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Tony Greenberg, Ramp^Rate – The IBC Digital Lifestyles Interview

This is the fourth in a series of eight articles with some of the people involved with the Digital Lifestyles conference day at IBC2004.

We interviewed Tony Greenberg, CEO of Ramp^Rate, an IT sourcing advisor designed to help companies select the most appropriate vendors for services such as email, hosting and security.

Ramp^Rate uses its Service Provider Intelligence Index to rate vendors and marry them up with customers using an unbiased, purely data-driven methodology.

Tony started Ramp^Rate as a response to the problem of huge sums of money wasted every year because of poor sourcing decisions.

Amongst many highlights in his career, Tony ran sales and marketing at Raindance, was senior vice president at Digital Entertainment Network and was a senior executive at Exodus.

Some of our readers may not be familiar with Ramp^Rate – and it’s a rather different company from those we usually cover – could you give us some background on what you do?

Simply put, RampRate helps companies make great decisions, fast. Part of what we do is help some of the biggest entertainment and technology companies in the world understand where all these next-generation media platforms are going, and how it affects their businesses. We do a lot of research and consulting with a lot of companies you’ve heard about, companies who are looking at delivering digital media of various sorts over wireless, mobile, the web and so on.

And the other part of what we do is help those companies and many others save a lot of money when it comes to running all the information technology that helps them function. Companies spend billions of dollars on IT services, and they’ll only spend more in this increasingly technological world. But we believe, and prove it every day, that companies spend way too much money on their IT services. So we help them save a lot of money.

We do that by using what we call the SPY Index, which stands for Service Provider Intelligence Index. We help companies buy sophisticated and complex IT services – everything from outsourcing everything related to a computer in your business all the way down to simpler services such as digital rights management, e-commerce gateways, bandwidth, applications outsource management, anything that has to do with a monthly recurring service.

The SPY Index is a bit of a magic black box, but it’s basically a huge database filled with information about hundreds of IT services deals and other information we’ve collected over the past several years. We take a client’s needs, punch those into the Spy Index, and find out which of about 200 vendors we are associated with would be a good match for the services they need, at a price that is almost always far below what they’re paying now.

A vendor can be a big company such as IBM or EDS or a lesser-known smaller company such as a payment-processing house. RampRate learns everything about the vendor, puts all the key information into the SPY Index, then uses that to radically speed up the process of picking the right vendor for a given client. Saving time saves companies a lot of money, and our SPY Index gives them hard numbers that let them know what real market prices are for the services they want. They can get a great decision, much quicker than ever before, and know that it’s the best deal available on the market.

We can do this because we have an unusual structure. We use an agency model, which means the vendor and the client share the cost of our services. That’s a different approach than many consultants take. In a more typical relationship, a company like Microsoft, Disney or Sony would give a consultant a retainer. The consultant in turn would source the products and services that they need, then would be paid a uniform transaction fee from each of those vendors that was chosen. The consultant then would repay the retainer to the client. So in essence it may cost the client essentially nothing, but they likely are paying far more for the services they actually get.

Our first allegiance is always to the client, but we know our approach allows everyone to win within a shared “ecosystem” of clients, vendors and us, as their intermediary. The vendors save money because we bring really good clients to them who are ready to do deals. The clients save money because we’re able to bring them the best deal out there, from a vendor who meets their specific needs for service quality, reliability, financial stability and other factors.

We manage hundreds of millions of dollars of transactions for companies large and small, and we have strong client work in the areas of publishing and media with clients like Primedia and Microsoft and a lot of online properties such as iFilm, ESPN Motion and the National Hockey League.

Can you tell us how you actually got to Ramp^Rate?

As a kid, I built a chain of retail stores in the fashion eyewear business and had several peripheral businesses in the manufacturing and distribution arena.

In manufacturing eyewear we designed, we customised eyewear and we created a unique proposition different from many stores worldwide. We also had a direct order/direct mail company – and we even did infomercials.

I sold those companies in 1995, moved to Colorado for a couple of years and regrouped. The Internet started to happen and I moved out to Silicon Valley, kind of paving a new frontier – and I was brought in to run many of marketing functions for Exodus Communications.

At Exodus, we had a few dozen people, and we turned that into what became the largest Internet hosting company for major brands in the world. From the streaming perspective, we developed the first streaming core for all the big broadcasters from Broadcast.com to Real Networks to Akamai to Yahoo. We went public with a US$37 billion valuation, and were sold to Cable and Wireless and then on to Savvis.After that, I have invested in a few dozen companies and then moved to Raindance (RNDC), which is now public in the web-based conference-calling space, where I ran sales, marketing and business development.

Then I went to run business development at Digital Entertainment Network, where we raised US$88 million from Microsoft, Michael Dell, Enron, Intel and NBC. The network paved a new frontier in digital-media distribution, not only creating short-form programming but aligning distribution deals with most of the major portals for video on demand.

After working with a venture firm for a bit of time, we re-launched RampRate based on correcting billions of dollars of bad mistakes on IT-service decisions. We have had a concentrated emphasis in the digital-media space, especially from streaming, and now moving into IT sourcing. Most of our deals are between US$5 million and US$100 million – but we do everything down to very simple core functions like streaming media, collocation, digital-rights management and even some telecom.

We have another unit of the company that is run by Michael Hoch. He was formally research director of Aberdeen, a leading research firm in digital media, and he now runs our operations and research. The research group uses the SPY Index to identify trends, especially in digital media.

We have analysed more than 300 companies against all their competitors. We use the data resulting from transactions to help companies go to market quicker, better and cheaper with their products and services. We work with everyone from large software companies to large media companies on a research and go-to-market basis. It is a very substantive part of our business – about 25 percent of our overall revenues.

Can you tell me a little about your IBC session and what you are going to be discussing there?

There are some enormous chasms in digital-media distribution in terms of business models that “stop.” Business models stop when they lack what I call the “point of inflection,” where they can successful, based on economies of scale or possibilities in distribution.

For instance, what are the limitations of Cable VOD in regional markets? How many concurrent users can be had? Well, that’s a bandwidth issue, it’s a numbers issue.

When companies go to market with things of this nature they must make decisions from an economic standpoint: how much they are willing to invest in the distribution, their loss, and the internal rate of return on the project as they move forward into this new space.

As long as they are clear what the investment is, and what their customer-acquisition cost is, that’s great. You just have to know where you are going.Data-driven decisions, which is what we provide our clients, are really where it’s at, where we focus our energies. What’s efficient and what’s not in the marketplace for IP distribution? What is the faceoff between Cable TV and broadcast affiliates and networks? What are the efficient scales? How does wireless relate to those and how does Microsoft relate to all points in between?

