Register for free to join our community of investors and share your ideas. You will also get access to streaming quotes, interactive charts, trades, portfolio, live options flow and more tools.
Register for free to join our community of investors and share your ideas. You will also get access to streaming quotes, interactive charts, trades, portfolio, live options flow and more tools.
OT Disney's Beaming New Venture
By Rex Moore (TMF Orangeblood)
September 29, 2003
Looking for yet another way to get movies into your home? Disney (NYSE: DIS) is here to help with its new MovieBeam on-demand movie rental service.
Rolling out today in Jacksonville, Fla., Salt Lake City, Utah, and Spokane, Wash., the service consists of a box with a hard drive and an antenna. It stores 100 movies at a time, with 10 new ones rotating in and out each week. Users don't even need a cable or satellite connection: The movies are unobtrusively beamed in over ordinary broadcast airwaves. All that's required is an electrical outlet and a phone line for billing purposes.
MovieBeam users will be charged a $6.99 per month "equipment service fee," plus $3.99 rental fees for new releases and $2.49 for older titles. Movies are available for viewing for 24 hours only. Disney is also experimenting with an "activation fee" of $29.99 in one of the test markets. There will be no late charges, however, and that's one of Disney's big marketing points.
In a world chock full of movie options -- traditional stores such as Blockbuster (NYSE: BBI), mailed-to-your-home services such as Motley Fool Stock Advisor pick Netflix (Nasdaq: NFLX), cable networks such as AOL Time Warner's (NYSE: AOL) HBO -- how does MovieBeam stack up?
Advantages:
* Ability to pause and stop movies
* Doesn't require cable or satellite connection
* No late fees
* No need to return DVDs or videotapes
Disadvantages:
* Yet another set top box near your TV
* Costs more than Netflix if you rent more than four movies per month
* No movies currently available from Viacom's (NYSE: VIA) Paramount Pictures studio
Disney spokesman Peter Murphy told The Wall Street Journal that MovieBeam will also be used to distribute other content, such as TV shows or music. The service "can be as big as a cable network from a profitability standpoint," he says, because it won't require a relatively high capital outlay for its planned national rollout next year.
Interested movie buffs will be able to see a demonstration and sign up for the service at various retail outlets, including Best Buy (NYSE: BBY), Circuit City (NYSE: CC), and Sears (NYSE: S).
Do you think MovieBeam will be a winner for Disney, or just an expensive flop? Post your opinion on our Disney discussion board.
Frontier makes 12-year affiliate deal with Horizon
Airline's new partner will serve more cities
By David Kesmodel, Rocky Mountain News
September 19, 2003
Frontier Airlines tapped Horizon Air as its new regional-jet affiliate, saying that Horizon will fly more planes and serve more cities than the current affiliate, Mesa Airlines.
Seattle-based Horizon - the regional feeder for Frontier foe Alaska Airlines - will replace Mesa on Jan. 1 under a 12-year deal.
Advertisement
Terms were not disclosed, but Denver-based Frontier said it will pay Horizon a base margin and performance- based incentives.
Horizon initially will operate four 70-seat Bombardier CRJ-700 jets under the Frontier JetExpress flag. It will fly nine of the planes by May 30.
Mesa operates five 50-seat Bombardier CRJ-200 planes for Frontier JetExpress flights from Denver to Albuquerque; Omaha; Oklahoma City; Wichita, Kan.; Tucson; and San Jose and Ontario, Calif.
Frontier hasn't finalized markets that Horizon will serve. But Sean Menke, Frontier's vice president of marketing, said Boise, Idaho, and at least five of the seven Mesa destinations likely will be served. Eventually, Horizon will serve new markets in the Midwest and West, he said.
Frontier and Mesa previously said their alliance would end Dec. 31 due to Mesa's new, exclusive partnership with United.
"There's a glut of regional jets out there," so Frontier had a lot of options for a new provider, said Mike Boyd, a consultant in Evergreen.
Horizon is "a good operator," and the deal will help Frontier expand, he said, "but remember, (regional jets) aren't very comfortable."
Horizon and Alaska are owned by Alaska Air Group Inc. Frontier JetExpress will mark Horizon's first contract flying for another carrier.
Horizon used to compete with Frontier on flights from Denver to Boise and Denver to Portland, Ore. Alaska assumed the Portland service in June and also flies Denver-Seattle.
Frontier expects Horizon to provide more reliable service than Mesa has, Menke said. From its start in February 2002, the Frontier-Mesa relationship was plagued by operational problems.
"We were very frustrated with the performance," Menke said.
The Horizon deal, like the Mesa pact, includes financial incentives if the operator meets certain targets for on-time arrivals and departures.
"The challenge is to operate as well as Frontier (mainline) is now," said Rudi Schmidt, Horizon's vice president of finance. "We think we can do it."
Among the differences under the new deal is that Frontier will feature its painted wildlife on the tails of the Horizon jets.
Horizon expects to base about 100 pilots, 100 flight attendants and 30 maintenance workers in Denver.
Downloaders Fighting Back
Despite lawsuits, traffic on file-sharing sites is booming
It's been the summer of fear online because of the music industry's campaign to sue file traders. But after millions of instant-message warnings, some 1,600 subpoenas and at least 261 lawsuits, there's been no discernable effect on piracy. Traffic on Kazaa dipped thirty-five percent after the Recording Industry Association of America announced its new anti-piracy initiative, according to Nielsen/NetRatings. But roughly 4 million users each week are still on Kazaa, and many of them are beyond the reach of the law.
One reason the RIAA strategy is having a limited effect is that the organization can pursue only file traders violating U.S. laws. Even if all Americans stop sharing their record collections on the Internet, millions of files would still be available from foreign swappers. Some forty percent of peer-to-peer users hail from overseas. And other national music-trade groups, like those in Britain and Australia, have said they have no current plans to file U.S.-style lawsuits.
Another factor keeping illegal music alive is the RIAA's strategy of pursuing only the most egregious uploaders -- those offering roughly 1,000 files from their hard drives. According to the Internet research firm BigChampagne, eighty-six percent of all file sharers have less than 200 songs available. "The record industry is perpetuating the belief that relatively few supersharers are responsible for all trading, and by yanking their participation, the networks collapse," says BigChampagne CEO Eric Garland. While Kazaa traffic slowed during the summer, usage was steady on Morpheus and increased on smaller file-sharing networks such as BearShare.
The threat of lawsuits hasn't caused traders to go legal, either. After Apple's iTunes music store sold 1 million songs in each of its first two weeks in business, purchases have plateaued at an average of 500,000 downloads per week. Meanwhile, the Windows download site BuyMusic.com has yet to take off. It hasn't even generated enough traffic to rank on Nielsen's weekly most-visited-sites charts.
"How we view success is not the day-to-day ticktock of file sharing," says an RIAA representative. "Ultimately, we hope fans will migrate to legitimate services."
WARREN COHEN
(September 26, 2003)
Continuous Computing Corporation Tops Deloitte & Touche San Diego Technology Fast 50 Ranking of Fastest-Growing Technology Companies, With 28,372 Percent Growth Over Five Years
SAN DIEGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 18, 2003--Continuous Computing Corporation tops the list of the fastest growing technology companies in the San Diego area as recognized by Deloitte & Touche LLP, one of the nation's leading professional services firms, at an awards event held September 17 at the Hyatt Regency La Jolla at Aventine. Called the "San Diego Technology Fast 50," the annual award program ranks by revenue growth technology companies located in the San Diego area.
Continuous Computing Corporation, a San Diego-based provider of high-availability, application-ready platform solutions that enable telecom equipment manufacturers to rapidly develop and deploy voice-over-packet, intelligent network, OAM&P, and wireless infrastructure applications, was the top-ranked Fast 50 company with a five-year revenue growth rate of 28,372 percent.
"To succeed during prosperous times is one thing; to succeed in adversity is much more challenging, and that's exactly what the Deloitte & Touche Technology Fast 50 winners have done," said Helen Adams, partner, Technology, Media, & Telecommunications (TMT) Group, Deloitte & Touche, San Diego. "We applaud these companies for their tremendous accomplishments during economically challenging times, and for being one of the elite Fast 50 companies in the San Diego area."
Winners are selected based on the percentage of growth in revenues from 1998 to 2002. To be considered, Fast 50 entrants must have met the following criteria: Have revenues of at least $50,000 in 1998 and at least $1,000,000 in 2002. Be public or private companies, headquartered in the San Diego area. Subsidiaries and divisions are not eligible, unless they have some public ownership and are separately traded. Be a "technology company" defined as owning proprietary technology that contributes to a significant portion of the company's operating revenues (using other companies' technology in a unique way does not qualify); and/or devoting a significant proportion of revenues to research and development of technology.
