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Northwest starts new Airbus A330-200 service between Tokyo, US West Coast
MINNEAPOLIS – Northwest Airlines recently announced the start of operations of its new Airbus A330-200, its newest aircraft type, between Tokyo and three destinations along the West Coast of the United States and four destinations in the Asia/Pacific region.
"The introduction of A330 service in these markets allows Northwest to offer travelers a new level of in-flight comfort that exceeds what’s offered by our US competitors and many of our international rivals," said Phil Haan, executive vice president of international, sales and information services.
Northwest’s long-range 243-passenger A330s are equipped with 32 new seats in World Business Class, 211 new seats in coach class, and a new entertainment system in both cabins. It also features Airbus’ enhanced aircraft interior design and according to Airbus, the quietest long-haul cabin in the air.
The start of service from the airline’s Tokyo hub is timed in conjunction with the delivery of seven new A330-200 aircraft the airline will begin receiving this summer.
The A330 is designed to provide a high level of comfort to passengers no matter what class of service they choose. Interior contours allow for a more spacious cabin with additional headroom and ample carry-on space.
State-of-the-art in-flight entertainment
Northwest’s fully interactive inflight entertainment system offers a wide variety of music, movies, short subject programs, games, shopping and inflight information, all "on demand," giving customers the freedom and flexibility to start, pause or stop at any time. The gateway to all of these features is a convenient retractable controller, making it easy to access from any sitting position, as opposed to stationary controllers fixed on armrests.
In World Business Class, Northwest customers are able to view any of these features on a 10.4 inch/26.4 centimeter video screen, 50 percent larger in size than the screens found in business class seats on other US airlines, and many international airlines. Northwest customers traveling in coach class are able to view any of these features on a personal video screen in the back of the seat in front of them. The screen pivots, allowing customers to adjust it and continue viewing if the seat in front of them is reclined.
Texas Instruments Redefines Mobile Application Design with Three New Low-Power TMS320C5000(TM) DSPs and New Low-Power Design Tools
Monday June 28, 7:01 am ET
New TMS320C5509A, C5507 and C5503 DSPs deliver integrated USB and 114x lower standby power than competitors for portable applications
HOUSTON, June 28 /PRNewswire/ -- Continuing to help designers maximize battery life and reduce costs in portable applications, Texas Instruments Incorporated (NYSE: TXN - News; TI) announced today the availability of three new low-power digital signal processors (DSP) and new eXpressDSP(TM) power design tools that together enable developers to optimize power consumption to previously unattainable levels. Where other vendors can only show typical power consumption of core and memory, TI is the first company to "tell the rest of the power story" with design tools that show detailed and modular power information of a DSP chip core, memory and peripherals and a methodology for measuring power running under real-world conditions. The combination of the industry's lowest power DSPs and the essential tools to optimize power consumption and maximize battery life gives TI's customers the competitive edge they need when creating best-of-class portable, multimedia products. For more information, please see: http://www.ti.com/powerefficientperformance .
New DSPs offer the Industry's Lowest Standby Power
The new TMS320C5503, TMS320C5507 and TMS320C5509A DSPs offer an ideal combination of low power, performance, memory and peripherals for mobile, portable and other low-power, real-time signal processing applications. These devices enable advanced low power consumption through:
-- The industry's lowest standby power (0.12 mW) -- 114x lower than
nearest competition
-- Very low core and memory operating power -- for example, 58 mW at
108 MHz
-- Dynamic frequency and voltage scaling
-- Multiple standby modes with ability to turn individual peripherals and
internal functional units on and off
-- Multiple SRAM options (64 KB, 128 KB, and 256 KB RAM) for efficient
code fit
The C5503 is optimized for low-cost, low-power devices such as portable biometric or medical devices and handheld wireless applications. The C5507 is for applications such as wireless gateways, Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), GPS and wireless speakerphones and offers a 500 microseconds 10-bit ADC as well as USB 2.0 full-speed port for PC connectivity. The C5509A is optimized for multimedia-rich, mobile devices such as MP3 audio jukeboxes and infotainment devices and offers two MMC/SD ports, as well as a 500 microseconds 10-bit ADC and USB 2.0 full-speed port. Standard peripherals for all include three MCBSP ports, three timers, I2C bus, six-channel DMA, 16-bit EMIF, 16-bit EHPI and 36 GPIO. These are the first devices with integrated USB at this low a level of power consumption for this class of DSP.
Advanced Power Design Tools
Determining accurate power consumption early in the design process is essential for making the right tradeoffs in performance, peripherals activity and external memory use in order to maximize battery life and reduce cost. With the new eXpressDSP power design tools, TI will be the first to "tell the rest of the power story" by eliminating the guesswork of determining actual power consumption and giving developers previously inaccessible visibility into devices. These tools allow developers to consume only as much power as is actually necessary by dynamically turning off all peripherals and internal functional units when they are not needed and developers can now optimally configure devices based on accurate and detailed power consumption information, rather than blindly guess at how much power a device consumes. The four tools included in this eXpressDSP power design package are:
-- Power planning tools: These planning tools include an easy "how to"
application note and a spreadsheet for easy trial configurations.
These tools give detailed internal functional unit and peripheral
power consumption data specific to a particular DSP. Developers are
able to easily and quickly create trial configurations to determine
"net" power consumption for various memory and peripheral
combinations.
-- Power Manager in DSP/BIOS(TM): Through intimate integration with TI's
DSP/BIOS(TM) real-time kernel, and delivered to Code Composer
Studio(TM) (CCStudio) Integrated Development Environment via Update
Advisor, this software module enables developers to automatically
implement power saving strategies at an operating system level,
resulting in more efficient boot-time power savings, automatic
management of clock domains and sleep states, supervision and control
of power scaling and central registry management for power event
notifications.
-- Power Scaling Library: Delivered to CCStudio(TM) via Update Advisor,
this software tool implements an EVM320C5509A compatible power scaling
configuration that supports dynamic control of run-time core frequency
and voltage based on application mode and performance requirements.
It allows callbacks to user code before/after scaling operations to
accommodate voltage and frequency changes and supports query
operations to determine current frequency, voltage, supported
frequencies and scaling latencies.
-- LabView-based Power Measurement Tool from National Instruments:
Developers are now able to accurately profile power consumption based
on actual application behavior. They can visually measure and analyze
power by using the power measurement tool from National Instruments
connected to the EVM320C5509A evaluation module (EVM) from Spectrum
Digital or target prototypes. Measurements include total energy,
max/average power, CPU and memory, peripheral and I/O power usage.
Power/peripheral data can be viewed in tabular or graphical views
forward or backward through time, as well as saved for future use.
Pricing and Availability
The new TMS320C5000(TM) DSPs are sampling immediately with volume production slated for August 2004. Recommended pricing starts at $7.50 for the C5503, $10.50 for the C5507 and $16 for the C5509A (10,000 unit pricing). The eXpressDSP power design tools are available as follows:
Power planning tools: Power spreadsheet and power application note downloadable today from the web for free.
Power Manager in DSP/BIOS(TM) and Power Scaling Library: Included in CCStudio via Update Advisor. Beta versions available now with production in 4Q04. Free evaluation tools for CCStudio(TM) can be found at: Free Evaluation Tools
(http://dspvillage.ti.com/docs/catalog/devtools/details.jhtml?templateId=5121&
path=templatedata/cm/tooldetail/data/fets_intro&toolTypeId=0&toolTypeFlagId=2)
LabView-based Power Measurement Tool from National Instruments: Hardware and software available today for $885.
EVM320C5509A EVM -- Available in July 2004 from Spectrum Digital for $1495.
For a description of TI's new power design tools, new DSPs and a roadmap of C5000 devices, visit http://www.ti.com/powerefficientperformance .
Analyst and Real users comment on new DSPs and Power Design Tools
"TI has established a good, power-efficient architecture in the TMS320C55x family with the hooks built in for power management. What is brand new from TI, and perhaps to the entire industry, are the tools that allow designers to manage power under changing processor workload in their new portable applications. TI is providing designers visibility into managing the power in their designs that they have never had before."
SkipJam Announces First All-Digital System for Home Entertainment & Automation
Monday June 28, 9:04 am ET
SkipJam's iMedia(TM) Links & Records All Analog & Digital Media and Devices Low Cost, Easy-To-Install, Consumer Friendly
PORT CHESTER, N.Y., June 28 /PRNewswire/ -- SkipJam Corp., a leading provider of home media networking solutions, announced today SkipJam iMedia, the first ever Network Attached Media solution. SkipJam iMedia technology is the first and only high fidelity, all-digital integrated home entertainment system which combines whole house audio and video distribution with digital recording and home control. SkipJam's iMedia technology makes a complete whole-house AV system simple to implement starting under $800 (estimated street price) over ANY standard wired or wireless home network. SkipJam's iMedia system integrates: PVR, DVR, Live Streaming, Universal Remote Control, On-TV PC Access, Analog Device Switching, and much more.
(Photo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20040628/NYM046-b Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20040628/NYM046LOGO-a )
Geared to the discriminating audio/video enthusiast, the revolutionary SkipJam iMedia system lets consumers instantly transform any ordinary home computer network into a complete whole-home A/V distribution and control platform. Competing products for home control and distribution from Sony, Philips, AMX, and others provide a fraction of the functionality at much higher prices, while requiring costly custom wiring and professional installation for even the most basic functionality.
The unique SkipJam iMedia technology also delivers digital media over the network. Unlike competitors' digital media access products, such as those from Cisco/Linksys, Creative, Hewlett Packard and proposed solutions from Microsoft, Intel, Sony, Panasonic and Denon/Marantz, which only provide one way PC to stereo connectivity or attempt to replace existing consumer devices with an all-in-one media server, SkipJam iMedia components integrate and operate with all existing and future analog and digital devices.
"We are proud to launch the SkipJam iMedia digital home entertainment network," said Michael Spilo, CEO of SkipJam. "Our products are high-quality Home Theater components that bridge the digital and analog world."
SkipJam iMedia features:
* High-end audio and video for superior digital audio and video
reproduction (e.g. 24-bit 192Khz DAC/ADCs with 114db dynamic range).
* Personal Video Recorder -- Records using MPEG-4 for complete networked
multi-tuner recording of favorite shows to any networked hard drive.
* Universal whole-house remote control -- Control any device from
anywhere, even while away from home.
* Live media streaming -- Move any AV source "live" to any other room
wired or wireless.
* Digital Video Recorder -- Record DVDs, VHS, and music (even radio) to
any networked hard drive to watch any time.
* No PC Required -- Network AV devices and digital media (MP3, MPEG-2/4/,
etc.), even without a home PC.
* TV to PC connectivity -- Play MPEG 1/2/4, MP3, WMA, WAV, Ogg, JPG and
more.
* PC to TV connectivity -- Access PC desktop screen on the TV to check
e-mail, or run any PC software and see the result on the TV screen,
rooms away.
* Home Intercom -- Use any stereo/TV as a paging speaker or speakerphone.
* Power -- 32/64 bit superscalar MIPS architecture CPU with separate DSP
processors for audio and video, dual PCI buses and dual Ethernet ports,
integrated TV and FM tuner.
* Flexibility -- 4 analog video inputs (3 S-video and 4 composite), 6
analog audio inputs, 4 PCM digital inputs (both optical and coaxial
inputs and outputs), Firewire, USB 2.0, 3 IR output ports, IR Blaster
LEDs, RS232 control.
Expandable
The SkipJam iMedia product line consists of the SkipJam iMedia Center, a networked media switch which sends and receives audio and video and the SkipJam iMedia audio and video players, which can receive but not send video and audio. The entire system can be expanded easily by simply adding components. Also, unlike first generation devices like TiVo, SkipJam iMedia components can access any networked PC or hard drive for storage, tapping into unused space on home PCs and providing easy expandability and virtually unlimited recording time. And unlike simple PVRs, SkipJam iMedia devices all employ higher capacity MPEG-4 compression, significantly reducing hard drive capacity requirements. With unlimited recording time and higher compression, SkipJam iMedia eliminates consumer worry over which of their favorite TV shows, movies, photos or music to erase to make room for new recordings. Want more space? Add any Firewire hard drive.
Easy to Use and Quiet
Designed as consumer devices from the ground up, SkipJam iMedia devices are extremely user friendly. They can easily be operated through a simple menu system and installed as simply as any stereo component. And since SkipJam iMedia can write to any hard drive on the network, they have no internal moving parts and therefore are silent -- perfect for use in the bedroom or media room.
Network Agnostic
SkipJam iMedia works with all home networks: 802.11a/b/g, coax, Ethernet, Home-plug, twisted pair, etc. SkipJam's system software adapts the audio and video compression to match network performance as needed. Furthermore, SkipJam iMedia's sophisticated peer-to-peer architecture is highly robust and designed to reduce network traffic for a fast seamless performance.
Pricing and Availability
SkipJam iMedia will be available Q3 2004 through the retail and VAR channel. The products are priced at $799 for the SkipJam iMedia Center, $499 for SkipJam iMedia Player, $299 for SkipJam iMedia Audio Player, and $499 for the SkipJam Audio Player Pro (estimated street prices). For more information, contact SkipJam, 168 Irving Ave., Port Chester, NY 10513 (914) 933-0590 http://www.skipjam.com .
First Look: Mobinote DVX-POD 7010
Alexander Grundner
June 23rd 2004
1 Page
With details about the about the upcoming MobiNote DVX-POD 7010 being scarce, Alexander Grundner decided to catch up with Keith Chiang, Business Development Manager at MobiNote Technologies, and ask him 10 of our most burning questions about their new buzz-worthy 7-inch, 16:9 wide-screen Portable Media Player.
MobiNote DVX-POD 7010 Product Recap:
The DVX-POD is an iPod-looking Portable Media Player that features a 7-inch color LCD (720x480), 20GB 1.8-inch HDD, and weighs only 600g. You may notice that the DVX-POD has no visible front panel buttons, but has cleverly hidden the media controls at the top of the device with A/V ports situated on its sides. Video playback formats include MPEG-4, DivX 3.11, 4 and 5, QuickTime 6 and WMV files, but can also record TV video directly into MPEG-4. As for audio, it supports WMA and MP3 audio files and can also record voice memos via its built-in microphone. Photo formats include JPEG, GIF, and BMP images.
Alexander Grundner: Suggested retail price?
Keith Chiang: The MSRP will be around $599~$699 USD.
AG: When is the DVX-POD becoming available (date and market - Asia/Europe/United States/Worldwide)?
KC: Mass production will be around mid-July and products will be available around August / September. Initially, DVX-POD will be launched in Europe, U.S., and Asia.
AG: What is the battery life going to be like?
KC: The battery life is around 3 hours when playing MPEG-4 video files. This number is expected to be improved.
