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RaySat
Brings TV, High-Speed Internet To Minivans, SUVs A growing number of families are starting to keep the kids occupied on road trips with so-called back seat entertainment centers, either a DVD player that came factory-installed with the SUV or a portable one purchased from Amazon or Best Buy to make the drive to grandma's house a more pleasant ride. Wouldn't it be nice, however, if instead of having to pick and choose which DVDs to take in the minivan and needing to switch discs every hour or two, you could just set the kids up watching their favorite TV shows? And what about the teenagers in the third row of seats? Maybe they'd like to chat on IM, surf the Internet or play Web-based games. Vienna, Virginia-based RaySat Inc has unveiled a new satellite antenna that makes all this possible. The company's new SpeedRay is an enclosed roof-mounted, low profile, five-inch high satellite antenna available in two versions - one that provides in-motion satellite TV and radio access and one that adds two-way Internet access as well. The SpeedRay 1000 provides satellite TV reception to moving vehicles. It can be mounted to the roof of an SUV, minivan or recreational vehicle, enabling passengers to watch hundreds of live satellite TV channels. The antenna is compatible with Dish Network or any other direct-to-home broadcast satellite provider worldwide. Getting TV signals on the antenna in the car is "just like paying for an extra receiver" for a satellite TV subscription, according to RaySat marketing directory Lynette Henley. For folks who want more, the company has introduced the SpeedRay 3000, which, in addition to receiving satellite TV and radio signals, essentially turns the vehicle into a "rolling hotspot." It provides Internet access with download speeds up to 2 Mbps and upload speeds up to 128 Kbps to laptops, PDAs and other Wi-Fi-enabled devices. The Internet bandwidth is shared among users in the vehicle. The system's Wi-Fi transceiver, which supports 802.11b and 802.11g, is built into the dish antenna housing and doesn't require any additional installation or connections. The SpeedRay 3000 uses GPS-tracking and phased array antenna technology to provide continuous coverage. The antenna's panels constantly move up and down and rotate back and forth inside the housing to track and maintain the satellite signal regardless of the vehicle's location. Cellular networks are limited to infrastructure and towers; the SpeedRay uses a satellite uplink so it can be accessed anywhere, Henley noted. "With our latest breakthrough technology, we're moving from being purely an in-vehicle entertainment company to being a communications solution provider in moving vehicles," said RaySat president and CEO Samer Salameh.
RaySat's SpeedRay on the Roof According to the company, the consumer market provides a growing potential market for its solutions, since wireless operators are unable to provide the combination of national coverage and high-speed Internet access of satellite communication. Some 10 million vehicles now come equipped for video. Market research firm Frost & Sullivan expects the market to reach 18 million by 2008. RaySat has forged a deal making Audiovox the exclusive marketer of the SpeedRay in the US and Canada. Audiovox is rebranding the SpeedRay 1000 as the Audiovox SkyBox and will deliver it to automotive electronics retailers and installers in Q2. The SpeedRay 3000 won't be available until later in the year. The SpeedRay 1000 will sell for $2,495 and the SpeedRay 3000 is expected to retail for $3,495. Installation and subscriptions to TV and Internet services are additional. In addition to the direct-to-consumer offerings, RaySat has also taken the covers off the StealthRay, an OEM product that will be factory-installed by vehicle manufacturers, rather than attached to a vehicle's roof. The StealthRay is also smaller than the SpeedRay - two inches thick rather than the five-inch thickness of the consumer model. Henley said that the company is in discussions with several car companies including Hummer, but has yet to finalize any deals. RaySat's one-way satellite
technology is already in use on trains in Europe. Its
TorpedoRay product provides high-speed Internet on high-speed
trains, receiving broadband data transmissions and satellite
TV. The company has also introduced the EagleRay antenna,
which offers the same services as the TorpedoRay, plus will
provide two-way uninterrupted communication for sending and
receiving e-mail and browsing the Internet via a laptop PC or
PDA. Top Six Reasons Not to Buy an iPod Appleturns.com
"translates" Microsoft's "Six Tips for Buying
an MP3 Player with Flash Memory." 1. Understand the basics, ie, flash players are inherently better than hard-drive players because they don't skip unless you throw them at the water just right. 2. Make sure you're getting all the goodies, ie, you just won't be happy unless your player can record FM radio and includes, for some reason, a stopwatch. 3. You'll want a display, ie, there's no nobler way to die than by trying to change songs with a three-line, teensy-button human interface while jogging and being struck down by a Dodge Stratus. 4. Let a professional make your next playlist, ie, why listen to your own music when you can listen to nonstop commercials and obnoxious local DJs on FM radio? And record them digitally, so you can share that great beer jingle with your friends and loved ones? 5. Pick the right size for you, ie, Windows Media is great, and we just wanted to harp on that for a minute. Have we mentioned that Windows Media is great? 6. Don't get locked into one
online store; it is, however, just fine to get locked into one
proprietary data format and DRM scheme - as long as it's
ours. Back
to Headlines Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, who also headed and sold Broadcast.com to Yahoo, says on his blog that he listened to RIAA head Mitch Bainwol argue that illegal downloads were hurting music sales because sales began to decline after the advent of the P2P networks. According to Cuban, Bainwol said it was "obvious the advent of file sharing coincided with a decrease in music sales. Therefore A leads to B." Cuban disagrees. "Personally, I don't think anyone at the RIAA has a clue what the actual impact of file sharing on music sales is, but then again, I don't know either," he said. Cuban decided to test Bainwol's logic by applying it to what happened to the sale of other digital content after the P2P networks popped up: - DVDs - Huge increase in sales. - Digital Photographs - Huge increase in sales. - Video Games - Huge increase in sales. - Software - Not huge increase percentage-wise, but increases in actual dollars. - Ringtones - Huge increases in sales. "So, using the Mitch
Bainwol/RIAA logic," Cuban says, "If five digital
based products sold since file sharing came on the scene are
showing flat sales at worst, up huge at best, doesn't it hold
true that file sharing can't hurt and must benefit digital
product sales?" Back
to Headlines Sony Shooting for Dominance in Online Movie Service It's about freaking time! Sony Pictures will digitize its top 500 films and make them available in various digital environments within the next year, according to published reports. "We want to set business models, pricing models, distribution models like [Apple CEO Steve] Jobs did for music, but for the film industry," Michael Arrieta, senior VP Sony Pictures, told attendees at the Digital Hollywood conference. "I'm trying to create the new 'anti-Napster.'" Sony sees two distribution channels for its digitized flicks. It plans next year to offer the films for viewing on mobile phones using flash memory chips. It also wants to start its own online movie service, in competition with Movielink and CinemaNow, to allow broadband users to purchase and/or rent films for downloading to their PCs. Sony and the other movie studios currently make only a few of their films available through the two legitimate online movie services. Sony Pictures, by the way, is one of several major movie studios that has an ownership stake in Movielink. The movie industry has become increasingly restless about the amount of free film downloading that takes place on the Net. It has ramped up its legal attacks against P2P services in the US and Europe in recent months. In particular, it has gone after those that use the BitTorrent technology for file sharing, because its transfer speed makes it particularly good for large files such as movies. No online movie service equivalent to iTunes has yet appeared - one that tightly couples an online store with a non-PC video player - say a TV or a portable video player. Consumers haven't accepted home networking schemes and digital media adapters that purport to let consumers play PC-stored video on the TV in another room. The complaints are they're too complicated, require more wires and wiring schemes and are not easy to install or use. As a result, consumers don't have an easy way to play a downloaded movie on a TV in another room. Sales of and interest in home networking gear is declining, mainly due to the industry's failure to make easy the connection and compatibility of PCs and consumer electronics gear. The same barrier, to a lesser degree, existed between music downloading services and portable MP3 players until Apple worked its magic. No such magician has yet appeared to tear down the PC-CE barrier. Consequently Sony is unlikely to have much success with online movie service. However, like Apple, Sony has all the pieces needed to make a PC-to-CE link work. It makes both PCs and TVs. It also has the RoomLink Network Media Receiver, a device that streams video and audio from a VAIO PC equipped with Sony's Giga Pocket personal video recorder to a TV in another room. Sony also has its PlayStations such as the newly arrived PSP handheld player that can be used for viewing movies. The first million PSPs sold in the states came with a free copy of the "Spider-Man 2" movie. PSP uses Sony's proprietary UMD discs. Already Lions Gate Entertainment and Disney have said they'll make films available in the UMD format. Whether Sony can harness its internal but separate fiefdoms to produce an iTunes-iPod wonder remains to be seen. Perhaps the newly promoted CEO Howard Stringer can get the attention of Sony's badly faltering CE management and wring out an integrated online movie service - one that would work for music as well. Sony faces two problems in developing such a service: 1. Much of the software that Sony has developed recently for its CE gear is archaic in its "look and feel." 2. Sony owns the content and
the content kings within the company are making money for
Sony. That gives them the clout to force copy-protection
schemes on the CE operations that are not acceptable to
consumers. Witness the failures that over-ambitious copy
restrictions have caused in SonyConnect, its dead-on-arrival
online music service, and the its Pocket VAIO MP3 players that
won't appear on anyone's wish list in their current form. Just
think - an MP3 player that doesn't play tracks from iTunes,
the world's most popular online music service, or from any of
the multitude of Windows Media-based services such as those
from Napster and Musicmatch. Back
to Headlines Home
Network Demand Is on the Decline The decline in demand for home networks is necessitating a strategic shift by vendors of such gear, according to The Diffusion Group (TDG). The research shop finds that what it calls the declining "manifest" demand for home networks will require vendors to adopt new strategies that focus on "push" distribution channels. TDG's point is that the initial, "natural" market for home networks was people who had an obvious need, say two PCs, one printer and a broadband connection - and were willing to pay the price - both money and time - to get the network installed. Those so-called early adopters were about 18 million US households - out of about 100 million. The next wave won't be so easy. It involves the folks who have unrealized, or latent, needs that a network would fulfill but aren't willing to spend the necessary time or money to install one. The Real Reason Home Network Sales Are Declining There is another reason, that sales of home network gear are faltering, and it just might be the real reason. Consumers don't need a home network if they only have one PC or if they want their TV or stereo to connect to the network. The CE gear makers have totally failed to make their products usable on a network. It's one thing to make them "networked;" it's quite another thing to make them "network usable." For a number of years a Windows PC and a Mac could be connected to the same network without being compatible. They might as well have been on separate networks as far as using them together was concerned, since they couldn't share files or a printer. The same is true for home networking of PC and CE devices today. Connect them both to a network and what do you have? Nothing. For a time it appeared that the CE industry might settle on Home Audio Video Interoperability (HAVi) as a standard user interface across multiple-vendors products. Mitsubishi, Hitachi, Scientific-Atlanta and EchoStar appear to be the only ones using the HAVi standard and then only on a few models. Matsushita (Panasonic), Mitsubishi, Philips, Sharp, Sony, Texas Instruments, VividLogic and Yaskawa are the "participating" members behind the standard. Grundig, Hitachi and Thomson Multimedia are the "promotional" members. Where is HAVi? Now, however, HAVi appears to be in trouble, based on what we found on its Web site (www.havi.org). The group's chairman and several other HAVi directors listed on the site appear to no longer be involved with the HAVi standard. The "next" scheduled meeting for HAVi members, as posted on HAVi.org, was last July - 2004. The last HAVi.org press release appears to have been sent in February 2004. The contact phone number on the site is answered by a machine at Vivid Logic, which develops HAVi software for CE makers to embed in their products. The next surge in home network sales will likely not occur until the CE makers adopt a universal user interface - one that will allow a TV viewer to play an audio file stored on his PC or play his iTunes library on the stereo. Currently, this just isn't possible in the practical sense. Installing the so-called digital media adapters that are available now is a nightmare - they come with batches of cables that have to be installed. Looking at the back of an existing PC or home entertainment center reveals more cables than most consumers want to deal with. Once they're connected, operating one networked device from another one is mind numbing. Every device has its own interface and strange terminology to be mastered. The fact is that the CE industry hasn't even been able to agree on a universal remote control, which is why most consumers have two to five remotes in their main entertainment room.
