Simon Perry

NDS To Protect Content On Mobile TV And DAB With Frontier Silicon
Set Top Box (STB) and PVR company NDS have today announced that they have reached an agreement with Frontier Silicon, a fabless manufacturer of digital media semiconductors based in the UK, to work together on technology to protect digital TV and DAB (Digital Audio Broadcasting) content on mobile devices.
Frontier Silicon are already well known for pioneering in next gen digital chippery with their DAB chips; the “World’s First” DMB and DVB-H mobile Digital TV chip – in their words; they’ve also innovated in DAB with the introduction of DABplus, a DAB radio with EPG (Electronic Programming Guide) built-in.
The deal sees NDS have their mVideoGuard DRM technology built-in to Frontier’s T-DMB, DVB-H and DAB receiving chips. Interestingly it also sees Frontier Silicon moving into producing kit for the head-end (where it’s broadcast from) – to ensure mVideoGuard is in place from end-to-end.
Many readers, especially the non-UK massive, may be thinking ‘So what? Who and who have signed a deal?’ Well the significance of NDS moving this way is that it may signal where Sky is moving. Sky, as I’m sure you know, is the satellite TV company who own the UK in satellite delivered TV, and who’s parent company News International now owns US satellite giant DirecTV.
For a long time Sky and NDS have been developing content protection schemes. They feel this is vital before they let their subscribers move their TV shows from STBs to other devices – including mobile devices.
Despite working on conditional access for mobile TV for a number of months (with NDS), this is the first time that Frontier have built DRM in to their chips, and it’s also thought that this is the first deal that NDS have done putting DRM in system apart from their own.
Is this a move to have NDS as an established provider of DRM? Well it having Sky as a reference client certainly isn’t a bad move.
Frontier Silicon
NDS
30 August, 2005
Unified DVD Format Trouble Confirmed
Following reports yesterday of difficulty between Toshiba and Sony in agreeing on the Unified DVD format, bringing together HD-DVD and Blu-Ray, we’ve spoken to Sony and they have confirmed difficulties.
Disc capacity
Blu-Ray, surprise, surprise uses a blue laser, as does HD-DVD. They didn’t just like blue lasers because it fits in with their name, or even that it’s their favorite colour, the shorter wavelength of the blue light, 405nm, (think of its position in the rainbow relative to the red, 650nm) allowed for higher density of their disks. Current CD and DVD media uses red lasers.
The difference in capacity of the two formats is pretty large. A single layer disc yields quite a difference – HD-DVD provides 15GB, and Blu-Ray 25GB.
Blu-Ray are claiming that their eight layer disks can hold 200GB of content, a considerable amount in anyone’s book. They’ve also told us they’re working on ten and twelve layer disks, pushing storage even higher to 300Gb. HD-DVD holds 30GB on their dual layer disks.
Why extra capacity is a sticking point
Many may wonder why 200GB is needed for a disk (not you, dear reader, I’m sure). Well while the storage requirements of HD content has a small part to do with it, the obvious use is to provide near-endless ‘extra’ material to go with the film on the disk (even if the purchaser isn’t interested in it). Less obviously, is placing material on the disk that is locked.
We think that Blu-Ray’s dogged pursuit for high capacity (possibly in the face of Unified DVD), and the fact that Sony are driving Blu-Ray is no coincidence.
Sony, having learnt its lesson during the Betamax/VHS wars, now own a serious amount of content and the studios want to make more. We imagine that the content side of Sony’s business is pushing hard to extra capacity for commercial reasons.
Think about it – what do media companies want to do? Reduce the involvement of the middle man, or cut it out completely. If they are able to sell a disk with one accessible film on it, plus a number of films on it that are locked, they’ve reduced their distribution costs, and importantly, kept percentage paid to the retailer to a minimum. To access the extra films, the purchaser simply has to contact the media owner.
An important part of the Blu-Ray standard is its online capabilities, so the unlocking could be requested and paid for through the player, or via the phone for the die hards. The great thing, at least in the eyes on the media owner, is that the additional income generated is nearly all profit.
Difference in programming One thing that appears to have been missed by most commendations on Unified DVD is the world of difference in the programmability of HD-DVD and Blu-Ray. As a player supporting both standards isn’t realistic, one of the sides would have to change completely. This leads to considerable additional cost for the media creator, forcing them to effectively have to programme the whole disc twice.
