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OT: Eastech business update (next one due soon):
http://www.eastech1.com/acrobat/publication_eng.pdf
Some feedback re XP3 and Circuit City:
-----Original Message-----
From: XXXXXXXX@yahoo.com
Sent: Monday, March 18, 2002 11:57 AM
To: support@emiglobal.com
Subject: CHD1000 availability
What is the status of the Circuit City retail arrangements for the Classic CHD1000/XP3 MP3 jukebox? Several acquaintances who have seen my player wish to purchase one for themselves. I'm not sure what to tell them, since I haven't seen an XP3 in the local Circuit City for some weeks now. Are there other retail outlets or has the XP3 been discontinued?
Regards,
Tom
From: "Support" <Support@emiglobal.com>
To: XXXXXXXX@yahoo.com>
Subject: RE: CHD1000 availability
Date: Wed, 20 Mar 2002 11:38:41 -0800
Circuit City should be receiving another shipment soon. The unit is not discontinued.
Thanks
Support@emiglobal.com
Todd, my DD shows that Evolution products will be sold at the following additional outlets: Fry's, Yahoo, J&R Music World, and www.USCDirect.com. ( http://nowevolution.com/buy.html ). Presumably, the MTV DataPlay player will be included. ( Checked out the ContentKey directory; nice read : - )
Also, FWIW, Bare Naked Ladies records on the Warner Brothers label. Batting 800 in your rookie season ain't too shabby, eh?
OT: Flash-based MTV players from Evolution:
http://nowevolution.com/products/EV-256MPN.pdf
http://nowevolution.com/products/EV-128MRS.pdf
Interesting DataPlay article from Circuit Cellar:
http://www.circuitcellar.com/chipcenter-pdfs/1201/c1201su.pdf
A PLAY ON DATA
by Tom Cantrell
I’ll admit I’m not well organized. For example, despite sporadic and fitful efforts to arrange my paper files, they’ve pretty much evolved into a LIFO stack. I open the file cabinet drawer, cram the latest piece of paper in at the front, and close the drawer, with the understanding that any future recovery will devolve to a linear search.
If I ever change my messy ways (in my next life perhaps), one thing I want to set up is a pundit-busting gotcha file.
How many times have you seen a quote from some guru along the lines of "In five years, the XYZ frubblewumpus will dominate the market"? Often I’m quite sure that the prediction is wrong. But, I’m equally certain that there’s no way I’m going to keep track of the prediction or remember to revisit the matter in five years. What I need is a nicely organized chronological file arranged by the year I should check back.
For example, consider this gem from the pages of Circuit Cellar way back in 1993 that read, "Sony’s new MiniDisc promises to revolutionize portable audio in much the same way the CD did to home stereos." Busted!
The good news is that the Circuit Cellar archive on CD solves my filing problem. The entire history of the magazine fits on a few CDs shoved in a drawer that even I can keep track of. The bad news is that it means the easiest pundit to bust for a flaky prediction is yours truly. And yes, you guessed it, I’m the one who went too far out on a limb in my article "Audio Rx—Skippy CDs? Tangled Tapes? Call an MD" (Circuit Cellar 34), which covered Sony’s introduction of their MiniDisc.
Here it is almost a decade passed and I don’t have a MiniDisc. I don’t know anyone who has one. There are not racks of MiniDisc titles down at the music-mart. MiniDisc is a zombie, still shuffling the dark, back pages of Sony’s web site, but for all practical purposes, dead.
OOPS
I should’ve known better. The history of technology demonstrates that a better mousetrap doesn’t necessarily mean overnight success. I’m reminded of one of the best (and worst) examples as I peck away at my QWERTY keyboard, a brain-damaged holdover from the last century. Things do change, but sometimes the pace is a little slower than mere technical considerations might imply.
So, what happened to MiniDisc? In hindsight, there were a number of factors that held it back. Certainly retailers weren’t excited about juggling yet another new media. Remember that at the time, all the audio/video outlets were finally clearing out the last vestiges of audiocassettes and no doubt looking forward to unifying their racks around CDs.
As usual, audiophiles had concerns about the audio quality of the MD psycho-acoustic compression scheme. Sony went as far as to hold a number of blind "taste" tests comparing CD to MD, which seemed to back up their claims that MD could hold its own. Indeed, at the time it was reported that for those listeners who could detect a difference, more preferred MD, even with its 5:1 compression, over CD. Nevertheless, we all know how finicky folks can get about audio, so whether justified or not, the concern may have played a role.
I suspect controversy over copy protection didn’t help. The MD incorporated a serial copy management scheme that, as I recall, would allow you to make a digital copy of a CD to a MD, but not subsequent digital copies of that MD. Even today, the issue of audio/video copy protection is still a hot button.
Perhaps in an effort to alleviate, or at least pay a way around, those copy-protection concerns, the pricing of blank media was set quite high, only 20% or so less than a prerecorded title. Good for the artists whose works were so protected, but ultimately bad for MD.
