More than 10 years after being approved by the FCC, almost nobody knows what HD Radio is. “Hey, check it out! My new car has that free satellite radio.” Here’s a transcript of essentially every conversation I’ve had about HD Radio. And that was a big, sharp, long nail in Blockbuster’s coffin.īut personally, I still pronounce Blu-ray as “blurry.” I mean, what was Sony thinking with that name? HD Radio Apple has never shipped a Blu-ray drive (in 2008 Steve Jobs described Blu-ray licensing as a “bag of hurt”), and consumers’ initial reluctance to buy either gave Netflix streaming (and Hulu and Amazon) a chance to prove people may not need a disc player if they have a decent Internet connection. HD-DVD is just a footnote now, but echoes of the format war are still with us. A million buyers – or gift recipients – suddenly had tech lemons on their hands. But the battle was already lost when number-one movie studio Warner Brothers threw its weight behind Blu-ray, and it didn’t take long for the likes of Best Buy and Walmart to follow. In January 2008, Toshiba claimed more than a million HD-DVD players had been sold to consumers. They weren’t compatible, and the stakes were high: HDTVs were just starting to move into consumers’ living rooms in serious numbers. Today Blu-ray is the standard for high-definition optical discs, but back in 20 there was a fight for who would take over for standard DVDs: Sony’s Blu-ray, or Toshiba’s HD-DVD. What two words always indicate a horrible holiday gift idea? Format war. At least, the most sophisticated robot that’s not a vacuum. In some ways, it’s a shame: Aibo is still the most sophisticated robotics product ever offered to consumers. At least Aibo still has an active enthusiast community who are (ahem) teaching the old dogs new tricks. Sony kept at Aibo until 2006, but canned its robotics products in 2006 to tighten up its bottom line. Back in the day an Aibo pet could easily set consumers back $2,000 or more – that’s almost $3,000 in 2013 dollars. Did I mention Wi-Fi? Later Aibos had Wi-Fi.Ī decade and a half later, why aren’t our homes littered with cool autonomous robotic dogs, cats, snakes, and goldfish? Price. It could stand guard at a door until it opened then start barking, or take a picture using its camera and send it to you via email using Wi-Fi. ![]() Aibo could respond to voice commands, could “grow up” from puppy-like behaviors to an adult dog via installed software, and was even programmable. When Aibo’s batteries drained, Aibo would act tired and try to find its “bed” – which, conveniently was also a charging station. If owners talked to Aibo and petted it, Aibo would get happy and calm. Aibo also recognized objects, particularly its own “toys,” which it would bat around and play with while no one was looking. Instead, Aibo used a camera to detect and avoid obstacles entirely. Sure, Aibo went around rooms avoiding obstacles – but not by bumping into them and randomly changing direction. ![]() ![]() Sony’s Aibo looked like an angular mashup of a puppy and an armored battle tank, but was much cooler than Zhu Zhu pets. Who knows, maybe they have some bearing on the present! (Smartwatches, we’re looking at you.) Sony AiboĪs the twentieth century drew to a close, Sony was at the top of the consumer electronics market, and the company pounced on the 1999 holiday season with … a robotic dog? Yup! I didn’t just make that up. Let’s take a moment to consider some great tech gifts of the past that didn’t work out so well. However, technology gifts aren’t always a sure thing: The coolest and most-sophisticated tech gift one year can turn into something you’ll trade around to groans and laughs at a white elephant party the next year. Technology has become so associated with the holiday season that unboxing new kit is now a revered tradition for many people – you know, like deciphering cryptic assembly instructions and untangling endless strands of LED lights.
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