Consumer Tech for February

There’s No App For that!
By Richard M. Sherwin
Lack of bandwidth will stall the final merger of computers, phones and consumer electronics.

Yorba Linda, Calif.—From last Summer’s manufacturers’ line showings right through January’s annual circus of circuits, (the 2012 International Consumer Electronics Show), every product or service showed off the final merging of computers, TVs and mobile devices. Nearly all the TVs, Tablets, Smart Phones and personal computers are all connected to each other whether we want them to be or not.
All the content that we might want from these devices is now also available through the “Cloud”, a bad euphemism for storing everything we watch, listen, play, work and study on someone else’s large computers.
Many consumers, who have purchased TVs or Blue Ray players recently (still the main entertainment device for most people) have discovered that these devices can be connected to the Internet. This connection using yet another part of the broadband spectrum lets people to use Netflix, Pandora, You Tube and many more Internet based applications right from their living room without using a computer. According to NPD, a market research giant, Netflix and other streaming and download services recorded twice the expected hours of programming in the fourth quarter than even their most optimistic executives predicted.
This streaming takes a significant portion of the allotted bandwidth the government gives to service providers.

At the same time people are accessing computer driven content on their TVs, most mobile devices today have APPs built into them that let you watch TV, or access radio or Internet locations, too.

This takes more bandwidth, while we enjoy our new mobile gadgets.
Your favorite tunes, pictures and videos now actually managed by Apple Google or Amazon or Verizon or some other behemoth’s cloud . Even in the case where you are paying for your content to be stored by another storage firm, you are still using valuable cloud real estate to upload, download, manipulate and in the newest services stream your own content from anywhere.

And when you access this content you are using up even more bandwidth.
While the security on these clouds, in the case of Verizon, an old airplane terminal in Dallas, Texas is better than the CIA, if there’s no power or bandwidth to access the content then you are out of luck.

Right now accessing the Cloud can only be done through wi-fi or mobile bands or Internet channels. All of these are already saturated with just making calls from the phone.
While mobile phone calls are the least data intensive service for bandwidth issues, some people now browse, listen to music watch videos over their smart phones, which is weighting down the speed of these services already.
Service providers and mobile operators provide instant access to your email, youtubing, skyping.
This, too also increasing the burden to the fragile mobile and home broadband systems. And all the wifi, (whether in your home or at Starbucks) also has limited space available and is shrinking by the hour.
So, while we enjoy all this content all the time anywhere, we are all paying a price to have Netflix or Amazon Video on all our devices or Skype, YouTube or Google on our TVs.
The price is that computer fathers, or the Feds or whoever is trying to govern the Internet and wanted us to merge all our technologies, never told the broadband spectrum gods (the service providers and Internet operators) that this double duty for all these Apps take more from the “cloud” infrastructure than it was ever designed for.
In addition, while TV stations, mobile operators and radio operators keep bidding on available broadband space that gets auctioned by the Federal Communications Committee, there’s just not enough space to go around.
And the growing and ubiquitous “Cloud,” i.e., storing, viewing sending receiving all content on servers, is still many years away from being de rigueur, say many industry experts.
Unfortunately, those providing the infrastructure and massive computer bandwidth — Verizon, AT@T, Comcast, Cablevision, Time Warner and so on — are slowly but surely running out of space, too. Yet they (when the government approves it) will start taxing you with higher fees for using extra bandwidth.
Sources at Verizon and Cablevision, claim they haven’t built an App yet that can give the Internet and service providers adequate broadband to get them through the next few years.
“We boast a lot about how the company will forge ahead on many bandwidth schemes, but already, in certain metropolitan areas or in high use regions, we are borrowing valuable bandwidth from one and not replacing it, ” said a source close to the Verizon FIOS expansion plans. [
Verizon’s sister company, Verizon Wireless, is even in worse shape. “We can build towers to handle more subscribers, but we don’t have nearly enough internal or external servers, or more importantly, channel bandwidth to handle the increasing video and heavy data content that we are promising our customers.” said another technician for the mobile division.
Dropped calls from all mobile operators, won’t be the only thing dropped in the near future without more mobile bandwidth.
And cable based service providers like Time Warner, Cablevision and RCN are in worse shape.
“To offer multi-stations PVRs like TiVo, we actually lower the speed and bandwidth from other apartments,” said a person familiar with cable operations in New York City and Chicago.
And with all the billions spent on making these devices talk to each other or talk to you, there is still lots of doubt whether the majority of technology public really wanted the still not secure way of living life and trusting the cloud, too.
So we could have the worst of both worlds: not enough bandwidth to operate efficiently and not enough security to guard the sacred “Cloud.”

Bytes and pieces:
ZTE, a China-based mobile hardware maker, further encroached on industry leaders LG, Motorola and Samsung by launching several Android models for multiple carriers, that offered the same or better features than their more established rivals, but for half the price. While they probably have less margin in their deals with service providers, ZTE is maintaining the sustainability of their research and development.
My-Ditto is the first hybrid storage solution with both a physical hard drive and a Cloud storage option. So it easy to share, access, and stream photos, videos, music, and files from any computer to virtually anyone, anywhere. Plus, it lets users share content directly to ‘friends’ on various social media sites. My-Ditto’s innovative USB keys or the free my-Ditto App, (available on iPhone, iPad, iTouch, and Android devices include a special integration feature with social media sites such as Facebook, Picasa and Flickr that lets users instantly share content – files, photos, videos, music – with ‘friends’ around the world or in the next room

Apple’s domination of the Smart Phone business ended last yearwhen Android devices eclipsed iPhone sales. Now Apple, while still being the most successful and richest company in the world, is heading down in its control of the Tablet business, as it’s projected to drop to less than 45% of the Tablet business by this summer. “Many people are finding out that a $500 while a terrific device, is just not worth three times the price,” said a spokesman for Costco. His competition, at BJs wholesale club, emphasized that while BJs would love to be able to sell iPads and may soon, they are doing terrific business with Acer, Vizio, Next Book, and Archos, Toshiba and Asus and other brands.
Of course the much maligned Kindle Fire is now selling twice as many units as iPad or any other Android based device
However, one big time Apple analyst said that the one thing that will keep the Cupertino, Ca. based company at the top of heap in corporate profits is that Apple’s cheap and efficient labor and materials, and humongous markups, will keep the profits rolling in.

Samsung and Panasonic, both worldwide leaders in television sales and clear winners in customer satisfaction by any and all research groups, are also top guns in second generation 3D TVs. However, Sharp, LG and Vizio, have now garnered a ton of acclaim for their 2012 TV entrees.
For instance, VIZIO’s first CinemaWide™ HDTVs with Theater 3D and VIZIO Internet Apps® (V.I.A.) is the first in the North American market with an ultra wide 21:9 aspect ratio, considered by many experts as the way to enjoy films as they were created for the movie theater. The CinemaScope 2.35:1 aspect ratio displays all TV without the black bars seen on conventional HDTVs.

Sharp, which saw its industry leading brand take a few hits the last few years, is really on a roll back to industry leadership, as we viewed the award winning 80-inch Aquos LED LCD model at a regional CE store in New England. It was one of the brightest and clearest TV sets we’ve seen and comes with built in Internet service support via Wi Fi or Ethernet that may negate the need for service calls or long technical support phone calls.
And LG, whose appliance division came up with our favorite product of the year, an instant cooler for soda and beer, now features a 55″ Class Cinema 3D Nano Full LED TV with SmartTV Apps. This particular 3D set seems to draw crowds wherever we’ve seen it. And it is absolutely one of the thinnest TVs on the market.