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Bam! Comcast, Scripps Launch Infotainment Portal "Cook, Garden, Build, Fix and Live Finely" Videos Come to the Net Scripps Networks and Comcast will launch the Net's first full-scale infotainment portal with video content from Scripps' Home & Garden Television (HGTV), Food Network, DIY - Do It Yourself Network, and Fine Living cable networks. Comcast, the first broadband service provider to sign up with Scripps, will offer the content to its 5.3 million broadband customers as part of its "The Fan" broadband multimedia player, unique to the Comcast portal. Comcast is the largest US broadband service, unless AOL and Time Warner Cable's numbers are lumped together, that is. It is significant that it is a cable TV provider rather than a phone company
provider that's the first broadband outfit to offer an infotainment portal. The
cablecos seem to have realized that content is king when it comes to netting
broadband subscribers. The telcos still appear to believe that reducing their
broadband rate will be sufficient to gain market share. The telcos have
hesitated and stumbled repeatedly in their broadband operations, allowing the
cablecos to take roughly two-thirds of the broadband market. The US is the only
major country where the cablecos have a larger broadband market share than the
phone companies. Comcast calls the Scripps deal the latest in a series of strategic
relationships dedicated to providing unique applications and services to its
broadband subscribers. Rather than cut broadband rates as the telcos have done,
Comcast and the other cable TV companies have been increasing download speeds
and adding content. Comcast says that the Scripps video content will make its
broadband customers appreciate the 3 Mbps broadband speed they get. As an
example, Comcast describes learning to make a new dish by watching it at any
time with the ability to pause, reverse and forward: Comcast points out that users can take their laptop into the kitchen -
equipped with Wi-Fi, of course - and even print out the recipe. The company says
the user can be "just 30 minutes and a few clicks away from a decadent and
delicious tiramisu dessert. A click on their Comcast.net home page and a click
on "The Fan" will take them to a video demonstration from Food Network
On-Demand. The tiramisu experience includes: One can as easily imagine watching a step-by-step video on laying patio
stones with a printed checklist in hand - or any of the thousands of other
"how to's" that modern folks want to do, whether it is how to grill a
steak or build a backyard pond. The big benefit for Scripps is that it makes its entrance on the Net to the
Comcast broadband customer base - America's largest. "Broadband is a
logical brand-extension strategy for Scripps Networks, enabling us to introduce
our popular content to high-speed Internet audiences," said Channing
Dawson, senior VP of emerging media at Scripps. thePlatform for media, Inc developed thePlatform publishing system. Scripps says it wants to "leverage its assets" from the television brands for its broadband business. The company wanted to migrate digital and analog tape formats to multiple streaming media formats including dynamic insertion of video and other forms of advertising for syndication to Internet content aggregators such as The Fan from Comcast.Net, which is also powered by thePlatform. Comcast offers basic and digital cable TV, broadband and phone service in 22
of the top 25 US markets. It has 59,000 employees and more than 21 million
customers for all its various services. Back
to Headlines InterTrust DRM Strategy Emerging from Closet Now that InterTrust Technologies has Microsoft's $440 million patent infringement settlement safely tucked in the bank, it's getting a bit clearer what InterTrust is going to do to capitalize on its victory. InterTrust CEO Talal Shamoon says Microsoft's capitulation sends the message that InterTrust has fundamental patents and has to be dealt with. That in turn should enlarge the market for digital rights management. The Microsoft settlement, remember, covers Microsoft's end users but not Windows developers who add value to Microsoft's basic digital media widgetry. They will probably need InterTrust licenses of their own. InterTrust is working with MPEG LA, a patent agent much like Dolby's Via Licensing, to put together a flock of patents, some of them belonging to other people, so it can offer at least smaller licensees one-stop shopping. InterTrust isn't absolutely sure it can put such a package together, but so far it thinks so. Besides patent aggregation, InterTrust intends doing deals direct and offering free or cheap reference technology consisting of specification or source code - stuff Shamoon calls "soup starters" - to kick start DRM in vertical markets. So a "hundred DRMs can bloom," Shamoon says. Meanwhile, InterTrust is working on what it thinks is a sexy DRM
interoperability layer, something that would evidently make an iTune play on a
non-iPod widget. Hmmmm. Back
to Headlines WorldCom Sheds Name, $35b in Debt WorldCom used shoddy, often illegal accounting procedures to prop up the value of its stock so it could buy over 60 companies and build the second largest long-distance company in America. It will now "disappear" the tarnished WorldCom name and use the MCI moniker from one of its acquisitions in order to hide its shady past. It's also moving its headquarters from WorldCom's Mississippi headquarters to the MCI base in Ashburn, Virginia. On the plus side WorldCom did build a global network that carries 35% of the world's Internet traffic, something that's sure to grow as consumers increasingly use the Net to get video - movies and TV-like shows - and audio - music and radio. On the minus side, besides rampant executive corruption, is the fact that WorldCom used deceit to compete with the other long distance carriers on a less than level playing field. WorldCom's main accounting trick was to record an expense such as salary as a purchase as if it were buying equipment. That let it illegally write off expenses over a period of years rather than in the year the expense was incurred. That way it could report profits higher than they actually were, deceive stockholders into thinking it was doing better than it really was and keep its share price up. With a high share price, it could borrow money and use its stock for acquisitions. Some of the money found its way into the pockets of corrupt executives. Competitors were unable to keep up with WorldCom's deceptive results and saw their stock price kept artificially low. By overstating its results, WorldCom was able to pressure rival such as AT&T to cut prices and make less profit. WorldCom's final blow was its bankruptcy. It was basically able to rook its creditors out of the $35 billion it owed them and emerge from bankruptcy without the debt load that its illegal accounting forced its rivals to incur just to compete. Thanks to the bankruptcy proceedings, WorldCom reduced its debt from $41 billion to $5.8 billion and built up cash reserves of about $6 billion. And all this is without considering the billions it cost its shareholders when the stock collapsed once its sins became public. A virtually debt-free MCI (nee WorldCom) will be better positioned financially to compete with the guys who got shafted both coming and going. They still have to pay off their debt. WorldCom competitors told the bankruptcy court and the United States Congress that WorldCom should be liquidated rather than released from bankruptcy debt-free after such massive fraud. The judge and Congress figured the world would be a better place with WorldCom, um, MCI as a competitor. WorldCom's hundreds of millions of dollars in accounting shenanigans were so complex that it has taken 600 of its employees and 400 outside auditors nine months working 15 hour days, six days a week to unravel. The total cost to the company was upwards of $250 million and as a result WorldCom had to restate what it had called a $10 billion profit for the two years pre-bankruptcy as a $65 billion (yes, billion dollar) loss. ************************************************ Reported Profits in the Actual Loss for the A number of WorldCom executives have been indicted. WorldCom was accused of routing calls to dodge the local connection fees that long distance carriers have to pay the local phone companies. Its right to compete for new federal contracts was suspended. Its annual revenues have fallen from $36 billion to $24 billion during its 21 months of bankruptcy. Looking ahead, the new MCI'd WorldCom, run by ex-Compaq boss Michael Capellas, the guy who sold the company to HP, is still second only to AT&T in the long distance market. In a few weeks its stock will trade once again on the Nasdaq. While it was straightening out its finances, the long distance business got more competitive. Five new forces have emerged that threaten old-line long distance services like AT&T and WorldCom, at least on the consumer side: - Cell phones are major competitors for line-based long distance. Consumers
figure that if they're going to pay $35-$50 a month for cell phone service they
may as well use their cell phone for their long distance calls. MCI still has the second-largest base of corporate customers in the US - it
says that it lost none of its 100 biggest customers during its bankruptcy. It
still has an enormous global network carrying voice, data and video. The
fastest-growing part of telecommunications these days is broadband. A
debt-cleansed MCI and its global Internet backbone could still be a major player
in the digital media even if consumers count for less than 20% of its revenue.
