LIVEdigitally

So what's a G1 iPhone worth now?

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As all humans across the planet are now aware, there’s a $199 3G iPhone (with GPS) available come June 11th.  John Biggs observes, that’s with a 2-year contract, but I don’t really feel that makes a difference since most typical consumers are re-upping contracts as they buy phones anyway.  $199 is an amazing price point, one sure to help get Apple to hit their previously-hard-to-reach volume numbers.  Let’s look at what you get for $199 now:

  • Arguably the best phone on the market, at a very competitive price to all “trendy” phones, making it affordable to non-professionals alike.
  • A GPS device.
  • A 3G mobile Internet + email device.
  • An 8GB MP3 and video player.
  • Access to a fairly big supply music, movies/TV shows, and now games and other applications.

All in all, not too shabby.  I’m still not running out to buy one (no Verizon, still want a keyboard, etc.), but I’m more tempted than ever.  It’s exactly the right price point to move large volumes of phones (here you can compare it to other top-priced AT&T phones.  Yes, that IS a RAZR in the mix, wow!).  It’s the same price as a Treo (shudder).  Incidentally, looking back a year I was about half-right on my G1 and G2 phone predictions.  Oh well, live and learn.

After some random, informal, and ridiculously unscientific polling, my hunch is a lot of first-generation iPhone users are going to wait until about 12:03am on the 11th to buy the 3G iPhone.  But what are they gonna do with the old ones?

Can’t really resell em (unless they’re unlocked) for any real value.  Again, I don’t view the 2-year contract as any kind of deterrent, and therefore it won’t help spur sales at near price points ($179, $149, even $99).  They’re still listed above $300 on eBay, but that will definitely change in the near future.  My hunch is the price settles in somewhere right around $80.  This makes an all-in early adopter program run a grand total of $718 ($599 + $199 – $80), not to mention the $100 iStore coupon.

One Gadget to Rule Them All?

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Am I the only one who’s found the entire industry surrounding gadgetry and computers has a certain amount of ennui around it? I blame (and not in a bad way, so read this through to the end people) Apple. Seems like ever since Jobs first unveiled the iPhone back in January 2007 that nothing’s even come close to being, well, interesting. I don’t even have an iPhone (and until they ship one on Verizon or until AT&T offers a US+Canada plan, I won’t have one), but I find it one of the most interesting and compelling products on the market.

I wonder how long it’s really going to take other manufacturing companies to start playing the game the same way as Apple does. Granted, not everyone can sport a black mock-T the same way, but they can certainly (1) hire great product designers, (2) have a great vision, (3) execute on that vision, and (4) build the same buzz. But nobody is doing it. Nobody. It’s as if the entire consumer electronics and PC industry look at Apple and just shrug their shoulders. This is, in a word, sad.

When Gretzky played hockey he was arguably the best player to ever lace up his skates. When he played, his teammates played better and the competition tried harder. Our industry seems to have the opposite reaction. “Competing” products come nowhere close, and for no good reason. This is the part that stymies me the most – it’s not exactly like Apple is perfect or anywhere close. While I’ve personally given up on Windows, I can create a huge list of complaints I have about OS X. The original iPhone has terrible problems dealing with corporate email (not to mention the accidental generation of multi-thousand-dollar bills from time to time). These flaws are opportunities for competitors.

Due to my attending CES year after year, my email address has saturated to the entirety of the consumer electronics PR lists. I get virtually all press releases, sneak previews, glimpses, and other news from major CE and PC manufacturers (other than Apple, interestingly). Is it surprising to any of my readers if I “unveil” that practically none of these companies even attempt buzz or drama? There’s no excitement, there’s just press releases and media events. Now I do happen to believe you can’t build too much interest around mediocre products, so this issue goes hand-in-hand with the “where are the great products” topic.

