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?

Comcast Make Surprise Bid For Disney

In a move that surprised a lot of people, Comcast has put in a hostile bid for the entire Walt Disney Corporation, appealing to shareholders suffering from “Eisner fatigue”.

Things have been troubled at Disney for a while – Roy Disney recently resigned after describing the company as “soulless” (copy of the resignation letter here.), they have not had a decent traditional animation hit in years, and the parks were suffering even before 9/11. In all, Disney has a net debt of some US$11bn.

Comcast on the other hand, have been doing quite well for themselves. They have more than 21 million subscribers, out of the 40 million homes they pass, and their operating cash flow was over US$2bn in 2003. Amongst the other assets they own they have ten local TV stations, the ABC Television Network and 72 radio stations. Acquiring Disney will give them vast, high-quality content production facilities – giving them control over the whole commission/produce/broadcast chain. We think they will ditch the theme parks fairly quickly as they seem less relevant to Comcast’s plans.

The US$66bn bid (let us just write that out in longhand for you: US$66,000,000,000.00) is ambitious, and there will be obvious comparisons with the ill-fated AOL/Time Warner merger, but if the deal goes ahead it will be interesting to see what kind of company it will create.

Steve Burke, President of Comcast Cable says in their press release: “I know Disney’s businesses very well, and I am confident that when we put those great brands and programming assets together with our distribution, there will be significant opportunities to produce compelling returns for shareholders.”

Rupert Murdoch has already said that the deal would make the company a competitor to NewsCorp., but who else might step forward with a bid?

Comcast estimate that the market capitalisation of the combined company would be around US$122bn, with revenues of US$45bn, and an EBITDA of US$10bn. Accountants are said to be stockpiling hoards of zeros in case there is a worldwide shortage after the deal.

Comcast’s statements

The FT’s comments

These Are Not the DVDs You’re Looking For

Although not confirmed by a press release, Fox have announced that they will be releasing the original Star Wars films in DVD in September. Apparently, George has found some time in his busy schedule.

These will be the Special Editions released in 1997, as LucasFilm regard these as the definitive versions. So, what about all those rumours floating around that further changes are being to the films for re-release in the future?

We at Digital Lifestyles couldn’t really care less if Han still shoots first – we were just miffed that they took such liberties with Sy Snootles band.

Straight from the Bantha’s mouth

Nothing but sane, well structured debate at Harry Knowles’ site

Viacom Looking to Sell its Stake in Blockbuster

Viacom are hoping to sell their 81% stake in Blockbuster Entertainment, making the video rental giant an independent company.

Said Blockbuster CEO John Antioco: “We believe Blockbuster will compete very effectively as an independent company and that separation from Viacom will enable us to better pursue our unique strategic vision and significant avenues for expansion.”

But what does the future really hold for Blockbuster? They managed to embrace the move to DVD admirably, but many see renting DVDs a dead end. It’s no secret that there’s a slowdown in the video rental business: consumers would much rather use video on demand (VOD) if they could, rather than trudge down to the video shop on a rainy Monday night to return that copy of Three Week’s Notice that you didn’t get a chance to watch. With broadband coverage improving, speeds increasing, and pay-per-view services flourishing, then Blockbuster’s customer base will rapidly diminish.

Even if they did reinvent themselves as a VOD company, they will lose an important part of their revenue – it has been speculated that as much as 20 – 30% of Blockbuster’s income is comprised of late fees, and you can’t charge those on a stream.

Hoover’s on Blockbuster

Phantom Games Console – Round Up

In the past year or so, there has been a lot of speculation about the Phantom console. The name doesn’t help much, it has to be said. The console was announced early in 2003 and then everything went a bit quiet – no prototypes were seen, the platform itself seemed a bit vague and many regarded Timothy Roberts’, the man behind Infinium Labs, involvement as a bad omen.

For some months, the only images of the console were 3D renders, and no games developer has yet admitted to having signed up for the platform.

The console was finally unveiled at the last CES, and we’d like to gather what is known about Phantom to clear up some of the mystery.

[1] What’s in it?

