Digital Rights Management (DRM)

Free Mobiles; Technology Terror?; RIAA Boycott – Teenage Tech News Review
Handy… Literally!
Engadget has a story on how Montclair State University in New Jersey is handing out free phones to it’s students to enable them to easier communicate with each other. The handsets feature software which allows them to receive “channels” of information, which users sign up for. These channels include things like the dinner menu and the location of the university’s shuttle buses, as well as channels students have set up of their own.
I can admit I am actually kind of jealous of this: I would love the ability to be able to do this at school, checking up on when holidays are, what’s on the menu, and what my time-table’s like. Sadly, I think my school would have some difficulty in preventing the chavs from selling them on eBay, which of course is an entirely different issue.
This is the problem with technology like this: Those most likely to adopt it are, by default, young people, who therefore can’t afford it. Give it to them instead then, and a select few will take advantage of that. Technology like this, for now, is only for older people I think. This isn’t to say it isn’t exciting though: I still find socio-technological implementations, usually referred to as MoSoSo (Mobile Social Software), fascinating, as although there isn’t yet much of a market for these sorts of services, there will inevitably be, and when there is, it could well change the way we communicate with each other forever.
Sounds nasty!
Everyone over here in Europe likes to text, or “txt” for short. I’m not entirely sure how popular the practice is over in the US, but in the UK it’s used mainly by teenagers, although others use it too, because of it’s extremely low cost in comparison to making voice calls.
The New York Times is reporting that apparently, using SPAMming techniques, it should be possible to flood a cities GSM infrastructure by sending as little as 165 text messages a second into the network. This is made possible because text messages use the same communications infrastructure and network that voice calls are made to as well. Imagine what could happen if someone flooded a network, so that no calls could be made, and then at the same time a co-ordinated terrorist attack occurred. People would be unable to call the emergency services, and wide-spread carnage and destruction would occur.
This is particularly scary for me, as I would be at a loss in an emergency without my phone: It’s central to how I find people and communicate with them, and when I really need to get in touch with them, I wouldn’t be able to. This reliance and taking for granted of technology is something that most of my generation are likely guilty of, and when everything does kick off and there’s no electricity, phones or water, I would have severe doubts that a lot of them would be able to cope with it.
It was only really recent events (London bombings) that brought this to my attention, but it has made me realise that reliance on technology could be very turned around and be used against us.
That lot again
Yes, that’s right, the RIAA are at it again: A short time ago, a case against a mother on her daughter’s behalf of file sharing was dismissed in court. Now, the RIAA are back, but this time, they’re not suing the mother but her 14-year old daughter.
People like the RIAA make me so, so angry: At 14, no-one really knows what they’re doing. So a little girl downloaded some of her favourite songs from the Internet. That little girl was probably a paying customer as well, but her pocket money just wasn’t enough, and she just wanted to hear one more song by her favourite artist, but couldn’t afford it. Her friend said “you can get it for free from here”, and so that’s what the girl did. Next thing she knew, the very company she was a customer of, was sending threatening letters to her, demanding thousands of dollars in compensation.
Is this the right way of treating your customers? I know for sure it is one great way of driving them away. If you are in my position at the moment, of having a good few thousand songs you enjoy, then stop buying music unless it is from your local bands or from an independent label. It might sound an unrealistic expectation, but I have found so many great bands on the Internet and locally at pubs and other music venues, that I am quite confident I will never be giving another penny to those greedy folks over at the RIAA.
You can do something about it though, by going to www.boycott-riaa.com. Every little helps!
That would be my rant for the day, have a nice weekend :-)
7 October, 2005
SanDisk ‘Gruvi’ TrustedFlash: Content On Memory Carts
SanDisk have unveiled their “fingernail-sized” new TrustedFlash cards, a technology that embeds Digital Rights Management (DRM) and decryption technology into memory cards, and also includes a subscription manager enabling the cards to be used for digital subscription music services.
