IPTV – Page 4 – Digital-Lifestyles

Interview With JD Lasica, Co-Founder, Ourmedia.org

During our preparation of our news piece on the launch of OurMedia today, we had a quick chat with JD Lasica, that we thought you might like to see. It gives a glimpse of the future for Ourmedia.

Ourmedia Launches Community Site For Podcasters And Vloggers DL: Is the site entirely bankrolled by Brewster Kahle (The Internet Archive) or are there plans to raise revenue through advertising/affiliate programs etc?

JD Lasica: The Internet Archive is providing free storage and bandwidth, and that won’t change. We’re also getting subsidized hosting from Bryght (a Drupal site), and Marc Canter’s Broadband Mechanics has kicked in some dough to pay for some programmers in New Delhi to get us across the finish line. Other than that, it’s been an entirely open source effort.

We plan to meet soon with some foundations. An infusion of grant monies would go a long way toward taking us to the next level. We have a very long road map of features and improvements we’re planning.

Marc and I are still discussing revenue models. We won’t clutter up the site with banner ads. But we are open to the prospect of corporate sponsors in addition to foundation underwriters. It certainly seems that the kinds of digital creativity we’re helping to enable would attract a wide swath of companies involved with helping consumers create personal media.

DL: Sadly, I imagine that scammers, spammers, porn merchants and ne’er do wells will be attracted to this venture like a moth to a flame. What measures have you in place to keep these undesirables at bay – or will the site remain a free-for-all with no censorship (past legal necessities)?

JD Lasica: It won’t be a free for all. We have a good-sized team of moderators around the world (including Britain) who will be watching everything that’s published on the site. The two big rules are: no porn and no copyrighted material (unless it falls within the scope of what we Yanks call fair use).

We won’t be the censorship police, so we expect a wide range of media that won’t be to everyone’s tastes. For those who violate our site rules, we’ll be relying on our team of volunteer moderators to shut them down, much as Wikipedia does.

DL: What measures have you taken in case of copyright disputes?

JD Lasica: Our site rules spell out the steps a copyright owner should take if he or she believes their copyright has been infringed. We respect U.S. copyright laws, so you won’t see Metallica mp3s winding up here — unless Lars himself uploads them.

DL: Is there a long term plan as such, or are you going to ‘go with flow’ and see where the venture takes you?

JD Lasica: We have a long road map of immediate features, functionalities and fixes that need addressing, and a longer-term plan for versions 2 and 3, which will incorporate more social networking functions, ratings, improved search, and so on.

DL: You mention that you will be getting involved with P2P – are there any other technologies up your sleeve?

JD Lasica: We’ll be looking at BitTorrent right away. I’m attaching a press release about some of the other things we’re doing.

One interesting item that will be rolling out soon: We’ll be working with Jon Udell and Doug Kaye to devise a standard for what we’re calling a media clipping service. Users will be able to cite a particular portion of a video or audio clip (a 2-minute dialogue that falls in the middle) rather than just point to the entire clip.

Here’s our version 2 roadmap as of this moment: http://www.socialtext.net/ourmedia/

DL: Thanks for sparing us time when you must be busy.

JD Lasica is co-founder of Ourmedia.org, author of “Darknet: Hollywood’s War Against the Digital Generation” (May 2005) and Senior editor of the Online Journalism Review.

He also writes the following blogs:

http://newmediamusings.com
http://darknet.com
http://socialmedia.biz/

IF… TV Goes Down The Tube – The Media 2016

I was asked to be lead technical advisor to a TV show, that was originally called IF … Media 2012. Over the last six months of script alterations and shooting the direction has changed, but finally the docu-drama is airing at 11:20pm BBC2.

It’s part of the highly respected BBC’s IF … series and it examines where TV may go in the next seven years. The piece is designed to give you some further background.

There’s little doubt that the media is changing significantly … and we haven’t even reached 2012.

Computers turned office life upside down. Now they’re focused on changing entertainment.

Each stage of the process – creation, distribution, and consumption is being altered, apparently inextricably leading us to the realisation of the long-held digital mantra (repeat after me) – What You Want, When You Want, Where You Want or WYW3 as it’s may become known as.

For those of you who haven’t downloaded and faithfully listened to the podcast of this chant on your media player, let me clarify – you will be able to access/consume any piece of media (text/audio/video/etc), on what ever device you have handy, no matter where you are.

Sadly the dream starts to falls apart at this point, because your commercial music or videos will only play on equipment approved by the owner of the content (more on that later).