I guess some of the areas that I find interesting are, who is your natural partner and who is your natural enemy in the digital-media food chain? Answering those questions will define the business models that will be successful. You can prognosticate what their cost will be in distribution all the way out three, four, even five years. It is pretty easy because you have a strong trend of costs and transactions gleaned from our database. We have everything from a data standpoint, so the trends are based on solid, real-world numbers that we know are correct.

That is quite a bit of ground you are covering there!

There are three distinct areas in the media business: creation, distribution and consumption. Almost any time any company has tried to delve into two as opposed to one they have been wholly and fully and holistically unsuccessful.

If media companies feel that, in bypassing a distribution channel such as Blockbuster, they can increase their relationship with their customer and take more profits off the table, then they are wholly and fully wrong.

I will help them try, but at the end of the day, the food chain has been established for content creation, content distribution and content consumption, and you can’t be in all those businesses.

Tell me what you are doing with ESPN and with NHL?

We have managed the sourcing for ESPN Motion. We have managed the procurement for the video-on-demand service for an online content e-commerce project for the NHL. We have testimonials on our website from those counterparts that would indicate the types of things that we did for those firms.

Are services like Video on demand and content on demand reaching mass market? What do you personally define as mass market for these services?

Anywhere an economic model exists to create profitability in a regional marketplace.

Are we getting there?

That would align with models that would throw dollars into the three channels discussed – content creation, distribution and consumption.

If I were to make a blanket statement, it is very clear that sponsored and/or branded content will pave the way as opposed to a subscription model. I believe that things like USDTV or MovieBeam, which are using the broadcast signal, offer a unique perspective and a unique revenue model for broadcasters and broadcasting affiliates alike.

In addition, the augmentation of satellite radio and distribution advertising will create another channel. A lot of these things will be bundled and pushed towards what I call Enron conversion. Who has the most to gain and who has the most to lose? You can either charge the consumer 10 bucks or you bundle it for telco to have a long-term sustainable contract with the vendor.

When you are talking about a place where you have cable or DSL, telephone, VoIP, VOD and cell phone – the telco, whether it be wireless or hardwired, really are looking to make about US$200 per household per month minimum. That’s US$2400 dollars a year or US$4800 dollars for two years which is the average churn rate for a lot of those services.

Well if there is US$48 to gain for a large telco and there is US$10 a month to be gained by a content provider, I guarantee that telco is going to be willing to pay for those services to bundle it in, to support conversion for long-term subscriber revenue into their base.

Playing the long game?

You have to. You can either play the short nickel or the long dime and ecommercing content these days is so very expensive because of on-line fraud and other issues. Unless you have a very meaty, highly valuable product or service, you could be eating up 15 percent to 45 percent of your actual revenue just in transaction costs.

Protecting the content is expensive too.

Well, that is important. We have to be more aggressive in the way we bundle, the way we package, as media companies. If I were speaking from their perspective regarding peer-to-peer services and increased distribution, which is the most valuable aspect, I’d say what they are getting for free is important, so they should really pay for the peer services.

Do you think that free to air digital TV services are going to be big in the USA?

It is hard to prognosticate where USDTV is going – all I know is that they are on loan to the spectrum, and the broadcast affiliates will have to adopt the model, with everybody and their brother starting to stick their feet in the water of trying to own something that lives in the living room.

The TiVo or PVR as we know it goes away, the cable box may integrate directly into the media centre which may look like a remote control, it may look like a light switch, it may look like a knob on your car, it may look like a cell phone.

All those things will be tried, but ultimately between hard-drive space and functionality, it doesn’t take a whole heck of a lot to put a new box next to your stereo or to integrate it into a unified system with your five-speaker digital surround sound system.

I can plug a cheap S-video cable from my laptop into my TV and VCR, and by doing that I enable every form of digital media that I can get on my system directly through the television at a very high resolution.

We are already there, it is a manufacturing thing and will be driven by the size of market.

Producing content and delivering it to many platforms is obviously expensive. What sort of efficiencies can content producers adopt to spend less money on re-purposing content?

Stop trying to deliver it themselves and rely on service providers enabling them to grow and create efficiencies in their business. Stop trying to create and distribute your content. Rely on people who do that for a living and use a sourcing advisor like RampRate.

So no need to bark if you’ve got a dog?

That’s right – everybody wants to do everything and they think they are controlling some secret sauce, but there’s no secret sauce. What they need to control is the quality of their content, because it is still a hit-based business. You get enough people to watch it, they will pay for it with their eyes through advertising or with their pocket book, through subscriptions and the like.

What’s next? What are you looking at next for your business that you can tell us about?

For us, we are very excited about the fluid marketplace that the SPY Index helps create, but really we are more excited about the fact that every business model has been tried and tested, and that data and operations have been put together to enable distribution and file-format and -protocol conversion.

Basically, there are services and web services that enable the conversion of these file types into deliverable media to all devices. It’s getting really simple to stick a content router or a box that reformats things and distributes to everything from your TV to your PC to your wireless headset to just about anything. WiFi and WiMax enable it, and it becomes the new operating system for distribution. We are very excited that there is a fluid connection within that digital-media chain.

We are going to pave new products and services, and whole new service providers, that will enable a fluid distribution through one single point. That’s exciting to us.

What keeps you awake at night? What is frightening you?

What’s frightening to me? I guess from this standpoint how powerful the telcos become three years from now.

Do you think that there will be another break up of the telcos in the US again?

I don’t know what the breakup would mean. I just think that they had been able to hold their product models extraordinarily steady until the big bandwidth started to appear. This music-download stuff is also scary as heck to me. It is very expensive to deliver; you have to have a product that will support the profit or the losses that it takes. It really feels that movies and video, long term, go the way of branding and sponsoring similar to television; the economic models are really tersely negotiated and are grave at best for a profitable enterprise over the coming two or three years.

So you think that the downloaded music business model is going to decay in another three years?

It’s the red herring of the business!

It is about transport cost and storage cost. The reality is, if you look at Moore’s Law and you do a calculation, 85 percent of all the music that people want to listen to will sit on one disc by the end of next year. Storage is so much cheaper than transport. You’ll take that drive and put it in your car. Why is Netflix working? Because they didn’t try to send it over the Internet.