AG: Will the firmware be upgradeable for future codecs?
KC: Yes, the firmware will be upgradeable for future codecs.
AG: Does it support Windows DRM (Janus - Microsoft's new Multimedia Transport Protocol (MTP) technology)?
KC: We have been studying various DRM solutions since the very beginning, but we are still waiting for an industry standard to be established. We are capable of implementing DRM solutions as long as our content provider clients provide us which standards that they would like to part with.
AG: Does it or will it (future versions) have Wi-Fi connectivity, built-in TV tuner, PDA functionality, built-in speakers?
KC: Yes, if the consumers need such functions, we will support these functionalities in future models. DVX-POD 7010, being the first 7" model that sets the industry standard, we believe the product should be simple and meeting the needs of the "popular users" because it is positioned as an CE (consumer electronics) product. It should not be identified as a 'sub-notebook" or an "enlarged PDA" with every PC enabled functions. The point is how to differentiate from PC and notebooks and focusing on multimedia and entertainment. The principle is "don't try to be everything, but focus on what we do best".... in this case, providing MobiNote users with the best video/music/image quality with the most user friendly experience!
AG: Is the screen a 16:9 format (wide screen)?
KC: Yes it is 16:9. DVX-POD 7010 comes with LTPS digital LCD panel. The LTPS panel offers 170 degrees of viewing angel which is 30 degrees more than TFT LCD panel. The digital resolution supports up to 854 x 640 resolution which is much higher than analog panels which max. out at 640 x 480 (VGA resolution). We believe these contributing factors will set us apart among competitors.
AG: Does the DVX-Pod have a touch screen for controlling the on-screen UI?
KC: The current model doesn't support touch screen. We decided to leave it out at this moment because the touch panel will decrease the picture quality and brightness by 5%.
However, if we find better touch panels with better solution, we will implement this function into next model.
AG: Will it ever have attachments like the Archos AV320: camera module, etc.?
KC: We are currently studying and evaluating. Technology wise, it can be implemented, but we need to make sure our users need such a function as it will increase the price of the unit.
AG: Will it support Apple media codecs and Firewire or just USB 2.0?
KC: Good question. Current DVX-POD supports USB2.0, and we are also studying Apple's solution and if we are going to implement 1394 in future models. Again, it is a matter of user demand. We are very keen on user need and market trend. OTG (aka USB On-The-Go) is also another feature we will implement.
DVX-POD 7010 Specifications:
Storage Capacity 20 GB HDD
Computer Interface High Speed USB 2.0 (compatible USB 1.1)
Video Playback MPEG-4 SP(.asf)
Microsoft WMV (*.wmv)
Apple QuickTime 6
DivX 3.11 / 4.x / 5.x (*.avi)
Video Recording MPEG-4 SP
Audio Playback MP3 and WMA
Audio Recording MP3
Image Playback JPEG / BMP / GIF
Screen 7-inch color LTPS
External Output Video output on AV-out connector to PAL (EU) or NTSC (US) television
AV Connections AV in & microphone in
AV out: for headphones, line out, and for audio/video out with AV cable
Power Build-in Li-polymer battery, External Universal Adapter
Dimensions 192mm(L) x 115mm(W) x 28mm(H)
Weight 600g+-10%
Stay tuned to Designtechnica for more information on the Mobinote DVX-POD 7010 as it becomes available.
http://reviews.designtechnica.com/firstlook52.html
Electronics Firms Take Step Toward Compatible Gadgets
Wednesday, June 23, 2004
by Daniel Sorid
A consortium of the world's largest computer and electronics companies on Tuesday established ground rules for building compatible electronic devices that can share movies, music and other media.
But the group quickly acknowledged that even greater challenges, including agreeing on how to protect digital content from theft, had to be overcome before consumers can create, manage and share content on any electronic device.
Many of the 145 global companies, including Sony Corp. and Microsoft Corp, are deeply wedded to proprietary ways of storing and processing digital media content. The group, however, found consensus in common and existing standards for audio, video and Internet communications.
Products that meet the specifications of the Digital Living Network Alliance will be awarded a logo that will let shoppers know that such a device will work with other certified products. The first compatible electronics could start appearing on store shelves by the end of this year.
Several challenges became apparent as participating executives gave a presentation to reporters in San Francisco. For one, the group acknowledged that they had yet to agree upon an anti-piracy technology for movies and music.
EASIER SAID THAN DONE
Even if an agreement is eventually reached on so-called digital rights management, business arrangements with movie studios and record labels would likely have to be renegotiated to allow such content to be shared on multiple devices and converted into different digital formats.
"The whole copy protection issue is an order of magnitude more complex than anything we've done so far," said Pat Griffis, the director of worldwide media standards for Microsoft's Windows client division, and vice chairman of the technology alliance.
Also, despite the large collection of companies, at least two important names in consumer electronics were absent from the alliance: Apple Computer Inc. and RealNetworks Inc. Apple did not immediately return a call seeking comment. Real said it would consider joining at a later date.
Apple's portable music player, the iPod, has become a highly profitable success in legal music downloading. RealNetworks, for its part, this month reached an agreement with Starz Encore Group to set up a flat-rate movie download service for people with broadband Internet connections.
Group members also acknowledged that marketing and pricing missteps with early versions of home content sharing devices -- such as "digital media adapters" that send audio and video from a computer to a stereo or TV -- had put off many consumers.
"When consumers go to the store, they're not exactly sure what they're looking at," said Scott Smyers, a vice president at Sony Electronics and chairman of the group. That problem, he added, is not going away.
"The products are not getting less complicated. They're actually getting more complicated," he said.
© 2004 Reuters
15 Million On-demand Movie Consumers by 2008
Parks Associates - June 23, 2004
Parks Associates released a forecast last week predicting significant growth in Internet-based video services over the next four years, with users exceeding 15 million by the end of 2008.
“Regarding on-demand video services, several key pieces of the puzzle are now in place,” said Puja Rathi, an analyst at Parks Associates. “Broadband penetration is sufficiently high, and with the launch of service providers like MovieLink and Starz! Ticket, movies are legally available in on-demand environments. The only missing piece is a wireless connection between TVs and PCs, and this should be available within the next 12 months, thanks to new products coming to market.”
The firm will present these data, part of its ongoing research of multimedia platforms and services, at its workshop on Digital Entertainment in the Networked Home on July 15, 2004, at The Fairmont in San Jose, CA.
Also at the workshop, Parks Associates’ analysts will present industry analysis and consumer research regarding other markets, including broadband, gaming, music, and media servers, within the digital home value chain.
Additionally, Parks Associates will be publishing a report on video-on-demand services, Video-on-Demand and PVR: Analysis & Forecasts, in July 2004
MP3 Players Yet to Strike a Chord in Delhi
By Sharmee Roy
New Delhi, June 24, 2004
With MP3 players becoming hot property, most vendors are foraying into this product line, but the channels in the capital are not much interested to push the product in the market.
Speaking to ChannelTimes, the reseller community informed that currently the market size for MP3 is only in the range of 5 to 10 percent. Though it is a growing market, the channels do not find it a lucrative option for them at the moment.
According to Shyam Modi, director, Modi Peripherals, "Looking at the current market scenario for MP3 players, we are not too keen on pushing them for the moment. We might think of dealing in this product line only when the market opens up more for them."
Citing yet another reason Binit Kumar, head of marketing, Comnet Vision, said, "The channels are not focused on the product since the sales for the product are not very enthusiastic and on an average we receive only one or two queries once in a while. Looking at the MP3 player market price-wise and quantity-wise, it is not a product to be stocked."
Moreover, while the vendors seem to be very upbeat about the product, hardly any channel activity is seen from them, the resellers pointed out. Also, the distributors are looking at a different set of channels to push the product. Yogesh Dutta, national sales manager, Aditya Infotech, feels, "it is a virgin market and the IT channels won't be too keen in marketing MP3 players as they are simple box movers. It is a lifestyle product which is more of a consumer electronics (CE) channel."
However, major vendors remain optimistic about the Indian MP3 market with leading electronics giants such as Benq recently foraying into this as yet relatively untapped market segment.
Japanese electronics maker Toshiba develops thumb-sized fuel cell
10:04 AM EDT Jun 24
TOKYO (AP) - Japanese electronics maker Toshiba Corp. has developed a small prototype fuel cell, about the size of a thumb, that can power a digital audio player.
The Tokyo-based company said Thursday the 5.6-centimetre-long fuel cell is the world's smallest of its type and can power an MP3 audio player for about 20 hours on a single charge of methanol fuel.
Many companies are competing to develop fuel cells to power electronic gadgets in place of conventional batteries. Fuel cells produce electricity by converting hydrogen and oxygen into water and are widely considered power sources of the future because of their efficiency and low pollution.
But manufacturers have faced difficulties in making them small and inexpensive. Toshiba said it was able to develop a system that allows a higher concentration of methanol while reducing the size of the fuel tank.
But the 8.5-gram prototype currently produces only 100 milliwatts of electricity, and its output must be raised before it can be widely commercialized. Toshiba hopes to use fuel cells to power handheld electronic devices by 2005.
This stock has "sold" at the bid for many, many, years. Not all the time, but enough to where it isn't a rarity.
Buoyant Portable Player Market Pressuring Movie Distribution Model, Finds ABI Research
OYSTER BAY, N.Y.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 22, 2004--In the Beginning was the Walkman, and it started a revolution. Since then we've seen the CD "Diskman", and recently, floods of portable MP3 players.
Now a similar revolution is gathering steam behind the portable video player, which, according to ABI Research's director of broadband research, Vamsi Sistla, "is entering the mainstream portable market."
"As price points fall, screens get bigger and form factors shrink," he says, "the market for portable video players is increasing." He notes, however, that because of their higher cost, personal video player market growth is not as explosive as that for MP3 players was in its initial stages.
Portable audio and video players are just one of four new equipment categories examined in the latest edition of ABI Research's "Residential Entertainment Technologies Quarterly Service". (Also covered in depth are LCD/Plasma/DLP TVs; digital cameras/camcorders; DVD Players/Recorders, DVRs, stationary audio devices, and other video and audio host devices. Segmented market breakdowns and forecasts are included.)
Unlike portable DVD players, portable video players often contain hard disk drives, allowing recording and storage of multiple movies. Therein lies a problem for the film industry, which is understandably frightened of piracy. In Sistla's view, "The industry has to figure out a way to deal with changes in technology and to make sure the consumer's rights to minimum copying for personal use are met, while at the same time protecting copyright holders' interests."
Can studios find inspiration in the success of online music retailing on the model of Apple's groundbreaking 99 cent song downloads? Given satisfactory solutions to the intellectual property issues, Sistla thinks so: "Make it legal," he says. "Motion picture industry players and regulators should jump in much sooner to realize the potential of this opportunity and start generating revenue. Maybe we need another Steve Jobs, to take the portable video player sales to the next level."
Founded in 1990 and headquartered in New York, ABI Research maintains global operations that support annual research programs, quarterly intelligence services and market reports in wireless, automotive, semiconductors, broadband, and energy. Their market research products can be found on the Web at www.abiresearch.com, or by calling 516.624.3113.
Microsoft Research DRM talk
Cory Doctorow
cory@eff.org
June 17, 2004
This talk was originally given to Microsoft's Research Group
and other interested parties from within the company at their
Redmond offices on June 17, 2004.
Greetings fellow pirates! Arrrrr!
I'm here today to talk to you about copyright, technology and
DRM, I work for the Electronic Frontier Foundation on copyright
stuff (mostly), and I live in London. I'm not a lawyer -- I'm a
kind of mouthpiece/activist type, though occasionally they shave
me and stuff me into my Bar Mitzvah suit and send me to a
standards body or the UN to stir up trouble. I spend about three
weeks a month on the road doing completely weird stuff like going
to Microsoft to talk about DRM.
I lead a double life: I'm also a science fiction writer. That
means I've got a dog in this fight, because I've been dreaming of
making my living from writing since I was 12 years old.
Admittedly, my IP-based biz isn't as big as yours, but I
guarantee you that it's every bit as important to me as yours is
to you.
Here's what I'm here to convince you of:
1. That DRM systems don't work
2. That DRM systems are bad for society
3. That DRM systems are bad for business
4. That DRM systems are bad for artists
5. That DRM is a bad business-move for MSFT
It's a big brief, this talk. Microsoft has sunk a lot of capital
into DRM systems, and spent a lot of time sending folks like
Martha and Brian and Peter around to various smoke-filled rooms
to make sure that Microsoft DRM finds a hospitable home in the
future world. Companies like Microsoft steer like old Buicks, and
this issue has a lot of forward momentum that will be hard to
soak up without driving the engine block back into the driver's
compartment. At best I think that Microsoft might convert some of
that momentum on DRM into angular momentum, and in so doing, save
all our asses.
Let's dive into it.
--
1. DRM systems don't work
This bit breaks down into two parts:
1. A quick refresher course in crypto theory
2. Applying that to DRM
Cryptography -- secret writing -- is the practice of keeping
secrets. It involves three parties: a sender, a receiver and an
attacker (actually, there can be more attackers, senders and
recipients, but let's keep this simple). We usually call these
people Alice, Bob and Carol.
Let's say we're in the days of the Caesar, the Gallic
War. You need to send messages back and forth to your generals,
and you'd prefer that the enemy doesn't get hold of them. You can
rely on the idea that anyone who intercepts your message is
probably illiterate, but that's a tough bet to stake your empire
on. You can put your messages into the hands of reliable
messengers who'll chew them up and swallow them if captured --
but that doesn't help you if Brad Pitt and his men in skirts
skewer him with an arrow before he knows what's hit him.
So you encipher your message with something like ROT-13, where
every character is rotated halfway through the alphabet. They
used to do this with non-worksafe material on Usenet, back when
anyone on Usenet cared about work-safe-ness -- A would become N,
B is O, C is P, and so forth. To decipher, you just add 13 more,
so N goes to A, O to B yadda yadda.
Well, this is pretty lame: as soon as anyone figures out your
algorithm, your secret is g0nez0red.
So if you're Caesar, you spend a lot of time worrying about
keeping the existence of your messengers and their payloads
secret. Get that? You're Augustus and you need to send a message
to Brad without Caceous (a word I'm reliably informed means
"cheese-like, or pertaining to cheese") getting his hands on it.
You give the message to Diatomaceous, the fleetest runner in the
empire, and you encipher it with ROT-13 and send him out of the
garrison in the pitchest hour of the night, making sure no one
knows that you've sent it out. Caceous has spies everywhere, in
the garrison and staked out on the road, and if one of them puts
an arrow through Diatomaceous, they'll have their hands on the
message, and then if they figure out the cipher, you're b0rked.
