Digital-Lifestyles

Distribution

The new digital ways content was becoming distributed

  • DVD Jon Cracks AirPort

    More bad news for Apple keeping its grip on iTunes and its related technologies – DVD Jon has cracked the encryption behind AirPort.

    Jon Lech Johansen came to fame five years ago when he co-authored DeCSS, an application for decrypting DVD video content. He wrote the software so he could watch his legally acquired DVDs on his Linux PC. I would like to point out that he was just 15 when he managed that. Now the Norwegian programmer has managed to discover the key that AirPort Express uses when sending data between iTunes and Apple’s wireless base station.

    Apple is currently in cat fight with Real Networks over Harmony, a technology that allows Real content to be played on the iPod. DVD Jon has just made it possible for third party software and hardware producers to stream music to AirPort express from other music programs. An example picked from random, I suppose, would be Real Player – music lovers will now be able to stream music from Real Player or Windows Media to their AirPort receivers.

    Johansen has released the source code to JustePort, a command-line tool that demonstrates how music can be streamed to AirPort.

    SoSueMe – Jon Lech Johansen’s blog

  • Blockbuster Launch Online DVD Rental Service

    Blockbuster have launched Blockbuster Online, as service that allows subscribers to choose films from the company’s 25,000 title catalogue – and then have them posted to their home.

    Not quite the giant leap we were all hoping for, and a bit late, but it’s a step forward. This is essentially the same service that Netflix and others have been providing for, well, months. Years, even.

    Blockbuster don’t think they’re late to market at all: “We think now is the opportune time for Blockbuster to enter the online rental business, and we plan to quickly establish ourselves in this arena by aggressively marketing, pricing and combining our online program and in-store capabilities,” said Shane Evangelist, Blockbuster vice president and general manager of BLOCKBUSTER Online. “Very simply, we plan on providing the best online movie rental service available. To this end, the BLOCKBUSTER Online monthly fee is currently priced below our biggest competitor for the three-out rental plan. Plus, we are offering 25,000 new release and catalogue titles. We believe that all of this, combined with our marketing savvy, should help Blockbuster to develop a substantial share of the online rental business by the end of next year.”

    Certainly, recognition of the Blockbuster brand should make it easier for them to gain ground in an already established market.

    Subscribers can rent unlimited films, up to three at a time, for US$19.99 (€16.30) a month. As they’re paying a subscription and can only hold three titles at a time, there are not late fees – so that copy of Three Weeks Notice can sit there unwatched for as long as you like, just because you can’t get to the post office.

    Blockbuster will be offering free rental coupons valid in its stores to encourage subscribers to still pop into the local branch now and again – of course, posting DVDs means that customers won’t be buying so much high-margin popcorn and chocolates anymore.

    Blockbuster Online

  • P2P Networks Distribute Windows SP2

    Peer to peer activists Downhill Battle have set up a share to distribute Windows XP Service Pack 2. The move is intended to show the positive side of file-sharing networks and to demonstrate how powerful P2P networks can be.

    SP2 has been released to manufacture, but is not currently generally available for download from Microsoft – late August is the expected time. Microsoft will be limiting downloads from its Windows Update site to prevent bandwidth and server problems, as it has predicted that the service pack will be installed on 100 million machines in coming months.

    Downhill Battle have made SP2 available on BitTorrent, but other P2P users have picked it up and the update is now available on a number of peer to peer networks, including eDonkey.

    As Downhill Battle state on the download page: “This website has been setup by Downhill Battle – Music Activism as a demonstration of how peer-to-peer filesharing technology can help distribute files that are too large for centralized distribution to handle. Even Microsoft, which has incredible server resources at their disposal, is limiting downloads of their SP2 release, but filesharing technology can let everyone download it right away. Congress is literally preparing to outlaw filesharing– it is crucial that we rally to defend and promote the technology.”

    The version available is a network install, and definitely not what the average home user needs – particularly as it weighs in at 270 mb. The standard SP2 is about 80 mb.

    Downhill Battle

    The SP2 BitTorrent

  • The BBC’s Digital Olympic Coverage

    BBC Sport have released details of the scale of their coverage for the 2004 Olympics, covering more than 1,200 hours of television and 200 hours of radio. Digital television and broadband internet means that the BBC will be able to broadcast much more Olympic footage than in previous years – so this year you might not miss out on the canoeing after all.

    The Olympic Games generally create about 3000 hours of television – the BBC will broadcast 250 hours on its two main channels, and another 1,000 hours will be shown on digital TV.

    Digital services will include constantly updated results and medal tables, and a scheduling tool so that viewers can see if the softball finals and table tennis events are on at the same time.

