Reebok CyberRider Review

I went to Brent Cross (Shopping Centre) on Saturday to speak to the people demonstrating the Reebok CyberRider. It was setup in the centre space, which I had remember from my youth as being a fountain. Four CyberRiders, two Playstations enabling riders to compete against each other.

After chatting for a while to one of the Reebok representatives, Grant Miller from The Body Squad, I decided to have a go, I found one of the Burnout games playing and I’ve got to say it was an interesting experience.

You start off thinking you’re turning the peddles a lot to stay up with the pack of other cars, but then you get absorbed in playing the game as you steer the car around the circuit. The two keys I used to steer the car were in a natural position and easy to operate. The other buttons felt a bit fiddly and could be prone to stick.

If you’re interested, I came second (I’ve no idea of the difficulty setting, but I suspect it was pretty lowly). By the time I realised I was doing OK, the first car was well ahead of me and I might have been able to catch it, thrashing silly in my home, but didn’t really feel like doing it in the middle of Brent Cross.

What they’ve come up with is an interesting idea, by combining what would normally be regarded at polar opposites, physical activity and playing video games, they created something where you exercise without thinking you’re exercising.

Of course that was just one title and the experience with other games might be completely different. I would be interested to try Tour de France, as Grant had. I’ve yet to play it at all but I remember some of the press labelled it a bit slow – perfect for the CyberRider. Could the future of the ‘sponsored run’ be sponsoring someone to actually cycle the Tour de France and you pay them according to their position in the race?

I was having a mental flick through of various types of games and I thought a Doomesque game would be fun, where you have to peddle for your life – it would be perfect if you could peddle backwards as well … and have triggers. For a more relaxing session a title like Pilot Wings on the N64, where the controls aren’t too complex but you have to peddle to stay in the sky. On the retro side, save bashing your Track and Field keys into oblivion and replace it with peddling.

The trick that they appear to be currently missing is to have the resistance of the peddling varied by the computer, so you’d have to push hard up hills. This would introduce a lot more variety and would make driving games set in San Francisco a pretty serious workout.

Personally, I’d like to see the ability to change the sensitivity of the peddle sensor, so the ride wouldn’t have to be totally manic to win the race. Or is that defeating the purpose?

If you were wondering about my stress levels at Brent cross – it actually wasn’t that bad at the beginning, but I’m sure there’s something they must put in the air conditioning system that means that you get a growing feeling that you’ve just godda get out of that place.

___The Tech
They altered a standard bike by integrating joypad buttons of differing sizes into the riding handles, fitted a sensor at the peddles and strengthened it slightly – after finding the competition got pretty hot between the testers.

The hardware is modular. Two cables use RJ45 connectors to the box that interfaces to the console/computer, enabling them to connect to any device. They’ve currently connected to PlayStation 2 & 1 and PC. They say that GameCube and XBox are in the works.

___Conclusions
Bearing in mind that I had the limited exposure of one game, I thought it was fun and for a lot of people who don’t exercise this could be the excuse they’re looking for – especially if they like gadgets.

It’s unlikely people are going to buy more than one of these (and console, and TV) so after trying it, I’m even more convinced that the long term future for this type of thing, as I said previously, will be linking them up with broadband – s not something they’d tried.

I also suggested that it would be fun to equip a number of gyms, get them connected together and have people compete against each other. Find the fittest gym.

Err, could you pause the wireless revolution please

News reaches us that the US military is, all of a sudden, worried about the use of wireless networking technologies, as they think it will interfere with their new passive radar systems.

This story has been widely misread or taken the wrong way, thinking it affects radar generally and all wireless networking. I don’t think it’s about the already widely used 802.11b/WiFi/2.4GHz, but the 802.11a equipment that operates in the 5GHz range.

In the UK the Radiocommunications Agency (RA) sets UK policy and issues licences for the non-military radio spectrum. UK people are currently free to use the 2.4GHz frequency (that 802.11b uses) without a licence but a £50/month licence is currently required for 5GHz equipment.

I called Annette Henley, who is responsible for both 2.4GHz and 5GHz at the RA to ask her what would be happening about the 5GHz range. She tells me it is hoped that the 5Ghz range will become unlicensed by the end of January 2003, but it will be with the restrictions that it is only for indoor use and only for the equipment set to its lowest power setting.

The completed paperwork has been passed to the Minister and just needs to complete the 21-day process of sitting in the House of Commons before coming into affect.

