I started working at DivX as one of the product managers on the consumer software team. It has been a lot of fun and I have been able to take the lead on a lot of interesting projects. My products are the Codec Pack, Converter, and Web Player. The digital video space has been a really interesting place for the last couple of years and we’ve been able to turn some big key threats (Windows 7 and HTML5) into big opportunities through our software (Codec Pack and Web Player, respectively). The Web Player in particular is something that I have spent a lot of time on over the past year. We recently released a beta that introduces two new features that I am particularly proud of.

First, it now supports HTML5 API for <video> which is something I have been following for a long time. I am really glad to see HTML5 finally getting some traction but the one area where things are kind of still a mess it in the <video> space. There isn’t a consistently supported format across the major browsers yet, and some browser have a pretty low quality of playback. We are helping to alleviate this by delivering a HTML5 <video> platform with consistent support for multiple formats (H.264, MP4, MKV, MOV, and DivX), all in very high quality with hardware acceleration (when available), on Windows and Mac for Firefox, Chrome, and  even Internet Explorer. Users just have to have our plugin installed and it will support standard HTML5 <video> markup. Check out a little HTML5 demo I made to see how it works.

Second, we introduced a new feature we are calling DivX HiQ. It allows you to choose to use the DivX Plus Web Player on popular sites like YouTube and Vimeo instead of their default Flash players. As the Web Player is solely focused on video unlike Flash it offers a much better experience with dramatically lower CPU and power consumption. Don’t just take my word on it though see what users are posting about it on our forums.

I have also been doing a bit of programming since I’ve been really getting involved in a lot of web/HTML5 stuff through my work. I made an “Instant” search using Bing’s AJAX API which was novel until Google Instant came out. It is a fun project and it works really well on mobiles. I also created a Google Code project for a JavaScript statistics library (I hope my Purdue professors are proud :) and a Silverlight audio player that supports the HTML5 audio API that I made. I’ll probably blog about them more later.

That is a sampling of what I have been up to in the tech world. I will try to post more regularly (once or twice a month) about what is happening in HTML5, media, and the mobile landscape.

For all the Vista users out there, I recently stumbled across an awesome program for the Vista Sidebar. It is called Amnesty Generator, and basically it will take the code for any web widget (think Google Gadgets, ESPN, etc) and turn it into a Vista Sidebar compatible gadget. It is a simple program, but works great; I use it to display the NBA.com live sports scores on my desktop. Check it out. There is also a Mac OS X version, but I have not used it.

Next up on the block is Nintendo’s forthcoming Mario Kart release for the Wii. Forget Zelda or Metroid, Mario Kart may be the most important franchise Nintendo has made in the last decade or two. All three people Everyone who had a N64 or Gamecube had Mario Kart; it is probably the only game I really played on Gamecube. It single handedly kept Nintendo in the console business, IMHO.

The formula is simple, easy and fun racing antics for you and your friends. Really it is about playing with others and yelling at them when they use a power-up on you. “Damn you Carl! That was the luckiest turtle shell ever!” The problem is that Mario Kart for Wii will not have voice support for online play (of course you can still taunt in person :)).

Maybe it is just me, but I don’t get it. Why doesn’t Nintendo come out with a headset for the Wii (it uses Bluetooth after all)? They made a steering wheel for Mario Kart, and I would think that another accessory to buy would fit perfect with Nintendo’s current accessory fetish strategy.

Mario Kart online won’t be half of the fun it could be with voice support. I understand that they may be concerned about the unwanted jagged words you often hear on Xbox Live, but limiting voice chat to friends-only by default would take care of that. When I read posts like this of people using Xbox 360s to do voice chat while they play Wii games, you know something is wrong.

Lastly, and certainly not least, why do people care what Kevin Rose says or does? (This is a real question, feel free to comment). I know he runs a website that is almost as popular as TechConsumer (ha!), but really, why do people care? It was the Kevin Rose 3G iPhone rumors post about back-to-back webcams that really pushed me over the edge. It got coverage on AppleInsider, Gizmodo, Techmeme, and of course Digg.

Kevin Rose has had one good idea in his life so far (which appears to be easy to copy and make better), and that’s it. Digg initially thrived under the so-called “wisdom of crowds” but it is now languishing under “mob rule.” Interestingly enough, the mob has a fancy for Paris Hilton, all products from Apple, and stupid ugly cats (and squirrels). More people on Digg read what Kevin Rose says than what Ben Bernanke says (even with this “recession”). Rose’s predictions were way off on the iPhone 1.0, so why would I listen to him now? He doesn’t work with or for Apple (actually his business relationship is closer with Microsoft).

