Category: Industry Trends

BT Cuts Broadband Price

It’s about time – BT have always been at the pricier end of broadband pricing, but the communications giant has finally made a significant reduction to the price of its basic broadband service.

Now set at a far more enticing and competitive UK£19.99 per month, the service is limited to one home PC (but if you bridge it, how would they know?) and supplies a full 512kbs. However, there’s one very unattractive condition to this new package – downloads are limited to one measly gigabyte per month. Once you’ve downloaded your equivalent of 200 iTunes tracks or a couple of games, you will be sent a reminder with the option to buy more bandwidth. We applaud the new price point form BT, but think the data limitation is a step backwards. Can’t have it both ways, we suppose.

Remember, some “broadband” packages you see offered for UK£20 and less often just give you 256kbs and less, so always read the terms and conditions.

BT’s new service

The FT’s comment

AOL Drops Broadband Service in US

With broadband price cuts from telephone operators and ISPs in the US, packaging a DSL service with access to AOL services was rapidly becoming uneconomic for the content giant.

America Online found that it couldn’t offer a price-competitive service: being so far down the value chain meant that the subscription cost of AOL broadband product was often far higher than that of competitors, once subleasing prices had been piled on top.

As the numbers of dial-up subscribers dwindle, AOL is moving towards providing content to users who supply their own access, thus concentrating on their core competencies and not wasting resources trying to be a telco. The market seems to be segregating out a bit: last year, Microsoft also dropped DSL access plans. How long will it be before companies which are more geared to providing access to the internet, such as BT, drop their content offerings?

Broadband without the bandwidth

More details of BBC iMP revealed – All content DRM’d

More details of the intriguing BBC interactive media player, iMP, first made public at IBC 2003, were revealed this evening at a AIGA meeting in London. Sara Watkins, Executive Producer, Broadband, BBC New Media gave the audience further details of what iMP will do and importantly, what it will not.

The most significant revelations were concerning the protection of the content. All content will be DRM’d, only available for a limited period time, once downloaded. As expected, it will also only be available to UK broadband users. In a break with the BBC’s long-standing support of Real, Microsoft DRM will be used for the technical trial, but it appears that no final decision has been made.

Sara started by running a video giving an overview of what the BBC hope the iMP will be and where it might go.

As was known previously, the EPG (Electronic Programming Guide) will cover fourteen days; seven looking forward and seven backward. The programs that have been broadcasted will be downloadable to the computer simply by clicking on them. A preview of a piece can be watched before committing to download a complete show.

Although it was not mentioned in this presentation, in previous discussion we have had we understood that upcoming programs could be selected to download, once they have been broadcasted.

People will also be able to recommend programmes it to friends.


The iMP, originally envisaged by BBC man Ben Lavender, will be a PC-only application that will be downloaded from the BBC website.

Further into the future they are looking forward to having the content on other devices, such as portable music players and even further forward, towards mobile phones. This portable content will initially be limited to audio, as the rights to these programmes are nearly all owned solely by the BBC.

Running through the demonstration version of the product, we were shown the player would have four sections

_Library area

A list of the content residing on the computer will be shown, as you would expect from any filing system. A new revelation was that the rights information for each show would be displayed on the right hand side of the screen.

Each separate show will be capable of having its own DRM setting, primarily how many days it will reside on your machine and therefore, how quickly you will need to watch the show before it become unavailable.

The examples given were

Eastenders (most popular UK soap) might be available for two weeks
An episode of Blue Planet (recent super budget natural history programme) might be available for two days.

The amount of compression applied to each piece of content will vary, so the video quality will vary. More popular programmes will be lower quality but programmes that would benefit from better quality will receive it, such as Blue Planet.

_Traffic area

As per standard peer-to-peer (P2P) packages – showing what is being transferred to and from your machine at any time.

It was reiterated that P2P file sharing technologies would be used to automatically exchange content between broadband-connected computers running iMP, thus saving the BBC a considerable amount of money on individually serving each files.

_TV and radio guide areas

No real details were given about this.

Stages of development

The BBC plan to carry out an internal technical trial, where they will work out the logistics of how to get the content from its original source (tape, etc), how to will be encoded, archived and make it available.

Later in the year, possibly around Easter, a closed network of users will be given the product to test it. During this phase they hope to understand how effective the interface design is.

Following these stages they will enter a product development mode – taking all of the learning and re-polishing the product. No date was mentioned for a public release.