So the existence of the message is a secret. The cipher is a
secret. The ciphertext is a secret. That's a lot of secrets, and
the more secrets you've got, the less secure you are, especially
if any of those secrets are shared. Shared secrets aren't really
all that secret any longer.
Time passes, stuff happens, and then Tesla invents the radio and
Marconi takes credit for it. This is both good news and bad news
for crypto: on the one hand, your messages can get to anywhere
with a receiver and an antenna, which is great for the brave
fifth columnists working behind the enemy lines. On the other
hand, anyone with an antenna can listen in on the message, which
means that it's no longer practical to keep the existence of the
message a secret. Any time Adolf sends a message to Berlin, he
can assume Churchill overhears it.
Which is OK, because now we have computers -- big, bulky
primitive mechanical computers, but computers still. Computers
are machines for rearranging numbers, and so scientists on both
sides engage in a fiendish competition to invent the most
cleverest method they can for rearranging numerically represented
text so that the other side can't unscramble it. The existence of
the message isn't a secret anymore, but the cipher is.
But this is still too many secrets. If Bobby intercepts one of
Adolf's Enigma machines, he can give Churchill all kinds of
intelligence. I mean, this was good news for Churchill and us,
but bad news for Adolf. And at the end of the day, it's bad news
for anyone who wants to keep a secret.
Enter keys: a cipher that uses a key is still more secure. Even
if the cipher is disclosed, even if the ciphertext is
intercepted, without the key (or a break), the message is secret.
Post-war, this is doubly important as we begin to realize what I
think of as Schneier's Law: "any person can invent a security
system so clever that she or he can't think of how to break it."
This means that the only experimental methodology for discovering
if you've made mistakes in your cipher is to tell all the smart
people you can about it and ask them to think of ways to break
it. Without this critical step, you'll eventually end up living
in a fool's paradise, where your attacker has broken your cipher
ages ago and is quietly decrypting all her intercepts of your
messages, snickering at you.
Best of all, there's only one secret: the key. And with dual-key
crypto it becomes a lot easier for Alice and Bob to keep their
keys secret from Carol, even if they've never met. So long as
Alice and Bob can keep their keys secret, they can assume that
Carol won't gain access to their cleartext messages, even though
she has access to the cipher and the ciphertext. Conveniently
enough, the keys are the shortest and simplest of the secrets,
too: hence even easier to keep away from Carol. Hooray for Bob
and Alice.
Now, let's apply this to DRM.
In DRM, the attacker is *also the recipient*. It's not Alice and
Bob and Carol, it's just Alice and Bob. Alice sells Bob a DVD.
She sells Bob a DVD player. The DVD has a movie on it -- say,
Pirates of the Caribbean -- and it's enciphered with an algorithm
called CSS -- Content Scrambling System. The DVD player has a CSS
un-scrambler.
Now, let's take stock of what's a secret here: the cipher is
well-known. The ciphertext is most assuredly in enemy hands, arrr.
So what? As long as the key is secret from the attacker, we're
golden.
But there's the rub. Alice wants Bob to buy Pirates of the
Caribbean from her. Bob will only buy Pirates of the Caribbean if
he can descramble the CSS-encrypted VOB -- video object -- on his
DVD player. Otherwise, the disc is only useful to Bob as a
drinks-coaster. So Alice has to provide Bob -- the attacker --
with the key, the cipher and the ciphertext.
Hilarity ensues.
DRM systems are broken in minutes, sometimes days. Rarely,
months. It's not because the people who think them up are stupid.
It's not because the people who break them are smart. It's not
because there's a flaw in the algorithms. At the end of the day,
all DRM systems share a common vulnerability: they provide their
attackers with ciphertext, the cipher and the key. At this point,
the secret isn't a secret anymore.
--
2. DRM systems are bad for society
Raise your hand if you're thinking something like, "But DRM
doesn't have to be proof against smart attackers, only average
individuals! It's like a speedbump!"
Put your hand down.
This is a fallacy for two reasons: one technical, and one social.
They're both bad for society, though.
Here's the technical reason: I don't need to be a cracker to
break your DRM. I only need to know how to search Google, or
Kazaa, or any of the other general-purpose search tools for the
cleartext that someone smarter than me has extracted.
Raise your hand if you're thinking something like, "But NGSCB can
solve this problem: we'll lock the secrets up on the logic board
and goop it all up with epoxy."
Put your hand down.
Raise your hand if you're a co-author of the Darknet paper.
Everyone in the first group, meet the co-authors of the Darknet
paper. This is a paper that says, among other things, that DRM
will fail for this very reason. Put your hands down, guys.
Here's the social reason that DRM fails: keeping an honest user
honest is like keeping a tall user tall. DRM vendors tell us that
their technology is meant to be proof against average users, not
organized criminal gangs like the Ukranian pirates who stamp out
millions of high-quality counterfeits. It's not meant to be proof
against sophisticated college kids. It's not meant to be proof
against anyone who knows how to edit her registry, or hold down
the shift key at the right moment, or use a search engine. At the
end of the day, the user DRM is meant to defend against is the
most unsophisticated and least capable among us.
Here's a true story about a user I know who was stopped by DRM.
She's smart, college educated, and knows nothing about
electronics. She has three kids. She has a DVD in the living room
and an old VHS deck in the kids' playroom. One day, she brought
home the Toy Story DVD for the kids. That's a substantial
investment, and given the generally jam-smeared character of
everything the kids get their paws on, she decided to tape the
DVD off to VHS and give that to the kids -- that way she could
make a fresh VHS copy when the first one went south. She cabled
her DVD into her VHS and pressed play on the DVD and record on
the VCR and waited.
Before I go farther, I want us all to stop a moment and marvel at
this. Here is someone who is practically technophobic, but who
was able to construct a mental model of sufficient accuracy that
she figured out that she could connect her cables in the right
order and dub her digital disc off to analog tape. I imagine that
everyone in this room is the front-line tech support for someone
in her or his family: wouldn't it be great if all our non-geek
friends and relatives were this clever and imaginative?
I also want to point out that this is the proverbial honest user.
She's not making a copy for the next door neighbors. She's not
making a copy and selling it on a blanket on Canal Street. She's
not ripping it to her hard-drive, DivX encoding it and putting it
in her Kazaa sharepoint. She's doing something *honest* -- moving
it from one format to another. She's home taping.
Except she fails. There's a DRM system called Macrovision
embedded -- by law -- in every DVD player and VHS that messes
with the vertical blanking interval in the signal and causes any
tape made in this fashion to fail. Macrovision can be defeated
for about $10 with a gadget readily available on eBay. But our
infringer doesn't know that. She's "honest." Technically
unsophisticated. Not stupid, mind you -- just naive.
The Darknet paper addresses this possibility: it even predicts
what this person will do in the long run: she'll find out about
Kazaa and the next time she wants to get a movie for the kids,
she'll download it from the net and burn it for them.
In order to delay that day for as long as possible, our lawmakers
and big rightsholder interests have come up with a disastrous
policy called anticircumvention.
Here's how anticircumvention works: if you put a lock -- an
access control -- around a copyrighted work, it is illegal to
break that lock. It's illegal to make a tool that breaks that
lock. It's illegal to tell someone how to make that tool. It's
illegal to tell someone where she can find out how to make that
tool.
Remember Schneier's Law? Anyone can come up with a security
system so clever that he can't see its flaws. The only way to
find the flaws in security is to disclose the system's workings
and invite public feedback. But now we live in a world where any
cipher used to fence off a copyrighted work is off-limits to that
kind of feedback. That's something that a Princeton engineering
prof named Ed Felten discovered when he submitted a paper to an
academic conference on the failings in the Secure Digital Music
Initiative, a watermarking scheme proposed by the recording
industry. The RIAA responded by threatening to sue his ass if he
tried it. We fought them because Ed is the kind of client that
impact litigators love: unimpeachable and clean-cut and the RIAA
folded. Lucky Ed. Maybe the next guy isn't so lucky.
Matter of fact, the next guy wasn't. Dmitry Skylarov is a Russian
programmer who gave a talk at a hacker con in Vegas on the
failings in Adobe's e-book locks. The FBI threw him in the slam
for 30 days. He copped a plea, went home to Russia, and the
Russian equivalent of the State Department issued a blanket
warning to its researchers to stay away from American
conferences, since we'd apparently turned into the kind of
country where certain equations are illegal.
Anticircumvention is a powerful tool for people who want to
exclude competitors. If you claim that your car engine firmware
is a "copyrighted work," you can sue anyone who makes a tool for
interfacing with it. That's not just bad news for mechanics --
think of the hotrodders who want to chip their cars to tweak the
performance settings. We have companies like Lexmark claiming
that their printer cartridges contain copyrighted works --
software that trips an "I am empty" flag when the toner runs out,
and have sued a competitor who made a remanufactured cartridge
that reset the flag. Even garage-door opener companies have
gotten in on the act, claiming that their receivers' firmware are
copyrighted works. Copyrighted cars, print carts and garage-door
openers: what's next, copyrighted light-fixtures?
Even in the context of legitimate -- excuse me, "traditional" --
copyrighted works like movies on DVDs, anticircumvention is bad
news. Copyright is a delicate balance. It gives creators and
their assignees some rights, but it also reserves some rights to
the public. For example, an author has no right to prohibit
anyone from transcoding his books into assistive formats for the
blind. More importantly, though, a creator has a very limited say
over what you can do once you lawfully acquire her works. If I
buy your book, your painting, or your DVD, it belongs to me. It's
my property. Not my "intellectual property" -- a whacky kind of
pseudo-property that's swiss-cheesed with exceptions, easements
and limitations -- but real, no-fooling, actual tangible
*property* -- the kind of thing that courts have been managing
through tort law for centuries.
But anticirumvention lets rightsholders invent new and exciting
copyrights for themselves -- to write private laws without
accountability or deliberation -- that expropriate your interest
in your physical property to their favor. Region-coded DVDs are
an example of this: there's no copyright here or in anywhere I
know of that says that an author should be able to control where
you enjoy her creative works, once you've paid for them. I can
buy a book and throw it in my bag and take it anywhere from
Toronto to Timbuktu, and read it wherever I am: I can even buy
books in America and bring them to the UK, where the author may
have an exclusive distribution deal with a local publisher who
sells them for double the US shelf-price. When I'm done with it,
I can sell it on or give it away in the UK. Copyright lawyers
call this "First Sale," but it may be simpler to think of it as
"Capitalism."
The keys to decrypt a DVD are controlled by an org called
DVD-CCA, and they have a bunch of licensing requirements for
anyone who gets a key from them. Among these is something called
region-coding: if you buy a DVD in France, it'll have a flag set
that says, "I am a French DVD." Bring that DVD to America and
your DVD player will compare the flag to its list of permitted
regions, and if they don't match, it will tell you that it's not
allowed to play your disc.
Remember: there is no copyright that says that an author gets to
do this. When we wrote the copyright statutes and granted authors
the right to control display, performance, duplication,
derivative works, and so forth, we didn't leave out "geography"
by accident. That was on-purpose.
So when your French DVD won't play in America, that's not because
it'd be illegal to do so: it's because the studios have invented
a business-model and then invented a copyright law to prop it up.
The DVD is your property and so is the DVD player, but if you
break the region-coding on your disc, you're going to run afoul
of anticircumvention.
That's what happened to Jon Johansen, a Norweigan teenager who
wanted to watch French DVDs on his Norweigan DVD player. He and
some pals wrote some code to break the CSS so that he could do
so. He's a wanted man here in America; in Norway the studios put
the local fuzz up to bringing him up on charges of *unlawfully
trespassing upon a computer system.* When his defense asked,
"Which computer has Jon trespassed upon?" the answer was: "His
own."
His no-fooling, real and physical property has been expropriated
by the weird, notional, metaphorical intellectual property on his
DVD: DRM only works if your record player becomes the property of
whomever's records you're playing.
--
3. DRM systems are bad for biz
This is the worst of all the ideas embodied by DRM: that people
who make record-players should be able to spec whose records you
can listen to, and that people who make records should have a
veto over the design of record-players.
We've never had this principle: in fact, we've always had just
the reverse. Think about all the things that can be plugged into
a parallel or serial interface, which were never envisioned by
their inventors. Our strong economy and rapid innovation are
byproducts of the ability of anyone to make anything that plugs
into anything else: from the Flo-bee electric razor that snaps
onto the end of your vacuum-hose to the octopus spilling out of
your car's dashboard lighter socket, standard interfaces that
anyone can build for are what makes billionaires out of nerds.
The courts affirm this again and again. It used to be illegal to
plug anything that didn't come from AT&T into your phone-jack.
They claimed that this was for the safety of the network, but
really it was about propping up this little penny-ante racket
that AT&T had in charging you a rental fee for your phone until
you'd paid for it a thousand times over.
When that ban was struck down, it created the market for
third-party phone equipment, from talking novelty phones to
answering machines to cordless handsets to headsets -- billions
of dollars of economic activity that had been supressed by the
closed interface. Note that AT&T was one of the big beneficiaries
of this: they *also* got into the business of making phone-kit.
DRM is the software equivalent of these closed hardware
interfaces. Robert Scoble is a Softie who has an excellent blog,
where he wrote an essay about the best way to protect your
investment in the digital music you buy. Should you buy Apple
iTunes music, or Microsoft DRM music? Scoble argued that
Microsoft's music was a sounder investment, because Microsoft
would have more downstream licensees for its proprietary format
and therefore you'd have a richer ecosystem of devices to choose
from when you were shopping for gizmos to play your virtual
records on.
What a weird idea: that we should evaluate our record-purchases
on the basis of which recording company will allow the greatest
diversity of record-players to play its discs! That's like
telling someone to buy the Betamax instead of the Edison
Kinetoscope because Thomas Edison is a crank about licensing his
patents; all the while ignoring the world's relentless march to
the more open VHS format.
It's a bad business. DVD is a format where the guy who makes the
records gets to design the record players. Ask yourself: how much
innovation has there been over the past decade of DVD players?
They've gotten cheaper and smaller, but where are the weird and
amazing new markets for DVD that were opened up by the VCR?
There's a company that's manufacturing the world's first
HDD-based DVD jukebox, a thing that holds 30 movies, and they're
charging *$30,000* for this thing. We're talking about a $300
hard drive and a $300 PC -- all that other cost is the cost of
anticompetition.
--
4. DRM systems are bad for artists
But what of the artist? The hardworking filmmaker, the
ink-stained scribbler, the heroin-cured leathery rock-star? We
poor slobs of the creative class are everyone's favorite
poster-children here: the RIAA and MPAA hold us up and say,
"Won't someone please think of the children?" File-sharers say,
"Yeah, we're thinking about the artists, but the labels are The
Man, who cares what happens to you?"
