Digital-Lifestyles

Distribution

The new digital ways content was becoming distributed

  • First European “Over the Air” Music Download Service Launched

    mm02, UK cellular provider, have launched the first European “over the air” music download service.

    To use the service, prospective customers must buy a separate music player, the “O2 Digital Music Player” (O2 DMP), which connects to the online service through their mobile phone, either via an Infra-red port or a short cable. Once connected via GPRS, they are able to browse the selection of music, preview tracks and then purchase them. Previews are not charged for and take around 20 seconds to start to play, but when a track is bought, it is downloaded to the device, which takes around 3.5 minutes, the customer will be charged £1.50 (~$2.55, ~€2.15). While it does not look like good value when compared with what is the current industry standard of 99c, mm02’s Kent Thexton claimed the price “fantastic value for money, for less than the cost of most ring-tones customers can purchase and own an entire chart track”.

    Siemens designed the DMP on behalf of mm02 and will also run the DRM-protected content aggregation and platform hosting.

    The music is encoded using a CODEC called aacPlus, a combination of MPEG AAC and Coding Technologies’ SBR (Spectral Band Replication) technology developed by the German company, Coding Technologies. They claim the compression can reduce the size of audio files by up to half. Given the limited bandwidth available on cellular networks, it is important that the files are as small as possible.

    A wide range of handsets are compatible with the service, meaning that at launch, more than 1.2 million O2 customers can access this service.

    The music content is being supplied by BMG, Universal, AIM and Warner Music and it is hoped that up to 100,000 tracks will become available.

    Once downloaded, the music is stored on a 64MB SD Memory Card that slots into the device. Tracks can be played back on the O2 DMP or transferred to a PC using the Memory Card but will remain locked with their DRM. The DMP can also play back MP3’s

    mm02 are hoping for a good take up as in a previous trial of 300 UK and German customers, an average of five tracks per user per week were downloaded.

    mm02

    Coding Technologies – aacPlus

  • ATI Announce Home Video Server Software

    Graphics card and chip maker, ATI have announced they will be releasing  new software, called Easyshare. It enables live TV and video recordings made on a PC equipped with an All-in-Wonder video card, to be distributed around a home network to any other PC that is equipped with ATI Radeon graphics card. The viewing PC will offer full DVR (Digital Video Recorder) functionality. The software will be available for free download from December 2003.

    This move makes a lot of sense. We have long held the view that the mid to high end of the market will move to a setup with a media server located outside the lounge, say in the loft or cellar, and local playback units, be they near-silent running PC or, Digital Media Adaptor (DMA). Keeping the media servers in the lounge will not be practical for most people due to their noise and size. They will require considerable cooling, due to the large amount of processing power needed to compress the video; and fairly physically large, as they may need a number of tuner cards and hard drives in them to store content.

    What will be important is the quality of the user interface and the ease of handling the library of content. We wait to see the software to see it ATI have conquered this.

    ATI

  • BT Claim a Broadband UK Possible by 2005

    BT announced yesterday that the UK could have 100% broadband coverage by 2005, “if industry and government pull together”.

    At the same time, they announced the introduction of Trigger Levels for all telephone exchanges in the UK, bar six hundred of them. Trigger Levels are set by BT and are the number of people that they feel make it economic for them to equip the exchange for ADSL, will vary between 100 and 500 customers. They excluded six hundred exchanges that have fewer than three hundred customers each, including ten of them having fewer then ten customers. BT hopes that regional development agencies and local groups will help fund broadband in the excluded areas.

    Earlier this month BT presented evidence to a House of Commons Select Committee, where they stated that broadband access in the UK is split 50/50 between ADSL and cable access. BT sell ADSL in two ways in the UK; retailing direct to customers and wholesale via 150 service providers, again split about 50/50. 25% of the retail market is well below BT original stated ambitions, but they presented this as positive items to the committee, in their own words “the highly competitive nature of the UK market is demonstrated by the fact that BT has the lowest share of the retail broadband market of any ex-incumbent.” The reality is, the total number of ADSL connections that they supply via retail and wholesale, equated to nearly all of the ADSL market and half of the UK broadband market.