Infinium state that the console is PC-based and features a custom N-Force motherboard. The processor is listed as “up to AMD XP 3200+”, though whether that this implies that the box is customisable or upgradable, or they just haven’t finalised it yet, no-one knows. The really important part, the graphics chipset is around the GeForce FX5700 mark. Interestingly, the console does not feature an optical drive, but will feature a hard drive up to 320gb in size.

[2] What does it run?

The Phantom runs on a modified Windows XPe kernel.

[3] What will it cost?

We’ve seen figures for between ~US$400 and ~US$700, which places it firmly in the “cheaper than a PC for playing games, but considerably more than a console” bracket.

[4] What can you play on it?

The Phantom will come with pre-installed games. Some reports have said as many as fifty. Other games will be available for download through the PhantomNet GameService.

Given the hardware/software platform, the games will be modified versions of PC games.

[5] What is PhantomNet GameService?

The console is unique in that it requires a broadband connection to function – players will be able to download new games or activate licenses for those already preloaded on the hard disk. Presumably, the service will also provide other functions as seen on Sony’s Central Station and Microsoft’s Xbox Live.

[6] Does it stand a chance?

Well, that remains to be seen. Xbox and Playstation2 are obviously dominating the market (and so will their offspring), and we’ve seen previously unassailable leaders like Sega and Nintendo get badly burned with hardware. However, the Phantom is a essentially a PC (and even more of a PC than the Xbox isn’t), so isn’t entirely proprietary like the GameCube and, to a slightly lesser extent, the Dreamcast. And remember, everybody laughed at Sony in 1995.

One of the problems we can see is the implication that consoles will be built to order, making standardisation a problem. However, new games can be published to the format without too much redevelopment and, given the absence of an optical drive, piracy will be difficult.

This could be a terrific distribution channel for games publishers who can’t get space in big retailers, or can’t afford the heavy discounting that’s endemic in the market. It could also be a great service for buying games on impulse, when even Amazon isn’t fast enough.

Given the dramatic increase in broadband subscriptions, the console could be right on time – but given that many games now have installers measuring 500 mb to 2 gig in size, perhaps popping down the shops to buy Half Life2 might be quicker than downloading it, although that didn’t put someone off in the past.

[7] What next?

Curiously, Infinium are reluctant to tell the press much at this stage, even though the project is reportly in advanced stages. They have, however, managed to raise a not inconsiderable amount of venture capital (at least ~US$25 million) on the back of this idea – despite not having really shown anyone anything.

We’ll keep you posted.

Wired on the Phantom

HardOCP on Infinium’s patchy history

Infinium on the Phantom

New Nokia Phone Converges Too Many Features To List

Nokia have released phones with radios incorporated in them for some time — but the 7700 is somewhat different as it incorporates a service that Nokia has termed “Visual Radio”. Listeners to participating stations can interact through their phones – polls, artist information, ringtones are all displayed in 7700’s browser whilst they listen a radio show. Helsinki’s Kiss FM will be the first station to offer the interactive services.

Adding interactivity to a radio programme through a browser (rather than streaming the programme to the phone) allows Nokia to avoid rights issues and save bandwidth. To us this seems like a good stopgap, but streaming directly to the phone offers so much more functionality that it won’t be too long before someone sorts out the rights nightmare and produces a proper internet audio/video phone.

Nokia will no doubt be analysing what users do with the new interactive features from radio stations – cookies and server logs will show them which features are popular. If successful, charging for ringtones and extras from stations will be a nice revenue channel for Nokia and its radio partners.

The look of the phone could best be described as “funky” — Nokia seem to be getting further and further away from traditional mobile phone design with every new iteration of their products.

Nokia on the 7700

Kiss FM

4.8 Million Broadband Users by 2005

“With 12.6m homes now connected to the Internet there is a still a huge opportunity available for telecoms companies to persuade people to upgrade onto faster connections, especially as we are seeing a strong interest and demand by consumers to do so.” said Colin Shaddick, director at Continental Research.

Ofcom estimate that broadband subscriptions currently stand at 3.2 million (Continental estimate 3.8). Given the rate at which people have been swapping over – because of the range of providers, competitive price cuts, and increase in quality, ease and reliability in the past twelve months – another 1.6 million subscribers by this time next year doesn’t seem too much of a stretch.

