Category: Content

Content

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.

Movielink by proxy

Rob Pegoraro has written a spirited review of the new Movielink Internet-delivered film service that’s backed by the media powerhouses Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Universal and Warner Bros.

After hitting problems straight off and forced to use a recent MS browser, he not hugely impressed. As it’s not truly Video On Demand (VOD), it took 3 hours 25 to download the movie on his home DSL and, as he points out, it’s quicker to pop down to the local video store.

I think he’s slightly unfair about the delay in getting the films. I imagine, if it is going to be used, it’s going to be more like a Tivo-like DVR – you make your selection and watch it later that night or any time in the next 30 days. It’s more likely to be competition for NetFlix but they clearly easily win on breadth of content, currently. That could vanish if the studios feel more secure about releasing material on the Internet.

I was concerned about his reports of video breaking up in the fast sections, but it’s reported that this will be improved in the next six months.

With these draw backs, I can’t see it being used in its current form by anyone other than computer enthusiasts and journalists writing reviews.

I’m sure the people running the Movielink have all read Tom Peters and believe in the marketing power of being first – and as nothing outside the movie world exists for them, they probably think they are the first.

But Tom, as all his close personal friends call him, also talks about quality and that seems to be missing in pretty vital areas – the breadth of selection and video quality.

Does it really matter at the moment? After all, not many households have their computer connected to their TV’s and without that, huddling around a monitor in a strange part of the house, frankly isn’t an enjoyable family viewing experience.

They’ve got to get into the lounge. The real opportunity is for companies with Internet connected DVR’s, like the SonicBlue ReplyTV, to make it a slick, easy to use, couch viewable experience. Given the large amount of bad blood between SonicBlue and the media, I would imagine the more forward-looking DVR companies are speaking to Movielink.

In case you wondered why I’m piggy backing on someone’s review – I would have written my own review but thanks to Movielink’s “GeoFilter” and by an accident of geography, I wasn’t able to. Anyone accessing the site coming from an IP address outside the US, of which I’m one, will be met with a fantastic piece of upbeat American corporate lingo that just shouts NO (our licensing doesn’t permit) …

Thank you for your interest in Movielink. We want you to take part in the powerful Internet movie rental experience that Movielink delivers, but …

HMV announces online music offering

UK music giant HMV has announced their online music offering. Going live some time in September, the £4.99 you pay will give you 100 credits which can be spent on streaming (1 credit), temporarily downloading for a month (10 credits) or burning to CD (100 credits). It’s not clear how much of the past and current catalogues will be available.

RealNetworks stream Big 12 Conference exclusively

RealNetworks and one of their content partners, FoxSports.com are going to be offering subscribers to RealOne SuperPass the opportunity to watch something called the Big 12 Conference. I’ve no idea of what this means but it looks like it might be college games, which I assume is great for watching for the ‘next big thing’ in US football.

The content is highlighted as exclusive as it won’t actually be shown on TV – I don’t know if this is because if no one would be interested in watching it, or it really is a scoop. The SuperPass is priced at about $10 a month with a $5 discount if three months are bought in advance and will give access to their other content as well as the games.

It’s good to see Real expanding their content to their service, which they say now has 3/4 million subscribers now.

MS announces US Xbox Live start

Microsoft has announced the finalised US release date of its new “online, broadband, multi-player” service for Xbox – Xbox Live, to be 15 Nov. It will retail in shops for around $50 including a years worth of subscription, a headset (enabling players to talk/insult fellow players) and a mini-game.

At launch there will be a minimum of seven Xbox live enabled games with at least sixty publishers working on new titles.

There’s only a small paragraph on how the Xbox will be able to receive and store additional content via the service. I think this is the area that holds some of the most exciting potential but I think they still concerned about highlighting this fact to people, in case people think MS is taking over their lounge – which I’m sure has crossed MS’s minds.

PressPlay try to entice online music fans

In a Napster-like world, people had been used to totally unrestricted access to whatever music they wanted and the freedom to do what they wanted with it away from their PC’s. You can obviously argue that the general public shouldn’t have ever been exposed to such freedom, but nothing can change the fact that some of them were.