Change is Afoot – High Definition

The Consumer Electronics companies have been spending a huge amount of effort promoting High Definition TV (HDTV) around the content production industries. They’re telling everyone that 2005/2006 is the year that HD will start to become a major driver for buying new TV equipment.

For those who haven’t watched HDTV on a large screen – let me tell you, it’s impressive. It looks far more real that Standard Definition (SD) and makes a return to watching SD difficult.

Will the dazzle of HD blind the buying public to the loss of control they will have over what they previously thought of as “their media”?

What do I mean, loss of control? Well, there are changes underway which mean that what you previously did without thinking (eg. recording a TV show, backing up a DVD) will become difficult, and in a lot of cases illegal.

Encrypted to the Eyeball

The companies that produce/own audio recordings, video, TV shows and films don’t trust the general public (a director of a large film distributor used those very words to me). Because they don’t trust you, they want to ensure that throughout the value chain (their words – meaning from production, to you watching it), the content will remain encrypted. The only time it’s not encrypted, is when it leaves the screen or speakers and hits your eyes/ears.

This way of locking the content, called Digital Rights Management (DRM), can also restrict other factors such as, whether you can record or how long a recording can be kept for.

DRM protection is intrinsically flawed. It can be broken and traversed. Aware of this, Governments have been lobbied and they‘re making it illegal to examine how a DRM scheme might work.

In Europe this legislation is called the EU Copyright Directive (EUCD), and in the US, it’s the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act ).

Given this, it will be illegal and you will be open to prosecution, if you use a program to take a copy of disc if it has copy protection on it., unless you use an approved application. What you can do with your media will be directly controlled by its rights holder.

If you want to watch films in HD resolution in the future, you will need to ensure that your equipment (Set Top Box, screen, etc) all have a HDMI interface and are able to support HDCP (High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection).

After 1 July this year, it will be against US law to manufacture or sell equipment that is capable of handling/recording HD material, if they do not recognise what is referred to as the Broadcast Flag – a copyright flag that is controlled by the broadcaster. Indeed to qualify for a European “HD Ready” label equipment must support HDCP.

Old equipment might have problems. All those who have bought their dream 42” plasma screen, had better check around the back. If you don’t have full HDMI/DHCP support, your £5,000 screen will be of no use for HD content.

The Content Explosion

While content created by the current commercial entities, like studios, will become more restricted, the good news is that the places that we’ll be able to source media from will increase substantially. It won’t just be from what are currently thought of as “normal” sources.

With a TV connected to a broadband connection (and they will be broad by 2012), you will be able to access the content from around the connected world. Any subject you imagine will have content available about it.

If you’re finding it hard to visualise, think WH Smiths in 1970. Back then the whole range of magazines available to you would have been about 20. These days the groaning shelves take up half of the shop and there are 100’s of regular magazines available to you.

User Generated Content

We are in a period of an explosion of User generated content. It’s no news that this type of content is going to be huge, but it will also be diverse, plentiful and importantly, quite well indexed.

The first few rungs on the Bandwidth Ladder have been reached. Blogging tools, essentially word processors for the Web (they print Web pages not paper), have enabled people to simply generate huge amounts of content online.

Audio content is currently seeing a lot of increase through Podcasting. Already the breadth and depth of the programming available is impressive.

Video is less prevalent and some way off. The delivery and receipt of it are all possible. It’s the generation of original content that is very time consuming, as it is currently cumbersome.

The public creating programming by using pre-made segments of content, is far more achievable. But where do the segments come from?

The BBC Creative Archive is important

The Creative Archive – started as an inspirational idea. The BBC has thousands of hours of content (audio & video) in its archive, This content has already been produced and paid for by the licence payers of the UK.

The inspiration of pioneers of the project was to make this archive content available for people to be able to download, watch, re-edit and create new programming from, to share with the UK. Ideal.

Since the project was floated the BBC has been very good at making the right sounds about it – and have generated interest in the idea around the world.

I hope that the loss of Paula LeDieu a joint- head of the project will not be too big a blow. I also hope the BBC delivers what it has spoken about – a wide range of free programming, which can be freely edited.

To maintain its highly regarded position in the world, the BBC must not continue to make bold new media statements, only to not deliver them. Failure to do so will reflect badly on the whole of the BBC.

