UK

UK Gov Wants Your Views On Content Protection And More
Ladies and Gentlemen, start your word processors …
The House of Commons’ Culture, Media and Sport Committee today announced a new inquiry into the challenges and opportunities for the creative industries arising from the development of new media platforms.
For the purposes of the inquiry, the term “creative industries” includes music, visual broadcasts, sound broadcasts, film, graphic art, design, advertising, fashion and games software.
The Committee is particularly interested in receiving evidence on the following issues:
- The impact upon creative industries of recent and future developments in digital convergence and media technology
- The effects upon the various creative industries of unauthorised reproduction and dissemination of creative content, particularly using new technology; and what steps can or should be taken – using new technology, statutory protection or other means – to protect creators
- The extent to which a regulatory environment should be applied to creative content accessed using non-traditional media platforms
- Where the balance should lie between the rights of creators and the expectations of consumers in the context of the BBC’s Creative Archive and other developments
Written submissions are invited from any interested organisation or individual by Thursday 19 January 2006.
Submissions should give the name and postal address of the person sending the memorandum and should state whether it has been prepared specifically for the Committee. If the memorandum is from an organisation rather than an individual, it should briefly explain the nature and membership of the organisation. The Committee may publish some of the submissions it receives.
For more guidance on the preferred format, see http://www.parliament.uk/commons/selcom/witguide.htm
Submissions should be sent to the Clerk of the Committee at the address below.
Kenneth Fox
Clerk of the Culture, Media and Sport Committee
House of Commons
7 Millbank
London SW1P 3JA
[email protected]
Luke Gibbs writes for Ofcomwatch.
16 November, 2005
Will ADSL2+ deliver in the UK?
The rollout of ADSL2+ in the UK appears to be going through a reverse-hype process, with people saying it’s not going to deliver high speeds to most people. That may be partially true, but in urban areas where people are within 1.5Km of the exchange they should get 20Mb/s+.
These speeds are enough for multi-channel HDTV. At the extreme end (extremely optimistic end?), we’ve seen Microsoft demonstrate what they call near-HDTV running at 1.5Mbps. A more ‘normal’ size for HD will be running at 2.5-4Mbps.
We can see that the delivery to the home isn’t a problem, but the back-haul (speaking between the exchange and the content provider) is another matter. Unless intelligent delivery and caching is used, shipping that amount of content to all of your customers gets very expensive.
Most people do seem to be ignoring QoS though, as having 20Mb/s downstream and 1.3Mb/s upstream is still useless for VoIP unless some of that bandwidth can be guaranteed so the voice traffic doesn’t get mixed in with everything else.
Using traditional CoDecs and then packetising them uses more bandwidth than over traditional telephony links. VoIP bandwidth can be squeezed to much lower levels, but then the calls are not what’s called toll-grade.
Broadband providers moving into VoIP are going to need to look long and hard how they actually implement services such that they are competitive (in terms of call quality) with existing analogue lines.
15 November, 2005
UK Digital Switchover Costs: Ofcom Report Questioned Again
Matthew Wall of the Sunday Times Doors section hammers Ofcom over the regulator’s recent report on digital switchover cost and power consumption issues. Wall labels Ofcom’s report a ‘dubious attempt to play down the true costs of switching…’
Read for yourself folks, but basically Wall claims that The Times / Doors estimates the digital switchover costs at about one billion GBP, while Ofcom’s report claims a ‘pie in the sky’ figure of 572 million GBP. The tone of Matthew Wall’s piece is aggressive and he suggests Ofcom is deliberately playing down the true costs of digital switchover.
My comments: Wall needs to be careful in his accusations. Ofcom did not author the report at issue. Instead it was authored by Scientific Generics. While I don’t know if this is the case with this particular report, in the past Ofcom has published third-party research without endorsing the conclusions contained therein. In particular, Ofcom’s recent third-party produced report on the Television Without Frontiers Directive proposed revisions was merely put on the internet as an interesting report for public viewing and comment. The regulator informed me that the TVWF report was useful third-party data but did not contain Ofcom’s views, per se.
That being said, Ofcom need to do a better job at handling third-party research. Some suggestions:
1. These types of reports should be tendered in a public manner. How do these research projects get sourced? I’d like to know…
2. Ofcom should publish how much it pays for these types of reports. I’ve mentioned this before and the reasons Ofcom gives for not reporting how much this research costs are not convincing.