Even at the time I wrote the article, I’d questioned Sony’s strategy of driving MD in the consumer audio/video space while appearing to ignore its possibilities as a data storage alternative. Remember, in ’93 most folks were still using floppies or tapes as backup, because today's ZIP, MO, CD-RW, and such alternatives were still in their infancy.
Eventually Sony did make a half-hearted effort to promote what they called Data MD, but it was too little, too late. I still wonder whether or not pushing MD initially in computers, a market proven to be amenable to adopting new gadgets quickly, and then audio after a beachhead was established, would have made a difference in the outcome.
ONCE MORE, WITH FEELING
Fast-forward to the present and what do we find? Check out the Micro Optical Engine from little-known, but well-funded (to the tune of over $100M), start-up DataPlay
Conceptually it’s MiniDisc déjà vu all over again, however freshened up with a dose of the latest and greatest more-for-less and less-is-more technology.
DataPlay shares one of the most personally appealing aspects of MiniDisc in adopting a floppy disk-like packaging with the optical media integrated with a shuttered carrier. I like the one-hand advantage over CDs that invariably call for two-handed fumble fingering to load. Yes, it costs a little more than a platter alone, but don’t forget CDs and such always come with those obnoxious jewel cases anyway. Frankly, I’m tired of juggling little silver Frisbees and would welcome the convenience of the DataPlay approach.
The shared floppy disk-like packaging is pretty much where the similarity between DataPlay and MiniDisc ends.
The most notable difference is size. The DataPlay media is tiny. At a little more than one inch (32 mm) in diameter, it is only about a quarter of the size of MiniDisc. The entire drive is less than 2² on a side, making DataPlay ideal for a gaggle of portable and pocketable gadgets. (see Photo 1 —Taking advantage of the tiny matchbox sized form factor, portable devices such as PDAs and MP3 players are likely candidates for the DataPlay optical disk. http://www.chipcenter.com/circuitcellar/december01/cimages-1201/c0112suop1.jpg )
At the same time, its capacity is a whopping 500 MB for double-sided media, and 250 MB for single-sided. That’s roughly five times the capacity of MiniDisc and practically the same as CDs.
Although uncompressed audio is an option, compression would allow fitting many hours of audio on a DataPlay disk, the exact amount depending on the ratio. Furthermore, compression along with the built-in buffer (2 MB of DRAM) and decent data transfer rate (approximately 10-MBps burst, 1-MBps sustained) can extend battery life by reducing the duty cycle (i.e., percentage of time the drive must be powered up). For instance, at the reduced 1 MB/min. or so required by MP3 compressed audio, battery life for a couple of AA batteries is estimated to be 55 h.
This is a key advantage over CDs whose format requires the drive to spin constantly to keep up with the audio. I know my own portable CD player with two AA batteries is only good for maybe 8 to 10 h.
OPTICAL OPTIONS
Under the hood, DataPlay demonstrates the marvelous mechanics and integrated electronics that characterize the latest generation of mini-me disks (such as the 1-GB IBM MicroDrive that I write about in "Disko Boogie" coming up in the January issue of the print magazine (Circuit Cellar 138)).
Let’s see where DataPlay fits in the laundry list of optical options. Basically, the differences between the alternative technologies boil down to whether or not, how many times, and how fast data can be written in the field.
Traditional CDs are pre-mastered with actual pits in the shiny layer to modulate the laser reflection, a process you can’t duplicate at home. The first big breakthrough was CD-R, allowing one-time programming in the field. CD-R media has a dye layer that is burned by a recording laser to simulate the pit in a CD. The burned areas absorb the playback lasers light, allowing CD-R disks to be played back by conventional CD drives (see Figure 1—CD-R drives mimic conventional CDs by burning spots in a dye layer to create a virtual (non-reflective) pit. http://www.chipcenter.com/circuitcellar/december01/cimages-1201/c1201suf1.gif )
Another approach is Magneto-Optical or MO, the first to deliver multiple write capability. As the name implies, it relies on a combination of magnetic (Curie point for writes) and optical (Kerr effect for reads) properties. A laser heats the media to a high temperature, which allows the magnetic polarity to be changed. Subsequently for playback, a slight shift in the polarization of the reflected light indicates a 1 or 0.
The original MO drives used a constant magnetic field and modulated the laser. Thus, they were like a flash memory chip in that the media had to be erased each time prior to recording. The need for an erase cycle requires separate read and write heads or two passes with a single head.
MiniDisc uses a slight variation on the MO theme by modulating the magnetic field instead of the laser, allowing direct overwrite much like a conventional magnetic disk. There’s no need for an erase cycle, so MD can re-record in a single pass.
Most recently, CD-RW has emerged. It replaces the dye layer in CD-R with a special alloy that responds to the heat of a write laser with an amorphous phase change. If heated a lot, when it cools it becomes shiny. Heat it less and it ends up dull. Note that the difference in reflectivity isn’t as dramatic as for CD or CD-R, so CD-RW media may not work in older CD drives. Newer CD drives (and DVD) include automatic gain control (AGC), which compensates for the weaker reflection from CD-RW media.
