Month: September 2003

IEEE Approves 802.15.4 (ZigBee)

The IEEE has approved the 802.15.4 wireless standard for simple devices. More widely known as ZigBee, designed for low power, low complexity units, applications for 802.15.4 include interactive toys, inventory tracking and smart badges. WPAN (Wireless Personal Area Network) devices are intended to operate in the user’s Personal Operating Space (POS), an area of effect of about ten metres.

Based on the broader Bluetooth specification, the standard covers three data rates: 20kbps, 40kbps and 250kbps, but is differentiated from HomeRF and Bluetooth by its greater emphasis on device simplicity and low power consumption.

Of course, there will be more privacy worries raised as inventory tags employing RFID (Radio Frequency ID) tags become more sophisticated, smaller and indeed washable. Clothing stores will not only be able to track their products in the warehouse and on the shelves but will know when you come back wearing something you bought there. Gillette recently abandoned (for the time being) plans to use RFID technology in their Mach 3 line of razor blades in Europe.

Digital Sun already have an interesting 802.15.14 product in the market: the S.Sense. There are two main components: a receiver that fits the control box of your garden sprinkler and an number spikes that you insert into your lawn. When the spikes detect that the ground is dry, they notify the sprinkler to do its stuff. Because of the low power consumption of the standard, each spike will fun for about a year on a AA battery.

IEEE on 802.15.4 Link

ZigBee Alliance Press Release (PDF)
Gillette on RFID Link

nCube’s Technology Enables Telefonica VOD Service

nCUBE and Telefonica de Espania have signed a deal to bring video on demand to a number of trial areas in Spain.

nCUBE are not just known for their VOD systems – they are also a leader in advert insertion systems where digital adverts are inserted into cable content.  The deal with Telefonica de Espana will provide viewers in the Madrid/Barcelona/Alicante regions with films and other content though their ADSL connection to a set-top box, and so straight to their TV – users won’t need a PC.  The service will be called “imagenio”.

Users will be able to control the content through their remotes.  nCUBE hope to be able to offer “everything on demand” (which their website helpfully terms as “EOD”) in the future.

Michael Pohl, president and CEO of nCUBE Corporation said “This strategic relationship with Telefonica is further validation of nCUBE’s flexibility and ability to cost-effectively deliver compelling on-demand services across multiple platforms, and we look forward to working with them as they continue to expand their VOD offering.”

n4x servers can cast to communities of between 5,000 and 500,000 users – ideal for scattered populations and dense cities.  The nCUBE platform can provide 140,000 hours of content – which is a lot of dodgy soap operas in anyone’s book.

The nCUBE platform: http://www.ncube.com/pressroom/downloads/n41.pdf

Sony’s Dream World Comes to Europe

Having tested the waters with smaller, more focussed events such as The PlayStation Experience in London, the Sony group of companies will be showcasing their entire entertainment offering at the Sony Dream World exhibition in Paris this weekend.

The two-day event will feature Sony’s main consumer divisions: Sony, Sony Computer Entertainment, Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications, Sony Music Entertainment and Sony Pictures Entertainment.

This is the second Dream World event – the first, last September in Yokohama, attracted 50,000 visitors.

Expected highlights of the show will be the European debut of the SDR-4X bipedal robot, the new Blue-ray disc recorder and the latest addition to the popular Clié PDA range, the PEG-UX50 with integrated wi-fi and Bluetooth to add to the ranges already solid multimedia capabilities.

The PSX, the PlayStation “2.5” will be seen for the first time outside Japan – a true convergent appliance, the PSX features a TIVO-like hard disk recorder for storing off-the-air and home video, as well as the established DVD-playing and games console functions.

Of special interest to the digital-lifestyle.info is the Network Media Receiver, a device for streaming video content around the home, and the PC-TV – a combined device that lets viewers browse the web and use a PC, but which is still a fully functional TV.

Sony hopes that the 7000m2 exhibition at the Palais des Congrès will capture the lifestyle of their customers and demonstrate how their products integrate into digital life.

Sony Music artists will be performing at the event – Galleon, Cedric Atlan, Julie Zenatti, Anne Warin and Dadoo. They must be popular in France, because we’ve never heard of them. Well, that’s the excuse we’re using.

Details of the programme of events and ticket information are available from http://www.sdw.sony-europe.com/sonydreamworld/jsp/home.jsp

Press release: http://www.sony.com/SCA/press/030605.shtml
 Images from Sony Dream World 2002: http://rapislazuli.dyndns.org/~nimori/imgs/20020914/noflash.html

AIBO Gets an Upgrade

The new revision of AIBO, the ERS-7 will soon be available in Europe.  Sony’s recreational robot has been extremely popular, despite its high cost, since the introduction of the ERS-110 in 1999 – the series has sold a reported 45,000 units. As the various models have retail prices between £800 and £1200, this has obviously been a success for Sony, and indeed become a cultural icon.

The new features on this unit include a more expressive face display (the “Illume-Face”), and a restyled casing.  More dramatically, the ERS-7 features an improved memory that enables the robot to retain and develop its personality over its lifecycle. We’re wondering if there will be a tearful moment in the house when AIBO has to go and “live on a farm” when he gets a bit older.

Sony claim the personality development routines are a significant step in artificial intelligence.

