Digital-Lifestyles

Distribution

The new digital ways content was becoming distributed

  • 1st July 2005 – the Broadcast Flag Comes to American Television

    From July 2005, every digital TV tuner sold in North America, whether a card or standalone television set, will incorporate a chip listening out for the Advanced Television Systems Committee Flag, or “broadcast flag” as it has become known.

    Devised by the Motion Picture Association of America, the broadcast flag is a technology where broadcasters will be able to control whether or not a home viewer can make a digital copy of a particular programme. If a programme has the flag set, receivers disable their digital outputs – so if a viewer wishes to make a copy, it will have to be onto analogue tape, or onto special low-resolution DVDs.

    Needless to say the flag has had a somewhat mixed reception – as do most initiatives where the default position is to mistrust the customer.

    But what will the flag be capable of in the future? Further incarnations of the technology could be used to prevent viewers from skipping adverts, or even preventing time shifting.

    “Losing Control of Your TV”

  • Scientific Atlanta Planning Games Console

    In what’s beginning to become a crowded market, Scientific Atlanta have announced that they are working on a games console. No specifications have been released yet, but the company claimed the device could compete with current games consoles from Sony and Nintendo. Chief Executive James McDonald said their new product would offer “the same performance you get out of those game boxes.”

    Scientific Atlanta do not expect their Explorer hardware to be available to buy on the high street but will instead be installed by cable operators in subscribers’ homes. Games will then be downloaded to the box on a pay-per-play or perhaps a “buy outright” charging scheme.

    Set top box builders and suppliers are working on ever more sophisticated hardware to compete for the coveted space under your television – getting the most compelling media gateway into millions of homes is worth a lot of revenue.

    It will be interesting to see how the new console compares with Infinium Labs’ notorious Phantom console, summarised here a few weeks ago. What content will be available for Scientific Atlanta’s new console? It’ll need a lot of software to be able to compete with the systems already in the market, and with the potentially huge library of adapted PC games available to the Phantom.

    Also allegedly about to emerge is the DISCover Console – a PC based system that boasts of the simplicity of a console. It allows users to play games simply by dropping the disk in the DISCover’s drive, rather than having to install and configure each game. The DISCover may cause problems for both Infinium and Scientific Atlanta based on the technology they eventually use: their website claims “‘DISCover® technology is protected by U.S. Patent No. 5,721, 951: a “home entertainment system for playing software designed for play in home computers.’ No one can manufacture a game console that plays PC games without infringing on this patent.”

    Scientific Atlanta

    DIScover, Not console yet, but you can buy a nice hat.

    The Phantom still sleeps

  • BSkyB Announces Next Stage for Sky+

    The Sky+ personal video recorder is set to evolve under new plans from BSkyB: they want to transform the PVR into a video and audio jukebox that subscribers can download films and music to.

    Other plans include integrating five separate tuners – a move which will allow subscribers to record four channels simultaneously whilst watching a fifth.

    Sky are also working on a technology that will allow Sky+ users to download content from their set top box to their portable video player so they can watch recorded programming whilst out an about.

    Sky hopes to make £400 from each subscriber per year by the end of 2005. By building new functionality into their Sky+ product and then charging on a service by service basis, they should be able to earn significantly more revenue per customer, on top of the basic £15 subscription fee.

    Since most domestic users are unlikely to ever want to record four separate programmes whilst watching a fifth, it seems to Digital Lifestyles that BSkyB will probably use this new capability to download films and programming to the PVR automatically, to a dedicated area of the hard disk. This will then allow Sky to promote the programming and offer it to to subscribers on an impulse buy, pay-per-view basis.

    Media Guardian on Sky’s plans

  • Slow Start to HDTV

    Europeans seem to be rushing out and buying HDTVs despite the lack of coverage: they bought 70,000 HDTV-capable displays in 2003, yet only one broadcaster, Euro1080, broadcasts a satellite HDTV service, and only for four hours a day.

    A report from Strategy Analytics goes on to predict that we’ll be buying 17.4 million HDTV displays in 2008, but by then only 2.6 million homes will have the set-top box and coverage to enable them to watch HDTV programming.