The 2003 San Diego Technology Fast 50 company ranking is as follows:
5 Yr. %
Rank Company Name City Growth Ticker Exchange
--------------------------------- --------- ------- ------- --------
Continuous Computing
1 Corporation San Diego 28372% Private N/A
--------------------------------- --------- ------- ------- --------
2 SEQUENOM, Inc. San Diego 8699% SQNM NASDAQ
--------------------------------- --------- ------- ------- --------
3 MUSICMATCH, Inc. San Diego 2706% Private N/A
--------------------------------- --------- ------- ------- --------
4 Prometheus Laboratories, Inc. San Diego 2499% Private N/A
--------------------------------- --------- ------- ------- --------
5 ComGlobal Systems, Inc. San Diego 2410% Private N/A
--------------------------------- --------- ------- ------- --------
Protein Polymer Technologies,
6 Inc. San Diego 2389% PPTI OTC
--------------------------------- --------- ------- ------- --------
7 Diversa Corporation San Diego 2250% DVSA NASDAQ
--------------------------------- --------- ------- ------- --------
8 Digirad Corporation San Diego 2062% Private N/A
--------------------------------- --------- ------- ------- --------
9 WIDCOMM, Inc. San Diego 1976% Private N/A
--------------------------------- --------- ------- ------- --------
10 Invitrogen Corporation Carlsbad 1965% IVGN NASDAQ
--------------------------------- --------- ------- ------- --------
11 MAXIM Pharmaceuticals San Diego 1090% MAXM NASDAQ
--------------------------------- --------- ------- ------- --------
CardioDynamics International
12 Corporation San Diego 1021% CDIC NASDAQ
--------------------------------- --------- ------- ------- --------
13 Websense, Inc. San Diego 781% WBSN NASDAQ
--------------------------------- --------- ------- ------- --------
14 ProfitLine, Inc. San Diego 660% Private N/A
--------------------------------- --------- ------- ------- --------
Discovery Partners
15 International San Diego 565% DPII NASDAQ
--------------------------------- --------- ------- ------- --------
Information Systems
16 Laboratories, Inc. San Diego 532% Private N/A
--------------------------------- --------- ------- ------- --------
Ligand Pharmaceuticals
17 Incorporated San Diego 447% LGND NASDAQ
--------------------------------- --------- ------- ------- --------
18 Novatel Wireless, Inc. San Diego 437% NVTL NASDAQ
--------------------------------- --------- ------- ------- --------
IDEC Pharmaceuticals
19 Corporation San Diego 365% IDPH NASDAQ
--------------------------------- --------- ------- ------- --------
20 The Titan Corporation San Diego 359% TTN NYSE
--------------------------------- --------- ------- ------- --------
21 ImageWare Systems, Inc. San Diego 331% IW AMEX
--------------------------------- --------- ------- ------- --------
22 SmartDraw.com San Diego 314% Private N/A
--------------------------------- --------- ------- ------- --------
American Technology
23 Corporation San Diego 313% ATCO NASDAQ
--------------------------------- --------- ------- ------- --------
24 SourcingLink.net San Diego 311% SNET N/A
--------------------------------- --------- ------- ------- --------
25 4-D Neuroimaging San Diego 275% FDNX OTC
--------------------------------- --------- ------- ------- --------
26 Wireless Facilities, Inc. San Diego 260% WFII NASDAQ
--------------------------------- --------- ------- ------- --------
Koam Engineering Systems,
27 Inc. San Diego 235% Private N/A
--------------------------------- --------- ------- ------- --------
28 SureBeam Corporation San Diego 230% SUREE NASDAQ
--------------------------------- --------- ------- ------- --------
Terra-Kleen Response Group,
29 Inc. San Diego 220% Private N/A
--------------------------------- --------- ------- ------- --------
30 JNI Corporation San Diego 215% JNIC NASDAQ
--------------------------------- --------- ------- ------- --------
31 ResMed Corporation Poway 207% RMD NYSE
--------------------------------- --------- ------- ------- --------
Applied Molecular Evolution,
32 Inc. San Diego 206% AMEV NASDAQ
--------------------------------- --------- ------- ------- --------
33 ViaSat, Inc. Carlsbad 205% VSAT NASDAQ
--------------------------------- --------- ------- ------- --------
34 Biosite Incorporated San Diego 184% BSTE NASDAQ
--------------------------------- --------- ------- ------- --------
35 Lightspan, Inc. San Diego 158% LSPN NASDAQ
--------------------------------- --------- ------- ------- --------
36 Predicate Logic, Inc. San Diego 139% Private N/A
--------------------------------- --------- ------- ------- --------
37 Nanogen, Inc. San Diego 125% NGEN NASDAQ
--------------------------------- --------- ------- ------- --------
38 e.Digital Corporation San Diego 124% EDIG OTC
--------------------------------- --------- ------- ------- --------
39 SeraCare Life Sciences, Inc. Oceanside 119% SRLS NASDAQ
--------------------------------- --------- ------- ------- --------
40 Overland Storage, Inc. San Diego 117% OVRL NASDAQ
--------------------------------- --------- ------- ------- --------
41 Cardiff Software, Inc. Vista 104.7% Private N/A
--------------------------------- --------- ------- ------- --------
42 ISIS Pharmaceuticals, Inc. Carlsbad 104.6% ISIS NASDAQ
--------------------------------- --------- ------- ------- --------
43 Captiva Software Corporation San Diego 104.5% CPTV NASDAQ
--------------------------------- --------- ------- ------- --------
44 Mitek Systems, Inc. Poway 101% MITK NASDAQ
--------------------------------- --------- ------- ------- --------
Applied Micro Circuits
45 Corporation San Diego 99% AMCC NASDAQ
--------------------------------- --------- ------- ------- --------
46 Innovative Medical Services El Cajon 91.4% PURE NASDAQ
--------------------------------- --------- ------- ------- --------
47 Epimmune Inc. San Diego 91.2% EPMN NASDAQ
--------------------------------- --------- ------- ------- --------
48 DJ Orthopedics, Inc. Vista 76% DJO NYSE
--------------------------------- --------- ------- ------- --------
49 Vista Medical Technologies Carlsbad 69% VMTI NASDAQ
--------------------------------- --------- ------- ------- --------
50 Gen-Probe Incorporated San Diego 62% GPRO NASDAQ
--------------------------------- --------- ------- ------- --------
A special category called "Rising Stars" recognizes three additional fast-growing technology companies based on revenue growth over three years (2000-2002). This year's rising star is Active Motif, based in Carlsbad, with a growth rate of 897%.
The Deloitte & Touche Fast 50 program is sponsored by Cooley Godward LLP, Comerica, Fleishman Hillard, Focus Creative, KPBS, Marsh, RJ Watkins & Company, The T Sector, and in association with AeA, and BIOCOM.
About Deloitte & Touche
Deloitte & Touche, one of the nation's leading professional services firms, provides assurance and advisory, tax, and management consulting services through nearly 30,000 people in more than 80 U.S. cities. The firm is dedicated to helping its clients and its people excel. Known as an employer of choice for innovative human resources programs, Deloitte & Touche has been recognized as one of the "100 Best Companies to Work For in America" by Fortune magazine for six consecutive years. Deloitte & Touche refers to Deloitte & Touche LLP and related entities. Deloitte & Touche is the US national practice of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu. Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu is a Swiss Verein, and each of its national practices is a separate and independent legal entity. For more information, please visit Deloitte & Touche's web site at www.deloitte.com/us.
Contacts
Deloitte & Touche
Yi-Fang Kryger, 702-837-0814 (or 213-553-1944)
iPod Competition
By Bill Howard
September 9, 2003
Total posts: 1
Will Apple's domination of the personal audio player business be challenged? Half a dozen competitors will soon be selling hard drive–based portable jukeboxes. All will be cheaper than the iPod. The question is, will any of them have the right combination of usability, style, and compact size to lure you away from the iPod?
Contenders who could undercut the iPod's price by 50 percent haven't announced products yet, but they will before the holiday season. Sony, the competitor most likely to match Apple in style and ergonomics, now says it won't enter the market until next year. So we'll see almost-iPod products: almost as small, almost as elegant, and almost as easy to use. What you will have by year's end is affordability: a 20GB hard drive jukebox for $200 and a 40GB one for $250. A $150 10GB player is possible early next year.
Compare that with 10GB, 15GB, and 30GB iPods for $300, $400, and $500, respectively. Current iPod competitors include Archos, Creative Labs, e.Digital, Philips, and RCA, and their products cost $250 and up. Expect to see one or more PC makers that have dabbled in personal audio come aboard, too.
Apple has had a free ride, because competitors knew what to do but didn't do it. Making a great music player is no secret. Apple's initial insistence on using a 1.8-inch-wide hard drive from a single supplier helped keep the case small. Vendors attempting to emulate the iPod say the two best choices in 1.8-inch hard drives are from Toshiba (Apple's original supplier) and Hitachi, but these have slightly different footprints: Toshiba's are a bit taller, and Hitachi's are a bit wider. So to gain leverage in negotiating hard drive prices, some iPod competitors will size their cases to fit both. The difference is only a few tenths of an inch in each direction, but this could add up to a 20 percent increase in volume. Some manufacturers use 2.5-inch hard drives, making the players up to twice as big as the iPod.
As hard drive MP3 player prices move down toward $200, the desirability of flash memory players may decrease, too. If you could get 350 hours of music for $200, would you pay $125 for 2 hours (128MB) of music? I think that market needs to top out at $100 for the player plus 128MB of integrated or flash memory. Either that or the players need dynamite feature sets.
WMA compatibility is useful in small-capacity players. 64-Kbps WMA is fine for casual listening, and who wouldn't like the ability to fit 2 hours of music on a 64MB card, versus 1 hour of MP3s ripped at 128 Kbps? You'll also want to be able to swap in an alkaline battery when the rechargeable battery gives out. On hard drive players with fixed rechargeable batteries, you'll appreciate an increase in battery life from the current 10 hours to closer to 20 hours, which will let you leave the transformer at home on weekend trips. Some users find the battery life of the new iPods has decreased from 12 hours to about 8.
USB 2.0 is essential for hard drive players; for flash-based players, write speeds don't push the 12-Mbps limit of USB 1.1. Other features you may want are voice recording, an AM/FM tuner, and trickle charging via USB. The ability to off-load photos via flash cards may come in future players; for now, this feature exists only in $500 audio/video players (either built-in or via an add-on module) with small color LCDs.
With flash players, since you can't have all your music on a memory card, you'll want a convenient way to transfer music quickly. I'm partial to the kind of device that plugs directly into the USB jack of your PC or notebook and lets you drag and drop music directly into the player using Windows Explorer.
If you're in a hurry to get your music loaded, you'll find that some digital rights management schemes get in the way. I appreciate the plight of starving musicians whose music is ripped off left and right. But when I go running and want fresh music in my player that matches today's mood, I can sublimate my social conscience for the duration of the run.
Watch for in-between players—bigger than flash players, potentially smaller than the iPod—from RCA (Thomson), Rio, and others, using a tiny, low-cost 1.5GB hard drive ($60 wholesale) from start-up Cornice. It will let you carry around 25 hours of music (or 50 hours at 64 Kbps). This may be enough for many people, though initial pricing won't undercut other hard drive players.
Discuss this article in the forums.
Philips talks to Web music stores, eyes media role
Friday September 26, 11:55 am ET
By Lucas van Grinsven, European Technology Correspondent
(Adds quotes, detail on broadcast flag, Microsoft comment, background)
AMSTERDAM, Sept 26 (Reuters) - Philips Electronics (Amsterdam:PHG.AS - News) said on Friday it is talking to Internet music retailers to help them sell songs and prevent piracy, as it aims to prevent rivals from defining and controlling the industry's digital future.
ADVERTISEMENTEurope's leading consumer electronics maker could offer products to play and protect digital music, Larry Blanford, chief of Philips' North American Consumer Electronics operations, told Reuters in an interview.
"We are in discussions with parties that want to develop music download sites," he said. Philips has a broad range of portable and stationary music recorders and players.
He declined to name partners in those discussions.
Dell (NasdaqNM:DELL - News), Viacom's (NYSE:VIAb - News) MTV and others have recently said they will start music retail services on the Web. Apple (NasdaqNM:AAPL - News), RealNetworks (NasdaqNM:RNWK - News) and Microsoft (NasdaqNM:MSFT - News) already sell music on the Web, each using different technology to compress and protect songs.