On a side note, DVD and DVD-R work the same way as CD and CD-R, only with higher density (i.e., smaller pits, and a narrower track). Rewritable DVD formats (e.g., DVD-RAM, DVD-RW, DVD+RW, etc.) incorporate various aspects of CD-RW (phase change) and MO technology, but it’s a complicated story I’ll leave for another day.
HAVE IT YOUR, AND OUR, WAY
DataPlay uses the amorphous media scheme like CD-RW but with a unique twist. DataPlay disks can include both pre-mastered content (like a CD) and user-recorded data (see Photo 2 A unique advantage for DataPlay is the ability to combine pre-mastered and user-recorded data. Wobble in the grooves is the basis for timing and tracking. http://www.chipcenter.com/circuitcellar/december01/ancil-1201/c1201sup2.htm ). It’s kind of like having a chip that’s half ROM and half flash memory.
The major impetus for the dual capability is DataPlay’s ContentKey scheme. It’s designed to allow an authorized (i.e., paying) customer to gain temporary or permanent access to some or all of the pre-mastered content.
It’s not hard to imagine useful scenarios made possible by this concept. Imagine a disk with a large collection of music or software. The disk itself can be stamped out in high volume and distributed widely at a low cost, perhaps even for free.
Then, individual users can pay to enable access to the particular content that’s of interest to them. The payment might occur initially at a checkout stand or vending machine kiosk or maybe portions of the content could be enabled over time via the Internet.
As shown in Figure 2 ( http://www.chipcenter.com/circuitcellar/december01/ancil-1201/c1201suf2.htm ), a DataPlay disk is divided into a number of regions—the mastered file system and content, and various writeable areas.
Notice that some portions of the disk associated with the ContentKey scheme are writeable only by the drive itself, not the user.
LESSON LEARNED
So, should I go on record saying DataPlay is going to take over the world? No thanks; I learned my lesson. At the same time, I wouldn’t go with those who say the optical story is over and any would-be innovator is doomed.
Will DataPlay replace the racks of CDs down at the music shop? Not any time soon. Will it obsolete everything that fits in the zillions of 5.25'' bays in the world's PCs? Nope.
Nevertheless, I think there are some critical applications where DataPlay makes a lot of sense. The compelling issue is simple—size.
Look at portable CD players. Manufacturers have done an outstanding job shrinking the players, but the party’s over. The footprint isn’t ever going to get smaller than the foot, and the 5'' or so required by CD, CD-R, CD-RW, DVD et-al is just too big.
If DataPlay can establish a beachhead in applications like PDAs, hand-held games, sub-laptop PCs, super cell phones, digital cameras, and the like, that would provide a foundation for wider acceptance. After folks get used to enjoying the small size, easy handling, light weight, and long battery life in those apps, there would be a basis for DataPlay to proliferate into traditional audio/video and PC markets.
Also, the whole pay-per-play aspect of ContentKey may well come into fashion and represent a compelling advantage for DataPlay over traditional media.
So, what’s my prediction? I predict that in five years I’ll know what’s going to happen five years from now. You can count on it.
Denver Post version of previous PR:
(found by denniso at Agora)
http://www.denverpost.com/cda/article/detail/0,1040,33%257E471293%2B%257E36%257E%257E,00.html
Tuesday, March 19, 2002 - Chart-toppers Britney Spears, 'NSync and R. Kelly will be among the first artists with music released in a new format that aims to replace the compact disc.
Boulder's DataPlay, makers of a highly anticipated recordable disc about the size of a half-dollar coin, will announce today that it has landed an agreement with the parent company of Jive Records to release content in DataPlay format.
DataPlay is also announcing for the first time some of the artists who will be available in its format. Other artists under the Jive label, a subsidiary of Zomba Recording Corp., to be released on DataPlay discs include Aaron Carter and Joe.
The first albums are scheduled to hit stores June 11, said Pat Quigley, DataPlay's chief marketing officer. The price will be comparable to what CDs cost.
Blank discs and music players and recorders will be available in late April. Blank discs will cost about $10, and players and recorders will range from $299 to $369.
DataPlay discs can store 500 megabytes of data, enough for 11 hours of MP3s or five CD-quality albums. All DataPlay devices can connect to a computer to allow users to view and record digital content. Labels are expected to include additional content such as music videos, games and photos with an album.
Founded in November 1998, DataPlay also has agreements with three of the five major record labels - Universal Music Group, EMI Group and BMG Entertainment. Those companies haven't revealed which artists will be released in the new format.
"This Zomba/Jive agreement is just a big boost for DataPlay because of the incredible list of artists," Quigley said. "Each label has strengths in different markets. Jive just owns the world of pop."
Jive's artists appeal to a younger audience, which should be among the first to embrace DataPlay's technology, said Yankee Group analyst Ryan Jones.
"From a demographics perspective, it fits in really well with the target market for the DataPlay device," he said.
Many industry experts have said that it will be vital for DataPlay to be able to release music content from all artists in its drive to replace the CD. Jones said he expects DataPlay to land agreements with the other two major labels - Warner Bros. Music and Sony Music Entertainment.
"The reason why they're able to sign Jive and why they'll be able to sign the other two major labels is that they've built this product with digital rights management at the core of it," Jones said.