    In an effort to increase their share of the retail market, which has a higher margin that whole, they have announced that Gavin Patterson, previously Managing Director of Telewest’s consumer division, will be joining BT. He will not only look after retail ADSL, but is charged with “defending the company’s fixed-line business in an increasingly competitive marketplace”, quite a challenge when knowledge of Voice over IP (VoIP) and the cost savings it brings is just start to reach the consumer.

    There are many advantages for BT if the number of broadband connections hits a critical mass. Clearly they would gain significant income from the wholesale and retail sides, but not least, that they would be able to offer content and services over these connections, including their long rumoured TV service.

    Trade & Industry Select Committee: ORAL EVIDENCE SESSION on: The Development of Broadband in the UK

  • Satellite Broadband for Ethiopian Including its Schools

    Ethiopia Telecom, the now-private incumbent telco in Ethiopia, has signed a $25m deal with Hughes Network Systems to deliver broadband data services countrywide. This deal follows closely on the heals of a similar deal with ChinaCast, to provide the same, Direcway broadband satellite network service.

    As wireline communications around the country are far from comprehensive, Tesfaye Biru, managing director of Ethiopia Telecommunications Corporation commented, “Satellite is the only solution that allows us to provide digital, always-on, reliable service no matter where our customers are”.

    One of the first Ethiopian projects is the creation of a national distance learning network, SchoolNet, connecting schools across Ethiopia. Biru says “The DIRECWAY broadband satellite solution allows Ethiopia to expand its national commitment to provide quality education to all our students by reaching our 28.7 million school age children nationwide with the latest in educational tools.”

    A valiant pursuit, but given their low level of funding and lack on consistent electricity supply, it is not clear what equipment will be at the receiving end of the signals at the schools. But with the right backing and support, this method of providing widespread education could potentially change a countries future.

    They plan to begin network installation in June and are scheduled to complete by year end 2004.

  • BT to Sell Content Through Street-located Kiosks

    BT have joined up with a partner, Ringtones Online, to offer ringtones, graphics and games for mobile phones. Potential customers will be able to freely browse a dedicated website on the street using the BT Internet Kiosks, then select, preview and purchase their choices. Payment can either be by inserting cash directly into the machine or electronically using credit card, text or by calling a premium rate phone number. Customer will pay £2 for the content, expect for games, which will be £4.50. By offering them from the street they are hoping to encourage the impulse purchasing.

    BT has been spending lots of money installing these electronic kiosks in to high street around the UK. Providing a small-form colour screen, trackball and a keyboard, the blue-coloured phoneboxes, which are unusual in the UK, have so far reached over 1,400, with over 90% of them having broadband access.

    They see them as a way to offering Internet-based services and products to people who don’t have Internet access at home or at work.

    We think this is an interesting distribution point that has been gradually adding services, both physical, such DVD rental via lastminute.com and electronic, such as photo & video services, enabling friends to send more animated messages.

    BT Internet kiosk

  • Napster Sell 300k Tracks in 1st Week, 20% of Apple

    Following the launch of Napster 2.0 last week, Roxio have announced the services activity after the first week. They sold over 300,000 individual songs and have signed up undefined “thousands” of subscribers to their $9.95/month Premium service.

    Elliot Carpenter, Roxio’s Chief Financial Officer commented,

    “From a financial perspective, the first week’s performance of Napster provides a strong indication of the size of our opportunity. Both the growth rate of premium subscribers and the volume of individual track sales support our financial objectives and should bode well for the future.”

    Reading between the lines, it doesn’t look like they have been overjoyed. Phrases like “bode well for the future” and “indication” somewhat give it away.

    As a spoiling tactic, Apple announced that over the same period, they have sold 1.5 million tracks on iTunes, bringing the total number of tracks sold to 17 million. Apple reported selling over one million tracks in their first week.

    Napster also announced a deal with Penn State University, which, from January 2004, will provide access to the Napster Premium service to all of their students. The offer will also extended to their 150,000 strong alumni association.