Back
to Headlines AOL E-mail Opens to Third-Party Apps America Online is gradually adding content and services to increase the value of a subscription to its AOL and AOL for Broadband services. It's developing a portal it hopes broadband users will want to pay for even if they get their broadband connection elsewhere. This week, AOL got compatible with other people's e-mail software and launched live local weather forecasts. AOL is opening its walled garden, at least its e-mail plot, with a new Open Mail Access feature that lets members access their AOL Mail from third-party applications such as Microsoft Outlook, Outlook Express, Eudora, Entourage for Mac and any that use the IMAP protocol. MSN and Yahoo don't let subscribers use foreign software to access their e-mail. IMAP offers some advantages over other e-mail standards like storing messages and folders on a server, automatically synchronizing messages and folders, and displaying messages faster. "AOL is the only major consumer online service to support the IMAP
protocol and we are pleased to provide our members with another choice for
accessing their AOL Mail with our new Open Mail Access feature," preened
Roy Ben-Yoseph, AOL's director of e-mail products. Open Mail Access is free to
all AOL and AOL for Broadband members on Windows or Mac. CEA Prez: HDTV the Only Way Forward for Local TV - and Don't Forget the Surround Sound The future of TV broadcasters depends on their full and rapid adoption of HDTV for both sight and sound, according to CEA president and CEO Gary Shapiro. Lots of CEA members want HDTV to come quick and in a big way so they can sell lots of top-of-the-line TVs. But Shapiro warns that unless over-the-air broadcasters - your local TV stations - move to provide HDTV and do it with surround sound they will lose out to cable and satellite TV services. Shapiro told a standing-room-only crowd of broadcasters that free over-the-air broadcasting will fade into oblivion unless they shake off their complacency and embrace the digital future. Shapiro delivered his message at the National Association of Broadcasters' (NAB) Broadcast Engineering Conference in Las Vegas this week. "Simply put, broadcasting as a medium is challenged," he said. "The digital transition is our national opportunity and destiny, but complacency could make it a broadcaster's swan song." Pleading with broadcasters to remain relevant, Shapiro urged them to shift to HDTV quickly. He called on them to promote HDTV more robustly and broadcast their HDTV channels at full power. He cautioned them about being sidetracked by "technological mirages" such as multicasting. "The market has spoken - HDTV is driving this transition. So why continue to lose market share to HBO, Showtime, Discovery, ESPN and everyone else that offers 24-hour HDTV channels? Don't you think that the nine million Americans who already have HDTV will be looking to watch quality programming in HDTV?" Shapiro also encouraged the broadcasters to leverage HDTV's surround sound capabilities. "Sound matters," Shapiro said. "It is part of the HDTV experience. Use it! Consumers notice and appreciate it and it makes a difference." Shapiro urged the broadcast industry to protect consumer recording rights, arguing that they will resist HD radio and other new broadcast formats if it means they forfeit their normal, non-commercial recording rights. He encouraged the broadcasters to stand up and fight for the First Amendment
against increased regulatory scrutiny and dangerously vague definitions of
indecency. "As fear over government action dilutes broadcast
creativity," he said, "as consolidation reduces diversity and as the
business model squeezes finances, broadcasters must act to ensure that
broadcasting does not become a bland, ignored and irrelevant wasteland."
Back
to Headlines Researchers transmitted data at 6.25 Gbps over a 6,600-mile (11,000 kilometer) Internet network between Los Angeles and Geneva, setting a new speed record. The speed is 10,000 times faster that what the cable TV and phone companies currently offer in their broadband products. Higher speeds to the home, but perhaps not this fast, will be needed to transmit multiple streams of movies, TV programs and other video content. The California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and the Geneva-based CERN laboratory - where the Internet was allegedly invented - conducted the test transmission as part of development being done on a next generation Internet technology called Internet2. The previous record was 4 Gbps. "By pushing the envelope of end-to-end networking their efforts demonstrate new possibilities for enabling research, teaching, and learning using advanced Internet technology," said Rich Carlson, chair of the Internet2 land speed record (I2-LSR) judging panel, said in a canned statement. More than 200 universities participate in the Internet2 consortium, working
with industry and government to develop next-generation Internet technology. The
group sponsors an ongoing Internet2 speed race to test researchers' ability to
build the highest-bandwidth, end-to-end Internet Protocol network.
Back
to Headlines AOL Rumor Central: AOL.com To Morph into Entertainment Portal AOL CEO Jonathan Miller has developed a plan that would morph the AOL.com Web site from one that mainly promotes AOL's subscription services to one that would be a full-blown online information, entertainment and services shop - one that would surpass what rivals MSN and Yahoo are doing, according to the Wall Street Journal. It would be more on the order of Telecom Italia's Rosso Alice and Deutsche Telekom's T-Online Vision. Miller is expected to tell a meeting of Time Warner board members in New York that fears about the company's dial-up business have overshadowed the revenue opportunity from subscribers to other companies' broadband Internet access. Miller wants to make more content, such as Webcasts of baseball games and recipes from Time Warner magazines, available to non-AOL subscribers. The content would be both paid and ad-supported, which would be free to the consumer. AOL is also developing a new version of AOL.com code named
"Copeland" specifically for broadband users. Back
to Headlines British Library Sound Archive Gets Digitized The Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC), a UK organization that promotes the use of information and communications technology in higher education by providing strategic guidance, advice and opportunities, has announced a program to digitize 12,000 sound recordings from the British Library's Sound Archive. The million-pound ($1.8 million) Archival Sound Recordings project, which involves nearly 4,000 hours of recordings, includes a range of materials such as classical and popular music, broadcast radio, oral history and field and location recordings of traditional music. The free Web site will be available to further and higher education. It currently includes a live recording of Paul Robeson in "Othello," Florence Nightingale speaking in one of the earliest sound recordings and Arthur Conan Doyle talking about the genesis of his famous character Sherlock Holmes. The project is possible thanks to funding from the Higher Education Funding
Council. It's part of an umbrella 10 million pound ($17.7 million)
digitalization program managed by the JISC that's charged with delivering
high-quality content online, including sound, moving pictures, census data and
still images for long-term use by the education communities in the UK.
Back
to Headlines 48m Americans Have Broadband at Home Forty-eight million Americans - 24% of the adult population and 39% of all online users - have a broadband Internet connection at home, according to the February 2004 survey of the Pew Internet and American Life Project. Its figures say that 55% of American internet users have broadband access either at home or at the office. The biggest surprise was the finding that the phone companies' aggressive marketing and lower prices for DSL were helping them gain on the cable companies' broadband Internet service. In February the phone companies' DSL technology had 42% of the market, up from 28% in March 2003. The gain is significant considering that people are reluctant to change their ISP because of the hassle of setting up and changing e-mail addresses. It's no surprise, however, that the survey found broadband adoption at home is up 60% since March 2003 - probably the only segment of the computer industry with that kind of growth. It's proof that the digital media era has dawned. Survey respondents said that one of their main reasons for upgrading to broadband was its faster download speed. The latency of dial-up and to a lesser extent the falling cost of broadband were also cited as reasons for upgrading. Another unsurprising finding is that the college-educated young are the biggest broadband users. For the first time, more than half - 52% - of college graduates 35-years-old or younger have a broadband connection at home. "People do more things online the longer they have been Internet users, and the additional waiting sours them on dial-up," says John Horrigan, a senior research specialist at Pew. He figures people justify the higher costs of broadband with the time they save, so they don't consider the falling price of broadband a factor. On the other hand, two facts seem to indicate otherwise. It's the phone companies that have been cutting prices and they have reaped most of the broadband growth according to Pew. Perhaps one reason that people say that price is not a major consideration in upgrading to broadband is that the phone companies now sell DSL access for just a bit more than the cost of dial-up. The cable companies, with much higher broadband rates, have seen broadband growth decline, at least according to Pew. Other findings: - 68 million Americans - 34% - have broadband access at home or office. One disappointing survey finding is that only 10% of rural Americans have
broadband access - about a third the rate for more citified Americans.