Digital rights management technology allows labels to limit the number of times a disc can be copied.
"DataPlay presents exciting new digital possibilities for distributing and enjoying music, and it epitomizes the kind of emerging technologies that Zomba will leverage to maximize exposure for our artists," Jive executive vice president Ivan Gavin said in a statement.
In addition to its agreements with music labels, DataPlay has deals with consumer electronics manufacturers such as Samsung Electronics and Toshiba Corp.
Zomba taking initial spin on DataPlay format
Tue Mar 19, 2:42 AM ET
By Chris Marlowe
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/bpihw/20020319/en_bpihw/zomba_taking_initial_spin...
LOS ANGELES (The Hollywood Reporter) --- Britney Spears, 'N Sync (news - web sites) and R. Kelly are among the first music artists whose works will be made available on a new portable media format intended to replace the CD.
In a deal set to be announced today, Zomba Recording Corp. will become the first record label to unveil a roster of artists whose albums will be distributed on DataPlay digital media.
Universal Music Group, EMI Group and BMG Entertainment also have announced plans to distribute music on DataPlay discs, but those labels have not yet named specific artists.
DataPlay discs are about the size of a half-dollar and resemble a tiny CD encased in a translucent shell. The technology is designed to resist piracy but permit consumers to make their own personal copies and compilations, a capability that analysts agree is essential to the success of any secure music initiative.
"Zomba's support will not only strengthen DataPlay's entrance into the market, but it ensures that enthusiastic fans will be able to enjoy a new music experience with their favorite Zomba artists," said Pat Quigley, DataPlay's chief marketing officer and senior vp.
Zomba's labels include Jive, Silvertone, Volcano, Verity and contemporary Christian music from labels under Provident Music Group.
"DataPlay presents exciting new digital possibilities for distributing and enjoying music, and it epitomizes the kind of emerging technologies that Zomba will leverage to maximize exposure for our artists," said Ivan Gavin, Zomba's executive vp finance and commercial operations, North America.
DataPlay discs come in two capacities: a single-sided 250MB and a double-sided 500MB. The larger one can hold more than 11 hours of compressed music files, or the equivalent of five complete prerecorded CDs. DataPlay discs and music players are scheduled to go on sale in the summer with players costing $280-$450. Blank discs are expected to cost $5-$12 depending on size.
DataPlay has a major rollout planned for a target date of June 11 that will involve high-profile advertising, including spots on NBC's "Today" and "The Tonight Show With Jay Leno (news - Y! TV)" and CBS' "Late Show With David Letterman (news - Y! TV)."
The discs are not limited to music but also can store about one hour of video, 1,000 high-resolution photographs, 100 e-books or one video game.
Quigley said the discs' multimedia capabilities provide unique packaging concepts. A prerecorded album could include the video, tour schedules or other bonuses that would provide an attractive alternative to illegally downloaded music. The disc also could have catalog product, games or videos that could be unlocked for an additional fee without the need for downloading.
EMI has been involved with DataPlay for nearly three years in an advisory capacity, EMI Recorded Music senior vp new media Jay Samit said. "It's versatile for both prerecorded and recordable," he said. "It also offers some new business models, such as buying a single and unlocking an album or buying one album and unlocking older albums."
There also are piracy deterrents built into DataPlay. Any music or other file can be stored on a DataPlay disc, but a DataPlay-equipped music player will play only music files that have been encrypted to prevent them from being copied or moved within limitations set by the content owner.
"DataPlay can put digital rules on that are different from any other media in the world," Quigley said. "An album can be set to play for a set amount of time or limited to making a specific number of copies, for example." It also is possible to offer free previews of songs that can then be unlocked with purchase.
Wherehouse Music is one of the retailers on board to carry DataPlay products. So is Trans World Entertainment, operator of the roughly 900 FYE retail stores; it is also an investor, and its chairman and CEO, Bob Higgins, is on DataPlay's board of directors.
Toshiba and Samsung are among the companies that will manufacture portable music players/recorders, digital cameras, PC peripherals, PDAs and portable game machines that will support the DataPlay format.
Regardless, there is still the huge question of whether the consumer will adopt any other new medium, much less one that comes with usage restrictions and requires the purchase of new hardware.
"Timing is a major issue with the success or failure of any product," Quigley said. "Today, protecting the consumers' right to make copies, share them over the Internet and yet limit the artists' risk are key. The music industry needs a new format; I think we all realize that."
He added that his music background, which includes having been CEO of Capitol Records Nashville during the rise of Garth Brooks, makes him cognizant of that industry's concerns.
Samit said the consumers' interest depends on the potential uses. "Recent years have shown that there's a variety of media for the different ways in which people enjoy their music," he said. "A camera that also is your music playback device or a driver that fits in your cell phone could be attractive."
DataPlay is headquartered in Boulder, Colo., and employs 240 people in the United States, Singapore and Japan. The company has raised $119 million in three rounds of funding since May 1999 from such investors as Eastman Kodak, Olympus Optical, Intel Corp., Trans World Entertainment, Toshiba, Samsung and venture capital firms and individual investors like musician David Crosby.
