Bye Bye Napster!

Microsoft guy Mike Torres says Bye Bye Napster!

Two strikes, Napster is out. I am not waiting for a third, I play by my own rules. Which brings me to a declaration: The end-user should never, under any legitimate circumstances, have to worry about copy protection. This is the chief rule of DRM and the only way on Earth people will ever put up with it. I had sync’ed my phone earlier today – why didn’t it re-authorize the songs at this point? I listened to Napster songs a couple of days ago – couldn’t it reset ALL of my licenses at this time? Note: I have no idea how this process works, and frankly don’t care. If you block two perfectly routine and valid attempts to listen to music, it doesn’t work AT ALL.

Absolutely. Napster’s already got one strike with me. One more and it’s curtains.

A few thoughts about e-books

Joe Wikert, a VP and publisher at Wiley and Sons, just started his own blog (Scoble made him do it). In the comments to one of his first posts, I asked Joe what he thought would make electronic publishing take off. His answer was thought-provoking:

…until we get past the notion of just porting a tree-book to an e-book, we’ll probably never see enormous adoption rates.

The biggest barrier I see is this recognition that an e-book needs to be developed with the delivery platform in mind. Wouldn’t it be great if you could introduce the concept of a hyperlink to a printed book so that someone could just touch a phrase they don’t understand and they’re magically taken to a definition of that phrase or the first place it appears in the book? Instead, you have to flip back to the index, look it up, and then jump to that page. Oh, and while you’re doing that, you need to keep a thumb on your original page so that you don’t lose your place. That capability obviously already exists in the electronic world, but it’s not something that’s generally built in to e-books. Plus, I believe you have to construct the material in more bite-size chunks in an e-book, allowing users to read just the essentials, then drill down further (with links) if they want.

Imagine how fast you could get through the last book you read if it was constructed this way. I’m not just trying to save time though — since we’re all different, this model would allow us to dip in and out to different levels on any given topic, depending on how far you want to go. What would enable you to do this? It would be possible because the author constructed the book this way. That’s not so easy in a printed book. It’s this sort of layering of the content that I believe needs to be taken into consideration to build a truly effective e-book.

I think Joe’s on to something here. Most of my recent books are available in electronic editions, either as PDF files or in Windows compiled Help format. The electronic versions are useful because they offer the capability to search the entire text instead of just relying on decisions that an indexer made. You can search for a word that appears in a dialog box or error message and have a pretty good chance of finding some relevant content, which may in turn suggest other words or phrases to search for.

But the experience of reading a book in Acrobat or in a Help window is pretty poor, and even if we used every advanced feature in the Adobe toolkit we couldn’t make it nearly as interactive as Joe’s vision. The cool features he describes require three things that don’t currently exist:

Some sort of standardized handheld device (the size and weight of a paperbook book) that can read e-book files and deliver them in a digestible format on the screen, complete with jump points and graphics and “drill down” functions. I don’t think any hardware device like that exists yet, although people have been envisioning them for as long as I’ve been in the computing industry, which is a long time.
Software tools to create these intricately linked, discoverable, expandable, deep storehouses of information. Somehow, I don’t think Microsoft Word or Adobe Acrobat are going to get the job done.
An economic structure that rewards authors for doing the hard work of creating these e-books. It’s already difficult and time-consuming writing a linear manuscript that steps through these complicated technologies with clear explanations and accurate information. Would it be easier to create one of these e-books? Could I do it faster? I don’t know, but I sure hope that the economics would work.

It’s fun to speculate about this stuff. If anyone out there is working on projects that can get us closer to this new format for delivering information, add something in the comments.