Back
to Headlines Broadband fans may have written off the dial-up business but it keeps churning out cash - and deals. AOL continues to push dial-up and MSN, on a promotional run, said new dial-up subscribers would get two months of free service by signing up. Regional telco Qwest Communications announced a two-year multimillion-dollar contract to provide YourNetPlus.com with nationwide dial-up services. YourNetPlus .com, which offers turnkey solutions to ISPs throughout North America, will manage their dial-up services from its Tucson operations center. The company bundles dial-up Internet access, billing and technical support to small, medium and large ISPs. It gives service providers a private-label, scalable model with zero time-to-market, allowing them to focus on selling. Qwest's dial-up network offers 56 Kbps and ISDN access from more than 2,690 points-of-presence (POPs) nationwide and covers approximately 85% of the US population with a local dial-up call. EarthLink, which depends mainly on dial-up for its revenue, reported better-than-expected results this week. Its losses narrowed to $11.8 million, or seven cents a share, compared to $65.7 million, or 43 cents a share, last year. Its numbers beat First Call consensus by four cents a share. The company added 98,000 subscribers in the quarter, bringing its base to 5.3 million paying customers - an increase of 5.6% year-over-year. EarthLink said 4.5% of its subscribers switched to other services, like
broadband. It had about four million dial-up customers at the end of the
quarter. That's roughly the same number it had last year.
Back
to Headlines EarthLink, Sprint in Broadband Deal EarthLink and Sprint have signed a new three-year deal to peddle co-branded broadband access to home and business users in Sprint's local market, expanding on their six-year-old relationship. Under the new deal, subscribers in Sprint's local market will get their phone and Internet service charges on a single monthly statement. Sprint already offers EarthLink's Internet services nationwide as part of its residential long distance bundles. EarthLink also said that it's closing four customer call centers at the cost of $30.2 million. It will outsource all its customer and technical phone support to outside vendors, both in US and abroad. In January it said it would terminate about 25% of its 5,100 employees. Separately, EarthLink reported this week that it increased its broadband
subscribers by 98,000 to 1.2 million - a 30.1% increase over a year ago.
Back
to Headlines AOL, Time Warner Cable Agree to Cross-promote. Duh! January 2000 - AOL says it will acquire Time Warner. January 2001 - a year and a day later - AOL's acquisition of Time Warner is approved and completed amid much hoopla about the synergistic benefits of the convergence of "old media" and "new media" in a newly named AOL Time Warner. April 2004 - Four years and three months after the announcement, Time Warner, having dropped AOL from its name, says that AOL and Time Warner Cable have reached agreements to cross-promote AOL for Broadband and Road Runner High-Speed online services. This paper has for three years called for AOL Time Warner to complete the "convergence" of AOL and Time Warner by breaking down the walls and forcing a company that has been operating as two separate companies to finally operate as one. The most logical place to start has always been the two ISP operations - AOL, both broadband and dial-up, and Time Warner Cable's Road Runner broadband service. At last it happens. - Time Warner's Road Runner customers - all 3.2 million broadband users - can now sample Premium AOL for Broadband content. - AOL's AOL for Broadband operations will be able to sell Road Runner broadband with AOL's Premium Broadband Service. AOL has about three million broadband customers including both those that use it as a broadband ISP and those to whom it only provides content and services. - AOL for Broadband's My MC 24-hour on-demand music video channel featuring AOL Music, original programming and music videos from BMG, Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group, will be available free to Time Warner's digital cable subscribers. My MC, which will be available beginning in May, promises to have the best of AOL for Broadband's music content, including original, in-studio Sessions@AOL performances from top artists and select performances from the Broadband Rocks weekly concert series. The net result is that AOL and Time Warner Cable will promote each other's services. A sampling of original and exclusive programming that was previously only available on the AOL for Broadband premium broadband service will now be integrated throughout the Road Runner High-Speed Online service, as well as in an aggregated "AOL Channel," which will be available from the Road Runner homepage. Road Runner subscribers will be able to sample some of the best elements of AOL for Broadband content from categories like entertainment, games, personal finance, sports and life management. The original programming will include: - Sessions@AOL AOL will promote the Road Runner service through its High Speed Internet Options service, making it easy for consumers to sign up for the AOL for Broadband service and place an order for Road Runner Internet connectivity at the same time. Videos, organized by genre and artist, including a special artist retrospective series, will be available at no additional charge, on-demand and commercial free to Time Warner Digital Cable subscribers who receive its "Favorites on Demand" service. Time Warner Cable customers will be able to learn more about AOL's premium broadband Internet service and the premium music, news, sports, movies and games content available only to AOL for Broadband subscribers. "By providing programming otherwise available only to AOL members, we can showcase the incredible value of AOL for Broadband to millions of consumers," said Kevin Conroy, executive VP and COO of AOL for Broadband. "This is a significant strategic development for both AOL and Time Warner Cable." "We view these agreements as a way to introduce AOL customers to the convenience and speed of broadband, while offering Road Runner customers some of the best content and features provided by AOL for Broadband," added Jeff King, executive VP, network operations at Time Warner Cable and president of Road Runner. What took ye so long, lads and lassies? Back
to Headlines Broadband Adoption Dependent on Income Nielsen//NetRatings revealed several survey results this week that are worth noting: 1. One shows that the more a person earns, the more likely it is that they will have a broadband connection - a clear indicator that as broadband rates decrease, subscription numbers increase.
Income Level Narrowband Broadband $ 150,000+
31%
69% - Source: Nielsen//NetRatings, March 2004 By a margin in excess of two-to-one, people making over $150,000 use broadband rather than narrowband whereas almost two-thirds of the people living in households earning only $25k-$50k log online via narrowband - only 36% use broadband. Broadband use drops among surfers earning up to $25k, just 25% access the Net via a cable or DSL connection. The results would seem to confirm that broadband, like almost everything else, is price-dependent. Nielsen//NetRatings Top 5 Web Sites by Parent Company Table 1. Top 5 Parent Companies,
Table 2. Top 5 Brands,
Unique Time Per
Unique Time Per 1. Microsoft 111,710
2:13:06 1. MSN
96,922
1:58:01 Example: The data indicates that 58.6 million Internet users at home and at
work visited at least one eBay-owned sites or launched an eBay-owned application
last month, and each person spent on average one hour 49 minutes and 43 seconds
at one or more of site or application. Income Level* Mar-03 Mar-04 Growth (%) $ 150,000+
6,010 7,873
31% * Income level based on combined total household annual earnings A Pew Internet and American Life Project survey also released this week came to a similar conclusion. It found that the phone companies, which have been aggressively cutting their broadband rates, increased their market share to 42% in February, up from 28% in March 2003. The telcos' lower prices attracted more new subscribers than the cable companies did with their higher rates. If the cable companies are assuming that they can maintain what once was a two-to-one lead over the telcos by increasing download speeds, they might want to take a closer look at the Nielsen and Pew numbers. "Cost plays a tremendous part in Internet access patterns," said Kenneth Cassar, director of strategic analysis, Nielsen//NetRatings. "While broadband has become much less expensive over the past few years, it's still a significant cost as compared to narrowband. Couple high-speed access with other utility expenses, and households with tighter budgets simply would not be able to afford the luxury of having broadband." 2. The finding based on the broadband growth rate at different income levels underscores the point that cost impacts use. Affluent Americans are the fastest-growing income group online. In every income sector, the higher the income, the more broadband connections increased over the last 12 months. 3. Two results are not directly related to digital media - the most popular sites on the Web and how much time people spend on them. These statistics will become more important in the digital media realm once the concept of an entertainment portal, a site that offers everything from audio/video search, news and shopping to downloadable music and movies, becomes more popular in the US. Of the portals listed in the following chart, only MSN, AOL and Yahoo can be considered to have sufficient content to be called an Entertainment Portal on the order of Telecom Italia's Rosso Alice or Deutsche Telekom's T-Online Vision. Nielsen defines a parent company as a consolidation of multiple domains and
URLs owned by a single entity. A brand is defined as a consolidation of multiple
domains and URLs that has a consistent collection of branded content. Reach is a
measure of the unduplicated audience that visits a property. The data is
expressed as the percentage of the total universe of Internet users who logged
onto the Internet at least once during the reporting period.