Interesting yjames666 post re CompUSA:
http://ragingbull.lycos.com/mboard/boards.cgi?board=EDIG&read=929185
Some exciting info (for me at least)!
I just spoke with Carl at the COMPUSA national customer service center in PLano, TX - I was forwarded there by the phone system at my local NJ CompUSA store.
He told me that the 10GB TREO should be in any day - HE actually told me to check this weekend - and would retail for, get this, $249. He also said the 1GB player, and I confirmed it was the MXP, would be available and retail for $399.
The product numbers are as follows: TREO # 290542
MXP #290543
I asked if these were available on the website site and he checked (I heard him clicking) and said not yet - too new.
If I can walk into a store and see an EDIG product, I will be pumped - I needed this after such a boring week.
From: Savant at SI re Treo...
Tuesday, Mar 12, 2002 1:53 AM
Respond to 767 of 768
I was pleased to notice the other day, in Computer Shopper, March, 2002 issue, on page 39, the Treo 10 being offered for sale.
S.
http://www.siliconinvestor.com/stocktalk/msg.gsp?msgid=17184999
Embedded Processor Enables Portable MP3 Recording
By Mark Long -- e-inSITE, 3/11/2002
http://www.e-insite.net/commvergemag/index.asp?layout=article&articleid=CA200650&spacedesc=n...
Cirrus Logic has rolled out a new ARM7-based embedded microprocessor that has been designed to enable the recording and playback of MP3 content.
Running at clock speeds of up to 90 MHz, the new low-power EP7312-90 has been designed to enable real-time MP3 encoding, as well as the decoding of digital music in the WMA, MP3 and AAC playback formats. The device is destined for deployment in portable and set-top digital audio device, car audio jukebox system, and general purpose controller applications.
"With faster than real-time MP3 encoding capability, manufacturers can build portable rotating media and flash-based audio players that record and store CD/MP3 data during playback, allowing more than 10 hours of music content to be stored on a single CD-RW disc," said vice president Lew Paceley in a prepared statement.
The new chip integrates digital audio interface (DAI) with the ability to connect with a wide variety of DACs and ADCs. The EP7312-90 also includes the company's MaverickKey technology, which provides on-chip security utilizing specific hardware IDs, such as those assigned for DRM or other authentication mechanisms. In addition, the processor is offered in designer's choice of 208-LQFP, 256-PBGA and 204-TFBGA packaging.
Available right now, the EP7312-90 is priced at $12.25 each in 50K quantities
OT: Wind River to roll DSP real-time OS
by Charles J. Murray, EE Times
March 11, 2002 (12:54 p.m. EST)
http://www.eetimes.com/sys/news/OEG20020311S0034
PARK RIDGE, Ill. — Wind River Systems Inc. will make its move on the embedded DSP world today. Just as the Embedded Systems Conference gets under way in San Francisco, Wind River is rolling out a development platform for DSP-powered applications.
Known as VSPWorks, the new product is believed to be a key to enabling Wind River to keep a foothold in the wireless market, especially as that market migrates to third-generation (3G) systems. "With the whole world getting so excited about 3G wireless, there's going to be a lot of interest in DSP," noted Daya Nadamuni, senior analyst for Gartner Dataquest (San Jose, Calif.). "Most of those systems are going to have a DSP on board."
The company's new platform will provide developers with the VSPWorks real-time OS (RTOS) and a graphical user interface-driven integrated development environment. The IDE is said to be optimized for creating applications with small-memory footprint requirements using multiple DSPs or a combination of DSPs and traditional CPUs.
The new product rollout gives Wind River an entry into the DSP RTOS market, which up until now has been populated by a large percentage of users who wrote their own operating systems.
A few commercial operating systems have been offered up to now, including OSE Systems' (San Jose, Calif.) OSE RTOS, which has been used by such customers as Ericsson and Agere Systems Inc., and RidgeRun Inc.'s (Houston) DSPLinux operating system. At the end of last year, RidgeRun teamed with Texas Instruments Inc. to deliver an "end-to-end" embedded Linux development suite for TI DSPs.
Still, commercial real-time OSes haven't yet taken hold in the DSP market, analysts said. "A lot of DSP operating systems are still being developed in-house," Nadamuni said. "But that will start to change soon."
One reason for the change is the rising popularity of DSPs. A recent EE Times branding survey revealed that 55 percent of developers have used multiprocessor designs, and a large majority of developers say they are willing to move back and forth from traditional CPUs to DSPs.
"We're seeing increased complexity, as well as developers who are building systems with new kinds of components," said Gareth Noyes, market development manager for Wind River's DSP and multicore products.
Photo of the Micronas MicroDrive Player board:
http://www.micronas.com/press/pressreleases/mediapictures/160.jpeg
Tara Systems, huh? What's with that???
Danl, a little more on that subject:
Chrysler opts for portable phones in telematics platform
http://www.embedded.com/story/OEG20011026S0082
(10/26/01, 03:17:41 PM EDT)
AUBURN HILLS, Mich. — Chrysler Group, backed by a partner team that includes IBM, Intel and AT&T Wireless, unveiled a hands-free telematics concept Thursday (Oct. 25) that lets consumers continue to use portable cell phones in their cars and alleviates their concerns about driver distraction.