    BBC Sport will be showing live and on-demand coverage of events on their web site for UK residential broadband customers. The service will feature the same streams carried on interactive channels, so users will be able to watch five events simultaneously.

    The BBC Sport player can sit on your desktop whilst you’re working with your computer, and the site even includes other activities that you can enjoy whilst the video player is running. The Flash games provided are a nice touch and have a lovely SNES feel to them – I managed to out swim the calamari in 12.1 seconds, but the B and N keys on my keyboard will never be the same.

    Watch the Olympics live online

  • TiVo Cuts Prices to Increase Demand

    Fresh from getting the nod for their TiVoToGo content sharing service, PVR manufacturer TiVo have cut the price of their digital recorder. With competition from cable companies looming, this could be TiVo’s last chance to grow, or even hang on to, their market share.

    A TiVo PVR is now only US$100 (€82) for the 40 hour model, with the subscription costing US$13 (€11) a month.

    The company has launched a US$50 million (€41 million) ad campaign in the hope of growing sales from US$141 million (€115 million) last year to US$1 billion (€820 million) by 2008.

    “This will set the stage and give us a chance at profitability by the end of our next fiscal year,” said Brodie Keast, TiVo’s executive vice president and general manager.

    Rival cable firms are threatening TiVo’s market share by launching services with cheaper monthly charges. Although TiVo hope to grow their installed user base form 1.6 million subscribers to 10 million in four years, the outlook does not appear good: the company’s share price has recently fallen by 10% to a 16 month low.

    As Forrester Research analyst Josh Bernoff has said.”This is it. This is their shot to get a whole lot of new subscribers before cable DVR subscribers really take off.”

    TiVo

  • Ringtone Market Now Worth Frightening US$2.5 billion; WAP Use Doubles, But Still Rubbish

    Research groups are estimating that the worldwide ringtone market is now worth at least US$2.5 billion (€2 billion), with some groups claiming that it’s nearer US$3.5 billion (€2.85 billion).

    The US market makes up just a tiny proportion of the US$2.5 billion figure, accounting for just US$140 million (€114 million) of ringtone sales – the bulk of the market is in Europe and Asia.

    Like text messaging, ringtones are another completely unexpected mobile phone success story – ten years ago, mobile networks thought they’d be making their money from obvious things like phone calls.

    Perhaps those guys in the panda outfits weren’t so daft after all.

    WAP, however, was an unexpected failure – adoption of the difficult to use, worse to implement internet browsing protocol has been extremely slow. Slow to the point that it will soon be bypassed by traditional internet access on phones. Like teletext but slower and less interesting, figures from the Mobile Data Association indicate that 1.11 billion WAP pages were viewed during June 2004, up from 784 million in June 2003. The MDA estimate that the year total will be 13 billion for the year.

    Mobile Data Association

  • China Issues Digital TV Licenses

    China’s government has issued digital television broadcasting licenses to four companies, ending the state monopoly. The move is also intended to increase competition and innovation in China’s nascent digital broadcasting industry.

    However, the move is not as open as first appears – the four companies are themselves state owned. The companies are CHC Home Cinema, China Broadcast Network Company, Shanghai TV, and a five company consortium including China National Radio.

    By opening up digital broadcasting in this way, the government hopes to create more opportunities for private and foreign-funded ventures, though foreign companies are not allowed to hold broadcast licenses. Regulators have approved a small number of overseas channels for broadcast on cable in Guangdong and hotels, though much of the overseas investment is likely to take the form of creating content, developing platforms and infrastructure.

    A recent project in Qingdao converted 600,00 homes to digit television, with 60 government channels. China is expected to have 30 million viewers by 2008.

    Digital TV in China

  • Nokia Partners with Loudeye on Mobile Music

    Nokia have signed Loudeye to develop and advanced wireless digital music platform for their range of mobile handsets. The announcement comes days after Motorola and Apple got together to bring iTunes to mobile phones.

    No details on the platform have yet been released, but the deal is for several years.

    “This agreement with Nokia represents a significant strategic opportunity for Loudeye to work with the leading mobile communications company in the world to develop an advanced wireless music platform,” said Jeff Cavins, Loudeye’s president and chief executive officer. “We are very excited about our relationship with Nokia and look forward to sharing more details in the future.”

    This is another early step showing that online music services and handset manufacturers believe that mobile phones have tremendous potential as tools for listening to, and buying, digital music.

    Loudeye recently acquired OD2, Europe’s leading white label music download service and claims to have the world’s largest music archive. We’ll be interested to see how the service ties in with Visual Radio, if at all. If Visual Radio gets a proper European or worldwide launch, then it may form the basis of a service for radio listeners to buy and download music heard during broadcasts.