During the Q&A session another interesting revelation concerning the Greg Dyke’s idea floated at RTS Edinburgh 2003, the Creative Archive. The content that makes up the Creative Archive will be downloaded using a similar application, but will not be restricted by DRM enabling people to re-edit it, or use it to make other programmes. Importantly it will not be the complete BBC archive, the examples given was – it will be nature programmes but it will not be show such as Dad’s Army (An old very popular comedy show first show in the 1970’s).

AIGA London

Transcript

Ofcom Chair: UK with True Broadband by 2010

Fifty days in to Ofcom’s existence, its Chair David Currie delivered a speech to the Communications Management Association conference. He recapped on what Ofcom had been doing, then outlined where he felt it was going, focusing mainly on broadband.

We feel the most exciting part of the speech was, in his words, True Broadband.

Anyone with a real understanding of why broadband is such a vital part of the future will be hugely encouraged by his words. In summary, what is currently being sold as broadband to the UK consumer and many other around the world, a 512k connection, is not broadband. It is the equivalent of a 1200/75-baud modem.

We heartily agree with Currie view that ‘DSL at 512k is a convenience product’. He argues that it is not practical or possible for the UK to lurch from a 512k connection to something much faster – the current copper-wire based system we have simply would not support it.

Instead a target of 10Mbps should be set for 2010 and that it should be provided competitively. We read this as; the long lasting monopoly that BT has, and does enjoy will be removed. His comparison with the multi-supplier mobile market bears this out. In our view BT consistently hoodwinked Oftel. At first glance it looks like they will not have the same joy with Ofcom.

This was further underlined by his praise of the Parliamentary Trade and Industry Select Committee point that

‘[we must] make certain that the regulatory framework ensures that commercial decisions by private companies are aligned with the wider economic and social needs of the country.’

He and his colleagues clearly recognise and understand what is required for a proper broadband service. With connections being symmetric rather than the slow transmit, asymmetric we have now, he identified the need for the network to enable distributed system, not just central services delivering to the ends of the network. We also find it encouraging that he reiterated the pursuit of wireless connections.

Currie states his aim is ‘Liquid bandwidth; all you can eat; always on. No contention.’

Very encouraging.

Full text
David Currie, Ofcom chairman, Communications Management Association Annual Conference, 16 February 2004

Akimbo Launch PVR-over-IP Box

Akimbo Systems launched their television-via-Internet service yesterday at Demo2004. They are claiming the service will start with over 10,000 hours of video content, organised in to 50 categories, will be pulled from a variety of sources. The number of hours available will grow to 20,000.

The $199 player, which is expected to be in US retail stores in late 2004, receives content via a broadband connection and can hold 200 hours of video, in Microsoft’s WM9 DRM-controlled format on it’s 80Gb drive. Subscription to the service is $9.99 per month.

This product is the first of released example of the long spoken about idea of distributing content by passing previously used broadcast structures. Akimbo claim a number of factors have now come together to enable the services to become realistic; the cost of transporting a gigabyte of video over the Internet has dropped to around $1 from $20 a few years ago; video compression has improved to the point that DVD-quality video can fit into a 1.5 megabit per second stream; broadband has grown to an audience of 50m people.

Given it is initially a dedicated box, that we assume will be closed to customer enhancements, it will live or die by the content they can secure for the service. We suspect the service may well morph in to a content channel when more PC’s are connected to the TV in the lounge.

Akimbo are canvassing for new content from video rights owners and are giving the option for subscription, rental, purchase, or advertising supported model. Their big pitch is niche content direct to the consumer and they will handle transactions, delivering the due fees to the rights holders.

We feel the other vital component for them to get right is the navigation of the content, enabling consumers to actually find the programmes that they want to watch.

Akimbo

MidemNet 2004 report

By Paul Hosford, partner, New Media Law

The fifth MidemNet 2004 opened the week long international music industry’s conference in Cannes. In heavily attended sessions this year, it appears, at least on the surface, that the industry is at last grasping on-demand digital distribution of music – the legal variety that is.

MidemNet is the music industry’s international forum that attracts players from every corner of the business to get together and discuss the issues confronting an industry severely impacted by the illegal distribution of millions of copies of its product.

Ted Cohen, EMI Music’ s senior VP of digital development and distribution, opened with the positive pro-industry message – commercial downloads represent the ultimate way forward for music consumers. He feels that it will come of age in 2004, and when legal battles are overcome and the consumer is empowered by commercialised P2P delivery, the industry’s bad reputation will begin to improve.