Ofcom – Hands off the Internet

Given the restrictions that will be hoisted on to users of media, it is all the more important that there is no restriction on flow of information that can come down your Internet connection. By 2012 this will include your radio and TV.

Having been technical supervisor for the show, seeing the script going through the twists and turns before coming to life – the decision to bring the dark side of IPTV (Internet delivered TV) to centre stage disappointed me.

I felt the programme helps the argument of those who want to control and restrict the Internet and the video/audio it could provide, missing the opportunity to highlight the many great advantages about having a free IP-based media.

I feel it’s important that the limitation of what people can access over the Internet is decided by the individual or household, not an external, overseeing Quango like OfCom.

Conclusion

As with any massive change, there are going to be advantages and disadvantages. I think the advantages of a new form of media, where everyone is able to contribute is a good thing. Any objectionable programmes like The Cage, while they may generate a lot of headlines, are ultimately insignificant when weighed against the advantages against a freer media.

It is vital to a healthy society that expressions are freely available to all, without restriction.

If you see the show, it would be great to hear your thoughts simon(at)Digital-Lifestyles.info.

>BBC IF …

Digital TV Grows In Europe, DTTV And IPTV Flourish: Reports Strategy Analytics

Digital TV Grows In Europe As More Consumers Adopt DTTV And IPTV Platforms Digital television continued to grow in Europe last year, according to a Strategy Analytics’ survey of more than 70 digital television operators across 16 countries.

The analysts say 25.7 percent of Europe’s TV households, acquired digital television by the end of 2004, up from 21.1 percent during 2003, with credit for the success down to services such as DTTV (Digital Terrestrial television) and IPTV (Internet Protocol television).

“The arrival of successful DTTV and IPTV services is shaking up the established digital television market,” says Martin Olausson, Senior Analyst. “New business models such as free-to-air and bundled services will add further impetus to market growth.”

According to the market research, Europe’s DTTV operators – such as the UK’s FreeView and Germany’s free-to-air broadcasters – added a hefty 4.4 million subscribers during 2004.

Meanwhile, providers of IPTV – such as France’s Free and Italy’s Fastweb – boosted their user base by 450,000.

All the signs are that DTTV will continue to grow rapidly as more countries establish services, with a predicted user base of 42.2 million households by 2010.

IPTV is expected to have become an established fourth digital platform by that time, with an estimated 11.3 million subscribers.

Satellite is still the numero uno digital television platform in Europe, reaching 25.0 million households at the end of 2004, with further growth expected with new services such as HDTV.

Cable put in an unexpectedly solid performance, registering the best user uptake for three years, adding1.2 million new digital subscribers. Strong growth is predicted, as penetration is still low with only 16 percent of all cable subscribers currently taking a digital service.

Strategy Analytics

SBC sign $400m Microsoft IPTV/TVIP Deal

SBC, the largest supplier of DSL connections in the USA, has announced a deal to spend $400m (~€307m, ~£215m) with Microsoft over the next ten years to purchase their Internet Protocol TV (IPTV) software. SBC has been testing Microsoft’s IPTV platform since June 2004 and they now intend to start field trials in mid-2005 and plan commercial availability in late 2005.

The Microsoft product, whose official name is a bit of a mouthful – Microsoft TV IPTV Edition, provides comprehensive security including subscriber and end-to-end digital rights management (DRM), enabling the content to be taken on to the portable devices that support Microsoft’s DRM.

In the first quarter of 2005, construction is due to begin on the SBC “Project Lightspeed”, the company’s initiative to deploy fibre closer to customer locations, providing significant amounts of bandwidth. It is expected to reach 18 million households by the end of 2007.

Microsoft have, of course, had enough opportunity to get TVIP software right. It has been estimated that Microsoft has spent up to $20Bn pursuing their ambitions of being the supplier of choice for TV software for the next-generation of Set Top Boxes (STB’s). We briefly used Microsoft’s TVIP service at IBC this year and found it pretty impressive.

This is the second major TV announcement for Microsoft this month following the Comcast deal.

As the world moves to IP-delivered content, and the source of that content becomes significantly less important, the power that sits with the broadcaster today becomes transferred to the owner/supplier of the box that is used to access the content – the gatekeeper. It is likely that there will normally only be one gatekeeper per household. The race is now on for companies to establish themselves in that role.

