Category: Platforms

Hutchinson UK have been preparing for launch their 3G services in the UK for at least two years. Oscar Clark, who I originally met in the streaming (video) world, started working for them back then, lining up games companies to produce content for their network.

Hutchinson was originally planning to launch in 2002, but here we are in 2003 and they’re saying it will be March. I suspect it might be 3rd March 03, for the very obvious marketing reasons and if this is the case, how could they have not known previously?

The whole time they’ve been delaying launching, their exclusive deal for Premier league football footage has been ticking away – with none of their customers able to see the content. The cost of the deal was never publicised, but let’s not forget that this deal was signed in the days before ITV digital crashed, so it’s likely to have cost them a lot of cash.

The uphill path to profitability for the 3G operators has been well documented already and when this is combined with the difficulty I think their average consumer is going to find differentiating between the 3G handsets and offerings like the Orange SPV – apart from the £399/£130 price difference – it will be a ‘challenge’.

There have been rumblings of problems with the Microsoft Xbox Live, broadband multi-user gaming service that was launched about a week ago, but they’ve sold out the initial 150,000 $50 units within a week.

They’re also trying to bring a more ‘street’ feel to the product, trying to emulate the big success Sony had doing the same to the PlayStation. MS is building on their current sponsorship of the Vans Triple Crown Series, which covers skateboarding, wakeboarding, surfing, snowboarding, BMX and freestyle motocross.

Vans, the hallowed skateboard brand, are allowing MS to create Xbox Lounges at eleven Vans Skate parks around the US, so the ‘Kids’ can take a rest from skateboarding, pick up an Xbox controller and … err … play virtual skateboarding on Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 4 and three other non-skateboarding games.

MS see the importance of broadening the awareness of online gaming by getting people to recommend it, and to this end Xbox Live will be available at all but two of the sites, only as those sites don’t have broadband connections.

After writing yesterday about lack of households who have their computers connected to their TV, I was prompted to take a look around the technology that may be coming to your lounge soon, allowing your media to be viewed or listened to from different sources.

Intel solution is their Digital Media Adapter (DMA). Containing an Xscale processor and its own interface program displaying on the TV that allows the user to browse images, audio files and video stored on their PC or Media Server via a simple handheld remote control. This is then fed through to the TV or HiFi unit. The DMA and PC can be connected either by cables or wirelessly.

Sony’s RoomLink is currently for sale in Japan and will be having a US spring release at a targeted $199 that appears to work on the same principle. Interestingly RoomLink will only pull media from Sony Vaio computers.

I noticed an illustration of the power of the US media companies in the piece – the US release will not be able to stream DVD video between devices, as the Japanese version does.

What’s not clear is whether Sony is using the Intel’s DMA. If you can drag yourself through the overview video, the style of which is what you might call dry, you’ll see the Sony “Vaio Media” server. Of course it might just be coincidence.

This looks very much like a first step, bridging technology that will fill that gap until TV and audio equipment are produced network enabled. Given the wrangling over digitally held video content, that might be quite a gap.

Nokia have announced their DVB-compliant Mediamaster 230 S to be released in Europe at the end of Q4 2002. Its major new feature is its ability to transfer photo’s from Bluetooth 1.1 capable cameras to store and view on the TV.

Sadly storage is limited to thirty images and apart from the high-end Sony camcorders and some camera-phones such as the Nokia 7650, there isn’t currently a huge choice of Bluetooth cameras around.

But generally a good move that will start to strengthen Bluetooth uptake – goodness knows it needs it.

Sad news in the UK as rumours that Video-Networks, the ADSL-delivered VOD provider, is in discussions with its backers about its on-going viability.

They’re blaming BT’s high prices for ADSL, but I think they were more damaged by BT’s slower than promised rollout of ADSL when they launched their North-West London service three years ago, which has lead them to only reach 15,000 subscribers.

I’ve been using a TiVo for the last for a couple of months and thought I’d give my initial impressions.

As soon as TiVo/ReplyTV was announced I have been thinking of getting one but felt £400 was an unreasonable cost, so when I saw them for £150, it felt like the right time to buy.

The setup and installation wasn’t very painful. Connecting it was a little long-winded but this is to be expected considering the number of boxes it connects to – the TV, a DTT (free-to-air digital STB), and VHS. The setup of the channels was pretty much automatic.

A couple of initial teething problems were quickly sorted out by the excellent phone support. The most annoying was the incredibly slow speed the TiVo changed channels on the STB, but by using the supplied Infra Red extension lead and making a menu change it was soon improved.