So again I ask, why does anyone listen to Kevin Rose? If you can actually give me a good reason why, I’ll be surprised.

The Scenarios
I decided to look at three different gaming configurations, an Xbox 360, a “typical” gaming PC, and the gaming PC setup as a home theater PC (HTPC). The main difference between the gaming PC and the HTPC is the display and sound. The gaming PC has a 22″ widescreen monitor with computer surround sound speakers. The HTPC has a 46″ 1080P LCD display, and a component 5.1 home theater speaker setup. The Xbox 360 setup has the same 46″ LCD display and speakers as the HTPC.

The Assumptions

1. The gaming PC must be replaced every three years (just the PC not the display or sound)
2. The gaming PC gets $250 of misc. upgrades by year two
3. The gaming PC is being purchased instead of a basic computer that would have been purchased anyway
4. The console PC requires a larger/better television than what would have been purchased anyway
5. The console life cycle is six years
6. For all scenarios four full-priced games, and one discount game (50%) were purchased each year
7. The console gamer purchases three additional controllers
8. The console gamer goes through four dozen batteries per year
9. The console gamer pays for an Xbox Live Gold membership
10. 23% (mean of Dell’s consumer financing rates 15-30%) discount rate used to calculate the NPV

The Method
I am using a finance technique known as net present value (NPV). It is a method for accounting for the time value of money. Basically a dollar today is worth more than a dollar three years from now (or any other later date). It should be noted that using NPV favors the PC rig because it discounts the future costs of upgrading/replacing the system which you don’t have to do with the Xbox 360.

The Verdict
In the scenarios I have laid out, the basic PC gaming setup is more expensive. It is somewhat close though; only 12% higher. Think about that though, a 46″ 1080P LCD TV, full home-theater setup, an Xbox 360, 6 years of Xbox Live, four controllers, and the two included games costs less than a good (but not amazing) gaming PC on a relatively paltry 22″ display.

If you compare the 360 to the HTPC it gets bad real quick: 38% more. If you assume that you already have the TV/monitor and sound that you’ll be using for your gaming, the PC solutions are a whopping 71% more. Here’s the breakdown in dollar figures:

Total NPV
Xbox 360: $3,152
Gaming PC: $3,523
HTPC: $4,349

NPV without display and sound
Xbox 360: $1,837
Gaming PC: $3,149
HTPC: $3,149

The Point?
The only point of this is to show the PC gaming is in fact more expensive. If you enjoy PC gaming, so be it. Just know that it costs more. For the record, I was actually surprised how well PC gaming did in this comparison. For my dollar, I’ll take the integrated approach of the Xbox 360 and Xbox Live though, not to mention that I don’t have to install my games and troubleshoot them to make them work (if you can make them work).

*If you would like to check out my spreadsheet for this, here’s the link. It has all of the specs for the PC, and links to every product and component used.

*Update* Bob has a response to my analysis. Check it out.

That was me before I started using VoIP (voice over IP) at home about two years ago. It is easy and inexpensive to setup, will work with your existing telephones, and I’m only paying about $8.50/month for service now. Here’s how:

VoIP gets talked about a lot these days, but it is usually: some service from your internet provider (Comcast, AT&T, Verizon, etc) that is only marginally less expensive than the phone company, really complex to setup (Asterisk), or it doesn’t work with your existing equipment (Skype). What I am recommending doesn’t fall into any of those categories. I am using a SIP-based service called Gizmoproject (Skype’s main competitor) with a hardware SIP ATA (analog telephone adapter).

SIP is the same technology that Vonage uses (they just lock their hardware down to their service). It is a standardized way of doing VoIP (unlike Skype’s proprietary setup); think FTP but for voice. As it is a standard, many different companies offer SIP-based services and products that are interoperable with each other. To get started you need two things, a service provider, and a hardware ATA.

As I just mentioned, I am using Gizmoproject as my SIP service provider, but you could use others if you wanted. They have “Call In” numbers with unlimited inbound minutes that cost $12 for 3 months, or $35 for 12 months. The price for calling out depends on the location you are calling, and the prices fluxuate a little bit. Currently, calling any number in the U.S. costs $0.019/minute. International calls are quite inexpensive as well, see this link for the full list. “Call Out” credits are purchased in $10 or $20 increments.

I should note that you don’t have to have a “Call In” number to make calls, and you don’t have to have “Call Out” credits to receive calls. They are independent of each other.

