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Gift-Giving Ideas By Royal Van Horn Illustration © 1998 by Mario Noche

BELIEVE IT or not, I do a considerable amount of "research" before I write this annual holiday column. (That's my story, anyway, and I am sticking to it.) I guess you could call it research, although it is probably more akin to an exercise in "technolust." I read like crazy, visit a lot of high-tech stores, surf the Web, and in general play with a lot of technology. In this year's column I'll concentrate on the technology of sight and sound.

Every year I recommend my audio CD "pick of the year." This year, instead of picking an audio CD, I am picking a DVD (Digital Video Disc) music video by Mannheim Steamroller, "Christmas Live, by Chip Davis," recorded at the Orpheum. The Orpheum is a gorgeous recently restored theater in Omaha, and the DVD of the concert is magnificent. This group also has a new audio CD just out titled "Fresh Aire VIII," which I also recommend.

Before I get into too many details, I need to say a word or two about "mature" and "immature" technologies. DVD technology is a mature technology. Among other things, that means that DVD players have dropped in price to about as low as they are likely to go and that today's players are not as finicky as earlier models. If you haven't purchased one yet, now would be a good time to do so. DVDs have from two to four times the resolution of videotapes, and their audio fidelity is at least as good as an audio CD's. It won't be too many years before DVDs replace videotapes just as audio CDs have replaced phonograph records.

If you do buy a DVD player this season, I'd recommend a single-disc player with S-video and optical "audio out" ports. To get the full effect of the stunning audio on a well-mastered DVD disc, you'll need to hook the optical "audio out" to a similar input on a "digital signal processor" (dsp) port on a good stereo tuner/receiver. See the December 1999 Technology column for a more thorough discussion of home theater issues.

HDTV (high definition television) is not a mature technology. Even if you need a new television set, I wouldn't recommend that you invest in HDTV just yet. Part of the trouble with HDTV is that the industry has not settled on a standard. Of course, some TV sets simply say they are "HDTV ready." That's a fancy way to say that, when you do want to use the set for HDTV, you'll have to buy a separate converter box for $1,000 or more. Bad plan. Besides, HDTV sets are still too expensive, and the prices are falling substantially every year. Most HDTVs will have an aspect ratio of 16 by 9, as compared to today's 4 by 3 aspect ratio televisions. In other words, HDTV sets are typically wide and not very tall.

If you just can't wait for a new super TV, I recommend the Pioneer Elite series rear-projection set. It's worth your time to go to an upscale store just to see how gorgeous the picture is on the Pioneer's screen. This set defines what the future of television will look like, but at about $7,000, you have to really want the best. Sony's new tube-type, flat-screen Wega series of television/monitors might also be worth considering. Smaller versions of this Sony state-of-the-art television start at about $1,000.

Cameras have been the traditional Christmas "open me first" gifts. From a technological point of view, some of this year's most innovative products fall in this category. Last year, I bought the family a Canon ELPH2 Advantix film camera. We use this camera more than any we have ever owned because it's so easy to carry around and use. The ELPH is not much larger than a pager and comes with a leather case so you can carry it around easily. Surprisingly, the camera even comes with a 2x zoom lens. The only downside to a small camera like the ELPH is that the flash is so close to the lens that "red-eye reduction" is a problem. You can overcome this inherent limitation of small cameras by 1) using the built-in red-eye reduction feature, 2) getting close to your subject (six feet is recommended), 3) shooting outdoors, or 4) using fast film and natural indoor light. The ELPH costs about $200, and I recommend it highly. There's even a new digital ELPH, but it's so new that I don't know much about it.

Digital still camera technology is now mature. So if you have been reluctant to invest in a digital camera, there is probably no reason to wait any longer. You can either get a cheap, fun-to-use digital camera for well under $200 or a really good one for between $600 and $800. I don't recommend purchases in the middle of this wide price range. In the under-$200 price range, you should look for a 1-1.3 megapixel camera, preferably with rechargeable batteries. I prefer cameras that use "flash card" memory. (Flash refers to nonvolatile RAM and not to flash bulbs.) It would seem intuitively obvious that cameras with disk drives are a good idea, but the disks don't hold many pictures, and the internal drives tend to eat up batteries. I'd also recommend you purchase an additional 32 MB flash card for about $45. You'll also want to be certain that you can easily connect any camera you buy to your computer, so check out what kind of output the camera has. Today, USB ports are the most common means of connecting digital cameras and computers. A one-megapixel camera will give you good snapshot-sized prints, but it will not have good enough resolution for enlargements. By the way, the trick to printing your own snapshots is to buy expensive printer paper -- about 75 cents a sheet.

