Digital-Lifestyles

Networking

  • Disney and Intel to Launch “Mickey Symphony”

    Disney and Intel are to launch an interesting broadband content service in Japan – an interactive version of some segments form Fantasia 2000. The three initial sections are “Pomp and Circumstances”. “Rhapsody in Blue” and, always a favourite, “Carnival of Animals”.

    Users will be able to enjoy interactive special effects, arrange the scenes’ backgrounds, and dance with Donald and Daisy. Which can’t be too bad. There’s a preview that I’ve linked to below – though when they say broadband, they mean broadband: it takes ages to load.

    Though currently rather limited in scope, the product hints at what Disney might be able to offer in the future with its rich range of intellectual property.

    Koji Hoshino, President of Walt Disney Japan said: “As a leading media company, Disney is committed to delivering content which satisfies a broad range of consumer demands utilizing new technologies … The achievement with Mickey Symphony has taken us to a new level of content creation and distribution. Intel and Disney, leaders in technology and media respectively, joined forces to create this milestone product in Japan and expect to continue further expansion of our collaborative relationship.”

    Disney believe that this will be just the first of many such products, and that it will act as a catalyst for increasing public demand for broadband content and services.

    Have a look at Mickey Symphony

  • Akimbo Showcase Internet-toTV VOD Service, Make Deal With TBS

    Still can’t find anything worth watching on TV? Akimbo have demoed their internet-to-TV video-on-demand service at the Digital Hollywook show in California this week.

    The service is planned to launch in October, and will deliver thousands of hours of video content to a set-top box, the Akimbo Player via subscribers’ broadband connections.

    The Akimbo system uses a “Que and View” interface and dedicated remote control to allow users to select programmes that they wish to see – for delivery to them for later viewing.

    The Akimbo player holds about 200 hours of video at 1.5 megabits per second, and two of the key advantages are that it doesn’t tie up subscribers’ PCs, nor do they have to watch programmes on a monitor — they can cosy up in their front room. The service will launch at US$9.99 (€8.10) a month, and will include films, music, sports, comedy and drama content amongst others.

    Akimbo, founded and managed by execs from ReplayTV, Macromedia, Microsoft and Apple, has also signed a deal with Turner Broadcasting Systems to license thousands of hours of content from CNN, Cartoon Network, TCM and Boomerang.

    Kevin Cohen, senior vice president and general manager, interactive/enhanced television for TBS said in a statement: “We are pleased to work with Akimbo and are looking forward to learning how consumers respond to this new subscription on-demand technology.”

    Akimbo

  • BT Doubles Bandwidth for Business Customers; Blair Promises Broadband UK 2008

    BT has announced today that it will be doubling the speed of its customers’ Business Broadband Network connections, at no extra cost. Customers on the 512k and 1 meg pipes will be upgraded to Network 1000 and 2000 automatically.

    Customers on the 2 meg service won’t be getting ablistering 4 meg however – instead they’ll see a UK£30 (€44) reduction in their monthly line rental.

    Duncan Ingram, BT Retail’s managing director of Broadband and Internet Services commented: “High bandwidth is no longer a luxury, but a necessity for businesses. Companies now need to have more than one computer attached to a network connection and that’s exactly what our Network products are designed for. Doubling bandwidth, whilst not increasing price, is part of our continuing drive to give our business customers the tools they need to really harness broadband, giving them a clear advantage over competitors and enabling them to punch well above their weight. Not only does it make communication easier, but also enables small businesses to have access to the same applications and services that have traditionally only been open to much larger enterprises.”

    Speaking at the Labour Party Conference in Brighton, the UK PM Tony Blair promised a broadband Britain by 2008, if the country voted Labour: “Our country and its people prospering in the knowledge economy. Increasing by £1bn the investment in science, boosting support to small businesses and ending the digital divide by bringing broadband technology to every home in Britain that wants it by 2008.”

    Broadband is part of a package of ten items that Blair promises as part of a Labour third term. Included amongst them are ID cards and the electronic registration of everyone who passes the UK’s borders.

    Given that it’s not actually the UK government who will be doing the connecting, it’s a bit of a cheeky promise.

    Since BT have already estimated that 99.6% of households will be broadband accessible by July 2005, is Tony saying that voting Labour will delay the whole process by three years?

    BT double bandwidth

  • BT Drops the Cost of Local Loop Unbundling

    For a very long time UK broadband providers have claimed that BT have had an obvious lack of enthusiasm for letting them in to telephone exchanges to install their own equipment, to offer services to rival BT’s. Known in the trade as local loop unbundling (LLU), BT’s rivals see it as the only profitable way to provide broadband and high-speed services, so they don’t have to pay BT for each customer, as they do if BT equipment is used.