Perhaps There Is No Future for CE Makers in Digital Media The major indictment against the traditional CE makers is their failure to develop a market-share leading digital media product. Apple leads in MP3 players and online music services and TiVo leads in DVRs with Motorola in second place. Network gear makers NetGear and Buffalo lead in home networking. If there is any success in digital media adapters, it's US companies like NetGear. The CE industry's failure to develop a universal user interface standard leaves the door open to Microsoft, just as Microsoft found the door open to make Windows the universal standard for PCs. One example of the chaos that existed pre-Windows: Every software developer had to engineer his own printer drivers for every model of every printer manufacturer. Microsoft came along preaching the universal Windows salvation. It told the printer companies that if they developed the printer driver and embedded it in Windows, then any software that ran on Windows would work optimally - more or less - with their printer. It told the software developers that if they wrote their software to comply with Windows' standard interface, then their software - and any compliant version of it - would run any Windows supported printer. Problem solved, support and development costs slashed, consumers made happy without having to learn anything about different interfaces. What is missing in the CE industry today is the foresight to develop such a standard and the clout to impose it. This creates the opportunity for Microsoft to step in, something the CE players dread because they have seen Microsoft, with some help from Intel, drain all the profits out of making PCs. Ask IBM, Gateway, HP and Sony for proof - a value-add business model doesn't work in a commodity industry. Two Doors for Microsoft Microsoft has two potential entries into the CE market, not including the possibility that one of the big CE makers - say Sony, Samsung or Matsushita - might see the light and put a CE version of Windows on all its products: 1. Virtually every home will eventually have a DVR-based set-top box, as a hub, perhaps the hub, for storing digital media files. If the big sellers of such gear - the cable TV or phone companies - were to standardize on Windows as the operating system, then they and Microsoft could dictate that every CE maker who wanted to connect its gear to the box would have to use Windows-compliant software. The cable TV companies, at least at this point, seem to have shied away from Microsoft. The phone companies, who desperately need a set-top box strategy that's clearly better than the cablecos', are the better targets. SBC and Verizon in their recent announcements indicate that Microsoft-based set-top boxes are in their future. 2. Microsoft, Intel and the PC makers have started selling PCs that are increasingly CE-like in function and operation - all based on the Windows Media Center operating system. They haven't been very successful at it, yet. Reports are that only about 1.4 million such "entertainment PCs" have been sold since HP launched the first one in September 2002. You've got to hand it to Microsoft, though. It keeps trying until it gets it right - just ask Netscape, Lotus and WordPerfect about Microsoft's persistence and deep pockets. There is no reason that the PC crowd shouldn't ultimately succeed, perhaps even at selling TVs and stereos (Oops. They're doing that already, aren't they?) It is that course - Wintel-based CE gear - that poses the biggest threat to the traditional CE makers - a threat that will ultimately force them to adopt a universal operating system and user interface, - whether Windows, HAVi or another, or watch the PC crowd take over their business. With the HAVi standard a non-factor, at least for now, the industry's left with the question of who could develop or lead the development of a CE-based universal user interface that all CE makers could incorporate, assuming it's not Microsoft. The two names that pop up immediately are Apple and Sony - working separately, perhaps even together. Apple has the software know-how and the credibility in digital media. Sony, despite its management and financial failures of late, still has lots of clout in the CE industry. TDG says that home networking makers have had a few good sales years as they sold via retail channels into a market of pent-up demand. TDG now says that the "manifest" or "overt" consumer demand for home networks is at an all-time low, having declined for each of the last three years. "There is no doubt that manifest demand for home networks continues to decline," said Michael Greeson, president and principal analyst with the research firm. "TDG's most recent analysis found that approximately 10% of non-networked broadband households are interested in buying a home network, with 5.9% (more than one-half of this group) being 'somewhat interested' and only 1.4% stating they would 'definitely' purchase a home network during 2005. This is the lowest level of interest we've seen in several years, and is indicative of a flattening of the demand curve and a requisite shift in channel strategy." At year-end 2004, approximately
18 million US households owned a home network, the vast
majority (almost 16 million) being households that also
subscribe to broadband Internet service. More than 60% of
these 18 million households purchased their home network in
the last two years, reflective of a very dramatic ramp-up in
demand for home networks that took place between 2003 and
2004. While this impressive demand attracted attention from
technology vendors and VCs alike, consumer research suggests
that this rapid uptake is about to be exhausted - that is,
barring any radical shift in network marketing and
distribution strategies. Advantage to the Cable TV and Phone Companies TDG says that the more effective sellers of home networking in the future are the cable TV and phone companies, not the retail stores and Internet retailers that have led the charge so far - Comcast, not Best Buy. The cablecos and telcos have the three things needed to install and support home networks, as this paper has reported several times: 1.They already have trucks and trained people in every US neighborhood. 2.They have a rent/lease business model that lowers the consumers' upfront costs. 3.They have gear in their central offices that can remotely monitor and support home networks and much of the gear that will be attached to it. Most importantly, they have the
motivation - the fierce competition for survival that each is
bringing on the other. Both want to control the wire to the
home and wring the maximum amount of revenue out of it.
Installing and supporting the home's network is another way of
doing that. NetGear, which makes home networking products, has
set up a "service provider" division to focus on
selling and supporting the cable TV and phone
companies. Back
to Headlines Point-Counterpoint in Grokster, StreamCast Case In all the noise surrounding the Supreme Court review of the record labels and movie studios' suit against P2P firms Grokster and StreamCast this week, the case comes down to this: 1.P2P firms make money selling advertising that's aimed at the millions who copy and make copyrighted files available for downloading. That's why Grokster, StreamCast and the other P2P outfits are willing to give away their software and services. Over 90% of the music and movies that users share on the P2P networks is copyrighted. 2.A US District Court and an
Appeals Court have ruled that, like the makers of videotape
recorders, the P2P firms cannot be held liable for the actions
of their users. The decision was based on a 1984 Supreme Court
decision in which the studios were suing Sony, which made the
Betamax VCR. Back
to Headlines Court Hears Cable Wholesale Argument The Grokster/StreamCast case isn't the only technology-related one before the Supreme Court this week. The court also heard one that contends the cable TV companies are like the phone companies and as such must provide third parties access to their infrastructure. A California ISP called Brand X initiated the suit, which attacks the FCC's contention that the cablecos are information companies carrying data rather than communications companies, such as the telcos, which the FCC does regulate. Brand X wants the FCC to require cable TV companies to sell access to their networks at wholesale in much the same way that the phone companies are forced to sell access to their networks to third-party ISPs such as EarthLink and Covad. The Court's decision could impact the way the FCC regulates the two classes of companies. If common sense prevails, the cable TV companies would be classified the same as phone companies. They have said repeatedly they will offer phone service over their lines and are openly marketing it with frequent ads. If they are providing phone service to some consumers, then they are phone companies. Ask a subscriber to Time Warner Cable's phone service who his phone company is and the answer comes back, "Time Warner Cable." At the same time, the phone companies are bent on using their infrastructure to becoming providers of TV programs in direct competition with the cable TV services. Some of the financial impact of the case has been reduced by a recent FCC decision that frees the phone companies from having the price that they can charge third parties who lease the phone companies' infrastructure imposed on them by state governments. Consequently, the phone companies have begun raising those rates and done so to the point that third parties no longer find it profitable. The result is that third-party ISPs have found it difficult to compete with the phone companies who've been cutting their monthly broadband rates. If Brand X wins, it could be winning a pyrrhic victory. One other inconvenient, perhaps even unfortunate, result of the FCC's decision to classify cable TV and phone companies separately is that the cablecos and third-party broadband VoIP providers such as Vonage do not have to offer the 911 emergency phone service. A Texas court ruled last week that Vonage must notify subscribers to its service that they will not be able to use 911 for emergencies. In the end, the court battle is between a heavily regulated industry - the phone companies - and a lightly regulated one - the cable TV companies. It now appears that technology has brought both industries into the same classification, call them what one might - phone companies that deliver TV programs or cable TV services that deliver phone service. The cable TV industry, in fact, calls its annual trade show the "National Cable and Telecommunications Association" show. It appears that the FCC's
various equivalents in Europe have done a better job of
forcing the phone companies to open their infrastructure to
third parties. Europeans seem to be ahead of the US now in
both broadband availability and broadband speeds. Cable TV
hasn't been as widespread in Europe as in the states.
