Monday
night, Keith, Daniel Reznick and I attended an all-digital
screening of STAR WARS Episode 1: The Phantom Menace, which is being
shown for only a month in four select theaters around the New York area
and Los Angeles. The digital format means no scratches, skips, or dirty
film, but it really goes beyond that with a visual quality that is hard
to describe. Projected digitally off a massive hard drive with Texas
Instruments' DLP Cinema technology, STAR WARS took on whole new levels of
sharpness, depth, and image quality. Digital sequences such as the pod
race and droid/Gungan battle scenes were even more realistic. And digital
characters such as Watoo and Jar Jar Binks were virtually perfect.
Indeed, ILM, the special effects arm of LucasFilm, says that the new
image quality is as problematic as it is exciting.
"This much clarity will give our production team brain damage!"
says Episode 1 Producer Rick McCallum. "The set designers, the
make-up artists, the hairdressers, everybody knows what they can get away
with in terms of visual economy. They know that something doesn't
necessarily have to look good on the set in order to look good on film.
But with digital projection, these visual tricks won't work anymore, and
new techniques will arise."
In the future, movies will be deployed
via satellite to theaters and projected digitally this way, and our
glimpse at this future was reassuring and exciting: We're right at the
beginning of an age of degradation-free movie making and STAR WARS
Episode 1, digital edition is just the start.
PC Expo 99, Day One: Tuesday, June 22
Though
I was excited to see STAR WARS digitally, I spent most of Monday fighting
the need to sleep, and Tuesday morning arrived rather unpleasantly. Keith
and I headed into New York for the opening of the show earlier than we
had anticipated, arriving around ten. This year's PC Expo lacks any
blockbuster announcements, but as always, it's the show to see on the
East Coast.
The Jacob Javitz Convention Center is the
home of PC Expo,
held every year in New York City.
As usual, Microsoft's presence is
obvious all around the Javitz Center, where PC Expo is held. Outside, a
massive inflatable SQL Server 7.0 box greets attendees, while product
billboards hang everywhere in the entryway. Microsoft's gigantic booth
includes a Partner Pavilion where allies and other smaller companies can
show their wares under the Microsoft umbrella. Executive Software
recently released Diskeeper 4.5, their excellent disk defragmenter for
Windows NT. A lite version of Diskeeper 5.0 is included in Windows 2000;
Executive says the full version, which will ship late this year, will
allow for more advanced functionality. They're currently reviewing
whether it makes sense to release this product during the Windows 2000
beta cycle. IBM was showing off its sleek black IntelliStations and
flat-panel screens running Windows NT. And Windows CE partners such as
AvantGo and Casio displayed their portable solutions.
As usual, Microsoft's booth saw the most
foot traffic with three theatres running constantly.
Microsoft has three theaters running
constantly, with demos of Windows 2000, Office 2000, and SQL Server 7.0.
The most exciting announcement so far, however, has to be Microsoft's new
line of keyboards, which include the Natural Keyboard Pro, the Internet
Keyboard Pro, and the Internet Keyboard. The Natural Keyboard Pro is a
full-sized ergonomic keyboard that answers user complaints about the
smaller Natural Keyboard Elite with its odd key placement and miniscule
arrow key layout. But the Natural Keyboard Pro also adds a bunch of new
features, including two USB ports and Internet and multimedia hot buttons
(which are small blue buttons arrayed along the top of the keyboard). The
other two keyboards are normal "straight" keyboards with
similar features. They'll all be available in October and trust me: I'll
be first in line.
Where do I sign up? I'll be buying one of
these beauties as soon as I can.
Microsoft was also pushing its new
Terminal Services, which is now bundled with Windows 2000 Server. This
cool feature lets you run applications remotely off a server using
Windows clients, dumb terminals, managed PCs, and the like. One of the
demo machines was an Apple iMac; there was something serendipitous about
seeing the iMac running Windows 2000.
An iMac running Windows 2000? At
least it's finally compatible: Windows Terminal Services
makes it all possible.
One of the unexpected highlights of the
show is Corel, which recently released its WordPerfect Office 2000 suite,
featuring WordPerfect 9. We're going to be reviewing the suite soon, so I
don't want to give it all away here, but the short story goes like this:
Don't count these guys out yet. In a world where Microsoft Office has
been able to steal marketshare through ma chine bundling, it's easy to
write off WordPerfect. But this product offers features Microsoft Office
can't touch, such as real-time preview, at a price that blows away the
competition. Corel understands the market in a way that I never thought
was possible and there's even the possibility that Microsoft's antitrust
trial could have a positive effect on this company's ability to get their
product into more people's hands. The crowds at the product demos were
certainly enthusiastic.
Corel was showing off WordPerfect Office
2000 and CorelDraw 9.
America Online, which included Netscape
Communications, CompuServe, and ICQ in its booth, was showing off its
latest online clients. But they got a small black mark for handing out
Communicator 4.51 on CD when 4.61 has been available for a while now.
Creative Labs was demonstrating its new
Nomad portable MP3 player, which features a beautiful small form factor,
64MB of RAM, PC connectivity and a nice suite of software.
