Author: Fraser Lovatt

Fraser Lovatt has spent the last fifteen years working in publishing, TV and the Internet in various capacities, and believes that they will be seperate platforms for at least a while yet. His main interests at the moment are exploring where Linux is taking home entertainment and how technology is conferring technical skills on more and more people. Fraser Lovatt was born in the same year that 2001: A Space Odyssey was delighting and confusing people in the cinemas, and developed a lifelong love of technology as soon as he realised that things could be taken apart, sometimes put back together again, but mostly left in bits or made into something the original designer hadn't quite planned upon. At school he was definitely in the ZX Spectrum/Magpie/BMX camp, rather than the BBC Micro/Blue Peter/well-behaved group. This is all deeply ironic as he later went on to spend nine years working at the BBC. After a few years of working as a bookseller in Scotland, ("Back when it was actually a skilled profession" he'll tell anyone still listening), he moved to England for reasons he can't quite explain adequately to himself. After a couple of publishing jobs punctuated by sporadic bursts of travelling and photography came the aforementioned nine years at the BBC where he specialised in internet technologies and video. These days his primary interests are Java, Linux, videogames and pies - and if they're not candidates for convergence, then what is?

321 Studios Closes

321 Studios has closed down after a series of court decisions that ruled that its key product, DVD X Copy, was illegal to distribute.

The software had been marketed as a tool that allowed consumers to exercise their legal right to make backups of legally purchased products. Whilst consumers do have this right, they must defeat the copy protection present on disks in order to do so. Defeating a copy protection system is illegal in a number of countries, including the US and Europe.

Since copy protection systems are seen to interfere with consumers’ fair-use rights, groups like the EFF believe that revisions to the law to make it fairer for customers are not far off.

321 Studios, based in St. Louis, had faced several court cases this year from industry leaders such as Vivendi Universal Games and Atari, and had even revised their product to remove the DVD descrambling component, CSS.

At the high of its business, 321 Studios employed nearly 400 staff and expect make US$200 million (€166 million) in sales in 2004.

The injunction only applies to 321 Studios – it is not illegal to own or even operate the software itself.

321 Studios

EU: Interactive TV Standards Will Wait

The European Commission has stated that it will not make a decision on imposing interactive TV standards until the end of 2005. Currently, there are several platforms in use throughout Europe, though the Commission does not see this as a problem, instead promoting interoperability on a voluntary basis. As some of the platform proponents are competitors, it remains to be seen if this will be successful.

Whilst the Commission hopes that everyone will share and get along, they are strongly advocating the Multimedia Home Platform. MHP is currently employed by RTL in Germany.

Developing for multiple interactive TV platforms does no-one any good – content has to be rewritten and retested for every platform and each system has different capabilities. As final content has to work on all platforms it is likely to encounter, it is often as simple and demanding as possible – stifling innovation.

There are five interactive APIs in use across Europe today, deployed in 25 million set top boxes, yet the Commission does not see this as a problem:

“In view of the complexity of the technological and market environment, the very different perceptions of interoperability held by market players, and the fact that interactive digital TV has not yet taken off on a larger scale in many Member States, we felt that the digital television market should continue to develop unhindered for the present” commented Enterprise and Information Society Commissioner Olli Rehn, “Digital television networks (satellite, terrestrial and cable) have the potential to offer delivery of multi-media information Society services, alongside 3G mobile and other networks, and we welcome all future investment in this important technology. We will however revisit the issue at the end of 2005 in order to see to what extent market developments have contributed to interoperability and freedom of choice for users.”

Europa Press Release

BSkyB Reports Soaring Profit, Targets 10 million Subscribers

BSkyB have reported a higher than expected profit in the year to June 30th, and added another 81,000 subscribers. However, investors registered disappointment at these latest subscriber numbers and consequently, shares fell 7%.

After-tax profits were UK£322 million (€488 million), up 75% on the previous year, sales were UK£3.6 billion (€5.4 billion), a 15% rise.

The company is hoping to have 10 million subscribers by 2010, from 7.4 million currently. BSkyB are planning to spend UK£450 million on upgrading infrastructure during that period. BSkyB are keen to get 25% of new subscribers onto their Sky+ package. To achieve this, they will be increasing their marketing budget by 40% next year.

BskyB’s modest increase in subscriber numbers has possibly been affected by rival free-to-air service Freeview, which does not require a monthly subscription. It is likely that this will have a continuing affect as free-to-air services develop and improve their channel offerings.

