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DivX for Grandma: a review of Alaska Air's video iPod

There has been a lot of speculation in the last year about when a personal video player would go mainstream in the US (they're pretty popular in Japan already), and many are waiting for Apple to take the lead and expand the iPod to serve video. Well, as I found out on a recent cross-country flight on Alaska Airlines, the technology is already here and it's pretty useful.

The digEplayer

I'll admit that it's not the most cutting-edge development, as personal video players have been seen in first class cabins for a few years now, and personal DVD players can be rented for one-way use at many airports. When I heard them mentioned at the start of my flight, I figured I'd pay the ten dollar charge (they're free in first class) and see if watching a movie on a small screen was comfortable and what types of music was offered. What eventually piqued my interest about the device was the technology being used.

After we got up to a safe altitude the attendents passed them out and as I was looking over the device I noticed something curious on the back. See for yourself:

I was surprised but impressed that a company called e.Digital had adopted an emerging internet video standard for consumer applications, figured out the studio licensing maze, and sold their services to a major airline. Compression formats like MP3 and DivX were popularized by underground internet trading networks but they've historically been difficult to use and the domain of expert users. In the past couple years however, consumer devices have fought Hollywood industry lawsuits in order to make those formats easy to use. In effect, e.Digital has created the first DivX player my grandmother can use. Kudos to the design team.

Looking inside and taking it for a spin

The device was called a "digEplayer 5500" and was easy to use with a directional wheel, play/pause/seek video controls, brightness and volume controls, and a couple navigation buttons. The display was a widescreen LCD around 7" in size. The main menu offered movies, sitcoms, and music, in addition to some airline info. The player was about the size of three iPods side by side, but still smaller than a laptop. It was about an inch thick and only weighed a pound or so.

The amount of content on the device was more that I would have guessed could fit. There were nine full length movies (three recently in theaters, the other six were common video rentals from the past 2-3 years), three TV shows (including the Simpsons!), and a selection of 10-15 songs in ten different genres. That's roughly 15 hours of video and about 6 hours of music. I would assume the player was hard drive based, to hold that amount of data (a 20Gb laptop drive would be my guess).

Movie and TV show playback was smooth, though the content was formated for a standard 4:3 tv set, and widened to fit the 16:9 screen on the handheld (which seems dumb, but I recognized the same "this movie has been formated to fit this screen" message at the start of films I've rented in fullscreen format, so they probably just ripped DivX versions of rental market films. I watched the Simpsons episode ("Lisa Gets an A") and Master and Commander in full. The screen was bright and crisp, and looked great in daytime light and during action sequences.

After I was done with the movie and show, I turned the device off to poke around a bit. The back pointed out it cleared FCC regs for home and office use, but other labels said it was limited to only commerical use on Alaska. Aside from the headphone jack on the side and a taped over DC power jack, the only other opening was a side door. I cracked it open and found what appeared to be a black cartridge-type pack. I believe it was the battery pack, though I couldn't get it to budge no matter how much I wiggled on the small strap sticking out of it. There's got to be a way to easily exchange content on the device for new films and music, but I could find no evidence of docking mechanisms. Perhaps the black brick was a removable hard drive. On bootup, the screen revealed it was running the "MicroOS 3.1".

Impressions

Overall, I had a great time using the device and it helped my five hour flight feel a lot shorter. Steve Jobs has said in the past that watching video on tiny screens was a bad movie experience, but I have to say it wasn't that bad for me. I had never seen Master and Commander before and I'm sure I would have enjoyed the epic's cannon blasts if they were on a 80 foot screen, but I still felt the suspense and action on the small monitor. By exposing airline passengers to this device, you get to see regular folks enjoy small, portable types of entertainment. And it makes sense to use a portable instead of installing screens in every seat (same could be said about in-car DVD systems, why not make them portable instead and entertain people in any car?).

What impresses me most from this device is that it appears to be a low cost box built with commoditiy parts, and it takes advantage of content encoding that was developed in the illicit world of online media trading. Small LCD screens are cheap (you can find a 5" LCD for around $50 on ebay), mp3 and divx decoders are just a few bucks for the chips, and laptop hard drives are readily available (they can be pricey though). Combined with a simple user interface, this device takes all the complexity of movie codecs, P2P networks, and file metadata, and turns it into a system that non-technical adults can enjoy.

Conclusions

After playing with the digEplayer for a few hours, I'm wondering why these units aren't widely available for movie and television show fans. The most obvious reason would be that Hollywood doesn't want you to make a copy of your purchased DVD for your handheld, nor do they want you to download a TV show you taped for playback on another device. I've long held that instead of calling Kazaa users criminals for going to such great lengths to find shows, songs, and movies they enjoy, content industries could instead be calling them customers (highly motivated customers, at that). Apple proved that if you gave people a reliable, speedy, easy-to-use source of music at a reasonable price, people would rather pay the small fee than go through the effort of obtaining free songs. There is MovieLink for films, but every review I've seen of the service talks about the hard to use software that only runs on certain configurations. Currently there's no easy way to get digitized TV shows other than searching underground networks for it.

It's clear why this device is only available for rental in a commercial setting -- Hollywood hasn't yet figured out a model they're comfortable with for distributing content to customers. The only barriers are social and legal, as the technology is already here.

by Matt Haughey May 5, 2004 in Product Reviews

Comments

I'd seen the "inventor" of this interviewed on The Screensavers (TechTV) a few months back... he was a baggage handler at the airline when he came up with the idea:

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/138884_airdvd10.html

Nice to see this follow-up review. Looks like an interesting device and I'm eager to get my hands on one.