Back
to Headlines BellSouth Ups Broadband Speed to 3 Mbps BellSouth will offer a 3 Mbps broadband connection - up to 3 Mbps downloading and up to 384 Kbps uploading. The company's VP of Internet Services Michael Bowling said, "We are committed to meeting the bandwidth demands of our customers by delivering products and service that will enable them to take full advantage of the Internet." The Yankee Group's director of broadband access technologies Matt Davis said, "Increased bandwidth is becoming a competitive differentiator across the broadband marketplace, and by offering these new DSL Internet service options, BellSouth has positioned itself to respond to this trend." Davis no doubt had in mind the battle going on between the telcos and cable guys for the heart and mind of the consumer broadband market. The 3 Mbps service offers residential customers a third option when picking a broadband service from BellSouth. For as little as $44.95 per month, the service provides greater speed and flexibility for streaming audio, video and online gaming. Consumers get eight standard e-mail addresses, 25MB of e-mail storage, 10MB of personal Web space, one back-up dial-up account with 20 hours of access and the option to use BellSouth's FastAccess HomeNetworking Plus for an additional $5 a month. BellSouth's own broadband entertainment portal www.home.bellsouth.net provides content, online games, news, streaming audio and Internet radio as well as streaming ABC News videos, a customized version of Movielink's rental service and music videos. At the end of December, BellSouth served more than 1.46 million DSL
customers. Back
to Headlines SBC Approaches 4m Broadband Users SBC added a net 446,000 DSL lines in the first quarter, bringing its total near to four million. It was SBC's ninth consecutive quarter of sequentially high-speed Internet growth. It increased the number of broadband connections by roughly 60% over the past year. SBC has been one of the more aggressive regional phone companies. It cut a deal for Yahoo to be its portal partner and it's cut the monthly DSL rate to $29.95 in a bundle with other services. For example: - When ordered online or as part of a bundle with local or long distance service, a consumer gets a year's worth of SBC Yahoo DSL Basic or Standard Plus for $29.95 a month with a free $149 DSL Wireless Home Networking Gateway Kit. Free activation and a free installation kit are included. Ordered separately, the service costs $34.95 a month. - For $89.90 a month a consumer gets SBC Yahoo DSL and a bundle of local and long distance services. SBC recently added Dish Network satellite services to the items that a customer can bundle with other SBC services. The company claims its bundling strategy is working. It says that its penetration of consumer retail lines with at least one key service - long distance, DSL, Cingular Wireless or the Dish Network - increased to 50% at the end of Q1, up from 44% sequentially and up 23% year-over-year. By getting half of its local phone customers to bundle in another service, SBC will reduce customer loss - the so-called churn - as well as increase its revenue. SBC and the other phone services are trying to grow their revenues even though local phone business is on the decline. In fact, SBC's Q1 revenues declined $300 million to $10.1 billion year-over-year. Its retail operations lost 305,000 consumer access lines. Its wholesale business, where third parties sell its local service, was up a bit sequentially. The RBOCs are also pushing long distance. SBC added 2.6 million long distance customers to reach 17 million in service, up 125% year-over-year. SBC's operating income margin in Q1 was 15.5%, down from 18.3% year-over-year but up 3.5 points sequentially. SBC traced the sequential improvement to stable revenues and a 3.7% cut in operating expenses especially in pensions and benefits and attributed the year-over-year decline to having fewer local phone lines - what it calls access lines - plus new product marketing initiatives. SBC's consolidated revenues don't include revenues from Cingular Wireless, its 60-40 joint venture with BellSouth. Once Cingular, with its parents' money, completes its acquisition of AT&T Wireless, the local phone companies will own 85% of the American cell phone market. There are conflicting reports about who is winning the broadband market. In early March, the cable companies owned 63% of the 26 million-strong US high-speed Internet market, according to Leichtman Research Group, which found little market share shift in the last few quarters. However, a survey released this week by Pew Internet and American Life Project gave the phone companies 42% of the market at the end of March, up from 28% a year ago. The phone companies are selling broadband cheaper than cable companies. A
Nielsen//NetRatings study done in March clearly showed price was a factor in
consumer decisions to upgrade from dial-up. The phone companies are slowly, very
slowly, adding content and services to compete with cable's stable of TV and
movie programs, to wit SBC's Yahoo's and Dish content.
ETV Offers Free Hollywood Classics ETV, a Hollywood start-up that plans to offer a library of 10,000 films for streaming and download over the Internet, is trying to tempt folks to check it out by offering a free download. Folks who visit www.etv-networks.com by May 1 can download three classic films for free, in either DVD- or PC-quality. The move is part of a test to help get ETV's movie download technology ready for market. Once the system goes live, downloads will average 99 cents each. The three Hollywood classics available for free download are: "Road To Bali," starring Bob Hope, Bing Crosby and Dorothy Lamour (color, 1953) "Charade," starring Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn (color, 1963) "Suddenly," starring Frank Sinatra (black and white, 1954) Film fans who'd rather watch a movie online than download it can visit the
company's streaming site at www.etvholly wood.tv. Back
to Headlines INgrooves Helps Indies Manage Music Service Accounts INgrooves, the digital record label focused on dance and electronic music, has come out with a new software program that lets artists and labels view and manage the music that's up for sale on all the digital services. The INgrooves Digital Music Access (IN-DMA) was developed by INgrooves CTO David Kent, who was director of new technology at the original Napster. "The diversity of technologies and processes involved in automating the acquisition, transformation and syndication of digital music assets has been a primary impediment to scalability," Kent said. "Until now, no single interoperable platform could facilitate a complete solution. IN-DMA is the natural evolution of my work at Napster - from an unregulated community where digital music was distributed, traded and consumed to a compliant, revenue-generating platform." Initially the software is only available to artists and labels that have
signed INgrooves as their digital label and marketing partner. The company
plans, however, to license the software to non-INgrooves artists and labels that
have made their own deals with the major digital music services.
Back
to Headlines Online Music Sales, Legal Downloading Up in '03 "This is an exciting time to be a music fan," proclaimed RIAA chairman and CEO Mitch Bainwol in a press release talking up the association's "2003 Consumer Profile" survey results. "Never before in the music community's history has there been so many ways to enjoy music legitimately," he said. The labels are working with technology firms and distribution outlets to offer a number of download and subscription services. And, Bainwol notes, they're also working with digital, satellite and Internet radio outlets and cell phone operators to expand the ways consumers "can experience music legally." Music buyers did pay more attention to the Internet last year than in 2002. Online music purchases (physical units purchased from e-commerce sites) grew to 5% of the total market, up from 3.4%. Despite the launch of half-a-dozen or more music download services last year, digital downloads made up 1.3% of the market in 2003, up less than a percent from 0.5% in 2002. The younger crowd, music buyers from 10-24 years old, bought less music last year than they did in 2002 (30% vs 33.7%). The RIAA blames a number of sources, including P2P services, economic conditions and competing forms of entertainment, for the decline. The over-45 crowd, however, increased their music buying a bit, accounting for 26.6% of the market in 2003, up from 25.5% in 2002. Good old rock and roll was the "most purchased" genre, followed by rap/hip-hop, R&B, country and pop music. The RIAA's annual Consumer Profile study, conducted by Peter D Hart Research
Associates, surveyed 2,900 US music consumers.