BskyB’s latest results

BT’s First Public Wireless Broadband Network

After a successful wireless broadband trial in Northern Ireland, BT intend to launch their first public access there by the end of the year. The company has signed a UK£500,000 (€757,000) deal with Alvarion to provide 5.8 GHz BreezeAccess VL equipment for the rollout, and is a partnership with the Northern Ireland Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment.

BT embarked on four trials in each of the regions of the UK, and has been investigating wireless as part of its strategy for 100% broadband coverage by the end of 2005. As there are 565 exchanges in the UK for which ADSL is not commercially viable, wireless access is essential to providing Broadband access to people in sparsely populated, remote areas.

According to BT, 73% of people trialling the service were extremely or very satisfied with the results, with 89% wishing to subscribe on a permanent basis.

“Radio broadband provides another innovative way for BT to provide ADSL-equivalent services in areas where our wireline infrastructure cannot reach,” said Chet Patel, General Manager of Internet Access products at BT. “Feedback from the trials was incredibly positive both in terms of ease of use, and suitability for the job. Based on this, we’re confident that the product will begin to meet the needs of more remote broadband users, where we are able to deploy this technology.”

“After 10 years of field deployments, wireless broadband is now a mainstream access technology,” said Zvi Slonimsky, CEO of Alvarion. “In the near future, the proliferation of WiMAX-Certified systems will usher in the era of mass-market radio broadband equipment, delivering both economical and performance benefits to everyone from operators to end users. Alvarion continues to be at the forefront of innovation, and our leadership position is confirmed by our relationships with the likes of BT, not to mention our strong and diverse customer base.”

Alvarion

South Korean company, Daum, Buys Lycos Inc.

South Korean internet portal Daum has bought Lycos Inc for US$95 million (€79 million) – considerably less than the US$12.5 billion (€10.4 billion) in shares its Spanish owner Terra paid for it just four years ago. In fact, it’s less than 1% of the original price.

Even April this year, the price sought was nearer $170 million (€140 million).

Daum’s new acquisition gives it a subscriber base of 170,000 paid users and a 6% slice of the US banner advertising market. Lycos also features Wired News, the stock market information service Quote and thousands of user created Tripod websites.

Daum president Lee Jae-Woong said that the acquisition of Lycos Inc meant that they were now ready to embark on a global initiative: “a springboard for our company to venture into the US Internet market and become a global player.”

Their new purchase might give Daum a foothold in the US internet market, but Lycos Inc has been loss-making for some time now, and it’s a very tough market out there – they’ll be facing stiff competition form a newly revitalised MSN and a cash-rich Google.

Daum.net

Lycos Inc

iTunes on Linux with Crossover Office

Codeweavers have released version 3.1 of their CrossOver Office application – and this new version features support of Apple’s iTunes jukebox.

Codeweavers CEO Jeremy White said in a statement: “iTunes has been our number-one most requested application. We remain confident that by the end of 2005, the majority of Windows applications will be supported by CrossOver Office. Until then, we’re pleased to be bringing the appeal of iTunes to Linux users through the development of Version 3.1.” Indeed, Codeweavers intend to have 95% of Windows applications running by the end of next year.

CrossOver Office relies on Wine to make Windows programs work under Linux. Wine is an open source re-implementation of the Windows API, and does not use Microsoft code. It’s not an emulator either – think of it as a wrapper that allows Windows programs to run under Linux.

Unlike RealNetworks’ Harmony product, released last week, CrossOver office makes no changes to iPod and does not reverse-engineer any code. Apple has yet to make a comment, but it is unlikely that they will be as vehemently opposed to CrossOver Office as they were to Harmony.

Codeweavers

Wine Is Not an Emulator

SunnComm Upgrade MediaMax, Provide Carrot

SunnComm have upgraded their MediaMax copy protection system to make it harder to circumvent, and have even added extra features to bring some benefits to CD users.

MediaMax was controversial from the outset – putting a CD protected by the system into your PC automatically installed a driver to protect the content of the disk. Unless you held down the shift key, as Windows does not let CDs auto-run when the shift key is held down. Also, if you put a protected disk in your Mac, you basically had to send it back to Apple for repair. Oh, and MediaMax didn’t work in all home CD players, and worked in even fewer car stereos.

Circumventing a copy protection system is against the law in the US and Europe, so this made holding that shift key down a bit of a legal grey area. Mind you, installing software on a system without the owners permission is also illegal – and so is breaking someone’s Mac – so labels avoided SunnComm in droves.

MediaMax is back now, somewhat reinvented – security has been enhanced, and the disks are 100% compatible in consumer players.