Tony is a panellist in the ‘Future Business Models – Who Pays for What?‘ session between 16:00 and 17:30 at the IBC conference on Sunday, 12th September in Amsterdam. Register for IBC here

Ramp^Rate

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

Ken Rutkowski – the IBC Digital Lifestyles Interviews

The second in a series of eight articles with some of the people involved with the Digital Lifestyles conference day at IBC2004.

We interviewed Ken Rutkowski, the force behind Ken Radio, on the media platforms available to today’s consumers, and what’s exciting him.

Fraser Lovatt: It is possible that some of the visitors to Digital Lifestyles might not know about Ken Radio. Do you want to tell me a bit about yourself and what you are up to at the moment?
Ken Rutkowski: Well, Ken Radio is the largest piece of listened to content on the web with over 186,000 listeners every single day. What we do is we look at technology on a global level. Where most shows on TV or on Radio are generally very localised, we try to do away the whole US-centric concept and say “Hey, technology is global” and see how it impacts people. So we are trying to really see what is happening – like we say: other sites might break the news – we’re here to fix it.

By really bringing together a team of global observers that can dissect what is happening and then interpret it properly. So we are probably the only place where people can go to really find out what is going on at a global level. We are pretty proud of that.

What are you up to at the moment? What is your current project?
My broadcast business is radically different to what my personal business is. My personal business is a company called RefreshIQ.com What we do is we help technology companies have better interface with media companies. So we basically bring technology to Hollywood and Hollywood to technology. We allow companies like Microsoft to have better relationships with the Studios. We help companies like Nokia have better relationship with media companies.

Microsoft have recently set up their own internal group for this, haven’t?
Absolutely and that’s kind of a contradiction. Think about this – I don’t know – when you go to war you generally have to be on the ground where war is waged. For example World War II was waged in Europe initially – you went to Europe to fight the war. Well the war right now is in Hollywood and when you set up a shop in Redmond you are mixing with words.

The contradiction is they are playing war but they are not playing in the right place. We are here to help them actually understand the strategy and place their troops in the right place.

Recent social and technological developments are creating the concept of a digital lifestyle and we’ve seen an explosion in the number of media platforms that are out in the wild. How many media platforms do you think that people have space for in their lives? The reason I ask this question is because I was looking in my bag earlier on and I had more media platforms in that bag than my entire household had up until about 1995.
Let’s be realistic – what is the dream? The dream is to have one. That’s really the goal.

You know, I picked a brand new Nokia 7610, I think, and I’m finally seeing a convergence happening. Where I have my standard phone, it holds 18,000 of my contacts, shows me video, it’s a 1 mega pixel camera, it will have software to allow me to play MP3s – and now with some of the technology coming up, like Nokia’s visual radio, it can allow me to actually get some data from radio that’s fine.

Obviously it is not a high-quality camera, it is not a high-end MP3 player, it is a good phone and it’s got some decent video – and it’s moving in the right direction.

One device is sufficient and if the phone can be it – and I think it is going to move in that direction dominate that market.

I would like to see one device. Now you are asking the question – how many devices can people tolerate? Well I think that toleration is something that is based upon the actual time parameter. What do I mean by that? We uses to tolerate in XT or AT computer which weighed about 65 pounds with a monochrome screen that would go out every once in a while that had a fan that sounded like an aircraft carrier and it processed real slow. We tolerated it because that was accepted during that time.

Now we have flat screen monitors, we have three gigahertz processors. Right now people can’t accept having a wallet, a phone and a third device – being an MP3 player or a digital camera. The minute we start going over four, to a PDA or going to a GPS, I think we have gone too far.

We use the tolerance limit anything over – you are overboard. Now again let’s talk about that Utopian world that I want to be living in and have one – and I’m happy.

We have seen that today’s platforms mean that there is some exciting content appearing. For example the quiz came called “Come and Have a Go”. It’s live broadcast and it uses the Java mobile phone application tool for the people at home so they can get involved. What other content are you excited about?
 Well I think the location based technology stuff that we see proliferating right now throughout Japan is so damned exciting, you know we are able to locate my children and we see this even coming in the States and I know the UK has is too.

Using RFIDS? WiFi child tracking at Lego Billund?
No – let’s take it in another direction. What I find is heinous is that with cheating spouses, their husbands or wives can go out and buy a cheap phone and they put it in their spouses car. They put it in the car and turn it on and they are able to track to see where their spouse is. You know it is getting to a point where it is so inexpensive to do forms of surveillance.

Swatch, the watch making company has a watch that uses location-based GPS, so the parents can easily identify where their children are on a computer screen. You know technology is coming up right now where there is location based technology for cattle. In Montana they are using this – even in Mongolia they are using it for horses right now, where they can track where horses are. That’s cool stuff. It is so inexpensive.

We have RFIDS – sure the technology has been around for 20 years – giant retailers are starting to see how these ideas make sense. We are not going to have to go around and take everything out of our carts have it scanned, put it into a bag and walk out – we can just drag the cart out and be told exactly what we owe and we are done.

That is cool. Now a Java application at a phone – that is mundane.

But we have a Java application which ties together a broadcast programme and provides a new type of content.
Let’s take it this way. My TV is my TV.

My television might have more additions to it being for interactivity – polling, voting, e-commerce and all that – that’s my TV – don’t give me television on my phone. My radio is my radio. Now if I want to use my phone as a radio – I can tolerate that because it is a device that I need to have portable with me because I am conditioned to have a portable with me. If I can get information like Nokia’s Visual Radio is doing, that’s cool, because I’m conditioned to take radio on the go. I’m not conditioned to take television on the go. I don’t want people to be watching TV on the go. We have a society that is suffering from the inability to collaborate right now. Add another one?

What about creating types of content that could never exist before?
I had the opportunity to see this really cool web cam technology that allows me to use my GPS – GSM phone and my camera on my phone to be a live streaming web cam. I could call my son and I could say “Look what daddy’s looking at right now? I’m looking at the Statue of Liberty”. He is able to go to a web page and see what his Dad is looking at right now. That’s cool.

Also, I think Microsoft’s Media Centre really is going to be exciting. It finally takes your pictures, your CDs, your DVDs, your music, your television and aggregates it into one platform and you finally get to use the TV as a true collaborative tool.

What is exciting is taking existing models like television. I hate to use these 1990 terms but time shifting is becoming to reality. The word “TiVo” is becoming part of the English language – you don’t tape TV shows any more you “TiVo”.

It is coming out to where even in Movies “I TiVo’d that”. We have seen it in Sex in the City. There was whole episode around her TiVo was better than her boyfriend because it was consistent and reliable. It is so amazing to start seeing this technology become part of our lives. We are becoming dependent upon it.

