Comments on: Adrian Wittenberg reports on Japan’s electronics scene…

By: Cory Potts

Cory Potts — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 14:56:54 +0000

I have always been jealous of kids who live in Japan (at least from a technology standpoint). They ALWAYS get the good stuff first, sometimes years (decades?) before it trickles down to the western world. Console gaming systems and games are the most visible example (they got the PS3 almost two years before we did). Their processors are faster, their memory is better, their hard drives are immense, their graphics are cooler, etc. Their kids play on cell phones that have higher bandwidth than our government mainframes it seems. It has been said that HD downloads won’t become the preferred method in the US until the infrastructure catches up (no indication of that yet) and Japan has had the capability for a while now. And, I’d be willing to be that they don’t pay a fraction of what the top-tier service providers are charging in the US. I recently went shopping for HD/faster internet and the best HD/internet package from an all-fiber system ran $154+taxes and fees, and only if its available in your area.
I guess its our own fault really, for accepting sub-par services from ALL of our media providers and paying through the nose for it, allowing them to sit on their laurels complacently instead of pushing to implement better services. What I don’t understand is, I know that a fiber network must physically be laid before we can attain much better service, but what baffles me is, the new fiber system will STILL not allow us the same download speeds/HD bandwidth as our Japanese counterparts have had for years (or so I hear from the industry). So, we are spending a ton to install a system that is already obsolete when we should be spending two tons for a system that can meet our demands in 20 years (or even 10). This type of thinking is not what made the US a superpower 100 years ago, too little too late seems a more appropriate summation.

By: Adrian W

Adrian W — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 02:18:41 +0000

Alas, the demonstration they had on hand only sported some average headphones which wasn’t enough to get a solid opinion. From what I gathered about the Blu-spec technology though, the discs are playable in any cd player and are not a high storage format such as Blu-ray. Apparently, the goal was to create a much higher quality CD disc, borrowing advanced manufacturing techniques from Blu-ray disks, rather than deliver high resolution lossless audio such as DolbyTrueHD or dtsMaster audio.

By: jim

jim — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 12:29:13 +0000

Nice article. I have noticed that due to space limitations in Japanese society, that they do not go “big” like we do in the States. Small TV’s, small home audio systems…not many will set up a big HT room or have huge floor standing speakers that we in the Us like to collect. I am somewhat surprised to hear that BD is no cheaper (indeed, more expensive) there. Great idea to combine a media center with the BD player ( again, space saving). A TB of storage…sweet!

By: Tyler Stripko

Tyler Stripko — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 01:40:27 +0000

Did you get a chance to listen to the Blu-spec CD? If yes, what did you think? I’m not sure if we need another high-resolution recording format, but I’m all for anything that sounds better than CD.