Digital-Lifestyles

Distribution

The new digital ways content was becoming distributed

  • Report: Vodafone Group Analyst & Investor Day

    The Vodafone Group is today hosting an analyst and investors day at their new offices in Newbury. Arun Sarin, Chief Executive of the Vodafone Group, is fronting the day and opened the session by explaining that Vodafone are living their message. The new office building is a wireless office that enabled total flexibility of working and, except for a small number of emergency fixed phone lines, every other phone line is a mobile phone.

    Speaking about 3G, he reconfirmed that Vodafone is committed to releasing it to the public by Christmas this year. The details of how, what and when wouldn’t be discussed today, but would be released in November (which we have already covered). The only clues he gave were that it would be a “sensibly rollout over time” and “not a big bang”.

    While commenting on the selection of ten 3G handsets that they announced last week, Arun reiterated that it was “very important to control the terminal” (handset) and underlined this importance of this, as in a poll, 37% of UK mobile consumers have no brand preference. They are working with a larger number of handset providers. With some of these, Vodafone are actually specifying features and the design of the handset. We were them assured that they will continue “pressing down harder on suppliers” to ensure better margins.

    Bill Morrow, CEO Vodafone UK, took to the stage next and in a non-stop flow of facts  that he didn’t appear to take a single breath for, we learnt among other things that 75% of UK customer pay for Vodafone Live!, the companies content play, with them spending an additional £4.70/month on the service above their basic subscriptions.

    Commenting on their web-based content distribution, we learnt that three weeks ago, they launched a ringtone bundle on their site, giving 3 tones a month for £5 per month. With no marketing, the site has already attracted 30,000 subscriptions.

    Vodafone were keen to get over that they are “getting ready to change gear” and this brought together under One Vodafone, or VodafOne. They claimed that they would be gaining a £2.5Bn efficiencies by uniting their service platform and IT platforms across all of their subsidiary companies worldwide for all providers. They are reducing their number of data centre from 33 to 27 and are moving to an all IP backbone.

    During the Q&A, we felt the most interesting questions was concerning their attitude to UK spectrum trading, which Ofcom wants to start by 2007. Sadly, the answers that came back were completely unenlightening, giving the excuse that it was “too early to tell”, but that they had a very good relationship with the government bodies.

    Vodafone

  • PassAlong Networks Launch Innovative Music Referral Service

    PassAlong MyShowcasePassAlong Networks have launched what should not be dismissed as YAMS (Yet Another Music Store). They are starting with a 200,000 track catalogue and increasing to 500,000 by the end of the month.

    There are two interesting parts to this one. Firstly, they actually encourage people to pass music around, and secondly they’re using multiple sales channels for the music they are representing, including eBay. While they’re not the first company to sell via eBay, they are the first to offer eBay-ers tracks from the major labels. They will also be selling via their own site at PassAlong.com.

    The passing of tracks is very exciting and something that we’ve been enthused about for a long time. Our logic – what is the most ideal sales person? A passionate one, and you don’t get much more enthused than a band’s fan.

    PassAlong allows links to songs to be passed to others via email, instant messaging (IM) or Web sites/blogs and to thank them for the viral spread of tracks, each track that is passed on and purchased by the receiver earns credit for the initiator of the transfer.

    The content that they launch with, is protected and they are initially using Windows Media DRM (WME) but are keen to point out that they have (wisely) designed their systems to work with any DRM system or music format.

    In October, the company will launch its Discover Music service, which will allow users to publish playlists for others to view, and in turn purchase. Following this, their future plans include offering white-label digital music stores.

    PassAlong Networks are a Nashville, Tennessee-based company who were founded in 2002 and are now a 60-person startup. Dave Jaworski, who entered the world of technology at a pre-public Microsoft, after some time spent in radio, heads them.

    It is very refreshing to see a company that appears to really understand the music consumers’ drivers and natural enthusiasm. We’ll be watching them with interest.

