Digital-Lifestyles

Content

Content in its shift to become digital

  • Disney and Intel to Launch “Mickey Symphony”

    Disney and Intel are to launch an interesting broadband content service in Japan – an interactive version of some segments form Fantasia 2000. The three initial sections are “Pomp and Circumstances”. “Rhapsody in Blue” and, always a favourite, “Carnival of Animals”.

    Users will be able to enjoy interactive special effects, arrange the scenes’ backgrounds, and dance with Donald and Daisy. Which can’t be too bad. There’s a preview that I’ve linked to below – though when they say broadband, they mean broadband: it takes ages to load.

    Though currently rather limited in scope, the product hints at what Disney might be able to offer in the future with its rich range of intellectual property.

    Koji Hoshino, President of Walt Disney Japan said: “As a leading media company, Disney is committed to delivering content which satisfies a broad range of consumer demands utilizing new technologies … The achievement with Mickey Symphony has taken us to a new level of content creation and distribution. Intel and Disney, leaders in technology and media respectively, joined forces to create this milestone product in Japan and expect to continue further expansion of our collaborative relationship.”

    Disney believe that this will be just the first of many such products, and that it will act as a catalyst for increasing public demand for broadband content and services.

    Have a look at Mickey Symphony

  • Jupiter Research: The CD Will Be With Us for a While Yet

    A new report from Jupiter Research describes the European music market in 2009 – and shows there there’s still plenty of life in the CD format yet.

    Jupiter estimate that the entire market will be worth €10.2 billion (US$12.55 billion), with digital downloads accounting for a mere €836 million (US$1.03 billion) or 8% of the total. Growth for digital music services such a s downloads and streaming has been increasing rapidly, from €10.6 (US$13.16) million in 2003 to an estimated €46.3 million (US$57.50)at the end of this year.

    Jupiter claim that the CD will remain the format of choice for a long time yet. Recent attempts at revising the format with extra features and gimmicks have shown that the CD of 2009 may be slightly different from those in the shops in 2004. Copy protection techniques may have moved on by then, though news this week that Sony has dropped copy-protected CDs in Japan show that a rethink on this technology is due.

    “Although Europe’s digital music market has finally begun to take off after a sluggish start, it will remain a relatively niche market, considering the total European music market in 2009 will be €10.2 billion. Even with the success of the new services, digital music spending will make up less than a half of a percent of Europe’s total music market at the end of 2004,” stated Mark Mulligan, Research Director at Jupiter Research. “In the context of successive years of declining music sales, digital music distribution will be an important alternative revenue channel for the music industry but it is not about to replace the CD,” added Mulligan.

    Jupiter Research

  • Overpeer Launched in Europe

    Loudeye have launched their Overpeer anti-piracy technology in Europe. The system, which uses a number of techniques to protect content, has proven popular in the US and Asia and currently protects 60,000 digital entertainment titles. This translates to millions of blocked downloads every month.

    “As we enter an important stage in the legitimate distribution of digital media content, content owners around the world face challenges in managing the illegal distribution of their material across peer-to-peer networks,” said Marc Morgenstern, vice president and general manager of Loudeye’s asset protection and promotion business in a statement. “Our proprietary systems and technology are designed to interdict illegal peer-to-peer traffic, blocking illegal transmission of copyrighted material and helping content owners take control of piracy. These systems have been highly effective for our customers in the US and Asia, and we’re pleased that we are now launching the services in Europe through OD2, our European subsidiary.”

    Overpeer uses content spoofing to distribute fake music, software and movie files across P2P networks – if downloaded, the file can then redirect a PC user to a legitimate source for the real content with the option of buying it.

    Overpeer

  • Akimbo Showcase Internet-toTV VOD Service, Make Deal With TBS

    Still can’t find anything worth watching on TV? Akimbo have demoed their internet-to-TV video-on-demand service at the Digital Hollywook show in California this week.

    The service is planned to launch in October, and will deliver thousands of hours of video content to a set-top box, the Akimbo Player via subscribers’ broadband connections.

    The Akimbo system uses a “Que and View” interface and dedicated remote control to allow users to select programmes that they wish to see – for delivery to them for later viewing.

    The Akimbo player holds about 200 hours of video at 1.5 megabits per second, and two of the key advantages are that it doesn’t tie up subscribers’ PCs, nor do they have to watch programmes on a monitor — they can cosy up in their front room. The service will launch at US$9.99 (€8.10) a month, and will include films, music, sports, comedy and drama content amongst others.

    Akimbo, founded and managed by execs from ReplayTV, Macromedia, Microsoft and Apple, has also signed a deal with Turner Broadcasting Systems to license thousands of hours of content from CNN, Cartoon Network, TCM and Boomerang.

    Kevin Cohen, senior vice president and general manager, interactive/enhanced television for TBS said in a statement: “We are pleased to work with Akimbo and are looking forward to learning how consumers respond to this new subscription on-demand technology.”

