Digital-Lifestyles

Distribution

The new digital ways content was becoming distributed

  • Instat: Digital Set-top Box and PC TV Tuner Market US$3.8 billion in 2008

    In-Stat/MDR are projecting that the worldwide market for digital tuners in set-top boxes and PC TV cards will be worth US$3.8 billion (€3.12 billion) by 2008.

    PC TV cards are growing rapidly in popularity, due to PCs being more readily accepted as the entertainment centre of households. Many lifestyle PCs are being sold with cards preinstalled and preconfigured – and even if a PC doesn’t ship with one, the installation of a decent card will enable the owner to turn their PC into a fully functional PVR.

    Consumers now expect their PC to be able to satisfy all of their entertainment needs, and television is an important aspect of this. A home entertainment computer without digital television will not be acceptable for much longer.

    Motherboard manufacturers are also getting in on the act, and are producing boards with integrated tuners. Motherboards have always demonstrated a trend for integration – many features which previously required an expansion card, like 5.1 sound, RAID arrays, graphics accelerators and Bluetooth, are now built into some boards.

    In-Stat predict that international growth (i.e. non-US) will be key, and that Europe will continue to lead the market for some time. Lifestyle PCs are remarkably popular in Europe, with many major brands such as Sony, HP and Shuttle doing well out of products aimed specifically it the entertainment niche. Asia is rapidly climbing into second place – will there be a time when Asia becomes the world’s largest entertainment market?

    In-Stat

    Hauppage

  • H.264 Codec Adopted for Next-Gen HD DVDs

    The DVD Forum has ratified the new H.264 Advanced Video Codec (AVC) for inclusion in the forthcoming High Definition DVD platform.

    The H.264 codec, formerly known H.26L, was was developed by the Motion Picture Experts Group (responsible of course, for the various MPEG formats) and the International Telecommunication Union, and has now been ratified into the MPEG-4 codec. The codec enables a variety of video content to be compressed for transmission and decompressed for playback in a highly efficient way.

    Apple has already made an announcement to the effect that H.264 will be included in a release of its QuickTime platform next year.

    “Apple is firmly behind H.264 because it delivers superb quality digital video and is based on open standards that no single company controls,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing in a statement.

    H.264 is intended to be used on a number of platforms, and as such covers a wide spectrum of bandwidth requirements – from HD television to mobile phones. The codec is highly efficient, and has been demonstrated playing back 1920×1080, 24fps HD movies at up to half the data rate of MPEG-2. Less data means room for more channels – or better audio and video.

    Don’t expect HD playback performance on your new mobile phone – Apple’s test detailed above required a dual processor G5 to do the playback. The new codec will be more suited to digital television broadcasts to phones and mobile movies with a much lower resolution.

    How H.254 works – and it’s not too technical, either

    MPEG resources on the internet

  • Mixing on Mobiles with Orange Fireplayer

    Orange are launching a new service – Fireplayer, which allows users to download tracks and remix them by adding effects. Attendees at Glastonbury were the first to get their hands on the new service, and it launches to the rest of us on July 1st. Fireplay currently offers 20 tracks for remixing, but the company is hoping to expand the range to offer more choice.

    Fireplayer is available as a free download from the Orange World portal. Your finished masterpiece than then be saved to your mobile as a TrueTone ringtone to impress/offend your friends/travelling companions.

    Also launching on 1st July will be Orange’s new music service, the imaginatively titled Music Player, where subscribers will be able to download and listen to music directly to their mobile phones. Given that the service will launch with only 200 tracks will no doubt be somewhat of a hindrance to uptake. However, Orange see mobile music as critical to their future and have a history of successful innovation and so to expand the range of available music, they are conducting talks with all major labels. Tracks for Music Player are a proprietary format, but perhaps this is the beginning of music labels seeing mobile phones as a secure platform for content distribution?

    Tracks for Fireplayer cost UK£3.50 (€5.25), music downloads for Music Player cost UK£1.50 (€2.25)

    Orange

  • Five May Buy Flextech

    Jane Lightning, speaking at a Royal Television Society event last night, dropped an unsubtle hint that Five are considering buying Flextech, the content arm of Telewest.

    While the rest of the industry is still speculating about the proposed merger with Channel 4, Lightning, Five’s chief executive said “Flextech could be one of the options we are looking at.”

    Well, it either is one of the options they’re looking at or it isn’t. I’ll fetch my deerstalker, pipe and magnifying glass for a second and say that they most definitely are looking at it, otherwise she wouldn’t have mentioned it in the first place. Oh, and it’s rumoured that Five execs paid a visit to Bill Huff, the fund manager who holds 20% of Telewest, in March.

    Flextech would bring Bravo, Challenge, Living, Trouble and the half of UKTV that isn’t owned by BBC Worldwide.

    With C4, Sony US and Disney also sniffing after Flextech, they’d better get a move on.

    Telewest are keen to sell the company to get out of debt and concentrate on its upcoming marriage to NTL, and are looking for about UK£750 million (€1.1 billion) for it.

    Flextech

  • Qwest to Launch VoIP Service to Boost Internet Telephony

    Qwest Communications are to launch OneFlex, a new voice over IP (VoIP) service, in July. The product is aimed at both business and home consumers, and will require VoIP phones to use. OneFlex has conference calling, voice mail and other added features, all controlled from a web interface.

    Qwest are looking to roll the service out to 20 US metropolitan areas by the end of the year, but is launching in Boise, Denver and Phoenix. It uses the Qwest iQ Network and is intended to appeal to customers who want to get their broadband and telephone service from a single source, and is of course cheaper than standard long distance.