    PassAlongNetworks

    PassAlong.com

  • Gadget review of IBC04

    IBC was good this year. There was real stuff to see. Ideas that were whispered two or three years ago are now products you can play with rather than vapourware. But you had to be cheeky to find some of them. Marching up to the stands with a request for a 90 second product demonstration certainly helped to cut through the sales bitch, sorry, pitch. Camera man Dave Allen and I spent a couple of days preparing our "gadget safari", looking for products, including software, of interest to the independent producer.

    The Long Slow Fade
    I am currently making a documentary on DV-CAM about the (slow) death of analogue radio. The question is whether digital radio will replace it in the form we were all expecting five years ago. In the UK, DAB is working. Elsewhere on the continent, it is a mixed bag. In Holland, for instance, the Dutch public broadcasters have stuck 6 of their channels on the air. But there is no added value for listening on DAB – the data is just the RDS feed and, with so few mountains, people are not writing to their favourite FM stations complaining about reception. Commercial broadcasters, still smarting from a crazy Dutch government auction of FM frequencies, refuse to play the DAB ball until they see a way of getting a return on investment.

    With hindsight, the radio dial is the worst human interface ever invented. Millions of pounds of valuable content is hidden behind a number – or in the old days the name of the transmitter site! Do you know anyone who sorts their address book by their friends phone number? If you do, probably best to avoid them for intellectual conversation! It is unlikely that they floss very often too.

    Pure Bug with DAB EPGWith all the competition from the "red button" and "iPod favourites" radio needs an electronic programme guide – an EPG. At IBC, Unique Interactive together with two receiver manufacturers – Morphy Richards and Pure Digital demoed the first attempts. Yes, the programme schedule is in there. But the intelligent radio that knows your preferences, anticipates and pre-records shows you might like is some way off. We’ll probably see the "personalised" software on Wi-Fi enabled MP3 players before the radios are out there.

    In South Korea, the national broadcaster, KBS, is working with Samsung to make a multimedia enabled radio. On the WorldDab stand they showed how they’re putting video over the DAB network and calling it Digital Multimedia Broadcasting [Watch a QT video of DMB]. Korean Digital Multimedia BroadcastingThey know the broadcast network is ideally suited to mass distribution of media rich content. The economics of sending 3 minutes of video to 100,000 people make 3G a very expensive way of getting content broadcast, especially in a crisis. Nokia know that, but have chosen partners such as NTL and HP to work on a competing method of content distribution, DVB-H. Both are really in the physics experiment stage – no-one has developed stimulating content for these platforms yet – and it is not going to be ringtones that save the day [Watch QT video of NTL].

    DAB, the other DRM, Wi-Fi
    Two other technologies seem to be moving along. DAB has a complementary technology designed to make AM (long wave, medium wave and short wave) sound like FM. By turning the transmitter into a giant modem, and using 1/3rd of the power, the results are impressive. The RTL group plans to revive the "great 208" and see DRM (in this case, Digital Radio Mondial) as a cheap way of covering audiences spread over large distances. Three radios were on the DRM stand. I was particularly interested in a ?199 (~$245, ~£135) "cigarette box size" radio from Coding Technologies. It plugs into the USB port of a laptop and is also powered from the USB port. You need a bit wire as an antenna (keeping it away from the laptop processor), but the concept is a true plug and play [Watch a QT video of DRM].

    As Wi-Fi takes off, a Wi-Fi enabled radio would be handy. There is a huge choice of radio programming streamed on the web. But you can’t carry it around the house. Philips StreamiumPhilips has a system called Streamium, which is more of a Wi-Fi enabled hi-fi/boombox. A clever piece of kit, but Philips haven’t a clue on how to promote it to the public. A Cambridge based research company called Reciva, on the other hand, had a much better concept to show at IBC – a kitchen radio format with a familiar tuning knob to change channels [Watch a QT video of Reciva].

