Digital-Lifestyles

Business

Changes to business digitisation brings

  • iBod from PlayBoy = iPorn

    PlayBoy iBodIt’s not that we’re surprised by this news, but it did send a ripple of laughter around the Digital Lifestyles offices today.

    In this world of new words being made up on what feels like an hourly basis, PlayBoy brings us iBod.

    Not surprisingly, their newly launched service entails delivering photos of scantily clad women to Apple’s Photo iPod. It’s nothing more than that really.

    For years, many have been enthusing about the huge revenues that will come from delivering p0rn to portable devices, based on the one-to-one relationship that people have with them. A few years back, when 3G operators the world over worried about how to make up the huge fees they had paid for the licences, some joked that 3G stood for Girls, Goals and Games.

    Playboy already sells to major wireless markets such as Germany, the United Kingdom, Australia and Brazil. They recently announced that they will now offer the same in the US.

    The fantastically-named Randy Nicolau, president of distribution for the Playboy Entertainment Group said “Given the extraordinary success we’ve had with our wireless offerings around the world, we felt the time was right to expand our wireless content to the millions of U.S. subscribers.”

    To the best of our knowledge the Photo iPod isn’t waterproof, but the Click Wheel is well known for its single hand operation.

    PlayBoy iBod

  • Microsoft Media Player-free Windows in Europe from January

    Microsoft has lost its appeal to block antitrust sanctions, originally imposed by the European Commission (EC) in March this year.

    Back then, along with a record-breaking near 500m Euro fine, the EC insisted that Microsoft should release two version of their Windows operating system, one without the media player built in and one without. The EC see Windows as the dominant computer operating system and want to try to ensure a more level playing field with the playback of digitally held audio and video. Some networking communication protocols were also opened up to compulsory licensing.

    The ruling won’t be a surprise to Microsoft but an unhappy result all the same. When we spoke to senior European Microsoft people back in September, they felt this action was likely, but were spinning a line saying that two version of the OS would confuse the public.

    It’s possible that the impact on the consumer may be close to zero. Philip Carnelley, research director with Ovum pointed out an interesting possible problem, “The way that part of the ruling was phrased doesn’t prohibit Microsoft from supplying Windows with Media Player at the same price as the version without, so there’s very little room for competition in the market place. If you can get something for free, why would you not take it?” The pricing issue was confirmed in a teleconference held with Microsoft general counsel, Brad Smith.

    Smith revealed that company lawyers wanted to look more closely at the 90-page decision before deciding whether to appeal. Smith confirmed that Microsoft would begin complying with the decision immediately, with a version of Windows that doesn’t include Media Player software being made available to European PC manufacturers in January and to resellers by February. Outside of Europe they have no plans to offer a version of Windows without Media Player.

    One long term worry for Microsoft could be that this ruling leaves it open for Europe able to question which extra bundled software could or should be included with Windows.

    We’ve got a couple of question about the impact of this ruling:-

    The Media player part of the ruling appears to only cover “Client PC’s” versions of Windows, not PDA’s or mobile phone version. We think the EC missed a trick here. If anything, the PDA or mobile player would be of more value to change, given its relative high market demand, than the less-than-furiously fought “Client PC’s” space. This oversight could be due to the age of the original legal action, instigated four years ago, when having media play back on a portable device wasn’t at the forefront of peoples minds.

    It is not immediately obvious which media player company will benefit from the removal of Microsoft media player. The only major PC maker to currently install Apple’s QuickTime player is HP, following their iPod deal. As far as we’re aware, Real player doesn’t have deals with major computer maker. Perhaps given this ruling they will accelerate their efforts and other entrants will be stimulated to enter.

    A confusing thought for you over the holiday period – will there be version of Windows Media Center Edition available Europe without Windows Media player! FYI – When we contacted the Microsoft team in Brussels said they didn’t think so.

    Microsoft ruling, Court of First Instance Order on Interim Measures – Court of Justice of the European

  • SuprNova.org closed in MPAA, BitTorrent Action

    For the last six months or so, the film industry has been gearing up to take on file-sharers exchanging video content online. The owners of the films are not very happy about people around the world freely swapping their content, and them not making any money about it.

    The first legal actions were against individuals who were sharing films. Next they mounted their assault on BitTorrent, an application that can be used to download video content. Most recently they have passed their attention to sites that point users to content distributed using BitTorrent.

    Their first move has been to take down the most popular of these, such as the self-described Universal Bit Torrent Source, SuprNova.org and TorrentBits.com.