    Loudeye

  • Curt Marvis, CinemaNow – the IBC Digital Lifestyles Interviews

    We interviewed Curt Marvis, a key player in IP-based video delivery and CEO of CinemaNow.

    CinemaNow have the distribution rights to the largest library of on-demand feature films available on the internet. CinemaNow’s distribution model is one of the most flexible in the industry: films are available with pay-per-view, download or subscription licenses.

    The company’s library comprises content from more than 150 licensors, including 20th Century Fox, Disney, MGM, Miramax, Warner Brothers and Lions Gate Entertainment.

    CinemaNow have not restricted themselves to films, however – their catalogue includes music concerts, shorts and television programmes.

    CinemaNow’s technology platform is essential to their business, and so they have developed their own proprietary content distribution and DRM system: PatchBay. They’ve also turned PatchBay into a product, and has licensed the platform to other content distributors. PatchBay allows distributors to manage, track and syndicate content whilst enforcing DRM solutions and territorial restrictions. CinemaNow’s entire business is built around the Windows Media 9 platform, which has simplified their business model somewhat, whilst at the same time allowing them to take advantage of the sophisticated features built into Microsoft’s platform.

    Curt Marvis has been CEO of CinemaNow since the company was created in July 1999, arriving there from 7th Level. He was also a founder of Powerhouse Entertainment, and in the 80s and early 90s was CEO of The Company, the Los Angeles production organisation.

    Digital delivery of video has been slower to arrive than many industry players predicted in the mid-90s, but with the adoption of broadband and improvements to codecs and DRM systems, it looks like mainstream is around the corner. There are still many hurdles – broadband isn’t quite broadband enough, consumer rights over moving content to other devices is unclear at best, content can be lacklustre and customers are confused by the many competing codecs, DRM schemes and formats in the market.

    We spoke to Curt about CinemaNow and his hope for the future of digital content delivery, and the advantages of Windows Media 9.

    Some of the visitors to Digital Lifestyles might not know about Cinema Now. Can you give me some background on that for our readers?

    CinemaNow has been around for five years. We started the company in mid-1999, which of course was during the dot.com hayday. We started the company then do to the same thing that we continue to do today, which is to offer movies and other video content on demand over IP Networks.

    What do you think has kept Blockbuster out of the part of the market in the US for so long?

    Blockbuster is actually a small investor in our company and I think Blockbuster feels that when they get into a new marketplace they look for a market which is very, very big which the IP on demand marketplace still is not.

    I think their philosophy is that they will enter the marketplace at a moment in time when they feel there is a sufficient amount of revenue.

    You have to keep in mind as well that Blockbuster do not own the rights to distribute content in this window yet, so they have to negotiate that through a studio.

    They are sort of dabbling with it in the UK, but not in a very high profile way.

    Yes, I know Steve Middleton and they have had that trial in Hull. So I’m familiar with that. They are actually doing more in the UK than they are in the US market.

    Tell me a little bit about your IBC session. What sort of things are you going to be covering?

    We have a sort of technology platform we call PatchBay. PatchBay is the sort of central nervous system of CinemaNow, and it’s a completely Windows based platform.

    We deliver our movies exclusively in Windows Media format, but that’s not to say that couldn’t use other codecs or other players, but we chose that as our primary platform when we started the company.

    We used the installed base for that choice as well as the specific functionality of the platform, for purposes of what we can do to add additional delivery and content.

    Could you tell us a bit more about your Patch Bay product?

    Patchbay is a versatile, user-friendly, API and tool for managing all facets of online content distribution. With Patchbay, you can manage six major tasks for successfully distributing content online including: Content Management and Distribution; Content Syndication; Rights Management; User Profiling and Ad Targeting; Pay-Per-View, Subscription and E-Commerce Management; and Comprehensive Reporting.

    It’s a tested, real-world application currently being used to manage millions of streams per month over disparate networks. With Patchbay’s scalable infrastructure, CinemaNow maximizes its revenues while protecting and retaining control over its assets, even those syndicated to third-party websites.

    Windows Media 9 it has been a terrific platform for delivering and viewing and protecting your content. What excites you most about it?

    That is a big question. Is there something that Windows Media excites me?

    The Windows Media Platform is directly compatible with the dominant operating systems and you know, EU concerns and other concerns notwithstanding we felt that having a player that was most used with the operating system it was running on was best. We also frankly think that beyond that specific issue the Windows Media Platform and Windows Media Player are the superior player and platforms for digital delivery. That is why we chose them.

    Who is the typical Cinema Now subscriber? Who are you actually reaching?