To understand what DRM does to artists, you need to understand
how copyright and technology interact. Copyright is inherently
technological, since the things it addresses -- copying,
transmitting, and so on -- are inherently technological.
The piano roll was the first system for cheaply copying music. It
was invented at a time when the dominant form of entertainment in
America was getting a talented pianist to come into your living
room and pound out some tunes while you sang along. The music
industry consisted mostly of sheet-music publishers.
The player piano was a digital recording and playback system.
Piano-roll companies bought sheet music and ripped the notes
printed on it into 0s and 1s on a long roll of computer tape,
which they sold by the thousands -- the hundreds of thousands --
the millions. They did this without a penny's compensation to the
publishers. They were digital music pirates. Arrrr!
Predictably, the composers and music publishers went nutso. Sousa
showed up in Congress to say that:
These talking machines are going to ruin the
artistic development of music in this
country. When I was a boy...in front of every
house in the summer evenings, you would find
young people together singing the songs of
the day or old songs. Today you hear these
infernal machines going night and day. We
will not have a vocal chord left. The vocal
chord will be eliminated by a process of
evolution, as was the tail of man when he
came from the ape.
The publishers asked Congress to ban the piano roll and to create
a law that said that any new system for reproducing music should
be subject to a veto from their industry association. Lucky for
us, Congress realized what side of their bread had butter on it
and decided not to criminalize the dominant form of entertainment
in America.
But there was the problem of paying artists. The Constitution
sets out the purpose of American copyright: to promote the useful
arts and sciences. The composers had a credible story that they'd
do less composing if they weren't paid for it, so Congress needed
a fix. Here's what they came up with: anyone who paid a music
publisher two cents would have the right to make one piano roll
of any song that publisher published. The publisher couldn't say
no, and no one had to hire a lawyer at $200 an hour to argue
about whether the payment should be two cents or a nickel.
This compulsory license is still in place today: when Joe Cocker
sings "With a Little Help from My Friends," he pays a fixed fee
to the Beatles' publisher and away he goes -- even if Ringo hates
the idea. If you ever wondered how Sid Vicious talked Anka into
letting him get a crack at "My Way," well, now you know.
That compulsory license created a world where a thousand times
more money was made by a thousand times more creators who made a
thousand times more music that reached a thousand times more
people.
This story repeats itself throughout the technological century,
every ten or fifteen years. Radio was enabled by a voluntary
blanket license -- the music companies got together and asked for
an antitrust exemption so that they could offer all their music
for a flat fee. Cable TV took a compulsory: the only way cable
operators could get their hands on broadcasts was to pirate them
and shove them down the wire, and Congress saw fit to legalize
this practice rather than screw around with their constituents'
TVs.
Sometimes, the courts and Congress decided to simply take away a
copyright -- that's what happened with the VCR. When Sony brought
out the VCR in 1976, the studios had already decided what the
experience of watching a movie in your living room would look
like: they'd licensed out their programming for use on a machine
called a Discovision, which played big LP-sized discs that
disintegrated after a few plays. Proto-DRM.
The copyright scholars of the day didn't give the VCR very good
odds. Sony argued that their box allowed for a fair use, which is
defined as a use that a court rules is a defense against
infringement based on four factors: whether the use transforms
the work into something new, like a collage; whether it uses all
or some of the work; whether the work is artistic or mainly
factual; and whether the use undercuts the creator's
business-model.
The Betamax failed on all four fronts: when you time-shifted or
duplicated a Hollywood movie off the air, you made a
non-transformative use of 100 percent of a creative work in a way
that directly undercut the Discovision licensing stream.
Jack Valenti, the mouthpiece for the motion-picture industry,
told Congress in 1982 that the VCR was to the American film
industry "as the Boston Strangler is to a woman home alone."
But the Supreme Court ruled against Hollywood in 1984, when it
determined that any device capable of a substantial
non-infringing use was legal. In other words, "We don't buy this
Boston Strangler business: if your business model can't survive
the emergence of this general-purpose tool, it's time to get
another business-model or go broke."
Hollywood found another business model, as the broadcasters had,
as the Vaudeville artists had, as the music publishers had, and
they made more art that paid more artists and reached a wider
audience.
There's one thing that every new art business-model had in
common: it embraced the medium it lived in.
This is the overweening characteristic of every single successful
new medium: it is true to itself. The Luther Bible didn't
succeed on the axes that made a hand-copied monk Bible valuable:
they were ugly, they weren't in Church Latin, they weren't read
aloud by someone who could interpret it for his lay audience,
they didn't represent years of devoted-with-a-capital-D labor by
someone who had given his life over to God. The thing that made
the Luther Bible a success was its scalability: it was more
popular because it was more proliferate: all success factors for
a new medium pale beside its profligacy. The most successful
organisms on earth are those that reproduce the most: bugs and
bacteria, nematodes and virii. Reproduction is the best of all
survival strategies.
Piano rolls didn't sound as good as the music of a skilled
pianist: but they *scaled better*. Radio lacked the social
elements of live performance, but more people could build a
crystal set and get it aimed correctly than could pack into even
the largest Vaudeville house. MP3s don't come with liner notes,
they aren't sold to you by a hipper-than-thou record store clerk
who can help you make your choice, bad rips and truncated files
abound: I once downloaded a twelve-second copy of "Hey Jude" from
the original Napster. Yet MP3 is outcompeting the CD. I don't
know what to do with CDs anymore: I get them, and they're like
the especially garment bag they give you at the fancy suit shop:
it's nice and you feel like a goof for throwing it out, but
Christ, how many of these things can you usefully own? I can put
ten thousand songs on my laptop, but a comparable pile of discs,
with liner notes and so forth -- that's a liability: it's a piece
of my monthly storage-locker costs.
Here are the two most important things to know about computers
and the Internet:
1. A computer is a machine for rearranging bits
2. The Internet is a machine for moving bits from one place to
another very cheaply and quickly
Any new medium that takes hold on the Internet and with computers
will embrace these two facts, not regret them. A newspaper press
is a machine for spitting out cheap and smeary newsprint at
speed: if you try to make it output fine art lithos, you'll get
junk. If you try to make it output newspapers, you'll get the
basis for a free society.
And so it is with the Internet. At the heyday of Napster, record
execs used to show up at conferences and tell everyone that
Napster was doomed because no one wanted lossily compressed MP3s
with no liner notes and truncated files and misspelled metadata.
Today we hear ebook publishers tell each other and anyone who'll
listen that the barrier to ebooks is screen resolution. It's
bollocks, and so is the whole sermonette about how nice a book
looks on your bookcase and how nice it smells and how easy it is
to slip into the tub. These are obvious and untrue things, like
the idea that radio will catch on once they figure out how to
sell you hotdogs during the intermission, or that movies will
really hit their stride when we can figure out how to bring the
actors out for an encore when the film's run out. Or that what
the Protestant Reformation really needs is Luther Bibles with
facsimile illumination in the margin and a rent-a-priest to read
aloud from your personal Word of God.
New media don't succeed because they're like the old media, only
better: they succeed because they're worse than the old media at
the stuff the old media is good at, and better at the stuff the
old media are bad at. Books are good at being paperwhite,
high-resolution, low-infrastructure, cheap and disposable. Ebooks
are good at being everywhere in the world at the same time for
free in a form that is so malleable that you can just pastebomb
it into your IM session or turn it into a page-a-day mailing
list.
The only really successful epublishing -- I mean, hundreds of
thousands, millions of copies distributed and read -- is the
bookwarez scene, where scanned-and-OCR'd books are distributed on
the darknet. The only legit publishers with any success at
epublishing are the ones whose books cross the Internet without
technological fetter: publishers like Baen Books and my own, Tor,
who are making some or all of their catalogs available in ASCII
and HTML and PDF.
The hardware-dependent ebooks, the DRM use-and-copy-restricted
ebooks, they're cratering. Sales measured in the tens, sometimes
the hundreds. Science fiction is a niche business, but when
you're selling copies by the ten, that's not even a business,
it's a hobby.
Every one of you has been riding a curve where you read more and
more words off of more and more screens every day through most of
your professional careers. It's zero-sum: you've also been
reading fewer words off of fewer pages as time went by: the
dinosauric executive who prints his email and dictates a reply to
his secretary is info-roadkill.
Today, at this very second, people read words off of screens for
every hour that they can find. Your kids stare at their Game Boys
until their eyes fall out. Euroteens ring doorbells with their
hypertrophied, SMS-twitching thumbs instead of their index
fingers.
Paper books are the packaging that books come in. Cheap
printer-binderies like the Internet Bookmobile that can produce a
full bleed, four color, glossy cover, printed spine,
perfect-bound book in ten minutes for a dollar are the future of
paper books: when you need an instance of a paper book, you
generate one, or part of one, and pitch it out when you're done.
I landed at SEA-TAC on Monday and burned a couple CDs from my
music collection to listen to in the rental car. When I drop the
car off, I'll leave them behind. Who needs 'em?
Whenever a new technology has disrupted copyright, we've changed
copyright. Copyright isn't an ethical proposition, it's a
utilitarian one. There's nothing *moral* about paying a composer
tuppence for the piano-roll rights, there's nothing *immoral*
about not paying Hollywood for the right to videotape a movie off
your TV. They're just the best way of balancing out so that
people's physical property rights in their VCRs and phonographs
are respected and so that creators get enough of a dangling
carrot to go on making shows and music and books and paintings.
Technology that disrupts copyright does so because it simplifies
and cheapens creation, reproduction and distribution. The
existing copyright businesses exploit inefficiencies in the old
production, reproduction and distribution system, and they'll be
weakened by the new technology. But new technology always gives
us more art with a wider reach: that's what tech is *for*.
Tech gives us bigger pies that more artists can get a bite out
of. That's been tacitly acknowledged at every stage of the
copyfight since the piano roll. When copyright and technology
collide, it's copyright that changes.
Which means that today's copyright -- the thing that DRM
nominally props up -- didn't come down off the mountain on two
stone tablets. It was created in living memory to accommodate the
technical reality created by the inventors of the previous
generation. To abandon invention now robs tomorrow's artists of
the new businesses and new reach and new audiences that the
Internet and the PC can give them.
--
5. DRM is a bad business-move for MSFT
When Sony brought out the VCR, it made a record player that could
play Hollywood's records, even if Hollywood didn't like the idea.
The industries that grew up on the back of the VCR -- movie
rentals, home taping, camcorders, even Bar Mitzvah videographers
-- made billions for Sony and its cohort.
That was good business -- even if Sony lost the Betamax-VHS
format wars, the money on the world-with-VCRs table was enough to
make up for it.
But then Sony acquired a relatively tiny entertainment company
and it started to massively screw up. When MP3 rolled around and
Sony's walkman customers were clamoring for a solid-state MP3
player, Sony let its music business-unit run its show: instead of
making a high-capacity MP3 walkman, Sony shipped its Music Clips,
low-capacity devices that played brain-damaged DRM formats like
Real and OpenAG. They spent good money engineering "features"
into these devices that kept their customers from freely moving
their music back and forth between their devices. Customers
stayed away in droves.
Today, Sony is dead in the water when it comes to walkmen. The
market leaders are poky Singaporean outfits like Creative Labs --
the kind of company that Sony used to crush like a bug, back
before it got borged by its entertainment unit -- and PC
companies like Apple.
That's because Sony shipped a product that there was no market
demand for. No Sony customer woke up one morning and said, "Damn,
I wish Sony would devote some expensive engineering effort in
order that I may do less with my music." Presented with an
alternative, Sony's customers enthusiastically jumped ship.
The same thing happened to a lot of people I know who used to rip
their CDs to WMA. You guys sold them software that produced
smaller, better-sounding rips that the MP3 rippers, but you also
fixed it so that the songs you ripped were device-locked to their
PCs. What that meant is that when they backed up their music to
another hard-drive and reinstalled their OS (something that the
spyware and malware wars has made more common than ever), they
discovered that after they restored their music that they could
no longer play it. The player saw the new OS as a different
machine, and locked them out of their own music.
There is no market demand for this "feature." None of your
customers want you to make expensive modifications to your
products that make backing up and restoring even harder. And
there is no moment when your customers will be less forgiving
than the moment that they are recovering from catastrophic
technology failures.
I speak from experience. Because I buy a new Powerbook every ten
months, and because I always order the new models the day they're
announced, I get a lot of lemons from Apple. That means that I
hit Apple's three-iTunes-authorized-computers limit pretty early
on and found myself unable to play the hundreds of dollars' worth
of iTunes songs I'd bought because one of my authorized machines
was a lemon that Apple had broken up for parts, one was in the
shop getting fixed by Apple, and one was my mom's computer, 3,000
miles away in Toronto.
If I had been a less good customer for Apple's hardware, I would
have been fine. If I had been a less enthusiastic evangelist for
Apple's products -- if I hadn't shown my mom how iTunes Music
Store worked -- I would have been fine. If I hadn't bought so
much iTunes music that burning it to CD and re-ripping it and
re-keying all my metadata was too daunting a task to consider, I
would have been fine.
As it was Apple rewarded my trust, evangelism and out-of-control
spending by treating me like a crook and locking me out of my own
music, at a time when my Powerbook was in the shop -- i.e., at a
time when I was hardly disposed to feel charitable to Apple.
I'm an edge case here, but I'm a *leading edge* case. If Apple
succeeds in its business plans, it will only be a matter of time
until even average customers have upgraded enough hardware and
bought enough music to end up where I am.
You know what I would totally buy? A record player that let me
play everybody's records. Right now, the closest I can come to
that is an open source app called VLC, but it's clunky and buggy
and it didn't come pre-installed on my computer.
Sony didn't make a Betamax that only played the movies that
Hollywood was willing to permit -- Hollywood asked them to do it,
they proposed an early, analog broadcast flag that VCRs could
hunt for and respond to by disabling recording. Sony ignored them
and made the product they thought their customers wanted.
I'm a Microsoft customer. Like millions of other Microsoft
customers, I want a player that plays anything I throw at it, and
I think that you are just the company to give it to me.
Yes, this would violate copyright law as it stands, but Microsoft
has been making tools of piracy that change copyright law for
decades now. Outlook, Exchange and MSN are tools that abet
widescale digital infringement.
More significantly, IIS and your caching proxies all make and
serve copies of documents without their authors' consent,
something that, if it is legal today, is only legal because
companies like Microsoft went ahead and did it and dared
lawmakers to prosecute.
Microsoft stood up for its customers and for progress, and won so
decisively that most people never even realized that there was a
fight.
Do it again! This is a company that looks the world's roughest,
toughest anti-trust regulators in the eye and laughs. Compared to
anti-trust people, copyright lawmakers are pantywaists. You can
take them with your arm behind your back.