Speaking at the CTIA Wireless show, SanDisk Chief Executive Eli Harar said, “We think this will be a disruptive technology, but will enable a whole new world of opportunities in the mobile market.”
“Today content is locked to play back on one device. Now we have the freedom to enjoy content on whatever device consumers want to use,” he added.
Harar stated that the TrustedFlash card would act like current SD cards, with the technology able to be extend into on-demand content such as feature films and online games.
Despite their speck-like proportions – a mere 18 mm long and 2g in weight – the cards can offer enough storage space to hold thousands of DRM-protected MP3, films, photographs or games.
The “Gruvi” (what?!) cards use the micro SD card interface so they can be slotted into mobile phones, GPS devices, MP3 players and computers.
Users of the card could, for example, buy a video online, view it on their home PC, save it to the TrustedFlash card and then slap the card into their PDA/smartphone for watching on the move later.
SanDisk are also hoping that content providers like music companies, film suppliers and mapping data companies will ship preloaded Gruvi cards with the content protected against copying by TrustedFlash.
The first batch of cards using TrustedFlash will be preloaded with the Rolling Stones’ new CD “A Bigger Bang,” due for a November release with the 265MB card costing $39.95 (£22, €33) – What?!? How Much?!?
The Stones’ release will also hold four additional albums that can be unlocked for an extra fee.
SanDisk hopes that the new cards – expected in the UK by Christmas – will eventually reduce the costs of buying music.
Pedro Vargas, SanDisk’s director of mobile entertainment, said that the price was justified by the extra capacity and flexibility on offer, and that he expected prices to drop over time.
In the future, the cards could be used to play content from subscription music services such as Yahoo Music and Napster.
Subscribers could download the DRM-protected songs onto the chip and play them back on any suitably equipped MP3 player, with the DRM continually checking the subscription status (so if the subscriber hasn’t kept up with their payments – whoosh! – no more music!)
SanDisk are producing the new cards in capacities ranging from 256MB to 4GB and expect them to debut in October followed by a complete rollout to be completed by March 2006.
SanDisk
28 September, 2005
Open Media Common: Sun’s Open-Source DRM
Sun’s Chief Operating Officer Jonathan Schwartz has been speaking at the Progress and Freedom Foundation Aspen Summit about how incompatible strains of DRM from different companies will not be good for the consumer.
Now, we don’t have the benefit of having heard his speech, but it strikes us that he’s a little late to this party. This idea is hardly news to anyone who’s spent more that half a day thinking about the future of digital media. Projects like Coral Consortium have been underway for sometime, exactly for this reason – but at this time Coral is proprietary.
Jonathan’s proposal to elevate the problems on incompatible DRM systems is Open Media Commons, which would be an open-source, royalty-free digital-rights management standard.
It appears that his idea is to launch the idea/project, not deliver a solution tomorrow. He’s offering to start it off by giving Project DReaM, to an internal Sun Labs project, to the initiative. The strange collection of capitalisation around Project DReaM is derived from “DRM/everywhere available.”
Where this type of headline-grabbing announcement is great, is in starting to bring the debate about who should own/benefit from the locking mechanism placed around digital media to the fore again.
It also panders to the media companies who are generally _totally_ paranoid/fed up with having to not only use a protection scheme they don’t own, but also to pay Microsoft for the pleasure of selling their snippets of media to the general public – each and every time they do.
Reuters, who broke the story, got this quote from Jonathan, “The industry generally falls into two camps: Those who support what we’re up to and others who want to collect a fee” for using their own DRM standards.
If it does nothing more that stopping or delaying a media company in making their decision to sign with one of the major DRM providers, then we suspect Jonathan would be pleased.
Jonathan has over the last year, been blog-tastic, writing long, detailed postings about many things – he’s clearly not someone who sleeps a great deal. A lot of his entries have been about open source, indeed in June Sun started to open-source their Operating System (OS) with the project OpenSolaris and Java server software, calling it Glassfish. Not only that, but they have an Open-Source Officer, Simon Phipps.
