The Recording Industry Association of America is lobbying for digital rights management features to be incorporated in digital radio, and Mitch Bainwol, CEO, intends to make the issue the focus of the forthcoming Congressional Hearing on Digital Copyrights on 16th June.
“We’re in favour of HD radio,” Bainwol said, referring to Digital Radio, “It offers great benefits for consumers and everyone involved, but we’re not blind to several concerns. Someone could cherry-pick songs off a broadcast and fill up a personal library and then post it on Kazaa.”
Therefore, to prevent this evil, the RIAA are keen to have a copy protection scheme in place to prevent digital copies of digital radio broadcasts. The Consumer Association are not pleased, however.
Many are concerned that the RIAA are trying to removing another freedom from the consumer. Besides, no DRM scheme will currently stop people from making high quality analogue copies of music and then re-digitising them. The RIAA, in it’s fervour to prevent perfect digital copies of music seem to have forgotten one thing: digital radio is compressed, it’s not possible to create a “perfect” copy. On top of this the act recompressing to make an MP3 or Windows Media file, transcoding, generally makes audio and video quality even worse. A digital radio copy will never have the same quality as a CD recording.
The technology behind digital radio broadcasting in the US comes from iBiquity, who are obviously willing to build in a copy protection scheme if it brings them more revenue, but even they can’t see the point … at the moment: “If there’s a consensus among the groups, we’re willing to go along,” said Jeff Jury, COO of the Baltimore-based company, “But given the state of the technology, it’s premature to worry about this.”
By imposing a DRM system on digital radio, the RIAA can remove the consumer’s ability to time shift or archive radio programmes. Also, it some feel that it marks a shift towards preventing consumers owning music, instead they will have to rent it, paying time and again to hear tracks.
Michael Petricone, technology vice president at the Consumer Electronics Association commented: “Our position on this is that there has been no demonstration that there’s a problem. It’s not clear what the RIAA is talking about. Do they want a broadcast flag or some limit on recording material? We regard a consumer’s ability to record off the radio as a pretty fundamental right. They’ve sold a half-million digital radios in Great Britain over the past five years, and this problem hasn’t come up. It’s premature to ask the FCC for restrictions on devices for a problem that might not exist.”
Nokia have admitted that their first attempt at a games console didn’t exactly set the world on fire: it had a number of design problems and they misjudged market desires – and failed to take into account just why Nintendo have had a 15 year reign on mobile gaming. But with new features, a greater emphasis on networked play and the GameBoy Advance looking a little basic these days, have they got it right this time? 
The deck is well constructed, and despite its compactness it has a reassuring weight to it (143g), without being awkward. It’s one of the most robustly-made phones I’ve used. The equator of the unit is a protruding rubber seal, and will generally be the first thing to hit the floor when you drop it, thus providing a fair bit of impact shock protection. The seal clips neatly over the phone’s ports limiting sand and water penetration, but doesn’t make it waterproof. External connections are limited to just headphones, power, and the game slot. All communications with the N-Gage are done via Bluetooth. The rubber equator also features no less than two loops for connecting a lanyard to – a quick look at any bus stop will demonstrate that youths like nothing more at the moment than hanging things like keys and phones round their neck with a lanyard. Or they do in Blackheath anyway.
Using the unit as a phone has been vastly improved – you now hold the unit flush to your cheek, rather than holding it out at an angle, as was the case with its previous incarnation. Sadly, the unit’s display rests against your face when you make a call. If you wear make up or use the phone on a warm day, be sure to carry a cloth so you can wipe sweat and foundation off the screen. Lack of exterior controls for volume mean you can’t easily adjust call loudness if you’re suddenly in a noisy or quite environment.
The 4096-colour display is difficult to read if the backlight isn’t on, but battery life in the QD is impressive. Nokia claim a full ten hours of gaming off a charge, up from about three to six hours previously. I charged the phone on Tuesday morning and only needed to give it a drink again on Thursday, after leaving it on continuously with my normal number of phone calls, texts and a few bouts of The Sims. As a side note, it accepts the standard Nokia charger and I can’t think of a household that hasn’t got four of those kicking around somewhere.
The interfaces for the phone and the game functions were evidently designed by two different teams. Two different teams in different countries. Who never spoke to each other or exchanged emails, or perhaps were even completely unaware of each others’ existence. The N-Gage Arena and gaming interfaces are much more compelling and excitingly designed, showing that Nokia have put a lot of thought into their appearance.
All the usual messaging functions are present: SMS, Multimedia Messaging, and email. I did come across an irritating feature whilst texting, however: pressing the uppercase key a couple of times whilst writing a text message (for the odd bit of EMPHASIS) turns the T9 dictionary off for some reason. This is highly annoying and requires six or seven button presses to switch it back on and then another six or so to get back to where you were. I do hope this is a bug rather than a deliberate feature.
Games are supplied on a MMC card, and the QD is backwardly compatible with its predecessor. The moving of the game slot to the bottom of the console is a welcome move, so you don’t have to take the back off the unit to swap games over. Nokia seem to have realised that people might want to play more than one game in a session.
Despite not having a camera, the QD will play video clips and other multimedia messaging, however there’s no radio and something key has been removed from this iteration of the N-Gage.