We’re a few hours away from Steve Jobs’ keynote at this year’s WWDC event. I’ll be watching live-ish from Engadget (not Twitter, which is neither reliable nor efficient for this type of information), using TechCrunch as my backup site should Engadget go down (or someone in my office hollers out something that they read on TC before Eng got it!). I’m sure I’ll be somewhat wowed, and somewhat not, because not everything will be exciting ZOMG news. But who cares? It’s Apple up at bat, and they are pointing to the bleachers while the other guys are still practicing their bunts.

ps – congrats to Sling Media for getting the iPhone version of the SlingPlayer ready!

pps – I own some AAPL stock, but I also own some Sony and other CE/PC companies as well.

Routers Need an Emergency Mode

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Where it used to be hard to find a WiFi network, these days it’s hard to find only one.  If you live in an apartment building, you may spot dozens of networks.  And thanks to malicious jerks around the world, most of them are closed, locked down, unavailable.  This is pretty strongly advisable, yet slightly disappointing from a community angle, and often-times very frustrating from a “gotta get online to send this email” perspective.

My first piece of wishful thinking is having router manufacturers enable an “emergency mode” triggered by natural disasters or other major emergencies.  I’ll say up front I have no idea who is responsible for triggering this switch, but let’s assume local governments could determine such a method (just don’t have it over to FEMA, they apparently rarely know when or where emergencies occur).  When routers receive the “emergency signal” they provide open access to the Internet.

While I may be oversimplifying the technology impact and there’d obviously be some security implications, the purpose here is to give people an easy way to share and receive vital information.  The phone lines and cell signals may be overwhelmed with traffic, but assuming either phone or cable services are available, people with Internet-enabled mobile devices and laptops would all be able to rapidly reach out.  We could share updates, find safe havens, etc, all with simple Internet connectivity.

I don’t exactly know what it would take to make this happen.  My hunch is it simply won’t.  But when I see 23 hotspots in my surrounding region and know full well that a stranger couldn’t use a single one of them in time of need, it makes me ponder how we can better use technology to improve our community.

Avi Greengart reviews 5 iPhone cases

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I get a lot of accessories and other doodads that don’t merit formal reports at Current Analysis, but are interesting nonetheless. Here’s a quick rundown of five iPhone cases:

DLO HipCase ($34.99) – this was one of the first iPhone cases on the market, and easily one of the most attractive – provided you don’t mind the wide “eyeglass case” style. The leather case protects the phone reasonably well, though the corners are left exposed. I managed to dent – but not break – my first iPhone sample when it dropped to the floor in this case and hit precisely at the corner near the headphone jack. The big downside to this case is that the belt clip is permanently attached, so it is awkward to slip into a pocket instead of perching it on your hip.

DLO Jam Jacket ($24.99) – this one looks like a simple silicone overlay, and it is, though there’s a twist around back. Instead of a belt clip, there’s a hard silicone protrusion which is used to wrap your headphone cord around, and even indentations for inserting Apple’s stock earbuds. There are a bunch of problems with this case: it doesn’t protect the screen in any way. It doesn’t have a belt clip, so if you want to use it that way, you can’t. Worse, if you want to stick the iPhone in your pocket, that’s difficult, too, because the cord winding thing sticks out. Finally, if you don’t use Apple’s stock ear buds – I don’t – then they won’t fit in the spots cut out for them on the rear protrusion, either. If it fits your needs perfectly, great. But I can’t generally recommend this one.

Griffin Elan Holster ($29.99) – Griffin has a bunch of different cases for the iPhone, and this one is one of the simplest. It is a leather sleeve open on one of the short ends and exposed along the sides for access to the volume buttons and ringtone on/off switch. Fit is pretty snug, which is a good thing if you want to take advantage of the case’s flexibility: it can be used with a removable belt clip in either vertical or horizontal orientation (if it wasn’t a snug fit, the iPhone would fall out when you have it in horizontal mode). So, vertical belt case? Check. Horizontal belt case? Check. Pocket case without a clip? Check. Screen protection? Check. It is attractive, but not as attractive as the DLO HipCase, so if flexibility matters more to you than fashion, Griffin’s Elan Holster is an easy recommendation.