For example – I’m in Washington DC, I live in Los Angeles, and I am able to go to my own special web page to make sure I have taped my favourite shows because when I get back to Los Angeles I get excited to watch my shows on my time without commercials. That is so damned exciting. I get home – technology has transformed my life.

So we have TV – we have location based technology devices that are coming out. I actually think where portable media players are going is really hot.

We can take all of our media with us in any environment – I am sitting in a hotel room right now and I am able to link to my server at home which is actually quite easy. I call it KIDMA. If it’s kidma, meaning my kids or my grandmother can do it, that right there just passed the test. These new devices are kidma – they are easy and simple – so I could sit down and listen to all my music sitting in Los Angeles right now right here in Washington DC. I don’t feel like I am away from home now.

The last thing which I get really excited about is the unified messaging technology that is coming out. Are you familiar with this?

Email, SMS etc together in one place?
Let’s take it a little further than that. I now can have the universal phone number – one phone number – and I can travel throughout the world and I can always be reached by that phone number in multiple ways.

There was a company about ten years ago called Wildfire, and there are better ones that allow me to have my own number and it follows me. So right now if somebody calls my number and I’m in Sydney, Australia it will find me and ring me on whatever mobile device I’m on or hotel phone in Sydney. If I’m not there, I am sleeping or I’m taking a shower when someone leaves that voicemail it will be emailed to me.

Unified messaging is so hot and we are starting to see some of the voice over IP companies bring services out.

So tell a little bit about your IBC session that’s coming up.
We’re going to really explore the idea of the platforms that are going to enable these devices.

This is important because anyone can paint a great picture – but tell me about the paint, the canvas and even the talent to make the picture. We are going to show how everything is put together so the technology on the consumer end will work. Interactive television is extremely dynamic and powerful, it is worth billions of dollars in the ad market. An interesting report came out recently from Jupiter Media Metric showing that the stereo-typical 18 – 34 male who everyone thought was playing video games would rather watch Survivor or rather watch television than play video games.

This is exciting – this is what the networks have been saying is true – well the numbers came out yesterday proving it. So that means television has the opportunity not just to become compelling but even generate more revenue. We are going to talk about how television, mobile devices and whatever the next generation media platform is, portable music player, or how they are going to empower the consumer to spend more money and be utilised even more.

How are established content businesses going to make money out of all these platforms then? Where is the business model? We have got lots of media companies out there like the BBC with huge media libraries and lots of resources to be able to create compelling media, but it can be argued that but there is no proven way to get the cash out of the consumer at the other end.
Well I would disagree with that – let’s look at a couple of ways.

One, we know that companies like Apple’s iTunes, Rhapsody or Harmony by real networks – even Microsoft MSN music – they’re generating money. iTunes is reporting some really decent sales not just on the music side that works.
Now let’s take music to the next level and look at fan based sites. Sites that you subscribe to you’re like David Bowie you now are part of David Bowie’s community which will include music, video, emails, chat – people will pay money for that.

Those advanced services that we were talking about earlier like location based technology and phones that might cost two or three dollars a month extra. People are not just willing, they are paying it. We don’t want to use Japan as a good example because their culture is radically different than in the West, but they prove that advanced technology services are worth paying for.

The next is the simple idea of advanced tools for television. Premium channels like HBO and Showtime. HBO has more Emmys than any one single Network right now. We are seeing people paying for premium content on television, which means that the trickle down concept always applies. If they pay for it on television once true broadband – we are not talking about a megabit, we are talking about 5/10 megabits – people will pay for premium content because it will feel like it’s television, coming through a TV.

So when you say it’s not there, it is there, it is in unique situations, but it is going to build and I see the money opportunities.

I think this is probably one of the most exciting times – and I didn’t even say that through the dot com times – one of the most exciting times to be part of this brand new industry.

What about the little media start-ups who are going to be faster moving, more technologically savvy – how are they going to capitalise on convergence?
Think about this idea – News Corporation’s Lucy Hood, who is running it on the technology side, creating content in one minute. Mini series for mobile phones – you are creating content with a cast, with screen writers to create one minute episodics on the phone. They’re going in a direction saying “Let’s look at the money and seize this opportunity”.

Again, you know my position regarding taking television to a phone, I don’t think it is going to work but we are seeing News Corp trying it out, we are seeing companies playing an HD. HD is going to be explosive.

HD is a brand new environment for consumers once HD televisions drops down in price, which they will soon.

So these studios can use tools like Final Cut Pro, even some of the cheap Avid systems to produce HD at a fraction of the cost of two years ago. That’s compelling.

What do you think of iTunes/Motorola deal?
They’re making a slimmed down version of its iTunes jukebox software that cell phone makers like Motorola will install in its wireless devices, to be rolled out in 2005.

That is the right direction. You know, again, back to your second question – how many devices will people be able to tolerate – if you could make my phone do everything – including being a functional music player, because I am conditioned to take music on the go, cool. It sounds like a good start. It’s a good catalyst. I don’t think it is going to be the win-all but it is the tweak to allow it to happen.

We have got content running on different hardware and software platforms and quite often consumers can’t move content from one platform to another because of incompatible DRM systems. How long do you think that is going to last?
Well you know the irony is most consumers don’t know about the limitations of that content.

They are going to find out pretty soon.
They are absolutely going to find out and once they find out they are going to start questioning the ideas – a 99 cent track that I could only have at 128k, only on four different devices, and not at the same time but individually? They are going to say “Well, wait a second a CD is a better value. I got the content at 320k, I can rip it and I can move it to any device”.

I have a feeling the labels will start questioning the value or the cost for certain DRM content. For example, if you want a 328k piece of content with unlimited DRM it is going to cost you three bucks, or maybe making it 99 cents with DRM. The labels have talked about this. I think the labels are going to have to change once the consumers are more educated.

I relish that day because what is going on is horrible, especially when you know the true value of that piece of media that you downloaded. It is extremely limited in its mobility because of its DRM. It pisses me off.

Ken Radio


Ken is chairing ‘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

The IBC Digital Lifestyles Interviews – Simon Perry – Part I

This is the first in a series of eight articles with some of the people involved with the Digital Lifestyles conference day at IBC2004.

We interviewed Simon Perry, the executive producer of the Digital Lifestyles theme day, in a two-part feature that covers on the makeup of the day and question him convergence and other aspects of the media. He publishes Digital Lifestyles magazine.


Fraser Lovatt: Tell me about the four discussion sessions at IBC this year.  What are they about and who’s speaking at them?