In Siva Vaidhyanathan's book The Anarchist in the Library, he
talks about why the studios are so blind to their customers'
desires. It's because people like you and me spent the 80s and
the 90s telling them bad science fiction stories about impossible
DRM technology that would let them charge a small sum of money
every time someone looked at a movie -- want to fast-forward?
That feature costs another penny. Pausing is two cents an hour.
The mute button will cost you a quarter.
When Mako Analysis issued their report last month advising phone
companies to stop supporting Symbian phones, they were just
writing the latest installment in this story. Mako says that
phones like my P900, which can play MP3s as ringtones, are bad
for the cellphone economy, because it'll put the extortionate
ringtone sellers out of business. What Mako is saying is that
just because you bought the CD doesn't mean that you should
expect to have the ability to listen to it on your MP3 player,
and just because it plays on your MP3 player is no reason to
expect it to run as a ringtone. I wonder how they feel about
alarm clocks that will play a CD to wake you up in the morning?
Is that strangling the nascent "alarm tone" market?
The phone companies' customers want Symbian phones and for now,
at least, the phone companies understand that if they don't sell
them, someone else will.
The market opportunity for a truly capable devices is enormous.
There's a company out there charging *$30,000* for a $600 DVD
jukebox -- go and eat their lunch! Steve Jobs isn't going to do
it: he's off at the D conference telling studio execs not to
release hi-def movies until they're sure no one will make a
hi-def DVD burner that works with a PC.
Maybe they won't buy into his BS, but they're also not much
interested in what you have to sell. At the Broadcast Protection
Discussion Group meetings where the Broadcast Flag was hammered
out, the studios' position was, "We'll take anyone's DRM except
Microsoft's and Philips'." When I met with UK broadcast wonks
about the European version of the Broadcast Flag underway at the
Digital Video Broadcasters' forum, they told me, "Well, it's
different in Europe: mostly they're worried that some American
company like Microsoft will get their claws into European
television."
American film studios didn't want the Japanese electronics
companies to get a piece of the movie pie, so they fought the
VCR. Today, everyone who makes movies agrees that they don't want
to let you guys get between them and their customers.
Sony didn't get permission. Neither should you. Go build the
record player that can play everyone's records.
Because if you don't do it, someone else will.
Apple, BMW Develop iPod Music Device for Car Radios (Update2)
June 17 (Bloomberg) --
Apple Computer Inc. and automaker Bayerische Motoren Werke AG are developing a device that will let users listen to songs from their iPod music players through the radios of BMWs and Minis.
The adaptors will be available in vehicles sold in the U.S., Eckhard Wannieck, a BMW spokesman at the carmaker's Munich headquarters, said in an interview. He wouldn't elaborate.
A deal with BMW is likely to be the first of several pairings between Apple and carmakers as the computer maker, once mainly known for its Macintosh PCs, tries to sell more iPods. Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs, in Europe this week to open iTunes online music stores, said he is in talks with automakers he wouldn't name.
``It's just the tip of the iceberg,'' said Jim Grossman, a portfolio manager at Thrivent Financial for Lutherans in Minneapolis, Minnesota, which manages $64 billion. ``The market opportunity for people who would like to play iPods in their cars is huge.''
Apple's Web site touts a $39.95 auto kit made by Compton, California-based Belkin Corp. that allows an iPod to play on a car stereo.
A built-in product to hook iPods to car radios would be more sophisticated and have better quality than existing products, making them a more attractive option, Grossman said.
U.S Market
BMW will release details on models and prices in coming weeks, Wannieck said. The devices will allow users to control their iPod players in the same way they would control the radio.
The U.S. is the largest market for BMW. The company sold 276,869 of its namesake cars and SUVs and Mini compact cars in the U.S. in 2003.
Shares of Cupertino, California-based Apple rose 7 cents to $32.81 at 4 p.m. New York time on the Nasdaq Stock Market. The shares had risen 17 percent this month ahead of the company's annual developer conference, a forum Jobs often uses to announce new products and partnerships, said Shannon Cross, an analyst for Cross Research, in a note to clients.
Shares of BMW rose 6 cents to 35.36 euros. They have fallen 3.7 percent this year.
Calls to Apple spokespeople Steve Dowling and Natalie Sequeira weren't returned.
Carmakers
IPod sales climbed eightfold to 807,000 units in the second quarter, helping underpin Jobs's efforts to broaden Apple's products beyond the Macintosh computer.
The player, which sells for as much as $499 and can store as many as 10,000 songs, generated more revenue than the iMac desktop personal computer. The iPod produced sales of $264 million, compared with the iMac's $252 million.
Apple captured 78 percent of the market for MP3 music players in U.S. retail stores during March, according to Stephen Baker, director of research for the NPD Group research firm of Port Washington, New York.
The iPod mini, which retails for $249 and holds 1,000 songs, was so popular in the U.S. after its February release the company delayed introducing it outside the country.
Jobs on Monday said the company will introduce a music product for cars later this year. This week he opened the iTunes online music store in the U.K., France and Germany. Those countries, plus the U.S., account for more than 60 percent of the global music market, Jobs said.
Apple plans to start the service in other European countries by October, Jobs said.
``We think we have the most popular places to listen to music covered,'' Jobs said.
Southwest flies into New York
A little Apple-polishing, just to show itself off
07:41 AM CDT on Friday, June 18, 2004
By ERIC TORBENSON / The Dallas Morning News
NEW YORK – Southwest Airlines Co. parked its 400th Boeing 737 under the noses of its competitors Thursday to remind them who's the low-fare boss.
The Dallas-based carrier popped into New York's LaGuardia International Airport to celebrate its 33rd birthday, along with the new jet's delivery, and to kick up some dust with the New York-based national media.
"Despite our size, it's always surprising about who hasn't yet heard our story," explained Gary Kelly, chief financial officer, in an interview aboard the plane.
Though Southwest executives hesitated to say their "airborne press conference" was aimed at stealing some of the spotlight from the Big Apple's darling carrier, JetBlue Airways Corp., observers say it's clear the king of discount flying wanted to let people know it's still the largest and most profitable discounter.
Maybe flight attendant C.J. Deschaine sang it best as the plane taxied toward the runway at LaGuardia, an airport it doesn't normally serve.
"You love us, we love you, we're much better than JetBlue."
Glowing coverage of JetBlue has helped propel its stock price to new heights while Southwest shares have been mired in the mid-teens.
"I wouldn't call it frustration" over JetBlue's positive reviews, Mr. Kelly said. Rather, it's flattering that JetBlue is emulating Southwest's high-frequency, low-cost model.
"We don't expect to be the only airline flying out there," he said.
JetBlue is "just another competitor to us," said Jim Wimberly, executive vice president and chief of operations, who serenaded passengers with old Eagles hits played on his guitar.
Consultants say Southwest's approach to telling its story has to change with the times.
"Southwest has always prided itself at flying below the radar and taking a quiet approach," said airline consultant Mo Garfinkle. "That worked for a long time when there wasn't anybody out there, but JetBlue took the panache view and it's really worked for them. I think Southwest wants to get some of that pride back."
Only 2 percent of Southwest's revenue comes from routes where it competes directly against JetBlue. But many industry experts sense the two low-cost rivals will butt heads in the future.
Southwest's pitch to New York media and Wall Street analysts on the two-hour flight above New York was simple: While other carriers struggle with costs, Southwest has its expense well under control.
And while traditional carriers complain about average airfares dropping, Mr. Kelly said he's happy with how Southwest's revenue and traffic have held up this spring.
"We're very comfortable with our performance," Southwest chief executive Jim Parker said, sipping a Screwdriver at the rear of the plane.
Expansion plans
The carrier announced 18 flights to launch between September and October, its biggest expansion since the September 2001 terrorist attacks. None of the new flights are from Dallas Love Field.
Consultants say they think Southwest will have even more aggressive plans in short order.
"I think Southwest is sensing that the industry is on the cusp of a huge shakeout among the legacy carriers," Mr. Garfinkle said. "Their growth will be even more than they've let on so far."
Southwest's fundamentals remain solid and its status as the model for discount carriers worldwide remains, said Ron Kuhlmann of Unisys R2A Transportation Management Consultants.
"You don't hear as much now about all-night drinking parties and them smoking two cigars at a time over at Southwest these days," he said. "But they're clearly trying to get more noticed, especially by Wall Street, and I don't blame them."
Although Southwest is known for no-frills service, it's contemplating some of the biggest operating changes in its history. The carrier continues to ponder an in-flight entertainment system, a feature that's contributing to the buzz for JetBlue., And it may seek to diversify its jet fleet, now composed of Boeing 737s.
"We're not intellectually opposed to change," Mr. Parker said. "Our people have seen a lot of it recently."
But Mr. Kelly says big changes would probably rock the carrier's culture. "If you want to talk about the future of Southwest Airlines, it's going to be the resistance to change," he said.
In-flight entertainment
A big outlay for entertainment runs against the carrier's cost- saving culture, particularly when it's not clear whether passengers want to watch television and movies in the sky. About 80 percent of Southwest's schedule is for flights under 750 miles, where passengers probably wouldn't want to pay higher ticket prices to support entertainment.
And the 35 percent of Southwest's customers paying full fares mostly business fliers are less likely to want entertainment because they often work while they travel. The fliers who would most want in-flight entertainment are the most price-sensitive.
Officials said they're still thinking about flying smaller Embraer jets, but the carrier remains reluctant to add complexity to its successful formula.
Texas reporters flew roundtrip between Love Field and LaGuardia on a special flight on the new 737 for the event. Even if Southwest wanted to fly passenger flights into LaGuardia, it couldn't serve the airport nonstop from Love Field because the Wright Amendment limits trips from the Dallas airport to nearby states.
As the plane left New York for Dallas, Mr. Parker spied a Diet Coke can sliding down a tray table in the row of seats across from him. He quickly unsnapped his seat belt just as the plane took off, leapt across the aisle as the 737 hits its steepest pitch and saved the can from spilling in one swift motion. "I didn't want to see it get all over that nice leather," he said as the plane roared skyward.
Other than direct quotes from RP...not that I know of...eom
Napster gives away MP3 players to users
Buy a one-year subscription and get a free Rio
Updated: 10:07 p.m. ET June 16, 2004LOS ANGELES - Roxio Inc.'s
Napster said Wednesday it is offering free digital music players with a one-year subscription in the latest bid by an online music service to lure consumers with promotional offers.
Napster, which was transformed into a legal service after turning the music industry on its ear with an unauthorized song-swapping platform, is now giving away MP3 devices to anyone who subscribes for a full year.
On its Web site, Napster said it would give consumers a Rio Chiba Sport portable music device, valued at about $130, if they sign up for the subscription, which is valued at $119.40.
The device features 128 megabytes of storage capacity and includes a stopwatch, sports headphones and an armband.
Napster's Web site also said consumers can upgrade to a larger capacity Rio Nitrus by paying an additional $80.
The Napster offer marks the latest example of cross-promotions among competing online music services.
Sony Corp.'s Sony Connect this month announced a deal with McDonald's Corp. to give away free music downloads, while nearly every other major online music store -- from Apple Computer Inc.'s iTunes to RealNetworks Inc.'s Rhapsody have announced joint ventures with consumer brands ranging from PepsiCo Inc.'s Pepsi to UAL Corp.'s United Airlines.
"This is another example of Napster trying to be creative to drive Napster subscriptions," said PJ McNealy, analyst with American Technology Research.
However, McNealy said Roxio still faces some significant financial hurdles for the Napster service to break even.
"While Roxio has forecast up to $40 million in Napster revenues this year, we believe that they really have to reach close to $300 million to break even and reaching that goal will likely not happen in the next 12 months," said McNealy.
Napster provides online music either through a monthly subscription model or through a la carte downloads.
U.S. consumers have visited Napster to purchase over 10 million tracks to date, according to the company.
© Reuters 2004. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content, including by caching, framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters. Reuters and the Reuters sphere logo are registered trademarks and trademarks of the Reuters group of companies around the world.
Fred
Can you post the email address (or send private)of the TGE rep you contacted? Thank you
Received today
TGE is scheduled to begin bringing products to market this summer. We look forward to releasing more information regarding this in upcoming company communications.
Best regards,
Apple, BMW 'in iPod deal'
By Macworld staff
The first iPod joint venture between Apple and a major car maker is already underway, reports claim.
A two-page joint advertisement for an iPod car adaptor from BMW and Apple suggests Apple is nearing completion on in-car solutions for the iPod – a market the company's CEO Steve Jobs alluded to during his iTunes Music Store keynote in London yesterday.
MacMinute reports that the ad reads as follows: "The first seamless integration of iPod and automobile. Connect with your music like never before. With the installation of an integrated adapter developed by BMW and Apple – now available for the BMW 3 Series, X3 and Z4 – you can control your iPod through the existing audio system and multi-function steering wheel. Which means no loss of power. No loss of sound quality. And no loss of control."
According to the report, the ad directs consumers to www.iPodYourBMW.com, this URL is not live, but was apparently recently registered.
You haven't learned your lesson yet? Gezzzzz
Quit responding
Red-Hot Airline Stock
By W.D. Crotty
June 15, 2004
When you think of a hot airline stock, JetBlue's (Nasdaq: JBLU) mid-2003 explosion in price may come to mind. Well, bankruptcy-court-protected Hawaiian Airlines has made its parent company, Hawaiian Holdings (AMEX: HA), a red-hot stock now.
About that stock symbol, finally, shareholders are laughing. The highflying stock is up 17.2% today and up over 1,000% during the last 52 weeks.
What is fueling this explosive rise is -- you guessed it -- profitability. The company was the United States' third-most profitable airline in 2003. It is also the nation's No. 1 on-time carrier. That is a great one-two combination.
Light traffic during the first quarter challenges all airlines. Last year's first quarter was the knockout blow that sent Hawaiian to bankruptcy court. This year the company fought back to post a first-quarter net profit of $8.3 million.
The company's March operating margin of 9.5% is out of the reach of rivals American (NYSE: AMR) and Delta (NYSE: DAL) and tops the 8% annual operating margin at Southwest Airlines (NYSE: LUV). Life is good in the land of swaying palms.
Bankruptcy court is no guarantee for success. United Airlines has made the trip and never approached the success Hawaiian is enjoying.
What sent the stock soaring today was the announcement that 10 million shares (35%) of the company's stock was sold by its controlling shareholder to an investor group. As part of the transaction, the chairman and CEO of the holding company and two directors resigned.
New ownership and leadership at the holding company does not signal that the final financial structure for the airline is in view. Boeing (NYSE: BA), one of company's largest creditors, and others have until July 29 to file reorganization plans. Even then, it will be October before the reorganization plan is finalized.