Satellite TV, particularly in the UK, has had better market
penetration. If the Supreme Court or Congress forces the FCC
to regulate both the cable TV and phone companies, it will not
necessarily be a win for American consumers. Of late the FCC
has given in to the demands by the phone companies that
setting rates and terms be left to them rather than government
directive. Canada Tightening Copyright Laws Canada's copyright laws have proven virtually useless to the record labels and movie studios in fighting the P2P networks. That could change and the country's copyright laws could become stricter if Canada joins 50-odd other nations and ratifies two treaties from the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). Canadian courts in the last year have ruled that under Canadian copyright laws, as written, it is not illegal to upload or download songs and movies on P2P networks. Current US court rulings make it clear that sharing files (uploading) for others to copy (downloading) is illegal. The same is true in parts of Europe. The two WIPO treaties would make unauthorized file sharing illegal in Canada. They would also bring Canada's laws more in line with the US' Digital Millennium Copyright Act by making it a crime to circumvent copyright protection on CDs and DVDs. "Clearly, once we get implementation of the treaties there'll be no doubt it'll be illegal to engage in unauthorized file-sharing," Graham Henderson, head of the Canadian Recording Industry Association, told Canadian Press. All political parties have
approved the changes to the copyright laws in pre-committee
meetings. They will be introduced in Canada's House of Commons
within a few months. Back
to Headlines MGM v Grokster: Notable Quotes Some quotes about the MGM v Grokster case that the Supreme Court this week held a hearing to review: - "If Grokster is illegal, the Internet is illegal, the postal service is illegal, a room where I can hand you a CD is illegal. It's not a slippery slope; it's a vertical cliff." - MP3.com editor Eliot van Buskirk - "It's a collision of two of our biggest and fastest-growing industries in this country. If the Supreme Court gets it wrong, innovation in one or the other industry is unduly hindered." - James Gibson, a University of Richmond law professor who specializes in intellectual property and computer law, in the New York Post. - "Should the Supreme Court uphold the previous rulings, Hollywood would lose a powerful weapon in its campaign against file sharing. But should the court strike them down, Hollywood could seize control of emerging digital entertainment technologies and hamstring them much as it did to radio, television and multiplex. To say that innovation would be irreparably harmed as a result would be a vast understatement. Certainly, I don't think anyone wants Mitch Bainwol (RIAA head) and Dan Glickman (MPAA head) designing their next convergent media device." - John Paczkowski of SiliconValley.com - "This is the most important case before the Supreme Court this year. At face value, the case concerns peer-to-peer file sharing. But in truth, the case is much broader. It's about preserving America's proud history of technological innovation and protecting the ability of consumers to access and utilize technology...The Betamax principles stand as the Magna Carta for the technology industry and are responsible for the explosion in innovation that has occurred in the US over the past 20 years. If these principles are undermined, we may witness the end of popular and revolutionary products and technologies such as the iPod, TiVo and even the Internet itself, and also the premature deaths of thousands of products that still only exist as a concept in the mind of young entrepreneurs." - Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) president and CEO Gary Shapiro - Speaking about the entertainment industry's perceived need for expanded grounds for lawsuits to discourage inventors from profiting from future gadgets and software that could be used for copyright infringement, Theodore Olsen, the former US solicitor general who now works for the entertainment industry, said, "This sort of thing is out there now and you can't go - and I may be wrong about this - but I don't you think you can go into people's homes and pull software out, or that anybody's likely to do that. But it would be an important statement; an important point here is to stop the worst of the activity, stop the people who are making money." - A ruling for entertainment companies could mean that if "I'm a new inventor, I'm going to get sued right away." - Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. - "Grokster doesn't pass the smell test with a lot of the justices. There were some concerns that they don't want to see technology or innovation stifled. Grokster is wrong from a variety of perspectives." - Sony BMG Music Entertainment CEO Andrew Lack, who was present at the hearing. - "I know perfectly well if I can get music on my iPod without paying that's what I'm going to do." - Supreme Court Justice David Souter. Souter said even iPod users would steal music if they believed they could get away with it. He questioned why the entertainment industry would sue Grokster but under the same legal theory wouldn't sue Apple so aggressively it would "lose his shirt" on the basis that iPod purchasers store and play pirated music on their iPods. - "That seems wrong to me." - Justice Anthony Kennedy when asking Grokster's lawyer whether profits from enabling people to illegally swap copyrighted files can rightfully be used to help finance a start-up technology business. - "The scale of the whole thing is mind-boggling," said entertainment industry lawyer Donald Verrilli, who noted that his clients have no interest in suing inventors who take steps to block their customers from stealing. He said that Grokster and other file-sharing services actively encourage consumers to steal, calling Grokster's software "a gigantic engine of infringement that thieves use to steal 2.6 billion songs, movies and other digital files each month." Possible Results The Supreme Court is expected to announce its decision in June. There are a number of possible results from the Supreme Court's deliberations. It could uphold the two lower courts' decisions in favor of Grokster and StreamCast, plus any unnamed P2P services. It could overrule the lower courts. It could send the case back to the district court and instruct it to conduct a trial. Remember - the district court never held a trial; it issued a summary motion based on the briefs that the two sides had filed. There is no possible Supreme ruling, at least in this case, that will make legal the sharing or downloading of copyrighted files without permission. The tens of millions of users who do it daily will still be subject to copyright infringement lawsuits. The thousands of such suits that are already in the courts will still be valid. Should the entertainment industry lose, it will be faced with "trench warfare" in the sense that every P2P-using copyright violator will have to be sued. That's a pricey proposition, but one the entertainment industry will have no choice but to pursue. The entertainment industry will also continue its guerilla tactics of posting falsely named tracks, flooding the P2P networks and send instant message of warnings to those it thinks are in violation of the copyright laws. It is ironic that at a time
when so much of American and European industry is under siege
from Asian and Far Eastern competitors, that two of its
fastest growing industries are at loggerheads with each other.
Entertainment and technology are two of the largest
job-providers and exporters. Back
to Headlines How Sharman Missed a Date with the US Supreme Court When Judge Stephen Wilson rendered his summary judgment against Grokster and StreamCast in his Los Angeles District Court, it started the companies on a road that led to their appearance this week before the US Supreme Court. A third defendant in that suit was Sharman Networks, whose Kazaa file sharing operation is larger than Grokster and StreamCast combined. How Sharman escaped from a Supreme Court visit is detailed in Judge Wilson's ruling: "Additionally, it is important to reiterate that the instant motions concern only the software operated by Defendants StreamCast (the Morpheus software) and Grokster (the Grokster software). Defendant Sharman Networks, proprietor of the Kazaa.com Web site and Kazaa Media Desktop, is not a party to these Motions. Accordingly, the Court offers no opinion in this Order as to Sharman's potential liability. While it appears that the primary root super nodes on the FastTrack network have been and are operated by Kazaa BV/Sharman, it is not alleged that Grokster operates these super nodes." Sharman has enough legal
troubles in Australia where the labels are in the process of
trying to sue it out of business and force Sharman and its
partner Altnet to "reveal all" as to who controls
Sharman and possibly who controls the FastTrack network that
Sharman, Grokster and StreamCast use for
infrastructure. Back
to Headlines *************************** NY Times Highlights 'A Few Points Along the Line Between News and Opinion' Our goal each week is to bring you news reports that indicate trends in the digital media industry. To those reports we add some analysis and opinion based on our years in the industry, discussions with industry leaders and trackers plus reading and watching other reports too numerous to count. Legendary ex-Intel CEO Andy Grove once admonished computer journalists to bring their memory when they wrote an article. The following is excerpted from a Daniel Okrents column in the New York Times titled "A Few Points Along the Line Between News and Opinion." Okrents is that paper's public editor, serving as the "readers' representative." "The tone and tenor of a newspaper you've been reading all your life can grow to be as familiar, and as comforting, as your mother's voice. But all this columnizing represents an inevitable, perhaps monumental, transformation in American newspapering. "Max Frankel, who was executive editor of The Times from 1986 to 1994, once convinced me that journalistic innovation usually begins on the sports pages, and I think we're now in the middle of one of those moments when innovation is about to morph into standard practice. More and more often, the lead article in the sports section is a Sports of The Times column; just last Wednesday, Selena Roberts's take on Barry Bonds ("We Won't Have That Surly Superstar to Kick Around Anymore") dominated the section's front page. "The key word in that sentence is 'take.' What won Roberts's piece its prominent position, sports editor Tom Jolly told me, was the wish to provide 'distinctive coverage of a widely covered event.' Most readers would already have learned about Bonds' explosive meeting with the press from broadcast or Internet news sources, or even from the guy in the next seat on the subway. What Roberts could bring to the issue were her intelligence and her knowledge of the issues, the milieu and the characters; she could explain the event not just usefully but distinctively. NBC and ESPN, Sportsline.com and WFAN, The Post and The Daily News all had the details of Bonds' Tuesday pronouncements, but only The Times had Selena Roberts. "This reliance on columnists to report and explain (as the best columnists do) has spread elsewhere in the paper, but rules vary. Business editor Lawrence Ingrassia tells me that when his columnists (notably Gretchen Morgenson and Floyd Norris) write the occasional news story, special care is taken by both the writers and their editors 'to make sure that the reporter's opinions aren't injected into the story.' Jolly's version of special care is more confining: 'We've drawn a strong line between our Sports of The Times and On Baseball columnists and our reporters. Our columnists only write columns. Our reporters only report the news.' "I think Jolly's tougher policy is wise, especially in the transitional period before the newspaper of the future finally arrives; I'd like to see Morgenson and Norris continue to report these stories, but to present what they discover in the clear voices they've already established in their columns. The sports and business sections are both riding a wave toward that future, where writers' authority of voice and distinctiveness of thought will distinguish great newspapers from the rat-a-tat of more conventionally iterative (and instant) forms of journalism." Subscribe now and learn the
"what" and why" behind every digital media
industry move. US
Takes Steps to Turn Spectrum Famine into Feast US emerges as a wireless nation: The combination of the spectrum changes ... reflect an FCC that is determined to help the US emerge from its broadband backwater and support competition and new services on a level with those offered in other developed economies. Finally, there is a range of bandwidth options becoming available to the operators of WiMAX and high power Wi-Fi, a range that could even help the US leapfrog its neighbors in terms of wireless capabilities. The big question mark hangs over how far the new regulations will have real teeth, especially where they challenge the interests of the incumbent telcos. The regional Bell operators and other powerful interests will be lobbying hard to win concessions that could severely weaken the apparent progressiveness of the new policies. This will be an early, and major test for the new FCC chairman Kevin Martin. One change in the FCC's approach is already clear, however - there will no longer be tolerance for companies that waste one of the US' most scarce resources, open spectrum. The Bell operators will be forced to use their 2.3GHz licenses, or lose them. Their decision, and how they move ahead in this increasingly attractive band, will help to shape the evolution of the US broadband wireless market in the coming few years. Europe losing mobile technology and IP lead to Korea and US: Europe has been accustomed to being the world leader in mobile technologies, and its vendors to being the greatest beneficiaries in terms of revenues, particularly from intellectual property. The US' Qualcomm may have destroyed the dream of global harmonization by throwing CDMA into the mix alongside GSM, but still the mobile world was based primarily on the Europe dominated foundations of first generation NMT (Nordic Mobile Telephony) and second-generation GSM. Now that lead is faltering, and there are signs of defensive action both from Europe as a body - keen to protect an industry that represents over 3% of its total GDP - and from individual players, scared of losing the technological edge, and the revenues, to challengers from Asia and the US. In the past week, we have seen the formation of a European group, E-Mobility, to further the interests of homegrown technologies on the world stage; and an aggressive move by Ericsson to protect its claimed patents, with a lawsuit against handset maker Sendo. Mobile talking shops and posturing in the law courts are nothing new, of course, but this time around, these are symptomatic of a sharp raising of the stakes... "In order to maintain the position of Europe in the global market for mobile and wireless systems in the 2010 to 2020 timeframe, it will be necessary to develop large scale European approaches to system research and development as well as to wireless services and applications in the context of digital convergence," said Magnus Madfors, chairman of the eMobility Steering Board. The group aims to create a
research program focusing on a wireless platform that spans
personal area and near field communications, to wide area
networking. It claims that wireless and mobile are more
important to the European economy than the Internet and that
the jobs created by the sector could rise from four million
now to 10 million by 2010 if Europe can "ride the next
wireless wave" and dominate the agenda.