OtterBox iPhone Defender ($49.99) – the Defender series of cases from OtterBox are semi-rugged, designed to survive jostling and moisture, but not sledgehammers and swimming pools. The case is built in layers: first, there’s a hard plastic shell (which splits in half to insert/retrieve the iPhone itself) which has a “patented thin membrane” that covers the iPhone’s screen. Surprisingly, I found that the membrane does not interfere with usage of the phone at all. On top of the hard plastic shell, you then put on a silicone jacket, which includes plugs for all the ports so that moisture can’t enter them when they are closed, but headphone jacks and USB cords can be used when they are open. Then, the whole contraption fits into a belt clip made of even thicker hard plastic with a rotating hinge so that the clip can be worn vertically or horizontally. I did not deliberately drop test the iPhone in the OtterBox case because I’m fairly certain Apple wants at least one of its loaners returned from me unharmed, but I used this case for months and came away extremely impressed with its well thought out design.

There are a few drawbacks, however. First, the case does add some bulk to the iPhone, particularly when the belt clip is used; that is to be expected. All the iPhone’s controls are accessible, save one: the ringer on/off switch cannot be used when the iPhone is in the case; this is a minor, but significant loss. The biggest problem is that getting the iPhone in and out of the case is a nightmare, and when in the case, the iPhone doesn’t fit in its white stand or in any of three or four iPod speaker docks I tried. It can be synced using the USB cable itself without the stand, so if you don’t ever dock your iPhone even that won’t be an issue.

H2O audio iFR Sport Combo ($29.99) – H2O Audio is known for cases and headphones that are fully waterproof, but the iFR case/armband combination is merely water resistant, much like the OtterBox case. Unfortunately, it is not nearly as well designed as the competition. It is far bigger and bulkier, and looks more like the fully ruggedized waterproof cases H2O Audio sells for the iPod (those cases are advertised as being designed for taking an iPod surfing which justifies their size). On the iFR, there is a clear hard plastic front piece that protects the screen which must be flipped out of the way to gain access to the iPhone’s controls underneath, which then completely exposes the iPhone to your fingers and to moisture. In practice, the flip-away cover makes it very difficult to answer the phone quickly, and you cannot surf the Internet outside during a light drizzle, never mind go into real surf. The armband is almost comically large. On the other hand, inserting and extracting the iPhone is a relatively simple and quick affair compared to the OtterBox. I have been quite impressed with some of H2O Audio’s ingenious waterproof cases, but I cannot recommend this one.

About Avi: At Current Analysis I focus on testing mobile devices and advising clients how competitive they are in the market. None of the products I’m recommending here come from clients, and I do not own stock in any of the companies. I do not pay for review units, and while most devices I test get sent back (whether the companies want them back or not – I need to get them out of my house), I have kept some of the items listed below for… lets call it a long term loan.

Fair Deal: UMG Profiteering off my YouTube Video

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I received the following email from YouTube earlier today:

Dear YouTube Member:

UMG has claimed some or all audio content in your video Pussycat Dolls @ Microsoft CES Party – basic Muvee w/U2. This claim was made as part of the YouTube Content Identification program.

Your video is still live because UMG has authorized the use of this content on YouTube. As long as UMG has a claim on your video, they will receive public statistics about your video, such as number of views. Viewers may also see advertising on your video’s page.

Claim Details:

Copyright owner: UMG
Content claimed: Some or all of the audio content
Policy: Allow this content to remain on YouTube.

  • Place advertisements on this video’s watch page.

Applies to these locations:
Everywhere

UMG claimed this content as a part of the YouTube Content Identification program. YouTube allows partners to review YouTube videos for content to which they own the rights. Partners may use our automated video / audio matching system to identify their content, or they may manually review videos.

If you believe that this claim was made in error, or that you are otherwise authorized to use the content at issue, you can dispute this claim with UMG and view other options in the Video ID Matches section of your YouTube account. Please note that YouTube does not mediate copyright disputes between YouTube owners. Learn more about video identification disputes.

Sincerely,
The YouTube Content Identification Team

At first, I was outraged. But at second, I really wasn’t. Why? Well, I *did* choose to use U2’s Beautiful Day for the background music, and I certainly didn’t ask for permission to do so. It would be their right to ask me to stop playing the video with that music in it. Instead, they’re taking ad revenue rights. Considering I wasn’t putting the video up for profit, I really don’t care, and if this allows me to continue using their music in such a way, I call it fair.