3. The significance (or lack thereof) of these reports should be plainly stated. Similarly, if Ofcom is not necessarily endorsing a particular report’s conclusions, it should plainly state that fact. An ‘evidence-based’ regulator should be very clear as to how it treats these findings made by third parties. If the Scientific Generics report is not endorsed by the Ofcom Board, but it is merely one of many research inputs on the issue of digital switchover costs, then Walls’ claims are clearly overstated. However, it’s hard to blame the press when reports like these are published on the Ofcom website with no disclaimers, giving them the imprimatur of Ofcom approval.
On the merits, I think people should stop bellyaching about the cost of digital switchover. No expert can seriously claim to accurately predict the true cost: Qui numerare incipit errare incipit (He who begins to count, begins to err). Anyway, the cost is not the real problem – the real problem is that Freeview stinks as a platform and Wall is correct when he observes that the U.K. government tends to assume it is the standard of the future. But that’s just my opinion.
Russ Taylor writes for OfcomWatch
14 November, 2005
HD, Or The Lack Of It, Could Hit UK Commercial Broadcasters
Following the BBC confirmation of High Definition Television (HD) trials for 2006, all of a sudden it feels like there’s a plethora of High Definition services and trials in the UK next year.
At an event held in London earlier in the week, under the auspices of the Royal Television Society, Pat Younge from Discovery USA provided news of his experiences. The bad news for commercial UK broadcasters is it costs more; doesn’t bring any extra revenue from advertisers; and it doesn’t increase viewing hours … but if you don’t have it, viewers will seek it out and they’ll end up watching you competitors.
The BBC is, as usual, unwilling to be left behind in new developments. With the expectation of World Cup Soccer in High Def on D-Sat (Digital Satellite) next year, the UK commercial broadcasters, ITV; Channel Four; and Five need to be on HD, but will try and ride on the BBC’s coat tails.
Speaking at the same event, Richard Freudenstein, CEO, BSkyB, was careful not to mention what the monthly subscription will be for HD on Sky when it launches. He spent his time talking up the platforms’ HD bouquet that will include Sky One, sports and movies with an HD Sky Plus box and plenty of storage capacity.
DTT (Digital Terrestrial TV) in France (quaintly abbreviated in French as ‘TNT’) will be MPEG 4 capable and is HD-ready from go, but finding capacity on the MPEG 2 Freeview platform in the UK is going to be more of a challenge. The BBC’s Jana Bennett, Director of Television is tasked with making the UK trials a success and wants to see the offering across all platforms. She hopes that, as well as cable and satellite, broadband will be a route into the home.
Confusion still reigns
Although the industry know they must go to HD, it’s clear that they’re far from having a strong hold over it. From listen to the snippets of conversation in the halls before and after the main event, it’s clear that there also remains broadcast industry confusion over the strengths of the various picture standards. This was given away with phrases like “I think 1080 refers to the number of lines” coming from the lips of one ‘expert.’
The equipment people have to buy for their homes is still an area of confusion, not helped by the next-gen DVD industry not agreeing their standard (Blu-ray, HD-DVD).
Once they do and this combines with the widely-predicted, continuing reduction in price, those exciting big displays labeled ‘HD-ready’ will really start to fly off the shelves.
Until then it’s a case of buyer beware – if you can resist the fantastic picture.
10 November, 2005
Amazon UK Straightens Out Tesco Via The ASA
The commercial rivalry between two UK online retailers has spilt over into the world of advertising, or more precisely the heady world of UK advertising adjudication, run by the Advertising Standards Authority.
Amazon.co.uk complained directly to the ASA that Tesco has sent out an email for DVDs and CDs, that attempted to seduce purchasers as follows, “Did you know our chart CDs and DVDs are cheaper than Amazon.co.uk and Play.com?* Visit Tesco Jersey and see for yourself … *Refers to Tesco Jersey, Amazon.co.uk and Play.com delivered prices”.
This put Amazon.co.uk’s nose right out of joint on two counts. Firstly some of the chart DVDs from Amazon Jersey were available from less money than Tesco Jersey, secondarily they felt it mislead readers as Amazon order over £19 included delivery.