Simon Perry: When the Digital Lifestyles day was introduced at IBC last year, my aim was to set the scene – to signal the change in the content industry. This year builds on that, by highlighting four specific areas that merit closer attention by the creative, business and technology people.

The day will inform the delegates on the new types of content possible, how to get paid for it, where you can deliver it and the business models around it.

The first session is titled ‘New platforms, new content’.

It is set in the context that, with new content delivery methods comes new forms of content. It’s chaired by Ashley Highfield, director of New Media & Technology at the BBC, and will create a discussion between some of the most experienced and forward-thinking Games, Film and TV people. In each of their fields they are bringing together different strands of content, creating something that couldn’t have existed previously, such as content that migrates between platforms, creating united content.

The second session is about getting paid for content. Up to now, the industry has been focused on protecting the content that they have, which is understandable and technology companies have been more than happy to assist them.

I feel this is a distraction. The really key part is how the consuming public are going to pay for content that they think is worth paying for, whether they receive it to their mobile phone, their TV, via broadband to their PC’s or through an adaptor on to their TV. The methods of payment are as diverse as the delivery methods.

The panel brings together the knowledge and experience of people who are successfully receiving payments from the public for text and video content; others offering payment systems that take small amounts, less that a pound/dollar, online and others that use mobile phones to make payments.

Tim Jones, the CEO of  Simpay will be on the panel. Simpay was brought to life by the four major mobile phone networks in the UK. The first stage of their service offers the phone-carrying public to pay for phone delivered content – catching up with the currently favoured premium-rate SMS charging. The next stage is – and this is where it becomes a more interesting example – allowing you pay for any types of content, as well as physical goods from shops, using your phone. It is something that has been theorised for a long time and Simpay appear to be pulling it together now. Tim’s background is particularly interesting. He co-invented Mondex, which as we all know, was the first form of public e-cash in the UK.

The third session is chaired by Ken Rutkowski of Ken Radio, and is about informing the content creators about the increasing range of platforms that are available to them for distributing their content. Within the industry there are different stages of knowledge, expectation and experience of what digital lifestyles will mean to the creators of the content, as well as the public. In this third session they will explore what roles different media play on different platforms and the effect it is going to have on the type of content people produce. Ken’s enthusiasm will lift the best out of the panellist.

The forth session is future business models chaired by media journalist, Kate Bulkley. It will explore the models that will run aside 30-second spot ads; mobile delivery; gaining benefit from efficient delivery to different platforms; generating new revenue from TV. There’s a lot of innovation in this area.

What does convergence mean to you? What’s your internal definition of it?

It’s an interesting word. It’s been around for a long time – and increasingly, over the last six/nine months it has become to mean anything that any marketeer wants it to mean. The original definition saw all devices being morphed in to one device. It’s clear that there won’t be convergence to that extent. It’s becoming less defined. The more it enters everyones vocabulary, the wider the definition becomes. Perversely it’s definition is diverging.
 
The convergence that Digital Lifestyles magazine focuses on, is how the influx of technology into the creation, transfer and reception of media content is changing the industry. Where media and technology touch, is what’s of interest to us, and the impact it will have.

There is an argument that media has always been a technological activity. From first workings and marking things on cave walls to the development of perspective, to the first film studios to television. It has always been technology-led.

That is probably true. Well it’s not probably true – it is true. The definition of what is technology is a sliding window, isn’t it? Pens, paper and the printing press were all once thought of as advanced technology, and then they slowly shifted to become the norm. I would argue that the window moves more quickly these days.

But media always seems to be at the forefront of technology – many technological breakthroughs are media related and have been throughout the history of mankind.

Technology has certainly had an influence – I don’t know whether media has always been pushing technology, or whether it has always been using the latest technology. It certainly has previously utilised it, and the people who have utilised the technology are the ones that have had the upper hand. Look back to Murdoch in the use of technology in the production of newspapers, originally pioneered by the Eddie Shah with Today.

I think people get business advantage by using technology and media. I don’t think necessarily the mainstream media are quick in adopting technologies and making the most of them, and that’s frustrating. However, this gives a space for the people who are outside the mainstream media, micro-production companies if you will, to use the technologies to create and deliver their content to an audience on an economic basis.

Do you think the public thave an active participation in convergence? Do they see the convergence as something they are getting involved in or do they see it as something that has happened around them? Five years ago they were going out and buying DVD players and now they are buying PVRs – Do you think they are seeing it as progress or just something new to buy?

Let’s use digital music, because that’s quite a good example. One of the articles on Digital Lifestyles today covered the Virgin Music Player, a little thing you just hang on your waist.  People will obviously notice that they don’t have to carry around a bulky CD player or a mini disc player or a cassette player, but as to whether they realise that the changes are wider reaching than that – I doubt it. It will feel like another small step.

These days people are now conscious of change. They have come to expect things to change. They are becoming numbed to the “Oh my god” reaction, when they come into contact with a new use of technology.

The people in the industry see it as significant, because they see the long-term impact.
 
One of the ironies I perceive with convergence is that the media itself, those pieces of entertainment like music, film and to some extent e-books, are becoming fragmented through platform and DRM issues. Do you think that we will be happy buying three versions of the same thing in the near future because the DRM or file formats are incompatible, or do you think that this will be resolved gracefully?

Incompatibility is a fear of mine and yes, in the short term, it is likely. It’ll happen because of the number of incompatible content protection systems that are around. I think the industry, whether it be the providers of content protection or the media companies, which are using the content protection systems that don’t allow interchange between devices are going to do themselves a disservice and, if it continues, will frankly end up irritating the customer.

I have asked the question to quite a number of people in the media business and technology business – I have never really had a good answer from them either. How do you sell the public something that’s less good, through it’s restrictions, than the thing that is being replaced? Something that ends up flexible, even though the form it is held in allows greater flexibility? So, short term I think it probably will be a problem. I hope that it won’t be a problem beyond the short term.

It can be argued that a lot of the fragmentation that we are seeing in media in file formats and devices is down to proprietary systems that are involved in the creation of media, and in its protection and distribution so we have DRM, we have CDs which can’t be played on PCs.   These are all proprietary.  Do you think there is a place for open standards in a convergent media culture?

I think the reason this hasn’t happened so far is that the prize is so enormous. The prize for being the provider of content protection is to be one of the largest businesses in the world. Much commercial material will only reside in the rights holders-approved DRM formats; ones that they feel protect their interest. That’s not to say that there won’t be a huge market for other content in another format, and that could be an open format.

Do you think that one company will be allowed to hold the keys for content protection?