    Penn State received a lot of press back in May this year when the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) incorrectly sent them letters accusing some of their students holding illegal MP3’s. Apparently the Record Industry’s legal department confused the works of pop star “Usher” with retired faculty member Peter Usher’s work on radio-selected quasars (the server also hosted a legal MP3). The RIAA later apologised for the mix up.

  • Analysis: The FCC Rules to Adopt the Broadcast Flag

    The US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has elected to adopt the ATSC flag, otherwise known as the Broadcast flag – a digital code that can be embedded into a digital broadcasting stream to mark content as protected. All equipment capable of receiving a Digital TV (DTV) signal, be that TV or computer, sold after 1 July, 2005 in the US must comply with the ruling.

    Content owners have been lobbying hard to try and get it brought into law, as they felt the broadcasting of their content in a digital format without the flag would lead to widespread piracy. Others, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), raised a number of objections to the most stringent of restrictions and were particularly concerned with the protection of consumers current “fair use” rights. It appears that the FCC has listened to all sides of the debate and have accounted for their views.

    The FCC announced ruling is that only equipment that is capable of receiving Digital TV (DTV) signals over the air will be affected and must “recognize and give effect to the broadcast flag”. The recording equipment and possible content protections schemes they employ will be addressed at a later date and are described below.

    Alternative protection schemes had been proposed to the FCC. The considered the encryption of content at the broadcaster and the use of watermarking or fingerprinting technologies. Both of these were rejected at this stage as it was felt that the technologies were currently not mature enough and, in the case of encryption the burden on the broadcaster would be too great.

    The FCC state the main aim of the ruling is to stop the wide distribution of the recorded content over the Internet. Many parties will be pleased that consumers will still be able to make personal digital copies. In the FCC words “redistribution control is a more appropriate form of content protection for digital broadcast television than copy restrictions”.

    While the FCC is at pains to point out that that they feel it is important that consumers are able to move recorded content around, what they call, the Personal Digital Network Environment (PDNE), they have declined to define where the edges of this lay.

    Although currently there are no detail given about the mechanism to stop personal copies be distributed wider a field, more detail on this are expected later.

    One fear of consumers, who have already spent large amounts of money on DTV capable equipment, was that they would be forced to discard their current euipment and buy new, compliant equipment. They will be pleased to discover that this will not be the case; “All existing equipment in use by consumers today will remain fully functional”.

    New DTV equipment, “Demodulator Products” sold after 1 July, 2005 in the US must comply with the ruling;

    “If the flag is present, the content can be sent in one of several permissible ways, including (1) over an analog output, e.g. to existing analog equipment; or (2) over a digital output associated with an approved content protection or recording technology”

    It is not clear if the quality that the digital broadcast brings will remain in the analogue output, or if it will be forcefully degraded to discourage the digital distribution of possible analogue recordings.

    Changes to DVD
    While it has been stated that current TV equipment will remain useable,  the future for current DVD players is far less secure. Hidden in footnote 47 the FCC states:

    “We recognize that currently, content recorded onto a DVD with a flag-compliant device will only be able to be viewed on other flag compliant devices and not on legacy DVD players.  While we are sensitive to any potential incompatibilities between new and legacy devices, we believe that this single, narrow example presented to us is not unique to a flag system and is outweighed by the overall benefits gained in terms of consumer access to high value content.  Changes in DVD technology, such as the transition to high definition DVD devices, will present other unrelated format incompatibilities.”

    The briefly translates to DVD players currently on the market will not be able to play DVDs which have been marked with a Broadcast Flag.

    Given that DVD is famously the fastest ever growing consumer technology, it is not clear what the public views will be on the fact they will need to replace them.

    Affect on the broadcaster
    As covered above, the broadcaster will avoid the burden of having to encrypt content prior to broadcast.

    The FCC has given individual broadcasters the freedom to make their own decisions as to whether they attach the Flag to their broadcast stream, but points out that they may not have content licensed to them, if they do not implement it.

    Some groups urged that the broadcast of certain types of programming, such as news and current affairs, would be prohibited from use of the Flag – in effect during their transmission, they would be forced to turn the Flag off. The FCC has ruled to decline this.