All of these actions are designed to attacking any income that their competitors (including Microsoft) derive from selling software. Sun, of course, is also in the hardware business, which conveniently will run the open source software.
What we do find a little strange is there are no references to Open Media Commons or Project DReaM on Sun’s Web Site.
While it is good that a company as large/established as Sun is talking about opening DRM up, not to be locked in to any single provider of DRM – we’re not yet convinced that this particular idea has a solid ring about it.
Open Media Commons – Updated
SunSource
The Progress & Freedom Foundation
Jonathan Schwartz’s blog
Sun Micro shows open-source DRM project
22 August, 2005
Oz Gov Give Away Data; DRM Chips On Motherboards; Apple’s Mighty Mouse – Teenage Tech News Review
Australian Government Sells Servers Containing Confidential Information
Let’s start this week’s news with some nice, old-fashioned, technological paranoia: As a teenager, you start to realise that giving everyone your mobile number, letting people know where you live and freely handing out your email address can be a bad thing. Imagine my surprise then when I found out that the Australian government had sold 18 of its servers at a government auction, all carrying confidential information, without erasing any data from them. “Who did they sell these to?” I hear you ask … Well no, it’s not some big company, it’s an individual called Geoffrey Huntley, who has his own blog and who promptly wrote about the issue of these servers having confidential information on them at sale. Using a basic knowledge of AIX, the operating system these servers were running, it was then possible to access all the information on every server, including financial information and emails sent and received.
This sort of occurrence does make me think that it is unsafe to give anyone information, unless I know it is safe with them, as it could all too easily fall into the wrong hands. More must be done to safeguard people’s information in this age of hacking and phishing, where anything not bolted down to the virtual ground is electronically stolen by people who wish to use this information for profit.
The Australian government, it seems, has tried to hush the issue up, as the Web page that originally documented the sale of confidential information carrying servers has now been erased from Geoffrey Huntley’s blog, although it is still available, as above, from a mirroring service.
DRM on motherboards
As well as compromising people’s privacy, technology can also restrict people’s freedom: Everyone’s known it’s been coming for a long while, but DRM (Digital Right’s Management) chips have started to be incorporated into motherboards. Although at present these are only present in Apple’s new Intel developer machines, Windows looks set to follow suit in its next release and require these chips to be implemented. What these sort of chips do, is to enable applications to make sure that a file or program will only work on the computer which has the right DRM chip. If this sounds similar to the current ways of protecting intellectual property with serial numbers, then think again: These serial numbers will be built-in to computer’s mother boards, meaning that they cannot be changed. For me, this is quite a serious blow, as I like to have the freedom to choose what sort of media I want to play, and from where I get it. This sort of inflexible and likely uncircumventible control could also allow computer manufacturers to enforce people to use a certain OS or certain software. With Microsoft’s clout and their habit of making sure that manufacturers of computers are tied into an agreement of bundling Windows with their computers, they might also enforce them to bundle chips with their motherboards that make them only boot Windows. These upcoming technologies will doubtlessly hurt consumers, but it remains to be seen how restrictive they will be.
Mighty Mouse: Apple’s Multi-Button Mouse
In other news: After years of Apple thinking themselves obviously superior by having just the one mouse button, and after years of jokes about how Mac users are inferior because they can’t use more than the one button, Apple has gone back and decided to bring out a mouse with not one, not two, but three buttons, as well as a four way scroll wheel. They have called their mouse, quite simply, Mighty Mouse. What’s so special about this though, and what sets it apart from the hordes of multi-button, Mac-compatible mice out there on the market? The answer is, the mouse has no physical buttons at all! The mouse incorporates iPod-esque touch sensitive technology to make the mouse appear button-less, but still work just fine. Very nice. An earlier argument of many Mac-users was that having just one button on a mouse made computing more accessible to beginners and so called technology-virgins, and I can agree with that statement: Teaching my Mum to use a PC is still a work in progress, and she still asks which button to click. Teaching her to use a Mac, on the other hand, was simply a matter of telling her how to turn the machine on, and what her login password was. Anyway, the new mouse from Apple, having no physical buttons, is programmable to have either one, two or three buttons, meaning that users can specify, on a user-specific basis, which features of the mouse they would like to have, and which ones they would like to leave well alone. What this means, is that You, your Gran, and your Mum can all use the same computer with the same mouse, but still all have as many buttons as suits them and their computing abilities. The mouse should also work just fine with a Windows computer, although from personal experience, trying to use Windows with one mouse button is a bad experience!