SBC
Microsoft IPTV

Akimbo IP-VOD to Sell Through Amazon

Akimbo IP-VOD We’ve been keeping our eye on Akimbo, an IP-delivered VOD (Video-On-Demand) service and have learnt that they are launching and have signed on Amazon.com as its official retailer. Akimbo has just launched its video-on-demand service and signed on Amazon.com as its official retailer. Akimbo is to video what Apple’s iTunes is to the iPod. The Akimbo Player, utilising an easy “Queue and View” format is a set-top box that delivers hundreds of mainly niche program videos to television through a broadband-Internet connection allowing consumers to choose content and view it on-demand – or maybe even later.

Amazon.com will be the exclusive retailer for the 2004 holiday season, and the Akimbo Player which can hold about 200 hours of video, is now available in the Amazon.com Electronics store for US$229.99 (~£125, €180) [Buy]. Consumers can sign up for the Akimbo Service by visiting their site at a cost of US$9.99 (~ £5, €8.10) a month. Sadly, for content licensing reasons we assume, it’s only available in the US currently.

The service offers consumers 50 categories of content, including mainstream, classic and independent films, foreign language, news, health and fitness, sports, children’s programs, and education. At no additional charge you can download old series such as “The Jewel In the Crown” from Granada International, consult comprehensive independent film catalogues from Undergroundfilm, GreenCine, Amaze Films, and IFILM. Or you can receive news specials and features from CNN, more conventional classic movies from Turner Classic Movies and cartoon episodes from the Cartoon Network. Premium services are also available for access to foreign language programming.

The Akimbo Player utilizes widely adopted technology for playback including Windows Media 9 technologies for audio and video compression, and digital rights management. The Akimbo Service automatically delivers an onscreen program guide and subscribers choose which programming they would like to download to the Akimbo Player. Then, each time Akimbo Service subscribers turn on their TVs, they have new videos, previews and editorial information waiting for them.

Akimbo has competition from other VOD suppliers waiting in the wings, including Disney’s Moviebeam, TiVo and Netflix, all who have plans for 2005.

Akimbo

Buy Akimbo Player from Amazon

TI to put DVB-H in Single Chip

Texas Instruments have just announced they will be building a single chip that will that will allow cell phones to receive digital television broadcasts over a wireless network.

Currently if a mobile phone manufacturer wanted to do this they would have to include three separate chips – a TV tuner, a signal demodulator and a channel decoder, but the TI chip, codenamed “Hollywood”, includes all this functionality already. “Hollywood” will support two emerging digital and open TV standards for the wireless industry – the European, DVB-H (Digital Video Broadcasting – Handheld); and the Japanese Integrated Services Digital Broadcasting – Terrestrial (ISDB-T).

Texas Instruments say that the chip will be able to receive a live TV broadcast at up to 30 frames per second, twice the rate that some of today’s top notch phones display video clips.

While the chip is already being trialled, manufacturers probably won’t receive samples until 2006, pushing commercial deployment to 2007.

It’s unclear if users will watch TV on a tiny mobile screen. Furthermore, it is not yet known which mobile phone manufacturers will provide the phones, although Nokia, who announced last year that they are going to put television tuners into all their cellphones, (having already done so with the 7700) could be a contender.

A time might come when we forget what the mobile phone is really for. We’ll be so busy playing music and video games, taking photographs, or watching TV that receiving a call will become an irritating nuisance.

Texas Instruments

McCain’s US Bill seeks $1Bn for Digital TV

The world over there is a general move towards replacing analogue television with digital. US Senate Commerce Committee chairman, John McCain has now raised the stakes.. His proposed bill calls for analogue switch off by 2009 but offers financial aid. Current law requires broadcasters either to give up their current airwaves by 2007, or when 85 percent of the nation can receive the new digital signals – whichever comes later. Many US TV stations already broadcast both digital and analogue signals, but few Americans own digital television sets, which are currently a lot more expensive than their more traditional counterparts.

McCain proposes a bill that that would require broadcasters to switch off analogue signals by 2009 and would subsidise the cost of consumers upgrading their equipment to digital. Currently there are about 70 million analogue sets in the US. Even though the Federal Communications Commission has mandated that by July 2007 all new television sets with screens 13 inches or larger must be able to receive digital signals, the fear is that digital TV will not be universal by then. This is because, according to the Consumer Electronics Association, Americans replace their sets only every eight to 10 years – messing up the math for the lawmakers.

McCain argues that it will take $1 billion to make the shift and this magic sum will be garnered through a rather circuitous route. When the government) gets their hands on the airwaves that broadcasters are now using, they will probably auction it for commercial wireless services, and this could potentially earn billions of dollars, and Senator McCain’s $1 billion would come from the auction proceeds.