Back
to Headlines ItsFun Offers Private-Label Music Download Stores Even though its own site only launched a month or so ago, music download newbie ItsFun.com is branching out. For an investment of as little as $279, would-be music entrepreneurs can license a private label online digital music store from ItsFun parent Advanced Solutions and Technologies. Folks who opt to open their own ItsFun-based online music store will get a 25% commission on all the music sold from their site. The artist will get 50% of the gross sales. For music sold from the flagship ItsFun site, artists get up to 95% of the net sales. The private-label stores can sell music in any or all genres available from ItsFun and can be customized with their own look-and-feel. The company claims to have signed contracts for 100 ItsFun-powered music stores and expects to sign another 100 by year-end. According to Advanced Solutions president Jerry Loader, the other stores will help the company "reach the millions of Internet users in their search to buy online music." Additionally, the sales generated by the licensed stores will "help us exceed our original dollar volume goals." Showing its desire for ItsFun.com to be a success, Advanced Solutions and Technologies has reassigned certain personnel "to assist in the developmental needs of its ItsFun.com subsidiary." It took computer folks away from developing its WomenInformed.com site to work on helping ItsFun "in its efforts to become one of the leading entities in the Internet music business." "We are encouraged and enthused about the reception of our subsidiary
ItsFun.com in the marketplace and feel it necessary to reposition personnel to
help capitalize on its enthusiastic reception by artists, labels and consumers
worldwide," Loader explained. Back
to Headlines Apple has snagged an exclusive deal for its iTunes Music Store that's bound to have kids singing about Beauty, Snow White and how they, like Simba, just can't wait to be king. Walt Disney Records is putting its catalog exclusively on iTunes through September 30. The catalog includes the soundtracks from Disney's classic animated films, Disney/Pixar computer-animated films, Disney audio storytellers, theatrical cast recordings and music from up-and-coming stars Raven and Jesse McCartney. A new Disney genre page on iTunes will feature a range of family entertainment including the soundtracks from "Beauty and the Beast," "Monsters Inc," "Finding Nemo," "The Lion King" and other Disney exclusive content. Odd that Jobs and Disney who are having a public dispute about the future
relationship of Pixar and Disney are able to agree on giving Apple such a choice
exclusive. Back
to Headlines Sony, United Airlines Make Music Fly Sony is taking the launch of a music downloading service to new heights - 30,000 feet or so. Together with United Airlines and Sony Electronics, Sony Connect - the company's soon-to-be-launched digital music service - is hosting an in-flight concert featuring rock diva Sheryl Crow. The live performance will take place on May 4 on a United flight from Chicago to Los Angeles to celebrate the launch of Sony Connect, Hi-MD Walkman Recorders and a program that lets United Mileage Plus members earn and redeem their miles for music at Connect.com. Tracks from the performance will be available for download at www. mileageplusmusic.com in early May. The new Hi-MD digital Walkman recorders use Hi-MD removable media to provide music fans with unlimited storage capacity. Sony Connect will launch with more than 500,000 tracks that can be downloaded, burned to CD and transferred to a wide range of portable digital music players. Individual songs will cost 99 cents each and complete albums can be downloaded for $9.95. Before you decide to take an impromptu trip from Chicago to LA to see Sheryl
sing, the passenger list is limited to invited guests of the host companies.
Back
to Headlines Live365 Forges Royalty Deals for its Broadcasters Internet radio network Live365 has forged deals with three performing rights societies - ASCAP, BMI and SESAC - that let it offer discounted Internet licenses to select Live365 broadcasters. With the new license deals broadcasters that stream exclusively through Live365 can turn to the company for all their broadcasting needs including bandwidth, hosting and performance rights licensing that authorizes them to stream stations from their own Web sites in addition to streaming through Live365.com. The total monthly fee for eligible broadcasters will be either $38 or $48, which will cover licenses from all three societies. "Live365 is committed to ensuring that all the necessary royalties are paid so that artists, record labels, publishers and songwriters are fairly compensated for their works," said Live365 COO Rags Gupta. "We are excited to be working with ASCAP, BMI and SESAC to offer our customers what they have long requested - a bundled one-stop-shop for any licensing they may need to extend their Web presence beyond Live365.com." Under the terms, each group will separately offer Live365 a licensing fee and
payment plan for the company to offer to eligible broadcasters. Live365 will
manage the licensing with all three societies and collect the royalty fees from
its broadcasters. Back
to Headlines oDogg Uses Net To Trade Music - Legally Folks who are tired of paying the high price the industry has set for new music, both in retail stores and online, and don't want the legal hassles or the risk of viruses that comes with using a P2P service have a new option for acquiring their music. And it's free. oDogg.com is a new Web site set up to facilitate music trading that's legal because it doesn't involve copying, uploading or downloading. Instead, the oDogg system arranges trades of physical CDs. Users who have CDs they want to get rid of can post them on the site and also post a list of music they'd like to own. The system analyzes the user-created lists. Its search technology then takes over and reports back with potential traders all over the world. Once a match is found the users can decide if they want to complete the trade. All personal information is kept secure until a trade is finalized, when shipping information is swapped so the traders can mail the CDs. "People who love to trade and hear new music with other fans are just
put off by harsh legal threats," said oDogg founder Owen Davis.
"That's the beauty of oDogg. It provides the perfect meeting between
yearning and law - oDogg.com is fast, free and legal." Back
to Headlines Most-Played CDs on the Internet For the Week Ending April 18 This Last 1
1
Usher/Confessions (Arista) Online Music - Who's In? Who's Out? Live Announced It Wouldn't Surprise Us iTunes
MTV Network
America Online * Uses Musicmatch NewsGator Launches XP Media Center Edition Reader NewsGator, a "news aggregator" that bundles content from a user's subscriptions to various syndicated news feeds, has added a new option to how and where users can view the content. The original NewsGator service delivered the news to a specified folder in the user's Outlook. Then in January the company launched NewsGator Online Services, which adds subscriber-only content and lets users access the content from a Web browser, other e-mail apps or mobile devices. This month NewsGator introduced Media Center Edition, which lets users with XP Media Center PCs read their NewsGator content on a TV. The new content reader supports both text and multimedia and boasts an interface that's meant to be used with a remote control from across the room. NewsGator Online Services is designed to only show users new content that they have not already viewed on another device. Typically, people use more than one device throughout the day, such as Microsoft Outlook at work, a mobile phone on the road, a Web browser in their home office and a TV in the living room. NewsGator Online Services lets them read one set of content from any of these devices, without any duplication, so if you read one story via a Web browser, it won't show up as a new one when you check in with NewsGator on a TV or cell phone. The NewsGator service retrieves news from news sites, weblogs, newsgroups and other sites that support the RSS syndication format. It provides exclusive subscriber-only content and lets subscribers search for content that matches a specific keyword or URL. The XP Media Center content reader is the company's latest step in its
"any time, any place, any device" strategy. NewsGator Media Center
Edition is included in the NewsGator Online Services subscription service.
Pricing starts at $5.95 a month per user. Back
to Headlines Real Adds Google Toolbar to RealPlayer 10 RealNetworks is adding the option of downloading the Google Toolbar when
people download the new RealPlayer 10, combining what it believes is the best
media player with the best Web search. By including the Google Toolbar in the
RealPlayer download options, Real lets users get the free Web browser tool that
lets them quickly search Google from any Web page and block unwanted pop-ups
instantly without having to go through a separate download procedure.
Back
to Headlines Moto, Picsel Advance Mobile Browsing Motorola has teamed up with Picsel Technologies in a partnership that they say will "revolutionize browsing on handsets." Picsel, which provides embedded software to the "beyond-PC" market - smart phones, PDAs, game consoles, set-tops and the like, uses patented user interface functions to deliver an "intuitive user experience" on even the smallest device screens. Motorola is using the company's new Picsel Browser, which is based on its ePAGE Multi-Media Content Engine, in several new mobile handsets. Phones with the Picsel Browser offer full Web browsing with Flash capability as well as multi-document browsing from such applications as Microsoft Office and Adobe PDF without requiring content re-engineering or device synching. Other variations of the browser that may show up in the Moto handsets include support for video and the ability to mix-and-match content types. There's also a live zoom & pan feature that lets users magnify content to any desired level and move the content on the page in any direction.
Motorola A768 with Picsel Browser The A768, Moto's first Picsel-Powered phone, is already available in China.
Moto plans to launch other phones based on Picsel solutions, including the A1000
3G convergence phone and the MPX Smart Phone based on Microsoft's Windows Mobile
OS, later this year. Back
to Headlines Motorola Cable Modems Have Built-in VoIP and Wi-Fi Motorola will show new cable modems for what it calls the "connected home" at the upcoming NCTA 2004 trade show in New Orleans May 2-5. Both models, the SBV5120 and SBG940, are compliant with the latest industry broadband standards and integrate Voice-over-Internet Protocol (VoIP) and/or wireless home networking. The SBV5120 has voice telephony services and high-speed Internet access. It allows consumers to use their existing home telephone wiring to power two lines of voice service. It supports: - Basic call functionality The SBG940 includes wireless communications to help consumers connect a home network. Features include: - Wi-Fi 802.11g Wireless Access Point Motorola will demonstrate DOCSIS 2.0-certified versions of the products at the show. Its wireless gateway technology is being used at NCTA to enable wireless Internet access in the show's "Wi-Fi" area. Motorola has sold 17 million cable modems.