    Akimbo

  • 3GPP Goes HE-AAC

    Touted as the most efficient audio codec in the world, HE-AAC has been adopted as a standard by 3GPP, a collaboration between telecommunications standards bodies to produce global standards and specifications for mobile technologies.

    It’s good news for the developing AAC format, and good news for those in the mobile industry – there’s now a good chance there’ll be a common file format for music stores and mobile music. Convergence fans will also be able to transfer music between AAC compatible devices, meaning that it’s less likely they’ll have to buy the same track more than once. Furthermore, the adoption of a standard should encourage more publishers to venture out into mobile music.

    aacPlus can store a reasonably high-fidelity single track in just 500kb – obviously hand for the current generation of handsets that are doubly constrained by available bandwidth and memory capacities.

    Richard Poston, director of corporate communications at mmO2 said about the news: “As the first operator offering mobile music downloads, we are very happy about the final standardization. We’ve been really impressed by the excellent balance of good audio quality combined with efficient use of bandwidth.”

    HE-AAC uses a spectral band replication system from Coding Technologies to reconstruct high frequency sound from hints in the encoded file. By stripping out the high frequencies, only low-frequency sound needs to be encoded and stored, meaning that music can be encoded at roughly half the bit rate of standard AAC.

    Perfect if you listen to that “bang bang bang” music, but we’ve yet to test if the high-frequency substitution wheeze can encode other music types, such as those with lots of strings, accurately.

    3GPP

  • Toshiba Announce First 60GB Music Players

    Toshiba have added some new models to their gigabeat series, including the world’s first 60GB digital music player. All players in the gigabeat F series have 2.2 inch QVGA high resolution colour displays and feature storage capacities from 10GB to 60GB. Based on Toshiba’s 1.8” hard-drive technology, the music players will début in Japan in November 2004.

    The 60GB model will store 15,000 4 minute tracks encoded at 128kbps in either WMA or MP3 formats – that’s nearly 42 days of continuous music.

    Interaction with the gigabeat F players is done through Plus Touch, a plus sign-shaped sensor that allows users to navigate quickly through music libraries and tracks. The players attach to PCs through a USB cradle, and users can rip any CD in their optical drive by pressing the RipRec button on the cradle. Toshiba’s gigabeat Room software manages music on the PC and player, synchronises tracks within designated folders and allows artwork and notes to be attached to music. Supporting Windows DRM, the players are fully compatible with either Windows Media or MP3 files, but no AAC as yet.

    So what next? Who will be the first to break the 100GB music player barrier, and when?

    The Toshiba players

  • Duke Nukem Forever Crawls Slightly Closer; New Development Tools for the PSP

    Think Half Life 2 is taking a long time? Well, spare a thought for those poor souls waiting for Duke Nukem Forever – the whole affair reminds me of the “Apocalypse When?” headlines when Coppola was working on his Vietnam film. Rabid fans of the first person shooter series will be pleased to hear that a physics engine provider has been chosen, and so hopefully the new game will have the same detail and level of interactivity as its 3D predecessors.

    Physics for the world inhabited by the Snake Plisskin-inspired eponymous hero will be supplied by Meqon, a new company in the physics middleware market.

    George Broussard, CEO of 3D Realms commented on the choice: “We evaluated several physics SDK’s and Meqon was really fast, had the cleanest interface and integrated into our game very quickly.”

    The original Duke Nukem shot to fame in 1991, but it wasn’t until 1996’s Duke Nukem 3D that players discovered the joys of shooting fire extinguishers and laying traps that the series reached legendary status. Since then 3D realms have had a number of hits, including May Payne and of course Wolfenstein 3D.

    3D Realms

    Meqon

    In other gaming news, SN Systems have released a development kit for Sony’s PSP handheld. Their ProDG tools are available to registered developers on the PSP hardware, and include a compiler, assembler, linker and debugger – with full integration with .NET.

    Andy Beveridge Co-Founder and Director of SN Systems said in a statement: “It’s been a very exciting time for us, getting hold of the new hardware and seeing what it can do is always fascinating. We’ve put a lot of hours into this latest line of ProDG and we’re really pleased with the results. It doesn’t stop there though; developers choosing ProDG for PSPTM are going to have a few more toys to play with in the near future, I just can’t mention them all right now.”

    The development tools are backed by Sega’s Yuji Naka, R&D Creative Officer: “ProDG for PSP has rich functions and is very stable while keeping up with fast changes of development environments. SEGA is very satisfied especially with the fact that important functions such as .NET integration, fast compile speed, and good GUI of debugger are equipped from the early version.”

    SN Systems

  • Roobarb and Custard in the 21st Century

    Roobarb & Custard30-something nostalgics, rejoice: a new series of Roobarb and Custard is in production. IP owners and new series Executive Producers, A+B Productions have started work at Monster Animation Studios in Dublin. To be distributed by Celador, Roobarb and Custard Too uses hand-drawn and hand-animated cells coupled with modern production processes to produce a cartoon that is faithful to the original series.