    We definitely have a male dominated audience – over 75% of our users are male. They tend to be slightly older than you might initially think. Our typical user is probably between 25 and 40 years of age. Generally speaking they have a higher than average income, higher than average education – you know that sort of thing. That is the kind of profile that we have in general, although it is changing all the time, as we have more and more of the mainstream business.

    You have 455 films in your library at the moment. How many are you aiming for?

    That’s what you’re seeing in the UK. We have territorial rights which protect our content from being viewed outside of the US for films that we do not have rights to – for example the collection of movies that you see in the UK is significantly inferior to what we offer in the US. In the US on our website right now we have almost 2000 films available. By the end of this year that will grow to probably close to 4000/5000.

    In the UK, I am hopeful that we will be up well over 1000 films by the end of the year including the films from major studios.

    How long do you think it is going to be before digital delivery becomes mainstream then?

    Well, I think there are a number of factors that are sort of the driving part right now. One is the problem of availability; one is broadband penetration; one is hardware device availability and penetration in terms of everything from portable devices, media centre devices etc. etc.

    I think there has got to be an alignment if you want to drive fast market adoption. When we started the company in 1999, we thought that by 2004 that time would have arrived. I can tell you now that is just the beginning and we will probably see this become a mass market over the course of the next two to four years – somewhere in that timeframe.

    You mentioned that you don’t have the rights to distribute all of your films in all territories – what kind of problems are you facing in getting rights clearances for content in different markets?

    No real problems, but rather an issue of needing to be set up in these countries with strong distribution partners before it is worthwhile to spend money acquiring local content and preparing it (encoding and storage) for distribution. Keep in mind that content is distributed on a territory by territory basis and with each version comes new contracts, payments and prepping.

    Are you considering a global pricing model or will you be pricing the same content differently on a market by market basis?

    We will try to keep it as consistent as we can, but we will definitely need to follow pricing schemes that are consistent with differences in the traditional distribution businesses.

    Many content providers are getting excited about supplying content for mobile phones — when you do see serving media to mobiles becoming a mainstream business? Will there be a point when consumers will want to watch long media streams like films on their mobiles? Is there a maximum length that consumers will watch?

    I think mobile distribution is really a business in the next few years for portable devices such as tablet PC’s, Portable Media Centers, etc. Cell phones for full length content seems a long ways away, if ever.

    What of the content that is being delivered to people the films and content that they are buying has quite often incompatible DRM schemes behind it. What do you think is going to happen in that space over the next four years?

    Windows Media has DRM that has been adopted by a lot of different people. I think there will be a shake-up in the market very shortly and one DRM system will be adopted by 95% of the content delivery industry.

    What worries you about the future of digital delivery? What keeps you awake at night?

    Well, I think, I sleep very well actually. I think the biggest concern is that people will jump into the marketplace prematurely – before there is a high quality user experience to be had, and that consumers will be turned off on the concept if it doesn’t work properly at first or it is not a compelling product offering.

    I hope that companies recognise that this is still very much a virgin market, and that when it really begins to take off I think it’ll dwarf the size of what is happening in the DVD industry, and it’ll open up avenues for huge amounts of libraries, great content opportunities etc. I think you will see people consume more and more content and I think there will be plenty of room for a lot players to get into the business.


    Curt is a panellist in the ‘Understanding the Range of Platforms – A Multitude of Destinations’ session between 14:00 and 15:30 at the IBC conference on Sunday, 12th September in Amsterdam. Register for IBC here

    CinemaNow

  • FCC Approves TiVo Content Sharing

    The Federal Communications Commission has approved TiVo’s new content sharing facility, TiVoToGo. Possibly the ugliest neologism I have ever seen TVTG (I’m not typing it again), allows TiVo owners to share recorded programming with a limited number of approved associates and friends over the internet. The FCC has approved the security features that only last week were causing the MPAA and NFL to throw their toys out of their prams.

    The FCC is now satisfied that digital broadcast television is adequately protected by TiVo, and that content should be made conveniently available to users – but without indiscriminate distribution all over the internet.

    TVTG limits sharing to nine other users, who must have a certificate and be registered with the host TiVo before they can view content.

    The MPAA is still disappointed though – they’d like to see tighter controls as programmes can be streamed to users outside the intended market: “technologies that enable redistribution of copyrighted TV programming beyond the local TV market disrupt local advertiser-supported broadcasting and harm TV syndication markets.”

    A breakthrough for consumers? Not so fast. Even if the FCC has approved the technology there are still plenty of opportunities for the MPAA or anyone else who doesn’t like TVTG from reaching the market, or crippling it when it gets there.

    TiVo on the FCC news