The new services that grew up, Pressplay, MusicNet, etc that were backed by the major music labels placed pretty heavy restrictions on the amount of music subscribers could listen to and to what non-PC devices (normal CD players, MP3 players, etc) they could listen to it on.

Many people who were exposed to music P2P services wanted to go legitimate, but the choice that was presented to them was like going back to the day when there were two TV channels available.

What a shock – people didn’t like this idea and subscriptions didn’t set the world alight.

An interesting change of heart appears to have taken place at Pressplay. They’ve brought out version 2.0 of their service, that more or less gives Napster users all of the features they’re used to.

There are three main subscription packages and encouragingly all of them give unlimited streaming and unlimited downloads. The difference between them is the more you pay, the more you’re able to listen to the music when you’re not at your PC. Their chosen moniker for this is ‘portable downloads’.

To persuade you to give it a go there is a free unlimited access three-day trial of the PC-based service – so go on, give it a go, go legit.

Artemis Records give free license to webcasters

In an interesting new dimension to the RIAA-induced fees for Internet radio story, Artemis Records have announced the creation of a licence allowing Internet radio stations to use any of their artists tracks for a year without the need to pay a fee.

The CEO, Danny Goldberg, who previously managed bands such as the Beastie Boys, said he saw tremendous marketing benefits from being able to be heard on Internet radio stations as they hardly get any exposure on mainstream radio.

I believe this is the first record label to have done this … so far.

RIAA squeeze audio Webcastsers

There was some significant news at the end of last week that will affect/restrict the breadth of music you can listen in the future.

The dispute that’s been rumbling on since 1998 between the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) and audio Webcasters, widely know as Internet radio station. The RIAA wanted all Internet radio station to pay a fee to playing music, which most felt was reasonable. The major dispute has been about the level of the fee that is paid. On 20 June, 2002 the US Library of Congress set fee rates for playing music tracks over the Internet. The levels summarised on their site leads one of the many station that has been affected, somaFM, calculate that their DAILY fees would be $500 or $180,000 a year. somFM also say “Don’t listen to the RIAA press release that says most small webcasters will only pay the minimum $500 a year. Any station with more than an average of 5 concurrent listeners will be paying more than that minimum.”

Many of these stations are run by enthusiasts, many of whom made no money and others who spent money from their own pocket. Using their specialist musical knowledge and lead by their enthusiasm, they put collections of tracks together that exposed their wide audiences to music they were excited to hear.

While collect high royalties from Internet radio stations, allegedly more than 100% of their current collective revenues, the RIAA is using the argument that “Internet radio airplay hurts CD sales”.

This is opposite case for both me and many other listeners. By having my choices widened and I have bought more –one of the problems may be that these purchases have been from non-major labels and they don’t like it. The major labels must be frustrated by the fact the people are not interested in their ‘product’ and through lobby pressure they have forced a situation where the small originators find it financially impossible to survive. I’m sure they’ll be more than happy to fill the void this leaves.

There are two killing blows, the fees mentioned here apply to non-subscription services, subscription services have to be negotiated separately and the second is the fees are back date-able to 1998 making the successful, long term stations the hardest hit. With the shock of Internet radio stations being turned off now and not waiting until 1 September, 2002 when the actual rates become effective, they hope to force the listeners to take action by contacting their representative urging them to act.

Sadly the most recent ruling and apparent conclusion don’t do anyone any favours long term. A broad and vital source of exposure to different types of music has been halted.

I don’t think we’ve seen the end of Internet radio, it’s just that the choice we will be given will be significantly limited – diametrically opposed to the philosophy of the Internet.

European RealOne SuperPass opens

RealNetworks yesterday opened the European version of their paid-for content network, RealOne SuperPass. The US equivalent, launched in December 2001, has become a significant contributer to their income.

To my eyes, the European offering is a less content for more money with a direct dollar/pound translation of the 9.95. It will be really interested to watch the subscription figures on this one.