Cover layer thickness difference
This is possibly the unbridgeable gap. Cover layer thickness – how close the information is written to the surface of the physical disc. Blu-Ray is 0.1mm and HD-DVD is 0.6mm. HD-DVD has plumbed for the 0.6mm, the same standard as current DVD’s. From our discussion, this appears to be an intractable difference.
The difference in layer thickness is one of the factors that makes manufacturing Blu-Ray discs more expensive, as the equipment used to create the disc has to be replaced.
Both sides have been busy gathering supporters of their own formats, in a not dissimilar way to two groups at school picking teams in the playground, trumpeting when another new chum joins their gang.
It will be a great shame if Unified DVD does fail. We all know what will happen – everyone suffers from the producers of the content to the consumer. At this time, it looks like we’re going to have to prepare for that.
HD-DVD
Blu-Ray
24 August, 2005
Google Desktop Search 2 Beta Released
Many who used the original of Google Desktop Search loved it. If you had a mention of the word you’d searched for, whether it be in a word document, an email or even in a IM session, up would come the list of mentions.
The new version of Google Desktop Search (or GDS2 as it’s bound to become) builds on its past strengths and adds to it.
Beyond an enhanced search facility, which now searches network drives too, the big addition is the Sidebar feature. An aggressive move, that will unsettle Microsoft, Yahoo and AOL as it’s moving into their territory.
When in this mode, a configurable selection of information is displayed down the height of the screen either on the right or the left of the screen. You don’t have to go to your Web browser to find the information you’re interested in, it comes to you.
Standard setup comes with email to your gmail account (a new feature), news headlines, stock prices, weather and interestingly Web Clips. Web Clips are RSS feeds – and will come with some controversy attached to them.
Last week a lot of fuss was generated in the blogging world when Microsoft decided to refer to RSS as Web Feeds in their upcoming updated browser, Internet Explorer 7 Beta 1. It will be interesting to see if equal vitriol will be reserved for Google as they ‘rename’ RSS to Web Clips.
We think the interesting boost is the API (Application Programming Interface) and SDK (Software Development Kit) for Sidebar, which enables developers to write plugin to display in Sidebar, but also embed Google Desktop Search into their own applications, bringing fast, convenient search to their users.
There are already some interesting new plugins at the site, such as gdTunes which lets you control iTunes from Sidebar, without having to actually go to iTunes.
Ever mindful of income, Google also are offering an AdSense Status plugin that offers information about your earnings through AdSense.
After a brief look at it, we found that it appears to have rectified one of the problems with the old version – primarily that it slowed your machine down when it was loaded. This slow down often was so significant that it caused those with slower/older machines, or those who actually needed the power of their processors, to remove it – despite its benefits.
As before, there is a long list of software that Desktop won’t work with – the majority of it being anti-virus and anti-spam.
There will be many software and services organisations that will be looking at GDS2 with more than a little concern – they’re starting to tread on a few toes.
At a time when there’s much talk about how there may be a lot of selling of Google shares (the tax paid on selling shares that have been held for more than a year is considerably reduced), and the drop in share price that might bring, isn’t it fortunate timing that this, and the full release of Google Earth is coming on the first day of trading after the one year period is up.
Google Desktop Search 2
22 August, 2005
Moog Dies
Thanks to Tim for the update on the details of this story
It is with great sadness that we heard of the death of Robert Moog, the inventor of the Moog synthesiser – an instrument that not only changed the way that music is created, but what music could be.
Moog had been suffering with an inoperable brain tumour since April and died on Sunday aged 71.
Many, including us, feel his contribution to society is too large to measure.
A humble man, by all accounts, who left the world on physics to work with composer, Herbert Deutsch in 1964 on the development of the Minimoog synthesiser.
While not the first synth, it became popular as it grabbed musicians attention in its flexibility, enabling them to express themselves.
