The HD-DVD format is dead. Toshiba made it official the other day, “conceding defeat to the competing Blu-ray technology backed by Sony.” With retailers dropping the format from their stores and studios opting out of releasing movies in HD-DVD, Toshiba had little choice.

For Sony, it can afford to breathe a welcome sigh of relief. They dodged a bullet and avoided going 0-2 in media format wars (its Beta format lost out to VHS in the previous round). But they can’t afford to relax too long. Blu-ray may be the victor here, but Sony may ultimately not have much to celebrate.

For starters, I doubt there will be a sudden upsurge in sales of Blu-ray DVD players. Most users will be content, for now, with their current DVD players. Only when the price of a Blu-ray player begins to approach what standard definition players cost today (under $100) is that likely to change.

On a related front: When I shifted from videotape to DVDs, I wound up repurchasing many of the movies I already owned in VHS. Doing so was worth it because the quality of the display and sound was so much better with DVDs. It was also a huge convenience to be able to skip almost instantly to any part of a movie (and not have to worry about rewinding). The added features that came with DVDs (such as deleted scenes and commentary tracks) were a bonus, although not critical ones for me.

I don’t expect to make a similar conversion to Blu-ray, even after I buy a Blu-ray player. First, many older movies will never be released in a true HD-quality version, because such quality will not be possible. Second, the improvement of the HD version over a standard DVD version is not enough to make it worth the cost (at least to me) of purchasing a second (or even third) version of the same movie. If studios had some trade-in policy (where you get a discounted version of a Blu-ray DVD by trading in your old standard DVD), I might be inclined to bite, but I don’t see this happening.

But all of this may well be moot. The DVD format, Blu-ray or otherwise, could be dead (or at least on life-support) before too long. It will take a few years, but it’s coming. Downloading movies is what will slay the DVD. The specifics are still a bit unclear, but my crystal ball sees a mash-up of the Rhapsody music service, the iTunes Store, Apple TV, and Netflix. Let’s call it TedFlix. I see it working something like this:

TedFlix will have a library that includes almost every film currently available (much like what the iTunes Store is today for music). Where an HD version of a movie exists, TedFlix will have both HD and standard definition versions of the movies. The HD version will be true 1080p. With devices similar to Apple TVs (let’s call them Ted TVs), you will be able to download the movie directly to your TV. With just slightly improved download speeds, you should be able to start watching the movie almost immediately after you click to rent it.

The rental period will be 72 hours. Further, you will be able to rent up to a maximum of three movies in any 24 hour period and up to a maximum of 60 movies a month. The cost? A monthly subscription fee of $24.95 (perhaps less if economics allow).

TedFlix, if successful, would effectively kill off most of the demand for Blu-ray discs, as well as the DVD rental business. There will likely be some market remaining for retail purchases of DVD packages (such as to give one as a gift). But the demand will be small.

Still, there may be a place where Blu-ray could survive, even thrive: Blu-ray DVD burners. Let’s include such a burner as part of each Ted TV unit. Why? Well, what if you want to watch all those “extras” that come on a purchased DVD, instead of just watching the movie? Or what if you want to be able to play a movie on a television other than the one to which your Ted TV is connected? Not a problem.

With TedFlix, you can optionally select to download and burn a complete DVD, an exact duplicate of what you would otherwise buy in a store. I foresee two variations here. In one case, the burned DVD only plays for 72 hours, and probably only plays on “authorized” devices (similar to how iTunes now works for purchased music). You pay a small fee (say $1.00) for each DVD that you choose to download and burn in this way. In the other case, you purchase the burned DVD (for a competitive price). It’s now yours forever and has no authorization restrictions. However, just as with a purchased DVD, you won’t be able to make copies of it. Admittedly, given the size capacity of Blu-ray DVDs, these burns may be impractical to do at current download speeds, but much faster connections are not too far off.

What about transferring movies to iPods and iPhones? I don’t quite have this worked out yet. But a model for doing this already exists in the iTunes Store; I am sure it can be adapted to work in TedFlix.

With TedFlix and Ted TV, you will be able to watch any movie you want, whenever you want—for just one monthly fee. Want to watch a movie for a second time, months after you first watched it? Just select it again. There’s no additional cost. And if movie technology improves, you’ll get the benefit of it, without having to repurchase your DVD library.

