Distribution

The new digital ways content was becoming distributed

‘Enron: the Smartest Guys in the Room’, Gets Simultaneous Cinema/HDTV Release
In a break with cinema-tradition, HDNet Movies viewers will be able to see Alex Gibney’s highly acclaimed documentary “Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room” on the very same day the movie premieres in US theatres.
Cackling wildly in the face of convention which dictates that cinema releases always come first, the film, which debuted in the Documentary Competition at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival, will appear on the US available HDNet Movies twice on opening night, 22 April at 8:00 pm and 11:00 pm EST.
After its one-day HDNet Movies premiere, the film will then be offered in traditional PPV, VOD and DVD windows.
“Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room” was produced by HDNet Films, the high-definition production division of Todd Wagner and Mark Cuban’s 2929 Entertainment, and is being distributed by 2929-owned Magnolia Pictures. Using insider accounts and incendiary corporate audio and videotapes, Alex Gibney, the films director shows the almost unimaginable personal excesses of the Enron hierarchy and the utter moral vacuum that posed as corporate philosophy. It is expected that audiences will be shocked by the avarice of Enron’s traders and their bosses.
Cuban is well known for trying to smash commonly accepted business standards and conventions. “We want to reward HDNet Movies subscribers with great movies,” table-thumped Mark Cuban, co-founder of HDNet and HDNet Movies. “Our feeling is that people who want to get out of the house and go to the theater will do so.
Those who can’t make it, rather than missing the water cooler talk on Monday, will be able to see the film, only on HDNet Movies.”
The company has also announced production on a new drama, “One Last Thing…,” starring Cynthia Nixon, Michael Angarano, Sunny Mabrey and Wyclef Jean which will also premiere on HDNet Movies under the same day-and-date model.
HDNet Movies
5 April, 2005
Moxi II Media Deal Between Digeo And Samsung
Samsung have jumped into bed with Digeo – a leading provider of media center software and services – and announced a deal to produce the next-generation Moxi II Media Center product family.
The companies are claiming that the new family of Samsung Home Media Center products will rival the features of personal computers designed for living room entertainment centres.
The Moxi II Media Center, scheduled for release in the autumn, will combine the functions of an advanced video recorder, jukebox, photo viewer and Internet telephone in a single unit (although cable providers will determine the exact feature set).
The boxes will sport four TV tuners (for recording multiple shows at once and/or feeding multiple live TV streams to satellite Moxi Mini boxes around the house) with enough onboard storage to record up to 40 hours of high definition programming.
There’s also support for Voice over IP for making and receiving calls (Moxi’s current Moxi Telephone app can only manage and receive calls).
US cable companies Charter Communications and Adelphia are set to be the first two cable companies to start dishing out the boxes to customers.
“We are pleased to be bringing powerful media center technologies to market with Digeo,” purred Gee Sung Choi, president of Digital Media Division for Samsung Electronics.
“Our Home Media Center solution launching this fall will be our marquee cable product, setting new standards for operators by delivering unprecedented, highly valued media center services and applications throughout the home.”
The new units will use the sci-fi sounding Digeo X-Stream chip set, a smart little fella that incorporates a chip that integrates several functions previously handled by multiple chips.
The cost-reducing chip will also offer improved graphics performance with Digeo cranking up the speed of the microprocessor from 733 megahertz to 1 gigahertz.
“The first product … is the first in this family,” said Michael Markman, Digeo’s senior director of marketing. “But the architecture, the design will allow for much further growth.”
Cable box makers face mighty mean competition from PC companies knocking out entertainment PCs running Microsoft’s Windows XP Media Center Edition. The latest PC models also support multiple-room viewing as well as HDTV.
Samsung
Digeo
5 April, 2005
Pope’s Death Told Via SMS Text Message
News of the Pope’s death was broadcast to the media from the Vatican using text messages and email enabling the 2,000-year-old Church to meet the increasing demands of real-time news.
Just a quarter of an hour after the Pope was pronounced dead on Saturday at 8:37pm (GMT), officials at the Vatican got out their texting fingers and sent journalists an SMS message alerting them to a pending statement.
With most of the world’s media hungry for news, an email communiqué was beamed to a sea of state-of-the-art handheld computers a minute later, purchased by journalists at the suggestion of the Vatican.
The email contained a simple, short Word document saying: “The Holy father died this evening at 21:37 in his private apartment.”
