Audio Hardware

Thomson Announce Portable Multimedia Player
Giant media group, Thomson, has announced the launch of a portable multimedia player that has 20Gb of hard drive storage and a built in colour screen which plays videos, show photographs and plays music. Sold in two guises, Europe (THOMSON LYRA Audio/Video Jukebox PDP 2860 – €749, ~£520) and USA (RCA RD2780 – $499.99), it will play back both MPEG-1 & MPEG-4 video and mp3, Windows Media Audio. It can also be upgraded to mp3PRO.
Depending on the compression used, Thomson claim the unit can hold up to eighty hours of video, which can either be played on its own screen (3.5-inch Thin Film Transistor (TFT) LCD ) or displayed on a television set using analog composite leads. Alternatively the unit can either be used as portable computer storage, store up to 5,000 music tracks or 100,000 JPEG images. Images can be organized into slideshows to accompany the playback of music.
The content can either loaded via a computer (PC or Mac), using a USB 2.0 connection, or the unit can either record video; using it built in MPEG-4 encoder, and audio directly. When the unit encodes video content, forty hours of content can be stored.
Battery life is reported to last up to twelve hours when playing music but only four when playing back video.
The unit is pretty compact (5.31″ x 3.15″ x 1.06″, 13.5cm x 8.00cm x 2.70cm) and light (10.5 ounces, under 300g) and we suspect will seduce many enough to add it to their xmas list.
RCA RD2780
26 November, 2003
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
20 November, 2003
Nokia N-Gage Games Possibly Cracked
The world of introducing convergent devices is a tricky one. Following on the heals of their combined music player/mobile phone, Nokia launched their mobile phone/music player/games machine, the N-Gage, in October and its has been a shaky start. Before its launch, lots of people were less than positive, and following it, the reviews have not been great.
Despite Nokia claiming to have shipped 400,000 units to retailers, the number of customer sales is thought to be low. This has lead to some discounting, to the point where it was available for 1 pence in the UK, if you took a particular service contract out with it.
Nokia will be following the business model for other games platforms, sell the box for a minimum margin (or try to minimise your losses), then make your money in the medium to long term on licensing games for the platform. The same theory as razors and razor blades. Clearly this model only works if you sell the games as well.
Nokia will not like the latest news. A Swedish hacking group claim that they have got around the protection system that ensures that N-Gage games only play on the N-Gage. They have showed photos of the some N-Gage games running on a Siemens SX1, it’s not clear if these are mock-ups or real.
If true, the impact is far reaching. Games written for the N-Gage will run on any phone running the Symbian operating system and according to Symbian, over 2.68 million handsets were shipped with their OS in the first half of 2003.
The damage does not stop with them only losing sales of the N-Gage hardware, but that once the games have been extracted from the N-Gage and are stored digitally unprotected, people will be able to download them – not have to buy them for between $35-$40 each.
SX1 playing N-Gage games – Screen shots
12 November, 2003
Microsoft Announce Partners for Portable Media Centers (nee Media2Go)
Microsoft has been talking about portable devices for a while that would enable owners to watch videos, view photos, play music, labelling them as Media2Go.
This week they have announced not only a new official name, but two companies that will help them create designs. AboCom Systems Inc and Tatung Co. will be the original design manufacturers (ODMs) of the now re-christened Portable Media Centers.
These designs will then be passed on the manufacturers, who are already lining up to get involved. So far Creative, iRiver International, Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., SANYO Electric Co. Ltd. and ViewSonic Corp have thrown their hats in to the ring – others are expected to follow.
Intel has had this type of device, labelled a Personal Video Player (PVP), in development for a long time ($100 ZVUE!.
We imagine that Microsoft will hope to win the consumer, via strong integration of these devices with their operating system and the content owners, by highlighting their Digital Rights Management (DRM).
Archos Video AV320 information
Buy Archos Video AV320 at Amazon US and UK
31 October, 2003
Dell Announce their iPod Rivals
Dell have just announced their competitor to the Apple iPod. It is initially launching two models, the Dell DJ 15 Digital Music Player ($249) and the DJ 20 ($299), with 15Gb (~3,700 songs) and 20Gb (~4,900 songs) of storage respectively.
Both of the models work as music players and portable storage devices, enabling users to load content on to them. They also have a built-in microphone, giving the ability to record conversations – this can only be achieved by using an add-on for the iPod.
The Dell offering certainly loses on looks, it looks at-best functional and the use moving buttons, as opposed to the iPod touch-sensitive controls, may contribute to reduced life. It is rumoured that the devices are made by Creative Labs and just badged Dell.
Dell have done a deal with the online music service MusicMatch to allow owner to electronically buy music and transfer it to the devices via USB 2.0. MusicMatch is not well regarded and it is therefore thought to be a major weakness ,when compared with the iPod/iTunes combination. Music from the service comes in DRM-protected WMA format, but the devices can also play MP3’s.
The iPod is often criticised for its battery life. The current version runs for about eight hours, but the Dell is reported to run for nearly twice that.
Without having had our hands on the Dell kit, our instant reaction is that the $100 saved by going for the Dell will not be sufficient to sway US purchasers from the iPod. For users outside the US, who don’t have the benefit of the iTunes service, the choice would be less clear.
Dell description of DJ range
Dell sales page
28 October, 2003
Home HiFi Unit Enables Online Music Purchase
Pioneer Corp., Kenwood Corp, Sony Corp. and Sharp Corp. have came together at the start of the year to form Any Music Planning Inc.. Under this banner they co-developed a Linux-based music HiFi platform that enables home users to accesses and purchase music via networked services. Yesterday they showed working prototypes. Although co-developed – each of the four companies own a equal percentage of the development company – the units will be sold under their own brands.
