Roku HD – The Future of TV

I bought my wife a Roku HD for Christmas.  She works out of town and wanted Netflix streaming for her little apartment.  Before the Roku HD left the house forever, I thought I’d play with it and see how it compared to my Netflix streaming on my LG BD390 Blu-Ray player.  In a way, I wished I hadn’t, because now I hate my LG BD390 Netflix streaming.

If I knew then what I know now, I wouldn’t have bought the LG BD390.  I spent $100 over my budget to get the highly rated LG BD390 because it had wireless-N built in and Netflix.  The BD390 is great for playing Blu-Ray discs, but has been less than spectacular for Netflix and wireless.  I would have been better off buying a basic Blu-Ray player and the Roku HD, spending the same as I had on the LG BD390.  But I might not even agree with this decision by next Christmas.

I hooked up both the Roku HD and BD390 to the same wired Ethernet.  The BD390 has never liked my Linksys WRT160N version 1 router – but that’s Cisco’s fault.  Cisco won’t update the original model of this router and it needs it.  I mention these annoying tribulations because anyone buying network devices to add to their TV need to be prepared for pitfalls and aggravations.  However, even after I hardwired my den, the BD390 would not consistently work well with Netflix.  My internet reception was usually one half of the gauge or a little over.  On rare occasions I got HD reception and things looked fantastic.  I keep waiting for a BD390 update that would tweak its Netflix feature, but so far I’ve been living with average quality Netflix streaming.

I set up the Roku HD, which was a complete snap.  It’s a tiny device, weighing just ounces.  (Here’s a peak inside the older model.)  I’ve been watching an episode of Farscape every night, streamed via Netflix through my BD390, so I decided to look at the next episode on the Roku HD.  I got 4 dot reception, that’s Roku talk for their streaming quality meter, the highest level of streaming.  I was overwhelmed by how much better the image was over the LG.  On the BD390 I assumed the show was old and the visuals were crude.  But no!  On the Roku HD the make-up, costumes, and sets are gorgeous.   And my wife leaves this weekend taking the Roku HD with her!  Bummer.

This morning I got up and played with the Roku Channel Store and found all kinds of extra content (Mediafly, Twit.tv, Revision3, etc.)  Techie shows I love that drives my wife from the room.  I was amazed by how good Internet TV content looked on my 52” HDTV.  Since I’m already planning on building a HTPC that would replace my BD390, I’m now worried that anything I build won’t be equal to the elegant little Roku box.

Now take all of my enthusiasm for the Roku HD with a grain of salt.  Go to the Roku Forums to read about other people’s experiences.  Not everyone is getting 4 dot reception.  Many fight with bad network connections, rebooting Roku boxes, bad updates, etc.  Also, remember, generally only users with a problem come to the forums to begin with, so we don’t know how many people have fantastic out-of-the-box luck like I did.

But I am in trouble.  I don’t want to watch Netflix streaming on my LG BD390 anymore.  It’s a shame that Farscape isn’t on Blu-Ray, but for now I just put the DVDs into my queue and I’ll be networking the show via USPS mail.  I would jump over to Amazon and order another Roku HD, but I want to wait and see if I can build a HTPC that does a better job instead.  The Roku HD box has a very tiny chip to process the Internet video stream, so I’m wondering if a powerful CPU and GPU can do a better job.  Watching the same episode streamed through my computer looks way better than the BD390, but not as good as the Roku HD, but that might be because I’m sitting twenty inches away from the LCD monitor and I’m sitting ten feet from my HDTV.  Like I said, everything is very iffy with Internet TV watching.  Twit.tv looked fantastic blown up to a 52” HDTV via the Roku HD box, but it looks just as great on my computer.

Actually, I’m struck with the overwhelming impression that the Roku HD box foretells the future of TV.  We watched a HD movie over the Roku box and maybe it wasn’t Blu-Ray 1080p quality, but the illusion was damn close.  I gave up Comcast cable to live with over-the-air broadcasts and Netflix and I’ve been very happy.  If I could get all my TV from a little box like the Roku I would.  I’d give up DVDs and Blu-Ray discs too.  In my post about building an HTPC I wanted to reduce my entertainment center from 5 electronic devices connected to my Samsung HD to one. 