Microsoft needs a Music Czar

Thomas Hawk points to this “personal note to Microsoft” from analyst Michael Gartenberg:

There’s no doubt that you must be frustrated. Really frustrated. After all, you were in digital music long before Apple. There were WMA players on the market long before iPod. In fact, Microsoft might have been dominant in digital music if it weren’t for that pesky little iPod thing (along with iTunes). Worse, Apple introduces a flash player years after anyone else, actually removes features and then has customers waiting 2-4 weeks to get one. Gladly waiting I might add and ignoring all those other devices your partners have brought to market. Let’s face it, you have all the tools to respond but at the moment, you seem to lack the leadership to tie it all together. You need to find someone to do for digital music what Martin Taylor is doing for Linux. You needs a master strategist that can deliver what folks like Brad Silverberg and Brad Chase did for Windows and Yusuf Mehdi did for IE back in the last century. In short, you need a digital music czar.

I would apply for this job in a heartbeat!

Copy-protected CDs? Sadly, America shrugs…

eHomeUpgrade prints a press release from an organization that did a survey showing some consumers don’t mind having ridiculous restrictions placed on their rights to fairly use copyrighted material: Consumers Amenable to Music CDs With Copy Protection.

Contrary to widely held industry beliefs, U.S. consumers are not overwhelmingly antagonistic toward the concept of copy-restricted music CDs, provided these CDs come with the proper incentives, according to Parks Associates’ forthcoming report Digital Rights: Content Ownership and Distribution.

Among respondents in Parks Associates’ survey Profiles of PC Usage, when given a choice between a normal music CD and a “copy-once” CD priced $5 less, 33% of those who do not rip CDs and 27% who rip CDs preferred the copy-once CDs.”

Consumers are “not overwhelmingly antagonistic” toward copy-protected CDs. That is a pretty powerful piece of spinnin’, I must say. I shook my head as I read this cosmically stupid release, which appears to have been written to please some client who is not interested in facing reality. Please allow me to dismiss it with a few bullet points:

The survey says 27% of those who rip CDs were willing to take a $5 bribe that restricts their right to freely use the content on the CD. Dusting off my old slide rule, I calculated that 73% of respondents did not prefer this option. That’s a fairly large percentage of people who appear to think this idea is not so hot.
The opinions of those who do not rip CDs are irrelevant – and even so, the fact that only 33% of respondents would take the $5 discount was revealing.
Did anyone ask those taking this survey how they would feel if they learned that copy-protected CDs [have] had problems playing in some CD players and computers, prompting customer complaints and even recalls? If they knew this, would they still answer the same way?

Oh, and a 2004 poll shows that 34% of Americans think “the First Amendment goes too far in the rights it guarantees.” They’re wrong, just like the people who said yes to this survey.

Fortunately, there are still plenty of artists who aren’t afraid of the idea that people might listen to and share their music. Today I heard an interview and live performance by Wilco on NPR’s Talk of the Nation that addressed this issue perfectly. Toward the end of the broadcast, host Neal Conan asked lead singer and songwriter Jeff Tweedy about the band’s decision to make their groundbreaking album Yankee Hotel Foxtrot available for download free on their Web site, and about their casul attitude toward fans who downloaded the follow-up CD A Ghost Is Born. Tweedy replied, “I just think that the arguments against those kinds of things are based on fear. I don’t think that as a band you should be afraid of people hearing your music and sharing it. I think it’s a great thing.”

Why was Media Player updated?

Updated March 2…

eWeek is out with a news story headlined “Microsoft Updates Media Player to Thwart Spyware Threat”. As far as I can tell, this story is almost completely inaccurate.

Microsoft Corp. has released an update for its flagship Windows Media Player to protect users from a known threat of spyware infection.

Microsoft said the update … installs two components on end users’ computers and will add “additional integrity checks to the DRM [digital rights management] system.”

The company made no mention of a spyware infection, but a spokesperson confirmed the new version of the player was released after Microsoft confirmed that malicious hackers were using the copy-protection mechanism to install spyware, adware, dialers and computer viruses on unsuspecting PC users.

The article refers to the Update for Windows Media Digital Rights Management-enabled players (WindowsMedia-KB891122–x86). I’m still testing, but I see nothing in the KB article that documents this fix that would indicate there is any protection for users. It appears that the spokesperson is in error and the reporter simply accepted the inaccurate statement.