Continental Research

Ofcom’s Broadband Update, January 2004

EVE Breaking Records for Concurrent Users in a Single Persistent On-line World?

EVE is a MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game), and is unique from other on-line games in that every player experiences the same game world. The premise of the game is rather like that of the old BBC Micro favourite, Elite: trade, kill pirates (or be a pirate) and upgrade your craft and equipment, all in a galaxy of several thousand stars, planets, stations and asteroid belts.

MMORPG games such as EverQuest and Star Wars Galaxies have more subscribers, but run several game worlds across their server farms, with each instance of the game world holding perhaps as many as 3,000 players.

As not everyone is in the same instance of the game, then if you are on a different server from your friends (or enemies) then you can’t meet them, and your experience is different from theirs. As EVE has one game world, it is possible to interact with every player – which has very interesting implications for economics and social interaction in such large simulation.

EVE is the first title from CCP, an Icelandic company founded by Reynir Hardarson, formerly of OZ.COM and reached its current incarnation last year. Interestingly EVE’s “high water” marks for most connected users seem to be occurring on Sundays – possibly a valuable snippet of information if any market research companies out there can decode what it means.

The MMORPG market is now becoming, not exactly crowded but, well-served with a variety of differently-themed games. Because of the time commitment such games demand and the monthly fee payable (typically from $9.99 to $14.99) users are reluctant to hope from game to game, losing carefully built-up characters and items. As broadband use expands and the games lose their somewhat nerdy image this could potentially be a huge and innovate sector of the On-line entertainment industry.

EVE Online

CCP

Freeview and Top-Up TV Lock Horns

In what is likely to be the first in a long series of bust-ups, the BBC is complaining that Top-Up TV, the new service run by David Chance and Ian West, will detract from the Freeview service, if the new channels are listed alongside the existing free channels.

The BBC wants Top-Up TV to have its channels grouped together on their own to distance them from Freeview. Chance and West’s new venture will initially carry ten channels for £7.99 a month, bringing subscribers E4, UK Gold, Cartoon Network, UK Style, Discovery, TCM, UK Food, Dscovery Home and Leisure, Boomerang and Bloomberg.

The whole thing reminds us somewhat of the fuss the BBC made with Sky over the Electronic Programme Guide.

Of course, the real reason that the BBC is getting sniffy about having their channels grouped with Top-Up Tv might just be that the new service is hoping to offer TVX, Richard Desmond’s porn channel, in the near future for an extra charge.

The ironic thing about the service is, despite its spangly newness, Top-UP TV can only be received on the old ITV Digital Boxes (the one you should have given back), because they’re the only ones with a smartcard reader slot on them. There are apparently some 800,000 of those boxes out in the wild, and newer hardware will have to be upgraded or replaced.

Top-Up TV’s new website

The Freeview Consortium

BT Wins Northern Ireland Broadband Deal

BT have just won a contract that roll broadband out to the 1.7 million inhabitants of Northern Ireland

Out of the twenty-seven companies who responded to the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment (DETI) invitation to tender, BT had already looked to be the favourite for some time.

Enterprise Minister Ian Pearson said “This will allow all our businesses, even those in the most rural locations, to avail of broadband services to compete in the global market.”

DETI’s objective is to offer every business and household in Northern Ireland at least a 512kbps connection by the end of 2005. This would make the region the first in the UK to offer 100% coverage. Coverage is currently 60%, with takeup of 10%.

BBC News on the deal

The Register

Apple Start a Garage Band

One of the highlights of iLife ’04, GarageBand is Apple’s new music application. It follows a similar paradigm to other loop-based music programs: samples are dragged to a timeline and arranged to form tunes. However, GarageBand goes beyond that – each professional quality sample’s key and tempo is automatically adjusted to fit, and you can plug in a MIDI keyboard (or use the one on screen) to control the range of software instruments provided. More loops, samples and instruments are available in a “Jam Pack” expansion pack.

We think the program deserves a mention because GarageBand performs a very useful function – not only can you export your creations into iTunes to listen to and share, but you can also use them as the soundtrack to your iDVD projects, giving far more professional results.

GarageBand homepage at Apple