Back
to Headlines Tandberg Wins €4m Deal for TV-over-DSL Norway's Tandberg Television has won an order worth over €4 million from an unnamed European phone company for its video compression technology that will be used for a commercial TV-over-DSL system that's expected to go live this summer. Tandberg's compression technology, called EN5930, will be used to deliver MPEG-4 AVC video and enable MPEG-2 encoding. EN5930 provides low bit-rate
encoding of up to 50% less than MPEG-2, enabling broadcast
quality video to be delivered over bandwidth limited DSL
networks. The product will allow telcos to offer TV services
as part of a "triple-play" bundle including phone
and broadband that will allow the telcos to compete with cable
TV operators. Back
to Headlines France Telecom Testing WiMAX for Rural Broadband France Telecom has begun trials of pre-WiMAX equipment as part of its planned rural broadband access program in remote parts of the country such as the towns of Amilly, Lehon and Le Salvetat, according to Wireless Watch. The company is targeting broadband coverage of 96% of the population by the end of this year, with ADSL being the main network. France Telecom has been
excluded from bidding for many 3.5GHz licenses because
France's regulatory agency wants to stimulate competition, but
it obtained some regional test licenses specific to extending
rural access. The initial France Telecom deployments use WiMAX
backhaul and Wi-Fi front ends. The most advanced is the Lehon
site, whose trial phase will end next month and covers
residential users and government departments. The other
projects will finish in August. In Amilly the equipment is
being tested with businesses and in Le Salvetat with
consumers. Wider rollout will depend on whether France Telecom
can obtain frequencies. Back
to Headlines Tele2 Netherlands Offers Broadband Tele2 Netherlands will start offering ADSL broadband in addition to its fixed and mobile telephony and dial-up services. It will use KPN's infrastructure. Prices are: ADSL Basic - 512 Kbps /256 Kbps - €19.95/month ADSL Plus - 1024 Kbps /352 Kbps - €24.95/month ADSL Super - 2048 Kbps /416 Kbps - €29.95/month Subscriptions include free Web
mail, five e-mail addresses and 10MB of space for home pages.
The subscriber does the installation with a free ADSL modem
worth €72. Back
to Headlines WiMAX Will Supplement Fixed-Wire Broadband, Not Compete WiMAX will not become a new broadband service competing with the cable TV and phone companies as some analysts, and this publication, had thought, according to the new "Positioning WiMAX: How WiMAX Stands Up To DSL, Cable, Wi-Fi and 3G" report from Pyramid Research. What wireless WiMAX broadband will do, instead of becoming a third source of residential broadband, is change the way that existing fixed-wire carriers - the cablecos and telcos - deliver Internet access. The survey shows that industry players expect fixed-line operators and ISPs to deploy WiMAX to provide backhaul and high-speed Internet access. Survey respondents also said that WiMAX has potential as a mobile solution, supplementing cell phone networks. The report says that WiMax and cellular convergence will have to wait until 2007, when the next-generation 802.16e WiMAX comes to market. Report author Ozgur Aytar expects this adoption pattern "to provide fixed providers with the capability to offer mobility services and compete for mobile data market share." The number of WiMAX subscribers will reach 10.9 million by 2009, most on 802.16d networks. There'll be a 64% compound annual growth rate in customers for 802.16e between 2009 and 2012. Pyramid expects faster growth if the costs associated with network deployment and subscriber adoption drop even faster than anticipated. It says that operators in developing countries and rural markets in particular will have a great opportunity to use WiMAX for backhaul and broadband access. Aytar said, "With the next-generation of WiMAX, the technology will live up to the hype - but time is working against WiMAX as competing technologies like HSDPA* emerge. Vendors need to bring their solutions to market on-time and up to specifications." * High Speed Downlink Packet
Access (HSDPA) is the next step for GSM cell phone technology,
following the 384 Kbps speeds of UMTS with the promise of 3
Mbps on a mobile phone or handheld device. HSDPA is a
competitor to WiMAX because it's more mobile, even though it's
not as fast. WiMax speeds could eventually achieve 70 Mbps.
Some analysts predict the two technologies will eventually
converge as HSDPA gets faster and WiMAX's mobility improves.
Until then, each technology will appeal to a different market
- HSDPA to the mobile/voice market, WiMAX to the
broadband/data sector. Back
to Headlines Cincinnati Bell to Test IPTV: 'Our Future Depends on This' Cincinnati Bell plans to begin
testing Internet Protocol television - IPTV - to deliver
high-quality, even high-definition, TV programs to subscribers
in competition with the cable and satellite companies,
according to the Cincinnati Enquirer. The company would begin
making the TV service available to about two-thirds of its
600,000 subscribers early next year if the test is successful,
according to Cincinnati Bell president and CEO Jack Cassidy. Telecom Italia Offers 4 Mbps Broadband Telecom Italia is increasing
its subscribers' broadband speed to 4 Mbps, at least for the
85% of them whose connection is capable of the faster speed.
The service, called Alice 4 Mega, has speeds up to 4 Mbps down
and 256 Kbps up and will cost a consumer €39.95 a month when
it launches March 31. Cable TV company Charter Communications has begun offering video mail as part of its Charter High-Speed Internet bundle of services. Called Charter Video Mail, it's is available free to customers, regardless of the speed of their connection. A Web cam is required to send video mail but not, of course, to view it. "Video Mail is the latest
in a continuing series of enhancements to our Charter
High-Speed Internet product," said Barbara Hedges,
Charter's VP of broadband marketing. "Most recently, we
launched a new, customizable portal, along with premium
content and Charter Music. And now we've added Charter Video
Mail to the bundle." Back
to Headlines Tiscali Has 1.65m Broadband Subscribers Tiscali, at the end of
December, had 1.65 million ADSL subscribers, up from a
year-earlier 840,000 users, a 97% increase. During 2004,
Tiscali started unbundling DSL lines in France and Italy and
continued to do so in the Netherlands, ending the year with
330,000 unbundled customers. It also has 5.7 million dial-up
users. Back
to Headlines US Falling Behind China in Broadband "The FCC should be
responsible for results, not rhetoric. I've been writing
lately about how cable at very modest incremental investment
can go over 100 Mbps to nearly every home, and DSL, at a
slightly greater but not unreasonable cost, can go to 50 Mbps
symmetric. Others like Dewayne Hendricks point the way to get
there wirelessly, and Paul Morris and Utopia are building
fiber. The geeks can argue which is the 'best' tech. The FCC's
job should be to make sure at least one of the choices rapidly
gets to almost every American home. China has installed over
five million lines of fiber to the premises in two years; the
US shouldn't be falling behind." - Dave Burstein in the
DSL Prime newsletter. Back
to Headlines Comcast Appoints Content Tsarina When the largest broadband provider in the US talks about broadband delivered content, the broadband and content industry had best listen. Comcast this week appointed Elizabeth Schimel as senior VP of content development for its broadband operation, reporting to David Juliano, president of Comcast online and voice services. The move signals that a) content is becoming a competitive differentiator for the broadband companies, and b) a new market is developing for content - online adapted content. Schimel will work with Comcast.net, the company's consumer portal, to deliver "best-in-class" content through new strategic partnerships. "Liz's unparalleled blend of industry relationships, deal-making skills and technology expertise will further enhance our efforts to creatively deliver best-in-class content over broadband, making Comcast.net the most valuable online destination available today," said Juliano. "Comcast provides our customers the best broadband experience by combining premier content with our innovative built-for-broadband applications, such as The Fan. Along with serving up thousands of videos each day from Disney, CNBC, ABC, CBS, Fox Sports, MLB, USAToday and more, our patented broadband multimedia video player also offers unique video search capabilities. This successful execution of our guiding principle: it's all about speed and what you can do with it, has led Comcast to become the nation's Number One broadband provider with seven million customers." Schimel was previously VP of consumer business development at AT&T Wireless Services, where she led the content strategy and execution of new business initiatives for wireless Internet portal and messaging applications. She also ran the AT&T Wireless ringtone and downloadable content business, a significant revenue driver for the carrier. Her accomplishments included the launch of a series of first-to-market wireless products in the US, including the single-largest text-messaging event ever, in partnership with the television series American Idol. Prior to AT&T Wireless, Schimel held key senior leadership positions with major media, entertainment and financial organizations such as Soundview Technology Group and Bertelsmann, where she was responsible for launching and running BMG's online music service, heading worldwide operations for its videogame businesses and running marketing and strategic development of electronic publishing. As VP and general manager of BMG Entertainment's Online Division, Schimel pioneered the company's online and digital music business and negotiated partnerships with major media brands, including forming GetMusic, a joint venture between BMG and Universal Music. "I am thrilled to be joining Comcast, which I believe to be our country's most innovative broadband, media and entertainment company, said Schimel. "As our country's number one broadband Internet provider, Comcast sets the standard for the online content experience. Its built-for-broadband portal and base of seven million customers make it an incredibly attractive platform for providers to showcase their content." Comcast added 1.7million new
broadband subscribers in 2004. Back
to Headlines UK-wide Wi-Fi Network to Use Lampposts & Electrical Wires Last Mile Communications will begin field tests that could ultimately provide a UK nationwide Wi-Fi network by using lampposts as wireless, according to PC Pro reports. The company would install Wi-Fi access points on about 150,000 UK lampposts and use the existing electrical cables for infrastructure. Users would initially be able to access the Internet at speeds of around 40 Mbps, eventually after upgrades at 400 Mbps for users within 200 meters to 300 meters (200 yards to 300 yards) of the lamppost. Last Mile patented and developed two key global technologies called WDirect and MagicBook. WDirect is the transceiver technology that sits inside existing lampposts and roadside architecture. MagicBook is the open source, operating system and reception technology that operates with existing and future generations of laptops, PCs, PDAs and handheld phones in the transport, telematics and broadband markets. WDirect equips existing
roadside signs and lampposts with small computers and large
cache memories that are user and location aware. This micro
cell technology transmits to ranges of up to 250 meters but at
extremely low power levels with user exposure to
electromagnetic radiation at approximately one thousandth of
that of a mobile phone. Back
to Headlines *************************** What's the Online Reporter? The Online
Reporter is a newsweekly that has the broadest coverage of any
digital media publication. Wherever content is turned into
digits, whether it is the cell phone, set-top box, MP3 player,
peer-to-peer file sharing, PCs or Wi-Fi hotspots, you'll find
The Online Reporter bringing the news to its customers. Microsoft Launches Video Service for Windows Mobile Devices Consumer electronics makers have been pushing the video capabilities of their new portable gear such as multimedia cell phones and portable media players, but are consumers buying? In parts of Asia and Europe, the answer is a resounding "yes," but in the US, the jury's still out. While there are a number of fledgling video services for portable devices, they tend to be rather pricey for the average consumer, who's likely too leery of the newfangled offerings to be willing to shell out five bucks a month or more to give them a try, despite having spent a few hundred dollars on a video-enabled device. Microsoft this week launched a new mobile video service that just might pique their interest. Of course, since this is a service from Microsoft, it's only available to folks with Windows Mobile-based devices such as Portable Media Centers and select Smartphones and Pocket PCs. MSN Video Downloads, at www.msnvideodownloads.com, is essentially a portal where consumers can go to download a variety of mobile video content ranging from news and sports to home improvement and food-related programming. Content is updated on a daily basis. For $19.95 a year, subscribers can choose the content they want to receive from the Web site. The selected digital videos are then downloaded daily to the user's Windows Media Player 10 library on a Windows XP PC. Once the content is downloaded, the user can then transfer it to a Portable Media Center or other Windows Mobile device. There's also an automatic deleting feature that lets the user choose how long video from the service directory will remain on the PC, thus avoiding a large backlog of clips. The site offers a limited amount of free video content that can be downloaded even without a paid membership. The video content is compliant with devices that carry Microsoft's "PlaysForSure" logo. Creative, iRiver and Samsung are among the companies that offer Portable Media Centers. "Readily available digital video content remains a key driver for the portable multimedia player market," said Josh Martin, associate research analyst at IDC. "The proliferation and growth of video service providers will serve to fill the existing video content void and increase adoption of portable multimedia players such as Windows Mobile-based devices." Microsoft says that it designed
