Philips Shrinks CD to 1.2 Inches

"In the ongoing effort to squeeze the size of a CD drive to fit into small, portable devices, Koninklijke Philips Electronics reports it is using blue laser technology to miniaturize a drive for an optical disc measuring 1.2 inches in diameter and capable of storing a gigabyte of data.

The company demonstrated Tuesday what it claims is the world's first fully functional prototype optical drive to measure only 2.24 by 1.36 by .3 inches. It can replay audio data on a 1.2-inch optical disc, according to Philips.

The disc's data capacity is 50 percent greater than that of current CD-ROMs, said Koen Joosse, a Philips spokesperson. It was made possible using a blue laser, which has a shorter wavelength than the red lasers used in current optical disc technology. A shorter wavelength means the laser beam can create smaller dots on optical discs, which means more data can fit on a disc....

optical drives are still costly to install in handheld devices, Schlichting said. The optical drives, which must be larger than the discs themselves, are larger and less convenient to use than flash memory cards. And because optical discs rotate, they consume more power than flash media, he added.

'The technology is still at an early stage, and we cannot determine when this will be commercialized,' Philips' Joosse said. The company hopes to shrink the .3-inch height of the drive; the optical disc's 1.2-inch diameter is already small enough for mobile devices, he said." [PC World]

Wow - 1GB on 1.2 inch re-writable CD! Of course, I still think you're going to want wireless access to the majority of your data and content (and you won't have much of a choice if The Heavenly Jukebox comes to pass), but that's a pretty handy number to have for storage. With MP4 video, could you watch (project?) a movie using a mobile device? That's a heck of a lot of ebooks....

TiVo Generation Takes Control of Viewing

"Ours is a TiVo house and my kids -- Alexandria, 6, and Zachary, 4 -- are TiVo kids. And that means that they (and I) can sit down whenever we want -- maybe before bedtime on a Tuesday evening -- and watch an episode of 'The Proud Family.' Or 'The Brothers Garcia' or 'Kim Possible.'

In our house, two of the founding members of the TiVo generation are growing up to realize that they control the schedule of their favorite shows -- not the network.

TiVo is becoming synonymous with the digital video recorder, a VCR-like device that records TV shows to an internal hard drive instead of a removable tape. Like competitors ReplayTV and UltimateTV, TiVo offers a user interface on top of the basic DVR technology that allows users to record a program based on its name, rather than its time slot....

Kids like Alex and Zack don't need to understand how it works. They just know that their shows are on when they want to see them. And that means the kids can come home and do their homework, play on the swings or ride their bikes without having to worry that they'll miss their favorite shows.

'There is a youth element to TiVo,' said Mike Ramsay, CEO of the San Jose-based company. 'Kids' programming is the largest segment of programming being recorded...'

A survey by TiVo found that 96 percent of subscribers would never give up their TiVo service. About 40 percent of the respondents said they'd rather give up their cell phones than their TiVo units.

'That's a fairly typical response,' Bernoff said. 'People are in love with this product and they are not going to give it up. The churn rate for TiVo is tiny.'

But penetration into homes remains a challenge. Existing subscribers have a tough time explaining it to their friends -- so instead they offer demonstrations....

My wife and I did our part to spread the word, too.

My dad was quickly impressed with the TiVo service at our house and hinted that TiVo was what he wanted to unwrap on Christmas morning. My mom took advantage of the holiday promotion and ordered one.

At first, they had a tough time understanding how to work the remote control. But that was easily fixed. We brought Alex and Zack to their house." [Mercury News, via The Lost Remote]

Emphasis above is mine, mainly because the numbers are so stunning. I'm not at all surprised by them, though, as we fit comfortably in, if not ahead, of the curve. We'll be getting our third ReplayTV by year's end (no TiVos).

In his book Growing Up Digital, Donald Tapscott reminds us of the adage that technology is only "technology" to those that didn't grow up with it. Baby Boomers don't think of television as technology, and kids don't think of DVRs (or interactive television) as technology. Although DVRs aren't perfect (our ReplayTV didn't notice the subtle change from Power Rangers Time Force to Power Rangers Wild Force so it stopped recording the show a few weeks ago, thereby causing much consternation), they allow for more efficent time-shifting of recorded shows. It's the best chance the networks have of reaching any viewer in our household, and this will be true of the kids for the rest of their lives.

I can't recommend DVRs highly enough, so if you don't already have one, consider purchasing one in the next year. You'll thank me later.