9 August, 2005
Real Rhapsody: To Go And Free Service Added
Real Networks is looking to up-end Apple’s iTunes store and nobble Napster To Go by launching a new music subscription services for portables music players.
The Seattle-based outfit, who are this month in their tenth year, is looking to extend its Rhapsody subscription music service, which currently lets home users and subscribers download as many tracks to their computers as they want for US$9.95 (£5.22/€7.66) a month.
The big shocker is that after years of scratching each other’s eyes out, Real has decided to license digital rights management (DRM) for their service from its once bitter rival, Microsoft.
The Microsoft software, code-named Janus, will disable songs from playing on devices once a customer stops paying the monthly fee.
The new music service comes in three flavours: Rhapsody 25, Rhapsody To Go, and Rhapsody Unlimited.
Rhapsody 25 is the entry-level standard service which is completely free to use. It’s being supported by advertising, initially Chrysler and is designed to tempt people to subscribe. It allows anyone who downloads Rhapsody’s Windows-based jukebox software to listen to 25 songs for free each month from Rhapsody’s library, with the option to purchase and download songs a la carte. There will also be 25 ad-free radio stations available.
Users of this freebie will also be able to share their selected music with others, even non-subscribers. When the generated email arrives, access to the DRM-controlled content is made, downloading them the software if they don’t already have it. Real hope they will benefit from the network viral effect.
The Unlimited deal is pretty much what is currently offered, provides a subscription-based service that costs US$9.99 per month, giving users access to 100 pre-programmed Internet radio stations, 50,000 “artist-based” radio stations and more than 1,500 music videos online. A few bells and whistles have also been added.
Subscribers can download an unlimited number of songs to their computer’s hard drive and these remain playable for as long as they remain subscribers.
Rhapsody To Go offers a near-identical subscription-based deal as Napster To Go, letting users download a near-unlimited amount of music to compatible portable music players. The price is identical to Napster’s offering too at US$14.95 (£7.85/€11.52) per month.
That’s all fine and dandy while they’re shelling out the cash, but as soon as a subscription ends – whoosh! – there goes their music collection, as every song they’ve downloaded is automatically rendered unplayable.
It’s been likened to having your CD collection on permanent hire purchase – once you lapse on your payments, you can kiss goodbye to your tunes. To old-school music fans, not owning your precious sounds is a bonkers proposition, but both Real and Napster believe there’s a market for subscription-based music downloads, with punters excited by the promise of filling an entire iPod for less than the price of two CDs.
The MS Janus DRM protection demands compatible portable music players, ones that turn the content off if the subscription lapses. Currently there are two favorites, the Zen Micro and iRiver H10. To further induce subscribers to the To Go service, Real are offering a US$100 (€77/£52) rebate on the H10 for a limited period.
According to recent estimates, the subscription market – comprised of Real’s Rhapsody, Napster and Yahoo’s MusicMatch service – is reckoned to generate about US$200 million in 2005 sales. Indeed Real announced they had passed one million subscribers last week.
By comparison, the digital music downloading business made popular by Apple’s iTunes service, is expected to rake in around US$350 million in 2005 revenue, according to Phil Leigh, an analyst at market research firm Inside Digital Media.