One of the great things about Gizmoproject is that SIP-to-SIP calls are always free. I set my parents up with this because of that. And because it is all going over the Internet it is a free call whether they live in Luxemborg or Los Angeles. Calls to toll-free numbers (800, 888, etc) are free too. They also came out with a new feature called Backdoor Dialing that allows Gizmo users to call about 11% (currently, but the number is growing) of U.S. phone numbers for free.

Another feature I use somewhat regularly is their call forwarding feature. If you are waiting for a call on your landline but want to run some errands you can just forward all of your calls to your cellphone. I know this can be done with most traditional phone services, but with Gizmo it doesn’t cost an arm-and-a-leg per minute; you only pay your normal per minute outbound call rate.

The hardware SIP ATA I have is a Grandstream Handytone. You can get one that even supports having two seperate lines for about $50 online. My house isn’t hooked up to any POTS (plain-old-telephone-service) service so the SIP adapter just plugs into my household wiring. If you still have a traditional land line service, you can plug a phone straight into the ATA. If you want the ATA to run to all of your phone outlets in your house, just disconnect the phone line coming into you house from the phone company (usually located in the phone box on the side of your house) before you plug the ATA into one of your phone jacks. Now all of your existing phones will be connected to your VoIP service.

You will have to put in a few settings (username, password, etc) into your ATA, but it is pretty easy. Here is a link to Gizmo’s knowledge base entry on setting up a hardware ATA. You can also put in what area code you want the ATA to think you are in. It will add the area code prefix (Grandstream calls it “Home PNA”) you choose to any 7-digit number you call. If you don’t see it in the ATA settings, make sure your ATA isn’t using really old firmware.

Once you have that setup, you are ready to go. When you pick up the phone you will hear a dial-tone just like you did before. You will make calls just like you did before. You will just be saving a lot of money. Last year it only cost me $102 total ($8.50 per month) for this setup! We mostly use it for long calls (my wife talking to her mom) or when we get low on rollover minutes.

There are a few downsides I should point out. Most SIP services won’t transfer your current home number, so if you want to keep that you are pretty limited. Vonage will transfer your number however, and the SIP ATA I have recommended will work with Vonage. There isn’t any 911 service either, but I can always call 911 with my cellphone so that isn’t an issue for me. Gizmo does include free caller ID, but unfortunately it will only show you the number (similar to cellphones) not the caller’s name. Lastly you can’t use a fax machine, at least with Gizmoproject. There are SIP-based Fax over IP services that use the same ATA but they aren’t quite as cheap as Gizmo. They are still probably cheaper than your traditional phone service, however.

What the hell is up with Apple and their fetish for making products that don’t have user-replaceable batteries? It was bad enough with the iPod, (even if it isn’t quite the only MP3 player in that category) but then they added the iPhone to the list, and now the MacBook Air (my vote for the worst product name since Microsoft Bob). I really can’t understand how it is acceptable to have to send in your cell phone or laptop every year or two (according to Apple) just to have a battery replaced. Did I mention that they’ll rent an iPhone to you while yours is in the shop?

How many iPods have been thrown away and replaced by new models because the battery died and it wasn’t worth the $66 investment in an old iPod. That’s great for the environment. And can someone tell me why it costs $20 more for an iPhone battery replacement than an iPod? It should be telling that Apple has FAQs just on battery replacement!

Next up on the chopping block? Sony. This whole Blu-ray and PS3 business just annoys me. It is like they can’t make up their mind on what their products are going to do before they launch them. The Blu-ray spec was so not-ready-for-primetime that the Playstation 3 has been the only safe-bet for a future-proof Blu-ray movie player. This helpful guide to what features each Blu-ray player does and doesn’t support should be proof enough that Blu-ray still isn’t really ready for the average movie buying consumer (let’s ignore the price that is 3x higher than HD-DVD too).

The Playstation 3 has been all over the product map as well. In the little more than a year that the PS3 has been out, they have had five different versions of the console and they are about to add a sixth, yet they have never sold more than two SKUs at a time. Let’s see, will this new one play PS2 games? If it does, will it be all games via hardware, or some games via software? Does it have WiFi? What about SACD support? Oh you haven’t heard of that? It is just another failed media format by Sony that some PS3s support.

And while Sony has made it obvious that they are using the PS3 as a Trojan horse for Blu-ray (or is it the other way around now?) could someone tell them that many people like to use universal remote controls when they watch a movie? Just try to explain to my wife why she can control everything in my living room with our Harmony remote (which we absolutely love), except for the PS3. Surely out of the five or six variants of the PS3 they could have made one that had a remote “eye” like the Xbox 360 does.

Speaking of the Xbox 360, even though they have three SKUs, all of the differences in features are accessories, so even a $280 Arcade model could be accessorized out to be like an Elite (minus the black paint job) if you wanted. The PS3 SKUs differences can’t be fixed/change after the fact.