If that one device could be something the size of the Roku box that would be even more elegant, but obviously, the solution is to put the little Roku circuit board inside of the TV and have just a TV and sound bar, and even then, why can’t they build a great sound bar into the TV too?  You can see where this is going.  A flat panel on the wall with a power cord and an Ethernet cable.  No HD antenna, cable or satellite cable, and if wireless improved, the future TV wouldn’t even need an Ethernet cable.  While I’m wishing, if they could also take the small circuit board from my Roku SoundBridge M1001 that streams music, and put it inside the TV too, we’d really be living in the future.

In other words, maybe I should hold off on building my HTPC.  By Christmas 2010 or 2011 such a simple elegant TV solution might show up on the market.  There are already TVs out with built-in Internet access, but they are limited.  Obviously, such an Internet TV will bring about a tremendous paradigm change in the TV business.  The Netflix model, of one monthly fee to watch exactly what you want to watch, and only that, is too powerful to ignore.  Why pay big bucks to cable and satellite providers for 250 channels you don’t watch?  Why hassle with HD antennas if the Internet provides better reception.  Why buy DVDs and Blu-Ray discs and mess with storing them when Netflix will do all the work for you?

The Netflix model for video and the Rhapsody model for music should be the standard for the future, but will the content providers allow so many revenue streams to be dammed up?  Will the Roku box change the TV world?  If on-demand streaming content can approach the visual quality of Blu-Ray, why not?

JWH – 12/30/9

HTPC Advice Wanted

I want to build my own Home Theater PC (HTPC) but I have a number of decisions to make that I hope readers can advise me on.  I want to build a low-cost HTPC that also uses as little energy as possible, especially since I will need to leave the machine on 24×7.  The demands of a HTPC can be high, so I’m worried that a green low-powered chip might compromise the project.  I’ve read reviews of a Polywell Mini-ITX HTPC with a  N330 Atom dual processor combined with an NVIDIA ION chipset, using just 23-30w of electricity, but is it powerful enough to do the job?  And is onboard graphics good enough, or will I need a discrete graphics card?  Finally, I’d like my custom HTPC to replace several machines connected to my 52” Samsung DLP HDTV:

  • LG Blu-ray player
  • Pioneer CD/SACD player
  • Toshiba DVD recorder
  • Yamaha 5.1 receiver/amp
  • Roku SoundBridge M1001 media extender

I doubt I can find an internal Blu-Ray optical drive for my HTPC that can replace my SACD player, so it might be time to give up on that technology. I never bought more than a dozen SACDs anyway, but I will miss them.

I want my HTPC to do:

  • Record over-the-air HD broadcasts
  • Offer an elegant program guide to work with the DVR
  • Burn DVDs from shows recorded with DVR
  • Play Blu-Ray and DVD movies
  • Stream video from Netflix and Amazon
  • Stream video from Youtube, Hulu, Boxee, etc.
  • Stream music from Rhapsody, Lala, Pandora, etc.
  • Play music CDs
  • Use the Internet in my den while sitting in my La-Z-Boy
  • Store 200 GB of digital media
  • Be my digital photo librarian and slide projector
  • Be my home file and backup server
  • Run everything from one remote

Question 1:  Can a sound card replace an standalone receiver?

Is it even possible for a HTPC to replace my Yamaha receiver?  My current system has Infinity main and center speakers, and Bose for the rear channels.  I never bought a subwoofer.  I’m wondering if I could replace my receiver and speakers with some decent PC speakers or an amplified sound bar?  I’m not a audiophile by any measure, but I like good sound.

Question 2:  What benefits will I get from a more expensive chip?

I’m happy now Windows Media Center is working on my AMD 64 X2 4200+ chip, but would things be much better with a higher powered chip?  For $50-75 I could get a very nice AMD chip.  For $100 I can get a low end Intel Core 2 Duo, or even a AMD X4 chip.  For more than double that I could get a high performance, low watt Intel mobile processor or i5.  What HTPC features benefit from a more expensive chip?

Question 3:  Will onboard graphics be good enough or will I need a good graphics card?

In terms of power consumption and cost, it would be great to live with the graphics built into the motherboard.  I want to watch Internet TV, so how much does the graphics card affect the quality of Hulu and other streaming video sites?  I’m not a big video game fan, but if I could play games hooked up to my big TV that might be fun.  What’s a good green graphics card?

Question 4:  Would I be better off buying or building?