Real Rhapsody
Watch Real CEO, Rob Glaser introduce the new Rhapsody
27 April, 2005
Napster Faces DRM Crack As WMA Files Compromised
Napster may have a new headache on its hands, with a DRM hack recently surfacing.
A team of programmers led by Cody Brocious are rumoured to be very near an implementation of a utility that will allow people to turn songs acquired through Napster Light and Premium into unencrypted files.
Users will still have to pay for the initial download of the file (to acquire the key from Napster) with the tool then stripping the WMA files of their underlying DRM protections.
Previously, users keen to distribute encrypted DRM-protect files have had to resort to unwieldy workarounds such as recording from the sound card.
Once stripped of its DRM, songs downloaded from Napster can be re-encoded and played back across a number of different systems – undermining the entire business model of the Napster service.
The tool is reported to be unable to circumvent Napster To Go songs using Janus DRM (WMA DRM v10) which is different from the DRM applied to Light and Premium songs.
The latest hack seems to be driven by a desire to make the Napster service functional on both Linux and Mac platforms, instead of just Windows, with Cody seeing his actions as “ethical,” irrespective of legality, and he is willing to “fight the DMCA.”
He wants to be able to play his lawfully acquired Napster music on Linux.
The Cracking of Napster WMA DRM
Cody Brocious
15 April, 2005
Virgin Electronics Discontinues MP3 Product Line?
Unconfirmed reports are suggesting that Virgin Electronics, the consumer electronics division of Virgin, have become an early digital music casualty with the division discontinuing its product line.
The word filtering through the wire is that Virgin will not be supporting the devices already out in the market and that their PR people have been quietly making calls and asking reviewers to return the units.
Virgin’s range includes a wearable, “teeny weenie” flash-based mp3 player, originally introduced last autumn in 128MB and 256MB flavours, with the latest product update issued in January of this year.
The company had pinned their hopes on the well-reviewed “Virgin player 5GB”, which had the audacity to try and take the iPod mini head-on.
That strategy seems to have failed miserably, with a Virgin spokesperson recently confirming the cancellations to Digital Music News. However, Virgin Digital is not thought to be affected by the Virgin Electronics discontinuation, as each Virgin division is essentially an independent entity.
Virgin Electronics have already been through one metamorphosis, dumping their Pulse line of home electronics gear (including DVD players and cordless phones) last year in favour of focusing mainly on MP3 players.
The Virgin Electronics product halt could be part of a larger industry shake-out, with several portable mp3 player manufacturers under-performing against Apple’s mini-marvel.
Serious contenders like Creative and iRiver look set to go the distance, however, and there’s always the chance that the Virgin brand may reappear at a later date.
Virgin Electronics
Digital Music News
Virgin Electronics, RIP (Om Malik)
9 March, 2005
Digital Music Forum :Summary
More than 400 industry professionals gathered for Digital Media Wire’s 5th annual Digital Music Forum at The French Institute in New York City on Wednesday. Discussion topics recalled the creation of the original Napster, examined the current business and legal environment, and looked ahead optimistically towards the future growth of subscription and mobile services.
In a widely anticipated keynote conversation, Napster founder Shawn Fanning described how early peer-to-peer file trading networks fundamentally changed consumer expectations for the breadth of music content available to them. Speaking about his new venture, Snocap, Fanning outlined his plans to create a central database for rights clearance while introducing a digital identification and acoustic fingerprinting architecture for file trading systems. Fanning expressed his hope that the creation of a trusted third party to manage rights administration will create an environment in which the interests of peer-to-peer companies, retailers, and content owners will not be in conflict.
Technology and rights management remained in the spotlight during a panel discussion about the forthcoming MGM v. Grokster case that will go before the Supreme Court on March 29th. At issue, according to Digital Media Association Executive Director Jonathan Potter, is whether a software developer can be held liable for the actions of its users. Martin Elgison, a partner at Alston & Bird, advocated separate assessments of legality for a company’s business conduct and the associated technology. Jim Delong, senior fellow at The Progress & Freedom Foundation, agreed that the courts need to examine a company’s underlying business model and question whether it depends on copyright infringement.