To make matters more confusing, an update to Windows Media Player 10 was also released this week, without any documentation of what was changed. Yesterday, Ed Oswald at BetaNews talked with a Microsoft spokesperson who said that this update was the promised fix to the spyware/adware issue:

Microsoft on Wednesday issued an updated Windows Media Player 10 to correct a potential security issue that could allow an attacker to mislead users into downloading malware or viruses instead of a license to playback DRM content.

A spokesperson for Microsoft confirmed that the new WMP release, marked build 3802, was the promised update to take care of issues related to the player’s digital rights management functions.

Needless to say, at least one of these stories is just plain wrong, and I strongly suspect that both are wrong.

CNET News.com has a slightly expanded story that contains similar assertions:

The Redmond, Wash., giant on Tuesday introduced an update to its Windows Media Player, which included changes aimed at blocking the Japanese hackers’ work, as well as a security update.

[…]

The new update also addresses a problem exposed a month ago, in which the Media Player and its digital rights management software could be used to show ads–or even to lure unsuspecting Web surfers into downloading harmful software onto their hard drives, security researchers said.

The process exploited a feature of the Media Player content protection, which allows protected files to pop up a Web page with information about a video or song license. In such a case, that page could be loaded with automatic spyware download mechanisms, Spanish security company Panda Software said.

The new update to the Media Player software contains a setting that allows consumers to request that they be notified any time their computer is going onto the Internet to obtain a content license. By default, this option will be turned off, but computer users can turn it on, Caulton said.

I’ve installed the Digital Rights update on a test PC and compared its options to those on a computer without the update. I can’t find any option in Windows Media Player 10 that matches the description in this story. If it’s there, it’s well hidden. It may be that the option is only available in Windows Media Player 9, but I’ll need to do further testing to see whether that’s the case.

[Update: In a comment to this post, Ben Edelman notes that he has tested the patch with WMP9 and found that it does not change the behavior observed before installing the patch. Ben’s comment includes links to a screen shot and a video of his results showing exactly how the exploit can deceive a naive user. Warning: The end of the video contains explicit sexual content that some viewers may find offensive.]

[Update, March 2: For a follow-up on this story, see “How to Fumble a Security Update.”]

Dear Microsoft, what’s in this new Media Player version?

Dear Microsoft,

When you release a new update to Windows Media Player 10 like the one that mysteriously appeared in the Microsoft Download Center yesterday, it would be nice if you also included some documentation on what sort of changes are included. I noticed a “Music Assistant” flash past as the install proceeded, and the new version number is 3802. But it would be really, really nice if I knew a few more details.

Thanks for listening.

Doing the Napster math

I’ve been sampling Napster To Go for the past few months. So has Rob Pegoraro at the Washington Post, who did the math and concluded that Napster To Go Doesn’t Add Up:

It wasn’t until after my initial binge that I thought a bit more about the virtues of this service. What Napster’s ads ignore is that most people already own a significant music collection — so how many songs will they grab once they sign onto this service? How about after the first month or year? Even the most manic downloader has to slow down eventually.

Napster To Go’s $15 monthly bills, however, will keep coming due for as long as you care to listen to your downloads. And over time, those fees add up, too.

Consider this example: I have been purchasing CDs for about 20 years now, in which time I’ve accumulated about 300 of the things. At an average of $15 each, I’ve spent $4,500. Now suppose that, instead of buying those CDs, I could have opened up a Napster To Go account back in 1985. My total bill would be $3,600 and counting — and although I might have accumulated a larger, more diverse collection, I wouldn’t own any of it.

I have a hard time accepting that. At its best, music has the same lasting value as books or paintings or any other sort of meaningful art: It isn’t a disposable good that you use and then forget about. It’s something that you keep listening to and discovering new things in. When music is good, you want to know that it can’t be taken away from you.

