January 18, 2008, 7:15 pm
You’re Not Buying Gadgets Any More, You are Subscribing To Them
By Saul Hansell
When I wrote last week, about the apparent victory of Blu-ray discs over HD DVD, there was a deluge of comments from readers. Those that agreed with my take on things, let’s say, were a rather small—if well-informed—minority. One of the many assertions that readers found objectionable, was the idea that any standard for high-definition discs is better than a format war. HD DVD’s defenders listed that format’s many advantages, such as the requirement that players include an Internet connection. This enables interactive features as well as updates to the player software. The readers are right. It was silly of Sony not to put an Ethernet jack on the back of every Blu-ray player. It was perfectly clear when the specification was being finalized that we are in a connected world, where nearly every experience can be made better by a network connection. The most common Blu-ray player, Sony’s PlayStation 3 console, does have an Ethernet jack, of course.
But technologies evolve. Smart engineers hate limits, and they create ways to overcome them. Indeed, today Ars Technica has a long analysis about the Blu-ray 2.0 specification. Guess what? The next generation of Blu-ray players will have network connections, as well as more memory and processing power so they can match some of the tricks of HD DVD. Of course, the 500,000 people who have bought stand alone Blu-ray players won’t have access to these features. But that is the price of being an early adopter. To stay sane, any consumer needs to think of digital technology as a subscription rather than a product. In the old days, you could buy a typewriter, television or a camera, and it might well last decades. Computers have been different. Once you buy a PC, you are really signing up to upgrade it on a regular basis. Now digital consumer electronics are the same. Your camera, video disc player, and even your television are now likely to become obsolete in just a few years.
Everyone who walks into the Best Buy understands that you pay more for a device with fancier features and newer technology. But the price difference is greater than what appears on the price tags: To keep yourself on the leading edge, you will have to replace your devices more frequently with more expensive devices than those people who want older, more established technology. Buy a G.P.S. and you can choose to be on the $900-every-two-years plan, the $300-every-four-years plan or the $150-every eight-years-plan. Sure, you can replace your cheap machines more often or keep your expensive machines longer. But you are letting your position on the innovation curve shift. It’s no different than changing from the cheap to the expensive Netflix or cable package.
Indeed, the price of high-tech devices can often tell the buyer where on the replacement cycle the product is. Clearly, anyone buying a high-priced high-definition disc player this early is signing up for a much shorter replacement cycle. (But note: Toshiba may be using heavy discounting to signal consumers that the technology is far more stable than it actually is.) Digital televisions are especially in flux. The features are changing. The quality, reliability and especially the affordability improves substantially each year. So every buyer of a digital TV has had to cope with the feeling that come up seeing the Sunday ad supplements offering a set with much better specs at a much lower price in less than a year. But again, if you choose to think of a television as a subscription, this may get a little easier to swallow. Accept this idea of consumer electronics as a subscription and you can defend profligate spending on the latest gadget or pinching pinching for a necessity.
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/01/18/youre-not-buying-gadgets-any-more-you-are-subscribing-to-them/?hp
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