Month: March 2004

BSkyB Announces Next Stage for Sky+

The Sky+ personal video recorder is set to evolve under new plans from BSkyB: they want to transform the PVR into a video and audio jukebox that subscribers can download films and music to.

Other plans include integrating five separate tuners – a move which will allow subscribers to record four channels simultaneously whilst watching a fifth.

Sky are also working on a technology that will allow Sky+ users to download content from their set top box to their portable video player so they can watch recorded programming whilst out an about.

Sky hopes to make £400 from each subscriber per year by the end of 2005. By building new functionality into their Sky+ product and then charging on a service by service basis, they should be able to earn significantly more revenue per customer, on top of the basic £15 subscription fee.

Since most domestic users are unlikely to ever want to record four separate programmes whilst watching a fifth, it seems to Digital Lifestyles that BSkyB will probably use this new capability to download films and programming to the PVR automatically, to a dedicated area of the hard disk. This will then allow Sky to promote the programming and offer it to to subscribers on an impulse buy, pay-per-view basis.

Media Guardian on Sky’s plans

Hewlett-Packard making strides in DRM

HP has licensed content protection technology from Intel and has developed a new copy protection technique with Philips.

Hewlett Packard has licensed a copy protection system from Intel that prevents video from recorded as it travels between devices, such as between a video card and TV.

HP is also working with Philips to develop a technology that will allow users to make legal and protected recordings from digital broadcast sources, such as from cable, in accordance with the new FCC broadcast flag rules.

Reuters

SCO Sues First Customers; Judge Orders SCO to Submit Disputed Code

SCO named the recipients of their first two lawsuits in their mammoth online conference call yesterday: AutoZone and Daimler Chrysler. They are being targeted as they run Linux – and of course SCO claims ownership to part of the source code of the Linux kernel, having found its way there from UNIX System V.

Meanwhile, in Utah, SCO have been ordered to identify all lines of Linux source code that it claims ownership of. Once the disputed code is identified it is expected that Linux kernel programmers will simply remove and rewrite the offending sections immediately, regardless of who the code belongs to – just to be safe.

Show me the code!

AutoZone

Yahoo Brings Audio and Video Together in Searches

Google is trialling an image search function, AltaVista had an image search for years before it added its video and MP3 search functions – now Yahoo is looking to bring it’s own powerful multimedia search engine to the internet.

Yahoo will be kicking off with some great content, including the Library of Congress, the New York Public Library and audio files from National Public Radio.

The company is looking to make money by charging commercial content providers for including their material in its database; non-commercial entities can submit their content free.

Microsoft are working on their own multimedia search engine, and that should be interesting given how much they like tampering with search results to suit themselves – try doing a search for Xfree86, an open source window system for UNIX and UNIX-based systems on MSN.

Google Image Search

AltaVista – useful, but different media types are not searchable from the same page

XFree86 on MSN

SCO Delays Promised Tuesday Lawsuit

Citing the need for more time, SCO did not begin promised legal action against the two companies they wish to prosecute for using intellectual property that SCO claims ownership of.

SCO, in a move entirely fitting with how they’ve handled the Linux/Unix source code issue to date, refuse to even name their targets until they are ready. However, the company has already stated that the soon-to-be recipients of the lawsuits are SCO license holders – this move to sue its own paying customers has raised eyebrows, and not for the first time.

The Santa Cruz Operation’s legal behaviour has been seen as increasingly erratic, with several volte face moves of late – and in fact the entire structure of their claim has changed. Originally a dispute over trade secrets, and claiming ownership of millions of lines of code, SCO have revised their claim to a copyright case over a small amount of code. Code over which IBM claims ownership.

SCO promises to name the recipients of its lawsuits on Wednesday – we’ll cover it here.

SCO’s live webcast — Wednesday, March 3, 2004 – 9:00 AM MT

News.com

Slashdot

Napster Will Launch in UK by “End of Summer”

Coming after shares in parent company Roxio surged last week (on a rumour that Microsoft will be integrating support for the music download service), Napster has announced that it will be launching in the UK at the end of the Summer. This coincides with the approximate time that Apple have publicised for their eagerly awaited UK debut of iTunes – and by then iTunes will have served well over 100 million tracks.

After iTunes, Napster is the most recognised music download brand – no pricing has been announced but it’s likely that subscribers will be able to burn tracks at the usual US$0.99 price point offered by competing services.

Coming Soon

Slow Start to HDTV

Europeans seem to be rushing out and buying HDTVs despite the lack of coverage: they bought 70,000 HDTV-capable displays in 2003, yet only one broadcaster, Euro1080, broadcasts a satellite HDTV service, and only for four hours a day.

A report from Strategy Analytics goes on to predict that we’ll be buying 17.4 million HDTV displays in 2008, but by then only 2.6 million homes will have the set-top box and coverage to enable them to watch HDTV programming.

Euro1080’s HDTV Service

Strategy Analytics

Sony: PSX, PSP, PS2 Will Connect

Speaking in the Mainichi Daily, the president of Sony Computer Entertainment Japan confirmed that the forthcoming PlayStation Portable (PSP) will have connectivity features with the new PSX home media centre, and the venerable PlayStation2.

Fumiya Takeno went on to say that Sony would be using the PSP’s Universal Media Disk (that’s right – yet another media format) to bring new, and as yet not elaborated upon, experiences to users: “I’m planning to create software that no-one is even thinking of right now – something free from the existing concept of ‘a game’”.

But how will this connectivity manifest itself? As the iLink/IE1394/Firewire connector has been dropped from the PSX and later PS2s, the only hardware options left are either using the optional ethernet adapter on PS2s or one of the two USB1.1 ports.

GameSpot

Sony news at Mainichi Daily

New Sony Products Shown at Open House

Sony’s Open House event this year covered all the key consumer devices – from HDTV recorders, and new Handycams to extremely desirable PDAs with more bells and whistles than a bus load of Morris dancers crashing into a flute factory.

Sony are going for integration even more than usual – HDTVs have integrated card readers for cable users, Clié PDAs and VAIO notebooks feature even sharper cameras and better wireless access than before, and MP3 support filters into products where there was previously only ATRAC.

More details from DVD Format

FT New Media & Broadcasting Conference

For more than twenty years the FT New Media and Broadcasting Conference has provided a unique platform for the exchange of information and ideas in the media industry. Characterised by its editorial independence the programme consistently attracts speakers and delegates at the most senior level. Recommended.
Programme
Renaissance London Chancery Court Hotel 252 High Holborn London WC1V 7EN http://www.ftconferences.com/mini_site/new_media2002/ft_nmedia/