Geographic – Page 54 – Digital-Lifestyles

UK PS3 Sales Down 82% In Second Week

The news for Sony and their PlayStation 3 just keeps getting worse.

UK PS3 Sales Down 82% In Second Week Early pre-UK-release signs weren’t promising, nor were they looking any better when the UK PS3 was selling for £100 under their release price, a couple of days beforehand.

On the positive side, Sony did claim to sell 165,000 consoles in the UK in the first week – making it the UK’s fastest selling home console to date.

Now the official Chart Track figures, that follow sales in the UK are reporting to gamesindustry.biz that sales of the PS3 in the UK have dropped by 82% during its second week of release.

Software sales are also suffering with “sales of the top two PlayStation 3 titles, Resistance: Fall of Man and MotorStorm, had dropped by over 60 per cent.”

It’s not looking much better for the PS3 in Japan, where Bloomberg is claiming that Sony has sold 812,000 PS3s since November 11, against a mighty 1.95 million Wii consoles by Nintendo.

Pace Celebrate 25 Years In Business

Our favourite UK Set Top Box manufacturer is celebrating their 25th birthday this year.

Pace Celebrate 25 Years In Business 25 years! Staggering how old the industry is now isn’t it?

Waaaaaay back in 1982 they started off selling modems and software. Their first product was a PSTN modem called the Nightingale and we can even remember Pace modems from back when 1200/75 baud modems appeared as an exotic advance from the 300 baud ones that were the standard.

For all of you young ones who weren’t around in those days, that’s 1.2/0.075 Kbps vs 0.3 Kbps. Scarily slow.

Following their modem and software successes, Pace launched their first satellite set-top box (SR640) in 1987 and like all design, it was a product of its time, with a fab HiTech feel about it.

From there, Pace really haven’t looked back. They’ve consistently carried out pioneering development, building up a large selection of industry firsts, including the first digital satellite receiver in the UK, the first PVR (personal video recorder) in Europe, the first low-cost digital terrestrial adapter (thereby creating the freeview market in the UK) and, more recently, the very first H.264 DVB-S2 high definition set-top box in the world.

Their latest and greatest product is a HD DVR, the HR20, which records using MPEG-4.

If you, like us, dear tech trivia fan don’t know the history behind the name of Pace, you’ll be excited to hear that the name Pace came from an innovative shipping company in Australia called the Pacific Australia Container Express.

The Next 25 years
Looking forward to the next 25 years, Neil Gaydon, CEO, give his views of where Pace will be innovating, “Soon we will see multiroom and home networking solutions coming through, that will allow you to watch anything you want from any screen in the house, including mobile TV. When you add the fact you will import your photos and internet entertainment to any screen, your music to any room in the home along with wireless technologies emerging, so removing the need for wires, we are at the early stages of a new TV revolution.”

Best of luck to Pace in the coming years, may they continue their success.

Pace Jubilee

Play Bestival: Learn Ukulele Via MySpace

Play Bestival: Learn Ukulele Via MySpace Our Sister site, Ventnor-Blog, has been scooping the world with announcements of who and what will be appearing at the amazing, manic extended weekend that is Bestival.

Besides the now-known amazing acts of The Beastie Boys, Chemical Brothers, a whole slew of talented ladies, Primal Scream, Jah Wobble and many others will be appearing.

The latest mold-breaking announcement of today is that willing punters, will themselves be able to play on stage at this coming Bestival, if they’re willing to pick up a ukulele and learn to play it.

That’s all very lovely, but what’s the relevance for Digital-Lifestyles? Well, the innovative way that enthused Uke holders will get up to speed on the required songs is via MySpace.

Play Bestival: Learn Ukulele Via MySpace

The whole jolly lot is being organised by the venerable Dulwich Ukulele Club (background) through the Night of 100 Ukes’s.

On there, in the lead up to Bestival, will appear details of the songs, the lyrics that need to be learnt and the cords that need to be sweated over in pursuit of Ukulele-nirvana.

The majority of preparation through practice will be done in the privacy of Uke-ers homes, but besides the planned rehearsal at “a central London pub” in August, Who knows, they might even choose to use Skype to Live to have remote practices.