    Hardcore R&C fans will be relieved to hear that there is no dodgy computer graphics work in the new version, and that the classic look has not been messed around with. Having done a side-by-side comparison with an early animation sample, I was very impressed by the R&C Too, and was keen to find out how they managed to recreate the distinctive look of the original. Adam Sharp, co-founder of A+B Productions told us “We’re using innovative ways to bring back the classic feel the original hand drawn series had.”

    I spoke to Gerard O’Rourke at Monster Animation Studios about the painstaking process that A+B and Monster went through to get the correct look and feel: “Everything is hand-drawn. It’s then traditionally scanned into a computer and digitised. It’s then animated by hand, using a graphics tablet and is then rendered using a combination of Photoshop and Painter to achieve that marker pen feel. From there it’s composited together in After Effects – and then it’s over to post production to do the sound.”

    And how did they reproduce the wobbly lines? “They recreate the drawing a number of times – when it’s played back if gives you the wobbly lines. Because you have to replicate the drawing a number of times, you have to do extra and copy them and offset them,” Gerard told us.

    “The old version was done in the 70s, and you’ve probably heard the stories of them getting unemployed brickies and everyone they could find to work on Roobarb and Custard – and the reason they had that look that the markers had run out was because the markers had run out! They didn’t use animators all the time, but it did create its own feel and look – and we’ve been trying to increase the production values but not lose the charm of the programme.”

    What about people who may be worried that it’s just a Flash update?

    “We don’t want people to think that it’s a Flash project, because Flash can tend to be very flat and internet-based, but it is a great animating tool. But it really is only a tool like Word and Excel. It’s how you use it afterwards – take the different functions out of it and then use them with your own techniques and methods. We’ve taken all our software to its limits and used all the libraries and tools that we could get.”

    Gerard seems very pleased with amount of care that A+B have been putting in to the new series: “Richard Bryers is narrating the series again, he’s doing all the voices. Grange Caveley, creator and writer has written all the new scripts.”

    “It’s very much Roobarb and Custard 1974.”

    Monster Animation

    If you just can’t wait for the new version of Roobarb and Custard, here’s a selection of can-buy products from Amazon
    DVD: Roobarb And Custard – The Complete Roobarb And Custard [1974]
    VHS: Roobarb And Custard

  • Yahoo’s New Homepage

    Yahoo’s homepage has become rather busy of late – in fact the number of sections, links and buttons to click has made it almost as impenetrable as Jacob Neilsen’s own Useit page. The search engine trend, even since Google appeared, has been to make user interfaces simpler – after all, what chance do you have of finding something on the internet if you can’t even find something on the search engine’s home page?

    MSN Search has recently had a make over, Google still gets praise for the simplicity of their default home page, so it was time for Yahoo to do something. Visitors to Yahoo get swamped in a choice links and paths – the old-style Yahoo home page currently harbours more than 210 links, making locating tools and information frustrating for the novice user.

    Enter the new, simplified Yahoo home page. Whilst not quite the radical culling of links that was needed, the page is much more organised. Links and other things to click are kept at a modest 150 or so (still 100 too many in my opinion), but categorisation is much better.

    The new page has been tightened up, with better use of space and font sizes, also separate sections are finally delineated by lines and coloured boxes. The new design makes prominent use of MyYahoo – a personalisation function designed to let visitors further tailor the home page to their needs with localised weather and even, for those of a gullible nature, horoscopes.

    Surprise – there’s a music button! Though this just takes the user through to launch.yahoo.com, offering videos and music news. No music store as yet, though you can buy CDs and ringtones. Since Yahoo just forked out US$160 million (€130 million) for MusicMatch, expect this to change soon.

    Try the new Yahoo

  • Virgin Digital launches Yet Another Music Store (YAMS)

    As another week starts, Yet Another Music Store (YAMS) gets launched. Virgin Digital today launch their music service in the US.

    To raise their head above the other online music stores, Virgin have lined up a number of features that they hope will be differentiators. Their thinking – one million music tracks, an “Ask the Expert” services and “3D browsing”, but more on those later.

    They are looking to play on their strengths, taking the approach that they are a music company aiming to sell music, not a technology company trying to sell music and by listening to their customer’s views of online services, they are creating the idea tool for music fans.

    Individual tracks are priced at the now-to-be-expected 99c and the subscription service, priced $2 lower than rival service from Napster or Real at $7.99, will offer unlimited streamed access to over 100,000 albums, 60+ radio stations and protected downloads.

    The differentiators – “Ask the Expert”, where customers will be able to pose questions about music and technology matters and get an answer without the usual sarcastic grimace from the floppy-haired assistant behind the shop counter. The futuristically named 3D browsing will provide suggestions of other tracks to tempt the music-hungry fan to part with more cash.

    MusicNet will be providing the backend and using Windows Media to protect the downloads, while enabling burning to CD and download to over 50 portable music players.

    The service will be promoted heavily in their high street stores and in their traditional manner, we imagine that Virgin will be marketing the hell out of this, with their adverts aimed at the ‘yout’, quite possibly featuring a young lad snogging a granny.

    Virgin Digital