Digital-Lifestyles

Distribution

The new digital ways content was becoming distributed

  • 8GB USB Drive Shown at CES

    i-Disk_II-8GB-USB-DrivePretec Electronics have announced an 8GB USB drive, that they’re calling the i-Disk II, at CES today. Currently it’s the highest capacity key chain drive and the second to market.

    Along with the 4GB that they’re simultaneously releasing, it provides high speed access by using what they call “dual channel technology” providing read / write speeds of 16MB / 12MB per second.

    Both USB drives come bundled with the FlashMail, MobileLock, and SecretZip software. Flashmail provides email access from any machine simply by inserting the USB drive into a Windows machine.

    The 4GB is now available and Pretec say the i-Disk II 8GB USB flash drive will be delivered by Q1 2005. It’s not cheap, being priced at $999 (~€755, ~£531), but it’s a huge amount of solid state storage.

    BUSlink released the first 8GB drive, which is physically slightly bulkier, but has a slower read/write rate, 10MB/9.2MB. The bigger downside is it costs, $1,799.99 (~€1,360, ~£956).

    Pretec’s other claim to fame, is as the company that brought iDisk Tiny, the smallest USB flash drive, to the world in 2003. They have now updated this with an even smaller version called the CU-Flash.

    We’re big fans of USB flash drives and see them extending beyond the current “Here’s my power point presentation” corporate usage to becoming totally mass market as the public come to realise that they can be used to hold their identity data and provide access to their personal information and email. At these capacities they also become practical for holding private collections of audio and video media.

    Pretec
    BUSlink

  • SIRIUS to Satellite Children’s TV to Cars

    SIRIUS SportsterSIRIUS Satellite Radio announced today that it will be providing 2-3 channels of premium video content, designed primarily for children, in the second half of 2006, to be beamed into moving vehicles. They will be working with Microsoft to develop the service.

    Although initially pitched as a TV-on-the-move service, they clearly have ambitions beyond this, as hinted at by Amir Majidimehr, Corporate Vice President of the Windows Digital Media Division at Microsoft “We will further work together to enable consumers to experience SIRIUS video whether on the go, or at home — from the initial mobile service in vehicles to the PC and home entertainment devices.”

    While it’s possible that content could be streamed down live to the cars, it may be more likely that content will be trickled down to hard disk devices in the car for on-demand playback. This would avoid cries of “Oh Dad” from the back of the car as TV pictures freeze due to drop out problems when driving through areas of low reception, like tunnels. More importantly for a satellite company, bandwidth requirements would be reduced from a full broadcast stream.

    This is further backed up by careful reading of Chief Executive Officer, Mel Karmazin’s statement “We will take the DVD experience to the next level, offering the best content easily available to families and consumers.”

    If they do go for live TV delivery the video channels will take significantly more bandwidth than their current audio offering. Whether SIRIUS will be closing some of their current radio stations or adding more satellite capacity is unclear.

    If the content offering from SIRIUS is just on-demand, they could face some serious competition from in-car media centres that wirelessly “recharge” their content while parked in their garage overnight.

    Reuters are reporting that they were originally told of the TV channels by the ex-CEO of Sirius, Joseph Clayton, as far back as February 2004.

    Today’s news follows an announcement on Tuesday that Ford have committed to offering Sirius radio as a factory-installed option in up to 1 million vehicles over two years beginning this summer. XM, who also offer a US wide satellite radio service, currently have 3.1m users’ verses the 1.1m SIRIUS currently has.

    SIRIUS Satellite Radio

  • HDTV Support in HP Media Hubs

    CES is coming. Prepare yourself for the flood.

    In an effort to get heard above the noise of CES, HP has this morning announced a couple of products that will be capable of receiving and storing High Definition TV (HDTV).

    The first is an extension to their current Digital Entertainment Center (DEC) range that will add high-definition ATSC (Advanced Television Standards Committee) tuning capabilities. Two models are expected to ship this spring with different storage, graphics card and tuning options.

    The second is the industry’s first HDTV media hub which comes with dual-tuners and expected for release in autumn 2005. It will handle all of the now-expected digital photos, music and videos and act as a digital video recorder (DVR). While HD tuning cards have been available for some time, this is the first time that a mainstream company has announced a HDTV product.

    We contacted HP for further details about the products support for the US Broadcast Flag, but as yet they were unable to provide it. Given the release date of the product is after the July 2005 compulsory support date, and that it’s a US-focused product it is highly likely that the equipment will support the Broadcast Flag.