The new AIBO is also the best connected ever – using a built-in wireless LAN, he can connect to PCs and other mobile devices.  His nose camera allows him to perceive his environment three times better than before, distinguishing shapes, patterns and even faces. He can send photographs of his surroundings and your au pair to your mobile phone.

We would have liked to have brought you some links on AIBO hacking, but Sony used the DCMA to bring all the sites down.

You’ll be able to see the new AIBO in the “flesh” if you’re in Paris at the weekend at the Sony Dream World exhibition.

AIBO’s home page: http://www.aibo-europe.com/

Handheld video player, ZVUE!, publicly demonstrated

ZVUE!, a handheld video player that has been spoken about for a while has now been publicly demonstrated. It plays MP3s, videos and displays photographs, all for $99.

It is thought that the price is kept so low by only allowing video in the proprietary HHE format to play. This content will need to be bought direct from HandHeld Entertainments, the company behind it. They plans to have it in the shops by October.

Audio Interview with CEO & story link
Hand Held Entertainment

321 Studios are ready to defend MPA legal action

Following the announcement of legal action by the Motion Picture Association (MPA) against DVD copying software company 321 Studios, the companies founder, Robert Moore, and its CEO, Rob Semaan will be coming to the UK on Monday to clarify their position.

They hold a strong belief that individuals should be able to backup copies of their DVD’s and said “Following on from similar lawsuits in the U.S., we have been anticipating this legal action, and are fully prepared to meet it head on.  We will fight it, and are certainly not prepared to take it lying down, or shut up shop and go away.”

The million-plus selling software already has a number of safeguards in place to avoid mass duplication of titles. These include restricting the owners to only make up to three copies of any one DVD and not allowing the copying of copied discs.

Jack Valenti, the MPA President and CEO view is quite different, “The law does not allow for the copying of commercial DVDs, and technologies designed to get round copyright protection are plain unlawful.”

Both parties believe they are right and are ready for a fight in the English High Courts. The lawyers must be pleased.

Review of six 19″ LCD screen

Review of six 19″ LCD screens, the majority of them are under 1,000 Euros. The test are particularly tough including high-res game play. The screen all use two type of screens, the MVA (Fujitsu) or PVA (the Samsung version of MVA), with both of them being 25ms response times (the average time required for a liquid crystal cell to go from active to inactive and back to active again).

They’re all (Acer L1931, Iiyama AS4821DT BK, Nec LCD1980SX, Nec LCD1920NX, Samsung SyncMaster 192B, Sony SDM-S93) judged as pretty much the same standard.

Review link

Movielink “upgrade” to version 2.0

Movielink, who supply a selection of films over the Internet, has revamped its offering, aiming to make the service faster and more convenient to use.

Many in the industry have felt that the clunky, unfriendly service has been a big barrier to customers regularly using the service, and it is widely thought that the new features are many things that most customers would expect to be part of the service.

Where previously users had to watch the movie in one sitting, and the movie remove itself after that viewing. Version 1.0 will allow customers to rent a movie multiple times within a 30-day period without having to download again. It also gives users the ability to stop a movie, shut down the computer, then later resume viewing at the same point. Features that any PVR-savvy customer would expect.

The new software will also allow users to view the movie while it is still being downloaded, so that a user can begin watching a film within two to 10 minutes of starting a download – again, an expected feature. They claim to be adding new customers at a rate of between 10 percent and 20 percent a month.

So slowly, slowly the service is starting to improve. The service is not available outside the US.

Link

Review of Gateway PC-connected DVD player

Using a wireless 802.11b, WiFi connection to a computer, this $249 (£159) DVD player can also pull photo’s, audio and video from your PC, after installing media server software on your PC. Media files on the network can be navigated using the player’s remote control, through a Windows Explorer-like interface on the TV.

Not all media format are supported. On the audio side, the player supports MP3 and WMA audio, but not Ogg Vorbis or AAC formats. Only MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 video formats are available for playback, but surprisingly there is no support for AVI (including DivX), MOV, or WMV files. JPEG images are supported but TIFF or BMP are not – which isn’t much of a problem.

The review reports the delivery of photos and music files worked well over the wireless link but video struggled, which sound like a bandwidth problem. It’s not clear from the review what the quality of the wireless connection was and it may have been that the DVD player was placed a long way away from the PC holding the media, and bandwidth delivery could have been patchy.

It sound like a reasonable initial start for Gateway in the media hub arena but the media server software still have a few bugs that need to be ironed out.

Link

Encouraging results in UK business broadband survey

British Chambers of Commerce have released the results of what they claim is the largest independent survey of business broadband usage, covering 4,000 UK businesses.

They found that the percentage of companies with a broadband Internet connection has doubled from 19 per cent. to 39 per cent. over the last year.

Different companies saw different advantages to broadband. Over 60% of all companies see more effective communication as the biggest benefit, while 46% felt the next most important benefit to be improved business productivity and 45% of all companies cited cost savings as a benefit.

Interestingly over 60% of all companies thought their customers would pressure them within the next five years to conduct business that requires a broadband connection. Nearly half of all companies, (48%) predict suppliers will exert similar pressure.

Remote working was seen as a big advantage with 53% of businesses now report that on average their staff work from more than one location for at least one day a week. Surprisingly 11% of companies report that more than half of their employees work at more than one location for at least one day a week.

Link