole render farm for high-end Maya rendering. I hope that Emerson buys many of these.
I did not comment about Apple announcements because everybody on the Mac web scene comments about Apple’s announcements. I was quite excited about Apple’s announcements yesterday. Here’s my take.
1) The Mac Mini is genius and the right product at the right price. Most people replace their computers every 3-5 years. This takes us back to 2000 at the earliest for most people. Most Windows manufacturers were using USB keyboards and mice by this time, so your argument is moot.
2) iPod Shuffle is another “gap” product. Apple has removed any reason for anyone to not own an Apple iPod. I was going to buy a thumbdrive anyway for my 3D class, so why not also have it be a portable music player? It’s great and it plays my purchased music from the iTMS. And you can play in a non-shuffle manner. Check the product’s page.
3) iLife ‘05 is a MAJOR upgrade. Garageband 2 took all of the features that were once exclusive to Soundtrack in Final Cut Pro and added even more. This thing rivals Logic Express. iMovie’s update to support high-definition and HDV standards is HUGE because these cameras will be finding their way into consumer hands in the next two years. $79 is *really* cheap for all the functionality, especially when no other companies offer software like this at any price.
4) iWork ‘05 is, again, another “gap” product. Apple will never ship MS Office for Mac with every new Mac purchase because MS will never give Apple that great of an OEM deal. AppleWorks is shitty and a horrible excuse for bundled software. iWork is primarily a product that will be included with new Macs for users who cannot afford MS Office for Mac (it’s sooooo cheap for students) or do not need all of the features of Office. I doubt that Apple will significantly sell iWork to existing users, but I won’t deny that it’s really great software. Apple could make an entire office suite better than MS Office, but Apple understands that its customer base needs MS Office to be 100% compatible with the rest of the world. It’s good restraint and it’s a great intermediate product.
Mac Mini will sell like crazy. It’s target audience probably already has a USB keyboard, mouse and VGA or DVI monitor.
iLife ’05 is a major upgrade compared to previous versions. I would say each application (save iTunes that was not upgraded) doubled its feature set.
iPod Shuffle is a great iPod for people on a tiny budget.
iWork is a great basic word processor and presentation software, which is all most people use MS Office for.
Ugh!
Don’t even mention color correction around me. Our graphics department has been very lazy in the beginning with ColorSync profiles and Adobe profiles. Anyone who runs a graphics or design environment where you share your graphics with Windows, Macs and printshops understands the importance of having one profile for your computers, your images, your exports, your PDFs and your video.
One collection of graphics your team has been working hard on can be struck down as horrible to a poor Windows XP CRT user who’s blacks are brownish black and who’s blues are purple. We’ve had to go through with Photoshop scripts and apply a custom ColorSync profile to every Photoshop RAW image and ensure all our Macs were using the same ColorSync profile. I can tell you even images take a LONG time to change the profile on, much less exporting them to GIF or JPG with the same profile in tow.
It’s the small growth issues when you deal with bigger clients that kick you in the ass in business, and it’s a great lessons to pass on to anyone else who wants to get in the field.. you have to have syncronized color profiles across the board, first thing. If clients request a different profile fine but you have to have a management process set up for it. Otherwise it’s a headache.
I totally hear what you’re saying. Emerson has these wonderful 22″ LaCie Colorsync monitors and none of them are profiled by IT. It’s so frustrating.
FinalTouch is less about profiles, but more about general image quality (shadows, midtones, highlights on all color channels) than synchronized color preview. Once any NTSC monitor is balanced, color tends to be consistent.
I did a little Googling for replacement parts and found that by 2001, Dell, HP, & Compaq were all using USB keyboards and mice. I tried finding keyboards/mice before 2001, but wasn’t able to, so it may have been earlier.
Every mouse I’ve seen in the past several years has been USB with a PS/2 adapter, which I’ve luckily gotten to discard 9 times out of 10. Keyboards are a bit harder, but there are deals that can be found. I was appalled to receive a Microsoft wireless keyboard/mouse package from my cousin (would have preferred bluetooth), but believe it or not, it works beautifully and even has some considerate preferences! And yeah, all through USB….
There’s also this little thing called an adaptor that will turn PS/2 Keyboards/Mice into USB. We use them at work and I’m pretty sure they cost maybe $10 in the store.