    Euro1080’s HDTV Service

    Strategy Analytics

  • New Sony Products Shown at Open House

    Sony’s Open House event this year covered all the key consumer devices – from HDTV recorders, and new Handycams to extremely desirable PDAs with more bells and whistles than a bus load of Morris dancers crashing into a flute factory.

    Sony are going for integration even more than usual – HDTVs have integrated card readers for cable users, Clié PDAs and VAIO notebooks feature even sharper cameras and better wireless access than before, and MP3 support filters into products where there was previously only ATRAC.

    More details from DVD Format

  • BT Cuts Broadband Price

    It’s about time – BT have always been at the pricier end of broadband pricing, but the communications giant has finally made a significant reduction to the price of its basic broadband service.

    Now set at a far more enticing and competitive UK£19.99 per month, the service is limited to one home PC (but if you bridge it, how would they know?) and supplies a full 512kbs. However, there’s one very unattractive condition to this new package – downloads are limited to one measly gigabyte per month. Once you’ve downloaded your equivalent of 200 iTunes tracks or a couple of games, you will be sent a reminder with the option to buy more bandwidth. We applaud the new price point form BT, but think the data limitation is a step backwards. Can’t have it both ways, we suppose.

    Remember, some “broadband” packages you see offered for UK£20 and less often just give you 256kbs and less, so always read the terms and conditions.

    BT’s new service

    The FT’s comment

  • “Stop Pestering Us About Bandwidth, Concentrate on the Services”: BT CEO

    After Dr Jyoti Choudrie of the Brunel University commented that that the UK “needs to sit up and take note of the example Japan is setting”, BT CEO Ben Verwaayen has responded – and has basically said that speed doesn’t matter over 2Mbps. One in four homes in Japan has a 12Mbps connection, used for VoIP.

    “All services, with the exception of live TV, are possible with 1.5 to 2Mps” he said at the UK Technology Partnering and Investment Forum. We’ll soon see if BT really believe that when they start marketing domestic connections faster than that.

    Verwaayen wants us to concentrate on services – but this seems at odds with what users want. Broadband subscribers are more than capable of finding their own content, and would rather their broadband ISP provided them with a fast, reliable connection than pop videos they can find on other sites.

    Silicon.com

  • ATi’s HDTV Wonder Card

    Featuring Ati’s NXT2004 Digital Modulator chip, already found in many set-top boxes, ATi’s HDTV Wonder card will include support for analogue, digital and high definition television services. The card will come bundled with PVR software allowing users to fill up their hard drives considerably faster than before: a 250gb disk should store about 30 hours of HDTV content, contrasted with 200 hours of standard definition TV.

    With the release of the DirectTV’s HDTV TiVo in the next few weeks, HDTV fans at least in the US will finally be able to record and archive programmes with ease.

    HotHardware’s preview of the card

    DirectTV’s HD products

  • AOL Drops Broadband Service in US

    With broadband price cuts from telephone operators and ISPs in the US, packaging a DSL service with access to AOL services was rapidly becoming uneconomic for the content giant.

    America Online found that it couldn’t offer a price-competitive service: being so far down the value chain meant that the subscription cost of AOL broadband product was often far higher than that of competitors, once subleasing prices had been piled on top.

    As the numbers of dial-up subscribers dwindle, AOL is moving towards providing content to users who supply their own access, thus concentrating on their core competencies and not wasting resources trying to be a telco. The market seems to be segregating out a bit: last year, Microsoft also dropped DSL access plans. How long will it be before companies which are more geared to providing access to the internet, such as BT, drop their content offerings?

    Broadband without the bandwidth

  • Ofcom Propose 056 Numbers for Voice Over IP Numbering Services

    Users wishing to place and receive Voice over IP calls through their broadband service will be able to have their own number in the future, as outlined in Ofcom’s proposal just issued. The proposal is intended to simplify access to VoB services, and distinguish them from other more traditional services.

    05 is currently reserved for corporate PABX systems, and it’s Ofcom’s proposal that 055 is used for corporate VoB services, whilst 056 will tend to be more for residential customers.

    Ofcom are against geographically dependent numbers – and we heartily agree that a numbering scheme that varies from town to town makes no sense for a system that is not so dependent on the location of a physical exchange, especially since users may want to pick up calls whilst travelling.

    Ofcom’s proposal