the service to keep people better entertained and informed,
wherever and whenever they want. - BreakTV: Behind-the-scenes footage and exclusive interviews with television's hottest celebrities. - Cookie Jar Entertainment: Children's entertainment from the provider of such TV series "Paddington Bear," "Animal Crackers" and many others. - DIY Network: Videos about home improvement, crafts, hobbies, indoor-outdoor living and kitchen and bath remodeling. - Fine Living TV Network: Programs featuring travel destinations, mind and body enrichment, ideas for entertaining and home design as well as videos for automobile enthusiasts. - Fox Sports: In-depth news, analysis and national and regional coverage of the National Football League, Major League Baseball, NASCAR, the National Basketball Association and select college basketball and football highlights, as well as Fox Sports Net original programming including "The Best Damn Sports Show Period" and "Beyond the Glory." - Food Network: Fun and interesting videos featuring grilling tips, ideas for entertaining, healthy eating, quick-and-easy recipes and pop-culture food specials. - Fun Little Movies: Original, live-action comedy and "Fun Funny Phone Films" such as humorous headlines in "Comedy USA," sci-fi parody "Spacey Movie" and the "Mini-Bikers," where little people on little motorcycles fight crime, a little at a time. - Headliners Entertainment Group: The operator of Rascals Comedy Clubs presents a selection of comedy clips including performances from popular stars such as Tim Allen, Rosie O'Donnell, Drew Carey and Ray Romano. - Home & Garden Television (HGTV): Selected programs featuring remodeling, home building, design and decorating, kitchen and bath to enhance a home's curb appeal. - IFILM: Movie trailers, viral videos, short films and other exclusive IFILM content. - TotalVid: Deep selection of action sports clips including surfing, snowboarding, skiing, windsurfing, street racing, kiteboarding, skateboarding, climbing, kayaking, off-road, Moto X, mountain biking, inline skating, BMX and more - Want Media: Music videos,
live concerts, Broadway shows, extreme sports and motor sports
programs, full-length films from independent filmmakers and
underground cinema. Back
to Headlines ****************** "The Internet is the greatest vehicle for the distribution of entertainment ever invented." - Yair Landau, vice-chairman of Sony Pictures Entertainment and president of Sony Pictures Digital, at the Stanford Graduate School of Business' "Future of Content" conference. For the best intelligence about the Internet as an entertainment delivery vehicle, subscribe now to The Online Reporter. Published
weekly, the annual subscription is $595. SafeNet Technologies BV, a wholly owned subsidiary of information security firm SafeNet Inc, is acquiring DMDsecure.com for €7.5 million ($9.6 million) in cash. Amsterdam-based DMDsecure provides carrier-grade digital rights management solutions for software vendors, broadcasters, broadband and mobile operators and service providers. Its customers include Arcor, British Telecom and Deutsche Telekom. SafeNet's security solutions and encryption technologies protect communications, intellectual property and digital identities. DMDsecure's products include server DRM components for the PC, mobile and digital home markets. SafeNet recently created a business unit to focus on rights management, which resulted in double-digit growth in that market in 2004, according to SafeNet chairman and CEO Anthony Caputo. "The acquisition of DMDsecure will enable us to extend our growth into the electronic download content protection market segment," he said. "The trend is clear that the PC market, the mobile market and consumer electronics are converging. In each of these platforms, there is a clear trend to electronic delivery of content whether in software, audio, video or gaming formats," Caputo added. "The combination of SafeNet's strong security, DMD's content DRM and our recent partnership announcement with Royal Philips Electronics provides SafeNet customers with a complete suite of strong standards-based security to protect all of these electronic download formats." The DMDsecure team will join SafeNet's the rights management business unit. DMDsecure CEO Rist Brouwer will head up the company's content protection-related strategic business development activities. The acquisition is expected to
close in April and will be neutral to SafeNet's 2005 balance
sheet. Back
to Headlines Bertelsmann, Intel Cut Cooperative Technology Development Deal Bertelsmann's Arvato operation, which last week announced a P2P service called GNAB that ISPs, TV stations and wireless carriers can use to distribute movies, music and games to their subscribers using peer-to-peer technology, has done a deal with Intel under which the two will cooperate in developing technology for downloading and sharing films, music clips and games from the Internet, according to Reuters. Intel will make chips for PCs, notebooks and mobile phones that are compatible with Arvato's online media file-sharing platform. "One of the major environmental changes in the electronics industry is this convergence - a combination of computing, communications and content," Intel CEO Craig Barrett told Reuters. "This thing we call the digital home really is the combination of all three of those things....Our emphasis with the digital home is obviously to do the architecture, the user interface, the platform." In 2000 Bertelsmann, which then owned the BMG record company, helped finance the original Napster, which attempted to become a legitimate P2P network after its network was used for massive downloading of copyrighted files. Sony BMG, now Bertelsmann's 50% owned music operation, is a participant in the RIAA's legal efforts to close down the file sharing efforts of Sharman Networks, Grokster and StreamCast. Last November Sony BMG said that it was in talks with Grokster to develop a legitimate peer-to-peer service. Intel, faced with slowing
growth in its mainstay PC market, has begun focusing on
digital media products that would be sold into the $200
billion consumer electronics market. When the consumer market
that gave Wi-Fi its initial spurt, Intel moved in rapidly with
customized chipsets for adding Wi-Fi as a standard function on
all portable PCs. However, except for PCs running on
Microsoft's Windows Media Center operating system, no major CE
product has been launched based on Intel's microprocessor.
Intel's competition will soon be more than the seemingly
"ne'er do well" AMD when IBM, Sony and Toshiba
launch their jointly developed Cell microprocessor. The Cell
is almost certain to be used in upcoming Sony PlayStations,
which will give Cell the quantities needed to get its per-unit
manufacturing costs low. Back
to Headlines *************************** CONNECTIONS(tm): The Digital
Home Conference and Showcase CONNECTIONS(tm): The Digital
Home Conference and Showcase, produced by Parks Associates in
partnership with the Consumer Electronics Association, is the
largest international executive conference for digital home
technologies. The CONNECTIONS(tm) Conference and Showcase, produced by Parks Associates in partnership with CEA, combines Parks Associates' expert primary and industry research with insights from key strategists providing a comprehensive analysis of current and future "Digital Living" technologies. Attend this event to network with 700+ executives, establish partnerships, learn about emerging products and services, and become educated on the current and future developments for digital living technologies Market areas include: Interactive Sessions Keynote Speakers Steve Boom, Senior Vice President, Broadband Access & Bundled Services, Yahoo! Inc. John Burke, Corporate Vice President & General Manager, Consumer Solutions Business, Connected Home Business, Motorola, Inc. Kevin Corbett, Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, Digital Home Group, Intel Corporation Charlie Giancarlo, Chief Technology Officer, Cisco Systems, Inc.; President, Cisco-Linksys, LLC ***************************
Samsung Unveils 'File Viewer' Phones Every week more mobile phones are introduced with new music, video and gaming functionality, making the increasingly smaller and more expensive gadgets more attractive to tech junkies. Samsung is taking mobiles in a new direction with its first "file viewer" phones designed to help on-the-go businesspeople be more productive. The new handsets, models SPH-V6500 and SCH-V650, let users view documents and images, including Microsoft Word and Excel, PDF, JPEG and TXT files. Files can be downloaded onto the phones in their original format through a PC connection, similar to an external storage device. That's not all, however. The
phones feature a 1.3-megapixel camera with a 16 million-color
LCD. Users can watch video-on-demand and surf the Internet as
well. They can also use one of seven different fonts for
personalized messaging.
In addition, a remote control function provides universal control of home appliances including the air conditioner, PC, game console, TV, DVD, VCR and even the car. The phones have also acquired
the S-Mark certification from the Korean government for their
anti-bacterial silver nano-particle coating. Back
to Headlines SongLink'd Links Mobile Users To Songs, CDs, Downloads NMK Inc, the company behind the MusiKube mobile music identification technology, has launched the SongLink'd mobile music recognition and discovery service. The multi-carrier SongLink'd service identifies music and "links" mobile users to related ringtones, songs and album information. It uses audio recognition technology from Shazam. As with other mobile music ID services, users simply dial a number - in this case 888-SONG-411 - and place the phone near the music source for 15 seconds. They then receive an SMS text message with the song title and artist name as well as a link to buy a ringtone from the song. This is where SongLink'd differs. It acts as a personal "music memory," remembering what songs the user has identified. In addition to the text message, the service also gives the user the chance to visit the SongLink'd Web site and buy related ringtones, CD and digital downloads. SongLink'd searches through a library of more than 2.5 million songs. The company has also launched the beta version of SongList, a personal archive of all identified songs. "SongLink'd takes the frustration out of trying to remember song titles and empowers mobile users to tap into their musical interests on impulse," said NMK CEO Sunjay Guleria. "Everyone has been in a situation where they've heard a great song and wish that they could have identified and purchased it right then and there. Now they can." SongLink'd is available from most major US mobile carriers including Cingular, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon Wireless. It's coming soon for users of Nextel and Boost. The company charges 99 cents
for each successful ID. If SongLink'd can't identify the song,
the user isn't charged. Through April 11, NMK is offering one
free ID for each successful paid ID. Back
to Headlines Xingtone Strikes Deal with Roxio, Enters Retail Channel Ringtone software developer Xingtone is hitting the retail channel through a distribution partnership with the Roxio digital media software division of Sonic Solutions. The agreement, Xingtone's first "brick-and-mortar" deal, calls for Roxio to use its established multi-channel sales and marketing organization to "increase Xingtone brand awareness and maximize the sales potential of its Xingtone Ringtone Creator." Xingtone Ringtone Creator lets consumers take music they already own - whether CD, downloaded MP3s, WAV or other similar format - and use it to create unique real music ringtones for their mobile phone. The software's recording capability lets users record their own ringtones as well. The Xingtone ringtones are downloaded to the mobile phone over-the-air - no cables required. "Xingtone Ringtone Creator is a solid addition to our broad portfolio of top-selling software," said Roxio senior VP of worldwide sales and marketing Scott Berlin. "The partnership allows us to take a product with a proven record of online sales and broaden its reach to capitalize on an emerging market opportunity at retail." The software should hit retail
shelves in late spring. It will be available for both PCs and
Macs, and will be the first ringtone creation software for
Macs on the market, claims Xingtone. The retail package will
include a single-user license for unlimited free ringtones.
