Simon Perry

Bling Player Screams Steal Me
As if the life of the portable music player listener isn’t hard enough to survive already, MediaReady has brought out a new range to attract the eye of street magpies – the Bling Player.
As you might guess from the name, the Bling Player has rather a lot of bling-esque stuff stuck to it. The young dudes and dudesses at Digital-Lifestyles tell me that this is referred to as being “iced out,’ or at least it used to be – street phrases move fast.
There’s two models available DOGTAG or SKULL’N’BONES, which MediaReady tell us creates “a new kind of fashion statement.”
The Bling Player is a 2Gb Flash player with FM radio built into it, capable of storing 30+ hours of music or 16+ plus hours of video. We hear that it “will ship to leading consumer electronics, clothing, and jewellry retailers,” starting April 2007.
The price of $199 will possibly mean that prospective purchasers will need to sell a bit of their current bling to own it.
MediaREADY Bling Player
14 March, 2007
Nearly Half Of All UK TVs Digital-ised: Ofcom
The number of UK TVs connected to digital devices – ones that can receive digital TV signals – has increased to 48.5% reports Ofcom.
The quarterly report snappily titled, Communications Market: Digital Television Progress Report, covering the fourth quarter of 2006 (October-December), shows the figures are up from 39% in the same period the previous year, and also from 44.7% in the Q3 2006.
The run up to Xmas is traditionally a time where many more new TVs are bought, in a desperate attempt to increase the ‘enjoyment’ of Xmas by numbing their brains watching ‘entertainment’ on TV. It appears no different this year as a further one million UK homes acquired digital televisions for the first time.
Previously, Ofcom used to highlight the number of UK households that were digital-TV-enabled, which has now reached 77.2%. This figure received a fair degree of criticism as, although it sounded impressive, didn’t give a true reflection of what the impact of switching off analogue would be for UK TV watchers.
There’s been an interesting announcement in the US, where the American households will be offered up to two $40 vouchers to switch to digital TV. The UK government has actively discouraged thinking like this in the UK.
As ever, there’s a huge pile of numbers that will be poured over by those in the industry who get quite excited about this type of thing. We’re normally in this category, but for some reason were not too excited about this quarter.
Communications Market: Digital Television
Progress Report, Q4 2006
14 March, 2007
Elgato Ends Collaboration with Miglia
We’ve just heard from Elgato that they are terminating their relationship. Although we’ve been told that the contract ended on 7 February, it’s only just being discussed publicly now.
Until then, Miglia has been bundling Elgato’s TVEye software with their digital TV DVB-T/Freeview/TNT tuners.
Wanting further details, we first spoke to Miglia, who told us they could say nothing until a press release is issued tomorrow.
A call to Elgato gave us slightly more information, but they were restrained by the non-disclosure agreement between the two parties.
Elgato said that they were were saddened that the relationship had to come to an end, and that they had “tried [their] best to keep the relationship alive.”
Looking on the bright side, they said that “The OEM business is only one part of our business. The bigger part is selling our own hardware with our software, which we will continue to do.”
The official statement from Elgato is
Elgato Systems announces that it has terminated the licensing agreement for EyeTV software with Miglia Technology, Ltd. Miglia can no longer ship, sell or advertise TV Tuner solutions bundled with Elgato’s EyeTV software.
Customers using EyeTV with a Miglia TV tuner product are not affected by this change. Elgato EyeTV will continue to work with existing Miglia products. Elgato will continue to support existing Miglia/EyeTV customers with software updates and improvements.
We’re waiting to hear back from Miglia which software they will be shipping with their product in the future.
Miglia
Elgato
12 March, 2007
BT Try To Vary Payphone Pricing
In their constant pursuit for higher profits, BT have put a request into the UK uber-regulator Ofcom, to allow them to charge different prices for phone calls depending on where the phonebox is located, claim TelecomTV.
BT is under a legal obligation to provide phone boxes up and down the length of the UK, which they claim numbers 63,795. BT say that 40,500 of these phone boxes are unprofitable.
BT is attempting to negotiate a three-year deal that would let BT “determine the acceptable pricing of pay-phone calls.”
Try to get out of their obligations is not really playing the game is it? It’s not like their obligation to payphones is news to them.
It’s got the ring about it along the lines of charging for directory enquiries. When BT was allowed to start charging for calls to directory enquiries, it was only ‘normal’ landlines that were effected. Calls to find out phone numbers were free from Payphone, as BT removed the printed telephone directories from them. A few years later BT had the rules changed and started charging from payphone, despite not returning the printed directories.