Well, that’s one point of view. Of course, by that logic, DVD rentals are equally indefensible, and both Netflix and Blockbuster don’t add up at all. In the last five years, I’ve paid Netflix over a thousand dollars, and I have nothing on my DVD shelf to show for it. For that matter, why have I been paying HBO all these years? They don’t let me keep anything either!

Unfortunately, this half-baked analysis is getting a lot of support from other corners of the Internet. At Boing Boing, for instance, Xeni Jardin writes:

What if Napster To Go were Napster The Grocery, and milk you bought there could only be consumed from proprietary square mugs (known for sprouting holes which must be patched by the user), and the milk cartons vanished from your refrigerator shelf if you didn’t re-up your subscription next month? You’d get your milk elsewhere.

How is that different from other subscription-based services that we all know and use? I pay my cable company a monthly fee, in exchange for which I get to watch as much TV as I want on the channels I subscribe to. If I stop paying the fee, all of a sudden I can’t watch any more. If I stop paying the phone company, I can’t make phone calls any more. Yet by the logic in the original review and its supporting post, any subscription-based music service is flawed. Which is silly, because it ignores the actual cost. What if Napster To Go cost 99 cents per month for unlimited access to the entire library for the month? Would that be an acceptable deal? What if it were $1.99? If you don’t like the service, the objection has to be at least partly rooted in its price.

I did a little math based on what Rob wrote. He buys 15 CDs a year, and I suspect most of those are mainstream releases – the latest hits from big labels. I’ve been known to buy 15 CDs on a single visit, which is why I have a music collection that’s roughly five times the size of Rob’s. I’d say there are probably 400 CDs in my collection that I haven’t listened to in years and probably never will again. Some are just dated, but others were impulse buys based on an artist or a label. Sometimes those purchases work out well, but I can easily pick out a couple dozen CDs from my collection that I bought, listened to once, and quickly concluded that I had made a bad purchase. In some cases I was able to listen to individual tracks, either in a record store listening booth or in those 30–second clips on Amazon.com. But that was just enough to fool me into thinking I wanted to hear more when I really didn’t like the CD.

If I had had access to a download service where I could have sampled the entire recording first, I might well have avoided a few of those purchases. The basic Napster service is $10 a month, which lets you listen on up to three PCs without burning any CDs or transferring tracks to a music player. The Napster To Go service costs $5 a month more and adds the capability to transfer downloaded tracks to a compatible music player or a SmartPhone. I’ve got a Creative Zen Micro (love it!) and an Audiovox SMT5600 SmartPhone (love it, too!), both of which are compatible with the Napster To Go service. So I did the math: If I could have avoided one bad CD purchase every other month it would have justified the cost of the service.

I don’t think this is just a theoretical advantage. Since I’ve been using Napster To Go I’ve probably listened to three or four new CDs every week. I’ve already identified a few that I absolutely, positively don’t want to listen to again. I’ve found some gems that I went out and purchased (used, of course) so I could have them in my permanent collection. I’ve also found a few CDs that were worth a listen or two but don’t deserve a place in my permanent collection.

If I have issues with Napster To Go, it’s with the whole concept of DRM. Because I’m not purchasing the tracks I download, I’m not worried about “losing” them, as I would be with those overpriced 99–cent tracks I can download from iTunes or Napster. But the license acquisition process isn’t as smooth as it should be. Last week my PC decided to stop playing all the downloaded tracks, and it wouldn’t let me listen to or download any new ones. I spent an hour on the phone Friday with a capable Napster tech support guy who walked me through manually reconfiguring the DRM files on my PC. It wasn’t a lot of fun, and I wouldn’t want to have to explain the process to a less sophisticated user. (I asked for and got a free month’s service for the hassle.)