Who is going to stop them? Are you talking about Government restrictions?

Some view it as a monopoly.

Certainly from the discussions I have had with content creators of the large studios, there is an unease with a number of companies holding all of the keys. There have been many suggestions as to the way that could be got around. One I found interesting was Fraunhoffer’s Light Weight DRM (LWDRM), but it still relies on a central repository that decides whether you are entitled to this music or that you have paid to have access to it.

The Fraunhoffer response to that question is to say, well we place that with a third party – so you split up the business of running the content protection system away from the business of holding the keys to the access to that content. Their suggestion was that it be done by institutions like the German post office. Different nations have got different relationships with their governments. So that’s something that might work in a country such as Germany, but not others.

There are two arguments – on the open source side there are many people, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) for example, who argue that there should be no content protection and people will pay for their content, relying on the good nature of man.
 
Rightly or wrongly, that is not how the mainstream media industry sees it. But if you look at companies like Warp Records, they sell their music in MP3 format. They have taken a more open file format, which can be exchanged quickly between different formats and difference devices. The consumer in me sees this as completely reasonable. I buy something and then I am able to put it on whichever device I want.

I did some research for the European Commission on a unified media platform called N2MC and it became clear from speaking to a wide range of people, along the whole creation-to-distribution change, that the idea of an open source content protection system didn’t currently work for them.

Because it could be easily reversed engineered?

It was seen as a weakness in the chain. One part of a content protection system must remain proprietary.

This interview is continued and concluded here.


Simon is chairing ‘The missing piece – Getting paid for content’ session between 11:30 and 13:00 at the IBC conference on Sunday, 12th September in Amsterdam. Register for IBC here

Dis/located Drama – Mobile Bristol in Queen Square in Bristol

1831 Riot! – “an interactive play for voices” played in Queen Square in Bristol until 4th May. The play is the latest fruit of the Mobile Bristol project – a collaboration between HP Labs, the University of Bristol and the Appliance Studio, which is working to overlay a wireless ‘digital canvas’ on the city and to explore the social and creative possibilities enabled by such a fabric.

Queen Square is the largest square in England outside London, dating from the early 18th century and recently restored to genteel, leafy tranquility following the removal in 2000 of a dual carriageway driven diagonally across the square in 1936.  It was also the scene of some of the most significant events of the 1831 riot in Bristol – which was instrumental in the eventual passage of the 1832 Reform Act significantly increasing the number of men who had the vote and starting Britain on the road to universal suffrage.

The current production is a specially commissioned piece which attempts a documentary style, fictionalised recreation of some of the key events of the riot which took place in and around the square.  To experience the drama you visit a stand on one side of the square to pick up a small backpack containing a GPS enabled iPaq, a large pair of stereo headphones and an A4 flyer providing a brief explanation of the project, but woefully little background on the riots themselves.  You are then free to wander the square at will until you have exhausted the experience, your enthusiasm or your stamina.

On the morning that Richard Higgs and I visited it was bright, sunny and warm.  As we strolled around the square different segments of audio were triggered as we moved between different areas.  The effect was most like tuning in to the middle of an afternoon play on Radio 4, with similar production values and the same instantly identifiable style – a somewhat ironic choice for a riot.  Even knowing the nature of the beast there was a strong tendency to try and construct a coherent story of the events from the fragments available, which was far from easy – perhaps appropriately for a riot. 

Despite wandering around the square side by side we often found that what we were hearing at any given time differed – sometimes due to a simple time lag and sometimes due to hearing different segments on different visits to the same area.  Our movements clearly triggered some, but not all, of the changes to what we were hearing and it was hard to distinguish such changes from simple scene changes within a segment.

The headphones were large, well padded and effectively blocked out external noise – this made it difficult to conduct the intermittent conversation with which we peppered our walk.  It also had the strange effect of divorcing us from our surroundings much like listening to music on a Walkman or an iPod, which seemed at odds with the very idea of interactive locative media.  I would have been happier with something that allowed the mundane noises of the square on the day to bleed into the authored experience rather than trying to cut them out.

Although we were left feeling that full the potential hadn’t quite been realised, it is early days for this kind of experience design and 1831 Riot! is a valiant and at least partially successful attempt to paint something interesting and worthwhile on the digital canvas. 

Bristol Wireless

Nintendo Top of the Charts. In Japan.

Nintendo sold some 6.5 million software units in Japan during the financial year to 31st March, placing at the top of the charts. But for how long? The future of the GameCube in the US and Europe looks bleaker every day and Sony are about to launch an assault on Nintendo’s strongest market area: the portable games console.

The Electronics Entertainment Expo (E3, Los Angeles, May) will be the battle of the handhelds: Sony and Nintendo will be unveiling their new portable hardware to expectant crowds. We already know a lot about Sony’s PSP: the disk format, connectivity, what it looks like, even down to the wrist strap. But what about Nintendo’s “DS”?

Details of the new Nintendo offering are sketchy and strange: it has two screens, one of which may be a touch screen. The Nintendo DS is touted as a new game play experience, but may end up dividing their market still further between products: the GBA, GBA SP and the new DS. Consumers are still confused as to what the two screen experience will bring – and Nintendo isn’t spoiling the surprise. Connectivity details are still sparse: Sony has been promoting connectivity with its PS2, PSX and PS3 products, but Nintendo have had a series of disappointments with GBA/GameCube link ups, and it’s never fully reached their expectations. Except with Animal Crossing of course, and only if you don’t use an GBA SP.

We’re are somewhat unsure of the new Nintendo offering, at least until much more is known about the console. There have been some unfortunate comparisons with Nintendo’s own VirtualBoy, which also promised a new game play experience (with two screens, oddly enough). The VirtualBoy died a horrible death, but like many doomed consoles is popular on eBay.

We’ll soon have the full picture: Nintendo are rumoured to be announcing 30 DS titles at E3, and the console itself will be out, at least in Japan, by the end of the year.

With Sony’s PSP looking to be a winner, at least in the West, the future is uncertain for Nintendo’s hand held dominance.

Piecing together the DS at Wired
PSP technical specs
Reuters on Nintendo’s success

Preview of the Connected Home event, April 2004

By Ian Johnson, Director, Junction Ltd.

After what was perceived to be a relatively slow start for the industry – things are finally making progress.

The Connected Home Conference – September 2003 – focused on partnerships to really push the industry forward. The technologies are in place and the service aggregators are ready – the challenge is communicating this to the marketplace.

