Month: September 2003

Tony Ball to step down as Sky CEO – official

After much speculation over the last few days, Sky has confirmed that Tony Ball will step down as BSkyB’s Chief Executive or in the words of the Sky press release “he has decided not to renew his service contract with the Company”.

He’ll stay with Sky until a successor has been appointed – “likely to be well before his current contract ends on 31st May 2004”. The industries view is that there are some large commercial changes likely at Sky, as changing the CEO is often a signal to this is Murdock companies.

Speculation is rife as to the successor, but a fair amount of the smart money is on James Murdock, who is currently with Asia’s Star TV.

BSkyB is the dominant digital TV platform in the UK with nearly seven millions homes supplied through satellite.

Sky press release

Don’t forget – free wireless access on One Unwired Day, 25 Sept.

Just in case you were going to forget, the Intel-sponsored One Unwired Day is going to be on 25 September. We would be surprised if you have missed it as it has so been heavily promoted.

To summarise, most of the companies involved in WiFi are getting together to give free access to their wireless networks, at a huge numbers of locations worldwide.

One of the biggest networks in the USA is Boingo who are gold sponsor of the event and will be present at the Wi-Fi festivals held in New York City, Chicago and San Francisco. So keen is Boingo for the world  to become wireless, that they are also offering anyone who signs up for the One Unwired Day an additional two months free access.

They are also providing a network sniffer application that shows the wireless networks that are within range of your computer. It is in a similar vain to the long available NetStumbler, but has the added advantage of having a database of addresses around the world that provide free and pay for WiFi access.

We don’t really see One Unwired Day changing the world, but imagine that the huge amount of money that being spent on marketing should slightly raise WiFi in the publics consciousness.

Intel One Unwired Day

Find a One Unwired Day global hotspot

NetStumbler software

Boingo network sniffer software

More Actors Provide Voice Talent In Video Games

Sony’s new real-time strategy Lords of EverQuest further confirms the trend that television and film actors are increasingly appearing in video games, usually as voice talent. Lords of EverQuest features quite a roster of film and TV talent, including John Rhy-Davies, Dwight Shultz and Ron Perlman.

Other high profile actors have voiced or appeared in video games – including Ray Liotta, Dennis Hopper, Burt Reynolds, Michael Madsen and Kyle MacLachlan in the Grand Theft Auto series along.

The breakthrough was some years ago with Hamill in the Wing Comander series. He has since gone onto star in many more video games, including dark Cloud 2, Soldier of Fortune II, Grandia Xtreme, and Batman Vengeance. This is possibly more than any other actor, but perhaps you could prove us wrong.

This gradual blurring between more traditional media acting jobs and video games shows greater acceptance of games as a valid art form.

Cast list for Grand Theft Auto: Vice City

Bill Black on casting actors in video games

Sony’s Lords of EverQuest site

The Dark House – Interactive Radio Drama, BBC Radio 4

Tomorrow, Tuesday 23 September, 11pm – 11:45pm (BST), BBC Radio Four will be running an interactive drama piece called The Dark House.

Produced by theatre/radio director Izzy Mant and sound designer/composer Nick Ryan and written by Mike Walker, it thankfully does not follow the expected, first-generational thinking of interactive drama – the plot reached a junction point, and the story branches in one of a number of paths – but instead gives the listener a chance to influence, via text message or telephone call, which character the audience ‘inhabits’ – Lucy, Kelly or Jim.

The first five minutes set the scene, then every three minutes the SMS and phone votes are collated to determine which character’s point of view is heard next. An alarming sound will signal the switching of the audience from one character’s thoughts to another’s and to listening from the chosen character spacial perspective, as if through their ears.

It is recorded using a binaural recording technique, which the BBC explains as being :-

“Based on the principals of human hearing, binaural recordings are made by placing microphones near the actor’s ears. Those listening on stereo equipment will experience spatialised 3D sound, immersing the listener in the Dark House. The drama recording also involved some sections of improvisation to create a heightened realism in the dark”

Those who are familiar with Phonography will be aware of binaural recording and be aware just how impressive and immersive it can be.

If you aren’t able to hear it when it is broadcast, or you don’t like the audience chosen character perspectives, The Dark House will be available at the site as it was broadcast or for your own manipulation afterwards.

We feel this sounds like an interesting direction to experiment with interactive drama and plan to bring a review to you after the event.