Keynote interviewee Eddy Cue of Apple’s Internet services announced what everyone suspected, the iTunes Music Store would launch in Europe at some point. iTunes throws into relief these challenges for the music business. Launched in April 2003 as a proprietary platform download service, the Music Store leverages Apple’s existing back-end infrastructure to offer a flat fee of 99 cents per track, and now offering 0.5 million tracks, made available by the Major record labels under recent licensing, but only available to US consumers. The delay in the European launch has been put down to resolving licensing across countries.

Setting out to develop “a better Kazaa” by 5 January 2004, iTunes has sold more than 30 million tracks in all kinds of genres, predominantly to an over-21 demographic. This has moved the Majors on from a proposition that only 2 and a half years ago was not on their list of potential licensing opportunities.

Whilst we all know and covet that beautifully packaged piece of must-have hardware that is the iPod, the reality is that Apples share of the 99 cents may not, in isolation, be sufficient to rev-up their share price. What is clear is that sales of iPod are going through the roof.

There has been a lot of discussion here about iTunes downloads not being platform-independent and that ultimately this may become a sticking point for the device-rich consumer who wants the flexibility to listen to their paid-for music on any device they own. In the meantime, iTunes sales still represent small numbers when compared to the world of illegal P2P sharing.

The European iTunes delay has highlighted a major problem. What will remain firmly as the principal challenge for any pan-European initiative is an industry with differing product release dates, differing licensing and rights collection mechanisms across the European territories – and differing price models. The message is clear – the industry must push through change in these licensing and publishing practices across the major markets.

In the panel sessions representatives of OD2, EMI Music, RealNetworks, French ISP Wanadoo and mmO2, debated the very real technical problems of delivering to consumers a single product where the industry’s marketplace and accounting mechanisms are territorially divergent and a very long way from uniformity. Whilst EMI’s goal is obviously, to sell more music by making it available in multiple formats on any platform, corralling all the various rights holders that share in recorded music remains the Major Labels most immediate challenge.

For the content aggregators, the ISP’s mobile networks and digital music intermediaries, the problems are different, but equally complex. They must deal with multiple payment mechanisms, differing pricing regimes and a complex value chain that makes it very challenging to deliver cost effective alternatives to paying consumers demanding of quality content. What will be critical to delivering a successful consumer experience is cross-platform transferability of the downloaded track that is paid for once.

In the meantime, the disc media formats are very much alive and kicking representing over 90 percent of music bought today. Your correspondent for one is looking forward to experiencing SACD recordings – real surround sound.

Sony Announce Location Free TV

Among the many announcements at CES was an interesting portable 12″ LCD TV screen from Sony, that can be carried around a house and have various content delivered to it from its base station, enabling the showing of video from many different sources, as well as playing music, viewing photos and browsing the Internet. Sony calls it LocationFree™.

It is based on a similar device released just in Japan called AirTact and a few TVs. Kunitake Ando, president and group COO at Sony Corp has realised the potential to freeing the screen. At Sony “Dream World” held in Paris, Sept. 2003 was quoted that transforming traditional TVs to “location-free” TV or displays could take the 125 million TV sets sold worldwide and “easily increased to four or five times that number.”

The basestation can have many different sources plugged in to it, including; video, be that TV ariel/cable, DVD, VCR, DV video camera; audio sources; other media files stored on computers via Ethernet. There is a wide selection for possible connections to the network, wirelessly (802.11a, 802.11b (WiFi), or 802.11g) or an Ethernet cable. The content is delivered to the remote, battery-powered 12.1″ LCD touch screen, which can also run from a main source. There are also plans for a pocket sized 5.8″ version. The viewer is free to move around the house while continuing to access the different media sources, selecting them by touching the screen. As yet, Sony has not discussed battery life.

For the first time Sony have brought technology from their high-end TV sets to the LCD display including 3D Y/C separation circuitry for clear, vivid picture and colour blur reduction; angled line correction circuitry for smoothing out jagged lines; motion adaptive I/P conversion circuitry for improving fast moving action scenes; and digital audio amplifier circuitry for crisp sound and minimized distortion.

It looks like Sony have carried out considerable research to find what function user may want. The five pounds screen itself has a lot of connectors includes an Ethernet port, a USB port, Memory Stick media slot, headphone jack, keyboard port and an AV input for connecting to a camcorder. Useful features include viewers being able to “freeze” and save a TV scene by using the “capture” button on the remote screen – saving a mad scrabble for pen and paper where information appears on the TV.  Prints of the images or homepage data, e-mail attachments and digital photos can also be made to USB printers connected to the base-station.

While using the screen to browse the Internet, the viewer will be able to watch their choice of TV/video source displayed in a Picture in Picture (PiP) window, but given the screen is 800×600, we imaging this might not be used much beyond demos to friends.