A red-hot stock is fine -- when you own it. With so much uncertainly surrounding the final financial and equity structure of Hawaiian Airlines, buying Hawaiian Holdings takes a leap of faith -- one without financial measures to assess future risk. Buying the company now may be the financial equivalent of taking a swan dive into a pit of red-hot coals.
California investment group buys majority stake in Hawaiian Airlines parent
JAYMES SONG
Associated Press
HONOLULU - An investment group led by Ranch Capital LLC has purchased 10 million shares of bankrupt Hawaiian Airlines' parent company in a deal that also calls for CEO John W. Adams to resign.
The purchase gives San Diego-based Ranch Capital a majority stake in Hawaiian Holdings Inc., owned by AIP LLC, the companies announced late Monday.
AIP, which retains 4 million shares of Hawaiian Holdings, received $4.14 per share, reflecting the market price of the stock when negotiations commenced. The stock rose 9 cents Monday to close at $5.19 on the American Stock Exchange.
As part of the purchase, Adams will resign as Hawaiian Holdings' chairman and chief executive. Two company directors, Edward Safady and Thomas Trzanowski, will also resign their posts. They will be replaced by Ranch Capital officials.
"We are excited about our investment in Hawaiian Holdings," Ranch Capital CEO Lawrence Hershfield said in a statement. "Because of the significantly improved performance of Hawaiian Airlines, we believe that its stock ... has significant value."
After losing $57.4 million in 2002, Hawaiian Airlines made a major turnaround last year with operating profits of $77.5 million. The once-troubled carrier that filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in March 2003 has since posted 13 consecutive months of profits while amassing more than $106 million in unrestricted cash.
Honolulu-based Hawaiian Airlines, the nation's 12th-largest carrier, has continued to operate in bankruptcy.
Ranch Capital - formed in October 2002 to invest in distressed or bankrupt companies - completed the purchase through a newly formed company called RC Aviation LLC, which Hershfield controls as its managing member.
Adams, who resigned as Hawaiian Airline's CEO last year amid accusations of insider dealings that led to the airline's financial problems, said the deal ends his involvement in management and stock ownership of Hawaiian Holdings.
"I believe the equity holders will be best served by my stepping aside and letting Lawrence Hershfield and his team pursue reorganization efforts," Adams said in a statement e-mailed to The Associated Press. "I hope that I will no longer be a distraction in the reorganization process."
Samsung Invests in Power Management Player
Online staff -- Electronic News, 6/15/2004
Samsung's U.S. venture arm has invested $2 million in Advanced Analogic Technologies Inc., a power management IC player.
This investment is an extension of series E financing that was originally announced on Jan. 20.
“Our strategic investment in AnalogicTech represents our solid commitment to investments that will enhance the development and performance of portable products,” said Jay Eum, managing director of Samsung Ventures America, in a statement. “Based on AnalogicTech’s strong customer acceptance, along with its circuit design and process technology expertise, we believe the company is well positioned to help designers satisfy consumer demand for more functionality while maintaining or extending battery life in such portable products as mobile phones, MP3 players, and digital cameras.”
Samsung Ventures America joins other AnalogicTech corporate partners, including Mitsubishi Corp., Vanguard Semiconductor, and VIA Technologies, which previously participated in the funding round with corporate venture investors China International Development Consulting Inc. (CIVC) and Sycamore Ventures.
The series E financing will be used in part to add new members to AnalogicTech's design team in its Sunnyvale, Calif., headquarters.
Delta to trim a quarter of Song flights
Associated Press
Tue, Jun. 15, 2004
ATLANTA - Delta Air Lines will cut a fourth of flights on its low-cost Song carrier this September, raising questions about how well the budget airline is doing.
Delta officials say the cutback is just temporary, with the full 144 daily flights returning in October.
"September is a particularly low travel time for all carriers," said Song spokeswoman Katie Connell.
Song, launched in April 2003 to give Delta an answer to low-fare alternatives such as JetBlue Airways and AirTran, relies on leisure travel. Those trips drop off at the end of summer, Connell said.
Analysts conceded that Song will have a more cyclical passenger load than Delta because it doesn't have a core of business fliers. But they warned the cutback in daily flights hints that Song isn't as strong as Delta hoped.
"Traditionally it has not been successful for a major airline to operate a low-cost carrier within the bigger company," said Joel Denney, an airline analyst for Piper Jaffray & Co. in Minneapolis.
Delta, the nation's third-largest airline, lost $1.3 billion last year and has been looking for Song to help return it to profitability. But in the first quarter of this year, Delta posted a $387 million loss.
Song uses Delta pilots and provides such perks as leather seats and in-flight entertainment. It cuts costs with shorter aircraft turnaround times at airports. Connell said Delta remains upbeat about the budget line's chances.
"Actually, its performance continues to improve," she said.
ON THE NET
AOL ANNOUNCES iTUNES ALLIANCE WITH APPLE IN EUROPE
Submitter: AOL UK [View SourceWire PR Company Listings]
Release Date: 15-06-2004
Integration of the iTunes Music Store to Expand AOL’s Comprehensive Music Offerings
London – June 15, 2004 – AOL announced today it has teamed up with Apple to integrate the popular iTunes Music Store throughout AOL Music channels in the UK, France and Germany, providing AOL Members with instant, one-click registration to the popular online music store in each of the three countries. The iTunes Music Store, which launched in the UK, France and Germany today, offers users the ability to preview, purchase and download music from a catalogue of more than 700,000 songs.
When iTunes is fully integrated, AOL members in the three countries will be able to directly access the iTunes Music Store by clicking on iTunes buttons integrated throughout AOL Music. AOL members will be able to use their AOL screennames and passwords to access the iTunes Music Store where they can search, preview and buy music as well as browse exclusive AOL/iTunes programming pages in the iTunes Music Store. Special offers from AOL for free iTunes downloads and iPods™ giveaways will be available to AOL Members as well. For more information, AOL members can go to AOL Keyword: iTunes.
“We are delighted that Apple has chosen AOL as its partner at the launch of the iTunes Music Store for the UK, France and Germany,” said Philip Rowley, President, AOL Europe. “AOL is committed to providing our members the best and most comprehensive music services and exclusive content. With the integration of iTunes, they will have one-click access to the pioneering iTunes Music Store.”
“As we roll out the iTunes Music Store in the UK, France and Germany, we are also pleased to be expanding our relationship with AOL,” said Rob Schoeben, Apple’s vice president of Applications Marketing. “By joining forces, we are making it easy for AOL Members to preview and buy music from the iTunes Music Store as a natural extension of their AOL Music experience.”
Over the course of the next several weeks, AOL UK, AOL France and AOL Germany will conduct promotional sweepstakes giving members the chance to win iPods and free downloads from the iTunes Music Store. AOL UK members, for example, will have the chance to win one of 29 iPod minis, and a grand prize 40-gigabyte iPod with a certificate code for 1,000 free songs, as well as giveaways to AOL members of tens of thousands of iTunes Music Store tracks.
This alignment comes as interest in legitimate music download services has skyrocketed. According to Nielsen SoundScan data, digital singles beat physical single sales by a margin of more than 6 to 1 by the end of last year. iTunes Music Store customers have downloaded more than 85 million songs from the iTunes Music Store since its launch in the U.S. last April.
Specific comments on the integration from AOL UK, AOL Germany and AOL France:
AOL UK
AOL’s agreement with Apple builds on the strong heritage of the AOL Music channel in the UK, which attracts more than one million unique visitors on a monthly basis. Recent exclusives from groups such as the Sugababes and the Scissor Sisters performing in intimate surroundings for Sessions@AOL, and a deal to stream footage from the Carling Weekend: Reading Festival, have further strengthened AOL’s position in the market.
AOL Germany
AOL Germany sees the integration of iTunes as an ideal complement to its existing Music channel. iTunes will be integrated both throughout AOL’s Music channel and in the Computer & Technology channel. AOL’s exclusive collaboration with iTunes underscores its proficiency in matters of music and entertainment.
AOL France
The integration of iTunes into AOL France is another milestone in our commitment to provide our AOL France members with a wide range of legal music services and content to meet their needs. The iTunes integration is part of a series of new services that AOL France will be announcing, which will change the online music experience for our French members.
About AOL Europe
AOL Europe, a business unit of America Online, Inc., which is the world's leading interactive services company with more than 32 million members worldwide. America Online, Inc. is a wholly owned subsidiary of Time Warner Inc. America Online is the world’s leader in interactive services, Web brands, Internet technologies and e-commerce services.
…ends…
Press contacts:
AOL Europe: Marc-Sven Kopka, ph + 44 (0) 20 7 348 8743
AOL UK: Jonathan Lambeth, ph + 44 (0) 20 7 348 8272
AOL France: Stéphanie Cabale, ph + 33 1 72 25 08 04
AOL Germany: Tobias Riepe, ph + 49 40 361 59 7602
New Toshiba HDD Players / Support Microsoft’s DRM technology
http://www.i4u.com/
http://www.toshiba.co.jp/about/press/2004_06/pr_j1401.htm
Toshiba introduces new Toshiba Gigabeat MP3 Players with different Hard-drive sizes in Japan.
There are now 7 different Toshiba Gigabeat Models with the different hard-drive sizes and color choices. And of course still non of them officially available outside of Japan. Good thing there are shops like Dynamism and AudioCubes, where those super thin hard-drive based MP3 Players from Toshiba are available. We reviewed the first Toshiba Gigabeat G20 a while ago.
The Gigabeat G5 (MEG050) features a small 5GB hard-drive (competing with iPod mini?), the Gigabeat G22 (MEG202) has 20GB and the G40 (MEG400) a 40GB hard-drive. The players support WMA (DRM) and MP3. The G5 and G22 measure 76.5x12.7x89.5mm and weigh 138g. The G40 is slightly thicker with 15.7mm and weighing more with 156g.
Compared to the G20 and G21 the G22 has now charging capability via USB. The wireless LAN option introduced with the G21 is now bundled with the G22 and G40.
Toshiba adds bigger, smaller Gigabeats
Posted Jun 14, 2004, 10:46 AM ET by Gareth Edwards
Related entries: Portable Audio
Toshiba’s updated its (still Japan-only) Gigabeat audio player, which volume-wise is somewhat smaller than an iPod and comes with a wired/wireless LAN adapter. The 20GB model gets a facelift and some new colour options, and more importantly there are new 5GB and 40GB versions. The biggest change appears to be the addition of support for Microsoft’s DRM technology, a step toward remedying the previous problem that you couldn’t transfer MP3s purchased online to the player unless you felt like burning them to a CD and re-ripping. The 5GB version comes in at the equivalent of about $270, while the 20GB version goes for around $425 and the 40GB for around $495. The 5GB model is supposedly aimed at eating into the MD player market, though it’s not clear why anyone thinking of switching wouldn’t have spent the extra $30 and acquired a 15GB iPod already.
St. John Technology to develop MP3 players with Bluetooth
June 15, 2004
St. John Technology Co. Ltd, established in 1992, manufactures computer peripherals such as CPU coolers and hard disk drives. Its three brand lines--Cyclone, Aviator and HDD Walker--carry products like removable 2.5-inch hard disk cases, PC cards, USB flash MP3 players, IEEE 1394 hubs and optical disc duplicators. Its newest applications include a range of USB and Bluetooth products.
Excerpts from the interview with Irene Shen, St. John's director, by Global Sources Computer Products:
What is the approximate monthly production of your main products?
We have two models of 2.5-inch external enclosures and for each model, we make around 2,000 units.
Which are the best-selling storage products?
The entry-level models. Right now, customers' priority remains to be price.
What are your most popular flash memory-based products and what is its approximate production?
The MP3 players. Right now we produce around 2,000 to 3,000 units per month.
Do you have plans of producing hard disk-based MP3 players in the near future?
Right now we already cooperating with another company for this type of project.
Are all your products made in Taiwan?
The MP3 players are made in Taiwan, but the chip production has already been moved to China.
Are any of your products subcontracted?
We subcontract the production of our MP3 players. The company doesn't manufacture. We just subcontract all the products for manufacturing. We buy the essential components and our partner companies assemble the end products for us.
So you focus mostly on design?
Yes, the design and the look.
Is the mix between your design and packaging part of your strategy to attract buyers?
In the past few years, we used the generic, no brand package because we sell mostly to trading companies. But some of our customers asked us to have our own brand, so towards the end of last year we started putting logos on some of our packages.
What quality control steps do you take to maintain quality in such a wide product range?
I can assure you that we have quality products because most of our OEM customers have been doing business with us for five years or more.
Can you give me an idea of your company's R&D for both hardware and software?
We don't handle software design, only hardware design. We have three engineers who are in charge of hardware design.
Can you give me an idea of the products you intend to introduce over the next year?
We will be introducing MP3 players with Bluetooth and cell phones with MP3 players.
Why should people buy from you?
I'm proud to say that most of our customers have been dealing with us for more than three years. As for support services, we normally share business experiences and marketing strategies with our customers. We introduce to them different kinds of products that might help them.
Since you're subcontracting a lot, how do you ensure the quality control for your subcontracted products?
The R&D gives the sample to the subcontractor, then our QC staff go to the plant of the manufacturer to check. Before we ship out, we conduct a second test of our products.
How many days would it take from time of order until delivery?
We finish a new product in about one month.
What are your major markets?
We market around 50 percent of our products to Europe, including Russia, Czechoslovakia and Greece. We also export to Indonesia and other Asian countries.
Are you currently offering wireless keyboard and mouse models?
No.
SEAGATE EXPANDS CONSUMER ELECTRONICS LEADERSHIP WITH FIRST 5GB 1-INCH HARD DRIVE, FIRST 5GB COMPACT FLASH HARD DRIVE, AND NEW 400GB DVR HARD DRIVE
Seagate delivers a complete business and technology partnership that enables growth in the home and portable entertainment market segments
SCOTTS VALLEY, Calif.—14 June 2004— Seagate Technology (NYSE:STX) announced today it has greatly expanded its line of consumer electronics hard disc drives, unveiling the world's first 5GB 1-inch hard drive for hand-held applications, a new 400GB hard drive for DVR (digital video recorder) and home entertainment systems and the world's first 5GB 1-inch Compact Flash external hard drive to give consumers up to 5,000 Mbytes of storage for digital cameras.
The new products give Seagate the broadest offering of Consumer Electronics storage in the industry, capable of supplying storage for the entire spectrum of today's and tomorrow's revolutionary entertainment devices - from the home theater to the pocket media powerhouse. As the only hard drive company offering products for nearly every hard drive application, Seagate provides the global scale, supply and support that Consumer Electronics device makers need. Seagate delivers a complete business and technology partnership that enables growth in the home and portable entertainment market segments.