So, when I do the math, I see an equation that’s a little more complicated. If your music budget is limited to buying one or two hit CDs every month, and your tastes are satisfied with that much new music and no more, then fuggedaboutit. You won’t get your money’s worth out of Napster. On the other hand, if you have a broad musical tastes and an insatiable appetite for tunes, you might find Napster (or a similar, all-you-can-listen-to service like Rhapsody) worth a try. The catalog is huge and it’s fun to rummage around on indie labels or follow links to artists that are similar to those you like or to dig into a favorite artist’s older recordings. If I sample 10 new tracks every day, that’s a nickel per track (3 cents if I don’t care to transfer the tunes to my portable player) for the right to listen to a particular song all month long. That doesn’t seem like such a terrible deal, all in all.

Update: Christopher Baus has been thinking along similar lines:

I’ve used a subscription music service (Rhapsody) for 2 years, and I couldn’t be happier. I know exactly what I am paying for, and I think I am getting an insane bargain. I know I don’t own the music. That’s a silly argument. When you buy a CD you aren’t buying redistribution rights for that content. You are buying a personal license. Not much has changed here. If people actually tried the subscription services (rather than just complaining about them), I think they would see what an amazing technology and deal it really is.

He also thinks that Microsoft should release Windows Media Player for Linux!

Why I prefer CDs to downloads

My buddy Michael called yesterday. He’s spent the better part of two days trying to clean up his 15–year-old niece’s spyware-infested computer. (Kazaa, of course. You had to ask?) He thought he finally had it cleaned up, only to discover that some of the crud had returned, and then the PC decided it didn’t even want to boot into Windows anymore. What should he do?

“Easy,” I say. “Reformat the sucker and start over. The kid’ll lose some data files, but nothing that she can’t re-create or replace.”

But it turns out to be more complicated than that. Seems that the niece had downloaded a large collection of iTunes tracks at 99 cents a pop, and Uncle Michael thought, rightly, that she might not want to lose several hundred dollars’ worth of music. No, she never backed them up. And no, she never burned them to CD. In other words, she’s just like a gazillion other people.

But can’t she download them again? I mean, she’s already paid for them, right? Imagine my surprise when I did a little research and discovered the sordid truth about music downloads.

The iTunes Music Store support site says if you lose it, you’re S.O.L.

When you buy a song or album from the iTunes Music Store, you are entitled to download it a single time. If you want to download it again, you must purchase it again.

Whoa. That sucks. Are all online music services like that? I decided to check.

The RealPlayer Music Store FAQ has an equally harsh answer to the What if I lose my music? question:

RealNetworks will not be responsible for refunding or replacing tracks or albums purchased through the RealPlayer Music Store if your system crashes or if you lose or delete your music files. Your downloaded music files are your responsibility. We recommend archiving your files to CD.

MSN Music says they might, might, help you out if you lose your music:

MSN is not responsible for lost downloads, and you should always ensure that you maintain a current backup of your music. MSN Support can replace lost downloads only under certain circumstances such as the crash of your computer’s hard disk drive. If you feel you have encountered circumstances that warrant a replacement of one or more of your purchased tracks please contact MSN Support for further assistance.

With Napster.com, on the other hand, you don’t need to beg. If your hard disk crashes, you can…

Sign into Napster on a secondary computer and use the Sync/Restore feature to download tracks you’ve already downloaded or purchased on another computer.

Too bad Napster tracks are only 128Kbps. Which, in a nutshell, is the problem with music downloads. At 128Kbps or 160Kpbs, the tracks you download contain only a fraction of the information originally recorded by the artist. Producers and engineers slaved to make those tracks sound great. If you sit down in a room with a decent (not great, just decent) audio system and do an A-B test with a CD and an MP3 download, you’ll hear the difference. Even in my car, where listening conditions are less than optimal, I can tell a real CD from an MP3 rip. You don’t need to be an audiophile snob, either; anyone who pays attention can tell that something’s missing from the MP3 or WMA copy. And yet the music services want you to pay at least $9.99 per album for this inferior product.