Are there any good HTPC makers that sell systems within the price range of building my own?  It’s a shame Dell can’t sell a Zino with a Blu-Ray player, 1GB drive and dual tuner TV card for $499.  I wouldn’t mind buying a HTPC if it was priced well and came with a warranty, but I’m figuring to get the features I want, at the price I’m willing to pay, will require building it myself.

Question 5:  Is there any reason not to base my system on Windows Media Center?

I’ve been happy with Windows Media Center in Windows 7 for TV recording, so is there any reason to consider another media center application?  I was disappointed that Windows Media Center needed hours to burn a DVD of a 1 hour TV show it had recorded.  Can other media center apps do it much faster?  I’m not sure that Windows Media Center handles large listings of recorded TV shows or MP3 albums very well.  What’s the best program for handling large libraries of media?

Question 6:  How does Hulu and other TV streaming sites look on a large HDTV screen?

I’m worrying about buying a decent video card to stream Hulu TV, but will that investment pay off?  Does TV streamed through Hulu look good on a big TV screen?  I’ll be very disappointed if I buy a video card and Hulu isn’t worth watching.

JWH – 12/28/9

Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-1250 and Terk HDTVa Antenna Pro

My wife gave me and my computer a Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-1250 TV tuner card and a Terk HDTVa antenna for Christmas.  I had to do a lot of research before I gave Santa my wish list, but I must have been a very good boy this year because that research paid off perfectly.  I want to build a HTPC for my den, but I thought I’d experiment first by adding over-the-air TV to my computer.  My previous TV tuner card experience consisted of working with an ATI HD-Wonder card on three different computers over the last three years.  What I learned by playing with that TV tuner card is making TV work on a computer leads to high blood pressure and a desire to seek the simple life.  And I’ve found many a blogger that confirmed this lesson. 

I was very worried that Santa would bring me another lump of coal, but I got a cool toy instead!  I knew it helped to have a computer and graphics card with a certain level of oomph and I was worried my old HP Pavillion a6000n with an AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ and NVIDEA GeForce 8500 GT graphic card lacked the horsepower.  I kept reading Best HDTV Tuner for PC’s over and over, looking for clues and advice, and finally figured I needed a tuner card with a PCIe connector to increase the bandwidth between the card and computer.  I was going to go with their highly rated AVertTV HD Duet, but after comparing the buyer’s comments at Amazon with it and the Hauppauge 1250, I decided to go with the cheaper card. 

Both cards are designed to be simple, tuning either over-the-air TV or clearQAM cable signals.  Make sure you have a PCIe slot free if you buy this type of card.  Best HDTV Tuner for PC’s actually seem to prefer USB tuners, but I was afraid to try them because of poor bandwidth issues with my old PCI based card.

I made a very lucky guess because I popped the 1250 in my PC running Windows 7 Professional and the 1250 was recognized and installed automatically.  In fact Windows Media Center did such an excellent job of configuring the card that I decided not to install the Hauppauge media center software or even try out any of the other media center applications, like XBMC, Boxee, SageTV or MythTV.  I’ll save that research for when I build my den HTPC.

The Terk HDTVa antenna also worked out well.  We have two local channels here in Memphis that still transmit on VHF that causes lots of trouble for indoor antenna users.  I tried the Terk without amplification and couldn’t tune in channels 5 and 13, but the Terk tuned them in great after plugging in its amplifier.

The bundled Hauppauge remote did not work out of the box with Windows Media Center, but I went to the install CD and manually ran IR32.exe and bingo the remote was recognized.  I would love to find a way to get this remote to work with other Windows programs.  I’d like to be able to sit in my reading chair and change music from across the room.  I’d especially love to be able to remote control Lala.com.  However, this brings up another issue for dealing with building a HTPC, and that’s the user interface and how visible it is from across the room.

Even sitting right at the computer with mouse in hand, getting to a particular TV show, photograph, film or song takes a lot of clicking.  Windows Media Center works hard to help, offering many ways to search.   I was delighted by searching for albums by their release year.  I also liked searching through my music by album cover.  However, with over 1200+ CDs, it’s hard to find a particular CD.  This isn’t an Achilles heel of Windows Media Center, but a central problem of all media managers.  Try finding a song from 1200+ CDs in iTunes with a remote from across the room.

The ultimate solution is either to have voice commands like in Star Trek, or have a handheld controller like those from Sonos or remote control programs that work with the iPhone or iPod touch.  Having a touch screen UI on the remote is the way to go now.