The number of tracks and musicians that used a Moog are too plentiful to mention, but of particular note are Rick Wakeman; Keith Emerson; the Beatles, with their Abbey Road album; Kraftwerk; and Wendy Carlos with her Switched on Bach album. Laterly the Moog has been embraced again by a new generation of young musicians. A more complete list is available at the bottom of the page on Synthmuseum.com
I was lucky enough to see the film Moog, by Hans Fjellestad a couple of week ago and if you haven’t seen it I’d highly recommend that you do. It was clear that Moog was a man who was not only admired by the people around him, but genuinely liked.
As a demonstration of the depth of feeling for Moog around the world, it’s telling to see that close to 2,500 messages have been left for him and his family following the announcement of his illness.
Moog music
Tributes of Robert Moog
22 August, 2005
Open Media Common: Sun’s Open-Source DRM
Sun’s Chief Operating Officer Jonathan Schwartz has been speaking at the Progress and Freedom Foundation Aspen Summit about how incompatible strains of DRM from different companies will not be good for the consumer.
Now, we don’t have the benefit of having heard his speech, but it strikes us that he’s a little late to this party. This idea is hardly news to anyone who’s spent more that half a day thinking about the future of digital media. Projects like Coral Consortium have been underway for sometime, exactly for this reason – but at this time Coral is proprietary.
Jonathan’s proposal to elevate the problems on incompatible DRM systems is Open Media Commons, which would be an open-source, royalty-free digital-rights management standard.
It appears that his idea is to launch the idea/project, not deliver a solution tomorrow. He’s offering to start it off by giving Project DReaM, to an internal Sun Labs project, to the initiative. The strange collection of capitalisation around Project DReaM is derived from “DRM/everywhere available.”
Where this type of headline-grabbing announcement is great, is in starting to bring the debate about who should own/benefit from the locking mechanism placed around digital media to the fore again.
It also panders to the media companies who are generally _totally_ paranoid/fed up with having to not only use a protection scheme they don’t own, but also to pay Microsoft for the pleasure of selling their snippets of media to the general public – each and every time they do.
Reuters, who broke the story, got this quote from Jonathan, “The industry generally falls into two camps: Those who support what we’re up to and others who want to collect a fee” for using their own DRM standards.
If it does nothing more that stopping or delaying a media company in making their decision to sign with one of the major DRM providers, then we suspect Jonathan would be pleased.
Jonathan has over the last year, been blog-tastic, writing long, detailed postings about many things – he’s clearly not someone who sleeps a great deal. A lot of his entries have been about open source, indeed in June Sun started to open-source their Operating System (OS) with the project OpenSolaris and Java server software, calling it Glassfish. Not only that, but they have an Open-Source Officer, Simon Phipps.
All of these actions are designed to attacking any income that their competitors (including Microsoft) derive from selling software. Sun, of course, is also in the hardware business, which conveniently will run the open source software.
What we do find a little strange is there are no references to Open Media Commons or Project DReaM on Sun’s Web Site.
While it is good that a company as large/established as Sun is talking about opening DRM up, not to be locked in to any single provider of DRM – we’re not yet convinced that this particular idea has a solid ring about it.
Open Media Commons – Updated
SunSource
The Progress & Freedom Foundation
Jonathan Schwartz’s blog
Sun Micro shows open-source DRM project
22 August, 2005
HomePlug AV Now Official
The long-anticipated launch of HomePlug AV specification has finally reached its public release on Thursday last week.
HomePlug, or the HomePlug Powerline Alliance to give it its full grand title, is a trade and standards body representing over 50 companies that promote the use of the internal power wiring of a house as a means of providing cheap and quick networking.
The theory behind HomePlug is that you simply buy HomePlug compliant equipment, plug it in to a main socket in your house and you have a home network. A boon you would imagine where the property is a few years old and wasn’t wired for networks when built.
In practice there have been some problems with it, the most glaring being that if a vacuum cleaner is plugged into the house’s mains and used, its interference reduces the data flow to a trickle. At this time, we are not aware if this has been addresses in the AV standard.
The body started in Q1 2000 and knocked out its first specification, HomePlug 1.0 in spring 2001. 1.0 was intended for relatively low bandwidth applications, as it ran at 14 Mbps.
In October 2002, they started discussing the idea of HomePlug AV, a much higher bandwidth version that would enable the passing of digitised video around the house – not only Standard Def (SD) TV, but High Def (HD) too.