Xingtone Ringtone Creator is compatible with all open wireless
networks including Sprint PCS, Cingular and T-Mobile and
supports more than 100 handset models. Back
to Headlines Mobile content aggregator Buongiorno Vitaminic has expanded into the US. The Milan-based company, which already operates in Europe, Asia and Mexico, is now entering the US wireless market with the goal of providing end-to-end services - from developing proprietary applications and working with content partners to managing marketing and customer relationship management services. The company has set up its US headquarters in Miami and named Burton Katz, former managing director of Buongiorno UK to head the operations. Initial US offerings, under the brand name Dirty Hippo, include wallpapers, ringtones, multimedia games and interactive text services among others. Buongiorno has more than 600 licensing, software and CRM agreements worldwide with mobile operators, music labels, movie studios, game developers and application and platform providers. It currently offers more than 250,000 music tracks, 20 video categories, 150 mobile games and 120 SMS and MMS services. All Buongiorno services are
managed through the company's proprietary B!3a
platform. Back
to Headlines CSL Uses Helix for Mobile Video Service Mobile operator Hong Kong CSL turned to RealNetworks to provide the platform for a new mobile media service that lets users watch on-demand video without interruption even as they switch between different data networks. CSL's Video World Service uses Real's Helix Universal Mobile platform to support multi-rate streaming of on-demand content, so a user can watch a streaming video on his mobile phone and not be aware that while he was traveling his phone coverage switched between CSL's GPRS (2.5G), EDGE (2.75G) and UMTS (3G) networks. Real's Helix platform helps bridge the speed gaps between the different generations of data networks. Its real-time video adaptation ensures mobile customers get a constant media experience even while moving through a multi-rate network environment. The platform supports multi-rate streaming of on-demand content using either standards-based or Real's audio and video formats. The Video World service
provides access to a range of news, finance, sports, drama,
music and entertainment video clips in Chinese and English.
Customers can also tune into a new leisure guide, funny video
and cartoon channels. CSL offers the services on a variety of
handsets from Nokia and Motorola, which ship with RealPlayer
Mobile installed. Back
to Headlines Jamdat Mobile has expanded its partnership with MLB Advanced Media, the interactive media arm of Major League Baseball. The two have signed an exclusive multiyear licensing agreement that calls for Jamdat to publish baseball simulation games for mobile devices. Under the deeper deal, Jamdat has the exclusive rights to publish MLB-branded titles involving game-play simulation - hitting, running, pitching, stealing bases - for cell phones. The agreement also includes additional non-exclusive rights for fantasy, trivia and manager games. The games will be available through Jamdat's wireless carrier distribution network as well as from the mobile storefronts on MLB.com and all 30 team Web sites. Availability of specific games
depends on individual phone models and wireless
carriers. Back
to Headlines Buy the CD Single, Create a Ringtone Atlantic Records UK has
released a CD single with software integrated in it that lets
users turn any 30-second section of the song into a ringtone.
"Baby," the latest single from rapper Fabolous,
contains MyTone ringtone creation software from Bounce
Technology so fans who purchase the CD can create a "realtone"
mobile ringtone from their favorite song segment. The CD is
the first with a realtone download incorporated into the price
of the single. "Baby" is the second single from the
album "Real Talk," released in
November. Back
to Headlines Bitmunk Legal P2P Marketplace Launches Digital file distribution start-up Digital Bazaar has launched its Bitmunk file-sharing marketplace. Bitmunk, which the company first talked up last summer, mixes peer-to-peer technology with digital watermarking and a sales server application. The result is a file-swapping network that's open to anyone wanting to sell their digital content and receive royalties for the sales. The watermarks are used to track the files downloaded via Bitmunk to both ensure that whoever's selling the file has the right to do so and also guarantee that the correct royalty payments reach the rights holders. Artists and content owners can list their songs for sale on Bitmunk, and assign a royalty fee for each song or album. Fans, retail Web site operators and other interested parties can then visit the site, purchase the tracks they like and then choose to " any of the approved songs, adding their own small fee on top of the royalty. When a user visits one of the Bitmunk-powered sites and buys a song, the royalty amount automatically gets deposited in the artist's bank account. If the song is purchased from a reseller site, the amount the site operator added to the royalty gets deposited in his Bitmunk account. Money made from reselling tracks on the network can be used to purchase future content from Bitmunk. Bitmunk only makes tracks available that have been approved for sale by the artist or rights holder. The network gives artists and labels complete control over their content, allowing them to manage royalties, descriptions, licensing options and other facets of distribution. According to Digital Bazaar CEO Manu Sporny, Bitmunk solves the biggest problem in peer-to-peer file trading, "the inability to pay for stuff that you want to legally own by downloading. We are offering up a different business model, one that works for consumers, artists and labels." Rather than charge labels or artists an up-front fee for posting their music or other content on the network, Digital Bazaar takes a cut of sales - 15 cents or 15% of the sale price, whichever is higher. "Bitmunk is best of breed technology and is the most fair system to the labels, artists, distributors and fans," said Sporny. In addition to the official launch of Bitmunk, Digital Bazaar also announced version 1.0 of its P2P Sales Server software, the piece of the puzzle that makes it possible for anyone with an Internet connection to resell content offered on the Bitmunk network. "The release of our sales server software will allow small companies, such as Internet radio stations and specialty music sites to take part in this rapidly growing market," said Sporny. "We handle acquiring of all the music rights from the copyright holder. There is no reason there should only be a handful of online music stores - our technology allows anybody with a great idea for a music store to immediately start selling music. Not only do we support traditional businesses, but fans may support their favorite artists by reselling any of their digital music with the Bitmunk Sales Server." Since there's nothing to pay major labels, the pricing structure on Bitmunk is more relaxed than on the major digital music stores. The company expects individual songs to range in price from 50 cents-95 cents and full albums to range from $6-$9. Currently, the average price-per-song hovers somewhere between 83 cents and 86 cents. The average price for a complete album ranges from $7.40-$7.54. All music on the Bitmunk network is in high-quality MP3 format, with no built-in digital rights management so the buyer is free to listen to it on any device and burn it to CD for personal use. Additionally, in mid-March the
company announced a partnership with CD Baby, the largest
seller of independent CDs on the Web. The agreement allows CD
Baby artists to distribute their digital music via the Bitmunk
network while retaining the vast majority of the sales of
revenue. Back
to Headlines Crossbreeding Satellite Radio and iPods "Perhaps the lack of appeal of satellite radio has more to do with what I've come to expect from media these days. Satellite radio has the potential for more accurate personalization in terms of content, but it's still a broadcast model medium. Other than picking and choosing what one wants to listen to, there's very little audience input into the medium itself. "Why can't I select the type of content I might want and have it pushed to me via satellite bandwidth and have it saved on an internal hard drive? Why can't I program my satellite radio receiver to go out and find podcasts that suit my interests? Where is the collaborative filtering, such that my receiver can go out and find music that I might like once it gets a handle on my particular tastes? In short, where is the user input? "In satellite radio, I think we have something that is an improvement on one medium (terrestrial radio), but not enough of an incremental step up to appeal to media junkies who are used to self-selecting content (the Web, RSS, etc) and have that expectation of new media. "For me to get really
excited about satellite radio, I think it would have to
leverage some of the characteristics of interactive media -
true self-selection of content, filtering of aggregated
content, and even the ability to participate such that people
can post their own audio content that can be found and
accessed by other satellite radio subscribers." - Tom
Hespos in MediaPost Communications' daily onlineSPIN
e-mail. Back
to Headlines Quality Will Out: BBC Radio Hits 9m in February The number of users listening to BBC radio shows on the Internet grew by 25% in February to nine million for all "stations." "On-demand listening," defined as when a user listens to a show after it has been aired, increased to 4.4 million hours. The number of "live" listening hours increased to 6.8 million hours from January's five million. According to the BBC, online listening to digital-only networks in the UK increased 83% in the last year. Back to Headlines
Peer Impact Beta Expands To 'Invite Only' Wurld Media has entered the next phase of beta testing for its Peer Impact legal P2P network that pays members for sharing content. In the new "Invite Only" phase, original beta users can invite others to use the service. Wurld Media plans to open the Peer Impact beta to the public at the end of May, with a full-fledged launch scheduled for later this year. Peer Impact lets users act as "paid redistributors" of legal content. Members can make money simply by leaving the Peer Impact application open on their PC. When other members search for and buy music on the service, the system chooses a "peer" on the network that has the selected track available and copies the track from that machine to the requester's PC. This method cuts down on server space and network bandwidth needed by Wurld Media to run the service. It also provides users with an incentive for downloading legal digital music from Peer Impact - the more tracks they have available, the more likely it is that they're "peer" will help with order fulfillment and the more cash they'll earn to buy more music from the network. All content offered through Peer Impact is "pristine, industry-approved and is not filtered or mixed with unprotected content, spyware, viruses or pornography." The company has content licensing deals in place with all four major record label groups as well as a number of independents. In addition to earning money by supplying on-demand resources and inventory, members can use tools supplied by Wurld Media to directly "market" and build awareness for their favorite content and receive further rewards. Members can share their suggestions to drive sales, essentially turning their PCs into music stores. Additionally, Wurld Media said that it has chosen the Peppercoin Small Transaction Suite to handle the micropayment aspect of Peer Impact. The Peppercoin solution enables Wurld Media to accept credit and debit cards for small payments, reduces costs through efficient processing. "Over the past year the
number of consumers who paid a fee to download music online
doubled, and we are proud to offer Peer Impact's unique 'cash
back' model, which is an added incentive to pay for content
online," said Wurld Media chairman and CEO Greg Kerber.