BT claim that calls from payphones have dropped off by 40% in the last four years, no doubt due to the considerable rise in uptake of mobile phones.
Digital-Lifestyles thinks this doesn’t make it right that people who live in remote locations should have to pay inflated prices for using the same payphone and connecting to the same phone network as everyone else, just because BT wants to make more profit.
(via)
12 March, 2007
HD Photo: Microsoft’s JPEG Death Dream
The 800-pound gorilla that is Microsoft is trying to get the world to shift from the global-standard JPEG format to their relatively newly-announced format, HD Photo.
Last week Microsoft went on a PR offensive to promote the new format, despite them having published the specification in November last year.
It’s claimed that HD Photo offers twice the efficiency of JPEG – meaning the same quality of photo will take up half the amount of storage.
Despite the HD at the start of HD Photo, there is no connection to the HDTV standard or format.
It’s not surprising to hear that Windows Vista has native support for HD Photo images, and it can be easily added to Windows XP. Microsoft have also released a beta version of a plug-in for Adobe Photoshop, enabling people to save files in HD Photo format. They’ll not be charging for it, even when it’s released.
Bold, to say the least
Microsoft’s attempt to convert the world to using their new photo format is, to say the least, pretty ambitious given how every camera in the world uses the JPEG format to store images.
Frankly we think Microsoft would have stood a better chance of success with HD Photo five plus years ago, before the price of storage, both of hard disks and portable memory formats, started plummeting. The same applies for the claims of needing less processing power to decode HD Photo images, as most new computers have more processing power than their owners know what to do with them.
Their best chance of success will be to try and get photographers who shoot in RAW (uncompressed) format to save their images down to HD Photo, tempting them with less loss in their photos than JPEG currently provides.
Wikipedia on HD Photo
12 March, 2007
EU Comments Add Pressure To Apple iTunes
The heat on Apple to open up their iTunes/iPod combination went up another notch following an interview with Meglena Kuneva, the European Union’s Consumer Protection Commissioner.
In the interview with German weekly magazine Focus, published today, she poses the following question, “”Do you think it’s fine that a CD plays in all CD players but that an iTunes song only plays in an iPod?” It’s followed by a couple of words that are going to make uncomfortable reading for Apple, “I don’t. Something has to change.”
Music bought on the Apple iTunes online shop cannot be played on any other music player, apart from Apple’s iPod.
Kuneva is carrying out a review of the eight basic laws which govern cross-border consumer rights.
Pressure has been building for quite a while against Apple, with the latest, most significant one being in January as the Norwegian Consumer Watchdog, declaring iTunes to be illegal.
Previous actions have been, the approval of France’s ‘iTunes Law,’ after Apple narrowly avoided the French courts over their FairPlay DRM back in 2004.
Apple leader, Steve Jobs, wrote an open letter at the start of last month, entitled “Thoughts on Music,” where he said he’d drop DRM “in a heartbeat,” but was hamstrung by the content owners not allowing him to do so.
Meglena Kuneva – EU site
12 March, 2007
Skype Downloaded Over 0.5 Billion Times
Skype has announced that its VoIP software has been downloaded over 500 million times since its inception in August 2003.
A pretty staggering number, even when you realise that it includes all of the downloads and possibly all upgrades of the software (* We’re in the process of checking this with Skype HQ).
Working out that this averages just under 11m downloads per month is pretty meaningless, as in the early days there were very few people knowing about Skype, or even how to pronounce it. In the early days some numpties called it Skype-eee – and we bet that the guilty keep that one quiet these days.
Some numbers that are worth looking at – because they’re pretty mind blowing – are that Skype is being downloaded at the rate of six times per second; Skype to Skype minutes in Q4 2006 alone totalled 7.6 billion minutes; and in September 2005, Skype had 54 million registered users. Today it has over 171 million registered users worldwide.
Skype CEO and co-founder Niklas Zennström shares the love and enthused, “The entire Skype team owes its success to the global community of registered users we have today who tell their loved ones how much they enjoy using Skype.”
The original Skype users were mostly people who had used Zennström previously wildly popular product, Kazza, a P2P file-sharing application. Much of the knowledge his team had built up in handling considerable amount of data sharing between machines was invaluable in building the bones of Skype.