The new Seagate ST1 Series, the industry's first 1-inch hard drive to offer 2.5GB and 5GB capacities, lets consumers download larger libraries of higher-fidelity music to pocket players. Seagate's new and unique RunOn Technology eliminates music skipping caused by interference from jogging or walking motions. RunOn Technology senses a high motion environment and compensates for it, enabling the drive to find the music it's looking for.
The Seagate ST1 Series can hold up to 90 hours of high-quality music files (128 Mbytes), its time-to-ready is 2.5 seconds or less, and its unique rugged design will change the reputation of 1-inch hard drives, helping music players withstand the abuse that hand-held devices take. The ST1 Series disc drive is compatible with all existing integration standards for portable disc drive-based devices. ST1 Series drives are also compatible with all forms of digital media. Seagate listened to the music player market and has reinvented the 1-inch hard drive to compete with or beat flash memory in performance, reliability, battery life and cost.
The new Seagate Compact Flash Photo Hard Drive offers 2,500 Mbytes and 5,000 Mbytes of capacity for digital cameras in a tiny 1-inch size. Finally, consumers and professional photographers alike can choose massive capacities at a price far below solid state flash media, enabling them to complete a vacation or a full-scale professional photo shoot without carrying extra flash media. The Seagate Compact Flash Photo Hard Drive plugs into standard Compact Flash slots on many of today's digital video and still cameras.
The new Seagate DB35 Series hard drive offers 400GB, the industry's largest available capacity for digital video entertainment, enabling new television services such as video on demand, high-definition DVRs, and home media centers. The DB35 Series drive delivers up to 10 simultaneous streams of TV and Seagate's unique new DVR toolkit to let manufacturers custom-tune the drive for optimal DVR performance. This breakthrough feature set includes controls for video performance, power consumption control and content security. And because it's from Seagate, the drive provides long-haul reliability for worry-free DVR operation, year after year.
The Seagate DB35 Series drive is also available as a customizable external DVR storage solution enabling DVR makers and cable and satellite TV service providers to offer viewers more room to store programs.
"The compressed audio player market is one of the fastest-growing consumer electronic markets for hard drives. IDC forecasts the hard drive market for portable digital audio and media players to reach nearly 15 million units in 2007," said Dave Reinsel, IDC program director, storage research. "Consumers want the ability to carry more music and store higher quality photos. They need reliable and rugged storage at an affordable price. Products such as Seagate's new ST1 Series and the Seagate Compact Flash Photo Hard Drive are designed to meet these requirements."
"The availability of 400GB capacity in both internal and external DVR hard drives will feed the growing frenzy for DVRs, especially the demand for archiving power, which is addressed by Seagate's new products," says media analyst Paul Kagan. "Also, giving users the opportunity to customize their DVRs with tiered capacities on external drives will enable service providers and manufacturers of DVRs, cable and satellite set-top boxes to control both costs and inventories. That will open up a potentially major blockage in DVR deployment and spur usage in this burgeoning field."
"Millions of cable and satellite TV subscribers are now using digital video recorders, and consumers are demanding even greater amounts of storage capacity for their DVRs," according to Mike Paxton, senior analyst at technology research firm In-Stat/MDR. "Seagate's DB35 Series internal and external hard drives provide both pay-TV service providers and consumer electronics manufacturers the ability to integrate, expand and customize the storage capacity on their DVR products," he says.
Seagate ships hard drives to most of the world's leading DVR makers, including Toshiba, Thomson, Pioneer, Pace, Nokia, Motorola and Echostar. Based on direct customer input at its CE Design Service Centers, Seagate develops drives to deliver the features CE manufacturers ask for - quiet acoustics, high reliability and top streaming performance. Seagate's unique Advanced Manufacturing capabilities give customers flexibility; automated factory lines can adapt within hours to meet unexpected requirements during a sudden demand swell for a popular CE system. Seagate consumer electronics engineers are ready to help solve integration issues at the company's unique Design Service Centers. Seagate is the only hard drive company to provide CE manufacturers with a comprehensive partnership: products, technology and services.
For details about each new Seagate product, please visit http://specials.seagate.com/spectrum. The Seagate ST1 Series disc drive will begin shipping during the summer. The Seagate Compact Flash Photo Hard Drive is expected to be on store shelves this summer. The Seagate DB35 Series will begin shipping in Fall 2004.
Seagate is the worldwide leader in the design, manufacturing and marketing of hard disc drives, providing products for a wide range of Enterprise, PC, Notebook and Consumer Electronics applications. The company is committed to delivering award-winning products, customer support and reliability, to meet the world's growing demand for information storage. Seagate can be found around the globe and at www.seagate.com.
Seagate and Seagate Technology are registered trademarks of Seagate Technology LLC. The Wave logo, ST1 Series and DB35 Series are trademarks or registered trademarks of Seagate Technology LLC or one of its affiliates. All other trademarks or registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Specified storage capacities reflect standard configurations exclusive of operating system or other software formatting.
For further information, contact John Paulsen, 831-439-2499.
OD2 aims to steal Apple march
By Rhys Blakely
OD2, the digital music provider, today announced it had joined forces with Microsoft in a surprise move aimed at upstaging tomorrow's long awaited European launch of Apple's iTunes service.
The SonicSelector service, unveiled today in London, breaks new ground in allowing users to purchase tracks from OD2 through Microsoft's Windows Media Player.
OD2, until recently the dominant force in digital music in Europe, hopes that Media Player's pre-instalment on a huge number of computers will give SonicSelector an advantage in an increasingly competitive online music market.
Previously, OD2, which relies on e-tail partners to market its products, had stayed one step ahead of its competitors largely through the agreements it signed with major music labels, which bolstered the choice of music it offered to its subscribers.
From tomorrow, however, OD2 will face much stiffer competition from the launch of iTunes. Apple will hope that its service will ride on the same wave of consumer enthusiasm that made its iPod MP3 player an instant hit.
Meanwhile, other well-funded rivals such as the reformed Napster, owned by Roxio, which was launched in Europe last month, have been successful in offering users substantial catalogues. Sony is expected to launch its Connect service later this year.
The music industry has chosen to embrace digital distribution since it became clear that online pirate sites, where music lovers share tracks online for free, were hitting their revenues.
Hoping to tap into a similar ideology, the SonicSelector upgrade will also be available for free. Once installed it will allow users to select from an initial catalogue of 350,000 tracks, which they will be able to listen to once for a penny, or to store for future unlimited use for 75p.
It also features a pricing scheme that the company claims will make the biggest hits progressively cheaper. "The more tracks people buy, the cheaper the unit price becomes," Charles Grimsdale, OD2's chief executive, said.
SonicSelector will also allow users to transfer tracks to over 60 portable music players that run on Media Player. Apple's iTune service has been criticised as it only works in conjunction with Apple's iPod MP3 player.
However, OD2 will rely on its e-tail partners to market the product, some of whom already offer rival services
MIPS Technologies Introduces the MIPS(TM) Consumer Audio Platform, The Industry's Most Comprehensive Audio Solution
Customers Now Integrating Optimized Audio Codecs Developed With Dolby, Fraunhofer, Microsoft, Sonic Solutions and SRS Labs
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., June 14 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Whether in mobile MP3 players, DVD-Recordable devices or plasma TVs, servicing the expanding market for consumer audio playback devices just got easier thanks to MIPS Technologies, Inc. (Nasdaq: MIPS).
Working with leaders in the consumer electronics software industry -- such as Dolby Laboratories, Fraunhofer, Microsoft, Sonic Solutions and SRS Labs -- MIPS Technologies today introduced the MIPS(TM) Consumer Audio Platform, a common foundation that enables customers to implement the world's most popular audio codecs (coders and decoders) on MIPS-Based(TM) system-on-chips (SOCs) targeting high-growth embedded markets.
Industry's Most Comprehensive Audio Solution
In use by a range of silicon companies, the MIPS Consumer Audio Platform enhances the formidable MIPS(R) ecosystem, which is comprised of over one hundred million dollars of software, tools and peripheral IP already ported to the industry-standard MIPS architecture. Now licensees can implement the audio algorithms using a dedicated MIPS-Based co-processor or leverage the
inherent processor headroom in many consumer applications to run audio codecs in addition to functions typically handled by "host" processors. These approaches will cut overall system costs, reduce or eliminate royalty payments to DSP vendors and speed MIPS-Based designs to market by stripping months from
the SOC development cycle.
All audio algorithms have been optimized for the MIPS32(R) instruction set and offer must-have audio technology including Dolby(R) Digital, MPEG audio, Microsoft's Windows Media Audio (WMA), and SRS TruSurround XT(R) technology from SRS Labs.
"The MIPS Consumer Audio Platform is another way we are giving customers the flexibility to optimize system configurations using a single industry-standard processor architecture," said Russ Bell, vice president of marketing at MIPS Technologies.
"Using our optimized platform, licensees can develop and maintain a single audio subsystem to target multiple consumer
products, ranging from mobile audio players to high-end consumer devices."
The following codecs are ready for licensing from Fraunhofer, Microsoft, MIPS Technologies or Sonic Solutions. Additional codecs are being developed and will be announced as they become available.
http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=SVBIZINK3.story&STORY=/www/story/06-14-2004/00...
Best Buy to peddle Gateway gear
Last modified: June 11, 2004, 5:20 AM PDT
By John G. Spooner
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
Gateway will establish what could become its retail beachhead later this month, when Best Buy will begin selling a limited amount of Gateway-brand consumer electronics gear.
Best Buy will sell Gateway's MP3 players,LCD (liquid crystal display) TVs and home theater equipment that are left over from the PC maker's retail stores, which closed in April. Some of the goods will appear online only, while others will also be sold in Best Buy stores, a Gateway representative said.
"This initiative is a first step, but only a first step in exploring our relationship with many retailers," said Bob Sherbin, a Gateway spokesman. The products are at their end of life, which means Gateway will replace or retire them when the inventory is gone, he added.
But it's possible the deal will open other doors for Gateway, which acquired eMachines in March and closed its chain of retail stores in April. Gateway has since been working to forge agreements to place its PCs on retail shelves in time for the back-to-school season. The PC maker, whose retail presence had been limited to its own chain of stores, earlier this year acquired eMachines, whose low-price PCs are sold only via retailers, in order to boost its PC sales.
Although the PC maker has yet to announce any such agreements--according to Sherbin, the company is "still in discussions" with Best Buy and other retailers about selling other products such as PCs--Gateway CEO Wayne Inouye has said retail will become a pillar for the company's consumer PC business strategy.
Despite being expensive to run, the Gateway stores generated about $300 million in quarterly revenue, the company has said. Thus Inouye, who took the helm at Gateway with the completion of the merger, aims to use relationships with retailers to help replace and ultimately surpass the revenue generated by Gateway stores.
When it comes to PCs, Best Buy or any other retailer would likely start off with a limited number of Gateway-brand desktops and notebooks. Most likely, Gateway desktops would start at around $700 or $800, allowing those machines to augment Gateway's eMachines line, which includes several desktop models that range in price from about $400 to around $600, and at the same time offer an alternative to PCs from retail giant Hewlett-Packard.
Gateway has said that, going forward, it would market Gateway-brand PCs as its premium machines and pitch eMachines models as its low-price offerings. This dual-brand strategy is not unlike HP's.
HP markets its HP Pavilion desktops as premium, multimedia computers, while its Compaq Presarios are aimed at customers who are more interested in basic productivity, such as word processing, e-mail and Web surfing. Although the two computer lines are similar and sometimes overlap on features, Presarios tend to sell for lower prices than Pavilions, which come with more extras, such as photo-editing software.
For its part, Best Buy, which analysts say is the dominant PC retailer in the United States right now, is a natural partner for Gateway. The companies already have strong ties, emanating in part from Gateway's eMachines arm. Additionally, Inouye once served as a Best Buy executive.
Gateway, however, still needs to place its products in a number of other stores as well. Inouye has singled out Circuit City as another retailer the PC maker is pursuing. Analysts have said that Wal-Mart, CompUSA and others are also likely to be on his short list.
Gateway's surplus consumer electronics devices may also show up at other retailers as well, Sherbin said.
Still, it may not be that easy for the PC maker to break into retail. One executive at a large electronics retail company said recently that it was unlikely to immediately make room for Gateway PCs.
One of the challenges, the executive said, is that even though eMachines already has won a place on many stores' shelves, many retailers have already allocated space to other brands' higher-priced machines, making it hard for Gateway to edge in.
CNET News.com's Ina Fried contributed to this report.
MobiNote to ship portable multimedia player with 7-inch screen
Press Release; Michael McManus, DigiTimes.com [Thursday 10 June 2004]
http://www.digitimes.com/NewsShow/Article1.asp?datePublish=2004/06/10&pages=PR&seq=201
MobiNote Technology formally announced its 7-inch portable multimedia player, the DVX-POD 7010, at Computex 2004. The product will ship later this month.
The DVX-POD 7010 supports video playback of MPEG-4, Microsoft WMV, Apple QuickTime 6 and DivX 3.11, 4.x and 5.x files. It can also be used as an MP3 player (MP3, WMA) and personal digital photo album (JPEG, BMP and GIF).
The device weighs only 600 grams and features a wide-screen (16:9) 7-inch color LCD screen with 720x480 pixel resolution. The low profile DVX-POD 7010 does not sport a DVD loader, but instead stores files on its 20GB hard drive. According to the company, the hard drive can support about 30 MPEG-4 films, 5,000 MP3 files, or 20,000 pictures.
In addition, the DVX-POD 7010 can be used as video recorder and can connect directly to a TV or DVD player without the use of a PC. Connectivity options include USB 2.0 and PAL or NTSC AV connectors, and recorded files are encoded into the MPEG-4 format.
The DVX-POD 7010 will be priced between US$599 and US$699, and the company said it has already attracted attention from international companies and distributors in the US and Europe. MobiNote expects to ship 200,000 DVX-POD 7010 units by June 2005.
iRiver PVP review
http://ecoustics-cnet.com.com/4505-6499_7-30904866.html?part=ecoustics-cnet
Cowan HDD Player
http://gear.ign.com/articles/522/522090p1.html?fromint=1
RipDrive HDD Player
(looks familiar..heh Jimbo?) LOL
http://gear.ign.com/articles/521/521733p1.html
Seagate unveils new drives, 1-inch model
By Martyn Williams
IDG News Service, 06/09/04
Seagate Technology has unveiled a line-up of new hard disk drives that it expects to launch in the second half of this year, including its first 1-inch drive for portable consumer electronics devices.