This may not be the future that Sony or the movie studios would prefer, but I doubt that will stop the train. I think I already hear the whistle in the distance. I certainly hope so.

Update: After writing this, I noticed that David Pogue also posted a column today on this topic. He takes a much more pessimistic view of downloaded movies. I don’t disagree with his assessment. However, he is talking about the present. I am talking about a hopeful future.

The HP-11C and HP-15C calculators are, quite simply, the best single-line display calculators ever created. If you don’t absolutely need a graphing calculator, they remain the best handheld calculators ever…period. This is true despite the fact that they date back to the 1980s. These HP marvels came with a sumptuous array of built-in functions together with a simple yet powerful method for programming (which allowed you to expand way beyond its built-in features). They also sported a sleek thin design that still surpasses any of the calculators on the market today. Best-of-all, they used RPN (Reverse Polish Notation) for data entry.

RPN, for those of you unfamiliar with this odd-named duck, is the alternative to the algebraic method of data entry. The algebraic method is found on virtually all other competing calculators (most notably the ubiquitous handhelds from Texas Instruments). You know you’re working with RPN if you use an Enter key instead of an Equals (=) key. Of course, the differences go beyond that simple distinction. Skipping over details, let me just say that, for anything beyond the most simple calculations, RPN is much easier to use, easier to keep track of what you’ve entered, and less prone to making mistakes. If you have ever been frustrated by entering a complex expression involving parentheses, for example, RPN will seem like a direct delivery from heaven.

Unfortunately, RPN lost out in the calculator wars. Even Hewlett-Packard largely abandonned it. They still make the HP-12C (a financial real estate calculator variation of the 11C). Beyond that, their calculators have either shifted to algebraic-only or a combined algebraic-RPN system. I am sure the reason for this is that, at first glance, RPN seems quirky and hard-to-learn. Admittedly, it does have a slightly steeper learning curve than algebraic entry. But once you make the minor effort to get over the hump, you are more than rewarded for your efforts. It may not seem like it at first, but RPN’s “inside-out” method of working through an expression mimics the way you would do such calculations in your head—much more so than the algebraic method.

I still use my trusty HP-15C. However, I must admit that it spends most of its time in a drawer of my desk. That’s because I now do almost all of my calculating on a Mac, via spreadsheets and such. And if I do want an HP-15C while working with my Mac, I simply launch a nifty emulation that’s almost as good as the real thing. The only remaining advantage of the “real” 15C is its portability.

This (finally) brings me to the main point of this blog entry. Last week, I was browsing through the list of programs available for my hacked iPhone (as viewed from the Installer utility) and discovered a set of HP calculator emulations (11C, 12C, 15C and 16C). I installed the 15C. It’s fantastic! After launching it, the phone becomes an HP-15C. The entire display is filled with an exact image of the calculator. To use it, you just tap the virtual buttons. The net effect is almost identical to pressing the physical buttons on an actual HP-15C. If you ever want to show off the advantages of a touchscreen interface, you’d be hard pressed to find a better example!

In a sense, I now have my HP-15C back in my pocket again. Actually, it’s even better. My “new” 15C doesn’t have to compete for space with my iPhone. The iPhone is the 15C. Ahhh…the joys of the iPhone…and iPhone hacks!

I only hope that, after the iPhone SDK is released in a few days, the HP-15C is one of the third-party programs that will be “officially” available, so I won’t need a hack to get it.

In my previous blog entry, I described the three features I liked best in the new Apple TV “Take Two.” A couple of reader comments made reference to a new feature in Take Two that was not on my list. In fact, I had not realized the feature was even there at first: the ability to use AirTunes to play iTunes content on an audio system connected to an Apple TV.

This is indeed a great new feature. So much so, that I decided to cover it here as a follow-up to my previous entry. As to why I didn’t notice the new feature in the first place—after accepting responsibility for failing to look closely enough—I would add that Apple has hardly promoted this new feature. In fact, if you go to the Apple page that lists the new features of Apple TV Take Two, the word “AirTunes” is not even mentioned. I could similarly find only one Apple support document that acknowledges its existence.