    Given HP partnership with Philips in the Video Content Protection System (VCPS), an FCC-approved technology designed to restrict the copying of video content to DVD, it is highly likely that this will be included too.

    Of particular interest is HP’s inclusion of an “intuitive Electronic Programming Guide” designed by them to “allow consumers to easily find and record the content they want.” There are no details of this being a free or fee service.

    We see this as HP’s move to become the gateway to access on-demand content of all sorts. This is further demonstrated by their mention of delivering “upgrades the device with new services.” It’s a smart move, placing themselves in this pivotal position before someone else gets in there to provide a service.

    It’s not just computer-based equipment that HP is offering in HD world. They’ve also announced plans to introduce a full line of 17 new HDTVs and home theater projectors based on HP-developed “visual fidelity” technologies.

    One of these is the spectacularly named “wobulation” technology, a patent-pending method to provide twice the resolution of digital projection displays without increasing the cost.

    HP
    ATSC
    VCPS

  • Cellular Phone Emissions Damage DNA, Study Finds

    A new study, majority-funded by the European Union, has found that in laboratory conditions, radio waves from mobile phones harm body cells and damage DNA, reports Reuters.

    When tested in a laboratory, the cells showed a significant increase in single and double-strand DNA breaks after being exposed to electromagnetic fields that mobile phones emit. Some of the damage couldn’t be repaired and “there was remaining damage for future generation of cells,” said project leader Franz Adlkofer.

    Despite what appears to us as being quite worrying information, the researchers said the study did not prove any health risks and suggested it “require further studies.” He recommended using a landline if available and an earpiece if using a mobile.

    The cellular phone companies have always asserted that there is “no conclusive evidence of harmful effects as a result of electromagnetic radiation.”

    Perhaps there’s nothing to worry about. The stock market certainly doesn’t appear to be concerned by the news, if Nokia’s stock is anything to go by.

    I wonder if the mobile phone companies have taken out insurance in the case that mobile phones are proven harmful to human health? If so, wouldn’t it be interesting to find out what the value of coverage was? [email protected]
    Mobile Phone Radiation Harms DNA, New Study Finds – Reuters

  • BT Wholesales 4m ADSL Connections

    BT has, through its arrangement with over 150 broadband providers, delivery four million ADSL connections in the UK. This figure also includes connections sold directly to the public by BT Retail.

    BT say they are connecting a new customer every 10 seconds, equating to an average of nearly 60,000 new connections each week.

    The last million milestone was only back in August 2004 when three million connections were announced. A million new connections in one quarter is pretty good.

    Currently there isn’t really any competition for BT Wholesale, although some companies are starting to make early moves with specialist services like UK Online.

    We see this as another in the long running back and forth between BT and OFCOM. BT tells the press “No BT would equal No Broadband” (as Christopher Bland did to the Telegraph), OFCOM tells them to trim their prices. Is their any co-incidence that BT issued this news on the heals of OFCOM ordering BT to cut the cost of third party access to the customer, opening the market for strong competition for BT Wholesale?. As the Guardian commented

    At the moment BT is the gatekeeper to all but 16,000 of the UK’s 25m phone lines, and charges for access to them. The telecoms operator suffered a blow six months ago when it was forced to lower the prices it charges for access to its network. Ofcom is aiming to get a system in place next year that will see 1 million lines unbundled a year.

    Will BT continue to be so strong with meaningful competition?

  • UK Households Buying Second Digital TV, Ofcom

    In Ofcom’s morning release of its third quarter figures for digital TV (dTV) penetration in the UK, they’re reporting an estimated 55.9% of UK households now have dTV in some form.

    The dominant provider of dTV in the UK is still Sky, with over 7m subscribers, although they have only added 53,000 more in the quarter.

    With just short of 4m households is Freeview (the UK Free-To-Air Digital Terrestrial Television service), which exceeds the combined analogue and digital services of UK cable TV providers NTL & Telewest. Pure digital cable is running at 2.5m subscribers.

    One of the big concerns with digital switch off has been going beyond the first dTV set in the house. It was fine to say that over 50% of UK households had digital TV, _but_ given that the UK average is 2.5 sets per household, what was going to happen to the analogue sets that were left? There might be a lot of unhappy people not able to watch TV the day after analogue switch off.

    The latest figures bring good news to those worried about this. Around a quarter of new sales of Freeview went to homes that already have one digital TV. With the pricing of the Freeview Set Top Boxes (STB) starting from as little as £49 (~$95, ~€71), households must be finding the content on Freeview compelling enough to want also have it in the kitchen, bedroom or child’s room.