We’re going to keep an eye on this one, both in our personal pursuit of Uke-ism and to watch how this MySpace-driven mass learning works out.

Night of 100 Ukes’s MySpace
Bestival
Bestival Latest News

Apple And Record Companies Charged In EU iTunes Row

The European Commission has dished out formal charges to Apple and ‘unnamed major record companies’, accusing them of restricting music sales in Europe.

Apple And Record Companies Charged In iTunes Row The EU alleges that agreements between Apple and the record companies are guilty of breaking European Union rules that prohibit restrictive business practices. It’s far from the first time that the EU and other Northern European Countries has got wound up about Apple and iTunes.

“Consumers can only buy music from the iTunes online stores in their country of residence and are therefore restricted in their choice of where to buy music, and consequently what music is available and at what price,” said Jonathan Todd, European Commission spokesman.

Apple And Record Companies Charged In iTunes Row “The statement of objections alleges that distribution agreements between Apple and major record companies contain territorial sales restrictions,” he added.

Promptly shifting the blame on to the record companies, Apple insisted that they’d tried to operate a single pan-European iTunes store accessible to peeps from any member state but were foiled by music labels and publishers imposing legal limits on the download rights.

The Commission first got involved back in 2005 after the UK consumer group Which? pointed out that iTunes purchasers in France and Germany were paying far less than us poor chumps in the UK (67 pence against 79 pence).

Apple And Record Companies Charged In iTunes Row Apple and the record companies now have two months to defend themselves in writing or take part in an oral hearing which usually happens around a month after a written reply has been received.

This latest development is unrelated to yesterday’s deal between Apple and EMI.

Source

Over Half Of UK Adults Have Home Broadband

Industry body Ofcom has published its Digital Progress Report, the result of taking a long goosey gander at current trends in the UK broadband industry up until the end of last year.

Over Half Of UK Adults Have Home Broadband The report found that half of all UK adults live in broadband-connected households, up 11% from 12 months ago and a hefty seven times increase from 2002.

Folks connected to broadband lines are getting good use of it too, with 63% of adults using it daily, while 30% went online at least once a week.

Video content was viewed by 51% of adults with broadband at home, with 26% watching video clips every week.

Over two thirds (70%) of broadband-connected adults bought products or services online, and over half had carried out banking transactions.

Broadband users were found to spend on average 9.1 hours online per week, over double the amount of people still connecting via screechy modems in dial-up.

Over Half Of UK Adults Have Home Broadband Although just under half of users had no idea how fast they were connecting to the Internet, the report put the average headline connection speed at 3.8Mbps (up from 1.6Mbps in 2005).

Voice over IP (VoIP) services like Skype have seen an increased take up, with one in ten adults making calls over the Internet, double the amount compared to the end of 2005. Of those using VoIP, 14% said they were making calls daily with a further 30% making calls several times per week.

Bundling
Bundling was found to be an important factor for consumers choosing their ISP, with 40% of all adults with broadband at home using other communications services from the same provider.

Wi-Fi
Ofcom found that just over a fifth (21%) of of all UK adults owned a Wi-Fi enabled laptop in February 2007, with a third of that total using public hotspots to access the internet. The amount of available public hotspots was counted at around 12,000 in September 2006, up 32% from the previous year.

Mobile Internet
The report found that despite one in three UK adults saying that they owned an Internet-enabled mobile phone in February 2007; only half had ever actually used the thing to go online.

It seems that a ‘lack of need or interest’ put off the majority of users (43%), with cost the second reason (31%).

Ofcom

Avoid Corporate Coffee Chains With The Delocator

If you travel around the UK a lot and find the homogenisation of High Streets into identical rows of bland coffeeshop multinationals a deeply depressing experience, you may find delocator.org.uk the perfect site for your needs.

Bearing a passing resemblance to the ‘store locator’ seen on the Starbuck’s site, the delocator lets you type in a UK post code and find the nearest ‘non corporate cafe’ near you, with a drop-down menu for selecting the distance range to search, from 1km to 15km.