Seagate anticipates the new drives will expand its range so that it competes in 95% of the estimated $22 billion per year global hard-disk drive storage market, according to Takeshi Kobayashi, president of Seagate's Japan unit, speaking at a news conference in Tokyo. At present the company estimates it competes in about 70% of the market
Seagate's 1-inch drive plans make it the second major hard disk drive maker to enter this part of the market, which is currently dominated by Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (HGST) and its MicroDrive products. Other companies making such drives include Chinese start-up GS Magicstor and Colorado's Cornice.
At present the drives are almost exclusively used embedded into digital music players or in a Compact Flash (CF) form-factor case in high-end digital still cameras. Apple uses HGST's drive in its recently launched iPod Mini music player and Cornice has found a number of customers for its drive, including iRiver and Digitalway, for use in MP3 players.
Seagate expects to launch its 1-inch drive in the third quarter of this year and will offer it in two versions, one for embedded use and one in a CF case. The drive will come in two capacities: 2.5G bytes and 5G bytes. That could put Seagate ahead of its competitors in terms of capacity. The current highest capacity 1-inch drive available is a 4G byte model from HGST.
Wednesday's announcement also included products aimed at existing sectors of the market including the fast-growing consumer digital video recorder sector and core computing sector.
The DB35 series consists of three drives and is targeted at the digital video recorder and home media server market. The drives have capacities of 250G bytes, 300G bytes and 400G bytes. In the case of the highest capacity drive this works out to up to 400 hours of standard definition television or 44 hours of high-definition television, according to Seagate, although recording time depends on the amount of compression used. The 7,200 rpm drives will be available with ATA or Serial ATA (SATA) interface and will be available in the third quarter.
Also announced were three new drives aimed at use in desktop and notebook personal computers.
For the notebook PC sector, the company announced the Momentus 5400.2 and Momentus 7200.1 products. The former are 5,400 rpm ATA drives intended for use in mainstream notebooks and the latter are 7,200 rpm ATA and SATA drives aimed at workstation-class machines. Both are available in 60G-byte, 80G-byte and 100G-byte capacities. The slower drives will be available in the third quarter and the faster drives in the fourth quarter.
For desktop personal computer and entry-level RAID server use the company also announced the Barracuda 7200.8 series, which will be available in ATA or SATA versions in capacities of 250G bytes, 300G bytes and 400G bytes. They are expected in the third quarter.
Seagate is also planning a range of three USB external drive products based on the previous drives. Models based on the 1-inch and 2.5-inch products will be available in the third quarter and models based on the 3.5-inch drive in the fourth quarter.
For the enterprise sector the company announced four new drives.
They included the Cheetah 10K.7, which is a 10,000 rpm SCSI or Fiber Channel drive that will be available in capacities of 73G bytes, 147G bytes and 300G bytes, and the Cheetah 15K.4, which is a 15,000 rpm Serial Attached SCSI (SAS), Fiber Channel or SCSI drive in 36G-byte, 73G-byte and 147G-byte capacities. All of these drives are expected in the third quarter.
The highest capacity drive in the new line-up is the Seagate NL35-series drive which is a 7,200 rpm drive with a storage capacity of 500G bytes. The drive is targeted at use in nearline (between online and archive) storage applications and will be available with a Fiber Channel interface and is expected to be available in the fourth quarter. A SATA version will follow in 2005, said Seagate.
Rounding out the enterprise line-up is the Savvio 10K.1, which will also be available in the fourth quarter and is a 10,000 rpm drive in 36G-byte and 73G-byte capacities. It has an SAS interface and is intended for use in high-density storage applications.
The new line-up comes on the heels of the company's announcement last week that it plans to lay off about 7 percent of its global workforce, or about 2,900 employees, as part of a restructuring. The company is looking to reduce its operating costs by $150 million this year as part of the plan.
Seagate was hit by during the third quarter by a number of factors including lower than anticipated demand for the company's notebook drives. Shipments of notebook drives was around 1 million drives during the quarter against the forecast 1.6 million.
The IDG News Service is a Network World affiliate.
"think of the implications if we are not involved with TI"
What friggin BS. Management has not said we are in this. That PR is a week old and has been known for that many days. All of a sudden it is the end of eDigital if we are not involved? LOL Talk about damned if you do...damned if you don't. Give me a break.
Implications? What difference is that PR from what has transpired so far regarding MP3 players? You guys crack me up.
Trying to set us up for an imaginary fall
If we are in this Ti projest, great $$$. If not....no change from the present, with plenty of positive projects underway.
APS IS TOPS!
Thank you for your e-mail, Ken. Per APS, they are using a tablet PC which makes their product more expensive and power hungry. Also per APS, their content security has not been accepted by the studios. Since the digEplayer™ is customized specifically for in-flight entertainment from our personal video technology platform, we believe it to be the best portable solution available to the airline industry.
Best regards,
Thanks to deBeer!
We be havin some company here.....
Pea pops into handheld IFE market
June 7, 2004 - A new handheld IFE system – the Personal Entertainment Appliance (“Pea”), from Californian content management and software development company IMS – has entered the market.
The Pea handheld device – based on commercial off-the-shelf technology and capable of containing 20 to 30 films, 40 audio CDs, eight interactive games, TV programmes, and digital newspapers, magazines and books - is supported by a comprehensive content-management system designed to aggregate and deliver content quickly, securely and economically, enable transactions, and provide usage and system status data. “In other handheld solutions the device is the system,” says IMS CEO Joseph Renton. “Pea is built on a content management infrastructure and is essentially device-agnostic.”
IMS expects to trial Pea with at least one major North American carrier in the summer. The handhelds will feature a 10.4in screen, battery or in-seat power, and 40-60GB of storage for MPEG-4 video and MP3 audio. They will also be configured to include 802.11b/g wireless as an option.
In commercial service, passengers will be offered a basic content package for a fixed rental price, plus an optional 20-30 pay-per-view films. Other applications are expected to include advertising (with rates based on current usage data), passenger polling and inflight shopping.
The devices will be stored in a Pod docking station, in which content will be loaded and batteries recharged. There are two Pod options: with all the required hardware permanently installed on the aircraft, or a serving cart giving the option of on or off-aircraft charging and loading.
For security purposes, both the device and its content are designed to become unusable soon after landing if the Pea is not reunited with the Pod on the aircraft. The content would quickly self-destruct and the proprietary content-loading interface would make it impossible to load fresh material. Similarly, the battery cannot be recharged without using a Pod.
Pea will come with a wide range of early-window content, according to Renton. “We wanted to provide an entertainment package that rivals or exceeds the content on more sophisticated embedded IFE systems but at a fraction of the cost,” he says. ''So we set out to assure the availability of early-window content from major studios.”
The system therefore includes a sophisticated security and content-management solution that could result in its entering service with content from at least five major studios, Renton says. Digital rights-management wrappers, physical security on the device itself and logistical security in the supply chain are all used to protect content.
IMS is also aiming for a very high content refresh rate compared with the 30 days of traditional embedded IFE and the 60-90 days of other handheld solutions. “Electronic newspapers could be updated every day,” says Renton, “and movies as often as necessary. We could change some movies every few days if that’s what passenger usage requires.” Pea usage data will be offloaded at the end of each flight, allowing the airline to replace less popular content within a few days via the IMS supply chain.
One of the keys to the supply chain is IMS’s onboard Terminal Data Loader (TDL), which receives fully integrated and encrypted content from hand-delivered removable media such as AIT tapes, DVDs, USB memory sticks and CDs. The media are placed in the TDL while the aircraft is at the gate, and the content is decrypted and loaded to the handheld devices through the Pod.
After landing, usage data will be offloaded via the Pod and TDL, using either 802.11 or GSM cellular to deliver it to the IMS network operations centre. The data will be made available to airline managers via the CabinTrends Web portal.
from agora
Virgin Plans to Build Its New Discount Air Carrier in U.S. From Scratch
By MICHELINE MAYNARD
Published: June 8, 2004
he Virgin Group's new low-fare airline in the United States will not take over the shell of one of its struggling competitors, but will be new from the ground up, the new airline's head said on Monday.
Frederick W. Reid, the former president of Delta Air Lines, who joined Virgin's American operations in April, said in an interview that the new airline was hoping to make its maiden flight from New York in 2005. The airline is looking for American investors to contribute capital to the venture.
Mr. Reid, whose previous employer has warned that it may have to seek bankruptcy protection, said that Virgin was not daunted by the prospect of starting up in an industry racked by intense fare competition, rising fuel costs and widespread losses.
"It is a difficult atmosphere, and it will be a difficult atmosphere," he said in his first interview since taking the job.
"It is anyone's guess what the structure of the airline industry will be" when Virgin's American carrier begins flying, he said. "This is an industry that is going through upheaval, and upheaval always presents opportunities to innovative and smart companies."
Airline industry experts have questioned Virgin's wisdom in starting a carrier while the industry is flooded with excess capacity and is beset by financial challenges.
Mr. Reid's answer is that customers simply are not happy with the choices available; he noted one study that ranked the airline industry second-to-last in consumers' regard, ahead of only lawyers.
"I am not going to decide whether the industry needs another airline," he said. "The customers will decide."
On Saturday, Virgin said that its new carrier, which has yet to be named, would use San Francisco as its principal hub and New York as its corporate headquarters. New York, Boston and Washington had all bid to serve as the airline's hub, where flight crews, maintenance and technical operations would be based.
San Francisco is also a hub for United, but neither that city nor New York is dominated by any single carrier. Virgin is receiving about $15 million in incentives from the State of California to put its hub there, and $11 million from New York City and New York State for the headquarters. Virgin expects to hire 300 employees in New York, including staff for its head office in SoHo - which, Mr. Reid noted with some chagrin, is not air-conditioned - and about 1,500 workers in California, including pilots and flight attendants.
First, Virgin must find American investors willing to take a majority stake and join Mr. Reid in running the new carrier. Under federal law, foreigners may not control more than 49 percent of the equity or 24.9 percent of the voting power in a domestic airline. In essence, Mr. Reid said, the venture will be a licensee of Virgin, created by the British entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson, rather than a subsidiary.
Virgin, based in London, has three other airlines already operating: Virgin Atlantic, an international carrier serving the United States; Virgin Express, operating within Europe; and Virgin Blue, a low-fare carrier in Australia. The American venture is expected to pattern its operations after Virgin Blue.
Mr. Reid declined to name any likely investors, but he did say that Virgin did not plan to set it up as a joint venture with an existing airline.
Asked about industry speculation that Virgin might build its carrier by buying some operations that US Airways is trying to sell to stave off another bankruptcy filing, he said, "This carrier is going to be red, white and blue and born in the U.S.A. We are not going to start it out of the shell of another carrier."
Mr. Reid said the airline expected to announce its management team and its choice of airplane vendor as soon as next week. Mr. Reid said that both Boeing and Airbus had offered "very good" packages and would not say if either had an inside track.
With investors, management and planes in place, it will be time to seek regulatory clearance and then begin service.
"We are coming in with a brand proposal and a brand culture that is very, very well known in highly competitive industries," like telecommunications, entertainment, financial services and travel, said Mr. Reid, who has also been the president of Lufthansa and has worked for Trans World Airways and American Airlines. "There are truly not many start-ups that make it," he said. "But not many start-ups are approaching it the way we are approaching it."
New Virgin-Branded U.S. Airline Announces New York as Corporate Headquarters and San Francisco as Principle Base of Operations
New Airline Will Create up to 3,000 Jobs Over Five Years
NEW YORK, June 5 /PRNewswire/ --
Fred Reid, head of the new Virgin-branded U.S. airline start up, today officially announced New York as its corporate headquarters and San Francisco as its principle base of operations. As two of the country's largest travel markets, both cities and states offered remarkable incentives that will help the airline to design a new low-cost operation that will create as many as 3,000 new jobs over the next five years.
"We received a heart-warming welcome in both cities. After careful deliberation, we felt that pairing New York and San Francisco would provide the best foundation for a business model that allows us to deliver a better experience and better value for air travelers," said Reid. "Culturally, NewYork and San Francisco reflect the Virgin brand's fun, dynamic style, making
them both ideal places for us to recruit creative, skilled employees who can deliver on our vision of outstanding customer service."
This dual approach is one way the company is already challenging industry norms. A significant presence on each coast will enable the airline to create operational efficiencies - the first of many innovative moves planned - to design a modern, efficient business structure that will help the airline deliver real value to air travelers. Initially, the New York headquarters is expected to employ more than 300 people. Also within the first two years of operation, the new company plans to hire more than 1,500 flight attendants,pilots, flight attendants, maintenance technicians, engineers, dispatching and other work functions in San Francisco. The overall number of employees, in both locations, is anticipated to grow to more than 3,000 over the next five years.
New York City, NY
This will be the only airline to call Manhattan home. It will centralize corporate functions for the company in New York, the country's largest travel market, at what it calls "Airline HQ," including marketing, human resources, and finance responsibilities. The airline anticipates more than 300 employees working at this facility initially.
"I would like to commend the airline on its decision to place their corporate headquarters in New York City," said New York Governor George E.Pataki. "They chose New York over several other major US cities, proving once again that we are the business capital of the world. It is through aggressive,
pro-business policies that this State continues to win projects and jobs for the people of New York. Important investments such as this bring New York State closer to our goal of creating one million new jobs by the end of the
decade."
The state and city offered the airline more than $11 million in hard andsoft state and local grants and incentives, including tax and energy incentives plus funds for job training assistance, co-operative marketing and community development.
San Francisco, CA
This also will be the first and only airline with its principle operationsbased in California. In San Francisco, the country's third largest travel market, the airline will centralize all operations responsibilities, including flight attendants, pilots, flight attendants, maintenance technicians,engineers, dispatching and other work functions, at what it calls "Ops HQ."
The airline anticipates more than 1,500 employees working at this facility.
"Today's announcement that the new Virgin-branded U.S. airline will base its operations center in the San Francisco Bay Area and bring more than 1500 new jobs to the state is fantastic news for California," said California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. "I'm thrilled the airline has decided to take advantage of California's many advantages - a vast market, qualified workforce, wonderful lifestyle, excellent operating climate and a government committed to making it easier for businesses to succeed. The new airline's decision to base its operations in our great state is yet another example that California is open for business."
The state and city offered the airline more than $15 million in hard and soft state and local grants and incentives, including employment training grants and co-operative marketing.
About the Virgin-Branded U.S. Airline
The new Virgin-branded U.S. airline will be the 21st century alternative,an innovator that challenges industry norms to deliver a better experience fordomestic air travelers. The company will unite Virgin's world-renowned customer-focus, and distinctive style to create a low-fare airline that offers
more - more options, more comfort, more entertainment, more value. The U.S.airline will be American-owned and operated - with a majority of American investors.
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Large pay? Well maybe compared to bashers pay. LOL eom