    VoIP is facing a slow start in the US – a recent survey from Ipsos-Insight revealed that 50% of public did not know what VoIP was, and some 60% of the people who did know were confused about how it actually worked.

    About Qwest

  • ITV to Invest More in Digital Brands

    Good news if you’re over 35 and/or like I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here – the UK independent broadcaster, ITV is to invest UK£36 million in its two digital channels, ITV2 and ITV3, by scrapping its plans for a children’s channel and choosing instead to focus on News and its digital offerings.

    This means that ITV2 has its programme making budget doubled to UK£24 million, and ITV3 gets UK£13 million for its launch later this year.

    ITV2 is going to use that extra cash to buy in American imports to compete with Channel 4 and Sky – so rather than attract an audience with original programming it’s going to buy in the content that the others channels show in the hope that it will somehow wrestle views away from them.

    By making the investment, ITV hope to triple their total revenues to UK£150 million (€225 million) by 2007. Net advertising revenues are up 4.9% over this period last year, but viewer share continues to fall.

    ITV

  • Mobile Operators Define the Open Mobile Terminal Platform

    Baffled by the sheer range of application user interfaces on mobile phones? I certainly am – but then the rich diversity of cash point interfaces leaves me standing there confused and moneyless on the best of days.

    To combat the confusion and fragmentation that comes with the diversity of mobile applications and their use, mm02, NTT DoCoMo, Orange, SMART Communications, Telefónica Móviles, Telecom Italia Mobile, T-Mobile and Vodafone have grouped together to form OMTP – the Open Mobile Terminal Platform.

    Their aim is to define the requirements necessary for mobile devices to deliver openly available standardised application interfaces – so you’ll at least have half a chance next time you try to fight your way round your new phone address book, because it’ll work much like the last one you saw.

    They’ll do this by establishing an open frame work for device manufacturers like Nokia and Siemens, plus their software and hardware suppliers, inviting them to develop OMTP compliant products.

    Of course, there is a slim chance that phone manufacturers could tell the OMTP group to go and take a jump.

    The OMTP

  • EasyGroup, UK Newspapers, Entire World to Launch Music Services

    EasyGroup, the company better known for being the parent of easyJet, has announced that it too will be getting into the online music store business. The difference is that the music will be free.

    Imaginatively called easyMusic, the service will feature tracks from unknown artists who need a bit of publicity. Customers who want to download tracks form better known acts will pay a fee.

    As always, Stelios was out with a statement:

    “Music is another example of a market which will grow if the price is lowered. Only this week we have seen that independent labels and artists, accounting for 20% of the UK market, do not wish to join the iTunes penny jukebox for fear of the commercial terms. easyMusic will allow them to advertise their music for free to get a bigger fan base and if they think they have become popular enough they can switch to the pay-for-download side of easyMusic.com. Market forces will decide on the value of their work and the result to consumers is that the price of music will come down, something which will increase the number of musicians and fans in this market place.”

    Ah, Stelios, the penny jukebox thing is OD2, but otherwise we broadly agree with you.

    Did you know there’s actually an easyPizza? I take it they arrive in orange boxes.

    Is that the sound of a bandwagon’s axles about to snap? Well, yes it must be because here comes the Sun, the Guardian, the Times, the Daily Mail and the Daily Mirror with plans for their own online music download stores!

    First up is the Guardian in a deal with EMI, planning a service at the end of June, with the Daily Mirror considering a music service as part of the relaunch of their website later in the year.

    Scorching!

    EasyMusic

    Daily Mirror

  • US “Family Movie Act” Will Approve Parental Content Filtering

    The Motion Picture Association of America is unhappy about HR4586, the “Family Movie Act”. The act will allow companies like Clearplay to manufacture software for filtering content from DVDs, without film studios suing over their product being tampered with.

    As always, censorship is an emotive issue: parents should have the right to protect their children from inappropriate material… but then perhaps they should be more selective about what finds its way into the DVD player when their kids are parked in front of it?

    “The technology my legislation allows does not alter any movie’s violence, sex and profanity,” said Lamar Smith, the Republican sponsoring the bill through Senate. “But it does allow parents to skip over the movie’s violence, sex and profanity. If they choose to designate a technology company to help them accomplish this, more power to them.”

    Not being a parent, I’m somewhat baffled here: why would you want to sit your child through a film based around the themes of sex, violence and profanity, even if it is filtered?

    Nevertheless, the studios are unhappy about someone else, the consumer with some software, having the final cut on their films. So this is all about artistic integrity is it? No, this is Hollywood.

    Jack Valenti, MPAA CEO testified that legislation wasn’t necessary because studios are already working with movie filtering companies and directors to create new, edited versions of popular films that are more family friendly. Of course, having two versions of a film in the shops means more sales for the movie industry, whereas just one version means that it’s the filtering company that makes the money and not the studios.

    Valenti’s statement

    Lamar Smith on the Family Movie Act

  • UK Broadband Take-up Almost Doubles in a Year

    New figures from the Office of National Statistics show that the UK broadband market has almost doubled in the past 12 months. In April, 27.2% of internet connections were now broadband, compared to just 14.5% a year earlier.

    Broadband connections continue to increase their market share rapidly, whilst dialup connections decline – there are now less dial up subscriptions than when the index started in January 2001.

    “The year-on-year decrease to April 2004 was 6.8 per cent for dial-up connections with a decrease of 1.9 per cent from March 2004 to April 2004,” the ONS said in a statement.

    The growth is being driven by new pricing plans, increased availability and more demanding applications such as music, video and online gaming.

    Dial-up internet access still accounts for 72.8% of internet connections, so there is still a lot of growth for broadband still to come.

    The Office for National Statistics