The ASA batted the first complaint aside, but felt the second held water despite Tesco putting up the follow argument. Their long winded thinking can be cut down to … As no single CD or DVD was priced over £19 (thank goodness – our addition), to qualify for the Amazon free delivery, it entailed ordering more than one item.
Well, yes, true. We follow that. The ASA also did, but found it irrelevant.
How did Tesco aim to put this right? First by stating that they didn’t think the ad was misleading, then with a swift call to their internal legal department by the looks of it. They fine tuned their terms and conditions of the price comparison on their Website.
We’ll save you from all of the details, but to us the pertinent part of it was “Comparison excludes multiple purchase or free delivery offers.”
But this jiggery pokery didn’t get them off the hook and the ASA found against them.
What terrible fate awaits Tesco? The ASA told Tesco to make clear in future that the claim referred to single item purchases and excluded their competitor’s multiple purchase discounts. We bet the collective boots of Tesco shook.
It’s a funny old world isn’t it?
Well what can we draw from this? It shows that the online market is sufficiently tough – and potentially profitable – that Amazon is employing people that read through their competitors emails looking for the smallest detail that they can try and call them on.
We have no doubt that Tesco would do the same to any other company that it felt threatened by.
Given the outcome, we suspect that neither Amazon with be cracking the champagne in celebration, nor Tesco will be drowning their sorrows.
The world continues to turn and the happy came of capitalism continues to fight another day.
Amazon
Tesco
8 November, 2005
Free Speech In Advertising?
Background – Make Poverty History had its last TV advertising campaign, widely know as the finger-click advert, removed from the UK’s TVs by Ofcom, citing political advertising.
Tamsin Allen (pictured below) has a thought-provoking piece on page six of today’s MediaGuardian (Sadly we can’t link to it as they are a subscription-only service, but it’s on page six of the printed version).
Partially arguing against the UK ban on advertising by organisations that attempt to “influence public opinion on a matter of controversy”, she says her group will challenge the ban. Allen is right in some respects when she says:
Oil companies can spend thousands on vanity advertising to convince us that the environment is safe under their stewardship but Greenpeace is not allowed to contest that view in the same media.
My reaction:
Tamsin Allen also misses the point in certain ways. Allen’s same logic of unfairness also applies to political party messages, but she discards them into some lower class of speech than (oddly) animal rights. That is wrong. If a group of interested persons – whether organised as a political party or not – want to get a certain message across to the UK populace and that message is otherwise legal, it should be permitted. Picking and choosing the nature of the permitted topic (animal rights, environmental issues, etc.) seems as arbitrary as the current system.
I don’t mean to be flippant about Allen’s cause, but do we really want the aborted ‘My Mate’s a Primate’ ad campaign to be the poster-child for this issue?
The whole ‘we don’t want to end up like the US’ tone he starts off with is just silly. So much of misguided thinking on British media policy is a reaction to some perceived deficit in the US system. Straw man thinking.
If you want a reasoned view of the US system, just click on the Becker-Posnerblog – they covered this precise issue yesterday. Becker notes,for example, that the $4 billion spent in the 2004 US campaign is quite small compared to the $200 billion annually spent by commercial advertisers.
There’s a convergence point here somewhere. Oh, it’s with the Conservatives. And the Labour Party. And even the Respect Coalition! So, like so many other debates we are witnessing, the regulatory scheme developed in 2003 is already out-of-date in many respects.
Russ Taylor writes for OfcomWatch.
7 November, 2005
BBC ‘FreeSat’: Where’s The Service?
Much has been made of what have been reported as poor results at BskyB (Profits announced on Friday 4 Nov 05 saw a pre-tax rise of 13.6% to £200m), intense competition is given as the cause of the lower than hoped for growth in subscribers.
The competition is attributed to the steady increase in Freeview penetration but where is the much trumpeted BBC free satellite offering, they labeled FreeSat?
Speaking recently with an NDS insider it was brought to my attention that this new ‘platform’ could be something of an empty threat. This must, of course been judged through the knowledge that NDS is the TV conditional access subscriber technology company used by Bskyb.
Even bearing this in mind, we felt it was worth asking ourselves a few questions about how it would work, who would view it and what would be its purpose:
How would it work?
