BSkyB’s Director of Product Management, Gerry O’Sullivan couldn’t help sounding smug as he took centre stage at The Connected Home conference in London today.
“Those of you who read the papers may have noticed we bought a small Internet company last Friday,” he announced. “To have a combination of satellite distribution and broadband connectivity solves all problems”.
O’Sullivan’s presentation focused on Sky+ and stated the need for a “whole home solution” but he was keen to distance himself from existing IP-based offerings such as the Windows Media Player.
While Microsoft’s Cynthia Crossley and Telewest’s Mark Horley nodded collaboratively to Merlin Kister of Intel’s assertion that “We mustn’t be close minded and pick a winner. It’s important for all players to work together,” O’Sullivan looked disinterested.
“I’m a fan of Media Player – but my mum doesn’t want a reminder to renew her anti-virus subscription while she’s watching Coronation Street,” he said.
And, in response to an audience show of hands revealing nearly all had regular problems with programme crashes on their PCs, O’Sullivan added:
“There’s zero tolerance (among our customers) for that sort of unreliability and pain…we can only roll out products that you switch on and they work.”
And BSkyB has the money and ambition to keep turning out products it thinks consumers may need – the five day old Sky Gnome for example, enabling you to listen to satellite radio in the garden, or the new movies over IP service, Sky By Broadband – due to launch in the next two weeks.
The third generation Sky+ boxes have 160GB of space – only half are visible to the consumer – the other 80GB of disc space is for BSkyB to keep as a store for future ‘on demand’ programming, O’Sullivan revealed.
Horley mentioned that Telewest was launching its own 160GB PVR in early 2006, with the WHOLE disc available for recording “as we already offer video on demand”.
Sky can’t support true VOD – it’s satellite distribution network has limited bandwidth and lacks an intrinsic return path – but do consumers care?
With Sky+ proving a virtually churn-free proposition (apparently 90 per cent of viewers say they’re very satisfied), Easynet on board and plenty of money in its pocket, O’Sullivan can’t help but smile – looks like BSkyB is onto a winner.
The futuristic vision of a connected home with content moving seamlessly from our TV to our PC and on to our mobile device is still a long way off, according to key speakers at The Connected Home conference in London today.
It took Dimitri Van Kets (pictured left), from Belgian telco, Belgacom, to voice what many were thinking by announcing that the networked home was “little more than a mass of standards” and “too confusing” for the average consumer. Unless the service providers get together and educate customers, he said, true home connectivity was never going to happen.
Paul Szucs of Sony said that service providers should “try not to lose the plot with content protection”, adding that “consumers simply want their devices to work together and share content.”
Last night Apple launched 3 new products (as we 
Front Row gives extremely simple access to content stored on the iMacincluding music through iTunes, videos (including the newly availablevideo content that’s available through iTunes), photos stored in iPhotoand DVD’s though iDVD. The remote works up to 30 feet away from theunit.
Since there’s no base unit (everything is built into the actualdisplay) the amount is space they require is minimal. They’d look justas good on a desk as in the living room.
iTunes 5 was launched with the iPod nano, and a month later there’s nowiTunes 6 to go with the 5th generation model. The main new advance isvideo content, there are now around 2000 music videos available on theiTunes music store (unfortunately there’s still a huge pricedifferential between the US and UK with a music video costing $1.99 inthe US and GBP 1.89 in the UK – with the UK getting panned on price, as usual).
The video aspects of the iTunes store, though limited at the moment,are a major break-through (even ground-breaking) especially with thecurrent shows being available. Disney obviously have a huge amount ofcontent they could make available if all the legal intricacies can besorted. Once one studio cracks, they’ll all follow suit.
Apple’s future has definitely been shaped by the iPod (they sold 1mNanos in 17 days – how many returned was, not surprisingly undefined) which is molding how the company moves forward. 
With the corporate might and phenomonal R&D budgets of Nikon and Canon continuing to create cameras that dominate the dSLR (digital Single Lens Reflex) market, smaller brands are discovering the benefits of pooling their resources to produce rival products.
The partnership will draw on Samsung’s digital image processing technologies, brand recognition and digital convergence technologies while Pentax can offer an established dSLR brand with a huge range of interchangeable lenses. It can’t hurt that Samsung currently are one of the biggest players in LCD screens production.
Samsung’s recent Pro815, an advanced prosumer compact digital camera, attracted praise for its innovation while Pentax’s *ist dSLR range has won many friends, although failing to match the popularity of rival Nikon and Canon products,
Continued growth is predicted for the world-wide digital camera market, with pundits expecting the tally for 2005 to be around 82 million unit sales, soaring to 89 million in 2006. 
According to a study by IDC, instant messaging in the business world is going bonkers and looks set to continue its huge growth, but experts are warning of security risks.
The growth in the enterprise segment is being fuelled by domestic users of IM tools like MSN Messenger bringing their online chatting habits into the work place and using the service as a business collaboration tool.
IMLogic says that the attacks on the IM clients have reached record values – up 14 times on last year – with the complexity of the attacks also increasing.
As the next-generation DVD wars between HD-DVD and Blu-ray Disc grind on, Paramount Home Entertainment has employed a time-honoured fudge and announced that it will be offering movies in both formats. 
Both formats serve up far more storage capacity than current DVD discs, with HD-DVD offering 15GB or 30GB and Blu-ray Disc 25GB or 50GB, depending on the disc.
Paramount was one of the first major content players to back the Toshiba/NEC-developed HD-DVD format, with other major backers including Warner Home Video, HBO, New Line Cinema, Universal Pictures and Sanyo Electric, followed by Intel and Microsoft last week. 
Influential in Paramount’s decision was the PlayStation 3’s support for Blu-ray Disc.
With Sony and Toshiba still enjoying a schoolyard scrap over which of their rival formats should become the standard format for next-generation DVDs, Samsung have announced a nifty compromise that plays both formats.
Although both Blu-Ray and HD DVD use groovy blue laser light to dramatically increase the storage capacity of a DVD-sized optical disc, they work in completely different ways.
Send Your Name To Pluto
It’s fast, but why? Nice solution, but where’s the problem?
That’s… Fast!
Big Brother is Everywhere
Following 
We think that Blu-Ray’s dogged pursuit for high capacity (possibly in the face of Unified DVD), and the fact that Sony are driving Blu-Ray is no coincidence. 
Cover layer thickness difference
Warner Music Group has announced a new digital music distribution mechanism based on downloads rather than physical media like CDs. 
With far lower production costs, Bronfman claimed that the e-label will give recording artists a “supportive, lower-risk environment” (I think this means “less cash from the record company”) without as much pressure for huge commercial hits – something that could benefit artists with a more “selective audience”. 
Bronfman called on the technology industry to work on digital rights management (DRM) standards, arguing that compulsory licensing – with support from P-to-P vendors – would set a price for downloaded music while forcing music companies to make their products available online to P-to-P users.