The site’s still in early days and because it relies on users to input recommended cafes, the coverage isn’t as complete as it might be, but the author told Digital Lifestyles that he intends to add more functionality ‘in the Spring’ (he’s also asked for help in running this site – contact him here.)

Despite this, we still managed to find two non-corporate cafes within a 1km of us, with the results displayed in a text box containing a description of the cafe and address details, accompanied by a zoomable Google map.

Delocating the world

The first Delocator website started up in America, tasked with “assisting the public in finding and supporting independently owned cafes” and proved a great success, with over 5000 independent cafes across the States being inputted by users.

The site encouraged other activists to create their own delocator site using a downloadable toolkit, with a second site being set up for Canadian users, delocator.ca, with the UK site now being the third of what may turn out to be a multinational anti corporate franchise (now there’s a concept!).

With Starbucks promising to open a new branch every fortnight for the next decade in the UK, we reckon local, independent coffee shops need al the help they can get.

Free Rosey Lee in the East End

Elsewhere, Starbuck’s shiny new store in Whitechapel in the East End of London found itself the subject of an unusual protest last week by those cheeky scamps, the Space Hijackers.

Setting up a stall and dishing out free fair trade teas, tasty home made sandwiches and delicious cakes to passers by, the protesters hoped to illustrate “what the area will be missing if Starbucks and their ilk are allowed to settle in.”

Naturally, the urban75 website went along to lend their support (and scoff some tasty banana cakes) – see their photo report here

VBox: Virgin Free TV DTT Launched By Virgin Media For Non Cable Customers

Virgin Media Launches Virgin Free TV For Non Cable Customers Virgin Media has ramped up the availability of its quadplay (broadband, phone, mobile and TV) services beyond its cable franchise network with today’s announcement of a new digital TV service.

Using the digital terrestrial television platform (DTT), Virgin will be offering a new set-top box to lure customers with the promise of over 40 free-to-air TV channels and over 25 digital radio stations, an eight-day, Virgin branded, on-screen TV guide, interactive content (via the trusty red button) and plug ‘n’ play installation.

Perhaps cocking a snoot to Sky’s energy-scoffing box, Virgin say that their set top box will offer low power consumption and use just 1/15th of the energy of a standard 60W light bulb (we could work that out as a percentage for you, but it’s still Monday morning).

The box is a wee little puppy too, measuring up around the same size as Ye Olde VHS tape (19cms by 9cms) and comes with a remote control and a nifty remote control extender so you can still use the remote if the box is hidden away somewhere.

Virgin Media Launches Virgin Free TV For Non Cable Customers

Virgin will be dishing the boxes out for free to any non-cable customers subscribed to their twenty quid 8 Meg broadband and Talk Anytime phone bundle, or there’ll be a £40 charge to non-cable customers taking a broadband service on it’s own.

Philip Snalune, managing director of non-cable (bit a duff job title that, no?) at Virgin Media, said:
“Launching a basic TV service into non-cable areas enables us to expand availability of our quadplay of broadband, phone, mobile and TV. This is just the first step and our aim is to offer more advanced TV services in all areas throughout 2008.”

Virgin Media

BBC TV & Radio Trial On UK 3G

The BBC are going to start of a trial to syndicate a range of its television channels and radio networks via 3G to mobile phones within the month.

BBC TV & Radio Trial On UK 3G Three UK operators will be taking part, Orange, Vodafone and 3 giving subscribers to the trial the ability to watch BBC One, BBC News 24 and BBC Three streamed on their mobiles. Beyond some sports programmes and programmes where they don’t have the necessary rights.

As well as the TV channels, eight radio stations will also be included – Radio 1, 1Xtra, Radio 2, Radio 3, Radio 4, 6 Music, BBC 7 and Asian Network.

Appropriately enough the announcement by Richard Halton, BBC Controller of Business Strategy, was made at the Broadcast Mobile TV Congress.

The BBC haven’t done a great deal of content on mobiles, not that they’re not keen on it, as you’ll be able to tell from the comments of Richard Halton, “The BBC believes that mobile content is an important part of the broadcasting landscape and is looking at ways in which mobile devices will shape services of the future for licence fee payers.”