Sony has omitted to give any precise dates for the shipping of Location Free, preferring to say it would be “Later in the year”.

Sony say one of the benefits of the screen being an IP device is that access your media does not need to be restricted just to your own home network. By taking the screen with you on your travels, you can access the self same content through any IP connection, which are increasingly found around the world in offices and hotel rooms. One example cited gives an interesting twist to the product – a person on the road, unable to attend their child’s birthday, has an opportunity to tune in, watching the live video being shot on a camcorder plugged in to the basestation at home. We believe application such as this, which can be used to bring together families distributed over great distances, will be a major driver in purchasing products.

We are excited about this step of remote access to your home media, firewall configuration allowing of course. It could be an interesting early step into a future where your home media server becomes the focal point of your media ownership, with your various remote IP devices having access, via your home server.

At this point it is worth highlighting that hard facts about which protocols are used to transfer content back and forth between base-station and screen. It would be a great shame if the protocols were proprietary. We think there is real potential in this device, and by using open standards; there could be a real potential for a product like this to become a standard for interfacing analog media to an IP device. There is a real need for a device like it and it appears that Mr Ando at Sony Corp is trying to fill it.

PSX Spec Downgraded but Still Sells Out

Following the recent launch of Sony’s PSX, which combines the functions of a PlayStation 2, PVR and DVD burner (full details), there have been a number of dissenting voices over the reduced specification of the released product. Despite this, the first shipment to shops is reported to have nearly sold out on launch day, with long queues on the day of its release. The size of the initial shipment has not been disclosed. A spokesperson for Sony added that they plan to ship one million PSX systems by the end of 2004.

Quite a number of what would appear to be vital functions and features of the PSX have been downgraded or removed, which Sony say is to time pressures in hitting an xmas released date. The most surprising omission is of a functioning Ethernet port, clearly vital for accessing online content and sharing content between rooms in a household.

A number of formats will not initially be supported. MP3 playback will be missing, but Sony’s copy-protected ATRAC will be and TIFF and GIF graphics formats, although JPEG will continue to be supported. Two disk formats, CD-R and DVD+RW have also been dropped. The speed of the DVD recording has been halved from x24 to x12 which should have too much of an impact.

Financial analysts have been damning in their views of the changes with Kazumasa Kubota of Okasan Securities has described the PSX as a “publicity stunt”, while Kazuya Yamamoto of UFJ Tsubasa has claimed that “lowering the specifications of the PSX hurt Sony’s image”.

We feel the removals have been more about anti-piracy than a need to “rush” the release and are probably victims of the long-running struggle between Sony’s content and CE division.

Sony PSX site

Xbox Games Respond to Spoken Commands

Two new Xbox games have been released that allow players to control some of the gameplay simply by speaking instructions.

Xbox Live players have been able to talk to each other during game play since the service was launched 18 months ago, but this is the first time Xbox players have been able to control the games functions.

Rainbow Six 3 and SWAT: Global Strike Team are by different games developers but both make use of the voice recognition features that are built into the Xbox developers kit (XDK), making these features available to any games developer. Voice recognition specialist, Fonix, is the supplier of the technology behind it.

Reviews of the games have spoken about how it initially feels strange giving commands to your TV, but when they get past this short-lived barrier found the game play significantly enhanced. It just feel like an natural extension and is particularly useful in games needing control of remote squad of people.

While it is not the first time voice recognitions has been used in video game play, the verdict is generally that this is the best implementation seen to date.

Recently there has been an expansion in the ways to interact with computer consoles. Sony EyeToy, which has been available in the UK for a number of months but that has just been released in the US, being the most notable by introduces players to new ways of interfacing to a game. By placing a camera on top of the TV and plugging it into the PlayStation, the player is able to move their arms, head and other parts of their body, controlling the computer-generated objects in the EyeToy games on the screen. EyeToy is a current favourite at the Digital Lifestyles office and we can see significant expansion in the use of this specific device, in areas such as keep fit training.

Both the voice recognition and the EyeToy are just steps away from the long-standard console interface, the games controller. We feel it is inevitable that additional ways of getting your computer or console to understand what you want or need will become normal, particularly within the home where keyboards and mice are both restrictive and clumsy object to have sitting around waiting to be used.

Fonix

Sony EyeToy

Buy Sony EyeToy – Amazon US|UK

Buy Xbox Rainbow Six 3 – Amazon US|UK

Buy Xbox SWAT: Global Strike Team – Amazon US|UK

Analysis: The FCC Rules to Adopt the Broadcast Flag

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

FCC Order and Report (Word doc)