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Forbes: January 9, 2008
Converging On Greatness
LAS VEGAS — As head of consumer electronics at online retailer Amazon.com, Paul Ryder sees plenty of gadgets. That means he doesn't put much stock in all the hype at the Consumer Electronics Show around the almighty trend of convergence: systems that can shuttle your movies, songs and photos from the Internet to the set-top box to the PC and back without calling an IT specialist.
Forbes.com sat down — quite literally on the floor, as there were no chairs in sight — with Ryder at the Sands Expo area of CES to get his take on what really counts as convergence. Ryder is no 20-something evangelist: hired by Amazon.com 18 months ago, he spent most of his career at GE Appliances and then at Honeywell's avionics group. He does love gadgets — as do his two adolescent sons, who scored an iPod Nano and electric guitar during the holidays.
Ryder contends there are two types of convergence: the capable and the excellent. Devices that merely rate as "capable," Ryder says, include most of the set-top boxes at the show from Motorola or Cisco, and game consoles like the Xbox360 or the PlayStation3 — products that can receive and send content from elsewhere in the house, if consumers can figure out how to do it. And that is still too hard.
"Excellence" is achieved by those devices that represent the nirvana state of electronics that simply work together without any fussing by the consumer. Here's a sampling:
- The EyeFi card ($100). It's a 2-gigabyte SD memory card that somehow manages to include a Wi-Fi antenna. Set it up once to connect with your home wireless network and then slap it in your camera or camcorder. When you walk into the house with photos in your camera, the photos start moving over the air to your PC. "I gave one to my wife and told her to put one in my Christmas stocking," says Ryder.
- The Slingbox (the pro version is around $185 and the smaller AV model is around $110). By now a staple item for true geeks, the Slingbox grabs live broadcasts or recorded DVR content from your living room or den and transmits it over the Internet to your PC or a Windows Mobile smart phone, no matter where you are as long as you're connected. Even if you're stuck in an airport lounge, you can open up your laptop and watch the ballgame your family is watching back at home. The thing works without any fuss.
- Flip Video (starts at $110). This is a pocket-size video recorder with a USB connection that pops out from the side. Fire it up and shoot, then connect it to your PC — the video is dumped right in. The Flip comes with built-in editing software. It's the No. 1-selling flash camcorder at Amazon because it's cheap and easy to use. Ryder gave one to his 11-year-old.
- Unbox with Tivo and Kindle. Ryder couldn't help plugging Amazon's own offerings, including its new Kindle electronic book reader, but he made a decent argument that it meets the "convergence excellence" criteria. The Kindle has a few flaws but it is easy to set up and manage and connects well with Amazon's e-book store. It sold out in the first five and half hours it was on sale late last year. Amazon's Unbox digital movie and TV show download service also delivers on the convergence promise because it's a convenient way to get movies quickly onto your TV through the Tivo's connection to the Web.
Amazon, with its unlimited supply of space, can do and does more than any other retailer to educate consumers about electronics. Its reviews and detailed product specifications are impressive and deep. Amazon has also been adding user-generated video reviews, employee blogs, and a Wikipedia style product description site called Amapedia, and it has created separate primers like HD 101 to explain terms and concepts in the fast-growing high-def category.
So if you can't figure out how to set up that new home server, maybe another Amazon customer can help.