The technology ensured that TV viewers across the globe learned of the Pope’s death before the faithful thousands gathered in prayer below the Pope’s window in St. Peter’s Square.
Minutes later, Archbishop Leonardo Sandri informed the crowds, who greeted the news with a long round of applause – an Italian tradition – with the spectacle being captured on television in real time.
The Vatican’s embracing of the mass media is a relatively new phenomenon – as recently as the 1960s news of Pope John XXIII’s inoperable stomach cancer was kept secret until just a few days before his death in June 1963.
Pope John Paul proved to be far more open to the media, writing in February that the Church should not be shy of using the media, including the Internet, to spread its message, saying the “mass media can and must promote justice and solidarity”.
With real time news networks and Internet bulletins documenting every minute of the Pope’s demise, he certainly got his wish.
Vatican
4 April, 2005
MSNVideoDownloads.com Launches For Mobile Devices
Microsoft has launched MSN Video Downloads, a spanking new mobile service that will provide daily television programming for downloading to Windows Mobile devices, such as Portable Media Centers, Smartphones and Pocket PCs.
MSN Video Downloads will shunt out a wide range of daily content including, sports highlights, news headlines, children’s programming, music videos, independent films and comedy shows.
The video content will be produced by companies such as MSNBC.com, FOX Sports Food Network, and IFILM Corp.
Users will be able to download the digital videos daily to a Windows Media Player 10 library, ready to be synchronised with their portable device.
The video content is compliant with ‘PlaysForSure’ video devices, and is optimised for Portable Media Centers and compatible with Smartphones and Pocket PCs that support Windows Media Player 10 Mobile.
A one-year premium “all you can eat” membership to the service costs $19.95, while freeloaders can access a limited amount of free content without a paid membership.
The service lets subscribers select the specific content they want downloaded daily to their XP-based PC each day. A new automatic deleting feature lets users specify how long they want MSN Video downloads to remain on their PC, thus avoiding a large backlog of clips.
“The launch of Portable Media Centers in 2004 began a new era of portable entertainment, and today’s announcement solidifies the continued momentum we’ve seen for portable video,” purred John Pollard, director of Windows Mobile Applications and Services Marketing at Microsoft.
“With content from some of the most recognized brands in entertainment, MSN Video Downloads helps bring this vision to life, allowing people to take their favourite television shows with them whether they are on the train, waiting for a doctor’s appointment, or keeping the kids occupied in the back seat of the car.”
Josh Martin, associate research analyst at IDC, was on hand to tell us that “Readily available digital video content remains a key driver for the portable multimedia player market,” adding that “the proliferation and growth of video service providers will serve to fill the existing video content void and increase adoption of portable multimedia players such as Windows Mobile-based devices.”
In other words, people want easy-to-find and easy-to-download quality video content to slap on their mobile devices and Microsoft hope to grab a large chunk of the action with this service.
WatchMusicHere.com announces music video deal.
Another company, CinemaNow has also started offering mobile video downloads with its newly launched service, WatchMusicHere.com
The company will offer music videos from multiple genres ranging from classics to the latest chart-topping videos, priced from US$1.99 (£1.06, €1.55) to US$2.99 (£1.60, €2.33) for a permanent copy (viewable for an unlimited number of times on the selected playback device).
All music videos on the site will be made available in multiple formats for playing on traditional PCs, laptops and Microsoft’s Windows Mobile-based secure devices including the Portable Media Centers, Pocket PCs and select Smartphones.
Users will be able to download the appropriate format and then transfer the video file to the secure device using Windows Media Player 10.
The company says that this announcement marks a major shift for record labels as they are now offering, for the first time, both classic and new music videos for purchase on-demand.
The site will launch with 75 music videos with over 1,500 additional titles expected to be available by December, 2005.
Windows Mobile
MSN Videodownloads
WatchMusicHere.com
31 March, 2005
Nuenen: Netherland’s Largest Fiber-to-the-Home Network Opens
Last week, deputy Director-General Mr Broesterhuizen of the Dutch ministry of Economic Affairs officially opened the Netherland’s largest Fiber-to-the-Home (FttH) network in Nuenen, a village in the south of The Netherlands.
The Dutch haven’t messed about here: the entire village is covering 7,500 households, shops, offices, schools, elderly homes, sports clubs, churches, hotels and health institutes.
This provides over 15,000 people with access to super high-speed internet access (up to 100 Mbps full duplex), with several other services (telephony, TV, and unique local services) following soon.