They hope to learn lots from this trial, as Ashley Highfield, Director of Future Media and Technology at the BBC said, “The findings, combined with quantitative and qualitative consumer research, will inform the BBC’s future mobile strategy.”

We’ll keep our eyes on this.

Ofcom To Regulate VoIP In UK

Ofcom To Regulate VoIP In UK Ofcom have just announced a new regulatory code for Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) service providers operating in the UK.

With predictions estimating that there could be as many as three million VoIP users in the UK by the end of this year, Ofcom clearly felt it was time to set some base rules for the industry to adhere to.

They’re broadly divided in two – prescribed information to tell the consumer before they sign up and once they have signed up, making them aware of the limitation of their access to the emergency services.

For a long time the lack of solid emergency (999) number access has been used by the incumbent telecos to try and stem the growth of VoIP. Their argument? If someone calls 999, there is no assured way of telling if that person is calling from Basildon, Birmingham, or Beijing, as the handset just needs to be on an IP connection, to attached to the end of a specific piece of wire, like a landline is.

Ofcom To Regulate VoIP In UK Before June 2007, all VoIP providers will be required to make it clear :-

whether or not the service includes access to emergency services (some operators may choose not to provide any support at all);
the extent to which the service depends on the user’s home power supply (Standard telephones are powered by the phone line itself, where as Broadband services require external power to a number of different boxes to function);
whether directory assistance, directory listings, access to the operator or the itemisation of calls are available; and
whether consumers will be able to keep their telephone number if they choose to switch providers at a later date. (This is known as number portability, and would seem reasonable to offer, given it is standard throughout the rest of the telecoms markets).

If a customer decides to sign up for a VoIP service, the provider has additional obligations around emergency calls:-

secure the customer’s positive acknowledgement of this at point of sale (by ticking a box, for example);
label the capability of the service, either in the form of a physical label for equipment or via information on the computer screen; and
play an announcement each time a call to emergency services is attempted, reminding the caller that access is unavailable.

Xbox 360 Elite Announced

There’s been lots of speculation going around the various blog sites about the release of a new version of Microsoft’s Xbox 360.

Xbox 360 Elite Released Yesterday Microsoft confirmed that the Xbox 360 Elite is a real product and will begin arriving in US stores on 29 April with an expected retail price of $480.

The confirmed spec of the 360 Elite is a combination of a 120Gb hard drive, new accessories bundled in, and to all of those HD TV fans, an HDMI port built in. Oh, and a return to a black case like the original Xbox. Microsoft tell us that the retail price of all of the bundled bits is over $600 if bought separately.

The HDMI port is an interesting move – yes it will make it simpler to get High Def screens connected (if you have a screen with an HDMI in port), but importantly it will let Elite owners play protected HD-DVD discs on the long-discussed add-on HD-DVD drive. HDMI connection is needed for the HDCP content protection scheme.

The new, large hard drive is a big step up from the previous version of 20Gb to 120Gb – all the more space for Microsoft to sell you TV shows, films and software to download – oh … and save you game positions to as well of course.

The hard drive is detachable and will also be sold separately so standard Xbox users will be able to get hold of them too. Expected US price is $180.

Alongside the goodies above are an Xbox 360 Wireless Controller in black and a headset, in … err, black. Do you get the black theme? There’ll be a couple of other new bits available separately too, a Play & Charge kit for the the wireless controller ($20) and a black rechargeable battery ($12)

Xbox 360 Elite Announced Peter Moore, Corporate Vice President – Interactive Entertainment Business, Microsoft, turned the hyperbole meter way up to deliver the following, “Today’s games and entertainment enthusiast has an insatiable appetite for digital high-definition content. Xbox 360 Elite’s larger hard drive and premium accessories will allow our community to enjoy all that the next generation of entertainment has to offer.”

It’s worth noting that the first shots of the Elite, while looking slightly underground, are in fact taken by ‘Major Nelson,’ the pseudonym for Larry Hryb, Xbox Live Director of Programming. So ‘leaked’ photos are now coming from official sources!

Images courtesy of Major Nelson