Digital-Lifestyles

Distribution

The new digital ways content was becoming distributed

  • FCC Begins Digital Television Push

    The USA’s Federal Bureau of Communications has started their big consumer campaign to switch the country over to digital television by December 2006, or January 2009 depending on who you ask. Starting with an interview with chairman Michael Powell at half time during Monday Night Football, the campaign is based around a website designed to help consumers learn about digital television and assist them in their decisions when moving from analogue.

    I’m trying to imagine Tessa Jowell appearing at half time during ITV News Football Extra and it’s not really working for me.

    Powell said during a press conference to mark the campaign: “Although for the vast majority of American households, digital television may be uncharted territory, we will not let them go it alone. If you have questions about digital television, the FCC is ready to serve as a primary resource for quick answers. Then we hope they will get DTV — get the set, get the connection, get the content.”

    The FCC certainly have a huge task in front of them if they are to be stuck with the initial 2006 date: there are only 11 million digital TV sets in the US – that’s just 10% of households, with only two years to go. The deadline may well be put back to January 2009, a date that Powell intends have the commission vote on later this year.

    The FCC’s DTV site

  • Sony Japan Rethinks Copy-Protected CDs

    Sony has dropped copy protection from their CD range, as they believe they’ve educated the public not to make illegal copies – and that only a small proportion of people made the copies in the first place. So, if this is the case they won’t be introducing another form of copy protection later on, then? Sony had previously been amongst the most enthusiastic proponents of copy protection in the market and indeed only recently decided to support the protection-free MP3 format in their range of digital players.

    My guess is of course that Sony are giving in to market pressure – piracy is still robbing artists of millions of euros every year but restrictive copy-protection turns the public off and harms revenues too. Sony has looked at the popularity of the iPod and other MP3 players, seen that it wasn’t the end of the world for recorded music and decided to jump on the bandwagon. Neatly avoiding potential legal action at the same time. Now, in order to avoid legal threats and criticism from its customers, Sony will supply all CDs after 17th November without copy protection.

    Sony’s copy protection system was unpopular with the public as it sometimes prevented CDs from playing in a range of devices, such as car stereos, and also infringed some citizens’ legal rights to make copies of purchased media for personal use. The copy-protected CDs are not strictly CDs, and incorporate a technology for preventing computers from ripping the music on the disk, but contain a compressed and DRM’d version of the music for use on music players and PCs.

    A guide to CD copy-protection schemes

  • Loudeye Launch Mobile Music Service in Norway

    Loudeye and USArtPhone have launched a subscription-free mobile music service in Norway. Customers can buy music directly from their handsets, paying through their usual mobile bill. The bad news is that the tracks aren’t delivered to your phone – you need to get to your PC to access them. However, it’s a handy way for labels and music stores to sell content to people who don’t have credit cards – like the under 18s and insane.

    The service, branded Mobster, will be available to all 4 million mobile customers in Norway, but Loudeye plan to roll the service out across Europe.

    The service is simple for the user and requires only that they send a text message to a special number. The user is then sent an email with a URL in it linking to the file they have bought.

    “We’re very excited to be able to announce this new technology in what is rapidly becoming one of the world’s biggest industries – digital music distribution,” said USArtPhone founder and CEO, Sverre Fjeldheim. “Over the past five years we’ve seen a completely transformative use of the mobile phone for much more than just verbal communication. Consumers are taking and sharing photos, text messaging and using the web, and through this announcement today, they will be purchasing digital music directly from their mobile handset. We believe this evolution will continue and mobile phone functionality will expand to include many interesting business models in the future.”

    Hopefully that functionality will expand to being able to download Loudeye-licensed music directly to mobile phones for playback and storage.

    Loudeye

  • Ofcom: A New Framework for Public Service Broadcasting

    Ofcom, the UK communications regulator has published the second phase of their review of public service broadcasting. Their review contains a number of proposals intended to enhance and strengthen public broadcasting in the UK to ensure that it is not damaged by the country’s transition to a multichannel, digital market. Ofcom are also keen that the public’s subsidy of the TV market, currently standing at around UK£3 billion (€4.35 billion) should not increase.

    The frame work has seven proposals and includes:

    • Supporting a independent, fully-funded public BBC
    • Channel 4 to remain as a non-profit free to air broadcaster capable of entering alliances and joint partnerships with other organisations.
    • A competition to run a new Public Service Publisher using new technologies and distribution systems to meet audience needs – though the BBC is obviously disqualified from entering.

    The closing date for responses to the Ofcom report is 24th November 2004, though the review will not be completed until after Phase 3 is published.

    Ofcom’s report

  • 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

  • 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

  • Two Way TV Acquires Broadcast Games

    Two Way TV has acquired mobile-to-TV specialist Broadcast Games, and will incorporate the company to form Two Way Mobile. Two Way TV hope that the acquisition will bolster its existing mobile services, including a service produced with ITV earlier this year.