Well, I won’t do it. Not when I can buy the real deal for pretty close to the same price. The secret? Buy your CDs second-hand. Amazon.com has a thriving market in used CDs, and the prices in many cases are at least as good as downloading them. Today, for instance, I listened to three albums on Napster’s new Napster to Go service, which gives you unlimited access to an enormous library (they claim it’s a million tracks, and I believe it). The monthly fee is $15, and in the last month I’ve probably sampled 50 albums – something I could never have done with the 99–cents-a-song services. Today, I decided to buy a few of those CDs, so I went over to Amazon.com and found:

John Prine, Live on Tour – $9.88 used at Amazon.com
Roy Rogers and Norton Buffalo, R&B – 3 “like new” copies for $7.99 or less
Green Day, American Idiot – 80 used copies for sale, five of them for $9.00 or less

Amazon collects the payment and guarantees satisfaction. Shipping is a flat $2.49 per CD. Those three CDs, shipping included, cost me about $11.50 each, which is only a buck and a half more than I would have paid Apple or MSN or Real or Napster for a second-rate download. I can take the “real” CD and burn a CD-R copy to play in the car (no worries about the CD getting scratched or stolen). I can rip it to a high-bit-rate copy and play it through my Media Center PC anywhere in the house. At 192Kbps or 256Kbps, the quality of my digital copies is more than good enough, and way better than those downloads. And I don’t have to be paranoid about backing them up.

I don’t own a single DRM-restricted track, but I do download some digital music. The Live Music Archive has an incredible collection of free, legal music available in lossless format (SHN or FLAC). I can buy CDs, also in lossless format, from groups like Yonder Mountain String Band. All those downloads, when burned to CD, produce a copy that is indistinguishable from the original source. So tell me again why should I settle for an inferior digital copy that I can’t use or copy freely?

Thomas Hawk says he feels the same way:

Buying a track with DRM appeals even less to me than the screwed up music I get with Kaaza. This is why I still go out and buy my own CDs and rip them myself into crystal clear, properly meta marked, DRM free, high bit rate .mp3 files. In my opinion, this still is the best way to go for the serious music collector.

So does Microsoft’s Matt Goyer.

Update: Tristan Louis came to the same conclusion but for different reasons.

Another update: In the comments, Serge reminds me that I ignored two excellent music services that aren’t so restrictive: eMusic (192Kbps VBR MP3 downloads, with no copy restrictions and the right to re-download) and Disclogic, whose selection neatly mirrors my admittedly offbeat tastes. I’ll have more to say about both companies later. Thanks, Serge!

Wired News conducts a clinic in bad journalism

Wired News published a horrible story this morning. In Hide Your IPod, Here Comes Bill, author Leander Kahney writes:

To the growing frustration and annoyance of Microsoft’s management, Apple Computer’s iPod is wildly popular among Microsoft’s workers.

Now read the story. Read it carefully. (I’ll wait.) Note that the entire thing is based on an interview with one “high-level [Microsoft] manager who asked to remain anonymous.” From this one source, we are able to calculate with confidence that 16,000 employees at Microsoft’s Redmond campus own iPods and that management is ready to send teams of security guards out to locate anyone wearing white earbuds and send them to a re-education camp.

Well, having spent a fair amount of time around Microsoft’s campus, I can tell you that this story is mostly … what’s the word I’m looking for here? Ah yes, bullshit. I have no doubt that lots of Microsoft employees own iPods. But taking an offhand remark from an unknown source (who may or may not have a hidden agenda and who may or may not know what he’s talking about) and extrapolating it to the entire campus is just silly.

I’m fairly certain that senior management at Microsoft would rather that all Microsoft employees used something other than an iPod, which is why the Windows Media team is working so hard to come up with devices that could compete with the iPod and be called something like, I don’t know, “insanely great.”

One thing they teach you in Journalism 101 is that when you have a single anonymous source, you don’t have a story. That’s still true. When you’re covering a subject outside your normal beat (which appears to be Cupertino for this reporter), you can’t just talk to one person. And if you’re going to quote a post from Scoble’s blog, why not actually, you know, talk to Scoble, who actually publishes his cell phone number right there on his highly trafficked site?