As commented by the previous review of the September event, there were a lot of top level – strategic overview speeches that really gave an important insight to what each sector was doing and allowing networking opportunities. This is great for those at a senior strategy level, and we have retained some of this for the April event. However the practical element, the hands on stuff, will also be focused on much more.

Partnering with Cedia, we’ve introduced an important section on construction and installers with a session chaired by Steve Moore outlining the latest practical projects. Also, there are two interesting speeches from Abrocour (who have partnered with the likes of Berkley Homes, Intel, HP and Microsoft to help deploy their services), and ConvergeX who are partnering with Linden Homes to launch a raft of new services.

The April event will also have some very interesting insights and learning from the US market from companies like GE Interlogix, Windows eHome, and Whirlpool, and Parks Associates all venturing over from across the Atlantic.

So, what are the current market trends?

Abracour CEO Sam Sethi explained to Digital Lifestyles: “Wireless solutions are becoming faster and safer, and are gaining in popularity with consumers, as people want access to their data, video and audio on the move. As the government pushes ahead with its new Building Regulations (Part Q) stating that all developers should provide the capability for broadband Internet in new homes, we expect to see a big uptake in housing developers installing wireless.”

This has important implications for the housing market, as Sethi pointed out, “Housing developers are realizing that wired solutions are costly and cumbersome, and that wireless home network solutions offers house builders and architects a cheaper and more efficient alternative.” (For more information on Abrocour, see the link below.)

This in turn provides a new angle for the way homes are marketed and the perceived value add it delivers for consumers. Matthew Bramble, Technical Director, Opus Technologies described that, “Its now widely accepted that modern entertainment technology genuinely attracts new home buyers and adds to a home’s perceived value. We recognized early-on that home builders were the key to getting this exciting technology into the home and have consequently striven to design products ideal for new build. We have made it a priority to partner with new-home builders world-wide and have enjoyed particular success where we have focused on creating customized solutions.”

That’s exactly what the connected home event is about – bringing together industries, and providing a useful link between home builders and technology companies, and enabling them to partner to deliver services to the marketplace.

We began the September 2003 event by defining ‘What is the connected home’?

“We believe it should be based on real people, living in real homes and not on technologies or esoteric finances, or lifestyles that don’t mean anything to people out in the street. It’s about connecting things simply and wherever I want to connect them in my home,” said David Sales, Director of Home Communications, BT.

Strategies for the market

The 2003 conference stressed that by using an ecosystem strategy to develop the home technology market – as an end-to-end service experience for the customer – it would make it simpler for them to build that system themselves.

Many speakers were thinking holistically about the broadband ecosystem in the home. They viewed broadband as feeding that system, at the heart of the connected home – bringing things alive. The Connected Home must feed consumers desire to work, play, and relax and even to be able to monitor all things going on in the home. Broadband was seen as important in setting this market alive, however, ‘partnerships’ are the key to driving the market forward.

Thomas Hott,, CEO of ProSyst Software AG, told me: “One of the discernible trends at present is a movement away from piecemeal home networking offerings to more comprehensive solutions. People realize the need for an integrated platform to connect devices of any kind and regardless of who produced them. Consequently, a standards-based approach is in the interest of all value-chain participants – from manufacturers to service providers and end users.”

What will drive the connected home?

In addition to forming alliances, many see entertainment in the connected home as the main driver. It was commented that people are willing to pay to enjoy themselves and that generating excitement and enjoyment in these services, with easy to handle technologies would be key.

“‘Enhanced features’, costs savings and ease of use are really the things that will drive this market forward” explained Michael Gannon, Senior Market Manager, Motorola Broadband. Gannon. “At the moment we are seeing competition is greater in Europe than in the US, in the connected home arena. The competition between DSL and Cable as the enabling technologies are driving the market, and we are seeing the acceptance of connected home products going down well in Europe, due to this competition. This is driving the market slightly more than in the USA.”

Looking at the different types of product on offer, “Numerous attractive new smart home products have reached the consumer in recent months. Through major contributions to such products – including a Motorola smart home gateway, the Philips iPronto and Bosch Siemens’ serve@home solution – ProSyst has played a crucial role in furthering this market with its OSGi-based end-to-end solutions,” outlined Daniel Schellhoss, ProSyst Software AG.

In order for the networked home to be a success there has to be a mass market. In the US the connected home market came to life in the retail market and online, whereas in the UK retail has not yet proved to be a very strong route to market. Many asked whether the UK retail industry would be supporting this market growth in a similar way?

Delivering Services

Entertainment, home care, remote control and security services are all becoming more important for the consumer, and the focus on these services was well received. Also, important other markets emerged in home care and control. This was highlighted by the West Lothian Council case study. This showed us the opportunity to embrace the potential of the technology in the way of changing lives of citizens, and helping to tackle social inclusion.

To make services available for the mass market, many were convinced something has to change in the market – and this was likely the role of the home service aggregator. Many cable, Telco and utility companies are looking to develop this role in the market. This involves combining portfolios of services and delivering this in an easy way to the end customer which makes higher quality of service.

“Manufacturers look for new ways to not only reduce their maintenance and development costs but also to enhance their market share by offering new and attractive services, that constantly grow in volume and content variety. An important factor that affects not only the manufacturers and operators, but also the consumers’ interest in new services and customer loyalty is the delivery, installation, activation and maintenance of new applications and services in a safe manner. By providing simple and convenient solutions we reduce barriers to adoption that remove the burden of complexity from the consumer’s hands and help manufacturers to reduce maintenance costs up to 30%.”, explained Dr. Susan Schwarze from ProSyst Software AG.

Understanding consumers

IBM outlined its role in understand the behaviour of consumers when dealing with complex technologies. “What is the reason to use these technologies – it’s all about services” commented Ralph Baral, Smart Home WW, IBM.

Understanding what exactly the consumer are doing, their behaviour and how much time they are spending using these technologies and how it is effecting their lives. The general consensus among speakers was that the consumer is becoming far more technology literate, and this is influencing the way in which technology and media companies configure their services.

Whilst they are becoming more technology literate, most speakers emphasised the need to keep the complexity for the end user at the lowest level possible – and that it was still the problem today.

April 21/22nd, Connected Home, 2004 event

The April event this year will receive yet more focus on service deployment and provisioning in the industry, but importantly will also include a focus on the construction industry. Four of the leading UK property developers will be speaking at the event, and offering their views on the different types of connected home project they have been undertaking.

ConvergeX, the digital homes solution company, is one such organisation partnering their home control middleware software with leading UK property developer Linden Homes.

