Author: Simon Perry

Movie88.com re-appear as Film88.com

You may remember Movie88.com from last year, you could log on to the Taiwan-based site and play complete Hollywood movies for around US$1. The Hollywood studios got upset about this and leaned heavily on the Taiwanese Government to get them shut down, which the were successful in doing in February this year.

They’ve now open up again under the name Film88.com and the clever-cookies have based their servers in Iran – which hasn’t had a diplomatic relationship with the US for a few years. This article suggests that the only approach to get the site shutdown is to ask the naming authority, Verisign, to rescind the domain – which I personally can’t see a legitimate justification for.

The unauthorised placing for copyrighted material on the Internet has always been a threat to copyright holders and a concern, but the idea of it actually happening from a country that they have absolutely no influence over must have movie world crying in their cocktails – and other copyright holders.

XtremeSpectrum announce Ultra-Wide Band compatibility

Only a day after the FCC published its First Report & Order about the public use of UWB (Ultra-Wide Band), XtremeSpectrum announce that they will comply with all items. Very fast work?, or more the fact that they’ve been working with/lobbying the authorities in this area for the last 2-3 years and therefore had a very strong idea what was going to be coming. They feel the manufacturers that will be using their UWB chipset could have their products in the stores this xmas – giving everyone up to 100Mb of very-local wireless access – Bluetooth on speed if you like.

Broadcast Protection Discussion Group draft proposal

The US general public probably don’t currently know who the Broadcast Protection Discussion Group (BPDG) , or in fact they may never know, but one thing is for sure – if the BPDG’s recently drafted proposal is taken up, the public’s understanding of TV shows and their ability of record them will change for ever.

The core of the idea is to ‘ensure no analogue leaks’ (their words) from the broadcast of shows to the point they hit your eyeballs – by forcing all electronics manufacturers to build-in decryption just before it’s displayed on the screen. There are many things wrong with this approach, some of them highlighted in an EFF blog.

We await to see if the decades of media group lobbying has been good value – as it is thought that BPDG will next approach Congress and the FCC to support the proposal.

Joltage first UK access point

Joltage, one of the new WiFi access companies, now have their first UK access point in Purton, a small Wiltshire village a mile west of Swindon.

The Joltage service works by owners of broadband connections attaching WiFi kit to it and allowing roaming WiFi users in the local area to use their connection. The roaming WiFi users pays $25/month Joltage for the privilege and the base station owner gets paid for usage of each packet.

A seemingly neat arrangement, but currently there are two problems for Joltage. Firstly it is illegal in the UK to commercially exploit the 2.4GHz band that WiFi runs on. Secondarily, reselling ADSL is against the terms and conditions of service.

The idea behind Joltage has been running since October 2000 in the UK by a collective, consume.net, who freely share their bandwidth, making it completely legal, as neither of the problems above are triggered. Being a collective they don’t have a marketing budget but do have huge amounts of enthusiasm to see the service succeed. I’ve been watching the progress of consume.net since early 2001 and have been impressed at the way they’ve continued to improve and expand the service.

Moxi sales on the move

I’ve written here in glowing terms about the theory and features of the Moxi Media Centre. Back in March Diego bought Moxi and they’ve now reported receiving a positive from the cable industry at the National Cable and Telecommunications Association (NCTA) annual tradeshow in New Orleans. Motorola showed their Moxi based “Broadband Media Center’s”, the BMC8000 and 9000, which they are building under license.

They also reported their first sale to Charter Communications, the fourth largest cable company in the US, who will be deploying them in Fall this year. I’m sure there’s no coincidence that Paul Allen owns large portions of both Diego and Charter. He may succeed where his old business partner, Bill Gates, failed, in becoming THE household entertainment device.