I believe this is the right kind of example content companies should set. Suing end-users is just a lose-lose proposition. Becoming ridiculously tightfisted about content use is also a dead-end. But here I’m basically being encouraged by a copyright owner to use their content for my purposes (fun) and yet meet their basic business needs as well (profit).

Here’s the video in question:

Mininotebook Lemmingness

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Lots of noise in the air today after Dell introduced (well, showed) a mininotebook at D6. I think the category is… interesting(ish), more a novelty than anything else. I’m sure there are some people who look at these laptops as their ultimate solution for computing, and others who scoff. Either way, the space is getting crowded, and unfortunately, I feel it’s crowding up in a boring way. Here’s a short video with my thoughts:

Quicken Online makes it easy to track your finances, at a price

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Intuit’s Quicken Online purports to offer a simple, all-in-one control panel that lets you easily monitor and manage your monthly finances. For the basics, it succeeds, but users who need complete control may find themselves wanting more, especially for $2.99 per month.

What’s your problem? I use four different sites to manage my finances online: one for my brokerage accounts, another for my 401(k), one for my credit cards, and yet another for my checking and savings accounts. Because 90% of my online financial activities requires nothing more than a quick balance check and a look at recent transactions, I’m on the hunt for an easy, secure application that I can use to aggregate the information without having to hop from site to site to site. I’d also love integrated budgeting features, so that I can compare my spending vs. personal goals.

Enter Intuit’s Quicken Online, which I first came across through Lifehacker’s personal finance tips (full disclosure: I have nothing to do with Lifehacker). The promise was there – a simple, one-stop interface that lets you easily monitor all of your financial accounts, and a breakdown of your expenditures in a monkey-couldn’t-get-confused-by-it pie chart. I’d used Intuit’s online TurboTax for years to handle my tax returns, so Quicken Online also offered something that is an absolute must for any type of bank account aggregator: security that I can trust (I hope).

As the video on the Quicken Online site promises, setup was a snap. Sign up for the 30-day free trial ($2.99 per month after that), enter your bank names and login information, and the application automatically retrieves the last 90 days’ worth of transactions. Once all your data is available, you’re presented with the home dashboard, which features the most basic look at your finances: three boxes representing your income, your expenditures, and the differential:

spending snapshot - I overspent.
Confirmation of my profligate spending, complete with pastel Web 2.0 gradients. We’re off to a good start.

The dashboard also provides a quick look at all your account balances, broken out by bank, and a customizable list of bill alerts, which sends a “pay your bills” reminder to either an email address or mobile device via SMS.

The site features two other main categories: My Accounts, which lets you add, remove, and otherwise manage your account settings (which we will totally ignore for now), and Track Spending, which is where you’ll spend most of your time.

Track Spending offers the aforementioned pie chart, which breaks your spending down into both pre-assigned and user-created categories (such as rent, travel, paycheck, etc.). You can also view all the transactions that contribute to each category.

pie chart example.
The pie chart breaks down your expenses by type…

selecting travel transactions.
And the menus allow you to drill down in each category…

transaction breakdown.
Which lets you see how you spent your money. By the way, if you’re ever at the Atlantis, try the Leap of Faith water slide. Just trust me on this.

Quicken tries to automatically assign your imported transactions to one of its pre-defined categories and, for the most part, it does a good job. It did initially list a number of transactions as undefined, such as my monthly rent payment, but you can easily reassign those wayward expenditures and deposits to their proper categories.

The one big gotcha I noticed with the initial setup is that Quicken Online, in Costanza-like fashion, double dips expenses – it interpreted both the purchases I put on my credit card and the payments that I made from my bank to my credit card companies as expenses, so it looked like I had spent twice what I had actually paid. The fix involved a transaction type called “Transfer Out,” which you use to classify a payment that shouldn’t count towards your total expenditures. Fixing the double dip was the most difficult part of setting up the account, and it took a total of about five minutes.

Since setup, managing the application has required very little maintenance – switch a random uncategorized transaction here and there, make sure that my bank’s web site allows Quicken to refresh account balances, and that’s it. I can say with some reliability how much I’m spending on what, and whether or not I’m hitting that magic threshold of living within my means.