Users of Microsoft Music Club can only play songs, however, if they have a PC or stereo set equipped with Microsoft's Windows Media Player software.
Microsoft hopes to become a popular standard among online media stores and electronics makers. Windows Media Player is already built into over 300 types of consumer devices, Microsoft said.
Philips, which globally ranks third behind Japan's Sony (Tokyo:6758.T - News) and Matsushita (Tokyo:6752.T - News), has chosen not to support Microsoft's Windows Media Player in its consumer electronics products, a company spokesman said separately.
RIGHTS OUT The decisions were part of what Blanford said was a company-wide effort to prevent just a few companies from setting the rules in digital media.
Blanford also criticised proposed U.S. legislation to set a "broadcast flag" that would give a handful of technology companies and Hollywood studios control over re-distribution of digital television broadcasts, including movies.
But the broadcast flag would also prevent consumers from recording snippets of free-to-air news bulletins and from emailing them to friends or relatives.
Electronics makers would also have to redesign PCs, TVs, set-top boxes and video recorders to include technology from a group of just five companies, including Intel (NasdaqNM:INTC - News).
"It will be controlled by just a few companies. They will have a huge competitive advantage," said Blanford, who last week testified before the U.S. Senate's commerce committee.
The broadcast flag could be made law next month.
Better technologies are available that will grant consumers the rights of fair use they have today, while making sure those same consumers cannot freely copy and distribute copyrighted content such as movies over the Internet, Philips said. "We need a technology that works, that is available to everyone, managed in a fair way and not constrained to any particular group," Blanford said.
"There needs to be an open standard," he added.
As a company that makes money selling TVs and stereo sets, Philips is concerned that consumers will be limited in the ways they listen to music and watch movies if these are distributed digitally over the Internet or the airwaves.
Such limitations could slow sales of a new range of digital devices, which Philips and its rivals hope will boost sales of the stagnant $100 billion a year consumer electronics industry.
Philips last month announced a series of Web-connected consumer electronics products that play music and video directly from a personal computer or the Internet. Sony and South Korea's Samsung Electronics (KSE:05930.KS - News) have announced similar devices.
OT Rock Singer Robert Palmer Dies at Age 54
32 minutes ago
By ROBERT BARR, Associated Press Writer
LONDON - Rock singer Robert Palmer (news), known for his sharp suits and hits including "Addicted to Love," died Friday in Paris of a heart attack, his manager said. He was 54.
AP Photo
AP Photo
Slideshow: Singer Robert Palmer Dies at 54
Palmer was on a two-day break in Paris following a television recording session in Britain, his manager Mick Carter said from the French capital.
In the 1980s, Palmer became a superstar with singles which also included "Simply Irresistible" — accompanied by slick videos featuring the smartly dressed Palmer with a back-up band of attractive women, all in black outfits and glossy makeup.
A side project, Power Station, formed in 1985 with John Taylor (news) and Andy Taylor (news) of '80s supergroup Duran Duran, scored three U.S. Top 10 hits, including "Communication" and "Get it On."
The son of a British naval officer, Palmer was a member of several British rock bands before he hit the big time as a solo artist.
He had lived in Switzerland for the past 16 years.
Known for his GQ sense of style, Palmer was named best dressed male artist by Rolling Stone in 1990.
The "Addicted to Love" video, with its miniskirted models strumming guitars as Palmer sang, became one of MTV's most-played clips, and sparked protests from some feminists.
"I'm not going to attach inappropriate significance to it because at the time it meant nothing. It's just happened to become an iconic look," Palmer once said of the video.
He had his first hit album and single, "Sneakin' Sally through the Alley," in 1974.
In his 20s, Palmer worked with a number of small-time bands including Dada, Vinegar Joe, and the Alan Bown Band, occasionally appearing in opening acts for big draw including The Who and Jimi Hendrix (news).
Palmer once confessed that he was not attracted to the excesses of rock 'n' roll stardom.
"I loved the music, but the excesses of rock 'n' roll never really appealed to me at all," he said. "I couldn't see the point of getting up in front of a lot of people when you weren't in control of your wits."
He was noted for dressing up and being somewhat restrained.
"I don't want to be heavy," he said in an interview with Rolling Stone magazine.
"I can't think of another attitude to have toward an audience than a hopeful and a positive one. And if that includes such unfashionable things as sentimentality, well, I can afford it."
Retail electronics may prove tough arena for Dell
Thursday September 25, 2:27 pm ET
By Ellis Mnyandu
(Recasts with Dell unveiling strategy)
NEW YORK, Sept 25 (Reuters) - Dell Inc. (NasdaqNM:DELL - News) will likely face stiff competition in its new push to sell digital items like flat-panel TVs and digital music players, resulting in faster price reductions for consumers, analysts said.
ADVERTISEMENT
Submit
With almost every retailer, including office supply stores and discounters like Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (NYSE:WMT - News), jockeying for a slice of the $100 billion U.S. consumer electronics industry, analysts said it may be some time before Dell realizes any returns from its expected entry into the consumer electronics market.
Prices for consumer electronics like home theater systems, digital cameras, and DVD players have already been falling as production costs for Asian manufacturers ease.
Dell, the No. 1 personal computer maker, on Thursday unveiled its consumer electronics strategy, which includes the launch of a music service. The Round Rock, Texas-based computer maker had said all along it is interested in pushing further into the consumer market.
But analysts said that even with its well-oiled online sales machine, it will be a tough road for Dell.
"Dell has a long way to go before gaining market share in the consumer electronics market," said Bill Armstrong, a retail analyst at C.L. King & Associates. "There are a lot of players and its entry could put pressure on product prices," he added.
The move is not expected to be much of a threat to retail heavyweights like Best Buy Co. Inc. (NYSE:BBY - News), the No. 1 retail electronics chain. But No. 2 player Circuit City Stores Inc. (NYSE:CC - News) could be vulnerable as it focuses on revamping stores as its sales weaken.
"Circuit City has been a weaker player and therefore a move (by Dell) into consumer electronics could be more detrimental to Circuit City," said David Schick, a retail analyst at Legg Mason.
Michael Baker, an analyst who tracks consumer electronics retailing at Deutsche Bank-North America, said he expects Best Buy to pose a formidable challenge to Dell in the consumer electronics segment.
"Best Buy is still the best competitor in the consumer electronics space due to its product mix and a strong store base," he said.
A push by Dell into consumer electronics follows a similar move by rival Gateway Inc. (NYSE:GTW - News), a personal computer company that is now refashioning itself as a consumer electronics brand -- but with little headway against major mainstream brick-and-mortar players like Best Buy.
Legg Mason's Schick noted that even competition from online sellers Amazon.com Inc. (NasdaqNM:AMZN - News) and eBay (NasdaqNM:EBAY - News) haven't hurt Best Buy. "Best Buy's sales have continued to grow," he said.
Sinkman, as I recall Dell stated that the jukebox would be available with the lauch of the music download site in Mid-October.
Michael Dell also noted that they would employ DRM and made it sound like they were negotiating with multiple record labels although they would not say how many songs would be available for download. My impression was this player will definitely be multi-codec, multi-DRM but we will see...
Yep, said Dell spends about a half a billion on R and D (which doesn't seem like much for a 40 billion dollar co.)and they contract with many manufacturers to make their products. Dell has a hand in the whole supply chain but they do not reveal who their manufacturing partners are and don't intend to do so.
The Washington Post's Digital Capital column today noted that "Internet piracy is a far less pressing problem in the movie industry than it is for music companies, but that may not hold true for long. Theater executives fear that as high-speed Internet connections become more prevalent, the exchange of pilfered movies could skyrocket." Part of that concern helped fuel a deal this week. Film sound company Dolby Laboratories Inc. announced that it bought Reston, Va.-based Cinea Inc. for an undisclosed sum. The anti-piracy technology company is "only three years old and some of its ideas about video and film piracy protection are years away from commercial use. But the film industry's growing alarm over piracy put Cinea squarely in the sights of acquirers," the Post reported.
"Rather than continue to focus on protecting consumer copies of movies, [Chief executive Robert Schumann] decided his new firm would offer products that shield specially screened versions of films for large audiences. Cinea's first product encrypts videos shown on airplanes and in hotels so that they can be played only on equipment sold by the company. If, for example, an airline employee tried to make a copy of a movie, the copy would not play on a normal DVD machine," the article said. "The company, funded by a $2 million investment from Monumental Venture Partners LLC of McLean [Va.], also developed a 'lock-and-key' technology so that movies transmitted to theaters digitally can play only on approved machines at predetermined times. The system protects movies from being hijacked during satellite transmission, or downloaded from theater computers. Cinea's latest product, which it expects to test this fall, puts individual tags on DVDs sent early to screeners or reviewers, so that if copies are made and put on the black market, they can be traced to their sources."
• The Washington Post: Reston Firm Sees Future In Fighting Movie Piracy
• Dolby Acquires Virginia Digital Content Protection Firm
• The Washington Post: A New Focus On Movie Piracy (Article from Oct. 14, 2002)
Bad start to the day. Time to go to work.eom
Whhoooops.eom
OT In-Flight Internet Crosses the Atlantic
1 hour, 20 minutes ago
Martyn Williams, IDG News Service
Boeing is to lease space on a satellite above the Atlantic Ocean, filling a further coverage gap in its Connexion by Boeing in-flight Internet service.
The new leasing agreement is for two transponders on the Intelsat 907 satellite, which is stationed above the Atlantic Ocean at 27.5 degrees west, the company said in a statement.
The Ku-band spot-beam coverage provided by the transponders encompasses northern and Central Europe, Iceland, and the eastern part of Greenland and will be used by Connexion to service aircraft flying between Europe and North America.
High-Speed Access
The Connexion service, which has yet to be commercially launched, offers a broadband Internet connection to passengers on aircraft on which the system has been installed.
Transmission speeds vary with conditions but maximum capacity is 20 megabits per second downstream to the aircraft and 1 mbps upstream from the aircraft.
To date, two European airlines, Lufthansa and British Airways, have run service trials and both Lufthansa and Scandinavian Airline Systems have signed definitive agreements to install the system on long-haul jets. Commercial service on both airlines is scheduled to begin in early 2004.
Two Japanese airlines, All Nippon Airways (ANA) and Japan Airlines System (JAL), have signed letters of intent to install the system. Boeing has yet to announce definitive agreements with British Airways, JAL, or ANA.