At the high end of the digital camera market are the cameras with at least three megapixels. I have used high-end cameras from Sony and Fuji, and I prefer the new four megapixel Fuji. Fuji even makes a digital camera that has an internal MPEG 3 audio player. (More about MPEG audio below.) This is logical since flash cards are used in both cameras and audio players. Of course, if you take pictures at higher resolution, they take up more memory, so fewer pictures will fit on one card. Incidentally, some digital cameras let you take a minute or so of digital video, but it is typically of poor quality, so it's not a valuable feature.

MPEG (pronounced m-peg) stands for the Motion Picture Experts Group. This is the standard-setting body that came up with a number of standard compression techniques for use with video and audio material. One song from an audio CD takes up as much as 50 to 60 megabytes of memory. If you use MP3 software to compress the song, it takes up only a tenth of that amount of memory or less to store. You do lose a little fidelity with MP3 compression of audio files, but, unless you have an expensive audio system, you won't be able to notice any difference.

I explain MP3 audio here because it is becoming a big deal to preteens and teenagers. You may have read about Napster.com in the news. Napster provided the software that allowed people to share illegally copied audio CD music over the Internet. The government managed to shut down Napster, but a large number of legitimate MP3 music sites still exist and are frequented by teenagers. Often the music at these sites is not the kind you or I would choose to listen to, but the kids like it. The music that people were sharing through Napster uses the MP3 format, so it downloads easily, and a lot of it can be stored on small computer disk drives or on flash memory cards.

There is an obvious problem with having a lot of your favorite music on your computer, since most computers are not very portable. The solution comes in the form of a portable MP3 player. About the size of a small portable radio, a personal MP3 player connects to a computer and lets you download your music files from your computer to the static memory in the player -- usually the same kind of flash card memory discussed above. What kid wouldn't want a no-skip, take-it-anywhere, hide-it-in-your-pocket-if-you-need-to personal music machine? One of the world's most innovative products is the Sony Vivo Music Stick. This player is about the size of a fat fountain pen and fits nicely in a pocket. The downside is that it's relatively expensive and uses a proprietary Sony "memory stick" technology. A memory stick is about the size of a piece of chewing gum and is Sony's answer to the more universal flash card memory. This season I suspect that wise shoppers will be able to find good personal MP3 players for around $100. Lower-priced units are likely to hold fewer songs.

Of all the innovative products on the market this season, the new 64-128-bit video game machines are the most amazing. These game machines are nothing less than computers that have been optimized to do only one thing: give the gamer a lifelike interactive experience. I am not much of a game player, so I can't make recommendations in this category, but these are indeed amazing machines. It makes me wonder what would happen if somehow someone would use these inexpensive devices for educational simulations and interactive programming. Imagine a $250 educational supercomputer! The hardware is available.

I am also not a user of PDAs (personal digital assistants), such as the Palm Pilot, introduced about four years ago. (I keep thinking that I should get organized, but I just haven't gotten around to it.) Since Palm Pilot's introduction and resounding success, Microsoft has released Windows CE (WinCE), which is a competing operating system to the Palm OS. A number of Palm's competitors that are now becoming available use WinCE.

But the PDA to contend with is the Handspring Visor. Essentially, the Visor is a modified Palm PDA. It uses the same operating system and comes with the same software. The major difference is that the Visor has an innovative "Springboard" expansion slot on its back that will accept add-on modules that are thicker and taller than the Visor itself. By simply inserting a different module, the Visor can become an MP3 player, a cell phone, a GPS receiver, or a universal remote controller. There's even a portable full-sized keyboard accessory that folds in four places to fit in your pocket. Visor add-on modules are not inexpensive, so you might want to do some arithmetic before you make a purchasing decision. A PDA that will connect to your computer will start at about $175.

I should mention that it's now possible to buy a very capable personal computer for slightly less than $800. Low-end iMacs and PCs from Dell and Gateway are worth considering as family machines.

A number of my friends are using eBay.com online auctions to purchase presents. For example, if a friend collects old fountain pens, you can find the appropriate section on eBay and buy your friend an antique paper advertisement of the very collectible Pelican fountain pen. An antique Pelican pen may be too expensive for your budget, but old Pelican advertising is highly desirable and probably affordable. Similar "paper" finds are available for nearly every interest or hobby.

Even if you don't use this column to make purchases this year, you can use it as a snapshot of the state of the technology. You can also use the column to begin to dream about how all these nifty devices could be used in schools -- someday. I wish you strong trees, healthy animals, loving friends, and empowering technology.

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Last updated 15 December 2000
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