For support, users have access to the Quicken Online blog and User Community forums. The blog is updated regularly, but the forums tend to be filled with unanswered questions, and aren’t much use. You can also contact Intuit support directly.

Sounds like the perfect solution! So far, so good. But Quicken Online isn’t perfect. As an anal control freak, one of the biggest problems I had with the service is that you can’t split transactions; that is, designate multiple purposes for a single expense. For people with mortgages, who need to differentiate interest from capital for tax purposes, or for people who just want to say “I split that $100 ATM withdrawal among dinner, drinks and White Castle at 3 AM,” this lack of functionality could be a deal breaker.

For $2.99/month, I also would have liked even rudimentary budgeting features, such as alerts when my monthly spending in a specific category reaches a pre-determined limit. These shortcomings are especially problematic for Intuit because competitor mint.com offers split transactions, comparable security and, most importantly for many people who are looking for a cheap budget/finance tool, the service is free (although it is ad-supported, which Quicken is not).

So what’s the bottom line? Quicken Online does what it says it does: it presents you with an easy-to-read view of your financial transactions. Setup is easy, maintenance isn’t a problem, and if all you want to do is get the bottom line, Quicken Online does it. The only reason I have a hard time recommending it is the price: even at $2.99/month, the service is overpriced for what it does.

Competitors offer everything that Quicken Online does, plus personal budgeting features (a feature that Quicken’s blog claims is coming soon), and it’s free. Quicken Online is better than manually updating a spreadsheet to track your spending, and easier than using the full offline version of Quicken, but if all you’re looking for is something to give you a quick overview of your finances, and maybe some basic planning functions, you might be just as satisfied somewhere that doesn’t ding you with a monthly fee.

How-to: Use Twitter and FriendFeed without being massively disrupted at work

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Random tweetsShort answer: You Can’t.  They are inherently distracting services, regardless of whether or not they are useful or relevant to you in a work capacity.

Exception to the above rule if you are one of the following:

  • you are a full-time blogger – in this case, odds are being more exposed to “the noise” may actually help you.
  • you are someone whose job does not depend on linear work – if you don’t spend hours at a time writing huge documents or lines of code or some other focused task, then you can probably tweet away.  Odds are that you probably have a pretty cushy job too.  😉
  • you are Robert Scoble – if you are Robert Scoble, then the normal rules simply do not apply.

More random tweetsFor the rest of us, it’s noisy and distracting.  And it doesn’t matter if you have notifiers on or off, because using either communication stream effectively requires participation.  Sure, you can just read a series of streams, and that’s better than nothing, but not by much.  Part of the point of it all is being engaged.

I think the best analogy I can come up with (and its a bit of a dramatic one, so take it with a grain of salt) is trying to do all your work in a Starbucks filled with friends, colleagues, and all of their friends and colleagues.  And everyone is yelling, and there are no headphones available.  And every now and then, someone yells something that you feel the need to respond to.  So you do.  By yelling.

Summize (in firefox tab)The next-best solution?  Wait for Twitter to be down.  (ooh, cheap shot, I know!)

Okay, time for the “real” how-to.  It’s a combo of the technology AND the mindset.  It isn’t too hard, technically, but it may be a crazy strain on the brain.

  1. Twhirl settingsTech: Turn down/off your notification settings (I recommend the same for email, btw).  Anything that can pop up over your actual work should go away.
  2. Mind: When you are working on a serious project, close your tabs and anything else with Twitter/FF visible.
  3. Tech: Create a bookmark folder with FF, Summize, and Twitter all ready to go, so when you are done with work, you can quickly pick up what you missed.
  4. Mind: Don’t worry that you are missing something.  Odds are really good you are not.  Anything important will be there when you get back.  I promise.
  5. Mind: Seriously, stop it!  Close Twhirl and Twitterific, and leave it alone for a few. The world keeps on turnin whether or not you pay attention to it.
  6. Mind: Breathe… it’ll be okay.
  7. Mind: Remind your coworkers and colleagues that they can call you should something important come up.
  8. Tech: If you are working on something *really* important, turn off your ringer too.