The Nuenen network (try saying that after a few drinks) is part of the Kenniswijk Project, an Dutch government initiative to encourage public and private organisations to start experimenting with and deploying FttH infrastructure and broadband services.
By summer 2005, approximately 16,000 FttH connections will be up and running in the Kenniswijk area, with over “100 innovative services” being developed, of which 50 are already available.
With the Dutch Government having no direct investment in the infrastructure, FttH in the Netherlands is a fully market-driven process.
Previously, companies weren’t too keen to invest their wedge in such untested, large scale ventures, but a new business model was used in Nuenen which made it possible to get this huge project up and running within just 6 months.
The business model works by individual households joining a cooperative society – “Ons Net” (Our Network) – which pays for and owns the network.
This ensures a high degree of user commitment and an extremely high degree of active users (a whopping great 97% in Nuenen).
These impressive figures have shown housing corporations, banks and the money men that it is a relatively safe and worthwhile investment, thus easing potential financial bottlenecks in the large-scale deployment of FttH elsewhere.
The success of the scheme has created a blueprint for FttH projects in the rest of the Netherlands, with lots of other countries expressing a keen interest in the ‘Ons Net solution’.
Ons Net has also led to the development of innovative local broadband services, ranging from video consultations by family doctors to church services and sports broadcasts, offering interesting examples of how the internet can benefit communities.
Kenniswijk Project
30 March, 2005
Splinter Cell Chaos Theory Demo Preloaded On Lexar USB Drives
Memory card kings Lexar Media have teamed up with videogame big boys, Ubisoft, in a cunning piece of cross-market publicity.
From 4th April to 15th June, 2005, purchasers of select 1GB and 2GB Lexar JumpDrive USB flash drives will find themselves the lucky owners of a pre-loaded single game level of Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell Chaos Theory for the PC, along with other specially created PC game content.
Described as a “major value-add promotion” it looks more like the unexciting equivalent of a magazine freebie cover disk to us, but Theresa Boldrini, Lexar Director of Retail Marketing, can’t hold back her excitement:
“This promotion with Ubisoft represents a breakthrough in the convergence of USB flash drive technology tied to a highly anticipated new game title,” she enthused.
“By partnering with one of the world’s largest and most respected videogame publishers, we’re able to provide consumers with unique, value-add content while conveying alternative uses for our JumpDrive products. It’s also an ideal way for Lexar to stand out among other USB flash drive manufacturers as we continue our drive to build retail presence in the software specialty and gaming channels.”
Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell Chaos Theory is Ubisoft’s third installment of the popular Splinter Cell franchise and the Lexar promotion will be accompanied by all the usual big bits of in-store cardboard, as well as what’s described as a “colourful promotional burst” on the JumpDrive packaging.
As well as the single game level for PC, purchasers of select Lexar 1GB and 2GB JumpDrive products can expect to find pre-installed branded gaming wallpapers for the PC, a game screensaver and a “Strategy Guide” provided by Prima.
And if all that wasn’t enough, a special Lexar promotion will offer consumers a free Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell Chaos Theory t-shirt with the purchase of another Lexar product (be still my bearing heart!).
Although we’re a little under-whelmed by this offering (there’s nothing particularly new about memory cards coming with pre-installed software), it may get interesting if other devices take up the theme.
Manufacturers stuffing their hard disk based DVD recorders full of Hollywood blockbusters may get an edge over the rivals, in much the same way as PC retailers crank up the bundled software.
And with hard disk based mobile phones edging ever closer to the mainstream, the devices of the future could come preloaded with a bonanza of freebies, extras, demos and adverts and other such promotional guff.
Doesn’t that sound, err, great?
Lexar
Ubisoft
30 March, 2005
Analogue Switch-Off Starts In Wales Today, DTV Starts
History will be made in a small corner of Wales today when the residents of two Carmarthenshire villages – situated on either side of the River Tywi – switch to digital-only TV.
Around 450 households in Ferryside and Llanstephan will become the only areas in Europe with digital-only TV signals (along with slightly more glamorous Berlin).
Closing down the analogue television transmissions marks a milestone for the government in its quest to install digital TV in every British home.
The government is keenly perusing its pledge to switch off the analogue TV signal and replace it with digital by 2008 in Wales.
A provisional timetable for the UK-wide switchover has earmarked ITV’s Border region – covering south-west Scotland and Cumbria – as the first to lose its analogue signal in 2008.