One thing I immediately liked about Windows Media Center is it allowed me to list only my preferred TV channels in my guide.  I mainly watch PBS, CBS, ABC, NBC and extremely rarely CW and FOX.  I blocked another dozen plus local channels, and I may block CW and FOX.  This makes my onscreen guide very easy to read.  However, I haven’t found out how to make it jump to a particular time and day.  It will take me awhile to explore the depths of Windows Media Center.  From reviews I’ve read, Windows Media Center is a great program, but some of the other media center applications offer tremendous customization (but with steep learning curves).

Windows Media Center is like a super Windows Media Player, with a  UI that scales up with big lettering for watching on a TV set.  When I build my HTPC for the den, and start using it from across the room, while sitting in my La-Z-Boy with a remote in hand, I’ll know then whether Windows Media Center succeeds or not.  I gave up cable TV to save money and have a very simple TV lifestyle, so any solution I keep must be frustration free.

And any HTPC I build must be simple to use too, and so far Windows Media Center and the Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-1250 fits the bill.  Right now I have a Blu-Ray player, DVD-recorder and CD/SACD player in my den setup, along with a receiver/amp.  I’d love to build a HTPC that replaced all four boxes so all I had was the HDTV and HTPC.  That would save electricity, reduce my pile of remotes, and may make my TV watching more simplistic.  As I get older, simple often means elegant.

My goal for having a TV tuner in my home office PC is so I can record the news and documentaries and watch them while checking email and web surfing.  Setting up recordings was a snap with Windows Media Center  The image quality is excellent for HD broadcasts, so I might even start watching short shows like The Big Bang Theory at my computer too.  I doubt I’d want to watch movies or hour dramas while seated at the computer.  And if I don’t like watching TV at all on my computer screen I’ll yank out the 1250 card and put it into a new HTPC box for the den.

JWH – 12/25/9

Mommy, I’ve Gotta Go To Number 3, Bad

Now that my friends and I are in our fifties I’m amazed that the differences between the sexes remain so baffling and mysterious, and still such a huge topic of conversation.  A lady friend reminded me of this recently when she asked, “Don’t men feel romantic like women do?”  She had gone through a bad divorce and was gearing up to reenter the battle of the sexes, and I think she was wary of being fooled again.  She leaned over and whispered embarrassedly, “You know, when a man is inside a women, when they’re having sex, don’t men feel a psychic bond with women?”

I told her I couldn’t answer for all men but I said it helps to picture men in simple terms.  “Remember when we were kids, and we needed to go to the bathroom?”

“Yes,” she replied surprised by the change of subjects.

“You’d say, ‘Mommy, I’ve got to go to number 1’ or ‘number 2.’”

“Yeah,” she said giving me an odd look.

“Well, sex for men is number 3.”

“That’s disgusting.  That’s the most horribly unromantic thing I’ve ever heard.  I don’t think it’s true.”

“Okay, think back to all your boyfriends and husbands.  How often did they want to have sex and how often did you want to have sex?”

She open her mouth to argue back immediately, and then paused, “OK, I can see what you mean.”

I’m reading a book called Why Women Have Sex by Cindy M. Meston and David M. Buss and it makes it abundantly clear that women are complicated, giving 237 reasons why women have sex.  As a male, I found it very informative, because it explained 237 reasons why I seldom got laid. 

Why Women Have Sex feels like a freshman survey textbook, and reading it suggests that both men, and women, will need graduate work, if not a doctorate before they will understand female sexuality.  There is no need to write a book about why men have sex.  Their physiology programs them to reproduce.  They feel this programming as a strong biological urge that requires release.  Thus, the reference to number 3.

My lady friend complained about science intruding into the topic.  “What about romance?”

“Some men are romantic and some are not,” I replied.  “But I don’t think it’s connected to sex, but I’m not sure.”  I went on to explain a story in the book Why Women Have Sex, which illustrates my point. 

I can’t remember the exact details, but the book described a small mammal that came in two species.  One was monogamous and one was not.  Scientists eventually found a chemical in the monogamous species that wasn’t in the other.  They injected the chemical into the life-long bachelor species, and they became monogamous. 

All I can tell my friend is maybe some men have a romantic gene and others don’t.  If women ever get an over-the-counter test for the monogamy hormone, guys we’re in trouble.  And what if science creates a monogamy pill?  Will men have to take their faithful drug every evening when their mates take their birth control pill?