Good luck to you.  When in doubt, just remember: there was a world before FriendFeed, Twitter, Email, Cell Phones, and even Facebook (yes, it’s true).  There were no tweets, pings, chatrooms, and ringtones.  Nobody used to get sheep thrown at them nor did they have to decide between vampires and werewolves (vampires!).  And Gary Coleman was once a star, dammit, a big star!

Lifecasting may well lead us to Crime 2.0

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This is something that’s been bothering me for a while: with all the push toward lifecasting, should we worry that criminals are going to get a little smarter?   I saw a tweet today that really got me over the edge to write this post.

Steal this car?

I first got antsy about TMI online when I was reading Scoble’s blog.  He wrote a post a few years back divulging his home address (at the time), and I for one thought he was a bit nutso to do it (that nutso quality is probably a part of why he’s so likeable).  I see tweets from him (and others) constantly revealing two important pieces of information:

  1. The fact that they are not at home.
  2. An easy tie-in to a specific location/event they have recently attended.

Both are better bait to criminals than personal injury videos on YouTube are to drunk college kids.  They are basically open invitations for bad people to do bad things.  Break-ins.  Thievery.  Identity theft.  etc.   I totally understand the desire to lifecast private details, and I occasionally slip myself.  It’s easy, and I think the more in a rhythm you get of publicizing your information, they more you get “sucked into” doing it.

Examples:

My recommendations to anyone and everyone who tweets, pounces, jaiks, friendfeeds, blog posts,  facebook statuses, and any other form of lifecasting is to think twice before you write.  Recognize that your message is going into the public, in a permanent and very findable manner.

I believe it’s only a matter of time before we see tweets like “just got home, where the F is my plasma?!?”  It sucks to think this way, but it’s giving me a little wakeup call myself.  Guess we may all need crowdsourced home security one day.

Now signing off from an undisclosed location.  I hear there’s a car nobody’s watching at SFO…

16 Simple Ways to Improve FriendFeed

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Despite my initial skepticism, I am enjoying using FriendFeed (“FF” from here out). I find interesting stories & news articles from my friends, I hear about news from colleagues, and am able to interact with them all in one place. I also like hearing from “related strangers” and finding new “friends” (Internet friends, that is) through the process. Below is my list of some simple things FF could do to easily enhance the overall experience.

  1. Subscribing to Subscribers – Right now you have to manually go subscriber by subscriber. FF should add a button next to each person’s name for instant subscribing (like on the “recommended” tab). Also a “subscribe to all my subscribers” would be nice
  2. Find my Friends – I should be able to point at my Plaxo/LinkedIn/address book, and have FF automagically add whomever’s in there into my subscribers list (should also allow me to choose which ones specifically)
  3. FriendFeed interestingnessUse “interestingness” more – The current list of “who’s subscribed to me” is stagnant, calculated by some ranking. Use the info from the stats page to show a more dynamic list.
  4. Nested comments – no-brainer.
  5. Re-ping my Subscriptions – I have friends who I am subscribed to who were surprised to find me on FF. There’s no way for me to easily renotify people I exist.
  6. Add to the “like” feature – I think a “dislike” button would be interesting (even if the results were hidden) as it could help add to the interestingness meter. Also, I’d like to see “Agree/Disagree With” as options, since they are very different from “like”.
  7. De-duplicating redundant entries – if I write a blog post then mark it in Twitter or Delicious, FF should be smart enough to remove the extra entries (or group them). This could be crowdsourced as well, in case the automatic version is too hard to build.
  8. More 2-way data sharing – if I like it on FF, then favorite it on Twitter. If I comment on a discussion, send it to Disqus or the blog comment system. Etc. Edit (per a comment on FF): this should be an option for the user.
  9. Surface the interesting features more – the ability to see stats, discussions, etc is very cool, but the features are buried away.
  10. Enable auto-TinyURL in posts – all URLs should get Tiny’d. Edit (per a comment on FF): this should be an option for the user.
  11. Create filters – I’d like to be able to filter out terms completely – for example, I have no interest in hearing anything political on FF, so would happily filter out Obama, Hillary, McCain, and other terms.
  12. Add “friends of friends” as a main tab – in addition to “me”, “friends”, and “everyone”, I’d like to see the feeds of my friends’ friends. This would be especially handy when I want to filter them out from my main feed.
  13. Make history more relevant – how about a timeline? how about seeing all the stuff of mine that other people have commented on? how about seeing my most popular stuff?
  14. UI clean-up – I read Louis Gray’s post on using the hide function, and while it’s extremely helpful, it just shouldn’t be that hard! Don’t agree? Go read tip#5 in that post again, and you’ll see how unintuitive that process really is.
  15. Make a control panel – too many things going on (this is really an extension of #14) in too many places. Give me a single place to make all my settings happen, and I’ll be a happy camper.
  16. FriendFeed typoFix the glaring typo on this page. Here, I’ll make it easy for ya…