Posted by: Josh at May 6, 2004 12:38:06 AM

This certainly seems more sustainable/simple than the Airport DVD-rental service inMotion Pictures. We tried that service a while back, and while it was nice to have for part of the trip, the hassle of signing up, picking up the box, then dropping it off in the next airport really was a poor experience. Airports are Hell, and any activity that forces you to travle through them more and spend more of your life there had better be worth it.

Poor Ralph Wiggum. He can't catch a break, even as a spokesmodel for a hi-tech advance. That pic makes a lovely bit of punctuation to the last sentence "The only barriers are social and legal, as the technology is already here." - like a visual "...duh."

Posted by: alan taylor at May 6, 2004 8:29:11 AM

Steve Job is talking about a video ipod not a small laptop (as you mention, it's 3 ipods in size). Other than flying, what other opportunity will you want to lug that around to watch TV - in the park? commuting to work? Most people are allowed to listen to music at work - how about watching TV, how many people are allowed to watch TV? It takes a minute to rip a song and load it into my ipod - how long does it take to rip a TV show or movie and how many times am I gonna watch it before I delete to load something else? How many times in a row can you listen to a song or how many days in a row - how about a TV show or movie. As much as I love some movies, I don't think I could watch eveyday for a week - a song, you bet.

For travelers and gadget freaks, this & the archos are great but beyond that, who wants to spend $400 to $800 for a portable video device in reality? If I stop you on the street and ask, sure - sounds great - just like a flying car sounds great in passing but the reality is different. Are you going to wear one of those harmonica harnesses and rest that unit on your chest as you walk around the city?

You can pretty much anything with music on - with video, if you're not watching it or devoting at least 80% of your attention to it - what's the point?

Posted by: jbelkin at May 6, 2004 2:15:14 PM

I used this device when I flew from Seattle to Florida for christmas in first class. I was dissapointed to get this device, as previously Alaska Airlines had been passing out DVD players with a limited selection of DVDs.

With a real DVD Player I got to watch a DVD in real widescreen format, and know that I was watching the same movie that I could watch if I rented it at home. Or I could watch one of my own DVDs (or from netflix)

The films on the device are the same films that could be shown on the overhead monitor in the cabin, and have been sanitized. I'm mostly dissapointed as I liked the previous service that alaska airlines was offering better than this new service.

Posted by: William C Bonner at May 7, 2004 6:48:40 AM

I played with one of these on a Flight from Seattle to Miami. It lasted the whole flight (6+ hours). The down side is that the movies are not in 16:9 mode to match the capabilities of the display. The sound quality on the included headphones ( you get to keep) is poor. I wound up listening on my own headphones I had along to listen to my iPod.

Posted by: John at May 7, 2004 2:44:54 PM

The real killer application for these devices is recording MPEG-4 video that you can share over the Internet with camera phone handsets, using 3GPP MPEG-4 video.

You put a small camera near your eye (perhaps on headphones) and record video in your pocket. Your friend can watch what you are seeing and hearing on their color mobile phone. They can for example, give you directions remotely, telling you which turn to take to get to get somewhere.

The idea to record and share your life is called "oGo" and it is not patented but evolving in the public domain.

Check out photos and video of prototypes and make your own improvements and tests:

evolvethis.com

Posted by: Nate Johnson at May 13, 2004 1:46:08 PM

Steve Job's comment was that you wouldn't watch movies on a PC screen in your home or on a 3-4" iPod-size display on the road. He said you would use a TV-size display at home or an iBook/Powerbook (min 12" display) to acceptably watch on the road (as a passenger in a car, bus, train, or plane). That's why he disagrees with the Microsoft/Intel vision. Another reason is he doesn't think the computer (which has slow startup, viruses, and crashes) should be the center of the home entertainment delivery system (see Intel's Entertainment PC vision posted two months ago here). A computer to create/enhance content - yes; simply to playback content - no (just an always-on server is needed).

One alternative vision is this: an iPod that wirelessly sends video/photos/music to a TV/speaker system from its HD, wirelessly records TV/audio from that system to its HD (or any other networked computer-HD), and wirelessly connects to the Internet and using the TV for web site display (mainly for video channels and the iTunes music/movie store purchases).

A wireless access point device is connected to the TV/speaker system home entertainment system (until those systems are sold with the access point built-in). The iPod is the remote control using the iPod interface. A separate 8-12" LCD display is also sold for use with the iPod on the road. This is a purely distributed system that allows CE companies to stay in business (except maybe TiVo), and allows you to keep or upgrade that stuff irrespective of the digital content side.

If the 40GB iPod cost $499 and the 8-12" LCD cost $299, that would still be cheaper than a laptop, and in the same price range as a similar GB-sized portable media centers but with a much smaller 3-4" display. Sounds doable to me!

Posted by: kev at May 22, 2004 9:19:01 PM

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Listed below are links to weblogs that reference DivX for Grandma: a review of Alaska Air's video iPod:

» First stab at a video iPod? from PVRUK: PVR/DVR news, reviews and how-tos for the UK
Matt Haughey of PVRBlog has had the good fortune to play with Alaska Air's in-flight entertainment system, the digEplayer 5500. He seems impressed... Overall, I had a great time using the device and it helped my five hour flight feel [Read More]

Tracked on May 13, 2004 10:04:01 AM

» Apples neuer Photo-iPod: sind das 15.000 Songs in deiner Hose oder freust du dich so mich zu sehen? from parasew.com
Apple hat einen neuen iPod: der iPod-Photo. Das neue daran ist ein 2" Farbdisplay (65,536 Farben) mit LED-Backlight und ein "TV-Ausgang" (composite video). Generell sind die kleinen Dinger ja ganz niedlich. Mich wundert nur, warum es noch... [Read More]

Tracked on Nov 25, 2004 12:29:12 PM