Needing to run video, never mind HD video, required lots more bandwidth, so the theoretical speed to HomePlug AV is 200Mbps, with the 100Mbps (again theoretical) being available for use. The AV release also has good things like Quality of Service (QoS), useful when delivery video and voice around the network, as well as strong security, 128-bit AES vs 56-bit DES of version 1.0.
They intend the chips and products which are HomePlug Av compliant to be hitting the market in 3-6 months. We find this pretty surprising given how long the idea has been in gestation, and how many of these standards bodies have pretty open secrets as to which spec they’re going to be running with, well in advance its the public release.
HomePlug Powerline Alliance
22 August, 2005
Google File For A Further $4Bn
The big news late yesterday was that Google announced a second round share offer – on the first anniversary of their IPO.
In their now-to-be-expected kooky way, their planning to sell 14,159,265 shares, which of course is derived from the value of pi.
At the current valuation for their stock, this would bring in another $4Bn, on top of the approximately $3Bn they have sitting in the bank currently.
Why do they need that money? Is the question on many lips. There’s been many project been floating around with Google’s name attached, among them, becoming a WiFi provider.
S&P analyst Scott Kessler view is that with Microsoft ($37.8 billion in cash) and Yahoo ($3.4 billion) having a ton of cash in the bank, Google needs the money to be able to compete in the global Internet market, in an “arms race” as he puts it.
Acquisitions would appear to be an obvious use of the money. To date Google hasn’t had to spent that much when it’s brought companies in to its fold, as it’s bought them at early stages, but perhaps their future targets are larger now.
Mary Meeker from Morgan Stanley clearly feels the same, “this cash balance could allow the company increased flexibility to consider large strategic acquisitions.”
Of the names that we’ve heard being knocked around as possible targets for a Google purchase including Tivo and Infospace and a number of Chinese companies.
Interesting extracts from the S-3 filing reveal some areas that they think are threats.
We face significant competition from Microsoft and Yahoo.
We face formidable competition in every aspect of our business, and particularly from other companies that seek to connect people with information on the web and provide them with relevant advertising. Currently, we consider our primary competitors to be Microsoft Corporation and Yahoo! Inc. Microsoft recently introduced a new search engine and has announced plans to develop features that make web search a more integrated part of its Windows operating system or other desktop software products. We expect that Microsoft will increasingly use its financial and engineering resources to compete with us. Both Microsoft and Yahoo have more employees than we do (in Microsoft’s case, currently nearly 14 times as many). Microsoft also has significantly more cash resources than we do. Both of these companies also have longer operating histories and more established relationships with customers and end users. They can use their experience and resources against us in a variety of competitive ways, including by making acquisitions, investing more aggressively in research and development and competing more aggressively for advertisers and web sites. Microsoft and Yahoo also may have a greater ability to attract and retain users than we do because they operate Internet portals with a broad range of content products and services. If Microsoft or Yahoo are successful in providing similar or better web search results compared to ours or leverage their platforms to make their web search services easier to access than ours, we could experience a significant decline in user traffic. Any such decline in traffic could negatively affect our revenues.
Other headline include
We expect our revenue growth rate to decline and anticipate downward pressure on our operating margin in the future.
We rely on our Google Network members for a significant portion of our revenues, and we benefit from our association with them. The loss of these members could adversely affect our business.
New technologies could block our ads, which would harm our business.
Google
Google’s S-3 filing document
19 August, 2005
Shuffle Art Archives – Decorate Your iPod Shuffle, Free
Shortly after the launch of the Apple iPod shuffle, if not simultaneously, manufacturers were quick to jump on the bandwagon by producing and offering thin cases or skins.
I didn’t ever understand the point of this. I found the shuffle to be made of pretty tough stuff, quite happy knocking around in a pocket of change, with smudges wiping off easily.
Not only that, but it attacked one of the very things that I found desirable about the shuffle. Being a male of a certain age, I liked the way I could wear it under my tops and it didn’t add to the girth of my waist. Adding a case around the shuffle would extend my wait by a few additional millimeters.
Many of you will also have seen the devoted souls who have been arranging a packet of chewing gum around their shuffle, aping the comparison that Apple used at its launch, when the Apple product evangelists held the shuffle up with the packet of gum.
NB. At the UK press launch the US Appleittes brought US gum packets over with them, noted with some amusement by some of the assembled hacks.
