Month: August 2003

“Is 99c too much for online music?” poll shows interesting splits

A recent Billboard poll of just over 9,000 votes has just released its results. When asked if they thought that 99c was too much to pay for a single music track, there responses were –

32% – 99c too much
29% – why pay when I can download for free?
22% – OK if the quality and selection of the tracks is good
17% – fair amount, “based on what you have to pay for an album.”

There are a couple of few ways at looking at this.

  • There’s a rough three way split between the price being OK (39%), people wanting it for free (29%) and the price is too high (32%).
  • 61% are not being happy to pay 99c because either it’s viewed as too much or they have no intention of paying for it no matter how cheap it is and 39% (22% + 17%) thinking that the cost is reasonable.
  • Of those prepared to pay for music online, more are willing to the pay the 99c price – 39% vs 32%.

It’s important to remember that this poll isn’t fully representative of the general public as it was taken online, therefore is biased toward people who are already online, are enthused enough to fill out a poll and visit the Billboard site.

Time will tell if UK customer will be prepared to pay more more than 99c per track when the Link

UK Film Council and government setup anti-piracy task-force

An anti-piracy task-force is being setup by the UK Film Council and government. With the Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT) estimating the cost of counterfeiting to the UK’s domestic film industry at around £400m, the task-force will focus on getting accurate figures for the size of the problem and suggestions of how it can be tackled.

The new task-force, which will be chaired by UK Film Council board member Nigel Green, includes representatives of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, UK film producers, distributors, exhibitors, visual effects companies and major US studios, film sales agents, as well as actors’ union Equity.

Copy VHS tapes are still the major problem, with around one in three videos purchased in the UK believed to be an unauthorised copies. FACT say the numbers of pirate DVDs are also expanding rapidly citing a number of 100,000 DVD raids having been carried out already this year. The majority of the DVD originate in the Far East.

Links – UK Film Council, FACT

DI Music – multilayered music format

An interesting new electronic music format is being spoken about as an advance on MP3. DI Music, as it’s being labelled, enables the listener to select the sections of the tracks that are played back in real time – effectively live remixing on playback.

Tracks need to be specifically prepared for this format using software from digimpro and when mixing the track, the recording artist is able include multiple versions of sections of the track eg. different drum tracks could be included. This will obviously take a lot of extra thought and consideration in preparing tracks for release.

We feel this is a very interesting idea as to what may be possible with many different medias, but with no demonstration publicly available to date, it’s hard to judge whether this is something that consumers will be interested in taking advantage of. While a hardcore of music enthusiasts are bound to be interested in this, we suspect that most listeners will find it hard to grab the concept and perhaps even fewer will be interested enough to be actively involved in mixing the tracks they are listening to.

ATi to supply graphics chip for Xbox 2

After a long period of speculation and rurmors Microsoft has confirmed that it is to change the supplier for it graphics subsystem on the Xbox 2 to ATi. Nvidia supplies the chip set for the current Xbox.

The base cost of the Xbox has been something of a concern to Microsoft and they have been keen to drive the price down to reduce the amount of money they lose on each one. Many in the industry feel that Microsoft wanted Nvidia to drop their previously agreed unit price for the current Xbox graphics chips and Nvidia declined. Nvidia recently reported a hike in profits that they attributed to the Xbox deal.

The official Microsoft quote was, “We’re combining Microsoft’s vision, software experience and R&D resources with ATI’s pioneering leadership in graphics technologies to create innovative future Xbox products and services that meet the lifestyle needs of consumers in the Digital Decade,” said Robbie Bach, senior vice president of the Home and Entertainment Division at Microsoft. “We selected ATI after reviewing the top graphics technologies in development and determining that ATI’s technical vision fits perfectly with the future direction of Xbox.”

Link

Microsoft to launch European single music track download service

Microsoft will be partnering with On Demand Distribution (OD2) to launch a European rival to the US-only Apple iTunes service. OD2 currently has 200,000 tracks available from five major record companies, which they hope to expand to 300,000 in the next few weeks.The proposed pricing of single tracks is 75 pence (Euro 1.06, $1.21) with albums being £7.99 (Euro 11.37, $12.86). The Apple service pound equivalent is about 62p and £6.20.The higher pricing of the proposed UK service will re-ignite the debate over the pricing of electronically delivered good compared with their physical CD equivalent. The argument from those that say the download versions are priced to highly is that these aren’t physical good that need to be manufactured, packaged, shipped and justify their place on a retailers shelf – they’re electrons, that once encoded take up a tiny amount of low cost disk space and then have a low cost of distribution. The companies justify the prices saying they have large investments in server hardware. As more providers enter the market, competition lowers prices – in the US, rival pay-and-download services have started dropping their prices, with some offering tracks at 79 cents.It’s widely acknowledged that the Apple iTunes service has been a great success. The problem for the world at-large is that currently it only runs on Apple hardware, which only accounts for around 5% of all computers, and it is currently only available in the USA. Among the reasons that the Apple service has been embraced so heartily, is that is it fantastically easy to use, it recommends related music to you and the licensing terms gives the purchaser a lot of freedom to move their purchased music to different computers and portable music players. Details have yet to emerge as to what the Microsoft/OD2 offering will be like.