    Following on from continuous pressure from Ofcom, the UK super-regulator, and LLU price reductions announced in May, BT has now cut the cost further.. . They put this down to   their investment in new automated processes. From now the cost of a shared LLU line is 62% less than it was in June of this year, the connection charge is now standing at £37 (~$64, ~€52) while the annual rental is £27.12 (~$48, ~€36).  It looks like BT might be on a roll and if it continues, prices may be reduced by up to 70% by the end of the year.

    Ofcom already indicated its enthusiasm for LLU to play a greater role in stimulating competition in the wholesale broadband sector. Last April its chief executive, Stephen Carter, hinted that Ofcom would be proactive in making LLU more attractive to rival operators.

    In real terms, cutting the cost of LLU will encourage the deployment of more 3rd party equipment in BT’s exchanges, giving more choice to UK customers.  As if to prove how serious they are about it, BT is appointing an LLU director of ceremonies.  NTL and Cable & Wireless (Bulldog) have already announced multi-million-pound plans to invest in LLU in the UK, and they must be chomping at the bit to install their kit in BT exchanges and get on with the business of offering a service to their customers.

    The UK is now a respectable 8th in the list of DSL countries, according to the DSL Forum. And as a member of the European Union, it is in the number one DSL region with more than 23 million subscribers.  With lower prices bringing the UK more in line with its European counterparts, and higher speeds, customers should notice improvements as the LLU market in the UK is finally ignited.

    DSL Forum

    Ofcom

  • 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 AmiNET500Amino, 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

  • Pace launch PVR2GO – 1st Mobile PVR for payTV

    Page PVR2GOPace, UK-based supplier for TV-focused technology, announced what they claim is the world’s first mobile personal video recorder of payTV.

    The 40Gb device, which enables the downloading of protected TV content, has an interesting and innovative approach to the display. The device will feature two screens, a large high quality and resolution screen to display the content, with a secondary, smaller strip of screen underneath it that is used for navigating the content. The normal approach to this would be to use a large high quality screen, but in discussion with their Director of Technology, David Gillies explained that Pace would get significant financial saving using this approach.

    The upper high-resolution screen will be a new range, supplied by Samsung, using one quarter of the power a currently available equivalent. Using ‘clever new battery’ technology and other power saving features, the battery life of the device will be at least 3 hours – more than long enough to watch a feature film.

    Unsurprisingly it will also have the ability to play audio files and view photos. One unexpected feature is the ability to play games, the make up of which we assume will be dependant on which OS is installed.

    On the OS question, we were told it would be soft, depending on who the operator customer is. If some purchasing operator has a Set Top Box (STB) with a defined look and feel or EPG, this can also be ported, extending the payTV operators brand to their viewers hand.

    Although a fully working demonstrator was not available, they were showing a version, using the older screen, displaying video content. Given an order, Neil Gaydon, Worldwide Sales and Marketing Director told Digital Lifestyles that they could have it in the market “within six months”.

    Pace Micro

  • GWR enable multi-cast audio network

    In a bid to improve the efficiency of it’s disparate, countrywide 31 radio stations, UK radio broadcaster, GWR Group.

    By using the multi-casing network each GWR site will be able to send live content broadcasts, eg celebrity interviews, to a few, several, or all of its other sites for inclusion in the local programming.

    THUS plc, a UK provider of network services, will be providing a national IP-based Multi-Platform Label Switching (MPLS) platform.

    Now GWR’s data, voice and broadcast traffic have been combined on to one network, adding new radio station sites will be simple and low cost.

    GWR previously led the UK field by being the first radio operator to drive their output from entirely CD-based output.

    GWR Group

    Thus

  • TV-Anytime v2 to include iTV timeshifting

    Today the TV-Anytime Forum, the collective of PVR industry-luminaries and deep-thinkers, announced it would soon complete its second, and final phase of the PVR standard.

    The new phase, whose scope will be frozen in November 2004 will include

    • enabling the saving of interactive TV content to be saved to a PVR
    • a metadata framework enabling innovative advertising models for PVR’s
    • rights management of content, allowing transfer of programming between devices

    We think that the first of these, allowing interactive TV (iTV) content to be saved to the correctly equipped PVR, is the most exciting. The playback of timeshifted iTV content has been the significant missing piece as far we’ve been concerned and if they achieve a standard that can work with any format of iTV content, they will have done very well.

    The initial phase, which was been passed as an ETSI standard (TS 102 822 – “Broadcast and on-line services: Search, select, and rightful use of content on personal storage system”, is being implemented in Europe, the US and Japan, with PVR’s with enhanced functionality expected to launch during 2005.

    Commenting on its widespread adoption, Simon Parnell, chair of TV-Anytime, “The adoption of TVA’s first specification by DVB, ARIB and ATSC shows how important this work will prove to be for the widespread adoption of PVR standards the public can reply on.”

    TV-Anytime