Digital-Lifestyles

Simon Perry

  • Sky, bye TiVo UK

    David Galbraith reminded me that TiVo are decamping from the UK.

    It’s a shame that TiVo got into a pickle here. They were brought over in a deal with Sky (part of News Corp.), which I’m sure looked great on the surface.

    Around launch time I remember going to see _THE TiVo_ at the only place that had it, Dixons. Swallowing my pride I went into (gulp) Dixons, to find it sitting on a shelf near the back of the store.

    The demonstration video that ran on it was quite informative, but my boat wasn’t sufficiently floated to make me reach for £400 to give them. It’s appeal is understood when you use it.

    I didn’t really remember much advertising for it but there was quite a lot of press. Then nothing, followed by … more nothing. Unsurprisingly only 32,000 were sold. I found mine about 18 months ago on FreeServe’s e-marketplace-thing selling for £150. Now I can’t believe I lived without it.

    It’s interesting how TiVo alters your perceptions, for example, I’ve given up archiving stuff off to VHS, as its hard to take its bulky, dated format seriously – Do I really want these big boxes cluttering up my house?

    I digress.

    It’s been alleged, how can I put this delicately, that Sky made it uneconomically viable for TiVo to have a base in the UK for their hardware distribution in the UK.

    I was speaking to someone who worked at Sky with the two people that did the TiVo deal. They were told to go and do the deal on specific terms, and not to return until they had. Sounds like Sky saw the opportunity … and the threat – and decided to control it.

    From the TiVo side, the deal confuses me. I don’t know if TiVo were seduced by the fact the Sky (Almighty) were interested in their product and all they were blinded by a partner with huge, growing number of subscribers in the UK.

    Whatever the deal was, it wasn’t mutually exclusive and appears to be lacking in proper Due Diligence. Sky still continue to developed PVR with NDS, the company they partially floated to the public in 1999. They also did a deal with the UK’s Pace, to supply their public PVR offering, Sky+. In true Sky style, they persuaded Pace to supply the boxes to them at under manufacturing cost.

    Sky, of course supplied something as part of the TiVo deal. When you call TiVo support in the UK, you get through to Sky’s Scottish call centre and your Monthly direct debit is labelled Sky – which is pretty galling.

    I think TiVo have done the right thing. As long as support continues to be provided at the generally very good level it is now and the EPG continues to function, who cares if they don’t have personnel here?

    Strangely they will continue to have a presence here. I heard they took a long lease on their UK offices – which they’re trying to be sublet as I type.

    The lesson TiVo learnt is clear. If you’re going to go into business with Sky, you’d better do it with your eyes wide open.

    Low down in the piece it says that marketing is the biggest obstacle to PVR adoption, which I agree with and understand . Here’s my suggestion, give people a PVR on free trial for a couple of weeks, you’d have trouble getting it back from them and leave it a month, you’ll have no chance.

  • Latest Oftel broadband research

    The Register covers a story based on the most recent Oftel (UK teleco regulator) research. Now eight in ten UK Internet users know about broadband, which is encouraging as last year it was about 50/50.

    From the Oftel report, we see that about two-thirds of all SMEs have Internet access, but only 13% use DSL/cable and around 4% are on leased lines.

    BUT here’s the scary piece – about 1/4 of them currently use ISDN. BT has made very little effort, if any, to convert ISDN users to DSL – the reason is simple – they would lose income – doesn’t matter that it’s better for customer.

    This is a typical BT – backward looking, squeeze every last penny you can from the customer, then when you absolutely have to, begrudgingly upgrade them. Deutsche Telekoms approach has always been more modern, when the advantages of ISDN over phone lines became obvious, they installed ISDN _instead_ of analogue phone lines, for no extra charge. They have also really pushed ADSL, by making it really attractive to upgrade.

    I called BT “sales” to try and get details of the costings and was shocked to find that they flatly refused to give me _any_ information without my phone number – all I wanted was a price. I think an attitude like this says it all – the customers needs and interests are secondary to BT’s – one of the reasons that the number of UK broadband users is so pitiful.

  • Further TiVo content deals

    There was a further announcement from TiVo’s advertainment division yesterday, in a new deal to place promotional material on TiVo’s. This time it’s with Fox Studios to promote five of their films this year. The content could include video elements from the films, including the full-length theatrical trailers, exclusive interviews or behind the scenes footage. Other video elements could also include music video performances associated with the film or film soundtrack.

    From the piece, it doesn’t sound like an opt-in scheme, as they refer to putting the content on the “reserved” hard drive space of TiVo’s and quite what channel the content will be pull from isn’t specified.