Chrysler's approach, which relies heavily on Bluetooth radio technology, departs dramatically from General Motors' OnStar model, which has dominated the market until now.
Instead of employing factory-installed, console-mounted phones, the company's platform will allow consumers to bring their cell phones into their cars, synchronize them with in-car voice-recognition systems and then lay the handsets on the front seat or even on the floor while they talk.
By designing the system in this way, engineers hope to appeal to a new breed of automotive consumers. "This changes the whole telematics world," said Patrick Kerrigan, director of Intel Corp.'s telematics operation in Chandler, Ariz. "Now, if you have a phone in your pocket or purse, you can use it hands-free in the car."
Automotive industry analysts said that the technology's simplicity could help fuel the growth of telematics, expanding it beyond its current clientele — composed mostly of early adopters — to include a broader swath of automotive customers. "Most consumers want to keep their technology simple and DaimlerChrysler has gone very much in that direction," said Dan Garretson, senior analyst for Forrester Research (Cambridge, Mass.). "Now OnStar is going to be forced to follow this model, too."
Chrysler Group executives at Thursday's press conference peppered their remarks with disparaging references to General Motors' OnStar technology, which uses embedded phones that typically remain in place for the life of a vehicle. In contrast, they said, their communications platform allows consumers to bring any kind of cell phone into a vehicle as long as it is Bluetooth-enabled.
"This gives us the option to tailor our products to the customer's demands," said Wolfgang Bernhard, Chrysler Group chief operating officer. "We're not using a one-size-fits-all approach here."
Altered status quo
Indeed, Chrysler's offering also differs from the status quo in how it plans to make money from its telematics system. Rather than attempting to profit from the service revenue, Chrysler will leave that to one of its partners, AT&T Wireless, which will provide cellular services.
Instead, Chrysler plans to profit from its telematics platform not only by enticing consumers to buy its cars, but also by being the hardware provider for the system. The company has worked with several major suppliers, including Intel, IBM, Johnson Controls and Gentex, to develop the electrical architecture and software backbone for its system.
Although the system basically uses on-board processing for voice recognition and other software chores, DaimlerChrysler engineers describe it as a "very thin-client" design. It will incorporate Intel's upcoming Xscale architecture, based on a StrongARM core that offers a 206-MHz clock speed, and StrataFlash memory. The hardware will help to process radio communications over Bluetooth frequencies, which will be used to link the handheld phone to the electrical architecture in the dashboard.
Intel engineers said the processor technology offers enough headroom to run the voice-recognition software, along with Bluetooth communications, text-to-speech and vehicle interface electronics, with no need for supplemental off-board processing. The processor was also said to be key because of its high Mips/watt performance ratio.
"This telematics technology has been waiting for a high-performance device with low enough power to do the things that need to be done," Kerrigan said. "This is a big jump in terms of performance in the dashboard." Engineers also said that one of the keys to the technology was its use of voice-recognition software that doesn't overburden the processor.
The design team for the system is employing Embedded ViaVoice from IBM Corp., a software tool that enables users to dial phone numbers or access an audio-address book by speaking preprogrammed commands. Unlike some automotive voice recognition programs, which use vocabularies of 2,000 words or more, the Embedded ViaVoice products come in versions ranging from 50-word vocabularies that need about 200k of RAM, to 500-word vocabularies that require about 500k of RAM and 600k of ROM.
Engineers said that larger voice recognition programs typically require bigger off-board, server-based memories and processors. Smaller embedded programs, they said, require users to memorize a menu of commands, while the larger ones are endowed with enough intelligence to figure out what the driver is trying to say.
Still, Chrysler executives said that the events of Sept. 11 proved that there is wisdom in creating more autonomous communication systems that can't be shut down in a single stroke because of an attack against a remote server.
Chrysler engineers also worked with counterparts from Gentex Corp. to develop microphones capable of dealing with interferences like road and wind noise, which can trip up even the best voice recognition systems.
Gentex, anticipating an automotive industry need for such products, went out two years ago and hired three engineers with 80 years of combined experience in designing microphones for the broadcast and aerospace industries, said Ken LeGrand, executive vice president and director of Gentex (Zeeland, Mich.).
The company then designed a rear-view mirror-based microphone that borrows some of the best features from array-type microphones while keeping the costs below those of array models. LeGrand said that the company's product uses a single transducer, instead of the four transducers often employed by array microphones (which typically cost $40 or more), and incorporates special plastic fins in the mirror to help the system deal with wind noise.
"We've made it waterproof and windproof and have given it the ability to cancel out noise," LeGrand said. "We've tried to give it as many characteristics of the array microphone as possible and still keep it affordable."
Platform foundation
Although DaimlerChrysler engineers steadfastly refused to talk about the company's future plans, the new telematics platform is rumored to be part of a program known internally as "Project Iceland," which lays the groundwork for an expanded effort in telematics.