Sloppy, sloppy, sloppy.

Update: Paul Thurrott read the Wired News story and had the same reaction I did: “Hide The Truth, Here Comes Leander Kahney.” Meanwhile, Scoble says he declined Leander Kahney’s request for an interview. And a pseudonymous Slashdotter takes note of my remarks about not publishing a story based on a single anonymous source and comments, “Well, you’ll never get a job at CBS with THAT attitude, young man!” Heh.

Update 2: The Seattle P-I Microsoft Blog has a nice round-up of commentary on this story.

Update 3: Don’t miss Leander Kahney’s comments. He thinks Mac fans are “paranoid” and “defensive.” Imagine that…

What’s the point of digital media?

In the comments to my previous post on ripping a CD collection into digital format, Ken asks some good questions:

Ed, educate me. I use my home computer primarily for e-mail, Internet browsing and research, word processing, the occasional PC game, and CD burning — but not CD ripping for the purpose of listening to music or watching DVDs on my computer (after all, I have a plasma HD television and top line DVD player, excellent stereo equipment in both my house and my car, et. cet. specifically designed for those activities). What, then, is the point of ripping CDs and saving them onto hard drives, other than having one additional copy of all your files in case something happens to your CD collection?

I know people do it, but I have never understood why. Even if I downloaded music from the Interent, I would rather burn it to a CD and then play it on equipment designed primarily to play music or video. What am I missing out on, if anything? TIA.

Let’s start with what I think is the single fundamental (but perfectly natural) misconception in this question, that PC-based equipment is inferior to dedicated audio and video equipment. That was once true, but no more. Today, PC-based equipment can do many of the tasks I once needed dedicated audio equipment for, and it integrates well with home theater components. The quality of audio and video is at the same level of quality as (and in some cases better than) consumer electronics equipment.

My home theater PC outputs 7.1 surround sound via a digital optical connection. In an A-B test, I don’t believe you could distinguish it from consumer-quality audio equipment. It uses component video connections to go straight to my HDTV, again with quality that is indistinguishable from a consumer DVD player and my digital cable connection. (And when I get the HDTV connection working, I expect its quality to be indistinguishable from my cable company’s HDTV signal.) My home theater system now includes an HDTV, two receivers (one for the den, the other for the speakers scattered throughout the house), and a Media Center PC that handles music, standard TV, digital photos, and DVD playback.

With an 800–CD collection, the logistics of managing the CDs as physical objects becomes overwhelming. I had a 300–CD jukebox that was almost impossible to use and couldn’t handle the majority of my collection. The idea of dedicating 20 or 30 feet of shelf space to CDs and then keeping all those CDs filed in some logical way is depressing. And what do I do with my extensive collection of live recordings and downloaded music, which represent the equivalent of another 400+ CDs?

The advantage of having music available in digital format is that I can scroll through the entire collection using a single interface (Media Center) that runs via remote control. I can search for artists and albums, create custom playlists, retrieve saved playlists, and do it all without stacking up jewel boxes and trying to find just the right CD. When we have a dinner party, I can put together a custom playlist for the evening, mixing music that I know will be compatible with our guests. I never fail to get positive remarks on the music and I don’t have to constantly get up to swap CDs (even a 6–CD changer will run out in the course of a long evening).

We still watch DVDs that we rent from Netflix, but all of our TV watching these days is via a DVR — either the cable company’s HD recorder or my Media Center PC, and it is fun to be able to save a particularly enjoyable show and burn it to CD for later viewing. The output from the Media Center PC is indistinguishable from the digital cable signal.

Most people have justifiable skepticism about integrating a PC into the home theater. But when the equipment is well designed and reliable, the benefits are overwhelming. I think you’re going to see an explosion in this category in the next year or two. Just watch!