    Further discussion on recordings
    As we have touched on, while the current ruling only covers the receiving equipment, the FCC is now seeking guidance on creating policy for recording equipment and content protection schemes.

    This is the area that will prove most controversial, as it will effectively lock the content. Consumer groups fear that it will also lock the content to a particular company, leading to competing systems not allowing the playing of one companies protected content on another’s platform – the inability to exchange material between formats. This has been labelled the “interoperability” issue.

    To address this whole subject, there will be an interim policy for approving digital content protection and recording technologies to enable the FCC to certify multiple compliant technologies in time for manufacturers to include flag technology in television receivers by 2005.

    The policy details have been laid out and include the public publishing of proposals, followed by a twenty day period where any objection can be raised. The proposer is then given ten days to provide their response.

    The FCC will take all input and make their judgement, which they hope to deliver within ninety days of filing.

    The interim policy will in turn be replaced by a permanent policy and the FCC initiated a “Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking” to examine this issue in greater detail.

    FCC Order and Report (Word doc)

  • 3G Streaming Video First Offered by 3 Sweden & Denmark

    Three, the 3G mobile phone service provider backed by Hutchison Whampoa, are offering the first commercial delivery of streaming video to the 3G mobile-owning public of Sweden and Denmark.

    Their customers have been able to watch the news streamed headlines by their nationa broadcasters Tidningarnas Telegrambyrå (TT – in Sweden) and TV2 (Denmark). Video clips have been available on mobile phone handsets before, but previously the clips have been downloaded to the handsets and then played, a subtle but important difference.

    Tre, as they are know in Sweden, say this is due to their strength of their network and its ability to deliver significant amounts of bandwidth. Currently they charge five Swedish Kronor (0.38 UKP, 0.64 USD) for a video of thirty seconds to two minutes.

    Three (Tre) Sweden announcement

  • Over 1m Bluetooth Units Shipping a Week

    Six years after its launch, the Bluetooth Special Interest Group has announced that they are now shipping over one million Bluetooth devices a week. They hold this up as proof that Bluetooth has now moved out of hype and into reality.

    It is generally thought that laws being enacted around the World, that forbid car drivers to hold their mobile phone while driving, are providing a significant contributions to the increased in these figures, and that this will only continue.

    One concern in the Bluetooth circles are the number of non-ratified devices that are being brought in to the market, with TDK estimating that as many as half of products sold in shops are made by companies that are not member of the Bluetooth SIG. The industries big worry is that these devices will not function correctly and Bluetooth generally starts to get a bad name.

    Bluetooth SIG

  • FCC Win Appeal for Digital TV by 2007

    The US regulator, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), whose remit covers the regulation of American TV, has ruled that by 2007 all TV sets sold in the US, bar the smallest (under 13″ screens), must be equipped to receive both digital and analogue signals.

    The Consumer Electronics Association (CEA), who represents the manufacturers of US TVs, took legal action against the FCC, claiming that they had acted illegally. Yesterday, a three-judge panel at the U.S. Court of Appeals, for the DC Circuit, rejected their appeal.

    President and CEO Gary Shapiro responded, “We obviously are disappointed by the DC Circuit Court of Appeals ruling, which we are still studying. We will be reviewing the full opinion and consulting with our member companies, but of course will be compliant with any final court order.” So, no clear conclusion as to whether they will appeal the decision.

    The National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) supported the outcome. President and CEO, Edwards O. Fritts, said “The court’s decision today upholding the FCC’s DTV tuner requirement is a milestone towards completing the DTV transition. Consumers buying TV sets will know that the receivers they buy will continue to receive all broadcast signals, even as broadcasting changes to digital. Chairman Powell and the FCC deserve congratulations for their strong leadership in advancing the digital transition.”

    The FCC had originally wanted to broadcasters to make the switch by 2006 but was extended when it became clear that this wasn’t going to be reached. Starting in 2004, larger sets must be equipped to receive digital signals.

    Court ruling (PDF)

    FCC response – Word | PDF

    CEA response