The system as it stands today employs an Intel hardware foundation beneath a QNX v6.1 real-time operating system. A Java virtual machine sits on top of the RTOS and interfaces with the system applications. DaimlerChrysler engineers reportedly incorporated the QNX RTOS because Java middleware was critical for their interoperability needs, and QNX was originally born of the Java world, so they knew the two would be compatible.
The company's engineers have reportedly not ruled out using a Linux-based embedded operating system in the future, but currently believe those operating systems are not robust enough for their needs.
Although DaimlerChrysler is now employing a J-1850 multimedia bus for the system, it could eventually switch to a MOST fiber-optic bus, especially if more data-intensive video systems are added to the automotive mix, engineers said.
Industry analysts expect the technology platform's acceptance, or lack of it, to determine whether other automakers will follow suit with a similar approach. Chrysler executives admitted this week that Mercedes-Benz has no immediate plans to adopt the technology. "TeleAid [the Mercedes telematics platform] was born at a time when Bluetooth was not yet available," said Bernhard of the Chrysler Group.
Until now, the auto industry has debated whether embedded phones or portable phones would eventually prevail. Proponents of the embedded models point to their greater power (typically 3 W, as opposed to 0.6 W for handhelds) and their ever-present availability in the vehicle, which they say makes them superior safety devices. Proponents of handhelds, however, say that their units can be easily replaced, pointing out that few people ever keep their cell phones for ten years (the average life of a vehicle). They also say that most consumers prefer to deal with a single telephone bill, and therefore will choose to use one phone for multiple applications.
A recent research study, "Voice Drives Telematics Boom," conducted by Forrester Research, determined that consumers mostly want their telematics systems to offer safety and security, and are less interested in office-type productivity applications. Such findings bode well for systems that offer greater simplicity, said Garretson of Forrester Research, who authored the study.
Either way, Chrysler Group engineers said they are convinced they are heading down the right path with their new platform, and intend to continue building on that foundation.
"What customer doesn't want to bring his phone into the car and have it work seamlessly?" asked Karenann Terrell, director of the e-Connect Platform for DaimlerChrysler. "This is just common sense."
JDrake, you must have skimmed over this part....
"Under the agreement, e.Digital will receive non-recurring engineering (NRE) fees for design and development services. Additionally, e.Digital will receive revenues for the manufacture and delivery of Eclipse-branded audio products for the automotive infotainment and telematics market.
More re Morpheus:
http://biz.yahoo.com/rf/020305/n05150867_1.html
WASHINGTON, March 5 (Reuters) - Thousands of Internet users turned to the little-known Gnutella network over the weekend to download free music and movies, throwing up another possible roadblock for media companies fighting unauthorized downloads of copyrighted material.
Makers of the popular Morpheus file-sharing software released an update Friday that switched from the Fast Track file-swapping network to Gnutella after a dispute over licensing fees with Kazaa BV, the Dutch company that owns the Fast Track network.
As a result, the Gnutella network nearly tripled in size over the weekend with an average of 353,000 users logged on at any time, said Redshift Research, a research firm based in Belmont, Massachusetts.
Traffic on the Fast Track network dipped slightly over the weekend as well, said Redshift analyst Matt Bailey.
The move fragments the formidable Fast Track user base, but also places another hurdle in front of a music industry seeking to stamp out unauthorized file-sharing services, Bailey said.
Recording companies managed to shut down the wildly popular Napster service last July, and have since filed suit against Morpheus along with Kazaa and Grokster, two other high-profile Fast Track clients.
The music industry says the three companies should prevent users from trading copyrighted material, a request the companies say is impossible because they cannot control what is traded.
A lawyer for the Recording Industry of America, a trade group representing the five major labels, said the move belied Morpheus' claims that they could not control their network.
``Their prior claim that they could not be shut down proved to be untrue. We are examining the current situation,'' said Matt Oppenheim, senior vice president for business and legal affairs at the RIAA.
But even if the industry wins its case, it will face ongoing headaches as users migrate to new services, Bailey said.
``This is just another sign that the actual peer-to-peer file-sharing industry is so fluid ... that it's going to be hard to really stop,'' Bailey said.
GNUTELLA COMES OF AGE?
The move marks a coming of age of sorts for Gnutella, which has in the past been overshadowed by more efficient networks like Fast Track and Napster.
While Napster boasted 1.57 million simultaneous users at its peak last February, only 19,000 people on average were using Gnutella at any time last December, Redshift said.
Since then, usage has gradually grown to 91,000 simultaneous users as new services like Limewire have boosted sluggish download times, Bailey said.
The head of Morpheus' parent company said legal concerns were not behind the switch.
``It was a business decision we made in an adverse time, but it had nothing to do with the lawsuit,'' said Steve Griffin, chairman and CEO of StreamCast Networks Inc.
StreamCast engineers were working on a way to incorporate both Gnutella and Fast Track in their software until a dispute over licensing fees with Kazaa BV forced Morpheus to go offline last week, Griffin said.
StreamCast has withheld $60,000 in licensing fees to Fast Track owner Kazaa BV since last October because Fast Track did not provide documentation with new versions of the network, Griffin said.
As a result, Kazaa did not provide StreamCast with a new version in February, creating technical conflicts with other network users.