Back
to Headlines Orb Offers Free 'Anytime, Anywhere" Access To Digital Content Consumers who want to access their home-based digital media content while on the road can now do it for free. Orb Networks, which launched its Orb Media streaming media software earlier this year, has gotten rid of the subscription fee, providing consumers access to their live TV, music, photos and videos stored on their home PC from virtually any Internet-connected device anywhere in the world. To make money, now that it won't be getting any from consumers, Orb is aggressively partnering with content providers and consumer electronic companies. The company is looking to get revenue from co-marketing deals as well as transactions for music, video, audio and other services. It also expects the partnerships to enable it to "drastically expand" its content over time. "By eliminating the subscription fees, Orb eliminates the final barrier between consumers and their digital media," said Orb CEO Jim Behrens. "The allure of 'anytime, anywhere' access to one's digital world has proven to be exceptionally compelling to Orb subscribers thus far. In our view, a free Orb service will exponentially increase our value proposition for those customers - and millions of new customers as well." The company has also added a new photo sharing service, allowing customers to share their digital photos with friends as well as accessing the pictures themselves. Photo Sharing gives customers access to a digital media portal where they can choose any of their photos and send them to friends and family for free viewing. Orb Media works with Windows XP
and XP Media Center Edition PCs in the US. The company
previously charged $9.99 a month or $79.99 a year for the
first user. Back
to Headlines Philips Writes Data and Labels on CDs/DVDs Philips' new DVDRW16LSK 16X dual layer, dual format DVDRW drive uses LightScribe Direct Disc Labeling to allow users to print directly on CDs and DVDs. After data is recorded to a disc, users can then turn the disc over, reinsert it into the drive and burn a precise, iridescent label with their desired text and graphics using the same laser that burns the data - no printer, permanent marker or adhesive labeling required. Nero, which makes CD/DVD
burning software, and Philips, one of the world's largest
manufacturers of consumer electronics, partnered with
LightScribe to bring the Direct Disc Labeling technology to
consumers. "Nero and Philips together provide the perfect
vehicle to bring LightScribe to consumers," said Jim
Corbett, executive director of Nero AG. "Nero's family of
award-winning digital media products and Philips' new 16X DL
burner with LightScribe's Direct Disc Labeling, gives the user
artistic license to design disc labels any way they
like." Back
to Headlines Labels to Show Life Expectancy of CDs/DVDs The National Institute of
Standards and Technology's Government Information Preservation
Working Group is attempting to develop a standard for labeling
CDs and DVDs according to their projected life span, according
to CNET's News.com. The labels would tell consumers the
minimum life expectancy. The government group is working with
the industry-sponsored DVD Association to conduct an online
survey that asks the public how long they would ideally want
optical disc storage media to last - between 20 and 40-plus
years. Just think, the MPAA used to say that they'd last
forever so consumers didn't need to make any back-up copies of
their CDs and DVDs. Back
to Headlines LIES, DAMN LIES, AND STATISTICS
Some 10 million homes worldwide
currently have HDTV, a figure that is projected to grow to
15.5 million by year-end, according to market research company
In-Stat. It forecasts HDTV will be in 52 million households by
2009. The US currently has four million HDTV sets in use, up
from 1.6 million in March 2004. HDTV is currently only widely
available in five countries: the US, Australia, Canada, Japan
and South Korea. Back
to Headlines One New DSL Subscriber Added Per Second One new DSL installation is
being made every second on average, according to Dave Burstein
of the DSL Prime newsletter. He calculates that by increasing
three million a month, the number of DSL subscribers passed
100 million in February, if not
before. Back
to Headlines Digital Media, Low-Cost Asian Manufacturers Make CE Industry Treacherous The advent of digital media and the onslaught of low-cost Asian manufacturers have kicked the consumer electronics company in a kilter as some such as Sony are discovering. They are unable to move quickly enough with innovative digital media products and are too ingrained in their manufacturing processes and rigid labor practices. Success in consumer electronics today requires not one strategy, but a whole arsenal, according to market intelligence firm ABI Research. "The consumer electronics industry has changed dramatically since the 1990s," says director of residential entertainment technologies Vamsi Sistla. "Consumers' feelings about purchasing based on cost have changed. The 'cool factor' is more important than ever. Vendors are trying to reinvent their strategies based on these new market conditions as well as buying sentiments." ABI points out that Sony, the once innovative giant, still has successful product lines, but it has struggled lately to build similar success across all its platforms, where inexpensive mass-produced no-name brands - Archos, Apex, CyberHome and others - are beating them on price. Its digital media products such as Sony's various MP3 players, its RoomLink home networking product and its CoCoon DVR have fared poorly. ABI says similar problems beset most of the large, established brands, and then asks, "What can they do?" One strategy, it says, is to launch products to build a mass market and then worry about revenue generation. Sony's new PlayStation Portable (PSP) comes with proprietary UMD discs. The PSP has a low list price compared to other portables, and Sony hopes to profit from packaged media sales. It has licensed the movie and music formats (but not games) to third parties, with an eye to generating ongoing royalties and licensing fees. The point, says Sistla, is that strategies must depend upon a company's particular situation, the market dynamics, and the immediate competition and near-term changes in the vendor landscape. There is no one magic formula. To address such complex
questions, ABI Research has launched a completely restructured
"Residential Entertainment Research Service," a
comprehensive suite of subscription products containing a
number of annual research reports, quarterly "market
updates"(one of which has just been released), a
user-searchable forecast database, four special reports
examining developments in Asia, and two vendor matrices.
Subscribers also receive analyst support time and ABI
Research's Analyst Insights. Back
to Headlines Mobile Games Market Will Near $19.5b in 2009 A new report from Research and
Markets found that over the last two years a significant
number of consumers were starting to pay to play games on
their mobile phones. The Irish research firm estimates that
the mobile games market was slightly above $3 billion in 2004
and expects a sharp rise for the next five years. It forecasts
that the market will approach $19.5 billion by 2009. While
just under two-thirds of this revenue will come from
downloadable games, a sizeable amount will be from either game
rentals (to try the game for a limited period) or,
increasingly, from subscriptions to online multiplayer games
networks. Back
to Headlines More Multimedia Phones Means More DRM As consumers start to listen to music and watch video on their cell phones, the need for digital rights management on those devices will become an even higher priority for content owners. With this growing amount of audio and video content flowing over mobile networks, license revenues from DRM technologies will likely top $500 million by 2009, according to market research firm Digital Tech Consulting (DTC). DRM technology, primarily either Open Mobile Alliance (OMA) DRM or Windows Media DRM, is increasingly finding its way into multimedia phones that deliver and playback of video and audio content, ringtones and multimedia messaging. DTC expects that nearly 40% of
all new mobile units shipped worldwide will contain DRM. The
researcher estimates that some 300 million units a year will
ship with DRM by 2009, more than 100 times the number shipped
in 2004. Back
to Headlines MyDTV, which develops personalized search engines for TV and video programming, has changed its name to MeeVee. The Burlingame, California company maintains that the new moniker better reflects "a product portfolio focused on delivering localized and customized television schedules and listings, program recommendations, video search and alerts for television viewers." MeeVee's personalized navigation system includes patented metadata generation technology that lets consumers search a real-time programming database by keyword, program, actor or topic rather than have to scroll through a grid-based program guide containing 200+ channels. "We have changed our name to set the stage for forthcoming product offerings that will further enhance our existing video navigation tool," said MeeVee founder and CEO Gil Dudkiewicz. "These new offerings will cut through the clutter of channel proliferation and allow consumers to find and view the content they care about. Our technology sorts results according to relevant information and is then optimized for television listings content, demonstrating how it easy it is to find something of interest to watch." The company's solution works on
a variety of platform and devices including PCs, Internet,
set-top boxes, DVRs and mobile phones by connecting directly
to programmer production systems. Back
to Headlines Here They Come: TiVo Users to Get Pop-Up Ads on Their Tellys TiVo began testing interactive advertising during the weekend, according to CNET's News.com. TiVo's first interactive ad, done on a limited and random basis, pops up on the screen when a viewer is fast-forwarding through an advertisement. By pressing the thumbs-up or select button during the half-second the tag is displayed, users will go to a menu that leads to more information about the advertised product. The pop-up takes up about 25% of the screen. So far TiVo is working with only one advertiser, a movie studio, on the test. TiVo has said previously that it expects increased revenue from advertising. The interactive features are designed to provide consumers with product information they're interested in and give advertisers information about interested viewers. TiVo's recent deal with Comcast includes interactive advertising. There is no way for TiVo users to block the ads. TiVo is developing the interactive ad technology to work on all its various models - Series 1, Series 2 and DirecTV. "Our goal is in no way to
interfere with the TiVo experience," TiVo spokesman David
Shane told the Web site. Back
to Headlines Bell Canada, MSN Launch Free Online Video Channel Bell Canada and MSN Canada launched a new free video service called Sympatico/MSN Video (http://video.Sympatico.MSN.ca) that lets screenagers create customized playlists of streaming video clips of their favorite Canadian content. It uses Windows Media Player, of course. Sympatico/MSN Video will provide on-demand access to high-resolution videos of news, entertainment, education, movie and sports clips that users can turn into custom playlists. The channel also includes breaking news from CTV, entertainment stories and interviews from CTV's "etalk Daily", children's programming and content from Magic Lantern, movie trailers and interviews from Tribute, live concert footage from the Sympatico/MSN High Speed Zone and car videos from MSN Autos. Visitors to the site will be able to: - Create customized playlists of video clips, - Search for available video content, - Watch live interviews with celebrities and musicians, and - See breaking news coverage as it happens. "Sympatico/MSN Video delivers on the broadband home promise that lets consumers access and manage a broad range of entertaining and educational content in a simple and convenient way," said Charlotte Burke, senior VP consumer Internet services at Bell Canada. "The Windows Media technology behind Sympatico/MSN Video provides viewers with seamless and fully customizable access to their favorite content," said MSN Canada VP Owen Sagness. "We believe we can offer all our customers - broadband or dial-up - the best online video experience available." Sympatico.MSN.ca is Canada's most popular online destination, with 15 million unique visitors experiencing its entertainment, information and communication services last month. Bell Sympatico is Canada's leading ISP. More Canadians - 10.6 million - use MSN Messenger than any other instant messaging service; MSN Hotmail is that country's leading Web-based e-mail service, with 12.6 million Canadian users. Sympatico/MSN Video will
present an online broadcast Sunday, April 3 at 8:30 PM EST
(9:30 PM Atlantic Time) featuring red carpet footage and
exclusive backstage interviews with JUNO winners moments after
they receive their awards. Visitors to the site will be able
to watch music video footage from Juno-nominated artists, as
well as interviews with Juno winners by CTV's "etalk
Daily" hosts Ben Mulroney and Tanya
Kim. Back
to Headlines Low-cost Streaming Video Service for the Masses from MPEG Nation MPEG Nation, a division of Digital Silo, announced this week a low-cost service to encode and stream consumer and commercial video content over its worldwide content delivery network, within minutes, via a simple upload. The company says its service will enable individuals and companies to inexpensively start streaming video across a high-performance, reliable content delivery network without having to spend hours encoding and transcoding formats, negotiating rates or worrying about ongoing storage and bandwidth costs. It claims the service is "the first-ever 'one-price-fits-all solution'" for placing video in blogs, auctions and personal and corporate Web sites. "We are working towards a world where television and video distribution are much more democratized and where a creative spark, a camera and a computer are all it takes to put video content before the eyes of thousands of people," said Scott Wolf, president and CTO of Digital Silo's MPEG Nation division. "The service offers streams in Microsoft Windows Media, RealNetworks' RealPlayer and Apple's QuickTime video formats. There are thousands of people who want to stream video from their websites, blogs, auctions, etc, but can't because of the complexity of encoding the video and the cost of having it hosted and streamed using current media solution providers." The company says that with its service, it's possible to begin streaming video from a Web site, blog or auction within minutes instead of days. It provides a three-step online form for selecting customer options such as password protection and logging. As soon as a video file is uploaded to MPEG Nation it is transcoded into the various Internet media formats for instant streaming Internet delivery. Once a file upload is complete, an HTTP link is provided to the customer, which he can paste into an e-mail, blog, auction or Web site. Clicking on the link instantly brings up his video. "MPEG Nation is truly a
disruptive technology in the streaming media space. Not only
is the service easy to use, it removes an enormous cost and
complexity barrier for anyone who wants to stream video on the
Web. In all cases MPEG Nation is hundreds and sometimes even
thousands of times less expensive than existing video
streaming providers," said Wolf. "MPEG Nation was
faster to market with a better product than anything I could
find at the time. The compression and sample rates, the
download formats, the conversion across Apple, PC and Linux -
make MPEG Nation perhaps the best choice for Web-based video
hosting," said Jon Baribeau, an early MPEG Nation
customer who produced his own music video and began streaming
it from his Web site just minutes after uploading it to MPEG
Nation. CinemaNow Delivers Concert Video Download for PCs, Portables Broadband video-on-demand service CinemaNow, which recently launched a music video download service, has inked a deal with Virgin Records to make a concert video from Ben Harper and The Blind Boys of Alabama available in a variety of formats. The video, "Live at the Apollo," was recorded when Harper and The Blind Boys got together for a one-night stand at Harlem's legendary Apollo Theater in October 2004. In an industry first, the video of the performance is being made available online through CinemaNow at the same time as its DVD release to the retail market. CinemaNow is offering the video
for download in a high-definition for the PC as well as in
formats that can be played on various Windows Mobile-based
devices including Portable Media Centers, Smartphones and
Pocket PCs. The high-def version will be available in Windows
Media Video HD at a video resolution of 720p. All CinemaNow HD
videos are encoded for optimum home theater enjoyment at up to
10 Mbps and feature 5.1 Surround Sound. Blinkx, whose search engine is
used to find video on the Net, has signed up Reuters. Blinkx
can now include in its index the thousands of hours of video
Reuters has. Viewers will see the video on the Reuters site.