    It is no longer cool to be just a supplier to the "radio" journalist. Most of the people making recorders or editing systems are coupling the audio editing to some form of video editor. Handheld Digital audio recorders look pricey (?1000 +) when put alongside the new Sony HDR-FX1 HD-CAM cameraSony HD-CAM, the HDR-FX1, which will offer entry-level hi-definition video for the prosumer market for around €3,500 (~$4,314, ~£2,390). It also seems crazy that many of the best video editors can be downloaded for a couple of hundred bucks for personal use and yet some audio editors have made it impossible for the freelance community to buy cheap personal copies of the software. They forget what power of persuasion these people have in getting technology adopted within many broadcasting stations.

    Our shortest visit was to Canford audio who have nothing on their stand – except one of the world’s biggest catalogues of audio equipment. In the back we spotted a pair of headphones, the DM H250 with a USB connector and a built in DA/AD converter – ideal for newsrooms with audio workstations that don’t want the expense of a separate analogue sound network. The headphones retail for around £110 (~$136, ~€75).

    And finally on the audio side we picked up an iPod with a difference. It is actually a company within Harris called Neural Audio that was showing what their codec technology can do with a very limited number of bits. You got what sounded like perfect mono at 24 kb/s, and 5:1 surround sound at 96 kb/sec [Watch a QT video of Neural Audio].

    Then onto stuff for the video/journalist in the field?and we found something that really is for someone like me. You are out on location with a complicated story?how do you remember your lines? Telescript has a small Teleprompter that works with a lap-top and is bright enough to be useful in the field. It will set you back £1,500 (~$2,700, €2,200). The batteries last for a day’s shooting. [Watch a QT video of the Telescript]

    It doesn’t take long for videographers to realize that steadycam isn’t steady enough for the bigger screens we see today. But the tripod and dolly manufacturers guess correctly that we don’t want to spend our old age in a home for the bewildered with back pain. IBC had a lot of useful equipment for the documentary maker. The Italian company Manfrotto had a carbon-fibre tripod with gimbles, just the thing to keep the camera level on uneven terrain. They also had useful remote controls for handycams allowing for much smoother zooms using buttons on the tripod. LED backlights and even dim-able LED spotlights were on show – and much closer to daylight that I expected [Watch a QT video of the lights]. Perhaps one of the fastest demos was from Microdolly Hollywood who have a portable dolly-track which folds up in 5 seconds -flat! [Watch a QT video of Microdolly] I also bumped into an Israeli company called DVTEC. They have some useful devices to take the weight off your shoulders with a heavy camera, plus a compact car mount which, although light, won’t come off as you drive [Watch a QT video on DVTEC’s product].

    My vote for originality goes to Puddlecam from the Norwich based EV Group. They’re in the sports TV business, trying to offer way in which to make unique action shots without ruining the camera. The indestructible Puddlecam is ideal for getting those action shots from the side of the road – in fact from anywhere where ordinary cameras fear to tread [Watch a QT video of Puddlecam].

    I think software concepts also deserve a prize. If you want a complete set of test and measuring equipment while doing important DV recordings in the field, look no further than DVRack from the US company of Serious Magic. It is like taking a broadcast truck on location – except the software runs on a laptop. Download the demo to try before you think about purchasing [Watch a QT video of DVRack]. Personally, I was impressed, especially since you can start using this software to save DV to hard-drive and only use DV tapes as back-up. US$495 (~?403, ~£274) is the download price. If you need maps on location, then the Norwegian company of MAPcube offer a special deal to independent journalists who need to draw accurate maps, perhaps for a TV documentary or a website. They take publicly available data from NASA, but then adjust the presentation to make it usable for the broadcast industry [Watch a QT video of MAPcube]. Finally, the satellite company of SWE-DISH caught our eye with a satellite dish, FA150T, that can be folded and carried as a back-pack – at 38 kg (84 pounds) a bit heavy for the overhead locker, but ideal for expeditions to some of the remote areas of the world. Why are these devices still so heavy? Because they need a power amplifier to make contact with the satellites. This one from Sweden uses GPS to find the location of pre-programmed satellites. It is controlled from a laptop. A perfect case of shoot the video, then automatically point to dish to transmit [Watch a QT video of SWE-DISH].