Jostein Svendsen, Managing Director of ConvergeX commented that, “2004 is the year where Digital Homes will take center stage as many major companies are moving into the market place and positioning themselves to drive the market forward. But even if the larger players will supply the devices, the innovation and applications will found in the smaller companies. This is where Europe can play a main role – delivering leading edge applications to enable the digital home revolution.”

This focus on the building industry was something emphasized by Opus Technologies, and exhibitor at the 2003 event. Matthew Bramble, Technical Director, Opus Technologies described that, “Its now widely accepted that modern entertainment technology genuinely attracts new home buyers and adds to a home’s perceived value. We recognized early-on that home builders were the key to getting this exciting technology into the home and have consequently striven to design products ideal for new build. We have made it a priority to partner with new-home builders world-wide and have enjoyed particular success where we have focused on creating customized solutions; solutions which are not only product but a fully realized support package which includes marketing, project management and installation services.”

Svendsen from ConvergeX echoes this sentiment, ” We look at the market and are tying up with players in a number of ways. We are initially targeting property developers and authorized re-sellers and will later license the software to be installed in various home devices. Even though we are starting deployment in the mid to upper end of the market – we will ultimately achieve mass market adoption by being available on millions of devices being sold to the home.”

Summary

The broadband home is here today, and the connected home is coming. Everything is available today, we have connectible devices and service aggregators – the question asked was how do we move forward to this integration environment? The technology is already here, the big challenge is how we market it to the right people? How do we communicate to the marketplace?

Jostein – “The connected home of the future is not about having massive amount of technology on display. The good solutions are the invisible ones, the ones that always there to help you and make your life easier, but you don’t have to think about them.”

Consumers are getting used to the concept of the home network. “The networked home really has a future, but as far as the mass market is concerned I think we really have to find out what that is” summarised Andrew Mullen, General Manager Communications and new technologies, LG Electronics UK.

Convergence is really re-defining the industry today as connected devices are emerging and as Mask Ossel, VP and General Manager, EMEA, Echelon outlined, “many companies underestimate t he speed of change.”

As we plan for the next connected home, April 21/22nd 2004, we are considering the comments throughout out the 2 days, and are looking to help the industry understand the issues that it faces, and helping drive this market forward.

We look forward to seeing you at The Connected Home 2004.

More information on the Connected Home event – can be found at – The Connected Home or by calling Ian Johnson, Director, Junction Ltd, 0044 1179042004, [email protected]

Abrocour

Saturday CeBIT: Manufacturers Recognise Importance of Consumers’ Digital Lifestyles

Many big exhibitors are pushing devices, components and software designed to enhance consumer’s digital lifestyles, in answer to the rapidly growing demand for smart devices capable of sharing content. Traditionally a business conference, this year has seen a pronounced shift at CeBIT towards the needs of the consumer.

Many consumer mobile phones contain applications and features purely seen as business tools a few years ago, such as scheduling software, email and connectivity with PCs and other devices.

Many exhibitors, such as Sony and Microsoft are displaying devices intended to introduce home users to a world where they can download and share content easily anywhere in the house. Microsoft is promoting this vision through its Windows XP Media Centre PC and has now developed the Windows Media Centre Extender which will allow users to access their Media Centre PC from anywhere in the house. We reported on Microsoft’s “iPod killer”, the Portable Media Centre yesterday, and this new device will be fully compatible with home Media Centre PCs.

Sony’s answer to all this, the hotly-awaited PSX, is on display at CeBIT. The games playing aspect of the PSX is almost secondary to its other functions: PVR, music, electronic programme guide, photograph and home video album … and all compatible with other Sony devices such as cameras, PDAs and even the PSP when it appears. The feature list for the European PSX has yet to be finalised, so we’re afraid that the model on display at CeBIT today is the Japanese box. A shame really, because those people who would be most interested in the PSX will already either seen the Japanese edition, or even had one imported by now.

CeBIT 2004 has shown how important digital lifestyles are to both manufacturers and consumers – there is a huge range of devices available with more coming soon. Sadly, for true interoperability, manufacturers would like to lock their customers into one brand – which is likely to lead to frustration. The Sony music online shop will only work with Sony software on Sony devices, Microsoft won’t let you play Windows Media files on a Linux PVR.

We hope that consumers will campaign for open standards and better interoperability before companies lock down the entire chain, from software to hardware to media.

CeBIT News Site

CeBIT: The Future is in Integration, Not Technology

“There is not going to be one Next Big Thing – it’s going to be many things working together, combined to work seamlessly” said Motorola’s president and COO, Michael Zafirovski in his speech at CeBIT yesterday. This seems to be a common theme emerging from CeBIT, and is reflected in the nature of the mobile devices coming into the market.

It’s almost impossible to buy a mobile phone that is just a phone. Even the most basic phone available has a some sort of PDA functionality, games and a simple WAP browser. Many phones appearing now are in fact more sophisticated than the people you see chatting into them – and the phones at least will continue to get more sophisticated and useful.

Where the challenge for network providers and mobile phone manufacturers lies now is bringing several channels of communication together: many consumers have a fixed line at home (often more than one), a mobile for each person, a mobile in the car, a phone in the office, email on some devices not others … it goes on. Although solutions have been banded around for years (Wildfire, anyone?) the scale of the problem is now far greater than was anticipated before the rapid growth of mobile communications and internet usage began ten years ago.

The current situation does not allow for simplicity and will begin to turn users away unless investment into the seamless integration of devices and services begins to rival the effort put into getting the latest megapixel camera into the smallest form factor.

Opening remarks presented by Simon Perry at the Digital-Lifestyles theme day at IBC September 2003 (PDF).

CeBIT: Sendo Smart Phone Records 30 Minutes of Video

Weighing 129g and with a 176 x 220 pixel TFT display, the new Sendo X is yet another entry into the highly competitive smartphone market.

The phone features all the usual applications and gadgets that have come to define smartphones: digital camera, GPRS, PDA functionality – however, there are a couple of features that set it apart.

Video playback is enhanced though Sendo’s GraphiX engine – a coprocessor that ensures smoother playback of Real and MPEG4 video streams. With 32mb of RAM free to users, the phone can store 30 mins of video, or 1000 photographs from the 4 x zoom camera. Memory expansion is through SD cards.

Another new feature is it’s Voice Signal Technologies (VST) voice-activation function: Sendo claim that their VST advanced speech recognition allows users to access the phone’s functions and address book without having to train the phone to recognize their voice.

The phone runs Symbian’s OS and Nokia Series 60 applications, and is J2ME compatible.

Sendo on the X and its GraphiX engine