Interestingly much of the 802.11a equipment that is for sale in the UK currently does not conform to these requirements.

It appears that the US has actually got a bit caught out with this and are probably going to be following the UK’s lead and indeed there are moves afoot to create an International standard for this.

If the US military does genuinely have a problem with 5GHz equipment, I can’t believe that they announcing it – at all. I guess that all of the 11a equipment that does not comply with the forthcoming UK standards will have a willing customer base with anyone who doesn’t want US radar to function.

Fit to burst

Fitness is on most people’s mind, given it’s New Year and resolution have some possibility of still being adhered to – it is only nine days into the year after all.

I know fitness is good for you and I have in the past had periods of reasonably fitness. Frankly these days it’s doesn’t sound that appealing – it feels more like a chore, hence I don’t do it.

My interest in fitness was raised slightly when I saw the Reebok CyberRider exercise bike that connects to your PC, Playstation 2 or 1 and enables you to use your peddling as the input to games. Peddle fast and win the race.

I’ve got a vague memory of a rowing machine that had a screen mounted in front of rower that graphically simulated you rowing down a river. It was a few years ago so the graphics were pretty unrealistic, ie blocky and slow.

Now that high-powered graphic processing is now cheap and freely available, in the form of the current gaming consoles, it seems like a good idea to utilise it.

I’ve always found going to the gym to be more enjoyable with friends, it enhances the element of competition. When you exercise by yourself at home, there’s no-one to impress with how fit you can appear to be to the other people in the gym, hence the healthy second-hand market in exercise bikes, rowing machines, etc. Add this to how much better some of the Xbox games (eg Ghost Recon) are when played on Xbox Live linked up to players Worldwide.

I would have thought the future of these machines would be when you’re linked up with others and exercise against exercise-buddies from around the World.

It’s being demonstrated this Saturday at Brent Cross. I find the idea of going to Brent Cross horrifying, never mind on a Saturday but in the interest of research I plan to go along and find out how good it is. I’ll let you know.

3.3.3?

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’.

Powering the Home Network

There are a growing number of networked devices, such as Xbox, Network receiver appearing in different rooms around the home contributing to digital lifestyles. There’s also a need to have them talking to the network that doesn’t involve re-cabling the house.

The current buzz is about using wireless networking such as WiFi. Unfortunately most network-enabled entertainment devices only have an Ethernet port on them, not PCMCIA. This could be solved with an adaptor with a RJ-45 (Ethernet) plug at one end and a PCMCIA sheath at the other, enabling WiFi access for any device that has an Ethernet port.

I’ve been running my wireless network around my house for while now and it’s been great having the liberty of not being restricted to only places where there is a cable. The reality of it is that I don’t get top speed connection all around the house, as I’ve found that WiFi doesn’t really like walls all that much. It does work everywhere (even the garden), but just not super fast.

Streaming music, video and playing broadband-enabled games need decent flows of data and low lag times.

There have been a number of standard to address networking in the home using existing, what I’m sure they would call, resident assets. HomePNA uses the phone wiring around your house. This might make sense in some newer countries where there houses where designed to have a phone point in every room, but that is never going to be popular in places like the UK.

The HomePlug Powerline Alliance method of distribution is the electrical mains circuit, you know the one with all of the outlets in every room in your house. BTW – the average US home has 45 power outlets.

Pretty much every entertainment device that will be used in a home, be it gaming console, DVR, network receiver, enhanced DVD, will be plugged into the mains, why not use it as the network connection. The benefits of HomePlug are graphic demonstrated here .

The headline speed is 14Mbps but reading further into it, the yield was actually 5Mbps+ in over 80% of 5000 test cases carried out in 500 homes in the US. That sounds pretty healthy to me – WiFi’s headline of 11Mbps is pretty unachievable anyway. They claim that older wiring does not seriously affect bandwidth loses.

There are quite a number of companies making products that are for sale now.

The kind of solution that Phonex Broadband offers in their NeverWire 14 makes a lot on sense. One area that they might win on is the apparent ease of installation and use of their product as their datasheet claims only their product needs no drivers installed on the device that you connect to the network. Pretty essential when you may be plugging and amplifier into it.

The big boys are also there. NetGear’s offering looking pretty sexy and LinkSys’s functional version.

Don’t get me wrong – I’m not saying WiFi is no use – just that it will coexist.