    That’s all we can squeeze into this space. This survey was done independently of the stand holders – no money changed hands nor was any equipment donated. Colleagues from other IBC sessions in the series also found other gadgets. Perhaps we can persuade them to share their discoveries for a follow-up column. If you want to see the stuff in action, watch the videos!

    About Jonathan Marks
    Jonathan Marks has worked in public broadcasting in the Netherlands for just over 24 years, but started his own consulting company in the middle of last year called Critical Distance. He produced a popular communications show on Radio Netherlands called "Media Network". He now plays devils advocate to a number of companies, questioning their strategies, but at the same time preparing alternative scenarios for what technology is making possible.

  • BT Drops the Cost of Local Loop Unbundling

    For a very long time UK broadband providers have claimed that BT have had an obvious lack of enthusiasm for letting them in to telephone exchanges to install their own equipment, to offer services to rival BT’s. Known in the trade as local loop unbundling (LLU), BT’s rivals see it as the only profitable way to provide broadband and high-speed services, so they don’t have to pay BT for each customer, as they do if BT equipment is used.

    Following on from continuous pressure from Ofcom, the UK super-regulator, and LLU price reductions announced in May, BT has now cut the cost further.. . They put this down to   their investment in new automated processes. From now the cost of a shared LLU line is 62% less than it was in June of this year, the connection charge is now standing at £37 (~$64, ~€52) while the annual rental is £27.12 (~$48, ~€36).  It looks like BT might be on a roll and if it continues, prices may be reduced by up to 70% by the end of the year.

    Ofcom already indicated its enthusiasm for LLU to play a greater role in stimulating competition in the wholesale broadband sector. Last April its chief executive, Stephen Carter, hinted that Ofcom would be proactive in making LLU more attractive to rival operators.

    In real terms, cutting the cost of LLU will encourage the deployment of more 3rd party equipment in BT’s exchanges, giving more choice to UK customers.  As if to prove how serious they are about it, BT is appointing an LLU director of ceremonies.  NTL and Cable & Wireless (Bulldog) have already announced multi-million-pound plans to invest in LLU in the UK, and they must be chomping at the bit to install their kit in BT exchanges and get on with the business of offering a service to their customers.

    The UK is now a respectable 8th in the list of DSL countries, according to the DSL Forum. And as a member of the European Union, it is in the number one DSL region with more than 23 million subscribers.  With lower prices bringing the UK more in line with its European counterparts, and higher speeds, customers should notice improvements as the LLU market in the UK is finally ignited.

    DSL Forum

    Ofcom

  • Verizon Wireless Rolls out EV-DO to 14 US Areas

    Verizon Wireless are to start to provide higher-speed wireless Internet access in an additional eleven areas of America, reports the WSJ.

    The carrier has said it plans to spend $1 billion this year and next upgrading its cellular network to support EV-DO. EV-DO, which stands for “Evolution, Data Only”, is a 3G standard with a theoretical bandwidth of up to 2.4 mbps, but under normal working conditions provides an average of 300-600 kbps.

    Verizon is planning to charge business users $80/month (~€65, ~£45) to access the service. The datacards are currently around $400 (~€326, ~£222).

    As of Monday, markets covered by Verizon Wireless’s new network include Baltimore; Philadelphia; Wilmington, Del.; Miami, Ft. Lauderdale, West Palm Beach and Tampa, Fla.; Milwaukee; Kansas City, Mo.; Austin, Texas, and cities in New Jersey.

    The cellular companies clearly feel they have to do something to counter the threat that WiFi networks combined VoIP bring, potential decimating their highly profitable business.

    WSJ (reg. req.)

  • McCain’s US Bill seeks $1Bn for Digital TV

    The world over there is a general move towards replacing analogue television with digital. US Senate Commerce Committee chairman, John McCain has now raised the stakes.. His proposed bill calls for analogue switch off by 2009 but offers financial aid. Current law requires broadcasters either to give up their current airwaves by 2007, or when 85 percent of the nation can receive the new digital signals – whichever comes later. Many US TV stations already broadcast both digital and analogue signals, but few Americans own digital television sets, which are currently a lot more expensive than their more traditional counterparts.

