letters to the editor - Letter to the Editor

Emedia Professional, May, 2000

At the Apex of Controversy

It's not exactly a portable CD/MP3 player, but two weeks ago I purchased a component DVD/CD/MP3 player at Circuit City for $179.95. The least expensive player I've seen, it also includes MP3 playback [as discussed in Robert Starrett's March 2000 article, "Building a Better CD Player"], and the sales staff doesn't know a thing about it! If you have the TV turned on and displaying input from the unit, the MP3 titles are listed on the screen. Titles are played alphabetically and folders are recognized. The first alphabetical folder is played in alphabetical order of its songs, etc. Its remote control even controls output volume in all modes. Although I was unfamiliar with the Apex brand, I'm obviously very pleased with the unit! Check it out.

Grover Nunnery Charlotte, NC

Check out Bob Starrett's CD WRITER column in this issue. He just stumbled upon the same product, and was similarly impressed by this breakthrough in the omniplayback category. Also, keep your eye on some growing controversy about this device. The real contentious point about the Apex is not the MP3 capability (though surely someone will take issue with that eventually), but its ability to break down DVD playback barriers on two fronts: first of all, it breaks CSS encryption so that users who attempt to copy DVDs onto VHS tape (so far, a fair use under Universal vs. Sony, 1984) won't get systematically scrambled results; and second, it also eliminates regional coding, so North American users can play European releases, for example, which has not been possible to date with any other DVD players, as far as I know. Step-by-step instructions for the code-cracking have even been published on the Web at http://www.nerd-out. com/apex. (This and more was reported in a March 24 Washington Post article by one-time EMedia writer Daniel Greenberg.) Also quoted in the article is Colton Manley, PR director for Apex, who had this to say about the encryption circumvention: "I don't know how it got there. We're trying to find out." So is the Washington bureau of the MPAA. Stay tuned.

EMedia Unravels the Mysteries of the Cosmos Once Again ...

In reference to the January 2000 issue, page 26, Marla Misek's case study on the Mars DVD title: I would like to point out, if no one else has yet, that as a native of the third planet from the sun, its official name is Earth. Mars is the fourth planet from Sol, unless Mr. Boyd was wrong in High School science class.

But you did get one thing right: our planet has indeed been a complete mystery to most scientists!

Dale Whitworth Winter Haven, FL

Washington Bullets

As a U.K. resident, it's interesting to see how deeply ingrained the gun is in the American psyche.

Comparing the weight of a Sony MZR55 MiniDisc player [See Joshua McDaniel, "Lost in the Supermarket," March 2000] to a handgun (why not a book, a TV remote, an apple, anything?) seems ridiculous and crass to me.

Jonathan Beadle

More on MiniDisc

I discovered MiniDisc about six months ago, and I can't believe it's not a monster in the U.S. I think this is due to Sony's failure to market. It's in wide use in Europe and Japan, but hasn't caught on in the States because no one knows about it. Put MD in the hands of anyone who likes music, and they'll be hooked by the quality of sound, portability, and flexibility.

Chris Callahan

The Only Format That Matters?

As a longtime Clash fan and MiniDisc aficionado, I just wanted to give my appreciation for Josh McDaniel's wonderful recent piece on rediscovering that MiniDisc is still alive. It is an incredibly cool and versatile technology, a fact which the Japanese and Europeans have realized for quite a few years. Unfortunately, Americans are a little harder to convince, and Sony's bungling of MD marketing in 1992 and even more recently is well-chronicled. I jumped aboard the MD express in late 1997 when Sony said it would support the format as a niche market in the U.S., even if it didn't catch on here. I have not regretted it a single minute. Once you've tried recording with MD, CD-R/RW is not much better than making a mix tape back in the day. You are probably already well aware of this site, but this is a great MD info site: http://www.minidisc.org.

Damien Josefiak Falls Church, VA

Affirming XML's Mettle

I was thrilled to see Robert Boeri's review of SoftQuad's XMetal in the March issue of EMedia. Finally, a review of XML software from somebody that grasps what it is about!

Although EMedia specializes in physical media, I would argue that XML has high relevance for the magazine. A major promise of XML is as a format that increases the lifetime of information, thanks to the use of descriptive tags, human-readable encoding, and other properties that make it easier to extract, reformat, and reuse the data in the future. This fits right into the concern among many EMedia readers regarding how to store information in a manner that preserves accessibility as technology moves forward.

My company provides several XML products for the Mac platform. We committed to XML in 1997, at which time our software already was designed around a strict separation of content from presentation, using what we called "lightweight SGML" (extensible markup very similar to XML, but few realized it was a good idea before XML finally took off). I encourage you to keep an eye on the progress of our products, including Emile, an XML editor for Mac; Interaction, XML-based Web server software; and XPublish, an XML-based Web site publishing system. Visit our Web site at http://www.in-progress.com.