Oh, and lastly, would it be too much for the PS3 to actually come with the HD cables (component or HDMI) to actually hook up their “true HD” game console to my HDTV (you know, like the Xbox 360 does)? I’m sure it makes sense to people that they are getting a free “Blu-ray HD” movie, but not the HD cables to watch it with. Actually wait, don’t do it Sony, I love to watch people at BestBuy get suckered talked into buying an $86 Monster HDMI cable (one of the few remaining joys of brick-and-mortal shopping). You know if they didn’t waste all that money on an HDMI cable they might have some money for an extra game or controller…but you wouldn’t want that sale, would you Sony?

Something has surprised me more than the twists and turns of the plot though, and that is Bungie’s Halo 3 website. It is a whole new level of game and interweb integration. Dare I say it, it is almost a social network.

The Old

Halo 2 already had quite a bit of interesting integration into the web. You could check your all-time stats, look at where each of your deaths took place, and even check out where the person was standing who killed you. But that was pretty much where it stopped.

The New

Stats: Halo 3 ups the ante on the stats, offering far more comprehensive stats. I especially like that they have added emphasis to the kill to death ratio for those players who make you lose the game by 3 kills when they get 25 kills, 35 deaths, and still feel they had a good game. You can look at your stats for each map, for each game type, and for each weapon you use even. So far my weapon of choice (in one multiplayer game) is the Heavy Machine Gun (turret).

Forge: There are two new modes in Halo 3 that are quite unique: Forge and Theater. The Forge allows you to customize all of the multi-player maps. Weapons, spawn points, vehicles, teleports, and more can all be altered. It will be incredibly interesting to see what the Halo community comes up with in the Forge.

Theater: The Theater lets you watch recent games from anywhere in the game, Forge, Multiplayer, or even Campaign; and when I say recent, that is a relative term. The Theater will keep the most recent “25 films, or about 400MB worth, whichever comes first.” My 360 still has every minute of my entire campaign. You can also save films to your library if you don’t want them deleted. Obviously you probably wouldn’t want to relive an entire campaign (unless that is your thing) so the Theater is about more than just replaying games. You can make brief clips or take screenshots (the picture above is actually one of mine, click on it for full screen) of any of your video.

Sharing is Caring: What good would all these custom maps and screenshots of major pwnage be without a way to share them with the world? That’s where the Halo 3 file sharing comes into play. It isn’t the illegal P2P type of file sharing most people associate with that name. It is the place you can put up any content, maps, videos, screenshots, gametypes, etc, you create in Halo 3 for anyone to download. Friends can find content through the game, but you can even download stuff via your web browser onto your Xbox 360. Just find the content you want on the site, click download, and next time you play the game… Violá, it downloads it.

The Social Network: As you may have noticed above, I was initially going to say it was almost a social network, but looking into it further I realized it is really a full-blown social network…for a game. Think about it, you have your profile, a message center, a friends list, a people finder (to find other friends on Halo 3), a forum, and even groups (formerly Clans). That sounded like a social network to me, but it was when I saw what clans had become that it pushed me over the top.

Groups: Clans (now called groups) have moved far beyond just a bunch of people to game with. Each group now has its own homepage (see below), forum, articles and FAQ sections, news, announcements, links, and of course an RSS feed. This is going to build a whole new level of community in many groups, particularly competitive ones. It will be really interesting to see if Bungie expands the feature list to allow group file share. I can envision groups just for machinima with episodes on their homepage.

Finding new groups has been expanded too. It used to be that if you played with someone on Xbox Live and had a good time, you might ask them for an invite into their clan, or maybe you had some friends at school that had a clan. Now you can search for groups based on location, the founder, or even just the name of the clan. I have already found one in my zip code and one dedicated to my university.

The Finale: So needless to say, I’m feeling pretty good about the return on my gaming dollar for Halo 3. I think Bungie has created something that will be mimicked by a lot of other studios, and that it has the potential to revolutionize the community aspect of gaming. If you have an Xbox, you owe it to yourself to get this game. With the solid campaign and multi-player, along with innovative features like the Forge and Theater, I’m giving this game a 10/10. Ask anyone who knows me, I don’t give out tens easily; I can nitpick with the best of ‘em.

In addition to the comments below, if you are on Xbox Live, drop me a message or game invite. My gamertag is peskyNOSPAMpescado. Just take the nospam out. Don’t ask about the name, it is a long story.

More Screenshots (courtesy of me, click for full screen):

*Those are real in-game graphics.