    The sites targeted do not contain the actual video files. Because of the way bitTorrent works, they simply contain a list of pointers to the content held in the bitTorrent format. The video files are themselves fragmented around the network of people running the bitTorrent application.

    There are other sites, like TVTorrents, still continuing to make content accessible.

    While BitTorrent, in and of itself, is not evil, the film companies are very putout that their films are travelling through it. BitTorrent also has legitimate uses. It is used to distribute many type of material. Digital Lifestyles has used it to distribute audio recordings in the past.

    We hope that while pursuing their legal action to regain control of the distribution of their content, the film companies are also keeping their eyes open to the opportunities of this type of technology.

    As we’ve commented previously, when video content, distributed over a shared network, is combined with a new content alert technology like RSS, the result is a blueprint for a form of TV delivery. Content automatically arrives at the viewer machine when it’s been published alowing them to chose which they will watch.

    MPAA
    BitTorrent

  • RAJAR defeat TWG Audience Court Case

    RAJAR (Radio Joint Audience Research), the organisation that monitors UK radio audience size and listening habits, has defeated a case against them brought by The Wireless Group (TWG).

    Kelvin MacKenzie’s TWG launched the case back in March, claiming £66m in compensation for lost advertising revenues. TWG’s case came from the frustration at the alleged inaccuracy of the paper diary methods, and results of RAJAR audience monitoring. They felt the RAJAR figures for the their TalkSPORT radio station were not representative and this in turn left TWG’s advertising under-valued.

    TWG claimed RAJAR has abused competition laws when it decided against the immediate introduction of audiometers in June 2003, which they felt would give a more accurate, and therefore better, audience numbers for them.

    Today’s judgment was handed down after a two-day High Court hearing in early November 2004. RAJAR’s application to strike out the claim brought by The Wireless Group (TWG) in March of this year was upheld. Mr Justice Lloyd ruled that TWG’s description of RAJAR’s decision in June 2003 “does not match the reality of the case”.

    MacKenzie’s response? “RAJAR may have won a legal skirmish, but the war goes on until technology-based audience measurement is adopted”.

    RAJAR current method of understanding listener’s habits uses a paper diary system distributed to a listener panel. It is widely thought that this measuring method, while giving broad habits, does not account well for smaller stations – measuring widespread niche audience is challenging.

    To address this RAJAR has also set a target date for the introduction of a new audience measurement methodology, potentially including audiometers, of January 2007.

    Digital Lifestyles attended their extensive testing of three competing audiometers back in a November. RAJAR had taken over the whole floor of a London hotel, setting up different situations where people might be listening to such as with the TV on; another music source playing; a shower on. Each scenario would be gone through in strict rotation and at set times, the testers would flood into the halls ways to locate their next room for testing. It was clearly comprehensive and was the largest trial carried out to date.

    All eyes of radio audience measuring authorities from around the world are on RAJAR, awaiting the results.

    RAJAR

  • BlackBerry Patent Case Swings Away from RIM to NTP

    There will be furrowed brows over at Research in Motion Ltd (RIM), the Canadian company behind the ever-popular wireless email device, BlackBerry.

    The US Court of Appeals has just ruled against them in a case brought by intellectual property holding company NTP Inc, that alleged RIM have violated patents owned by NTP that cover the transmission of email over a radio network.

    The only slight cause for relief for RIM will come from the court ruling that they will be able to continue selling their products until final judgement is reached.

    The history of the case goes back to 2000 when NTP first notified RIM of the alleged infringement. In a series of cases since then, the case has been batted between the two of them and over the period, the courts have ordered RIM to pay over $70m to NTP.

    Back in November 2002, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office ordered re-examinations of all NTP patents litigated in this matter.

    Although this ruling only has jurisdiction in the USA, it is unclear if there will be any impact on RIM’s deals with non-US mobile operators. RIM has done deals with a number of operators around the world, the product of which have now made it to market. One example, being two months ago Vodafone UK launched the 7100v that has BlackBerry functionality built into a more compressed form.

    Research In Motion

  • UK Film Council Launches “Film Theft in the UK” report

    This morning the UK Film council launched a 94-page report containing 30 measures they feel will help defeat the spread of unauthorised film copying in the UK.

    Compiled by the Anti-Piracy Taskforce convened by the UK Film Council, it contains suggestions of short, medium and long-term actions aimed at the UK Government, the UK film industry and, what they call, “Government-backed and other film sector stakeholders”. Started in Summer 2003, it has taken nearly 18-months to complete.