I’ve talked to a number of women about this conversation and they all dislike it.  They don’t like science analyzing human nature.  One lady said she wanted men to be like my blogging friend Carl.  I was amazed at this because it was many months ago when a few women in the office read Carl’s comments to one of my blogs and they all immediately loved his romantic ways.  Evidently romantic guys are memorable.  Notice that my lady friend above never asked why men wanted sex, she just wanted to know if men were romantic like women.  If fact, she implied she didn’t want to believe that men were unromantic.

I’m reading Why Women Have Sex because women’s sexual urges are baffling, not as simple as going to number 3.  If women were like men, we’d all be mating like Bonobos.  If men were romantic like women, wouldn’t the world be very different?  That might be the answer to my friend. 

Women should be reading this book more than men because it explains why women love and hate men.  But time and again my lady friends are repelled by the details I relay to them from the book.  So I’ll suggest another topic for Meston and Buss.  They should write a book about why women hate scientific inquiries into romance.  Whenever I talk to a woman about relationships and suggest there might be a biological basis, most women get annoyed.  It’s anti-romantic. 

I know its terrible to generalize like this, but it does appear to be a common attitude among the women I know.  One lady friend gave me a clue though.  She said science might explain animal biology, but it can’t explain human behavior.  I wonder if this is a religious bias.  Are humans divine and unexplainable by research, and animals are lowly aspects of the physical world that can be explained.  It makes me wonder if romance and religion have similar biological causes, and for some people it’s territory that scientists shouldn’t explore. 

JWH – 12/22/9

Reviewing Science Fiction Books With Statistics

Before the Internet if you wanted to find a rip-roaring science fiction novel to read you’d flip through the books at your favorite bookstore and hope to stumble upon the next mind-blowing sci-fi novel to change your life.  Or you’d ask your best buds about which books knocked them into orbit.  True fans subscribed to science fiction magazines and fanzines, reading all the reviews so as to maintain their status as the Sci-Fi guru at their local Slan shack.

Back in the 1980s I wondered if there was a better way, and developed a statistical system that I wrote about for a fanzine Lan’s Lantern.  I describe the process at my Classics of Science Fiction website.  When the world wide web came along I put my lists online, and eventually revised them three times.  The latest list, Classics of Science Fiction by Rank, is now several years old.

Today I discovered SFFMeta.com, a site created by Eric Bouchard, that also applies statistics to the task of finding a great science fictional read.  Think of it as Rotten Tomatoes for science fiction, fantasy and horror books.  SFFMeta is the newest in a succession of websites that use statistics for identifying the best science fiction books.  An early endeavor was Tristrom Cooke’s The Internet Top 100 SF/Fantasy List, which is now maintained by a new list maker.  Years later came Sci-Fi Lists Top Science Fiction, an excellent polling type site from the land down under.  I wish their creators would take credit and write about developing their systems.

Each statistician of reading has come up with a different method for identifying good reads. All of us look for ways to cash in on the wisdom of crowds theory.  Bouchard’s site is built on the idea that collectively, a group of current book reviewers, will spot the best reads.  I love his simple and elegant web design.  And it will be one that will evolve with wisdom over time. 

Bouchard assembles lists of reviewed books from online reviewing sites.  This produces worthy information now, but not deep enough to show wisdom just yet.  In other words, his samples are too small.  Rotten Tomatoes gets over a hundred reviewers for each film, but SFFMeta is limited by surveying a much smaller industry, and many books on his list have just 1 review. 

SFFMeta’s 90 day lists are a helpful indicator now, but their all-time best books are iffy.  It might take SFFMeta 5-15 years to gather the data using their methods to show inherent wisdom in identifying all-time classics because they have to wait for old books to be reviewed in new editions.  And be reviewed in numbers more significant than new books.

Their best lists now are the 2008 and 2007 summary lists.  Statistically, it would be wonderful if we could compare them to sales figures, and other annual best lists, because it would further reinforce the wisdom of crowds concept. I’m looking forward to the 2009 list.

I made my lists before the Internet was well known, and I had to combine the wisdom of fan polls with the wisdom of cross-tabbing critic’s recommended reading lists, along with award lists, and other criteria.   We came up with 28 lists, and to get on the final list, a book had to be on at least 7 of those 28 lists. 