Complicating matters further, for many users, it will not be immediately obvious what this new feature adds. Apple TV “Take One” owners are already familiar with streaming iTunes content from a secondary shared computer (not the one that is synced to the Apple TV). Take Two continues to do so. The Take One version of Apple TV could stream movies and TV shows from a Mac. That’s not new either.

So what is new with AirTunes support? It provides the ability to stream any audio content in your iTunes Library to your Apple TV, even if it is not in a playlist. Actually, with AirTunes, you can stream audio content from any computer on the same network as the Apple TV, even if it is not a Mac being shared or synced with your Apple TV! Not only can you play all your music from your Library via this method, but you can play Audible content or Internet radio stations as well!

To do all this, just enable the connection via the same method that is used to connect a Mac to the AirTunes feature of an AirPort Express: At the bottom of the iTunes window on your Mac, access the Computer pop-up menu and select the name of your Apple TV. Next, select an item to play. Done. There is no setting on the Apple TV itself that needs to be enabled or selected. [Well, that's not 100% true. There is an Apple TV setting to enable AirTunes, located in Settings > Audio. However, it is on by default.]

You can use your Apple TV remote to pause/play or skip items. If your Apple TV doesn’t respond to your remote here, you need to enable the necessary preferences item in iTunes: Go to iTunes’ Preferences and select Advanced > General. From here, make sure the AirTunes option to “Allow iTunes control from remote speakers” is enabled.

The key thing to remember in setting all of this up is that, unlike other Apple TV connections, you do not make the connection or select the music to be played from the Apple TV itself. Instead, you do it from iTunes on your Mac (again, the same way as if you were connecting to an AirPort Express rather than an Apple TV).

Note: If iTunes is open on the Mac that is synced to your Apple TV, you automatically have access to most content in your iTunes Library, via streaming, even without using AirTunes. Just make sure that the option to “Show only the synced items on my Apple TV,” in the Apple TV Summary pane, is not enabled. There is no longer a separate listing for synced vs. streamed content, as in Take One. This is just one more of the many differences between Take One and Take Two in the areas of streaming, sharing and syncing—most of them still not documented well (if at all) by Apple. Apple has some work to do here!

The AirTunes feature is apparently still a bit rough around the edges, as I have seen several reports of problems with it getting it to work. I have had one of these problems myself. When playing audio via AirTunes, if you select Music > My Music > Now Playing on your Apple TV, you should see the name and artist of the currently playing song. I don’t. Instead, all I see is “untitled” and “unknown.” I haven’t yet figured out why some users have this problem and others do not—or how to fix it. But I am working on it (I did see one report that said a “factory restore” of my Apple TV would fix this; I haven’t tried this as yet and am reluctant to do so). It is almost certainly an issue with the Apple TV rather than the Mac, as I have the same symptom no matter what Mac I use.

{revised slightly on 2/17/08}

Apple TV “Take Two” is definitely worth the upgrade. It so transforms your old Apple TV, it is almost as if you sold the old model and purchased a new one. And it’s free. There’s virtually no downside here.

Among all the new features in Take Two, I already have three favorites:

Podcasts. This is my #1 favorite new feature. While there are many podcasts that I would enjoy listening to, I rarely do—because I rarely want to take the time to sit down and listen for an extended time. With Apple TV Take Two, however, I can easily listen to podcasts from my living room TV, allowing me to (for example) prepare and eat dinner while the podcast plays in the background.

True, I could play a podcast from my iTunes Library even with the old Apple TV. But the new version makes it so much more convenient. I don’t have to subscribe to a podcast or worry whether the one I want to listen to is on my Mac or not, or synced to my Apple TV or not. I just directly start browsing podcasts on the Apple TV and play the one I want. As a bonus, you can play it without having to download it. This means that, once you are done listening, you don’t even have to remember to delete it from the Apple TV (assuming you don’t care to save it, as will usually be the case). The process is as simple to do as it is to select a broadcast TV channel to watch.

Some users have complained that you cannot subscribe to a podcast from the Apple TV. Personally, I don’t see this as a negative. If I really want a subscription, I can still do it from my Mac.