    The report is being forwarded to The Creative Industries Forum on Intellectual Property, which was launched by the UK Government in July this year. Headed by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, Department of Trade and Industry and Patent Office, the group contains Ministers from eight Government Departments including the Treasury and Home Office.

    There is clearly a large problem with DVD’s being commercially copied and offered for sale in the UK. We’ve been surprised in the past, when offered copied DVD’s of many feature films. A while back one of the writers at Digital Lifestyles was offered the then unreleased Incredibles, a Pixar film, by an Oriental lady with a bulging bag of DVD’s with colour photo copied covers. The price for this unreleased film? Just five pounds. This was made all the more cheeky by us being a stones throw from the centre of the UK film industry.

    For research we bought one, and found the audio quality to be terrible at the start of the film. Persisting, we were later amused to see the classic “Bloke off to the toilet” head raise up and pass in front of the screen, only to return 10 mins later. From the size of the mystery person, it was clear that this has been shot in a small private screening room, probably during a preview, possibly from within the projector room. The likelihood was that this wasn’t shot by a member of the public, but by someone within the industry.

    When discussing the availability of commercially copied DVDs with others, we heard that there are regularly stalls on the high street in Kilburn, London that are openly selling copied DVDs, with the police walking past not taking any notice.

    Based on figures from Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT), the report estimates the value of black market in pirate DVDs in the UK to be £400-£500 million in 2003 and they expected it to exceed £1 billion within three years, based on their retail price. In the full report (yes, we read it) they list the main sources of copied DVD’s to be Pakistan (36%), Malaysia (31%) and China (14%).

    We found it very confusing that the authorities or the film companies didn’t appear to be taking, or even publicly threatening, actions against commercial copiers, when there was considerable noise being made about the imminent death of the film industry being caused by file sharing networks. It’s more than obvious that the current installed base of DVD players is significantly bigger than those with computers and a broadband connection.

    Down to their suggested actions. They felt that trading standards don’t have enough powers to combat trading in copied films and would like them to have more. There are a couple of suggestions to clamp down on car boot fairs (public markets where individuals turn up, pay a fee and sell their goods) including; ensuring that people registering to sell be over 18 (they say that currently children under 14 are being registered as the stall holders, and legal action cannot be taken against a child under 14); making the registration of car boot fairs compulsary; and there being powers to close down car boot sales where pirate DVDs are persistently sold, which they told us would be a “last resort measure.”

    Some of the points mimicked ideas running in the USA, such as making the act of camcording in a cinema a clear criminal offence (it is currently a civil offence) and providing incentives for cinema staff to look for unauthorised camcorder usage.

    It was encouraging that some of the problems that are normally glossed over were addressed. To this end, one of their short-term suggestions is to conduct a thorough review of security risks in the film making process, looking to develop improved security procedures for the handling of film prints and digital materials.

    Despite a whole chapter in the reports appendix “Learning from the music industry”, we were disappointed to see that “Developing clear commercial strategies in relation to Internet Film Distribution” was only listed as a medium-term goal. Indeed, when we spoke to the UK Film Council, we were further disappointed to hear the same old delaying arguments of “when the technology is in place and the broadband market is significant” being rolled out. It’s clear to all who pay any attention to this area that this point has already been reached otherwise, people wouldn’t be swapping films online, was met with a blanket, non-committal response.

    UK Film Council

  • LG opens European RandD Centre in Paris

    The march of LG continues West with them setting up an R&D office in Paris (Reg.Req.), France. The advantages to them are plentiful; a stronger understanding of the needs of the European market; the forging of closer relationships with European network operators; having the cellular standards bodies on their door steps – ETSI (European Telecommunications Standards Institute) and 3GPP (Third Generation Partnership Project) are both based in Paris.

    This will be their fifth R&D centre, following San Diego, Beijing, Bangalore, and Moscow.

    LG profile has grown tremendously in recent years, and their handsets have been doing well. They hope the opening of this R&D centre takes them one step closer to being a ‘global top 3’ in handsets by 2006. On past performance it looks highly achievable – rival companies must be getting worried.

    LG

  • Blu-Ray gets Disney support

    The battle between Blu-ray and HD-DVD is heating up. Reuters carries the story of Disney pledging support for Sony’s Blue-ray. Disney will make films available on the release of Blu-ray players, which are first expected in 2006 in North America.