Speaking to technology’s current effects on artist management, Nettwerk Productions CEO Terry McBride conveyed that digitization currently represents a mixed opportunity for his clients like Avril Lavigne, Sarah McLachlan and Barenaked Ladies. On the one hand, McBride reported, Barenaked Ladies sold more than 900,000 live tracks in the past year and archives 150 concerts for sale online. On the other, he voiced concern that his artists’ catalog sales are being negatively affected by peer-to-peer file trading. On the whole, McBride was bullish on technology’s long-term potential, both for management companies seeking to provide for all their clients’ needs, as well as for artists pursuing long term careers.
In an afternoon keynote, Yahoo Music Vice President and General Manager David Goldberg highlighted the opportunities created by consumers’ desires to discover and control their music in an on-demand environment. Goldberg predicted the continued emergence of subscription-based digital music services, as well as the use of customization and community functionality to drive traffic and consumer engagement. According to Goldberg, playlists will become the “killer app of music” for users confronted with more than a million tracks at their fingertips and services will need to focus on delivering appropriate recommendations to create the ultimate listening experience.
MSN Marketplaces General Manager Mike Conte addressed Microsoft’s digital music effort which initially launched last October as an a-la-carte download service. According to Conte, Microsoft is principally involved with music to drive traffic and advertisers to MSN.com while contributing to the company’s strategy to build an overall ecosystem for digital media. While emphasizing that Microsoft’s plans were still in their early stages, Conte echoed Goldberg in emphasizing the importance of building community to engage customers and alluded to future digital music integration with messaging, blogging and playlist capabilities. Conte also agreed with predictions for the future growth of subscription services, citing company research indicating that the younger the consumer, the lower the likelihood that they desire to own their music.
During morning and afternoon panels, participants painted a positive future for the mobile music marketplace. Sony BMG Senior Vice President Thomas Gewecke noted that mobile services continue to be the dominant digital revenue stream outside the United States. Gewecke further predicted that mobile devices will become the dominant method for initial music purchases, even if the content is eventually consumed on another platform. Sprint General Manager of Wireless Music and Personalization Nancy Beaton reported that music represents an important way for the company to boost its current average monthly bill of $62. Beaton also cited successful ringtone launches with artists like Beyonce and 50 Cent, with both reaching platinum sales levels.
Thanks to Wesley Radez (wradez @ digitalmusicnews.com) over at Digital Music News for this report.
4 March, 2005
Broadcast Flag “Crossed The Line”, FCC told by US Appeals Court
A US appeals panel has challenged new federal rules which require certain video devices to incorporate technology designed to prevent copying digital television programs and distributing them over the Internet.
US Appeals Judge Harry T Edwards delivered a slap across the wrists of the Federal Communications Commission by saying that that it had “crossed the line” with its requirements for anti-piracy technology in next-generation television devices.
The anti-piracy technology, known as the broadcast flag, will be required after July 1st for televisions equipped to receive new digital signals. Many personal computers and VCR-type recording devices will also be affected.
The broadcast flag would permit entertainment companies to designate, or flag, programs to prevent viewers from copying shows or distributing them over the Internet.
Two of the three judges on the District of Columbia Circuit panel said the FCC had not received permission from Congress to undertake such a sweeping regulation, and questioned the FCC’s authority to impose regulations affecting television broadcasts after such programs are delivered into households.
“You’re out there in the whole world, regulating. Are washing machines next?” fumed Judge Harry Edwards. Judge David Sentelle was equally unimpressed: “You can’t regulate washing machines. You can’t rule the world.”