It’s very easy to understand the basic function of the system, as the built-in software has been excellent with the different routes to recording the shows being pretty flawless. Over the period there’s been a number of software upgrades which arrive and are installed without your intervention – which just reminds you of how easy computing should be but hardly ever is.

Pausing live TV has been less useful to me that the marketing material lead me to expect. What has been good is the ability to rewind the live broadcast to hear something that you might have misheard or missed, as the TiVo constantly records and stores the previous 30 minutes of the channel you’re watching. If you change channel the recording buffer starts again.

Of course the Season Pass is a great boon. This allows you to automatically record, for example, every time that Dr Katz is shown (Wow, Dr Katz has to be the best show on TV – brilliantly observed). Just set it up and you get a chance to watch a number of them in a row.

The only slight bugbear was when a schedule overran the end of show was sometimes cut off. This has now been got around by a software update that allows you to extend the finishing time of the recording.

The hard drive filled up pretty quickly as the novelty of recording lots and not deleting anything took over, but a concerted effort of archiving to VHS cured that.

Sadly you have to select and tape each individually and one improvement to the software would be if you could tag a number of shows to archive to VHS and let it save them all to tape. Perhaps the reasons why it might into have been included is in an attempt to placate the media owners who can be a prickly bunch.

Conclusions

TiVo is really a preview of what on-demand TV will be like.

After TiVo I hardly every watch live TV these days and it’s leading me to widen my viewing as I’ll record something and take a quick preview of the show to see if it’s the same as described and enjoyable.

My belief in on-demand content is what lead me to setup LemonTV in ’99. There are times when you want content to wash over you, ie live TV, but most of the time you want to watch what interests, appeals or stimulates you.

In the real World there are two problems; with huge amounts of on-demand content there needs to be a way for the potential viewer of finding what they like and obviously there is a need to make money from the content.

My long held belief is that one solution to this is scheduled broadcast TV show that is effectively a ‘shop window’ for the available programming. The viewers then have the option to pay for time-shifted content, whether this is a small amount of money for shows that have already been broadcast or a lot of money if it’s in advance of their scheduled broadcast.

The TiVo must be good – I’m seriously thinking of adding a second hard drive to up the capacity.

Intel and Sonicblue are device that Intel’s Emerging Platforms Lab were showing in July, although this isn’t mentioned in the news piece. The big change for this version of the device is the access to TV shows, as it will be able to download content stored on your ReplayTV.

UK-based company, TVcompass, has been stepping up the publicity for its forthcoming digital TV adaptor. It’s an exciting company with strong, good, new thinking behind its products.

The DTT box is due to be available from spring 2003, they’re planning aggressive pricing of £29 which is highly favourable against its current main competitor, the £99 box from Pace. This isn’t going to do Pace any favours, coming so closely after their recent news of selling Sky their boxes below their actual manufacturing costs.

TVcompass say they can subsidise the retail price because their business model relies on ongoing income from selling products and services that are synchronised to normal TV broadcasts.

They’re using the model that I thought for a long time would be a route to success. People viewing TV don’t want to have supplementary information plastered all over their favourite TV show as interactive TV currently does. It makes sense to have the information on another device – in the future I see this as a half A4 tablet form displaying a rendition of what’s on the TV with, if needed information overlayed – to allow for hot-spots on the video. TVcompass see it as a colour square display on the remote.

They’re also doing the smart thing of making the remote a network device. Communication isn’t via Infra-Red, instead it uses Bluetooth, enabling proper two-way traffic between remote and base-station and gives a decent transfer rate allowing graphics to be transferred to the remote.

The only things that’s not currently clear is how users selections and orders will go on the return path from the home to the fulfilment house, as they state the unit will have no need to connect it to a phone line.

Their available-now product is TV listings on PDA’s, not a new idea. DigiGuide has been doing this successfully for quite a while BUT TVcompass done a deal with BBC Worldwide to brand its service as RadioTimes (the most popular and oldest listings magazine in the UK).

A wise move for a number of reasons:-

• An instant income stream of £14.95 a year per user with, I suspect, a strong margin;
• They get great profile/standing from being associated with the BBC and RadioTimes.
• More importantly, they get access to programme schedules – enabling them to synchronise the TVcompass interactive content with the TV shows.
• And when all PDA’s are wireless-enabled, people will be able to use their PDA’s in the same way as TVcompass are using their remotes.

There is one possible fly-in-the-ointment for TVcompass. They may hit a problem with distribution as I suspect the dominant UK electronic retailer Dixon may not stock the product. Word in the market is that Dixons have been building up a big stock of the old ITVDigital boxes and planned to sell them at £79 to undercut the Pace box.