Additional Coverage
The lease of transponders on Intelsat 907 comes shortly after Boeing signed for space on Eutelsat's SESAT satellite at 36 degrees east, which will provide coverage over Europe, and Space Communications' Superbird-C satellite at 144 degrees East, which will provide coverage of Asia and routes from Asia to Europe.
The latest announcement means the Connexion by Boeing network now covers many of the major intercontinental airline routes in the northern hemisphere.
In addition to adding coverage of other regions in the future, the system will also be enhanced with the addition of backup capacity, said Terrance Scott, a spokesperson for Boeing. Next year the service plans to make use of space on Loral's Estrela do Sul spacecraft, which is scheduled for launch in early 2004, Scott said.
Studios Moving to Block Piracy of Films Online
By LAURA M. HOLSON
Published: September 25, 2003
OS ANGELES, Sept. 24 — If Hollywood executives have learned anything watching their peers in the music business grapple with online file sharing, it is how not to handle a technological revolution.
While the major labels in the music industry squabbled among themselves about how best to deal with Internet piracy and failed to develop consumer-friendly ways to buy music online, the movie industry has gone on a coordinated offensive to thwart the free downloading of films before it spins out of control.
This summer, night-vision goggles became a familiar fashion accessory for security guards at movie premieres as they searched for people in the audience carrying banned video recorders. The industry's trade association began a nationwide piracy awareness campaign in movie theaters and on television. Studios are aggressively putting electronic watermarks on movie prints so they can determine who is abetting the file sharing. And some movie executives are considering whether to send out early DVD's to Academy Award voters, fearing the films will be distributed online.
Also, as early as next month the industry will begin promoting a "stealing is bad" message in schools, teaming up with Junior Achievement on an hourlong class for fifth through ninth graders on the history of copyright law and the evils of online file sharing. The effort includes games like Starving Artist, in which students pretend to be musicians whose work is downloaded free from the Internet, and a crossword puzzle called Surfing for Trouble.
"There is no issue in my life I take as seriously as this," said Peter Chernin, president and chief operating officer of the News Corporation, which owns 20th Century Fox. "This is going to be with us for the rest of our careers. But if we remain focused on it, maybe it won't kill us and we won't have to panic."
This is not the first time the studios have battled technological advances they worried they could not control. Back in 1982, Jack Valenti, then as now the head of the movie industry's trade association, said the threat of videocassette recorders to the film industry was like that posed by the Boston Strangler to a woman alone. The studios hope they can find a way to co-opt online movie swapping as profitably as they did the VCR and now the DVD player. Still, many in Hollywood fear that online movie sharing could be the most serious menace to profits so far.
The concern is such that 20 of the film industry's top decision makers, including Jeffrey Bewkes, chairman of the entertainment group at AOL Time Warner, and Jeffrey Katzenberg, a co-founder of Dreamworks SKG, attended a focus group in June at the Museum of Television and Radio in Beverly Hills. The participants, about 20 college- and high school-age students, quickly and easily downloaded several current hits at the executives' request. Next they confirmed what many already knew. "These kids said they weren't going to stop," Mr. Chernin said.
As a result, in late July the major studios through their lobbying group, the Motion Picture Association of America, began an advertising campaign, with the theme "Movies. They're Worth It." It profiles, among others, a set painter, stuntman and makeup artist.
The music industry, which began feeling the effects of online sharing four years ago because the relatively small size of music files makes for much quicker downloads, began running national antipiracy ads only last year. Executives lament the delay. "It could have had an impact," said Hilary Rosen, the former chief executive of the Recording Industry Association of America, the music industry's trade group.
But music executives then were indecisive about how best to tackle online file sharing. "I think the music industry has always resembled feudal warring kingdoms with an underworld edge thrown in," said Martin Kaplan, a former executive at the Walt Disney Company who is now the director of the Norman Lear Center at the University of Southern California, which studies entertainment, business and society. "If you look at Jack Valenti's French cuffs, it is a different culture. Movie executives collaboratively deal with joint enemies at the gate."
Many Hollywood executives say there is still time before free Internet movie swapping takes hold. Internet movie files are still large and unwieldy, taking as much as two hours to download.
But there is a growing contingent who fear the threat is closer than some in Hollywood want to admit. Already industry analysts suggest there could be as many as 500,000 copies of movies swapped daily.
Hollywood is cracking down on what a recent study published by AT&T Labs found was the source of a large number of movies on the Internet: movie industry insiders. Now invitations to premieres include a warning about unauthorized copying. While the film is showing, the audience is closely monitored by guards.
Many in the entertainment industry privately say that only fear of reprisals, like the 261 lawsuits filed by the recording industry's lobbying group this month, will stop consumers from sharing files. But to change behavior in the long run, they say, consumers — particularly younger ones — have to be educated.
This fall the industry's trade association is joining with Junior Achievement, an organization based in Colorado Springs whose volunteers lecture students from kindergarten through high school on the fundamentals of business, economics and free enterprise. An hourlong lesson plan was created in conjunction with Warner Brothers Entertainment, a unit of AOL Time Warner, and covers the history of copyright, the economic benefits of both the music and movie industries, and the consequences for consumers who violate copyright laws.
Junior Achievement is projecting that the lesson, which will be taught both in school and after school, will be used in 36,000 classrooms nationwide and has the potential of reaching 900,000 students in grades five through nine, or about 10 percent of all students in those grade levels.
In the role-playing activity Starving Artist, for example, groups of students are encouraged to come up with an idea for a musical act, write lyrics and design a CD cover only to be told by a volunteer teacher their work can be downloaded free. According to the lesson, the volunteer would then "ask them how they felt when they realized that their work was stolen and that they would not get anything for their efforts."
Some in Hollywood and in education circles wonder if it is appropriate for the movie industry to be teaching children about the moral and ethical consequences of downloading when the legal and cultural issues are still being worked out. "You have to ask the threshold question, `Should any outside entity be allowed in the classroom?' " said Mr. Kaplan of the University of Southern California.
David Chernow, chief executive of Junior Achievement, counters by saying the industry's message that downloading is stealing is an ethical lesson not to be ignored.
Still, Hollywood executives agree that to succeed in changing minds, they have to come up with easy and cheap online alternatives to free downloads.
Movielink, the industry's first major effort, has met limited success so far. Started last November by five major studios, including Sony Pictures Entertainment and Warner Brothers, Movielink allows consumers to rent downloadable films via the Internet for 99 cents to $4.99.
But even some in the industry say Movielink is not flexible enough. Users cannot burn movies onto discs, and must watch the movies on a computer screen. And while rented films stay on customers' hard drives for 30 days before they disappear, the customers have only 24 hours to finish the film once they hit play.
Movielink recently rolled out an improved version of its product, and is backing it with an ad campaign aimed mostly at college students. Entertainment executives said the industry's fate would be decided more by the success of services like Movielink than a public relations campaign. "Movie executives have to be aggressive in their business strategy right off the bat," Ms. Rosen said. "Frankly if they don't take that view given what has happened in the music business, they should all be fired."
The LCD and Font sure look like us.com
Music industry drops suit against sculptor accused of downloading rap
BOSTON (AP) — In a possible case of mistaken identity, the recording industry has withdrawn a lawsuit against a 66-year-old sculptor who claims never to have even downloaded song-sharing software, let alone used it.
Sarah Seabury Ward, of Newbury, Mass., and her husband use their computer to e-mail with children and grandchildren, said Electronic Frontier Foundation attorney Cindy Cohn, who has worked with the family. They use a Macintosh, which cannot even run the Kazaa file-sharing service they are accused of using illegally.
Nonetheless, Ward was one of 261 defendants sued by the recording industry this month for illegal Internet file-sharing. Ward was accused of illegally sharing more than 2,000 songs, including rapper Trick Daddy's "I'm a Thug."
An attorney for the Recording Industry Association of America withdrew the case Friday, calling the move a "gesture of good faith" but writing in a letter to Ward's attorney that the organization would continue to look into the matter and reserved the right to refile.
RIAA spokeswoman Amy Weiss said Wednesday the group believes the computer address — known as an Internet protocol (IP) address — provided by Comcast Corp., Ward's Internet service provider, is correct and the organization still believes it has the right account.
Cohn said she expects more cases like this to emerge, given the difficulties of tying IP addresses to particular individuals. She said Internet service providers like Comcast don't have enough IP addresses for each user, so they shuffle them around, and it is difficult to track which addresses were assigned to a particular account.
"This is what happens when you sweep away all the due process protections and all the privacy protections," Cohn said. "Those are the kinds of things that would stop this before it gets to the stage where you sue some nice old lady who did nothing wrong."
Ward's husband and attorney declined to comment.
Weiss said this was the only case the RIAA had withdrawn, but Cohn said her group was investigating several others that may involve mistaken identity. Cohn said more than half of the defendants who have contacted her group claim another member of their household was doing the file-sharing.
The RIAA certainly is willing to go directly after the offending family member, as in the case of Brianna LaHara, a 12-year-old honors student from New York who was named as one of the 261 defendants. Her mother settled the case for $2,000 and an apology from Brianna.
Airlines see IT as key to recovery
But focus on flexible cost models to deal with downturn
Wed 24 September 2003 09:24AM BST
Despite being hit hard by the SARS virus, war in Iraq, terror threats and a wider economic slowdown, airline IT chiefs see technology investment as key to cutting costs and rebuilding the industry.
The Airline IT Trends Survey 2003 found that IT investment increased slightly to 2.4 per cent of carriers' revenue this year, with three-quarters of CIOs predicting budgets to remain the same or increase next year.
Cost reduction and improving efficiencies were cited as key drivers for new technology in the survey, which was questioned over half of the 200 worldwide top carriers and was commissioned by non-profit airline industry group SITA and Airline Business magazine.
Peter Buecking, president of SITA, told silicon.com the current scale of problems the industry faces is unprecedented in its history.
"The CIOs see IT as central to enabling cost reduction and that is going to be there for the next few years. The airline industry has to rebuild its balance sheet," he said.
The increasing use of application service providers (ASPs) and outsourcing is one of the key trends highlighted by the study. Over 80 per cent use ASPs and Buecking said companies are moving to these models as they realise the need to have a more flexible cost base to cope with downturns and upturns in business.
"With the ASP model airlines have moved to a more variable cost structure. When there is a downturn you need a more variable cost structure. ASP and outsourcing makes a lot of sense and this is a strong trend, not just a flavour of the month thing," he said.
But a hardcore of 20 per cent of airline CIOs said they have no plans to outsource any of their IT in the next two years.
Based on five years of this study, SITA has established a benchmark model of the ideal "IT-enabled airline". This includes a three-year IT strategy in place led at board level with a budget at around 2.5 per cent of revenue, and be already or rapidly moving to an IP infrastructure and outsourcing non-core, non-competitive parts of IT.