The groups challenging the FCC’s broadcast flag regulation include the American Library Association, the Association of Research Libraries, the Medical Library Association, Public Knowledge and the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
They argue that the FCC has over-stepped its authority, that Congress should be responsible for making copyright law, and that librarians’ ability to make “fair use” of digital broadcasts will be unreasonably curtailed.
Although the judges’ comments are encouraging for opponents of the Broadcast Flag, doubts have been cast whether their opponents have the legal standing to challenge the rule in court.
Either way, we can expect to wait a few months before the court issues a ruling. In the meantime, activist groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation continue to offer consumers the means to get around the restrictions with their “HD PVR Cookbook,”.
Electronic Frontier Foundation
Federal Communications Commission
23 February, 2005
Digital Lifestyle extolled by Bill Gates at CES
In what has now become a tradition, Bill Gates opened the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas extolling the virtues of Digital Lifestyles (thanks for the plug Bill).
In a “casual” interview style, US TV chat show presenter, Conan O’Brien, lead Bill through the wonderful world of digital media.
O’Brien started his shtick with a great joke, “When Bill Gates walks onto this stage in a few minutes, the average net worth of each person in this room will be(come) $128 million.”. He then went on to be reasonably rude about most people in the industry. Of particular note was the “CES – The Movie” spoof casting, where well known characters in the industry were matched up with their acting doubles. It’s worth watching, just fire it up and jump to 11m 30s.
Bill Gates then came on stage to give Microsoft’s view of Digital Lifestyles.
Not surprisingly Microsoft pitches the PC as the centre of it, “The PC has a central role to play, (in that) it’s where it all comes together.”
As has been the case since the public started recognising the iPod and iTunes, Bill and his promotional videos took every opportunity to feature ‘other’ music players, while subtly highlighting the virtues of the Microsoft approach.
This covered “Windows Plays For Sure”, the certification process that labels all devices that are able to understand and adhere to Microsoft’s Digital Rights Management (DRM) scheme. Read as, music in Apple’s format can’t play on other devices except Apples.
For the trend spotters among you, Bill referred to this as a “rights management system”, dropping the Digital prefix.
He also pitched monthly subscription services where you have access to all of the music you desire – another thing that Apple iTunes doesn’t offer. He failed to mention that with most subscriptions services, the ability to play the music you’ve paid for access to, stops when the monthly subscriptions fees do.
Media Centre featured large with Gates announcing that PC manufacturers have sold 1.4 million Media Centre models worldwide so far.
Media Extenders, which enables households with networked homes to pull content from their Media Centres to rooms around the house were also brought up again. Dedicated boxes from companies like LG were mentioned as well as a software upgrade for Microsoft’s xBox to provide the same function. The fact that 6.3 million people had bought Halo 2, was also dropped into the conversation.
The LG example was of note. A dedicated DVR with DVD burner, it featured a cut-down version of the Media Center software that retained the familiar user interface (UI), while offering access to music and photo’s stored on the Media Centre PC. Not only that but content recorded on this dedicated device could be transferred to the Media Centre PC and in turn to a smartphone or Portable Media Centre (PMC).
To easily operate the Media Centre, the “simple, single remote control” was also touted, more than once. Microsoft have formed partnerships with Philips, NiveusMedia and Logitech to produce universal remote controls that work with Media Centre, as well as many other devices. All these remotes will feature a “signature” Green Start button. Bill had previously mentioned that some remote controls will have small colour screens on them, allowing video content to be shown on them.
New content partners also got a nod. Discovery will be creating “unique content” that fits on Media Center, with Yahoo and Fox Sports also getting a mention.
One key item was the launch of the Media Centre as a platform. Not just a means of accessing and playing back content, but of broadcasters creating interactive content specifically for it, that combines broadcast and IP delivered content using Online Spotlight. We feel this is the most important item to come out and will be covered in more detail in another piece shortly.
It’s also worth watching the video, if nothing else then to see Bill looking less than comfortable with the interview technique.
Bill Gates CES – Opening Speech
6 January, 2005