Blinkx already had deals with Fox, the BBC and CNN. The Blinkx
index allows users to search for films and TV programs that
meet a specified scene description or by using quotes from the
scene. Users can also set up "smart folders" that
automatically gather user-specified content as it becomes
available. Back
to Headlines Speed Channel Premieres 'Pinks' Online Speed Channel, the first US cable network dedicated to motor sports and everything automotive, has partnered with RacingJunk.com, a classified-ad portal for the performance racing industry, for an exclusive "webisode" of the network's upcoming reality-based series "Pinks." The March 29 debut of the Webcast marked the first time an episode of a Speed Channel was available (legally, at least) on the Internet. Although the webisode is a shortened version of the show's premiere episode, speed junkies still get an exclusive - the show won't appear on TV for another four months. "Pinks" pits drag racers against each other, with the contestants putting up the titles to their cars ("pink slips," hence the name of the series). And yes, losers really have to give up their cars. The webisode is at http://pinks.racingjunk.com, with no registration required. It will be available for viewing on-demand for approximately a month. Back to Headlines
Akimbo Systems has signed a
deal with Scripps Networks that'll add programming from
Scripps' cable TV channels including Food Network, Home &
Garden Television and DIY Network to its service. Akimbo's
service requires a $200 set-top box that connects to the TV
(no PC required), a broadband connection and $9.99 a month.
"Our content is so well known and watched by audiences
around the world, yet increasingly they're asking to watch it
on-demand," said Channing Dawson, senior VP of emerging
media at Scripps Networks. "Akimbo will give consumers
convenient on-demand access to a broad selection of Scripps
programming for viewing on their
televisions." Back
to Headlines Thomson Acquires Home Gateway Developer Thomson has acquired Inventel, a maker of home gateway gear (DSL modems and the like) for broadband ISPs, for Thomson stock. Thomson intends to use Inventel's products and expertise to the expand voice and data product line that Thomson sells to telecom operators and ISPs worldwide. Thomson wants to expand its customer base, market reach and ranges of multiple-play gateways. Inventel's most notable product is its DV5203/DV7203 that is a combination VoIP-DSL modem with a "digitally enhanced cordless telephony" (DECT) handset. Features: - Integrated ADSL2+ modem (up to 24 Mbps downstream). Multiple virtual channels for high-quality triple-play service thanks to the prioritization of ATM classes. High-end solution for TV-over-DSL and video-on-demand. - Complete router including a full-featured firewall provides the end-user with an easily configurable, secure and reliable home network. In addition to the wireless connections, standard 10/100 and USB interfaces are available. - 802.11g-compliant access point for high-speed (54 Mbps) Internet access throughout the home. Highest wireless security (WPA) is enabled by default with no hassle for the end-user. Mac access control and association process with hardware button enable secure wireless networking. Ready for wireless media streaming with 802.11e QoS support. - Remote management and easy to use Web browser-based setup. ISPs can individually configure added value services and centrally manage and maintain their gateways. A private company based in Paris, Inventel had its revenues increase threefold between 2003 and 2004. Inventel also has expertise in wireless voice and data communications (Wi-Fi, Bluetooth). Thomson says the acquisition will bring synergies in terms of technology, products and services, customer base and geography. It expects Inventel to expand and complement its in-house design capabilities, its DECT and wireless technology offering, its portfolio of multiple-play gateways and "home networking" products and its solutions for the growing "hotspot" market.
Thomson said it would purchase in the market an amount of its shares equivalent to that contributed in the acquisition that it estimated to be 3.2 million shares. It expects the acquisition to be neutral to Thomson's core business profitability in its first quarter of ownership and positive thereafter. Inventel will be part of Thomson's Access Platforms & Gateways business unit within the Systems & Equipments Division. That business unit sells products and solutions to satellite, cable and terrestrial operators worldwide. It also offers a range of telecom systems and equipment such as voice products, high-speed DSL modems, IP video boxes and multiple-play gateways. "Increasing our already
substantial business with telecom operators is one of our
important areas of development, as highlighted in our Two-Year
Plan. This acquisition, which is likely to be followed by
others, will further Thomson's objective of strengthening its
role as a strategic supplier and partner to this important
customer base," said Thomson chairman and CEO Frank
Dangeard. Back
to Headlines Zennstrom's Skype Used for File Swapping Isn't this where Niklas Zennstrom, the founder of VoIP start-up Skype, came in? Skype users have begun to use Internet telephony service to distribute music files directly to other users, according to CNET's News.com. Zennstrom also started Kazaa BV, which developed the FastTrack P2P network and the Kazaa software (now owned by Sharman Networks) that has made it possible for hundreds of millions of copyright-protected music and movie files to be swapped without payment or permission. Zennstrom says that the network Skype uses is very similar in structure to the FastTrack network that P2P firms such as Sharman, Grokster and StreamCast's Morpheus use. However, he says, the Skype network employs end-to-end encryption to protect user privacy. He also says that unlike the FastTrack/Kazaa network and software he developed, Skype contains no spyware or adware. A third generation of P2P technology ("3G P2P"), or Global Index (GI) was a necessary development, according to Zennstrom, who says it represents "yet another paradigm shift in the notion of scaleable networks." He describes Global Index technology as "a multi-tiered network where super nodes communicate in such a way that every node in the network has full knowledge of all available users and resources with minimal latency." Skype users have reportedly also developed a way of connecting portable music devices to the Skype network to turn them into a broadcast device that can transmit music to any Skype subscriber, now approaching 30 million. Subscribers also use the Skype network for "Skypecasts," which, like "podcasts," are recordings that other users can download to a computer and transfer to a portable music player. There's no reason, of course, that Skypecasts can't also be copyright-protected music tracks. N'est pas? Skype investors include Bessemer Venture Partners and Silicon Valley VC Bill Draper and his son Tim, who is the managing director of VC firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson and a personal investor in Skype. He compares Skype to Hotmail, one of his biggest successes. See http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1080135/posts
for a detailed business history of Niklas Zennstrom, Kazaa and
Skype. Back
to Headlines Cuban Financing P2P Firms before Supreme Court Mark Cuban, of Dallas Mavericks and Broadcast.com fame, he sold Broadcast.com to Yahoo in 1955 for $5 billion, has put up an unspecified amount to money to help P2P outfits Grokster and StreamCast defend themselves against the record labels and movie studios in the case in front of the Supreme Court. "If Grokster loses, technological innovation might not die, but it will be the domain of big corporations only," Cuban wrote in his blog at www.blogmaverick.com. Cuban owns several content operations including HDNet Films, Landmark Theaters, Magnolia Pictures and the Dallas Mavericks professional basketball team. He said technological innovation like Internet file swapping has legitimate uses. "Bits are bits. We don't care how they are distributed, just that they are. We want our content to get to the customer in the way the customer wants, when they want to it, at a price that is of value to them. Simple business." Here's how the tit-for-tat
iTunes game is played: 'N' Versions of Windows Coming to Europe "Windows XP Home Edition
N" - the "N" stands for "not with media
player" is the name that Microsoft and the European
Commission have agreed to for the version of Windows that does
not come bundled with Windows Media player. Microsoft proposed
10 names such as "Windows XP Reduced Media Edition"
that the EU found unacceptable. The EC then suggested the
"N" name and Microsoft agreed. All this was caused
by an EU ruling last year that Microsoft had been acting in an
anti-competitive manner by bundling Windows Media Player with
its Windows operating system, which virtually every consumer
PC and most commercials PCs come with pre-installed from the
factory. The bundling, the EC said, put Microsoft rivals such
as RealNetworks at an unfair advantage. The "N"
version should be available in Europe in a few
weeks. Back
to Headlines T-Mobile Czech Republic Chooses Oplayo T-Mobile Czech Republic is the
latest wireless operator to choose the Vidlet media player
from Oplayo to power its mobile video service. In 2004 some
half a million mobile phones were able to play Oplayo videos;
the company expects that number to pass 900 million by the end
of this year. Oplayo claims that Vidlet can play videos on
nearly any cell phone with a color screen. Back
to Headlines Cingular Tops Worst Customer Service List Cingular Wireless, the largest
US cell phone service provider after acquiring AT&T
Wireless, has the worst customer service, according to Federal
Communications Commission statistics obtained by the Wall
Street Journal. The poor ratings are based on customer
complaints about everything from service quality and dropped
calls to billing errors. Cingular topped the list with 4.6 per
100,000 customers complaining. The Wall Street Journal
obtained the FCC data through a Freedom of Information
request. Following Cingular were T-Mobile and the
soon-to-merge partners Sprint PCS and Nextel Communications.
Verizon, the second largest cell phone provider, rated the
best in customer service with only 1.4 complaints per
100,000. Back
to Headlines iPods Popular with NY Subway Thieves The hottest product for New
York subway robbers is, after cash, iPods, according to the
New York Times. That makes sense; iPods are valuable, easy to
hide and quick to sell. Back
to Headlines "The plumbing of IT is
converging. But there are so many different devices the trends
are of a divergent nature." - Adam Bain, VP of technology
and production at Fox Sports Interactive during the Digital
Hollywood conference. Back
to Headlines Raising Drug Prices Good for Patients "In New York, con men are
said to sell naive fools the Brooklyn Bridge, a publicly owned
landmark. I could sell a bridge to anyone who believes some
people's comments, including this gem from Billy Tauzin,
infamous former leader of the Congressional telecom group:
Drastically rising the price of drugs 'is good for India, and
good for Indian patients.' Ex-Congressman Tauzin, of the
Tauzin-Dingell-Bell bill, now is the $2-million-per-year
spokesman for PhRMA, the drug companies' lobbying agency. No
one knows the power of money and mis-direction in American
politics than our Billy." - Dave Burstein in his DSL
Prime newsletter. The Tauzin bill prohibits the government
from negotiating prices with the pharmaceutical companies or
from purchasing medicines in Canada where they are
considerably less costly than in the US. Back
to Headlines "It's probably just a question of time before we get a live transmission of a decapitation," an unnamed European defense analyst told Reuters, which reported on how Islamic extremists post propaganda messages and video recordings of beheadings and other terrorist acts on the Internet. The report says that some sites that claim no ties to militants will readily offer links to al Qaeda sites hosting videos.
Back
to Headlines
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