Some of this $1 billion could also be used as a benevolent fund to enable people who do not have a digital television set to install a pay television service that would either offer them the new signals or a converted signal they could see. This will allow millions of consumers to continue watching television once broadcasters begin airing only in digital. Understandably though, those same broadcasters are concerned about their signals being switched back into analogue after they have spent millions of dollars upgrading their facilities to offer digital.

McCain’s draft legislation gives priority to those households that rely solely on over-the-air television, and in particular lower-income homes. The legislation is scheduled to be considered by the committee on Wednesday, but it is hard to anticipate any meaningful progress since Congress is trying to adjourn by early October and the U.S. House of Representatives has not acted as yet.

If the Bill is passed analogue -only television sets made after September 2005 will be obliged to include a warning label stating that without additional equipment, it would not work after 2008.

So far the UK government has rejected any call for it to contribute to the public’s cost of making the change to digital TV. McCain’s bill will give further weight to those who feel they should.

BT Broadband Delivered TV – This Month it’s on

The rumours of UK incumbent teleco BT considering a broadband-delivered video service have been circulating again.

It is often said that you can tell if it is an odd or even numbered month by seeing if BT is saying it is launching a broadband service or not.

The latest rumours are that BT would work with Sky. BT has been getting cosy with Sky over many years. It started when Sky wanted to ensure a return path from their Set Top Boxes (STB’s) and had BT install a phone line specifically for this purpose each time a new Sky customer signed up. This relationship continued to grew to include BT offering their customers pricing bundles.

It has been known for some time that BT has been in discussions with makers of Freeview boxes. They are exploring the idea of combining this with downloaded content, distributed to the consumer via broadband.

ZDNet UK reports a currently running 100-household trial with London-based BT employees. They proffer the commercial rollout could be achieved as early as Summer 2005.

There are two broadband-TV services in the UK; HomeChoice, with operates in London; and KIT running in Kingston-upon-Hull. Both have been delivering service for many years over their own networks.

There is a fly in ointment. One of the major problems with delivering broadcast-quality video to households was introduced by BT when, while trumpeting their price reductions, they set limits on the amount of data that could be downloaded in a month. With video being the most data hungry application, this could preclude the delivery of video to the home without an additional charge being incurred. Unless of course BT lift those limits for their own video service …

Amino shows tiny IPtv PVR STB

Amino AmiNET500 Amino, the broadcast electronics company based in Cambridge, UK, have unveiled the AmiNET500, a tiny, low-cost, Internet Protocol Television (IPtv) set top box with built in PVR. The diminutive 184mm x 240 x 56 box can hold up to 40 hours of programming on its 80Gb drive. It runs on a Linux platform and uses a Java-based PVR application

Amino have taken a flexible approach to delivering content to the box. The AmiNET500 will monitor the speed of the broadband connection and will enable the uploading of content for later replay if, bandwidth is insufficient for live delivery.

Amino plan to support leading DRM and conditional access systems and, if protection is used, the programming will be stored encrypted on the hard drive. Delivery of content around the home, to different STB’s is also possible with this machine. Presumably the disparate STB’s will need to be able to decode the encrypted material.

The first vision of the box, destined for US release is available form October and the European version in early 2005.

Amino Communications

Bluewin to Trial Microsoft Broadband TV

Bluewin, a subsidiary of Swisscom, will be the first operator in Europe to trial a pay-TV service with Microsoft over broadband internet connections. Using set-top boxes, the 600 home trial will feature up to 25 television channels, a pay-per-view service and PVR functions. Beginning in September, he trial will run for four months, before the the true launch of the service in Switzerland.

Tim Fritzley of Microsoft TV said: “As the first operator in Europe to trial pay-TV services powered by the Microsoft TV IPTV platform, Bluewin is now able to offer its DSL customers competitive, next-generation TV services, both broadcast and on-demand, combined with innovative communications and information services. The huge advantage of this technology is that it is interactive and has made delivery of television programmes possible on-demand”.

Testers will have to pay for the service: €15.50 (UK£10.41) for the 25 channels, with pay-per-view films costing between €1.95 and €6.50 (UK£1.31 to UK£4.37).

The bandwidth required for the service will be around 1.2 and 1.4 megabits. Switzerland has around 700,000 broadband customers, Bluewin serving the majority of them with 390,000 subscribers.

Bluewin