Digital-Lifestyles

Distribution

The new digital ways content was becoming distributed

  • CeBIT: Sony’s European Music Launch

    Sony have announced at CeBIT that they’re launching a new music service in Europe in June. The initial countries on the list will be UK, Germany and France. The service will comprise of some 300,000 tracks form Sony’s catalogue, and they will be available for the usual €0.99 per track.

    Now for the bad news. The tracks won’t be MP3s, they won’t be AAC and they won’t be Windows Media Format. They’ll be ATRAC3 (Adaptive TRansform Acoustic Coding 3) – and customers will have to use Sony’s Sonic Stage 2.0 software.

    We’ve used Sonic Stage in the past, and it’s a bit of a pig: getting tracks onto devices is relatively simple, but getting them off again can be a nightmare – we hope that some changes will be made to the platform to make the whole process considerably less painful.

    This is also a bold move for Sony – by providing Sonic Stage as the engine and selling ATRAC3 music, the service will only work with Sony devices, considerably narrowing their market reach at the expense of copy protection. With Napster and iTunes launching in Europe later this year, it won’t take long to see if this was a good decision or not. We’ll keep you posted.

    US Service “Coming Soon”

  • OD2 Allows Users to Pay for Music Through Mobile Bills

    Companies offering digital music downloads have long had a problem with getting revenue from their core market – as many music buyers are under 18, they won’t have a credit card. However, a quick glance at the top deck of any bus, or inside a chip shop, will clearly demonstrate that most of them have mobile phones.

    On Demand Distribution (OD2) the company that supplies the music service behind sites like Virgin and Freeserve, has come up with a scheme that will allow purchasers to charge the cost of music downloads to their mobile phones. The system, developed by MChex and launched on March 22, is simple: purchasers send an SMS with a code to a premium number and the cost of the message is then charged to their bill.

    Paul Smith, OD2’s UK marketing manager, said: “This payment option opens up our services to a much wider demographic. It will allow younger fans to control their own music spend, without having to hijack their parents’ credit card.”

    Of course, this wheeze is just moving the payment stage one step further down the ladder and may cause problems for parents who pay their children’s mobile bills, if they’re not on a pay-as-you go plan.

    On Demand Distribution

  • USDTV Launch USA’s First Over-the-Air Digital TV Service

    It’s a broadcast model that’s been available in the UK for a while, but US Digital Television (USDTV) have introduced a digital TV service employing unused digital spectrum leased from its broadcast partners.

    The subscription to the service is US$19.95 and includes channels from Fox, Disney and ABC. The set-top box to receive the broadcasts are made by Chinese manufacturer Hisense, and will set viewers back a reasonable US$99.

    USDTV promise better picture and sound over analogue cable – and many of the broadcasts will be in HDTV too.

    The service is currently available in Las Vegas, Albuquerque and the Salt Lake City Metro Area but is set to expand into an additional 30 areas by the end of 2004.

    USDTV recently arranged US$8.5 million in private equity funding from NexGen Investments and Stonebridge Capital – and if they deliver on a number of prerequisites investors say they’re in line for an additional $12 million in funding.

    USDTV

    Hisense tap into digital TV market

  • CeBIT: PSX Will Make its European Debut at CEBIT 2004

    The specifications are expected to have changed from the version launched in Japan a few months ago, but Sony are expected to unveil the European version of its exciting PSX media centre.

    The Japanese PSX shipped with a few of the key features missing (namely MP3 playback and the ability to play some image formats), but they were later addressed in a firmware upgrade and it is hoped that the European PSX will hit the market with all of the proposed features enabled. We’ll have to wait and see if the box that Sony show at CeBIT is the proper European version, of if they will simply demo a Japanese unit – the later would be deeply disappointing.

    The Register

  • Chrysalis Mobile Offers MP3 Downloads Straight to Mobile Phones

    Chrysalis Mobile, a standalone business unit within the Chrysalis group of companies, has launched a service designed to bring music to mobile phone users, in various forms.

    Chrysalis are offering the service on a “white label” basis – third parties will be able to contract the service and have it branded with their own identity. The service is comprised of hosting, content creation, billing and even royalty payments.

    Available for download will be MP3s of real songs, ringtones, short edits of real songs (for alarms, tones and fun use), and images.

    Chrysalis are pushing the CRM aspect of the service to potential customers – they’ll know who bought what and when, allowing effective management of campaigns and promotions.

    Chrysalis Mobile

  • iTunes Sells 50 Million Songs; Hewlett Packard-branded iTunes Launches

    Apple announced on Monday that they’d sold 50 million tracks through its iTunes music service. They’re not including free songs redeemed through the Pepsi promotion running at the moment, just tracks which users have paid for and downloaded.

    The service is now selling 2.5 million songs per week – that’s an annual rate of 130 million tracks per year, and it’s increasing. Steve Jobs said “It’s increasingly difficult to imagine others ever catching up with iTunes.” He may have a point: there’s no denying that the service has completely changed the face of the music industry, with many other companies are trying to get a slice of the market – though many other offerings (such as myCokeMusic) are considerably inferior. We’re looking forward to iTunes belated launch in Europe in the Summer – and hope that this will prompt Apple to do a bit more work on their slightly shoddy Windows client for the store.