That’s it for now, hope to see some of these happen!

Update: Thomas Hawk has 16 more ways to improve FF!

Thoughts on the Netflix box

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Bringing you up to speed: Netflix announced a $99 device that hooks up to your TV and streams movies (free to Netflix subscribers) from your queue straight to your set. This is not the first “Internet set-top box” to come out, nor will it be the last. But it’s definitely one of the more interesting ones to discuss. Here are my thoughts on it, in a semi-organized manner:

What I like about it:

  • Price point: under $100 is great (under $50 is perfection), especially in conjunction with free movies.
  • Netflix brand extension: the company’s followers tend to be fairly loyal (I’ve heard an estimated 5-10% churn before, which isn’t too bad considering the space they are in), and have the financial resources to make a $100 box a near-no-brainer purchase.
  • K.I.S.S.: the pictured remote only has a few buttons, and they aren’t making an “all in one killer box” (which would be much harder to market than a specific, focused product)
  • HDMI: absolutely essential.

What I don’t like about it:

  • Price point: seems like they could’ve found a way to make it free with a committed subscription. I personally pay $17.95/mo for my Netflix subscription, I have to think there’s a point ($25.95?) where I’d upgrade my service for the box. This is how the cable companies “get ya” and I think should be considered by the company.
  • Roku’s brand: it’s effectively nonexistent with the masses, which is who this product is targeting. I don’t feel Netflix gains much (other than possibly having complete control over the product, a la Apple)
  • It’s a box: like Thomas Hawk said, people don’t want more boxes in their living rooms.
  • Competing with cable companies: Comcast offers me dozens of free HD movies per month (hundreds of SD ones), and lots of PPV content to boot. I’m concerned that for $100 I don’t really feel I get much extra, and as I state above, I now have to deal with an extra box in the mix.

Other misc thoughts:

  • Initial reviews seem positive, I’m hoping to try it myself soon. I think for the box to succeed it has to be better than “easy to use”, it has to be “compelling to use”. A slam dunk would be my wife not just using it, but loving it enough to tell her friends (which was not true of VuDu, and only partially true of Moviebeam). The process of selecting movies to watch and the actual playback have to work great (think TiVo). Ditto for setup.
  • According to CNET, HD content is coming soon, and I think this is a questionable move. I believe launching with HD would make a huge difference in the marketability of the box. Also, it seems that it doesn’t offer upscaling on the SD video, which means I’ll be watching content that looks less good than a standard DVD.
  • I wish they had taken a page from the Apple playbook and made a more interesting/attractive product. Either that or follow the Slingbox “purple cow” approach. I totally understand the reasons for the generic gray consumer electronics product, but I feel it’s a tactical error in this case. Netflix has always stood out from the crowd, and I think their box should do the same.
  • Their biggest competitive threats are, in order: nothing, a digital cable box, a DVR, a computer (media center or not), an Xbox 360, and maybe an Apple TV. I don’t really see anything else currently on the market as actually competitive.

Back in January I voiced my concerns over this exact product. I like where they’ve gotten so far, but still have a lot of concerns over market viability. I believe with some polish and evolution, combined with paying a lot of attention to early adopters’ feedback (different from beta testers!), and great marketing, they might be able to turn this into a big hit. I’ll definitely be watching!