One area of growth that airlines are looking at to enable them to differentiate their services from competitors is offering in-flight email and SMS services.
By the end of this year 25 per cent of airlines will offer email and 22 per cent will offer SMS services to passengers onboard their aircraft. By 2006 these figures will rise to 46 per cent offering email and 45 per cent SMS.
Buecking said it will be another three or four years before these services become widely available to passengers on planes but that it will be inevitable.
"It is like in-flight entertainment years ago. Not everyone did it, then they all did, and then the airlines moved to personal TV screens. It becomes a competitive necessity after a while," he said.
Another area of growth is the use of the web as a direct channel for ticket sales, the survey found. Web sales and direct ticketing doubled in the past year and now account for 10 per cent of total airline ticket sales, posing a threat to traditional travel and ticketing agents.
Andy McCue
------------------------------------------------------------------------
e.DIGITAL CORPORATION SCHEDULES ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING
(SAN DIEGO, CA – September 24, 2003) – e.Digital Corporation (OTC: EDIG) has scheduled its Annual General Meeting of Shareholders for Thursday, December 4, 2003, at its corporate offices in San Diego, California. The event will be carried live via audio webcast on December 4 at 2 p.m. Pacific Time. Details of the broadcast will be announced before the meeting.
Proxy materials are being prepared and will be mailed to Shareholders of Record as of the Record Date (October 21, 2003). Shareholders are encouraged to read the Proxy materials and return their ballots. Shareholders are also encouraged to take advantage of their broker’s online voting systems and phone-in voting systems. All ballots must be received no later than noon on December 4, 2003, to be counted before the Annual Meeting.
About e.Digital Corporation - e.Digital Corporation specializes in technology innovation and applications integration through engineering partnerships with leading original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) designing, licensing, branding, and manufacturing digital audio, video and wireless products and technology platforms. Engineering services range from the licensing of e.Digital's patented MicroOS™ file management system to custom software and hardware development, industrial design, and manufacturing services. For more information on the company, please visit www.edigital.com.
Safe Harbor statement under the Private Securities Litigation Reform of 1995: All statements made in this document, other than statements of historical fact, are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are based on the then-current expectations, beliefs, assumptions, estimates and forecasts about the businesses of the Company and the industries and markets in which the company operates. Those statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions that will be difficult to predict. Therefore, actual outcomes and results may differ materially from what is expressed or implied by those forward-looking statements. More information about potential factors that could affect the Company can be found in its most recent Form 10-K, Form 10-Q and other reports and statements filed by e.Digital with the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”). e.Digital disclaims any intent or obligation to update those forward-looking statements, except as otherwise specifically stated by it.
# # #
CONTACT:
e.Digital Corporation: Robert Putnam, (858) 679-1504, robert@edig.com
20 Percent of U.S Uses Internet Audio/Video Monthly
September 24, 2003 (1:20 p.m. EST)
TechWeb News
One fifth of the U.S. population used the Internet to access audio or video materials in the past month, research firms Arbitron Inc. and Edison Media Research said Wednesday.
The figure represents 50 million consumers aged 12 or older.
An overwhelming percentage of Internet audio and video users preferred ad-supported rather than subscription-based sites for their images and sounds, according to the companies' study, “Internet and Multimedia 11: New Media Enters the Mainstream,” released Wednesday. 61 percent of Internet audio users and 59 percent of video viewers favored add-supported sites rather than fee-carrying sites.
20 percent of video customers would be willing to pay a subscription fee in return for less or no advertising, while only 12 percent of audio were willing to pay to play ad-free music, the firms said.
Is it MH? Can you please tell us what you know to make this statement? It seems to me that 1,000 units have been ordered and the service is "scheduled" to start on Alaska in October. Do you have any info that states otherwise? Do you have information that suggest edig will not make reasonable profits from this endeavor or are you just alluding to that fact and thus illustrating the point murgirl and all of us have continually made about these types of repetitive, completely speculative, bordering on libelous posts? I look forward to your candid reply. TIA
Pretec plans 12GB CompactFlash card
Category: Peripherals
We knew about Pretec's 6GB CompactFlash memory card (the one that costs $4500), but did you know they're planning to have 12GB CompactFlash card out some time next year? Slightly sooner than that, Pretec's also bringing out an SD digital camera attachment and a CompactFlash bar code reader for PDAs.
OT Dolby Acquires Cinea
Acquisition of anti-piracy technology company furthers
ability to meet the needs of the entertainment marketplace
San Francisco, September 22, 2003—Dolby Laboratories announced that it has acquired Cinea, a start-up content-protection and anti-piracy technology company based in Virginia. Cinea will operate as a wholly owned subsidiary of Dolby Laboratories, with Cinea personnel and offices remaining in Virginia. Cinea CEO and founder Robert Schumann becomes head of the new Dolby subsidiary, reporting to Tim Partridge, Vice President, Professional Division, Dolby Laboratories.
"Content is increasingly being delivered digitally, and unauthorized use of digital content can have serious consequences for the content owner. Content protection has thus become an ever more important element in enabling the delivery of high-quality entertainment," said Partridge. "Cinea has proven expertise in this important area, and is an ideal complement to Dolby's audio and image expertise."
Mr. Partridge added, "Our studio customers have made it clear that piracy is the most important problem they face today. Dolby has a long history of meeting the needs of the film industry through technical innovations such as stereo, surround sound, and digital audio. Content protection is another area where innovative and comprehensive solutions are clearly needed."
"Cinea's mission is to provide world-class anti-piracy tools and services to our studio customers," said Schumann. "Dolby's unsurpassed reputation for quality and customer service-and proven ability to bring practical solutions to market-will allow Cinea to expand the scope of our offerings and provide our customers with quality solutions worldwide."
Mr. Schumann added, "Whether it's with Dolby's Production Services Group working in content creation, its Professional Products Division, or its Consumer Licensing program, we see tremendous opportunities for our technologies. We believe Dolby is uniquely positioned to leverage the content protection offerings of Cinea."
Cinea, Inc., was founded in 1999 to develop and commercialize a broad variety of content protection solutions for markets that include digital cinema, in-flight entertainment, high-definition DVD, and video on demand. Most of Cinea's staff previously formed the senior technical and operating team for Digital Video Express, LP (Divx), a Circuit City subsidiary that implemented a highly secure DVD-based delivery system.
Content Protection in the Digital Entertainment Era
Entertainment content protection consists of a collection of services, products, and licensable technologies deployed across the entire content chain, from content creation all the way to the consumer. It is a key to enabling the distribution of high-value digital content to consumers, whether at home, in theatres, or other venues. The need for interoperable secure systems is particularly important in digital cinema, where highly valuable content is mastered, distributed, and ultimately projected for the enjoyment of moviegoers.
Cinea possesses broad skills and proven technologies in content protection, with an emphasis on professional markets, including digital cinema. Specifically, Cinea possesses industry leading expertise in key areas such as highly secure hardware and software, watermarking and fingerprinting, back-end content protection infrastructure, and camcorder anti-piracy.
Security products will continue to be developed in Virginia and released under the Cinea brand, with worldwide support and infrastructure offered by Dolby.
About Dolby Laboratories
Dolby Laboratories creates technologies that intensify and enhance the entertainment experience. For nearly four decades, Dolby has been instrumental in defining high-quality audio and surround sound in cinema, broadcast, home audio systems, cars, DVDs, headphones, games, televisions, and personal computers. Based in San Francisco with European headquarters in England, the privately held company has entertainment industry liaison offices in New York and Los Angeles, and licensing liaison offices in Hong Kong, Shanghai, Beijing, and Tokyo. For more information about Dolby Laboratories or Dolby technologies, please visit www.dolby.com.
OT IMS Chooses Anti-Piracy Technology From Cinea, Inc. For Next Generation Digital Content Management Solution
Posted: 9/16/2003 9:50:36 PM
News Release
Systems and Software developer to use Cinea Secure™ anti-piracy solutions to enable an end-to-end secure content management solution for IFE
September 9, 2003 (Seattle, WA) Innovative Media Solutions (IMS) and Cinea announced today that “Cinea Security Compliance”™ will be a key feature of IMS’ family of content management solutions for the in-flight entertainment market. This agreement represents an important milestone in moving the IFE market infrastructure to support an end-to-end secure system. Such a system is an essential component for enabling next generation IFE content management systems. The IMS solution is particularly significant because it is compatible with the digital video equipment on board planes today as well as the next generation products being developed by IFE equipment manufacturers.
Under this agreement, Cinea will provide technology to IMS that includes a hardware and software based security manager that IMS will use in its Terminal Data Loader (TDL). TDL is a content loading product offered to airlines that emphasizes the use of removable media rather than removable hard drives in content delivery and loading.
“Cinea security technology is well-known and well-respected in the content community, and its adoption in our IFE Content Management tool set helps to ensure maximum security in the IFE supply chain,” says Joe Renton, CEO of IMS.
“By adding Cinea Security Compliance, IMS’ TDL will be the first product to extend a consistent security solution all the way from the Studio, through the content integration stage, and to the content loading stage of the IFE value chain” says John Nelson, Director of Marketing and Business Development for Cinea. “Cinea Security Compliance insures end-to-end security interoperability from one vendor’s solution to another.”
About Cinea
Cinea Inc. (www.cinea.com) is a leading provider of anti-piracy products and services for the entertainment industry. The Company has developed an integrated set of hardware-based security solutions that provides the most robust digital video content protection available today, including encryption, key management, business rule enforcement, fingerprinting and secure logging and auditing.
About IMS
IMS (www.imsconsultants.com) is a systems and software engineering company that specializes in the development of passenger and cabin crew software applications, and the development and operation of data management services for the airline industry. IMS is best known for its eOffload, MASLink, and ThalesPort metrics and data capture services, and recently announced a new content application called NewsStand, a service providing electronic newspapers and magazines to airborne passengers.
Both IMS and Cines have actively participated in WAEA’s Digital Content Management Working Group (DCMWG) which is working to set standards for the network delivery of IFE content.
Consortium wants e-books to show images, text
By Yoshiko Hara
EE Times
September 22, 2003 (12:12 p.m. ET)
Tokyo - While retailer Barnes & Noble Inc. ceased electronic-book sales in the United States earlier this month, a consortium of about 200 companies is just taking shape in Japan to promote the development of e-book terminals and content. The Electronic Book Business Consortium believes it holds some cultural and technical advantages over U.S. efforts, including an ability to display images as well as text. It is also considering making e-books available on cell phone platforms.