    Apple also partnered with Hewlett Packard to offer a special HP-branded copy of iTunes.

    Oh – and what was the milestone song sold this time? “The Path of Thorns” by Sarah McLachlan.

    Apple on the milestone

    HP iTunes

  • Pay As You Go Broadband

    In answer to BT’s new UK£19.99 broadband product, capped at 1gb but “burstable”, Tiscali have launched a competing product aimed at customers wanting to dip their toes in broadband internet access.

    Bandwidth is set at 512Kb/s and has an option of either 1Gb of data per month, or 50 hours online. Customers who go over their basic allowance either pay 2p per minute or 2p per Mb extra, depending whether they are on the 1Gb or 50 hour package.

    The new packages that are appearing from suppliers look like good value at first, but we thought we’d check what you’re really getting. We dug out our HP48G+ and calculated that you could get nearly 10Gb down the pipe on the 50 hour package, but then it does limit you to less than two hours a day online. Further frightening calculations revealed that certain DigLif staff spend at least 120 hours a month online, and so for “heavy” users uncapped products currently retailing at UK£29.99 are best.

    Tiscali’s Broadband Offerings

  • Hand-held Digital Video Broadcasting – a summary of progress at DVB World 2004

    The fourth Digital Video Broadcasting World conference was held in Dublin last week – and one of the key topics discussed was the developing standard for broadcasting digital video to hand-held and other mobile devices.

    The new standard was only conceived two years ago, and after a couple of name changes (it has previously been known as DVB-M and DVB-X), has been named DVB-H. The standard was accepted by the DVB Technical Module in January and is expected to be submitted to the European Television Standards Institute this year.

    As the standard is still so new, there are still some problems to be ironed out, mainly power consumption and some network issues.

    DVB-H’s core function is the delivery of digital media to small and portable devices such as mobile phones, but without using mobile phone networks. It has been designed to deliver MPEG-2 streams, but can broadcast any type of data.

    The proposed standard addresses five issues with mobile devices: they tend to move about, they have smaller screens, they have smaller antennas, they require indoor coverage and they run on battery power.

    DVB-T (the terrestrial standard for digital broadcasting) was not really considered for mobile video as it was designed for use with rooftop antennas and does not have the building penetration required, nor is it very power efficient. In theory it could be used to broadcast to mobile devices but a separate dedicated standard would allow many optimisations, rather than just bolting on functionality to a standard that was never actually designed for mobile use.

    DAB was designed for devices with similar location and power demands, but simply does not have the spectrum width to carry the data required.

    Another interesting aspect of DVB-H is that it can coexist with DVB-T without disturbing devices using the other stream, such as set-top boxes.

    DVB-H uses time-slicing between streams to reduce power consumption, but this saving is more or less lost when the total bit rate for a service is low. It’s designed to carry only IP (Internet Protocol) services, so is obviously constrained by the capabilities of the carrier protocol – but since IP is well understood and supported, and has a rich set of features such as strong encryption, this should not present many problems.

    As we said at the beginning, the standard doesn’t use existing mobile networks to deliver content, but we should add that it also needs more masts than conventional broadcasting (though less than cellular coverage, and the masts need not be as large as conventional broadcast masts). It is expected that existing cellular masts will be upgraded to transmit DVB-H signals. However, the cellular network will provide the return path, allowing users to pay for content and receive licenses for their purchases.

    Presented at DVB2004 was the Nokia’s 7700 is the first device to support DVB-H through the addition of their Streamer SU-6 accessory. The SU-6 is attached to the 7700 like a battery pack and is just the beginning for devices that will provide new forms of multimedia and entertainment for consumers.

    DVB Home

    The Nokia 7700

    The European Television Standards Institute

  • Half of UK Homes Now Receive Digital TV

    With penetration of 50.2% of UK households, the total number of homes in the UK watching digital television now stands at 12.3 million, up 423,000 in Q4 2003. This number includes 3.2 million free to air digital viewers using Freeview and ITV Digital boxes, and PC cards.

    The report will be submitted to the secretary of state for culture, media and sport at the end of March.

    Ofcom

  • Ireland Launches Free WiFi Service

    Ireland’s Minister for Communications, Marine and Natural Resources (a varied remit if ever we saw one) Dermot Ahern has launched a free wifi service at the country’s three largest airports to mark Ireland’s Presidency of the EU Council of Ministers.

    The service is only free until June, and will be centred on departure lounges and other major passenger areas.

    Hosted by Aer Rianta at Dublin, Shannon and Cork Airports, each location will be in partnership with either Eircom, Esat Telecom and O2, depending on what airport you’re visiting.

    Twenty million passegers pass through these airports each year and given how much of that traffic is related to the technology firms in Ireland, the service should be very successful.

    Eircom

    O2 ie

    Esat