Review of the Linksys WMA11B Wireless-B Media Adapter

Tom Hardware reviews the Linksys WMA11B Wireless-B Media Adapter.

In the same vain as other Digital Media Adaptors based on the Intel reference design, this VHS cassette-sized unit connects to a TV set, Using the supplied remote control it allows the browsing and playback of photo’s, music and video, that are held on your networked Windows PC, to be enjoyed through your TV screen. Interestingly, the serving machine has to be running Windows XP but can be connected either via cabling or using 802.11b, WiFi connection.

It’s essentially the same functionalisty as Sony’s Roomlink, but has the advatage that you don’t need to buy a Sony Vaio PC to serve the content from. To date, Sony won’t sell the serving software seperatley.

It’s works with the mainstreem formats of media, but there’s no mention of the Ogg Vobis, which is growing in popularity with computer audiofiles.

Their view of the product is that it’s a good first stab. Street price should be around $149.

Review

DivX.com becomes first US retailer for KiSS DP-500 DVD player

KiSS was the first licensee of the DivX codec for use in a DVD player, now DivX.com will be the first retail channel for the DP-500 at a price of $299.

In addition to supporting DivX 3.xx, 4.xx and 5.xx.video technology, the DP-500 offers a number of cutting edge features including progressive scan, Ethernet 10/100, Internet radio streaming, PC-Link, support for DVD, SVCD, VCD, CD, MP3, Ogg Vorbis, CD-RW & DVD-RW/+RW playback, and a photo album feature that enables users to view digital photos on a television.

Link

NTL boss steps down

No great surprise to see that Barclay Knapp, who headed up NTL, is to leave the commpany. Many people have been amazed to see that he’s lasted a long as he has after the company emerged from bankruptcy in January. He’ll be replaced by current chief operating officer, Simon Duffy.

Sales for the April to June quarter edged slightly higher to £551m, lifted by subscription revenues from 40,000 new customers. Losses for the quarter have been cut by 38% but still stand at £159m ($254m).

Link

Garry Kasparov vs 3d Virtual Reality

Garry Kasparov will be playing another Man vs Computer chess match at the New York Athletic Club starting 11th November this year.

The unique twist on this match, is that using the X3D Display, the chess board will appear to be “floating in the air between man and computer” and he will use voice commands to move the virtual 3D pieces. 3D viewing has been possible for quite a while, but X3D Technologies are claiming X3D Display is viewable by the naked eye, rather than with the normal synchronised shutter glasses.

Billed as “the most dominant chess program and the most powerful 3D software to challenge the greatest chess brain of all time”, it will be Webcasted at www.X3D.com.

This event is a little different from a lot of their other sponsored entertainment content, which is headlined by Swimsuit models in 3D.

Link

UK film council announces world’s first ever ‘e-premiere’

The UK film council is claiming a global first. The new feature film, This is not a Love Song, will be released simultaneously in a number of different formats on Friday 5 September. It will be streamed and digitally projected in selected cinemas across the UK and be made available for streaming and download on the Internet on the same day.

The whole process of film-making has been extremely rapid. Written by Simon Beaufoy (The Full Monty) in under two weeks, then shot on PD-150 DV cameras in just 12 days, under the direction of Bille Eltringham (The Darkest Light) and digitally edited on Avid.

Richard Morris of Juggernaut Pictures, the online producer of the event, told us that they wanted to use a mixture of different distribution formats to cinemas around the country. The ‘e-premiere’, as it’s being labelled, will be at the following four cinemas in the

Watershed, Bristol – Live projected streamed video
Cornerhouse, Manchester – 35mm print
Showroom, Sheffield – Digital projection
The Other Cinema, London – Digital projection

The streamed video will be delivered in Microsoft Media 9 format at 700k, giving VHS quality that will then be projected. Both of the digital projections will be driven by Digi Beta tape.

Online viewing will be available, on the same day, from www.thisisnotalovesong.com at a cost “less than renting a video”. As the non-UK film rights have been sold in other territories, the films distributor have insisted that its viewing be restricted to the UK only. To try and ensure this the Internet-delivered versions will be protected by Digital Envoy’s Geo-Targeting technology, which attempts to understand where the viewer is using information such as their source IP address.

The UK film council tells us they are in the process of gathering lottery funds to put low-cost digital projection into 150 cinemas around the UK. Digital distribution makes it far more economic to show non-blockbuster films in smaller venues.