    One of the opt-in advertainments that sounds like an idea is “Telescoping” 30-second commercials. When the viewer is watching TV they will be able to link through to further material held on the TiVo, while the live TV is paused, ready to continue watching when they’ve finished with the extra material. Quite how this will work practically isn’t clear as advertisers don’t know all of their showings, certainly in the UK – I guess it’s just their big spots, live the Super Bowl, etc.

  • Telewest easy broadband hookup

    UK cable provider, Telewest, has announced a self-install kit enabling their current digital TV customers to get a broadband via their STB. The kit, £12.50, connects the STB to a computer via USB and gives access to their 1/2 and 1 Mbs service within 30 minutes, they estimate. They are also planning to release a wireless version.

  • Disney copyright extended to 95 years

    In a win for Disney at the US Supreme Court. It looks like there’s a lot at stake

    Copyright holders stand to collect about $400 million more a year from older creations under the extension

    The extension of copyright clearly benefits the corporation over the consumer

    Copyrights lasted only 14 years in 1790. With the challenged 1998 extension, the period is now 70 years after the death of the creator. Works owned by corporations are now protected for 95 years.

    But what did everyone expect?

    One advantage I would assume is that the rapidly growing content restoration business will be growing even more, as the media company capitalise on their back catalogue.

    [via David Galbraith]

  • Did you know? Michael Powell got a TiVo for xmas

    “God’s machine” he called it.

    There are two reasons why that’s significant.

    1 – Further proof that anyone who uses a DVR, wouldn’t want to live without it
    2 – He’s chairman of the US Federal Communications Commission

    The really significant section is-

    “Powell said he intended to use the TiVo machine to record TV shows to play on other television sets in his home, and even suggested that he might share recordings with his sister if she were to miss a favourite show.”

    It’s common knowledge that there is serious lobbying going on by the visual media industry to try and make it law in the US that all TV-type devices have to be digital and encrypted from source until it hits your eyeballs. They might not have all that much to fear through-

    Powell said he understood the needs to balance consumers’ fair use rights to make personal copies of television shows with Hollywood’s fears that TiVo-like technology allows exact copies to be made and easily sent over the Internet.

    All the same – you can bet there’s going to be some quickly convened meetings going on in Media Land about this.

  • Reebok CyberRider Review

    I went to Brent Cross (Shopping Centre) on Saturday to speak to the people demonstrating the Reebok CyberRider. It was setup in the centre space, which I had remember from my youth as being a fountain. Four CyberRiders, two Playstations enabling riders to compete against each other.

    After chatting for a while to one of the Reebok representatives, Grant Miller from The Body Squad, I decided to have a go, I found one of the Burnout games playing and I’ve got to say it was an interesting experience.

    You start off thinking you’re turning the peddles a lot to stay up with the pack of other cars, but then you get absorbed in playing the game as you steer the car around the circuit. The two keys I used to steer the car were in a natural position and easy to operate. The other buttons felt a bit fiddly and could be prone to stick.

    If you’re interested, I came second (I’ve no idea of the difficulty setting, but I suspect it was pretty lowly). By the time I realised I was doing OK, the first car was well ahead of me and I might have been able to catch it, thrashing silly in my home, but didn’t really feel like doing it in the middle of Brent Cross.

    What they’ve come up with is an interesting idea, by combining what would normally be regarded at polar opposites, physical activity and playing video games, they created something where you exercise without thinking you’re exercising.

    Of course that was just one title and the experience with other games might be completely different. I would be interested to try Tour de France, as Grant had. I’ve yet to play it at all but I remember some of the press labelled it a bit slow – perfect for the CyberRider. Could the future of the ‘sponsored run’ be sponsoring someone to actually cycle the Tour de France and you pay them according to their position in the race?

    I was having a mental flick through of various types of games and I thought a Doomesque game would be fun, where you have to peddle for your life – it would be perfect if you could peddle backwards as well … and have triggers. For a more relaxing session a title like Pilot Wings on the N64, where the controls aren’t too complex but you have to peddle to stay in the sky. On the retro side, save bashing your Track and Field keys into oblivion and replace it with peddling.

    The trick that they appear to be currently missing is to have the resistance of the peddling varied by the computer, so you’d have to push hard up hills. This would introduce a lot more variety and would make driving games set in San Francisco a pretty serious workout.

    Personally, I’d like to see the ability to change the sensitivity of the peddle sensor, so the ride wouldn’t have to be totally manic to win the race. Or is that defeating the purpose?