    Founded last year by Julian Jones and Jani Peltonen, Broadcast Games bring their SAMPO mobile-to-TV interaction platform, which lets users play games, chat and interact with TV broadcasts using their mobile handsets, interactive TV button and internet connections.

    Commenting on the deal, Jean de Fougerolles, the chief executive of Two Way TV, said: “We are integrating the expertise of Broadcast Games with our existing mobile-to-TV services, to create innovative and market-leading mobile-to-TV games which work on analogue services, as well as digital platforms. This is all part of Two Way TV’s aggressive growth strategy to make sure that we stay at the forefront of interactive programming and is the first in a number of strategic partnerships that we will be announcing between now and Christmas.”

    Julian Jones added: “This is a really strong partnership. Broadcast Games was set up last year but in that time we’ve managed to get a platform off the ground. This deal with Two Way TV means we will become part of a substantial, growing company where mobile-to-TV games form an important component of the business.”

    Two Way TV

  • BT Doubles Bandwidth for Business Customers; Blair Promises Broadband UK 2008

    BT has announced today that it will be doubling the speed of its customers’ Business Broadband Network connections, at no extra cost. Customers on the 512k and 1 meg pipes will be upgraded to Network 1000 and 2000 automatically.

    Customers on the 2 meg service won’t be getting ablistering 4 meg however – instead they’ll see a UK£30 (€44) reduction in their monthly line rental.

    Duncan Ingram, BT Retail’s managing director of Broadband and Internet Services commented: “High bandwidth is no longer a luxury, but a necessity for businesses. Companies now need to have more than one computer attached to a network connection and that’s exactly what our Network products are designed for. Doubling bandwidth, whilst not increasing price, is part of our continuing drive to give our business customers the tools they need to really harness broadband, giving them a clear advantage over competitors and enabling them to punch well above their weight. Not only does it make communication easier, but also enables small businesses to have access to the same applications and services that have traditionally only been open to much larger enterprises.”

    Speaking at the Labour Party Conference in Brighton, the UK PM Tony Blair promised a broadband Britain by 2008, if the country voted Labour: “Our country and its people prospering in the knowledge economy. Increasing by £1bn the investment in science, boosting support to small businesses and ending the digital divide by bringing broadband technology to every home in Britain that wants it by 2008.”

    Broadband is part of a package of ten items that Blair promises as part of a Labour third term. Included amongst them are ID cards and the electronic registration of everyone who passes the UK’s borders.

    Given that it’s not actually the UK government who will be doing the connecting, it’s a bit of a cheeky promise.

    Since BT have already estimated that 99.6% of households will be broadband accessible by July 2005, is Tony saying that voting Labour will delay the whole process by three years?

    BT double bandwidth

  • Rajar Propose Move to Electronic Measurement

    Rajar, Joint Radio Audience Research Ltd, has published its roadmap for updating the way that it measures radio audiences in the UK.

    The schedule includes a tendering process to begin in April 2005, with the new contract to be awarded in September 2005, or later. After that, new versions of the Arbitron Portable People Meter (PPM) and the GfK Radiocontrol systems will be vaildated and tested, alongside a new meter from Eurisko.

    Sally de la Bedoyere, managing director of RAJAR, said in a statement: “The RAJAR roadmap to enhanced radio audience measurement is ambitious, but certainly achievable. It is the final stage of a journey RAJAR began in 2001 and it leads to a seismic change in radio audience measurement, namely the possible move to electronic measurement. We are optimistic that, by 2007, we will be heralding the introduction of an audio-meter based methodology, which measures analogue, digital, digital TV and Internet listening and we shall continue to work vigorously in the pursuit of this goal.”

    Kelvin Mackenzie has already announced that the tests are “twaddle”, and indeed his Wireless Group is suing Rajar, as they are claiming lost revenue due to the lack of an electronic measurement system.

    Rajar

  • Adobe Propose Digital Negative Standard Format for Cameras

    Adobe have proposed a public, archival format for raw digital camera data to deal with the archival problems of detail loss and accessibility. For most camera users, images are stored as JPEGs, which is a lossy format even with the gentlest of compression. Some cameras make use of a raw format, storing the image exactly as it is captured without compression – but of course not all manufacturers use the same format and the specifications for many of them are not publicly available. This lack of an open standard also creates the risk that software to read a particular camera’s raw image data may not be available in the future, making archiving problematic.

    To combat these concerns, Adobe are suggesting the adoption of DNG, or Digital Negative Format and have made its specifications freely available. DNG is based on the TIFF-EP format, and supports metadata so that images can be described and differentiated.

    To encourage adoption, they have released a free converter which will take the raw image format from a variety of cameras and convert them to DNG. Adobe hope that a single processing solution will improve workflow for photographers if they have to use raw files from multiple cameras and manufacturers.

    Adobe on DNG