The government has said switching to digital would provide a major one-off boost for the UK economy, leaving Chancellor Gordon Brown free to flog off the lucrative old analogue frequencies to telecom companies.
The west Wales households agreed to run trials with the digital set-top boxes when digital transmissions in the area began last November. Each house was given digital receivers for each of their televisions.
To help smooth the transition, a helpline was set up for residents’ teething problems, with one-to-one support made available to the elderly.
After three months, the households were asked if they wanted to keep the digital services or revert to analogue only – and the overwhelming answer was “Ydw plîs!” (Yes please), with 98% voting to retain the digital services (out of the 85% of households who responded).
Project director Emyr Byron Hughes said residents had taken to digital because it provided more services, commenting: “It is such a leap forward even with the basic digital service, they have just taken to it.”
The trial had been run to discover how people coped with the new digital equipment and to learn from any technical problems experienced in the switchover.
Officials from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, and the Department of Trade and Industry, joint co-ordinators of the project, seemed well chuffed with the progress so far, with Stella Thomas, one of the project team members, adding: “People have been more open to change than perhaps we have given them credit for in rural areas.”
There are concerns, however, that these fancy-pants new digi-boxes could be a problem for the elderly and those on poor incomes. The government is discussing with charities about how to protect the vulnerable while promising not to authorise a complete switchover until support measures are in place.
The trial results come on the day that Ofcom publishes its Digital Television Update for the fourth quarter of 2004, examining the latest data provided by the main digital television platform providers.
The update shows that by 31 December 2004 a total of 59.4% of UK households received digital television; an increase of 3.5% from 55.9% at 30 September 2004.
By the end of last year, the total number of digital television households grew by 914,980 to 14,773,881, representing growth over the quarter of 6.6%.
BBC Digital TV
30 March, 2005
Lampposts To Access Web And Location-Based Services?
A British company has unveiled its cunning plan to roll out high-speed wireless networks and location-based services using street lampposts.
It sounds as mad as a box of gerbils to us, but Last Mile Communications reckons that the humble lamppost can be used to provide broadband Internet access and also to store useful information about its location.
The company has announced that it will work with security company Qinetiq to commercialise its plans, with trials scheduled later this year at an undisclosed location. The company is confident that its service can be rolled out on a large scale.
Last Mile’s service wouldn’t just turn the humble lamppost into wireless Internet access points – the company is also planning to turn the things into groovy info centres, with installed flash memory storing information about local pubs, coffee shops and retail outlets.
According to Barry Shrier, Last Mile’s sales and marketing director, people who run an application called the MagicBook on a mobile device will be able to connect to their nearest enabled lamppost and access the information stored on it.
In a slightly less than convincing move, Last Mile is also hoping to win the backing from emergency services agencies. The idea would be that firefighters rushing to a flaming building would flip out their laptops and start accessing local information from a handy knowledgeable lamppost.
Ian Fogg, broadband and personal technology analyst at Jupiter Research Europe, said that Last Mile will need the support of the public sector for this ambitious plan to succeed.
“The idea of a local wireless network that emergency services, local utility companies and local government officials can use generally for day-to-day activities is a common one that is used in many places around the world,” Fogg said.
Last Mile believes its lack of reliance on other telecommunications infrastructures such as local telephone exchanges would give their scheme the edge, with the system still working in the event of widespread network failures.
Shrier believes that revenue could be generated by persuading companies to store their information on lampposts, paying Last Mile whenever someone accesses data using the MagicBook.
“Say you operate a petrol station….The results of Last Mile’s proposition, developed in partnership with Qinetiq, would allow you to communicate instantly, quickly and very cheaply with motorists who need petrol and are near you,” Shrier said. “This is a profound advance in how the Internet works, and the benefits it provides.”
We’d think these petrol-seeking motorists would be more likely to flip open a map, use a GPS device or make use of the many location based services available through WAP and mobile phones, but the real killer blow to MagicBook’s plans may come from the increasing proliferation of Wi-Fi hot spots.
Pubs, railways stations and airports and cybercafes are all falling over themselves to offer free and paid wi-fi access in the UK, with even the roadside restaurant chain Little Chef announcing free access.
Ian Gogg shares these doubts, “3G manufacturers are building location-based functionality into handsets and base-stations today. “There are also a tremendous number of Wi-Fi hot spots in place already, for which the demand is relatively weak.”