Back
to Headlines Home Media Networks has signed up Arche Technologies and New Magic Australia
as distributors for its networkable ShowShifter in Australasia. ShowShifter is
add-on software that permits users on any PC to watch, record and time-shift
(pause) TV and play DVDs, CDs and MP3 music files all through one interface. The
ability to control ShowShifter with a remote control and its "Farview"
interface allow consumers to use the thing from anywhere in the room with a
unified interface for all home entertainment components. "ShowShifter has
become a truly international phenomenon and now boasts over 500,000 users,"
said Home Media Networks CEO John Croft. Back
to Headlines LIES, DAMN LIES AND STATISTICS
Top Internet Radio Networks See Strong Growth According to Arbitron's latest Internet Broadcast Ratings, the top five Internet broadcasters - AOL's Radio@Network, Yahoo's LaunchCast, Live365, Musicmatch and Virgin Radio - saw their audiences increase an average 32% from June 2003 to February 2004. The high number is largely due to LaunchCast's 92% jump in its audience. The combined total of unique users (Cume) who listened to those broadcasters for five minutes or more increased from just over eight million a month in June to 10.6 million in February.
% Increase AOL
3.5m 4.4m
24% Mobile Data Usage Becoming Mainstream in US In its recent Consumer Mobility Study, In-Stat/MDR found that more than half (54%) of respondents use at least one wireless data service. This, says the high-tech market researcher, means that wireless data services have made it to "prime time" in the states. Mobile data users and non-data users share most of the same demographics, leading In-Stat to suggest that mobile data usage is now a mainstream phenomenon among multiple demographic groups. Folks who take advantage of data services on their mobile phone are an important group to mobile operators, content and application providers and handset makers, meaning that they take more time and spend more money. The study found that on average, wireless data customers use 42% more minutes, spend 19% more on their monthly bill and pay 64% more for their phones than non-data users. Other findings include: - SMS appears to lead the mobile data services used by survey respondents. Internet access services, ringtones and mobile games had strong showings as well. - National wireless carriers are relatively even with respect to wireless data adoption. Verizon Wireless, AT&T Wireless, Cingular and Sprint PCS are evenly represented among both mobile data subscribers and non-data users. T-Mobile and Nextel showed strength with a relatively higher rate of data services among their customers. - Responses indicate a greater-than-average adoption of wireless data usage
among ethnic minorities, particular Asian-Americans and Hispanic-Americans.
Back
to Headlines 21% of US Downloaders Have Gotten a Movie It would appear that US music downloaders are broadening their horizons. It's not that they're necessarily switching to the legal download services, but that they're expanding the type of content they download. According to the latest Tempo quarterly digital media study from Ipsos-Insight, 21% of American downloaders have downloaded at least one full-length movie off the Net; 9% admit to having done it in the past 30 days. A larger group - 38% - have gone for a smaller format and downloaded a music video. Fifteen percent downloaded a music video in the past 30 days. Not surprisingly, more 18-to-24-year-olds, the group that tend to download the most music, have admitted to downloading video content off the Net than any other group. Some 37% of this age group has downloaded a full-length movie, with 16% having done so in the past month. Nearly half - 49% - have downloaded a music video. "While the music industry continues to define and integrate the role of
digital music in the existing marketplace, the motion picture industry is
presented with a unique foresight into next-generation consumer
entertainment," said Matt Kleinschmit, senior analyst with Ipsos-Insight's
technology and communications practice and author of Tempo.
"Multimedia-enabled portable devices, digitally formatted television
content and downloadable back-catalog videos are just a few of the categories
that may be mined in anticipation of near-future consumer demand."
Back
to Headlines Internet Is Dominant Medium for Gen-X The Online Publishers Association (OPA) released results of a new study on the media habits of 18-to-34-year-olds. Done by John Carey, a research professor and managing director of Greystone Communications, the study found that media use is largely a function of lifestyle among this group, whose members often have unpredictable schedules and may only have small slivers of time available for media use. As a result, the survey found, the Internet, which is pervasive and accessible whenever they want, has become the dominant medium. The pervasiveness of the Web is a main reason why it has become so important to this crowd. The fact that it's accessible at home, at work, at school and, thanks to Wi-Fi, restaurants, bars and airports, not only made it the dominant medium for these consumers, but the first place they go for information of any kind. When asked the purpose various media serve, TV was largely cited as a source of "entertainment" and "escape." Radio is used for "companionship" and "connectedness." The Web, however, serves multiple purposes; it's seen both as a source of information and as a form of entertainment. Besides turning to the Net for information, this demographic also turns to it for "humor" and "fun." The report found a significant amount of simultaneous cross-media usage since many people this age go online while watching TV or chatting on their cell phones. In terms of simultaneous TV and online viewing, two types of behaviors emerge. Some visit a Web site that's related to what they're watching, particularly sports and reality programming. Others use it for e-mail or surfing that's completely unrelated to what they're watching on TV. The 18-to-34-year-olds surveyed said that they are increasingly spending more
time on the Web, but that's not the only form of "new media" taking up
their time. They also tend towards heavy use of cell phones, MP3 players and
other digital devices. According to OPA, "As a result of living through a
time of rapid technological change, it is clear that the multimedia of media
options available to the group are aggressively competing for their media
time." Back
to Headlines Users Want 1,000-Song MP3 Players A new online survey from JupiterResearch found that the "sweet spot" for digital music player capacity is 1,000 songs. Some 90% of consumers who store music on their PC have less than 1,000 songs, Jupiter says. But they're apparently planning on bulking up, because 77% of those interested in buying a portable media player want one that can hold at least 1,000 tracks. Another reason for buying a media player with extra capacity is content
beyond music. According to the report, 45% of online users interested in such a
gadget want one that can play video as well as audio, which will ultimately
create market demand for larger capacity players. This bodes well for companies
that make hard-drive-based players with at least 4GB of memory and not so well
for the manufacturers of flash-based players unless they come up with a method
for extra storage. Back
to Headlines Microsoft Previews its EC Appeal The European Commission's final 300-page decision ordering Microsoft to fork over an unprecedented $613 million, create a version of Windows without its Media Player and share more of its secrets with rivals has been made publicly available. (See http://online. wsj.com/documents/microsoft_042104.pdf). In response Microsoft is circulating a six-and-a-half-page single-spaced argument that is evidently the essence of its anticipated appeal to the Court of First Instance in Luxembourg, which has, by the way, already suggested it isn't prone to giving any stays. Anyway, Microsoft claims that the EC, whose ruling on IP dismisses out of hand international treaty obligations, is trying to make new law and a new economic policy for Europe that will adversely impact IP rights and the ability of any dominant supplier, not just itself, to innovate. It says the impact is not limited to software or Europe, but will "affect all industries, altering market dynamics and reducing incentives for research and development that are essential to global economic growth." It also says that, if applied, the impact will be pretty broad considering the EC defines dominance as a mere 30%-40% market share. Microsoft claims the compulsory licensing order that Sun arranged goes beyond legal precedent by asserting a "broad and ill-defined duty" on dominant firms to share the fruits of their R&D with rivals that are going to turn around and put the R&D in products that compete head-to-head with the dominant player's product in the self-same primary market. Precedent, it says, confines mandatory licensed IP to secondary markets. Microsoft claims the EC defined the workgroup server market covered by the IP too narrowly and inconsistently and that Microsoft isn't as dominant as the EC makes it out to be. It says it got three statements of objections over four years and each time the market was defined differently. The final decision, it says, limits the workgroup server market to the performance of four discrete server tasks but since workgroup servers do more than four things, according to the EC's definition, Microsoft is only part of the market when the server is doing one of those four tasks and not in the market when it's doing other things and only when it's doing one of those four task on a system that cost less than $25,000 although the "price of the operating system is not dictated by the price of the server" it's installed on. Microsoft concludes that the EC's approach "could be used to render virtually any product dominant if the Commission so chooses." The EC, it says, is proposing a "sweeping" and vague new test under which the EC can order compulsory licensing if "on balance, the possible negative impact of an order to supply on Microsoft's incentives to innovate is outweighed by its positive impact on the level of the whole industry (including Microsoft)." Microsoft complains that the EC doesn't support its conclusion that industry-wide innovation will be boosted long-term if it's divested of its workgroup server protocols with any economic analysis. The court of appeals is reportedly very touchy and defensive about IP and Microsoft makes it clear that the 100-odd communications protocols that the EC is forcing it to license are covered by patents, copyrights and trade secret conventions. For color, Microsoft adds that the specifications that the EC will be making it share aren't even written down yet and once they are - and it'll entail "thousands of pages" - they will "qualify as copyrighted works in their own right and as copyrightable preparatory design material for a computer program under the EC's 1991 Software Copyright Directive." Furthermore, it claims that, as "essential" to Microsoft as this stuff might be, there's no basis for concluding that it's indispensable to the creation of competing server operating systems. Microsoft claims that given Unix and the rise of Linux, "There is no reason to conclude that alternate server operating systems are in any danger of disappearing." Then the EC, it says, went and found "incorporating new components or features that demonstrably improve a finished product" illegal if a "single complaining" alternative component supplier may lose market share. This is the Media Player bit, the stuff Microsoft is really worried about because it threatens its basic business model and Microsoft describes the EC's order as "unprecedented regulatory intervention in product design." It says the EC somehow thinks this is a standard contractual tying case. Well, it ain't, Microsoft says. It's not using contractual restrictions to force people to buy an ancillary product in an after-market somewhere. Heavens, no. And furthermore there's no evidence that the alleged tying held people back from buying third-party media players. "No competitor has been forced from the market," Microsoft thanks its lucky stars it can say in this case and "the entire case rests on the purported adverse impact on a single competitor, RealNetworks, a Seattle-based company," - an American company, not European, it might as well add but doesn't. "Based on this," it says, "for the first time in the history of competition law, the decision compels the creation of a degraded version of a finished product" - people are going to dine out on that finished product crack - "and orders that product to be offered with the same trademarked brand name" that consumers associate with "a particular set of features and level of quality." Here it's playing the IP claim again because it says the EC's notion of calling the degradation OS Windows "tramples on Microsoft copyrights and its right to control its own trademark." Microsoft holds to the claim that this tying charge is the work of a single competitor and that the EC's decision has nothing at all to do with so-called harm to competition, which is what it's supposed to be safeguarding and, by the way, Microsoft manages to work in those 300 million copies of its player that RealNetworks has distributed worldwide. Microsoft points out that the US settlement made the Windows Media Player
disappear from view if that's what the OEM wanted and entitles the OEM to
substitute another player if it wants. Microsoft claims the EC decision isn't
concerned with consumer benefit or industry benefit or the market norm (other
people's operating systems like Apple's include players, it says) and quotes the
finding of the US district court, which, during 60 days of testimony including
Real's, considered requiring Microsoft to unbundle functionality and decided not
to because it would "disrupt the industry, harming independent software
vendors and consumers." Back
to Headlines Mightsoft Intro's Audio Editor/File Converter Toronto-based Mightsoft Company Ltd is shipping its $39.95 Audio Editor Pro,
a Windows-based visual audio file editor that permits users to perform a wide
range of functions with audio files. The software lets them edit audio files,
add special effects and modify a track's metadata. Audio files can be edited
visually and users can cut, paste and mix from other files. Special effects
include Vibrato, Delay, Echo, Reverse, Amplify, Equalizer, Invert, Flanger,
Reverse and Chorus. The program is compatible with WAV, MP3, WMA, OGG and MP2.
Metadata editing includes altering and inserting information such as year,
title, comments, artist and album. A CD-ripping function supports the CDDB
database and ID3 tag. Another tool converts audio files from one format to
another. Back
to Headlines MainConcept Adds Video Editing Plug-in for Adobe Premiere Pro MainConcept, a developer of video codecs and editing technology, released an MPEG Pro editing plug-in for Adobe Premiere Pro this week. The plug-in adds MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 capturing, editing and exporting capabilities to Adobe's popular video editing application. Although Premiere Pro can import MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 files, for effective editing the material must be transcoded to the project's format, such as digital video. But if the project calls for output to an MPEG format such as DVD, it has to be transcoded back to MPEG. Unnecessary transcoding can result in lost quality and productivity. MainConcept MPEG Pro adds native MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 editing to Premiere Pro,
using smart rendering and re-quantizing to eliminate unnecessary rendering. It
can do real-time MPEG capturing at up to DVD-quality from a variety of analog
and digital sources including DV camcorders, Sony MICROMV camcorders, TV tuner
cards and video cards with analog inputs. Expensive hardware encoders are no
longer necessary for real-time capture. Back
to Headlines Musicmatch To Ship on Intel Boards New Intel desktop motherboards will be shipping pre-installed with the Musicmatch Jukebox music software and services, including Musicmatch Radio, Musicmatch MS and the Musicmatch Downloads service. The deal marks the first time Intel's customers will receive the software on the motherboard resource disc for immediate installation on PC hard drives. It also marks Musicmatch's entry into a new market and "increases the visibility of our software and services with millions of consumers worldwide," according to Musicmatch president and COO Peter Csathy. The motherboards will be distributed to Intel customers including white box manufacturers. The Musicmatch Jukebox software currently ships on leading PCs, including
some from Dell, HP and Gateway, and more than 60 other hardware devices from
Creative Labs, Rio Audio, Samsung and a slew of others.
Back
to Headlines YES Unveils Mobile Music Service To ID Songs on 2,500 Radio Stations Interactive media services firm YES Networks is teasing the public with a preview of an upcoming service that will let anyone with a capable mobile phone rate, share and buy any song played on a participating radio station during a 24-hour period. For end users, the YES service works to identify a song that played anytime over the past 24 hours on any of more than 2,500 radio stations, MTV, MTV2 or VH1. To activate the service, the user enters "#YES" on the phone to connect with the company's advanced voice service. The user needs to say the name of the station and the time the song played. He'll hear a sample of the song plus information about the artist, track and album. He can rate the song, download a ringtone of the song, buy the CD or forward the info to a friend. For the radio stations, it means immediate feedback on how the audience feels about the songs it's playing. They can also visit the YES.com Web site for data on the most played and most popular songs, national rankings and other tools to help DJs better address audience demand. Each call that goes through the YES system is tied to a specific radio station and can become an extension of that station's on-air experience. Callers can interact with the DJs and hear the "trademark audio experience" of their favorite station. "YES turns more than 600,000 songs per day into advertisements for themselves. The 2,500 stations we offer have about 75 million listeners at any given moment, so we provide a response platform for 45 trillion impressions every day," said YES CEO Daniel Goldscheider. "It will be a great tool for radio to turn listeners into active participants, to get deeper insight and to open a new and recurring revenue stream." YES is free to radio stations; end users pay 79 cents a call and 20 cents a minute. Radio stations that promote the service earn money for each call they generate, regardless of whether a ringtone is downloaded or a CD purchased. Even for promotions or polls, YES generates revenues while the platform remains free to the station. The company is teaming with interactive game developer Jellyvision to create a user interface for the phone service. YES is also working with BMG to let users identify a song from a BMG artist, buy the CD, download ringtones, stream exclusive video and audio on compatible handsets, enter contents, play trivia games and display pictures of the hottest artists on their mobile phone. At launch, YES will provide contextual information for BMG artists such as Britney Spears, Alicia Keys, Pink, Elvis Presley, Kenny Chesney and Alan Jackson. The new service works with AT&T Wireless' mMode service and is also available for WAP-enabled phones at mobile.yes.com. The YES service is expected to go live this fall.