.Mac and flickr photos. I had already been using Apple TV “Take One” to displays photos from my iPhoto Library. With Take Two, I can now play slide shows from .Mac Web Gallery and Flickr accounts. This doesn’t add much value for playing my own photos at home (it’s just as easy to use my iPhoto Library directly for that). But it’s a great way to view other people’s photos—or even to show your own photos when you are at someone else’s house (if that someone else has an Apple TV and is willing to put up with watching your vacation slideshow!).

HD content. You can rent HD movies directly from your Apple-TV connected television. Unless you already own a Blu-Ray or HD-DVD player, and prefer having physical discs, Apple TV is currently the best way to rent HD content for your television. With “Take Two,” you can even play theatrical movie trailers in HD. Very cool!

I do have one relatively minor complaint with “Take Two”: All the menus are organized around iTunes Store content. This means, for example, if you want to play music from the iTunes Library on your Mac, you first have to select “Music” from the main menu and then (from a submenu that lists Top Music, Music Videos, Genre, Search and My Music) select the last choice (My Music). This finally takes you to the menu for your iTunes Library; a menu that looks pretty much as it did in “Take One.” The net effect, however, is to make you feel as if your own music is semi-buried amid the iTunes Store options, as if Apple TV is now designed primarily as a device to sell iTunes content (and maybe it is).

On the other hand, as a music video fan, I welcome how easy it is now to browse through and purchase music videos directly from the Apple TV. If you purchase a music video (or any item, other than a rented movie), it is transferred to the iTunes Library on your Mac, automatically, the next time you sync your Apple TV.

One caution: I have my Apple TV connected via a 802.11n connection. I am not sure how much streaming and downloading would be negatively impacted by a slower 802.11g connection.

When you rent a movie via the iTunes Store, you have 24 hours from the time you start watching the movie until it is erased from your drive. That’s marginally better than the situation with Comcast (my cable provider). With Comcast, the 24 hour clock starts ticking from the moment I rent a movie, whether I start watching it immediately or not—making me feel a bit like Jack Bauer in 24. With the iTunes Store, you have a generous 30 days within which to start watching the movie.

The problem for me, even with iTunes Store rentals, is that I often want to watch a movie over two nights. The 24 hour limit gets in the way here. If I start watching at about the same time each night, I won’t get to see the second half of the movie—because I will have exceeded the time limit. A 36 (or even a 30) hour rental would make so much more sense. I know I am not alone here. A recent column by David Pogue makes the same point.

This is one reason I never rent movies from Comcast. It’s also a reason why I have been reluctant to try rented movies from the iTunes Store. Still, I downloaded one the other day, primarily as research for an article I was writing.

With the movie now on my drive, I naturally began to wonder exactly how strictly the 24 hour limit was enforced.

It turns out that it’s not enforced all that much.

What did I do? The most obvious thing I could think of. I changed the time. More specifically, after starting to watch the movie and putting the 24 hour countdown in motion, I went to the Date & Time System Preferences pane. From here, I unchecked the option to set the time automatically. Then I pushed the clock back a day.

Sure enough, iTunes now said that the movie had an extra day remaining before it expired. I still wasn’t sure that this would have the desired effect. But it did. The 24 hour period passed and the movie continued to play.

With success coming this easy, I figured I couldn’t be the first person to have come up with the idea. I was right. When I did a Google search, I found several similar reports.

There are couple of hiccups that can occur if you start pushing times around. iTunes may get a sense that something is a bit off. Occasionally, especially after changing the display size via iTunes’ View menu, the movie window may go gray or the sound may stop playing. Often, just closing and reopening the movie a couple of times will get things working again. As a last resort, I found that if I quit iTunes and reset the clock to less than 4 hours from the expiration time, the movie would always work fine when I relaunched iTunes.

I’ve made no attempt to see whether the extended time limit would hold if I transferred a movie to an iPod or an iPhone. I see possible complications here, as these devices have their own clocks. But I leave that for someone else to worry about.

In any case, I imagine that Apple will eventually find a way to prevent these time extensions from working. But who knows? Apple at first tried to block iPhone users from creating their own ringtones for free. In a 180 degree turn-around, Apple later not only ended the blockade but offered tools for creating ringtones using GarageBand.