"The consortium's mission will be not only to discuss how to make Japanese-language e-books, but also to invite participation internationally," said Yuusuke Suzuki, president and chief executive officer of eBook Initiative Japan Co. Ltd. In a demonstration, Suzuki showed how texts in various languages can be easily converted to e-books. His company, a distributor of e-book content, is one of the four primary proposers of the consortium.
The consortium's founders said they are suited to creating a new form of reading experience for the 21st century.
"It was Japan that changed text-based telex to image-based facsimile. Fontless image data can be used everywhere in the world," said Masaki Akiyama, president of Panasonic System Solution Co., a part of Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. Ltd., another of the main proposers. Electronics giant Toshiba Corp. and publisher Keiso-Shobo Publishing Co. Ltd. are the other main backers.
Machiko Satonaka, one of Japan's most famous cartoonists, welcomed the e-book effort. "E-book is often considered a technology issue, but it's a culture issue," Satonaka said. "Japan has ample cartoon content, but even so a lot of cartoons have been lost in the past. With the establishment of an e-book business, once a book is created it will be digitized and stored, and won't ever be lost."
The consortium will form several working groups that will discuss the e-book platform and business, compression technologies, international collaboration, e-book distribution and how e-books can revitalize existing bookshops. The consortium said it will accept multiple display formats and viewing platforms. No specific data format is defined for e-books at present. It is desirable for viewers to be able to "read various data formats," Suzuki said.
New books, old system
The consortium intends to work with existing book distribution systems, which comprise publishers, wholesale agents and bookstores.
Though the consortium said it intends to support multiple data formats and e-book viewers, Matsushita has already developed a prototype e-book viewer and the consortium will initially promote e-books suited for that viewer.
Matsushita's prototype shows two pages side by side, mimicking printed books. It has two 7.2-inch monochrome LCDs with XGA (1,024 x 768-pixel) resolution in 16 gray scales. The LCD requires power only when writing a new page, so two AA batteries can power the viewer for three months when 80 pages are viewed every day, according to Matsushita. The company is currently developing a color version of the LCD.
Matsushita plans to introduce the viewer, dubbed SigmaBook, in Japan this November with a suggested retail price of about $340.
E-books have a checkered history. Once viewed as a next-generation publishing medium, the readers never caught on with the public. Barnes & Noble suspended its e-book efforts earlier this month. Five years ago, a different e-book consortium was formed in Japan by about 150 companies. Sharp Corp. developed that consortium's viewer prototype, but the consortium was dissolved after several years.
Sharp has since shifted its e-book focus from dedicated readers to existing devices such as PDAs, electronic dictionaries and cellular-phone platforms. Newer cell phones with QVGA (320 x 240-dot) displays are emerging as an e-book reader platform, the company said.
Working with Cybird Co. Ltd., Sharp began distributing e-books in June to its latest cell phone for the J-Phone network. Toshiba has started to bundle dictionary content into its latest cell phone. Other distributors have begun similar services for the KDDI Corp. network.
The Electronic Book Business Consortium said it will consider making cell phones one of its e-book viewer platforms.
Electronics makers positive on Christmas outlook
TAIPEI (Reuters) — Consumer electronics makers are expecting a healthy dose of cheer for the upcoming Christmas season, fueled by improving consumer sentiment and a bevy of new gadgets drawing on the growing power of computers and broadband Internet.
The optimistic air at Computex, the world's third-largest computer trade show taking place this week in Taipei, contrasts sharply with last year when sales ranged from flat to marginally higher for many western retailers.
A stabilising employment picture in the United States is helping boost consumer confidence in the run-up to this year's holiday season, said Tom Engibous, chief executive of the world's largest cell phone chipmaker Texas Instruments.
In a nod to the U.S. economy's building strength, Texas Instruments earlier this month gave out new guidance for its third quarter, narrowing its expected revenue range to the high end of previous forecasts on strong demand for its semiconductor products that power cell phones and other consumer electronics.
"You have to believe the consumer is going to feel better (about Christmas) this year than last," said Engibous, speaking to reporters on the sidelines of Computex.
Many exhibitors at the show, held much closer to Christmas this year after the usual event in June was postponed due to the SARS outbreak, forecast sales growth of 10% or more this holiday season on the strength of a crop of new products.
Many of those were on display, drawing on the growing muscle of powerful memory chips that run applications and broadband that allows for the transfer of data at millions of bytes per second.
Recordable DVDs
One group of products that had vendors buzzing was a new crop of DVD recorders, whose rapidly dropping prices have led many to predict the medium will soon replace videocassettes.
Ritek Corp, the world's largest maker of recordable CDs, expects its revenue to grow by about 15% in the third quarter, when most Christmas orders are placed, said Eric Yu, director of sales for the OBM division of the company's North American operation.
Yu said much of his company's growth would come from a recent jump in CD prices as a glut eases, along with exploding demand for recordable DVDs needed for the new generation of affordable recorder-players making its way to market.
"Normally in the third quarter we have to finalize sales for Christmas," Yu said. "Many buyers at this show are coming to finalise orders."
Another company banking on recordable DVD was Ulead Systems, whose software competes with the more high profile Adobe Systems and whose hopes are resting on a new DVD editing product, said Christine Tseng, director of the company's Asia-Pacific marketing and sales centre.
Tseng said Ulead, whose revenue is still a relatively modest $30 million a year, had seen sales grow by 10 to 15% this year, and expected to at least match those gains during the Christmas season.
"DVD burners should drop in price significantly by the end of this year, so that should help a lot," she said. "We've gotten a lot of end-user enquiries. They've wanted to find out what kind of software they can use for DVD editing."
Amid the cheer, however, privately held Feton Technology was less upbeat on the Christmas prospects for its MP3 players, though its reasons were unrelated to holiday demand.
Product Assist Manager Ariel Liao said the industry had been hammered by a global shortage that has seen prices for flash memory chips more than double in recent months.
"I'm not very optimistic about Christmas because the flash IC increased its price, so not many people are buying the product this year," she said.
ReplayTV Founder Launches Digital TV Player
30 minutes ago
Add Technology - Reuters to My Yahoo!
By Franklin Paul
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Anthony Wood, the creator of the ReplayTV (news - web sites) digital television recorder on Monday unveiled Roku, his latest consumer electronics effort whose first product is a media player for high-definition TVs.
With the new company, Anthony Wood hopes to target a high-end market of big screen TV buyers that may also desire using the advanced visual quality of the screen to display more than just programming. At about $500, the HD1000 connects to any HDTV and offers a high-resolution canvas for digital media such as photos, art, music or other media applications.
"The TV can be used for more than just watching TV," he told Reuters in an interview. "I think there is a tremendous opportunity for a company ... that is focused on media players for the home."
High-definition television offers high resolution digital images, and are among the most popular sellers in electronics stores this year, and Yankee Group projects 46 million U.S. homes will have them by 2007. However, there has been a lag in available programming that takes advantage of the technology.
Wood said he expects to sell 20,000 units of the device in the product's first year at specialty electronics retail stores such as Magnolia Hi-Fi and Tweeter Home Entertainment Group Inc.(Nasdaq:TWTR - news) There -- unlike at high-traffic stores such as Best Buy Co. Inc. (NYSE:BBY - news) -- employees have more time to explain the machine's function to consumers.
"We are worried that it is not going to sell through fast enough at Best Buy," he said. "At Tweeter, the customer will see our stuff and say 'yeah, I want that too."'
"Our goal isn't to sell millions of units right away, it is to make money this year," Wood added. "We think that we can by being very targeted in the market."
Wood's last invention, ReplayTV, first unveiled in 1998, is just starting to hit a mainstream stride. The digital video recorder (DVR) is key in the competition between satellite and cable TV providers. Wood in 2002 left ReplayTV, which is now owned by Digital Networks North America, a subsidiary of D&M Holdings.
Unlike ReplayTV, the Roku device does not include a hard drive or any kind of recording option. The HD1000 takes most flash memory cards, including CompactFlash, Secure Digital and Memory Stick, and can be linked to home computer networks.
Software available for the device include images of classic works of art, for about $70.
Wood says other products are in the works at Roku, which is privately held and situated in Palo Alto, California.
Music Fans Starting to Tune In to Fee-Based Sites
Ex-file sharers like the bigger, more reliable libraries. But the labels have a long way to go.
By Jon Healey, Times Staff Writer
Jim Goodall knew it was illegal. But when the occasional craving for music struck, the 37-year-old graduate student helped himself to free songs on Internet file-sharing networks.
Then friends introduced Goodall to Rhapsody, an online service authorized by the record labels. Now, Rhapsody is the main source of music in his Santa Monica home. And file sharing? "I don't even think about it."
For the music industry, that's one down, 59,999,999 to go.
Goodall and about half a million other Americans pay $5 to $10 a month for services giving them access to a large online library of digital songs. By comparison, an estimated 60 million people in the United States tap Kazaa and other free file-sharing networks, which have mushroomed in popularity since they debuted in 1999.
That disparity, some critics say, shows how the recording industry blew its chance to capitalize on the online music revolution. As record labels and music publishers were releasing their works to fee-based services such as Rhapsody in fits and starts, people were moving at warp speed to unauthorized networks, including Napster and Kazaa, that let them copy songs free from other users' computers.
Still, the slowly growing ranks of converts such as Goodall underscore a key point: The revolution isn't solely about free songs. It's also about having entree to a vast, reliable collection of recorded music that isn't controlled by radio programmers, record-store stockers or major-label executives.
For Goodall, those benefits had more to do with his conversion from pirate to paying customer than moral qualms or fears about getting caught in the music industry's legal dragnet. Simply put, he thinks Rhapsody is worth the $10 he pays each month.
"I didn't find on the free services that they led me or tweaked my curiosity very much," said Goodall, who is studying social welfare at UCLA. With Rhapsody, "I'm introducing myself to tons of music because it's so easy."
He often starts by navigating to the electronic-music section of Rhapsody and entering the portion devoted to a musical subgenre called downtempo. The Rhapsody software suggests a few artists and albums, and Goodall picks a song to sample. If he likes it, he follows the links provided to the whole album, that musical genre or a related radio station, which will lead him to other artists to explore.
That kind of experience is something more and more people are willing to pay for, despite the limitations of services such as RealNetworks Inc.'s Rhapsody, AOL Time Warner Inc.'s AOL MusicNet and Roxio Inc.'s Pressplay. For music fans who want to download songs without paying a monthly fee, a host of companies are preparing to sell individual tracks through online stores such as Apple Computer Inc.'s iTunes Music Store.