Other devices such as the Onkyo Net-Tune NC-500, have had a similar form and functions – playing digitised music, delivered over a network connection and in the form of a traditional HiFi unit. Where this initiative differs is that the listener can buy the music via the device, without having to use their computer.
The new devices will initially pull content from online music service, LabelGate. It is thought that “OpenMG X”, Sony’s digital rights management and distribution technology will be used to protect the content.
The working versions will initially be released in Japanese, but “ultimately, our dream is to make the service a worldwide standard,” said Any Music CEO Fujio Noguchi.
Sharp’s audiovisual systems department head, Moriyuki Okada gave a stark comment – “Our industry is in crisis. We want to emerge from that by offering new business ideas.”
OpenMG
Onkyo Net-Tune NC-500
22 October, 2003
Apple iTunes v2 – New Features Analysed
Further details of the second version of the iTunes software and service are becoming clearer and as you would expect with Apple, they are not only interesting, but steps forward in the use of digital audio.
Audio books and Round Tripping
Apple have signed an exclusive, multi-year deal with audible.com to sell five thousand of their spoken books, equating to over twenty thousand hours of content.
Once the audio-books have been downloaded, the listener will be able to listen to it both on their computer and their iPod – features that were available on version one of the service. The clever part is that you can transfer your listen point, an audio bookmark, from computer to iPod and back again. This is best illustrated with an example – you starts listening to the book on your Mac, you then need to leave you computer, so transfer the audio-book to your iPod. The playback will continue from the point you left it at on the computer. When you return from travelling to your computer, hook up your iPod and continue listening from the point reached on your iPod. Apple have called this feature Round Tripping.
Round tripping is interesting for a number of reasons. Apple have only been able to quickly introduce a new feature like this into the market as they control both the client software on the computer, and the portable playback device, iPod, and can make the required changes to both. It will be interesting to see if Apple declare an open standard on this, to enable other playback devices to take advantage of this feature. We suspect they’ll be keeping this to themselves, at least for the while.
While Round tripping is nifty when listening to books, it becomes potentially far more interesting when it is applied to music, consumer electronic equipment and wireless connections – giving a listener the ability to have a “Continuous Music Experience” as they move from work, to the car and to home.
Enabling the “giving” of digital music
To enable children who do not have their own credit card to use the service, there is a patent-pending online “Allowance” feature which allows parents to automatically deposit funds into their children’s accounts – very smart.
People will also be able to give someone a gift certificate to spend in the online store. By signing on to their iTunes account, they can gift between $10-$200 to a person, who might not even currently have an iTunes account. The recipient receives an email telling them of the present and by clicking on a link, can start to use it to access content.
Digital Lifestyles:Apple Adds Windows Support to iTunes
Apple iTunes
21 October, 2003
Apple Hit 1m Windows Downloads of iTunes in 3.5 Days
In only three and a half days since Apple released the Windows version of their iTunes software, over one million copies have been downloaded. In the same period, one million songs have also been purchased, halving the time it took to reach same level when the Apple only version was released back in April.
Although the headline figure of songs downloaded initially sounds very impressive, we would assume the million songs must include ones bought by the current Apple users as well (Apple UK weren’t able to clarify this as they didn’t have this breakdown, Apple US were unreachable) – working out at an average of under one song per Windows user. This shows that people have been downloading the Windows version of the software and possibly not purchasing songs. We think it is likely that this is due to them currently being unable to buy music, as they live outside the USA.
Apple iTunes
20 October, 2003
Pioneer First to Support WMA9Pro in High-end AV Amplifier
Pioneer has announced a new AV amplifier which transfers audio content using an optical digital S/PDIF interface and marks the start of a wave of high-end AV amps that will support the Microsoft Windows Media Audio 9 Pro (WMA9Pro) CODEC.
The amplifier, with the oh-so-catchy name, VSA-AX10Ai-N, is planned to be release in Japan in December 2003 and then in the US in January 2004 as the VSX-59TXi.
It will be able to pull audio from a PC via an S/PDIF interface and play back, in Dolby 5.1 surround sound audio, the correctly encoded audio files and films delivered on physical media or via a broadband connection. S/PDIF (Sony/Philips Digital Interface) is an optical connection that transfers digital audio between devices without downgrading to analog.
Right is a photo of what we believe is rear of the VSX-59TXi, which like many AV amps looks truly frightening. It makes us long for the day when Ethernet and Firewire ports are the standard connectors.
8 October, 2003
Apple Launches More New iPods, Sells Ten Millionth Song
Apple have proven their mastery of the portable MP3 player market with the announcement of two new iPods – even before the buzz has died down from the launch, less than six months ago, of their hugely popular 3rd generation players.
And there’s more: the iTunes site, now selling 500,000 songs per week has just sold it ten millionth song. Thanks to the wonder of modern transaction processing we even know what and when it was: Complicated, by Avril Lavigne at 11.34pm (PST) on the 3rd of September. We wonder how much that commemorative file would fetch on eBay.
iTunes is immensely popular, despite being a US and Macintosh only platform – it demonstrates that there is a real market out there for properly licensed music downloads and the 99c price point seems ideal. Windows users and non-US customers look forward to enjoying the service later this year – we can’t wait to see how many units it’s going to shift then.
Steve Jobs said: “Legally selling ten million songs online in just four months is a historic milestone for the music industry, musicians and music lovers everywhere.”
Despite our shiny 30gb iPod being only four months old, it’s no longer the top of the range: the new 40gb iPod will hold 10,000 tracks (or as many songs as the iTunes store sells in three hours) for $499. Together with the 20gb ($399) model, they provide a more comprehensive range for people who like to carry a lot of music with them.
The iTunes Store: http://www.apple.com/itunes/
The iPod Lounge: http://www.ipodlounge.com
8 September, 2003