Last Mile reckons it would cost around £500 (US$933) to upgrade one lamppost to provide their service. We think it’ll be some time before we see gangs of laptop-flipping consumers hanging around their lampposts.
Lampposts to provide location-based services (news.com)
Last Mile Communications
29 March, 2005
London Tube Users To Get Underground Mobile Coverage by 2008
Commuters on London’s Tube network could soon be able to bellow out, “I’M ON THE TUBE!” if trials to introduce mobile and wireless Internet connections underground from 2008 get the green light.
London Underground (LU) is planning to install technology that will give commuters mobile phone coverage in the concourse, ticketing areas and platforms of underground Tube stations – but not on trains rumbling through underground tunnels.
LU will be chatting to suppliers shortly and aims to undertake a trial of the technology at one underground station in 2006 with a view to extending it across all tube stations by 2008.
Tube bosses say there is strong support among passengers for mobile phone access across its network with plenty of companies interested in getting involved, commenting that suppliers faced “unique practical challenges” around space, power and ventilation constraints.
LU director of strategy and service development, Richard Parry commented, “The process we launch today is to start getting information from the market about how we could best provide a mobile phones service”.
Although execs haven’t revealed how revenues would be generated and split between the operator and the Tube, any income generated would be re-invested in the Tube network to fund further improvements for passengers.
The proposals were announced by London Mayor, Ken Livingston, who said in a statement: “We know that many Londoners would like the convenience of being able to use their mobile phones at Tube stations throughout the Underground network. We also want to see how the technology could be taken even further, for instance wireless internet so passengers could receive up-to-the-minute travel information via their laptop or mobile phone.”
An LU spokesman added “Passengers would like to have mobile coverage at Tube stations but they are less keen to have it on trains”.
Photos copyright urban75
Transport For London (The Tube)
23 March, 2005
Wireless Internet Soars Nearly 30% – Ipsos Insight Report
The number of wireless Internet users grew by 29% in 2004 according to a recent research study by Ipsos Insight.
The study estimates that 171 million people, or 44% of Internet users in the measured markets, have accessed the Internet wirelessly.
The wireless population growth was largely driven by the two biggest Internet markets, the US and Japan, fuelling 69% of user increase and adding an estimated 15 million and 11.6 million new wireless Internet users, respectively.
Wireless Internet also gained some popularity in Western Europe, South Korea, and Urban China.
Surprisingly, it wasn’t the growth in Wi-Fi enabled laptops leading the charge, but consumers accessing the Internet through their mobile phones.
In Japan, for instance, where wireless Internet, laptop, and mobile phone prevalence is highest, twice as many adults (59%) have accessed the Internet through a mobile device such as a mobile phone than have used a wireless laptop connection (28%).
Similarly, outside of North America, Germany, and Urban Mexico, mobile devices like mobile phones are propelling wireless Internet use.
This reflects the belief that mobile phones have reached a turning point, evolving from primarily a voice communication device to a popular multimedia tool encompassing data and Internet applications.
Although SMS may have been the growth vehicle for non-voice applications on a mobile phone in recent years, the survey predicts Internet-based applications are the ‘wave of the future’.
The survey discovered that one in three mobile phone households (estimated 175 million) have exchanged email via mobile phone, with one in four (estimated 124 million) using their handsets to browse the Internet.
A similar percentage of users have exchanged digital image and videos over their mobiles.
With the exception of SMS and ring tone download activity, 2004 saw a year-over-year increase in wireless activities across the board, with email usage growing by 21% and the nascent market of mobile commerce growing by 60%.
Said Brian Cruikshank, Senior VP of Ipsos-Insight and co-author of the study: “These developments are indicative of an early adoption of multimedia and transaction-based activity through a mobile device. As smart-card technology handsets are introduced in many markets, transaction-based activity will be yet another frontier driving data connectivity and ARPU in the next three-to-five years.”
Ipsos predicts that 2005 will be a ‘spring board year’ for wireless Internet via a mobile phone, with uptake encouraged by cheaper 3G coverage offering more mass market services.
“The mobile phone is the most prevalent global device. The continued adoption of the Internet and the recent launch of advanced mobile networks will no doubt lead to a greater number of people connecting to the Internet through a mobile phone.
In fact, we feel that wireless Internet connection via a mobile phone may indeed become the predominant and, perhaps, only point of connection for many in the developing parts of the world, akin to the technology jump from wired to wireless voice communication,” said Cruikshank.
Ipos Insight
18 March, 2005