Vongo is a download video service owned by Starz Entertainment that can best be described as a video subscription service similar to Netflix meets CinemaNow. For $9.99/month you get all the movies you can download from their current selection of movies. While the selection of movies (2,500 titles) isn’t as large as Amazon’s Unbox, there are more current mainstream movies (The Queen, Stranger than Fiction, Bridge to Terabithia, etc) than can be found on Netflix’s “Watch Instantly” service.

As with most of the services available, you have to download a special application to find and download the Windows Media DRM’d movies. The movies are in standard DVD resolution (720×480) but are compressed down to about 1GB. Picture quality was generally lower than a DVD, but higher than what I have experienced with the on-demand movies available from my cable company. I should note that there was a noticeable jitter on scenes that pan side to side a lot. With my eye for compression artifacts, I usually notice things like that, but even my wife noticed and complained about it. Overall I would say the picture quality was acceptable, but still lower than the Xbox Live Marketplace.

Vongo’s application can run as a standalone application, or within Windows Media Center. After trying both interfaces, I strongly prefer the normal GUI and not the Media Center version. The only saving grace about the Media Center interface is that it mostly works on Media Center Extenders such as the Xbox 360. The programs will queue up your movies and download them one at a time, and even though I have a 10MBit/sec internet connection most downloads were around 1.5MBit/sec and took about an hour. If you plan on watching the movie on your computer, you can start playing it after just a minute. You have to wait until the download completes to watch it on another device like the Xbox 360 though.

Up to this point everything sounds good, but unfortunately it wasn’t that easy. The download manager seemed to crash quite often. It could only download 2-3 movies before it would crash. You have no idea how annoying it is to be half-way into a movie only to have it stop all of the sudden.

I also encountered quite a few odd problems with it not taking care of the DRM properly. In fact, I had to use a trick I learned getting CinemaNow to work on Vongo too. One movie even stopped playing half-way through because it lost its authorization to play mid-movie. Go figure.

Last but not least, you can’t actually play movies on an Xbox 360 through the Media Center interface. If you try to, it will just basically crash the Media Center interface. You can only do it through the normal video playblack that is built-in to the 360. It is nice that you don’t have to have Media Center to play the videos however.

Even with all of the technical snafus, I still kind of liked the service. I am planning on canceling after my free trial runs out, but I might try it again later (unlike CinemaNow). The problem for Vongo is that the software is just too buggy. The average user is not going to be able to get it to work, and others who maybe could get it to work won’t want to deal with the hassle. If you are curious about it, I would recommend trying out the 14-day free trial they have going on right now. You have nothing to lose but possibly some of your time.

For another movie rental option, see our coverage on using Amazon Unbox and Tivo together.

In the post, I said that Nintendo is doing very well with what I call their strategy of selling “checkers instead of chess”. Although it was not intended to be insulting, apparently it came off that way. For me, I don’t care if you enjoy checkers or chess, there’s no qualitative difference, they are both just games. Some people like to read books for leisure, while I don’t usually find anything about reading books to be leisurely. People have different tastes. It is great that Nintendo wants to push to create games for people who don’t want to literally invest time in a game.

This brings me to my point, I am sick and tired of other people judging my (or anyone else’s for that matter) use of leisure time. Why is it that some people view someone like me (late-20s grad student) as being lazy because I will play a video game for an hour. Yet these same people will watch a couple of hours of The Apprentice, Grey’s Anatomy, and then end it off with the local news. I spent 60 minutes on leisure, they spent 150. Can you smell the hypocrisy?

“But think of how much more productive you could have spent your time.”

My response? Why do I have to be productive all of the time? When I get home from a day of work, frankly I need to unwind, and TV doesn’t do it for me. Games actively distract me; TV is too passive. A synonym in the dictionary for entertainment is diversion; and that is precisely what I need. Fortunately, after a few years of marriage, my wife started to get it. She used to hate it if I played an hour of Halo, but I could watch 6 hours of TV and not get a single comment. She realized, like I hope more will, that entertainment is inherently not actively productive. I believe strongly that you can be more productive by taking adequate breaks, than you can by working until your eyes cross.

Hopefully, one of these days video games will actually be recognized as a legitimate and acceptable form of entertainment. Too often it seems that gaming is judged by its lowest common denominator (Manhunt 2?), and not by its more cinematic masterpieces (Metal Gear 2). If movies were regarded in this way, people would look at moviegoers with disdain because the latest “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” was too violent and tasteless.

Bottom line, it is my time, and I will do with it as I please. As long as the average American is still watching 2.6 hours of television a day, I won’t feel bad spending an hour on Halo. Just get off my back.