    McCain proposes a bill that that would require broadcasters to switch off analogue signals by 2009 and would subsidise the cost of consumers upgrading their equipment to digital. Currently there are about 70 million analogue sets in the US. Even though the Federal Communications Commission has mandated that by July 2007 all new television sets with screens 13 inches or larger must be able to receive digital signals, the fear is that digital TV will not be universal by then.  This is because, according to the Consumer Electronics Association, Americans replace their sets only every eight to 10 years – messing up the math for the lawmakers.

    McCain argues that it will take $1 billion to make the shift and this magic sum will be garnered through a rather circuitous route. When the government) gets their hands on the airwaves that broadcasters are now using, they will probably auction it for commercial wireless services, and this could potentially earn billions of dollars, and Senator McCain’s $1 billion would come from the auction proceeds.

    Some of this $1 billion could also be used as a benevolent fund to enable people who do not have a digital television set to install a pay television service that would either offer them the new signals or a converted signal they could see. This will allow millions of consumers to continue watching television once broadcasters begin airing only in digital.  Understandably though, those same broadcasters are concerned about their signals being switched back into analogue after they have spent millions of dollars upgrading their facilities to offer digital.

    McCain’s draft legislation gives priority to those households that rely solely on over-the-air television, and in particular lower-income homes. The legislation is scheduled to be considered by the committee on Wednesday, but it is hard to anticipate any meaningful progress since Congress is trying to adjourn by early October and the U.S. House of Representatives has not acted as yet.

    If the Bill is passed analogue -only television sets made after September 2005 will be obliged to include a warning label stating that without additional equipment, it would not work after 2008.

    So far the UK government has rejected any call for it to contribute to the public’s cost of making the change to digital TV. McCain’s bill will give further weight to those who feel they should.

  • BT Broadband Delivered TV – This Month it’s on

    The rumours of UK incumbent teleco BT considering a broadband-delivered video service have been circulating again.

    It is often said that you can tell if it is an odd or even numbered month by seeing if BT is saying it is launching a broadband service or not.

    The latest rumours are that BT would work with Sky. BT has been getting cosy with Sky over many years. It started when Sky wanted to ensure a return path from their Set Top Boxes (STB’s) and had BT install a phone line specifically for this purpose each time a new Sky customer signed up. This relationship continued to grew to include BT offering their customers pricing bundles.

    It has been known for some time that BT has been in discussions with makers of Freeview boxes. They are exploring the idea of combining this with downloaded content, distributed to the consumer via broadband.

    ZDNet UK reports a currently running 100-household trial with London-based BT employees. They proffer the commercial rollout could be achieved as early as Summer 2005.

    There are two broadband-TV services in the UK; HomeChoice, with operates in London; and KIT running in Kingston-upon-Hull. Both have been delivering service for many years over their own networks.

    There is a fly in ointment. One of the major problems with delivering broadcast-quality video to households was introduced by BT when, while trumpeting their price reductions, they set limits on the amount of data that could be downloaded in a month. With video being the most data hungry application, this could preclude the delivery of video to the home without an additional charge being incurred. Unless of course BT lift those limits for their own video service …

  • Now 55% of UK Homes are Digital: Ofcom

    Ofcom, the UK super regulator, has just announced that as at 30 June 2004, Digital Television penetration had reached 55% of UK households, up 2% from the previous quarter. The total figure now stands at 13,704,459 households.

    The Free To Air (FTA) service, Freeview, usage increased 12.1% to nearly 4m households. This percentage increase dwarfs the growth from the dominant digital TV delivery service, the satellite service Sky, which increased at around 1% over the same quarter adding 76,000 to reach 7,032,000. We note that Ofcom doesn’t give the Sky growth as a percentage, perhaps as it sounds small.