    If you were wondering about my stress levels at Brent cross – it actually wasn’t that bad at the beginning, but I’m sure there’s something they must put in the air conditioning system that means that you get a growing feeling that you’ve just godda get out of that place.

    ___The Tech
    They altered a standard bike by integrating joypad buttons of differing sizes into the riding handles, fitted a sensor at the peddles and strengthened it slightly – after finding the competition got pretty hot between the testers.

    The hardware is modular. Two cables use RJ45 connectors to the box that interfaces to the console/computer, enabling them to connect to any device. They’ve currently connected to PlayStation 2 & 1 and PC. They say that GameCube and XBox are in the works.

    ___Conclusions
    Bearing in mind that I had the limited exposure of one game, I thought it was fun and for a lot of people who don’t exercise this could be the excuse they’re looking for – especially if they like gadgets.

    It’s unlikely people are going to buy more than one of these (and console, and TV) so after trying it, I’m even more convinced that the long term future for this type of thing, as I said previously, will be linking them up with broadband – s not something they’d tried.

    I also suggested that it would be fun to equip a number of gyms, get them connected together and have people compete against each other. Find the fittest gym.

  • Err, could you pause the wireless revolution please

    News reaches us that the US military is, all of a sudden, worried about the use of wireless networking technologies, as they think it will interfere with their new passive radar systems.

    This story has been widely misread or taken the wrong way, thinking it affects radar generally and all wireless networking. I don’t think it’s about the already widely used 802.11b/WiFi/2.4GHz, but the 802.11a equipment that operates in the 5GHz range.

    In the UK the Radiocommunications Agency (RA) sets UK policy and issues licences for the non-military radio spectrum. UK people are currently free to use the 2.4GHz frequency (that 802.11b uses) without a licence but a £50/month licence is currently required for 5GHz equipment.

    I called Annette Henley, who is responsible for both 2.4GHz and 5GHz at the RA to ask her what would be happening about the 5GHz range. She tells me it is hoped that the 5Ghz range will become unlicensed by the end of January 2003, but it will be with the restrictions that it is only for indoor use and only for the equipment set to its lowest power setting.

    The completed paperwork has been passed to the Minister and just needs to complete the 21-day process of sitting in the House of Commons before coming into affect.

    Interestingly much of the 802.11a equipment that is for sale in the UK currently does not conform to these requirements.

    It appears that the US has actually got a bit caught out with this and are probably going to be following the UK’s lead and indeed there are moves afoot to create an International standard for this.

    If the US military does genuinely have a problem with 5GHz equipment, I can’t believe that they announcing it – at all. I guess that all of the 11a equipment that does not comply with the forthcoming UK standards will have a willing customer base with anyone who doesn’t want US radar to function.

  • Fit to burst

    Fitness is on most people’s mind, given it’s New Year and resolution have some possibility of still being adhered to – it is only nine days into the year after all.

    I know fitness is good for you and I have in the past had periods of reasonably fitness. Frankly these days it’s doesn’t sound that appealing – it feels more like a chore, hence I don’t do it.

    My interest in fitness was raised slightly when I saw the Reebok CyberRider exercise bike that connects to your PC, Playstation 2 or 1 and enables you to use your peddling as the input to games. Peddle fast and win the race.

    I’ve got a vague memory of a rowing machine that had a screen mounted in front of rower that graphically simulated you rowing down a river. It was a few years ago so the graphics were pretty unrealistic, ie blocky and slow.

    Now that high-powered graphic processing is now cheap and freely available, in the form of the current gaming consoles, it seems like a good idea to utilise it.

    I’ve always found going to the gym to be more enjoyable with friends, it enhances the element of competition. When you exercise by yourself at home, there’s no-one to impress with how fit you can appear to be to the other people in the gym, hence the healthy second-hand market in exercise bikes, rowing machines, etc. Add this to how much better some of the Xbox games (eg Ghost Recon) are when played on Xbox Live linked up to players Worldwide.

    I would have thought the future of these machines would be when you’re linked up with others and exercise against exercise-buddies from around the World.

    It’s being demonstrated this Saturday at Brent Cross. I find the idea of going to Brent Cross horrifying, never mind on a Saturday but in the interest of research I plan to go along and find out how good it is. I’ll let you know.

  • 100’s lose their ADSL connections

    BT managed to disconnect hundreds of their ADSL users, mostly 2Mb business customers. Amazingly the BT spokesman is quoted as saying that should have their services restored within five days. What sort of emergency reconfiguration takes five days to restore?