The new iteration still requires software to be installed on your PC before it’ll read the protected optical medium. I hesitate in calling these CDs, because they are encoded to a different schema from CDs and are no longer compliant with the Red Book standard.

SunnComm, a company so paranoid you have to click a disclaimer before even viewing their homepage, seem to be learning a valuable lesson: the consumer is the one who is paying for the product, and so it is their rights that are important. As SunnComm’s president, Peter H. Jacobs, said: “Everyone at SunnComm believes that the best digital security technology should be ever mindful of the consumer experience.”

To provide the carrot for consumers, MediaMax can provide special features for consumers –videos, song lyrics and picture galleries.

Unlike DVDs, where special features come on a second disk and space is generally less tight, these little extras, plus the drivers, plus the software, and the video use up space that consumers might prefer to see spent on storing some nice, clear audio. Which is why they bought the disk in the first place, right? MediaMax might be a good option for disposable pop, but will never be acceptable to audiophiles, who need all of that 650mb for the music.

Finally, will I be able to play a 2004 vintage MediaMax disk in my PC fifteen years from now? Probably not – who is going to make sure that there’ll be a driver available for Windows 2020? You know how difficult it is to get your old DOS games working now, don’t you?

SunnComm

Doom 3 Leaked to P2P Networks

Doom 3 has been cracked and up loaded to the world’s various P2P networks – even the most casual search will uncover dozens of download sources.

This is terrible news for id Software, the game’s producers, after more than four years’ of work on the title. The game was due to go on sale on Tuesday in the US, and next week in the UK – so it is likely that this is final code version of the game, possibly taken from an advance or review copy, rather than stolen code in the case of Half Life 2.

First person shooter enthusiasts and Doom fans will undoubtedly buy legitimate copies of the new game, but it is likely that id will lose a lot of sales from P2P downloads. Because of review copies it is virtually impossible to stop PC games appearing on file sharing networks before titles appear on shelves.

id ran into problems earlier on this year when, predictably, attempts to stop a demo of Doom 3 from proliferating on the very same P2P networks failed.

Valve’s own Half Life 2 shooter was delayed for months after source code was stolen by hackers and then found its way onto the internet – it will finally be seeing release in the autumn, after a substantial rewrite of key sections of code.

Doom 3

NTL Add PhotoBox to Broadband Plus

The problem with supplying a straight broadband service is that once price, speed and stability have all equalised, there is nothing to distinguish you from your competitors. When service providers appear virtually identical, customer churn increases as subscribers can be tempted away in large numbers by simple offers and discounts.

Service providers are trying to combat this by providing value added services to make them distinct from each other – such as NTL’s new inclusion of PhotoBox in its Broadband Plus subscription. NTL are hoping to take advantage of the huge popularity of digital photography, coupled with the practical requirement that broadband is essential to make use of a digital printing service.

Broadband Plus costs an extra UK£3.99 per month on top their usual broadband bill, and NTL claim that it provides an extra UK£35 worth of value added services to subscribers.

NTL’s research indicates that a third of consumers in the UK take more than 48 digital pictures every month – and half of those consumers will keep 12 or more of those images. Proportionately few digital pictures are then made into prints as online services are not main stream and domestic photo quality printers aren’t quite what consumers would regards as photo quality.

PhotoBox is a well-established service for printing and storing digital photographs, and NTL customers will be eligible for 15 free photographic prints per month plus 200 mb of online picture album storage. This will allow subscribers to store about 1,000 print quality images. Prints from online services are considerably superior to inkjet prints and are produced on photographic paper for accuracy and longevity.

Aizad Hussain, managing director of NTL’s residential service said: “The introduction of PhotoBox ensures that NTL Broadband Plus customers have easy access to one of the UK’s finest online digital photography services at no extra cost.”

Broadband Plus costs an extra UK£3.99 per month on top their usual broadband bill, and NTL claim that it provides an extra UK£35 worth of value added services to subscribers.

PhotoBox

NTL Broadband Plus

Acclaim Faces Nasdaq Delisting

Acclaim are facing Nasdaq delisting as the market value of the company no longer meets the minimum criteria for inclusion on the technology stock market.

The company has until August 18 to remedy this or will no longer feature on Nasdaq. Shares fell 25% last week when the company reported their Q4 results for the financial year ending March 31 2004. Indeed, the debts that the company are facing mean that they could well be filing for bankruptcy before the end of the year.

Acclaim’s recent titles have not sold particularly well this year, and the outlook for Christmas is looking even bleaker – their forthcoming racing game juiced will be up against Sony’s Gran Tourismo 2 and EA’s Need for Speed Underground 2.

Acclaim