    What isn’t clear from the figures, is if the original dTV set was Freeview, Sky or cable. We contacted Ofcom to dig a little deeper, only to find that they “don’t dig that deep” into the figures. One thing that did become clear during the chat, was that Sky household’s that purchase a second box are not broken out at all, but are just added to their overall subscriber base numbers.

    Full Ofcom Digital Television Update – Q3 2004

  • Amazon UK Launches DVD Rental Service

    Amazon has launched its anticipated DVD rental service in the UK.

    Other similar services have been available for a considerable period of time, with Netflix being the most popular example in the US. Customers pay a fixed monthly fee and can have DVD films for as long as they like. When they’ve finished viewing it, they simply return it in the post and receive their next DVD by return.

    Amazon.co.uk is the first country to launch for Amazon. It is offering two services, £7.95 giving two disks at home and a £9.95 for four. Its offering differs slightly in that there’s a limit to the number of disks that can be viewed in each month, 4 for the cheaper price and 6 for the other. They say this is based on industry data that shows that people generally rent five or fewer films per month. Competitive services don’t impose this limit.

    They’ve made no bones about their desire to dominate the area, “Amazon is determined to be the best place to rent DVDs.” Amazon Chief Executive Jeff Bezos said in a statement.

    The market in the UK is pretty busy with long established companies like Movietrak and more recent entrants like retailing giants Tesco, among the many. Back in July in what was generally seen as a defensive move against the plans of Netflix to open in the UK, Movietrak and Qflicks merged. They were not immediately available for comment when we tried to contact them.

    The Amazon offering is a powerful play. The new rental service is fully integrated into Amazon.co.uk’s existing DVD store, allowing DVD shoppers to rent or buy in the same area of the site and receive recommendations. They also have the advantages for current Amazon users not needing to sign up new accounts and enter credit card details as Robin Terrell, Amazon.co.uk’s Country Manager, pointed out, “Since we already have their payment and billing information, the millions of existing Amazon.co.uk customers can sign up for the programme with just one click.”

    The larger companies can offer additional incentives; Tesco offers clubcard points and Amazon will be offering a 10% discount on the purchase of DVD’s.

    When Amazon opens a service in the country you operate, you are bound to be worried. Expect further consolidation within the market or special offers. We understand that Netflix have delayed their plans to launch in the UK to assess the impact of Amazon’s launch.

    The cost of delivering films over an Internet connection has been one of the things that has held back online film rental. DVD’s in the post are just about the most bandwidth efficient way to distribute information. 28 pence to deliver 4.7GB – you don’t get much cheaper than that … until the release of the next gen DVD formats.

    Amazon DVD rental

  • 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;

  • Online Documentary Channel Planned by UK Channel 4

    The Chief Exec of Channel 4, Andy Duncan, has been floating the idea of launching an Internet-based documentary channel, that would carry archive footage from previously transmitted shows.

    Duncan also announced that Channel 4 is to “double the amount it spends on ‘public service’ Internet sites”, which he revealed was currently in the low millions, reported Brand Republic.

    We understand from Ofcom that the comments were made during their PSP pitching day.

    Andy Duncan moved from the BBC, where he was the mastermind of the highly successful Free-To-Air service, Freeview. He’s been speaking publicly a lot about re-positioning Channel 4, although not all of his comments have been well received.

    When Digital Lifestyles spoke to Channel 4 today about the Internet-based channel, there were still only sketchy details available; in their words it was “work in progress.” They did confirm that new programmes would be commissioned specifically for the site and that content would be downloadable.

    Channel 4 told us more details will become available in the New Year and the launch is muted for Spring 2005.

    Channel 4
    Ofcom

  • P2P OK with Most Musicians, Survey

    A survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project has revealed that two thirds of musicians that they surveyed felt that peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing poses a minor threat or no threat at all to them.
    The author of the report, Mary Madden said, “What we hear from a wide spectrum of artists is that, despite the real challenges of protecting work online, the Internet has opened new ways for them to exercise their imaginations and sell their creations. To many, this feels like a new Digital Renaissance rather than the end of the world.”
    The findings of this survey are in stark contrast to the published findings of the US recording industry that claim that file-sharing hurts artists.
    We’ve found a drastic difference between the public stance of the record companies and their private actions. In our discussions with operators of file-sharing networks we’ve been surprised to hear that one of their largest paying clients have been record companies, who have become near-obsessed with using the networks to watch the speed to spread of new tracks giving them valuable feedback to the viability of bands.

    Pew Internet & American Life Project survey