The music industry shouldn't celebrate yet. Only lightly advertised, the authorized services are likely to generate less than $80 million in revenue this year, Jupiter Research has predicted. That's less than 1% of what the record industry collected from CDs in 2002. And like file-sharing networks, subscription services are attracting consumers with a proposition — an unlimited amount of music for a flat monthly fee — that undermines the CD market, which has been the industry's bread and butter.
But at the same time, the services are teaching the industry a valuable lesson. As they evolve and start building meaningful audiences, they are showing what it will take in the digital era to get music fans to part with their money.
The subscription services — which also include MusicNow from FullAudio Corp., RadioMX Platinum from MusicMatch Inc. and Streamwaves from Streamwaves Inc. — all take the same basic approach. Subscribers can listen to as many songs as they want from an enormous and steadily growing library of songs. In Rhapsody's, there are more than 380,000 tracks from 28,000 albums on 180 record labels.
There are two significant restrictions. First, subscribers lose the ability to play those songs if they stop paying the monthly fees. And for now, at least, they can play them only on a computer, not on a car stereo or a portable device. If they want music that won't expire after their subscription lapses, or if they want to move it to a portable player, they have to pay 79 cents or more per track.
File-sharing networks have the advantage of a wider selection, offering just about anything that has ever been on CD, a plethora of unreleased live and bootlegged recordings and a vast collection of older songs. None of those songs expire, and all can be copied freely to CDs or portable devices.
But file sharing isn't a perfect way to obtain music either. When users search for files, they're often presented with a disorganized jumble of tracks peppered with bogus or inaccurately labeled files and low-quality recordings.
There also is the legal problem: At least five federal courts have ruled that file sharing without the copyright holder's permission is illegal. Eager to drive home that point, the major record labels sued 261 file sharers this month and are expected to sue thousands more.
Still, the chances of getting sued for file sharing seem about as remote as getting hit by lightning. So why would anyone pay for an online music service when free songs with fewer restrictions are available through file sharing?
The answer, according to Goodall and other subscribers, is that the fee-based services are better organized, more reliable and more fun. They also make it easy to discover new and unfamiliar music, something the file-sharing networks have yet to do.
Reflecting those strengths, the subscription services attract people with voracious appetites for music and expansive tastes.
Lane Schwark, a software developer in Alameda, Calif., uses Rhapsody to sample music before buying it — the reason many people give for using file-sharing networks. But Rhapsody offers a better experience, Schwark said, in part because he doesn't have to wait for a song to download to hear it. Instead, the music plays as it's streaming to his computer.
"It's something that I just didn't have before: a good-quality streaming music service where I could choose what to play," he said.
The subscription services are quite a departure from traditional ways of buying music — too much so for some customers.
One former AOL MusicNet subscriber in Fresno, who asked that his name not be used, said he quit the service after two months. "If I were them, I would do away with the added monthly fees and make it as simple as going into a store and buying what you want for one price," he said. "You don't pay a monthly fee to go into Tower Records to buy music, so why should it be different online?"
That's the approach taken by Apple's iTunes Music Store, MusicRebellion.com Inc. and BuyMusic Inc., which sell downloadable songs for about $1. Several of the subscription services, including AOL's, are expected to add downloads for non-subscribers within the next few months.
Other subscribers to the new services continue to download songs from file-sharing networks, either for portability or to fill gaps in the services' offerings.
"I'm an iPod owner and big into the download scene, but I've kind of found that downloading isn't my primary activity anymore as much as streaming," said Ken Ruck, 34, who runs the e-commerce operations for two clothing companies in New York. That's why he subscribes to AOL MusicNet and uses a free radio service from MusicMatch.
Those services have "taken over the way I'm exposed to music," Ruck said. Instead of relying on suggestions from friends, he said, "I can go to a service and say, 'I like that song from Travis or from Coldplay,' " and listen to a set of music in the same vein.
Jesse Hertzberg, a 31-year-old merger and acquisition executive in New York, said he used to download a fair amount of songs from file-sharing networks, storing them in his iPod portable music player to play at his desk. He had trouble seeing the value in a streaming service such as Rhapsody.
"Why would anyone want to pay for music if they couldn't own it and put it on their iPod? I didn't get it," he said. Then he spent a night with friends in San Francisco playing with Rhapsody, and after seeing it in action, "it made a lot more sense to me."
Now, Hertzberg said, he spends 10 or 15 minutes building a playlist around "whatever artists pop into my head," then listens for hours while he works.
"I had pretty much stopped buying CDs and had pretty much stopped going to concerts," he said. "Rhapsody has definitely increased significantly my listening hours and reinvigorated my interest."
All the same, Hertzberg illustrates how subscription services can be a double-edged sword for the music industry.
The $100 or so he spends on annual subscription fees is far more than he once forked over for discs, Hertzberg said. But the only reason for him to buy CDs now is to have something he can listen to on the road.
New technology is in the works to let subscribers move songs to portable devices without requiring them to pay extra for permanent copies. Expected to arrive next year, it could eliminate the biggest shortcoming of Rhapsody and the other subscription services.
"If they do that, then they have me for life," Hertzberg said. "But I'll never buy a CD again."
Security standards could make anti-piracy easier
18:35 16 September 03
NewScientist.com news service
The US music industry's legal clampdown on online music piracy could soon be supplemented by technical measures that will make it harder to make unauthorised copies of digital files.
A new set of programming standards, released by a consortium of the world's largest software and hardware companies on Tuesday, specify methods for developing software for hardware security modules increasingly being built into many personal computers.
The Trusted Computing Group's new security standards promise to shore up personal computer security by linking software to tamper-resistant hardware modules in which cryptographic keys and other tools are stored. This could be used to increase the security of files or authenticate messages.
A new version of Microsoft's Windows operating system, scheduled for release in 2004, will incorporate the ability to use these hardware modules. The first computer systems to include the hardware were released by IBM in April and Hewlett Packard in May 2003.
Experts say the standards will enable the development of more robust Digital Rights Management (DRM) software to restrict unauthorised copying of digital files. A music file would only play on a machine if it had the correct key.
Raising the bar
Julian Midgley of the UK's Campaign for Digital Rights says this will "raise the bar significantly" for someone trying to defeat a copy prevention system. Software-only systems have so far proven vulnerable to circumvention.
But Midgley says "it will be well outside the bounds of your average user" to break a DRM system based on the new standards, as this would involve having to physically break into the security chip.
The TCG and Microsoft maintain the system was not created specifically to prevent piracy. But spokesperson TCG Anne Price concedes that the standards could be used to develop DRM software. "It is certainly possible," she told New Scientist, but "it's really up to the application developers."
Legal battle
Last week, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) began legal action on behalf of the world's largest record companies against 261 file-swappers accused of sharing copyrighted music illegally.
The RIAA has all but exhausted technical efforts to clamp down on unauthorised copying. These included altering CDs so that they will not play at all in a computer's CD-ROM drive or releasing music in software-protected formats. But such controls have proven either easy to get around or too complicated for many to use.
File-sharing is reported to have dropped since the RIAA announced its legal action. But the suits have also attracted negative publicity, most noticeably after a 12-year-old girl was sued for downloading a handful of songs.
Record companies accuse file-sharing networks of facilitating massive copyright infringement and contributing to a year-on-year fall in US music sales. Critics say the industry should better embrace this distribution mechanism by developing attractive alternatives that compensate artists.
File-sharing networks connect individual computers to create a giant searchable database of files. The trend began in 1999 with the release of Napster, but this service was successfully sued for assisting with copyright infringement. Services that have sprung up in Napster's wake have escaped legal pressure by removing the requirement for an index kept on a centralised server.
Will Knight
Experts Debate Future Of Digital-Rights Management
Fri Sep 19, 3:34 AM ET
Add Technology - TechWeb to My Yahoo!
What will the future of digital-media-rights management look like in a post-Napster (news - web sites) world? Some 200 media executives, attorneys, IT vendors, and legal academics debated Thursday how content producers will protect music, films, and other digital content through the next five years.
• More On Storage
• More On Security & Privacy
• More On Software
• More On Small Biz
• More On Mobile & Wireless
• More On Product Reviews
The conference, organized by Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet and Society and the GartnerG2 market-research firm, was held at the Harvard Law School in Cambridge, Mass. The Berkman Center will prepare a white paper based on the conference to provide a road map for how the issue might play itself out.
Digital-rights management has been a hot topic lately as record companies and the Recording Industry Association of America (news - web sites) (RIAA) take legal action against an increasing number of people for swapping music files over the Internet and pirated feature films appear online almost as soon as they hit theaters. The acrimonious situation shows how the old business model, in which content owners have more power over consumers, needs to change to adapt to the Internet, said Jim Brancheau, a GartnetG2 research director. "Business models need to change. The status quo is unacceptable," he said.
John Palfrey, the Berkman Center's executive director, outlined five possible scenarios for how digital-rights protection efforts will evolve. But he acknowledged that managing online content might follow any combination of the five or even some unexpected path.
One scenario assumes no change in the current situation, with widespread sharing of music and other content through peer-to-peer sites and irregular enforcement of copyright laws by music companies and other content owners. Under a second scenario, digital-content owners, through more rigorous enforcement of copyright laws, are more successful in preventing unauthorized use and copying of music and other protected content.
Improved digital-rights-management technology, such as encryption for CDs and DVDs, saves the day for content owners in the third scenario. Under the "utility model" scenario, digital content is treated as a public utility with regulatory limits on price discrimination and concentrated ownership of content. The final scenario foresees the creation of some kind of compulsory license system in which content creators and owners are compensated through a means such as taxes on electronic devices and Internet access.
Some attendees said any government involvement in managing digital content would be "Orwellian." The third scenario could result in Internet service providers gaining more revenue for distributing protected content. That's "an extraordinarily bad idea," said Scott Bradner, a senior technical consultant at Harvard, because it means that ISPs might distribute only the most-profitable content.
There appeared to be a consensus that digital-rights-management technology hasn't been effective so far. "It really boils down to educating the consumer," said Mark Ishikawa, CEO of BayTSP Inc., which provides anti-piracy and copyright-tracking services to digital-media companies. Others, such as Electronic Frontier Foundation co-founder John Barlow, said digital-rights-management tools could be misused. "Today's digital-rights management can easily become tomorrow's political-rights management," he said.
Some media industry representatives, including RIAA president Cary Sherman and Fritz Attaway, general counsel for the Motion Picture Association of America, were unable to attend the conference because their travel plans were disrupted by Hurricane Isabel.