Listen to the trailer

Watch to the trailer

Visit The Dark House site

ReplayTV creator launches new HiDef digital media device

pRoku Labs have for the last year been quietly developing products that connect to High-Definition TV’s and their first device, the Roku HD1000, launches today. They claim it is the first digital media player to be designed for high-definition televisions and with a price tag of $499, Roku is targeting the high-end consumer, those already spending $3,000 or more on an HDTV set.

The HD1000 can play photo slideshows, video or music files from its front mounted built-in memory card slots (CompactFlash, MMC, SD, Memory Stick or SmartMedia) or, using either its built-in 10/100 Ethernet or optional WiFi adaptor, can play media files streamed from a PC or Mac.

You will have noticed that this is a recall only device – it has no ability to record. Many would expect that this device would come with a hard drive onboard, but perhaps because of the extensive and eventually fatal attention that ReplyTV got from its ability to record programs and skip adverts, this has been left for a later product.

Roku is trying a novel approach to encourage owners of large High-Def screens to treat them as picture frames or as windows to alternative location. To this end they are selling $69 memory cards filled with classic paintings, nature and aquarium images.

By keeping their overheads to a minimum, the company would break even by selling 10,000 units, but hopes to become profitable by selling at least 20,000 units within a year. Clearly a small market currently. They hope to gain additional income by its software to other set-top box and television makers and given the HD100 is based on an open Linux-based platform, they hope to encourage third-party developers to build applications for it using the published API.

Roku is lead by Anthony Woods, the creator of ReplayTV. ReplayTV was the first consumer grade hard disk video recorder to come to market, launching in 1999, a few months prior to the more widely known TiVo. Roku labs is not to be confused with Roku Technologies who have been developing peer to peer technologies.

Link

Michael Powell, US FCC, still loves his TiVo

The New York Times has a very quick Q&A with Michael Powell, who heads up the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

We know he got a TiVo for christmas 2002, but what is really encouraging is that he is still talking about it with enthusiasm and an understanding of the siginificance of PVR’s.

“I think there’s something going on in the world that’s very profound. We’re moving to a world of incredible intimacy in mass media. I’m my own programmer, not NBC.”

Q&A Link

Ford to offer SIRIUS satellite radio option

US satellite radio service operator SIRIUS has struck a deal with Ford US to offer their radios as a dealer-installed option on ten different Ford, Lincoln and Mercury vehicles in the 2004 model year. Ford say they may expand the offering to other cars in their range.

The $329 device can tune in to 100 radio stations – 60 playing commercial-free music and 40 others covering news and sport – all delivered over satellite. In addition to the apparently clean delivery of music, the name of the artist, song title and category are displayed on the unit. Monthly subscription is $12.95.

Prior to satellite radio, it was not possible to listen to the same radio station when travelling coast-to-coast across the US.

One thing we are not clear on is how potential Ford owners will feel about having to pay for the units when the tuners are currently available free from SIRIUS.

SIRIUS

New lawsuits against DVD backup/copying software companies

Paramount Pictures and 20th Century Fox have filed in a New York court against Tritton Technologies, QOJ, World Reach and Proto Ventures. They are asking the court to halt sales of their software, and are seeking unspecified monetary damages. The software is sold both in US retail stores or online.

Tritton distribute CopyWare, a DVD backup/copying application created by UK software company Redxpress that we’ve covered previously.

The Motion Picture Association of America is currently in legal actions against 321 Studio and their DVD X Copy software both in the US and the UK. In a interview with Digital-Lifestyles.info, Rob Semaan, CEO of 321 Studios told us that they intend to vigorously defend both cases which he felt were attacking the consumers Fair Rights usage. The film industry views the software as tools for piracy.

AT&T: Film industry insiders are major source for online pirate films

The current approach of the US film industry to the perceived threat of Internet-distributed film piracy is to cast blame on the consumer and the number of filings of legal action against the creators of DVD-backup software bears testament to this. Perhaps they view the RIAA as their role model in this regard, pursue the consumer, even sue to consumer to try and halt the problem. We and others really do not think this is the best approach. How ever just the protection of their copyright material might be, it is simple business sense, you just do not attack your customers.

Recent AT&T research claimed that 80% of the 300 movies that they looked at on file sharing networks “appeared to have been leaked by industry insiders”. To further underline the fact that it was not consumers who were placing the movies online, AT&T also found that most of the films were available before their public DVD released. This will not come as a surprise to anyone who has a connection to the film industry – they know that film material floats around freely.

If copyright holders continuously blame the consumer and tell them “We don’t trust you”, they will eventually tire of this, lose faith and leave, with the strong possibility that they never return. We’re sure that no-one in the industry wants that.