    At the end of November Warner, Paramount, Universal and New Line Cinema pledged their support for HD-DVD.

    Blu-Ray uses a blue-violet laser with a very fine focus. This enables it to store 25GB of data on a single-layer disk, sufficient for 2 hours of HDTV, or 13 of standard-definition TV. The dual-layer versions of the discs that can hold 50GB. HD-DVD holds 20Gb on a single-layer disk.

    “Everyone is looking for the right format … to release their content. That is a combination of consumer adoption of the players and the platform, content protection, and adequate capacity. We think Blu-ray is there,” Murphy told Reuters in a phone interview.

    Having said they’re supporting Blu-ray, Disney isn’t saying that they won’t support the rival HD-DVD. At least they’ve has gone one step further than 20th Century Fox, who, despite being founding members, haven’t committed to publish on the format as yet.

    There’s been a trickle of announcements over the past months giving support to Blue-ray, from HP on 15 Nov saying they’ll ship computers with drives next year and in their laptops in 2006; Sharp on 11.Nov saying they’ll ship the BD-HD100, a combined HDTV tuner, 160GB hard disk and Blu-ray recorder (25GB) in December this year;

  • Dell strong EPS, SG Cowen

    Kevin Rollins, CEO at Dell, impressed a Boston’s investor lunch meeting organised by SG Cowan yesterday. So much so that they’re now seeing Dell providing 20%+/Annum Earning Per Share growth over the next two years.

    They report strong current demand and a lowering of component pricing. While thinking Dell’s shares are fully valued near term, they are buoyant long term, rating them as “attractive.”

    Most growth will be in the Enterprise space, and they are a little wary of the Consumer space, as margins are so thin.

    They see Dell continuing to disrupt the printer market, recognising that it is a “step-by-step” multi-year process.

    SG Cowen

  • European Networked and Electronic Media (NEM) initiative launches

    How Europeans receive their digital entertainment in the future could change, following an event in Nice last week. At the launch of the bold and ambitious Networked and Electronic Media (NEM) initiative, the European Commission (EC) announced their intention to form an integrated, interoperable platform. Its broad scope stretches from the way media is created, through each of the stages of its distribution, to its playback.

    The EC want its citizens to be able to locate the content they desire and have it delivered seamlessly, when on the move, at home or at work, no matter who supplies the devices, network, content, or content protection scheme.

    With interconnectivity as its goal, it is fortunate that over 120 experts were there to share the vision and hear pledges of active support from companies such as Nokia, Intel, Philips, Alcatel, France Telecom, Thomson and Telefonica.

    It might initially appear to be surprising that companies in direct competition are keen to work together, but again and again speakers stated they could not see incompatible, stand-alone solutions working. A long-term strategy for the evolution and convergence of technologies and services would be required.

    The EC is being pragmatic in its approach. They have identified that many standards bodies have, and continue to, define standards in the areas that NEM encompasses, but recognise that some of these standards overlap. The NEM approach is to take a serious look at what’s available and what’s in the pipeline, pick out the best, integrate them together and identify where the gaps are. Where it finds holes, it will develop standards to fill them.

    While the global access to content is not a unique idea, what is significant is that such a large and powerful organisation has stated its desire for it to be fully open and interoperable – not restricting the consumers choice at any stage in the process.

    This is bound to please, if not surprise, many individuals and user organisations who feel that the wishes of the holder of rights to content are normally considered over and above those of the consumer. Following the keynote earlier in the week of EC Director João Da Silva, they now know they have a supporter within the higher echelons of the European Commission.

    Many feel that the most difficult and challenging area for the EC will be to identify a solution for interoperating Digital Rights Management (DRM) schemes. Currently DRM solutions are incompatible – locking certain types of purchased content, making them unplayable on all platforms.

    With the potential of having a percentage of every media transaction that takes place globally, the prize for being the supplier of the world’s dominant DRM scheme is huge. This leads the companies who feel they have a chance in controlling it to not be very open to sharing.

    Although entertainment is an obvious first step, it will encompass the remote provisions of healthcare, energy efficiency and control of the Smart Home. The over-arching initiative amalgamates the work of many currently running research projects that the EC has been funding for a number of years.

    The NEM is a ten-year project, which in the everything-immediately age we live in, might seem like a lifetime away, but it’s important to remember that the digital delivery of media stretches a long way into the future. Decisions made and solutions selected now will have far reaching consequences.

    This piece was featured on the BBC Web site.