OT Memory Cards Get Cheaper
Provided By Pinnacor, 09.18.03, 4:51 PM ET
Vacation photos? Forget the film. Need some files from work? Leave the floppy disc at home. Addresses and phone numbers? Who needs a Rolodex?
Today it's all stored on digital "flash memory" cards and chips. Information can be saved on the memory and then transferred to other electronic devices, like a home computer.
The good news for consumers is the memory cards are getting cheaper and faster. Now may be the time to buy more memory cards for digital cameras, handheld computers and MP3 players.
"It's great," said Peter Hischier, an avid photographer who uses a digital camera on his world travels.
"I take a lot of digital stuff and have a (Hewlett Packard) printer at home," he said. "I can print what I want and discard what I don't."
When the first memory cards came on the market about five years ago, the prices ranged from $50 to $175, depending on how much memory they had, said Kevin Scott, sales manager at The Camera Center on J Street in Modesto.
At the time, digital cameras were in their infancy and shot at low resolutions. A 16-megabyte card, for example, could store about 77 photos.
Over the past two years, other types of memory cards have been developed for different devices: from handheld computers to MP3 players and cellular phones. Those developments fueled the creation of low-cost, high-storage capacity memory cards.
The original eight megabyte memory cards cost about $60. Today, a consumer can get a card that holds 16 times more memory for about $40.
The prices will only get lower, said Mike Wong, a spokesman for SanDisk (nasdaq: SNDK - news - people ) of Sunnyvale, one of the leading producers of memory chips.
While prices are falling, the amount of memory that can be purchased by a consumer is rising, Wong added.
"Probably the most popular devices are digital cameras," he said. "Digital cameras are selling like hot cakes."
Other devices are also pushing the demand for flash memory. For example, there are thumb drives -- memory chips that are a modern version of floppy drives -- for transferring files between computers. And, also, cell phones that double as cameras.
Now that flash memory prices have dropped to affordable levels, manufacturers are developing more devices to take advantage of it, said Joe Unsworth, a semiconductor memory analyst with Gartner (nyse: IT.B - news - people ), a think tank for high-tech companies.
Just this month, Panasonic (nyse: MC - news - people ) announced a new digital camera that will record high-resolution video onto a memory card, and Sony (nyse: SNE - news - people ) unveiled a device that uses memory cards but will replace the video cassette recorder.
It's no surprise that flash memory is becoming cheaper, because the memory used in laptop and desktop computers has been getting cheaper for years, said Sean Casey, manager of the PC Club computer store in the Costco shopping center.
Memory cards have become so popular in such a short time, because of falling prices, that there's a shortage in some areas.
"We are actually in a state of undersupply, so it will be interesting to see what happens with prices," Unsworth said. "I don't expect prices to drop as we have seen in the past year."
©2003 The Modesto Bee. All Rights Reserved.
OT SigmaTel rings up 20 percent gain
Chipmaker's IPO gets warm reception
By Steve Gelsi, CBS.MarketWatch.com
Last Update: 12:04 PM ET Sept. 19, 2003
NEW YORK (CBS.MW) -- SigmaTel rose 20 percent over its raised price in a warm reception Friday for the semiconductor chipmaker's initial public offering.
With the Nasdaq rallying nearly 43 percent this year amid strength in the tech sector, relatively few technology deals have come to the IPO market.
The low supply of tech IPOs has been translating into high demand once they trade. Another plus is that tech listings nowadays usually offer much more solid financials than deals from the bull market era.
SigmaTel (SGTL: news, chart, profile) opened at $18.20, well above its $15 price. The stock changed hands at $18 on volume of 4.8 million in recent action.
Strong interest from investors made the deal richer ahead of its debut.
SigmaTel upped its price to $11 to $13 from $9 to $11 last month, but late Thursday the deal priced at $15 per share.
The Austin, Texas, company is raising $150 million by offering 10 million shares with lead underwriter Merrill Lynch (MER: news, chart, profile).
"SigmaTel is getting lots of attention since it is the leading supplier of chips for portable MP3 players, products that have been selling like hot cakes around the world and should be big sellers this holiday season," read a note posted on the Renaissance Capital Web site.
SigmaTel rang up net income of $150,000 on revenue of $32.5 million in the first six months of the year, up from a net loss of $7.6 million on revenue of $9 million in the year-ago period.
The firm designs semiconductors for MP3 players, notebook and desktop PCs, DVD players, digital televisions and set-top boxes. It has about 100 employees.
"Our focus on providing system-level solutions enables our customers to rapidly introduce and offer electronic products that are small, lightweight, power-efficient, reliable and cost-effective," the company said in its IPO filing.
Shareholders include chipmaker Creative Technology (CREAF: news, chart, profile), Battery Ventures, Invesco Private Capital and Telesoft Partners.
Research firm Renaissance Capital, which also runs the IPO Plus Fund (IPOSX: news, chart, profile), has noted that technology IPOs such as SigmaTel's lately have been gaining traction in the market. See full story.
The IPO from SigmaTel comes after successful IPOs from Netgear (NTGR: news, chart, profile), Intervideo (IVII: news, chart, profile) and Formfactor (FORM: news, chart, profile) in recent months. All the IPOs are trading well above their IPO prices.
Steve Gelsi is a reporter for CBS.MarketWatch.com in New York.
Seems to me it would depend on how popular portable IFE becomes. If legacy IFE systems on existing fleets don't measure up, one could easily see planes with existing embedded IFE systems gravitating to portable systems since the added weight is minimal and the cost of removing existing embedded IFE systems would be prohibitive imo. Today's planes have life spans on the order of 25 years, so there will continually be opportunities to sell to the purchasers of these aging planes.
"It is a good idea, light and small," said Dale Linder, director of cabin electronics for General Dynamics. Linder's company yesterday introduced EmPower YES!, an in-flight entertainment system that can store 28 feature films and 100 hours of music. Because the system is embedded in each seat of an aircraft, it is heavier and more costly than the APS.
Future of Online File-Sharing Debated
53 minutes ago
Add Technology - AP to My Yahoo!
By THEO EMERY, Associated Press Writer
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - Ilan Hornstein used to download his favorite tunes from the Internet to his hard drive, but he stopped several years ago, cowed by threats from the recording industry to sue high-tech music lovers who swap files.
He's still infuriated that he can't download music with impunity as he once did, and that the industry has the weight of the law behind it. An outcry by music listeners would take away the industry's clout, he said, and put music back in the public domain — and onto his hard drive.
"Why should the law protect the record industry?" said Hornstein, who works for Raytheon Co. "It seems a lot like the Mafia."
Hornstein, 27, was among 100 scholars, industry representatives, music lovers and privacy advocates who gathered Thursday at Harvard Law School to discuss the future of digital media and online file-sharing, the bugaboo that has delighted music fans and aggravated the music industry.
"There was a time that to make a copy, you needed a monk, and a desk, and months," said Harvard law professor Charles Nesson, the faculty co-director of Harvard's Berkman Center, a sponsor of the gathering. "And then Shawn Fanning hit the scene," he said, referring to the college dropout who created the wildly popular music-trading Web site Napster (news - web sites), which was shut down in 2001 after battling the music industry over copyright infringement.
The rocket speed of digital media technology, which can put a pirated movie onto the Internet in hours, pirated CDs and DVDs on street corners around the world in days, and allows home computer users to swap music using "peer-to-peer" file-sharing software, is fundamentally changing the entertainment industry.
"Clearly, we need a solution to the issue. Everyone would agree to that," said Richard Conlon, vice president of BMI, an organization that collects license fees for 300,000 songwriters, composers and music publishers whose tunes are played in public.
The Recording Industry Association of America (news - web sites) has been on the offensive against song swappers. Last week the RIAA sued 261 people, including a 12-year-old girl, in federal court for allegedly distributing on average more than 1,000 copyrighted music files each.
But several participants at the Harvard meeting said they doubted that tactic would stop the millions of people using file sharing to download music.
The meeting focused on five scenarios put forward by a working group from Gartner/G2, a research firm, and the Berkman Center. They range from preserving the status quo with copyrighting to a compulsory licensing scheme that would require the government to pay for lost music industry revenues with taxes.
The debate sparked strong reactions and outbursts of dismay from some participants, particularly to one proposal that the government treat the music industry like a public utility, and regulate it as such.
"Are you seriously considering the regulation of artists?" asked John Perry Barlow, a Grateful Dead lyricist and a co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "That is so Orwellian. I'm astonished this is even on the screen."
Ivan Reidel, a student at Harvard Law School, said he's studying ways to get rid of licensing organizations like BMI and ASCAP altogether, and instead create an organization of artists who would opt out of the licensing system and deal directly with consumers.
Asked the odds of such a scenario coming to fruition, he said with a smile: "I'm working on that."
OT ..LOL..Computer makers sued over hard-drive size claims
Thursday September 18, 4:57 pm ET
LOS ANGELES, Sept 18 (Reuters) - A group of computer owners has filed a lawsuit against some of the world's biggest makers of personal computers, claiming that their advertising deceptively overstates the true capacity of their hard drives.
ADVERTISEMENT
The lawsuit, which seeks class action status, was filed earlier this week in Los Angeles Superior Court against Apple Computer Inc. (NasdaqNM:AAPL - News), Dell Inc. (NasdaqNM:DELL - News), Gateway Inc. (NYSE:GTW - News), Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE:HPQ - News), IBM (NYSE:IBM - News), Sharp Corp. (Tokyo:6753.T - News), Sony Corp. (Tokyo:6758.T - News) and Toshiba Corp. (Tokyo:6502.T - News)
The lawsuit brought by Los Angeles residents Lanchau Dan, Adam Selkowitz, Tim Swan and John Zahabian centers around the way that computer hard drives are described by manufacturers.
Representatives of the eight defendants were not immediately available to comment.
According to the lawsuit, computer hard drive capacities are described in promotional material in decimal notation, but the computer reads and writes data to the drives in a binary system.
The result is that a hard drive described as being 20 gigabytes would actually have only 18.6 gigabytes of readable capacity, the lawsuit said.
The plaintiffs said this difference in convention is deceptive and leaves buyers with less storage than they thought they were getting when they purchased their computers.
For example, when a consumer buys what he thinks is a 150 gigabyte hard drive, the plaintiffs said, he actually gets only 140 gigabytes of storage space. That missing 10 gigabytes, they claim, could store an extra 2,000 digitized songs or 20,000 pictures.
The lawsuit asks for an injunction against the purportedly unfair marketing practices, an order requiring the defendants to disclose their practices to the public, restitution, disgorgement of ill-gotten profits and attorneys' fees.