Back
to Headlines Mobile Video in Western Europe To Be Near $2b in '07 Mobile video services, including telephony, messaging and content, may still be a novelty in Western Europe, but the market is expected to grow over the next few years, according to Frost & Sullivan. The researcher believes that mobile 3G networks and video telephony are strategically important to the mobile video market in terms of providing a clear differentiation to consumers and sending an important message to investors. "In the long-term, mobile video services could be instrumental in driving up the average revenue per user (ARPU) and hence it has assumed a greater strategic importance," said F&S analyst Jan ten Sythoff. "However, in the short-term, there are a number of limitations - both technical and commercial - that prevent mobile video services from gaining priority." Those current limitations include low penetration of video-capable handsets, lack of standards and lack of standard formats as well as issues such as pricing, billing, roaming, ease-of-use, image quality and device capabilities. Near-term, the Western European market for mobile video is expected to grow slowly. However, with use of video-capable handsets expected to surge past 30% in 2007 and given a "critical mass of users" availing themselves of such capabilities on a regular basis, the market should see significant growth. According to ten Sythoff, as mobile video telephony services and the next-generation MMS standard take hold in the next two-three years, the quality of mobile video content will be forced to improve. "Once these points have been achieved, the market will be ready for further growth," he said. "Prices will decline as usage increases, and video services will move from being a high end, advanced service - as it is seen today - to a more mainstream application." Frost & Sullivan expects that by 2007 nearly all mobile devices will
support some type of video, although a "significant portion" will only
be able to receive video messages. The researcher's projection puts the mobile
video market in Western Europe at 1.6 billion euros ($1.9 billion) in 2007, with
most of the revenue coming from messaging and content services.
Back
to Headlines Sorrent Creates Content for Spike TV, Nickelodeon Mobile entertainment publisher Sorrent has signed multi-year licensing deals with two MTV Networks companies that are at opposite ends of the entertainment spectrum. The first deal, with Spike TV, the first network for men, calls for Sorrent to publish wireless games based on the new "Ren & Stimpy Adult Party" cartoon. One game, Ren & Stimpy Pinball, which places the genre-breaking animated characters in a fast and addictive mobile pinball game, is currently available to Sprint PCS Vision customers. Sorrent plans to introduce a full portfolio of Ren & Stimpy-related content over the next several years. The second deal is with Nickelodeon to develop and publish mobile apps based
on Nick's new everGirl brand. everGirl integrates a Web site, pop music and a
customized line of apparel and accessories to create a lifestyle brand that lets
tween girls explore who they are and what they want to become. The Sorrent apps
will let the young ladies access the everGirl content from their mobile phones.
Set to launch this summer in time for the back to school season, the mobile
everGirl apps will part of Nickelodeon's multimillion-dollar marketing campaign.
Back
to Headlines Free Real Downloads from Heineken Start May 1 Starting May 1, Heineken drinkers stateside should be on the lookout for
specially marked 12-packs of their favorite beer that offer two free music
downloads from the RealNetworks RealPlayer Music Store. When Heineken and Real
first announced their partnership in January, they didn't expect to start the
promotion until Memorial Day. Guess they decided to get an early start on
summer. Heineken is supporting the effort with a comprehensive marketing
program, including national TV, print, radio, online, on-package, in-store and
on-premise promotions. Consumers can redeem the free downloads through the
RealPlayer Music Store, which is integrated into RealPlayer 10 and now offers
more than 520,000 songs. Back
to Headlines Wireless Broadband Comes to Research Triangle Park Cell phone service provider Nextel is selling subscriptions to a mobile
wireless broadband service for North Carolina's Research Triangle Park. Download
speeds range from 1.5 Mbps-3 Mbps. Upload speeds are from 375 Kbps to 750 Kbps.
Monthly charges range from $35-$75. The Nextel Wireless Broadband network covers
the million or so people in the 1,300-square-mile area in the
Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill triangle. Back
to Headlines HP Makes Digital Media Moves at Two Studios Hewlett-Packard pushed into movie studios this week garnering two new deals.
It's using utility computing to put the finishing touches on DreamWorks'
animated films such as "Shrek 2." HP also announced a deal with Warner
Bros to restore classic films. HP wants to sell its digital media widgetry for
rendering, editing, workflow, archiving and restoration. Its sales to studios
include both Linux- and Widows-based computers. HP sold Linux PCs to DreamWorks
in 2001, which used them to produce the original "Shrek," which won
the first Academy Award ever given for the Best Animated Feature Film.
Back
to Headlines Demand for the Apple iPods has caused Hitachi to up production of the hard
drives Apple uses in the gismos. Back
to Headlines BT will test a faster DSL broadband service running at 2 Mbps this fall.
End-user pricing, if the tests succeed, is expected to run $88-$106 (50
pounds-60 pounds) a month. To attract more first-time users, BT will test a
lower-speed 250 Kbps service this summer. BT and other phone companies realize
the need for higher speeds to handle the larger sizes of digital media and lower
cost to entice more users. Back
to Headlines Apple, in upgrading its laptops, is including Wi-Fi 802.11g cards in all
PowerBook G4s. Back
to Headlines BT To Test Longer DSL Distances BT will test to see if it can deliver ADSL broadband on copper wire to homes
up to six miles (10km) from the central office. Current DSL limitations keep the
range to four miles. The tests will be run in Milton Keynes in June. It will
attempt to get 500-Kbps DSL delivered to about 1,000 test sites. If successful,
BT and other phone companies would substantially increase the potential number
of homes they could sell broadband to. Back
to Headlines P2P Outfit StreamCast To Sell Internet Telephony StreamCast Networks, which developed the Morpheus P2P network, will start
peddling Internet telephony (VoIP). It will sell a $50 phone-to-Net box called
the Morpheus Voicebox that links a regular phone to the Internet via a PC and
its modem. There's a $25 connection fee and a monthly subscription of $6.95,
$14.95 or $24.95 depending on the amount of calling time a customer wants. For
$6.95 a user gets unlimited calls to the US and Canada for 3.9 cents a minute.
For $14.95 a month, users get 1,000 free minutes of calls to the US and Canada.
Back
to Headlines Sony Looking to Bulk Up Movie, TV Business Sony, looking to build up its movie and TV program businesses, is in talks to
buy MGM movie studios for about $5 billion according to a Financial Times
report. Sony and two private equity companies, Providence Equity Partners and
Texas Pacific Group, have been examining MGM's accounts with a view to making an
offer, which may take several weeks to finalize, the FT said. Back
to Headlines The national TV networks - ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox - have increasingly blurred
the line between the regular season and the summer reruns. For example, Fox,
raising the ante for summer programming, said this week that it would launch six
new shows in June. The move presages the day when Internet delivery will erase
all thoughts of seasons. Back
to Headlines At War Against Terrorism and Innovation From Tom Friedman's "Losing Our Edge" column in the New York Times: "The bottom line: we are actually in the middle of two struggles right now. One is against the Islamist terrorists in Iraq and elsewhere, and the other is a competitiveness-and-innovation struggle against India, China, Japan and their neighbors. And while we are all fixated on the former (I've been no exception), we are completely ignoring the latter. We have got to get our focus back in balance, not to mention our budget. We can't wage war on income taxes and terrorism and a war for innovation at the same time. "Craig Barrett, the CEO of Intel, noted that Intel sponsors an international science competition every year. This year it attracted some 50,000 American high school kids. 'I was in China 10 days ago,' Mr Barrett said, 'and I asked them how many kids in China participated in the local science fairs that feed into the national fair [and ultimately the Intel finals]. They told me six million kids.' The only crisis the US thinks it's in today is the war on terrorism, Mr. Barrett said. 'It's not.'". -------------------------------------------------------------THE online REPORTER provides weekly reports and strategic analysis about digital consumer technology and the e-commerce activities of the movie and music companies.. It reports on all the power struggles that have been unleashed.THE online REPORTER focuses on:
If ever that overused phrase "paradigm shift" was apt, it's now, about the Digital Media industry. There's not a company in the industry that's not worried about where it'll still be standing after the deluge - and that goes for leaders like AOL Time Warner as well as that feared monolith Microsoft. Its format is concise and pointed, its style a touch brash and, with any luck, a bit controversial. Its object is to break the stories that give its readers the real inside track. It is pledged to fact and fair comment. THE online REPORTER - Intelligence for decision makers.
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