I was thinking that you could actually use the HomePLUG to enhance the reach of your network, when I came across the Corinex Wireless 2 Powerline Access Point (AP) which will do exactly that, starting in February, 2003. Siemens do a more discreet version, the SpeedStream Powerline 802.11b Wireless Access Point, which is not much bigger than a plug. They also win for longest product name.

Corinex appear to be a forward looking company, blending their two strengths of Wireless and HomePlug to provide last mile solutions for service providers. For the distribution within the home they have coined a great phrase ‘last foot’, playing on the old telco ‘last mile’ phrase. They also look like the only company to have the foresight to manufacture UK compatible products.

I notice that Asoka have a SIP module mentioned – perfect thinking, enabling people to plug in VoIP phone handsets into the mains to make low cost calls.

The HomePlug Alliance has now started work on their next generation version, HomePlug AV with ten times the capacity, enabling the network to be used, they claim, for multi-stream entertainment including High Definition television (HDTV). They think it will take them 18-24 months to complete.

IBC 2003

I’m delighted to have been asked to exec produce one of the five themes at the IBC 2003 conference. The working title is ‘In the Home’ and heralds the current convergence that is finally arriving in Media. The thought of convergence has been around for a long time but now Media from different formats, such as computers, TV, radio, other video and audio sources, are being consumed on different platforms.

Something new is happening that is being labelled by some as ‘digital lifestyle’. The strangest things are turning up, network-enabled – DVD-recorders, DVR’s, even audio amplifiers.

Many changes have been taking place in this area and some of them will impact on media companies.

The battle for whom and what will control the connections between the HiFi, TV and computers, the Digital Hub, is underway. The biggest names in technology and entertainment companies have thrown their hat into the ring – eg. Apple, Intel, Microsoft, Philips & Sony, as well as newer, smaller innovators such as Pace, SonicBlue, Moxi, Zoran and the creation standards such as TV-Anytime.

For the viewer, it’s not just about listening to, or viewing of content – it’s also about the finding [locally and remotely], managing, and storing it. For the media companies it’s about what method of distribution will be used, how they will control copying of material.

It should be an interesting challenge.

Xbox Live sells out initial 150k units in a week

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.

Couch viewable computers

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.

Movielink by proxy

Rob Pegoraro has written a spirited review of the new Movielink Internet-delivered film service that’s backed by the media powerhouses Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Universal and Warner Bros.

After hitting problems straight off and forced to use a recent MS browser, he not hugely impressed. As it’s not truly Video On Demand (VOD), it took 3 hours 25 to download the movie on his home DSL and, as he points out, it’s quicker to pop down to the local video store.

I think he’s slightly unfair about the delay in getting the films. I imagine, if it is going to be used, it’s going to be more like a Tivo-like DVR – you make your selection and watch it later that night or any time in the next 30 days. It’s more likely to be competition for NetFlix but they clearly easily win on breadth of content, currently. That could vanish if the studios feel more secure about releasing material on the Internet.

I was concerned about his reports of video breaking up in the fast sections, but it’s reported that this will be improved in the next six months.

With these draw backs, I can’t see it being used in its current form by anyone other than computer enthusiasts and journalists writing reviews.

I’m sure the people running the Movielink have all read Tom Peters and believe in the marketing power of being first – and as nothing outside the movie world exists for them, they probably think they are the first.

But Tom, as all his close personal friends call him, also talks about quality and that seems to be missing in pretty vital areas – the breadth of selection and video quality.

Does it really matter at the moment? After all, not many households have their computer connected to their TV’s and without that, huddling around a monitor in a strange part of the house, frankly isn’t an enjoyable family viewing experience.

They’ve got to get into the lounge. The real opportunity is for companies with Internet connected DVR’s, like the SonicBlue ReplyTV, to make it a slick, easy to use, couch viewable experience. Given the large amount of bad blood between SonicBlue and the media, I would imagine the more forward-looking DVR companies are speaking to Movielink.

In case you wondered why I’m piggy backing on someone’s review – I would have written my own review but thanks to Movielink’s “GeoFilter” and by an accident of geography, I wasn’t able to. Anyone accessing the site coming from an IP address outside the US, of which I’m one, will be met with a fantastic piece of upbeat American corporate lingo that just shouts NO (our licensing doesn’t permit) …

Thank you for your interest in Movielink. We want you to take part in the powerful Internet movie rental experience that Movielink delivers, but …