Most would consider a UK satellite rival needs to be positioned to use the same satellites as Sky services that’s Eurobird and Astra 2. If you move away from their orbital positions, you’re going to have to duplicate a whole load of services across two platforms with the expense that will entail.
Who would view it?
Presumably the target audience are those who want Freeview but aren’t currently served. Freeview coverage is growing steadily and a Satellite installation is always going to be more costly than a terrestrial one, so I reckon numbers here will be limited.
The other group that would be interested are the ‘churn’ which are now reported by Sky as around 11%. These are subscribers who are leaving their Bskyb packages – but they’re really already on the Sky Freesat as unless someone comes and takes away their Set- top-box and mini-dish. They’ll get many of the FTA (Free To Air) services like ITV3 that aren’t available on analogue terrestrial and, for a small charge, can obtain a viewing card that will allow them to view those encrypted services like Channel 5, Channel 4, ITV1 and ITV2.
So what’s the purpose?
It seems to me that one purpose of the BBC floating the idea of FreeSat is as a spoiler to Bskyb. To perhaps deter those at the margin from signing up and also to increase the traditional broadcasters negotiating position when speaking to Sky.
With the promise of Satellite delivered HDTV in 2006, the continuing growth of Sky+ and the strategic takeover of Easynet, Sky still looks to know where it’s going. Given time and with the right marketing by Sky, many ‘Free-viewers’ will trade up to a Sky package that fits their requirement.
Long term, as long as Bskyb retains its hunger for subscribers, and continues to secure content that viewers wish for, I’d back it against ITV and the cable companies, with or without a new BBC sponsored Satellite version of Freeview.
7 November, 2005
MacExpo UK Review (2/2)
Further to the first part of this review.
Hash showed off Animation Master which is a very simple (if you believe the demos) animation package. It has a huge library of pre-built characters, objects and even things like types of walks for the characters. Lip syncing even looked easy. Though the package is simple, you probably need some basic creative skills and understanding of animation to do anything sensible with it. Visit their Website and look in the gallery, the video of “I will survive” of Gloria Gaynor fame is a true classic.
Shure had their in-ear phones and were letting people try them (using replaceable foam in-ear sleeves, the comments from staff about ear wax were not pleasant). The big news is that they are now available in black to suit both iPod and PSP users. The black E4c’s (previously reviewed on the site) look better, but don’t sound any better, as this would be hard as they already sound so good.
There were lots of iPod and laptop cases and Be.ez make a range that can hold your iPod and accessories, laptop, laptop accessories and one that holds a Mac mini AND keyboard meaning you can almost use your mini as a laptop. All the cases are made out of 5mm polyurethane adequately protecting whatever’s inside.
LaCie had lots of disk systems on offer (firewire, USB and Ethernet) offering easy access to multi-terrabytes of data. An external 5 1/4″ drive (the size of a CD-ROM drive) can hold up to 1TB (big disk) while the double width bigger disk extreme can hold up to 2TB. There’s also external RAID drives, the biggest F800 holds up to 2TB supporting Firewire 800 (up to 80MB/s transfers) and the biggest S25 support 160MB/s and up to 2.5GB (which is 3GB internal) both support hot-swappable drives. The newest addition is the mini which looks just like a Mac mini and sits underneath it (and can be stacked with more minis), each one containing up to 250MB of disk.
Roxio have released Toast v7 which now is much more than just CD/DVD burning software, it can now create music DVDs with menu navigation, HD photo shows and much more.
Many usual suspects were there (Adobe, Quark) but Macromedia weren’t, maybe this is due to Adobe buying them?
Hopefully next year the show will revert to more of an expo and less of a computer fair.
Hash
Shure
Be.ez
LaCie
Roxio
4 November, 2005
BBC Radio 1 Does Video, With Gorillaz – News release
Exclusive animated footage from Gorillaz Demon Days Live in Manchester will be available ‘on demand’ via the red button on digital television for seven days, courtesy of BBC Radio 1.
This is the first time Radio 1 has delivered visual content on demand for TV and takes the BBC’s plans to visualise radio up a gear.
The ground-breaking initiative means viewers with digital satellite, cable and Freeview can enjoy audio and animated visuals from the gig at the push of the red button for a week after transmission.