If SFFMeta could find more reviewers and up their green cutoff to 5 reviewers their accuracy would improve dramatically I think.  It would also help if they could factor in other indicators besides reviewers – such as sales numbers, awards and nominations, Google citation numbers, and critical articles, foreign editions, audio book editions, for instance.  

SFFMeta also faces the problem that most of their cited reviewers are either overly kind, generous, or just plain hate to trash a book.  One positive review can get a book on the list, but it takes three reviews to get a highlighted green score.  Because their site is new, their 90 day list has only two green highlighted titles.  Their all-time list covers 100 books, with all getting the green rating, and one book having 14 reviews.  Statistically that’s better than the 90 day list, but not good enough for identifying true classics.

As their database of reviewed books grow, I’d like to see SFFMeta allow the viewer to manipulate the lists – for example, to see a 90 day list made of books getting more than 3 reviews, or more than 5, etc.  You can eyeball this now, but their programmer is obviously talented enough to do this for us.  I hope SFFMeta can find many more review sites too.  Here is their current list.  Print reviewers, I encourage you to reprint your reviews on the web if possible.

Bookmarks Magazine collects statistics on books via reviewers too, but uses print reviewers.  In their annual best of the year grid.  Their standout books will have 7 or more reviews, and the best of the best will have 12 or more, from the reviewers they use.  This illustrates why writers lust after reviews – any kind of attention helps.  There are so many books published that it’s hard for most books to get noticed at all, and for some to get noticed by several reviewers is a triumph. 

SFFMeta is a dream come true for genre writers because its results further emphasizes the best reviewed books.  SFFMeta is also a positive force for book reviewers.  Be sure and click the titles to drill down to where you can read the reviews.  There’s a major amount of work that’s gone into this site and I hope it becomes a huge success.  Hopefully, SFFMeta will bring more readers to the reviewers too, and that should help educate the audience for SF/F/H.  It should promote the value of reviewers and maybe bring more into the field. 

I’ve always dreamed of doing something more with my lists, but it’s so much damn work.  The latest books on my site are three from 1992.  I’d love to find enough lists to make it practical to identify books through 2000, but that will be hard.  I have 28 lists now.  If I could find 5-7 newer lists it would catch a lot of new books, but if I left the cutoff at 7 the final list would be far too long.  I’d need to make the cutoff 8-10 lists, and that makes it even harder for new titles to get listed.  My system has it’s limits.  It tends to recognize the very best of the very best of older books in the bell of the curve, dropping older titles that are being forgotten, and making it very hard for newer titles to be recognized.

If I used a 10 list cutoff, my current list would be 116 books.  If I use 11 lists, I’d get 94 books.  By using 7 lists, I get 193 books, far too many to be a real Top 100 SF Books, but look what gets left off (scroll down to #94 and see).  The Top 100 Sci-Fi Books site have a great overlap with my list and they do have a few newer titles.  When SFFMeta collects enough reviews and start matching those two lists it will be a powerful system with a lot of built in wisdom.

SFFMeta, if it becomes popular, should help sell books.  I watch way more little movies after the advent of Rotten Tomatoes.  I was overwhelmingly surprised by how many unknown authors (to me) I saw listed on SFFMeta.  For old SF farts, stuck in the 1950s science fiction world of Heinlein-Clarke-Asimov triumvirate, it’s quite a revelation.  Using the wisdom of crowds should push book reviewing into a new paradigm, but it will make it even harder for a new writer to break in.  One book review will sell books, but now buyers will expect books to be positively reviewed from a database of reviewers.  This could become a dangerous trend.

Books have always competed in a survival of the fittest competition, but now the internet will push that competition to newer heights.  My Classics of Science Fiction web site gets on average 92 hits a day – not that many, but it builds up over time for people looking for a list of SF books to read.  I’ve gotten lots of emails over the years from people telling me they use my list to find new books to try out.  This helps maintain fans for these older books.  SFFMeta will also create a momentum for popular new titles, and hopefully it will help find new readers for the genre by helping them to discover exciting books.

Will the wisdom of crowds increase the number of overall readers though?  Harry Potter books certainly got more kids to read for pleasure, but I’ve often heard kids say they couldn’t find anything exciting after HP, and gave up reading.  It’s hard to find books to love, so systems that identify top reads should create new bookworms.  Let’s hope so.  Be sure and add SFFMeta to your Blogroll.

JWH – 12/20/9