Well, I’ve just come across an alternative to buying a cover.
Design your own shuffle cover Shuffle Art Archives is an enterprising Japanese Web site which has assembled collections of designs for decorative stickers that you can apply to your little white pride and joy.
It brings together all of the aspects of shuffle decoration – make your own; share your designs; and photo galleries of others designs.
Once you have downloaded your blank shuffle-sized templates as Photoshop file or GIF, you are then free to decorate, upload and share with your fellow shuffle customisers.
User Generated Content doesn’t just have to be digital.
Designs to Download The libraries of designs cover a really impressive range of designs and styles. These are easy to preview and download for you to print out to sticky-backed printer paper for your use.
Most of the designs for download leave the round controls uncovered, as I would assume that the print would wear out with use and it is possible that not seeing the functions of the keys could confuse the owner.
Rather than ignoring this large circle, a couple designs make use of the circular gap left in the print. One of particular note is Crow’s who uses an open mouth to surround the controls.
Another treats the shuffle as a phone, displaying the numbered keys in the lower section, with the controls taking the position of the ear piece
While some people take the simple approach and cover only one face of the player, others are more devoted and produce stickers for each of the exposed surfaces.
Once created or downloaded, they can be printed out on to sticky paper and applied to your virginal-white shuffle.
The quality of some of them is extraordinarily high. Two by Thomas Hui, could almost be sponsored version of the shuffle for the Basketball league.
Gallery The final part in the jigsaw is a photo gallery showing how enthusiastic people have been in customising their pride and joys.
As with the other sections, the range and quality is highly impressive with quite a few playfully mocking trade names such as a Sony battery, and a packet of Viagra.
As you might tell, I’m pretty enthused about the site – providing the tools to make your own covers and providing the inspiration to do it.
Shufflesome – has turned this idea into a business, even using RSS to alter you when new designed (or Outfits as they call them) becoming available.
Again, an impressive site with good designs – but of course you have to pay them for it!
Shuffle Art Archives
Shufflesome
19 August, 2005
3D TV: In Japan By 2020
You may think 3D TV is the kind of technology that will only ever appear in pages of a Dan Dare comic – a pipe dream.
Japan’s Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications feel differently. They have stated that they plan to make it a commercial reality by 2020.
Japan is well advanced in TV technology – they’ve had HDTV for _ever_, so it makes sense that they start to purse what many feel should be the ultimate extension of TV.
Given their HD TV background, the 3D TV would be displayed at HD resolution, but it doesn’t stop there, they’d also have the sensation of touch and smell. This isn’t 3D with big clumpy glasses, but is watched with the naked eye.
There have been a number of research projects working on this over the last few years, indeed I was lucky enough to see one demonstrated last year. It was impressive.
A US company deepLight is claiming that they will be shipping displays in the first quarter of 2006, initially for commercial use, but as prices reduce home use will become practical.
Reuters interviewed Yoshiaki Takeuchi, director of research and development at the Ministry, giving an interesting example of, “Can you imagine hovering over your TV to watch Japan versus Brazil in the finals of the World Cup as if you are really there?”
3d TV forms part of a grand national project, formed around “universal communication,” which Reuters define as “a concept whereby information is shared smoothly and intelligently regardless of location or language.” Their serious about it too – the ministry will be requesting a budget of 1Bn Yen for the project.
deepLight
Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications
19 August, 2005
Nokia N91 with iTunes – Yes/No
Speculation about Reuters reported than Kari Tuutti, spokesman for Nokia’s multimedia division said, “There is no commercial agreement between Nokia and Apple to integrate iTunes into the N-series devices.”
In a making-the-most-out-of-a-difficult-situation way, Kari went on to say, “But since this is based on a computer platform, anybody — including Apple if they so wish — can very easily develop this kind of application and offer it to consumers, via the Internet for example.”
Apple have publicly been working with Motorola to take iTunes to some of their new phones, including the E680i and E725.
As you’d imagine with any story attached to iTunes, there’s been a lot of excitement and words written about the now long promised beauties from Motorola. As yet, they haven’t been seen in public – which we feel must be pretty embarrassing for them. Reuters reports that one of them should be with US operators by the end of September.
Nokia
Apple
18 August, 2005