Radio 1 will broadcast audio from Friday’s on Lamacq Live from 9pm on Monday, November 7. From 11.30pm the same night, the station will make visuals and audio of the event available from all BBC TV channels (via digital TV) and online at bbc.co.uk/radio1. Freeview viewers will be able to press red from Radio 1.
Gorillaz Demon Days Live is a trailblazing event for the Manchester International Festival, the world’s first commissioning arts festival which kicks off in 2007. Jamie Hewlett – co-creator of Gorillaz visual identity – is producing exclusive visuals for the evening.
Daniel Heaf, Radio 1’s Interactive Editor said; “Radio 1 knows how important visualisation is for its young listeners. This collaboration with Gorillaz Demon Days Live demonstrates how the station can provide world class music content across multiple platforms.”
Dan Duncombe, Digital Media Manager at Parlophone, comments, “Giving fans the ability to access content across a number of digital platforms is a key part of the Manchester events. These shows are groundbreaking and working with Radio 1 has allowed us to take this further in terms of reach as well as interactivity. Gorillaz fans throughout the world can access and interact with this exclusive audio and visual content, making it a truly global and multi platform event.”
Gorillaz Demon Days Live sees the musical collaborators behind smash hit album Demon Days brought together for the first time ever, to recreate the album over five remarkable and unrepeatable evenings; it’s also the first time Radio 1 audiences can receive on demand visual content on digital television (DTV).
People can listen to Radio 1 – and any other BBC radio station – via DTV. Recent research shows nearly 10 million people in the U.K. listen to radio via DTV every week (RAJAR Q3 2005).
This initiative uses the thinking behind the BBC Radio Player – which allows people to listen to BBC Radio programmes via the Internet for a week after transmission – to give DTV listeners more control.
BBC Radio 1 can be found on Freeview, Sky Digital, NTL and Telewest.
Gorillaz
bbc.co.uk/radio1
4 November, 2005
BBC iMP Review – A Naughty Little iMP
Despite so much current talk from the UK Telco’s and Sky on the magic that will provide an on demand broadcast TV proposition in the UK, tangible evidence of a working model beyond KiT in Hull and Homechoice is pretty sparse.
The one organisation that is taking it seriously and putting some of their money behind it (sorry, UK TV license payers money) is the dear old BBC.
Digital-Lifestytles has been keeping a close watch on iMP through each stage of its development from its initial announcement by Ashley Highfield at the Digital-Lifestyles theme day at IBC in 2003, through our uncovering that all of its content would be DRM protected back in Feb 2004, to the announcement of the trial, back in May this year.
I’ve been lucky enough to be one of the trialists for the iMP (that’s integrated media player not interactive as so many insist on calling it) and I can tell you it’s not at all bad. Viewing TV on a PC screen is not ideal and that has probably influenced the programmes I’ve chosen – largely factual and quiz. The BBC counters that, a ‘box’, is under development to port the output to your domestic telly and reminds us that it’s already possible to view the content on a selection of mobile devices.
Despite the somewhat limited selection of programmes, which I’m told is largely down to copyright issues, it seems a positive move for a public sector broadcaster actually providing a service and solving the ‘problem’ of letting you see a programme you forgot to record or you later discover is worth viewing.
The operation, as you’d expect from a Microsoft product is ‘workperson-like’ ,if rather un-exciting, but to all intents and purposes, to those with an always-on connection, downloading the content is free. The technology that allows programmes to be downloaded in faster than real time on a 2mb connection is a completely legal (I’m told) peer to peer application – everyone who is running the trial software, shares their content with other on the trial, without their having to do anything.
The built-in DRM expires the programmes after seven days which, when compared to the analogue world, I haven’t noticed happening on my VHS tapes. It’s been necessary to quell the agonies protested by the copyright owners.
The BBC is thinking beyond the present Windows-only solution. Speaking recently in London the BBC’s Project Director for iMP Ben Lavender reinforced the BBC philosophy of platform agnosticism and spoke of the desire to work on Apple and Linux solutions when DRM issues can be satisfactorily dealt with.
For commercial broadcasters there’s an over-riding issue to deal with, should they choose to get involved. How would they deal with the ease which you can move through spot advertising, remains to be seen but that’s an issue they’re’ going to have to face soon one way or another.
My verdict – I give it a thumbs up as long as a large enough library of content can be made available. For drama and the like, I’d want an easy method of outputting to the living room TV.
4 November, 2005