Skype is now just part of everyday life. A product that you couldn’t imagine being without. A pretty impressive feat in anyones book.
8 March, 2007
Who Owns YouTube/BBCWorld?
When an important deal like the YouTube/BBC one comes around, we feel we want to find out that little bit extra about it. Sadly neither of the press departments have been given the go ahead to provide journalists any further clues as to how the deal went down.
Given that frustration, we thought we’d apply a little lateral thinking to the situation and have a sniff around in a few places online to see if we can dig up some more.
Lots of investigation drew a blank, but realising that the address of the BBCWorld YouTube Channel hadn’t been given when the press information had been distributed at the announcement, we made a couple of guesses what it might be and it ended up being the obvious one.
One of the questions that we had was how long the deal had taken to negotiate. As mentioned there was no official word on it, but YouTube.com/BBCWorld reveals that a channel has been previously setup. The question is, is this an official BBC channel – setup over 9 months ago, or is there a 24 year old Australian squatting the BBC’s channel name.
If it is a BBC channel, it shows that there’s been a very long period of negotiation – 9 months – between the BBC and YouTube to get to the point of them announcing the deal.
If it isn’t, it will be interesting to see what YouTube’s approach will be to an individual registering a name that their largest content partner owns.
Keep your eyes on YouTube.com/BBCWorld to find out the answer.
7 March, 2007
BBC and YouTube Partner
Another day, another content deal as the UK National broadcaster, the BBC, sign a deal with YouTube/Google to make a selection of their content available on YouTube on an non-exclusive basis.
Two deals have been done, one with the BBC, the other BBC Worldwide, the commercial arm of the BBC. Financial terms of the deal aren’t being discussed at all.
There will be three YouTube ‘channels’ under the deal. Two of them are live already, BBC and BBCWorldwide, with BBCWorld to follow ‘shortly.’
BBC is very much in the YouTube model, full of rough camcorder diary pieces, and behind the scenes shots giving an ‘insight’ into the workings of the BBC. Currently there are 31 pieces going back one month.
BBCWorldwide is labelled as “The best of British TV” and currently has 78 video pieces on it and contains a ton on Top Gear, Attenborough and a smattering of comedy shows like The Mighty Boosh and Catherine Tate. Will also “include a limited amount of advertising.”
BBCWorld isn’t up and running yet, but when it is, will only be available to YouTube viewers outside the UK. It will be advertising-funded.
Mark Thompson, Director-General of the BBC, likes the project, “The partnership provides both a creative outlet for a range of short-form content from BBC programme makers and the opportunity to learn about new forms of audience behaviour.
What’s it like?
Surprisingly for the BBC the quality of the video isn’t what it could be. Quite a change from the days when quality was everything.
Interestingly, fans of BBC content are barred from showing their fav ditties on any other sites as “Embedding disabled by request.” If the BBC has requested this, or YouTube isn’t clear. It’s more likely given they’ve paid the BBC for their content, and we imagine that they damn well want viewers visiting their site to see the videos.
This is great for the BBC as they get to distribute their content widely (fitting their remit) while not having to spend any money on distribution of the content, in fact receiving payment for the privilege.
2 March, 2007
Sky Remote Record Via The Internet
Sky has gradually been increasing the number of ways to program your Sky+ and HD boxes to record. The latest, via the Internet, joins interactive via mobile phone and the rather convoluted mobile text message services.
In those situations where Sky subscribers find they haven’t set their boxes to record the latest episode of Celebrity Trouser Press, and can’t live without seeing it, relief will now be at hand.
By grabbing the closest (compatible) Web browser, Sky subscribers bring up the Sky site, login and take themselves to TV Listings. The next seven days of TV programming will be brought up, and, when Celebrity Trouser Press is found, by clicking on the title, the description of the programme and its options are brought up.
All that is needed to program the box is a click on Remote Record, and a subsequent confirmation to send the request to the box nestled under the TV at home.
Sky tell us that it can take up to 30 mins for the programming request to reach its destination, but it’s highly likely to be significantly quicker than that.
Strangely they have decided to impose a limit of 10 recording request a day via the Internet – but, in our view, anyone who need to remotely programme their box more than that needs help anyway. Those afflicted can reach for their mobile to carry on programming until their thumbs bleed.
Well that’s it. The remote programming circle is now complete. All ways to program your Sky+ box are now available … err, except the direct brain method. We await the call from Sky on that one.
Sky Remote Record
2 March, 2007