    Ofcom estimate that the total number of free-to-view digital homes is now almost 4.2 million, an increase of 13.4% from the previous quarter. Taking the information from various sources, they say the figure comprises the number of viewers using Freeview, those using satellite ‘Solus’ cards and ex-Sky subscribers, who continue to use their satellite box for viewing free-to-view channels. Digital Cable accounts for nearly 2.47 million households.

    While these figures will be encouraging to all, they measure households, not the number of TV related sets (TV, video, etc) in the UK. The biggest outstanding issue for household that need to change to digital receive will be replacing the non-primary TV (the UK has an average of 2.5 sets per households) and VCR. It is thought that the replacement of VCR’s could be the big boost for Personal Video Recorders (PVR) that would change the market.

    These figures come in the same week that Ofcom annouced analogue switch off to occur in 2012.

    Ofcom Digital Television Update Q2 2004

  • US FCC: High Speed Internet and television

    Yesterday, Michael Powell, U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman said that technology and telecommunications companies are working on ways to develop pipe television shows to consumers’ homes via high-speed Internet lines.

    Telephone companies like SBC Communications, are competing against competition from cable television companies that offer their customers a comprehensive package of products, including phone and Internet service.

    Stateside it would appear that the majority of major phone companies have an initiative underway to provide broadband-delivered Internet protocol (IP) television. However, at present, it is unclear as to whether there would be any regulatory obligations that would apply to television via the Internet. 

    According to Powell, TiVo Inc., famous for its digital television recorders, was joining up with online DVD renter Netflix Inc. to provide films to the home by high-speed Internet, or broadband lines (see our coverage).

    This week, in another indication that television via the Internet was gaining momentum, the largest U.S. local telephone company, Verizon Communications, appointed Terry Denson, formerly of Insight Communications to manage entertainment content and marketing.

    The company has already begun an ambitious fibre-to-the premises (FTTP -) programme to deliver broadband services over optical fibre directly to homes and businesses. It expects to pass 1 million homes by the end of 2004 and an additional 2 million homes next year.

    Qwest Communications International already operates a small IP television service in Arizona, and the other three large local telephone companies are actively planning to compete. As part of their voice and Internet packages the other four carriers already resell satellite television services from DirecTV and EchoStar Communications

    FCC

  • Yahoo to Purchase MusicMatch for $160m Cash

    Yahoo! will soon be dancing to a new tune as it purchases online jukebox provider Musicmatch, in a cash in hand deal costing US$160 million.

    Rather than build their own service, Yahoo has decided to buy an online music provider in an attempt to broaden the Internet’s appeal with the growing number of people who purchase songs from the Internet.

    Digital music is becoming increasingly popular. According to Jupiter Research, sales from online music subscriptions and downloading is expected to rise from an estimated US$271 million in 2004 to US$1.7 billion in 2009.

    Sunnyvale-based Yahoo! expects its music audience to climb from about 12.9 million people to 23.9 million after the acquisition is completed by the end of the year.

    The all-cash acquisition, announced on Tuesday, gives Yahoo! the chance to compete in the increasingly competitive digital music market place, against the likes of Apple Computer, RealNetworks and Napster. Microsoft launched its own online music store, MSN Music, earlier this month. EBay and Virgin have also announced plans to open online music stores.

    San Diego-based Musicmatch will become a wholly owned subsidiary of Yahoo! upon completion of the acquisition. They will provide the Yahoo! with two new features: an online music store selling individual songs for 99 cents each and a software program that helps manage digital music on computer desktops.

    The purchase will give Yahoo! a strong position in the digital music business, in both ad-supported media, such as radio and music videos, and on-demand distribution, with subscriptions and downloads.

    “This acquisition is one of several product innovations and new initiatives in which Yahoo! will invest to build our music portfolio this year and in the future,” said Terry Semel, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Yahoo! Inc

    The decision is welcome by its investors. In Tuesday’s trading shares in Yahoo! increased from $1.33 to US$33.20 on the Nasdaq Stock Market.

    MusicMatch