Griffin said he felt confident he would hold onto his user base when the company introduced an improved version of Morpheus in a few weeks.
But there were signs that at least one other file-swapping company tried to lure the Morpheus users who previously made up 60 percent of the Fast Track network.
``Morpheus users come on over to our place ... you'll feel right at home,'' said the Web site of the Kazaa Media Desktop, a Fast Track service that is no longer associated with Kazaa BV.
Then there's this:
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/cn/20020305/tc_cn/morpheus__downfall__bills_weren...
Morpheus' downfall: Bills weren't paid
Tue Mar 5, 9:47 AM ET
John Borland CNET News.com
StreamCast Networks' delinquent licensing bills were to blame for the blackout of the hugely popular Morpheus file-swapping network last week, according to Dutch company Kazaa BV.
The Morpheus file-trading network, which drew more than a million people a day to trade movies, songs or software at its peak, went dark last Tuesday. Although it relaunched with new technology late Friday, the service is struggling to regain its footing.
In progressively more extreme statements, StreamCast Networks Chief Executive Steve Griffin has characterized the shutdown as an "attack" on his company and on the millions of people who used the Morpheus software. Bulletin and chat boards around the Web have been buzzing with conspiracy theories, ranging from a competitor's sabotage to plots by the record industry.
But in its first public statements since the blackout, Dutch company Kazaa BV, which provided StreamCast with its peer-to-peer technology, said there was a simple explanation.
"MusicCity (also known as StreamCast Networks) has failed to pay any amounts due to Kazaa BV under the parties' license agreement," Kazaa BV founder Niklas Zennstrom wrote in an e-mail to CNET News.com. "As a result of MusicCity's breach, Kazaa BV did not provide version 1.5 to MusicCity. Kazaa has also terminated MusicCity's license."
Zennstrom did not provide details on how the Morpheus software could have been shut down as a result of the fee dispute. StreamCast has said that Kazaa BV was able to change settings stored deep inside Morpheus users' computers as they logged on to the file-trading network.
StreamCast's Griffin conceded last week that there had been some dispute over licensing terms for the peer-to-peer software. But he said that a wholesale shutdown of the Morpheus network would have violated the terms of his contract with Kazaa BV.
In a message to Morpheus users this weekend, Griffin pointed fingers at Kazaa BV and warned people not to use the company's software.
"Since it appears that the attack on your computers came from the closed proprietary FastTrack-Kazaa software, we have opted not to continue with this (technology)," the company wrote on its Web site. "We believe it to have the ability to access your computer at will and change registry settings."
Griffin could not immediately be reached for comment on the issue of unpaid license fees.
The closure, and the resulting rush of users to find an alternative, has set off a scramble that will quickly change the face of the file-trading world. StreamCast's Morpheus, with more than 51 million downloads of its software before last week, had formed the largest part of the biggest file-swapping network to develop after Napster's demise.
Anyone using Morpheus had also been able to search computers running another piece of software called Kazaa, originally built by Zennstrom's company but sold to an Australian company called Sharman Networks. With Morpheus temporarily crippled, the Kazaa software has taken over the mantle of file-trading heavyweight.
The shutdown, whatever its cause, could also have serious ramifications in court--even for Zennstrom's own company.
Kazaa BV and StreamCast each are being sued by the Recording Industry Association of America and the Motion Picture Association of America. One of the key issues in that case, which had its first hearing Monday, was whether the companies could control what happens on their networks.
Each company has contended that the networks are wholly decentralized, and that the companies could not exert any control over computer users' actions. But the failure of Morpheus' network appeared to indicate that at least one control point existed that would allow part of the network to be shut down.
The RIAA reacted to this development quickly last week.
"We have been saying all along that they control the system, and this proves it," RIAA Senior Vice President Matt Oppenheim said in a statement last week.
And this:
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/cn/20020306/tc_cn/morpheus_woes_lift_rival_from_o...
Morpheus woes lift rival from obscurity
Tue Mar 5, 7:50 PM ET
John Borland CNET News.com
The surprise shutdown of the popular Morpheus file-trading software last week has thrown a spotlight on a little-known Australian company whose service now carries bragging rights as the world's largest file-swapping network.
Obscurity comes with the territory in the underground file-swapping world, where unknown upstarts with the unlikely power to shake the entertainment industry to its knees seemingly spawn and die overnight. But even in this shadowy domain, the story of Australia's Sharman Networks stands out.
The company seemingly came out of nowhere in January to buy the Kazaa Media Desktop from creator Kazaa BV, formerly known as FastTrack, which also provided the code used in Morpheus. After a silent first month, Sharman has emerged as a key player in an increasingly bizarre triangle with Morpheus' parent company, StreamCast Networks, and Kazaa BV, in which accusations of unpaid bills, user-poaching and technical sabotage are flying back and forth.
Despite its role in the high-profile fracas, little is known about the company. Sharman has hired a public relations firm and a lobbyist in Washington, but it has not provided even rudimentary contact information for its operations in Australia. The company's headquarters are in Sydney, but its business address and phone number are not listed.
Even record industry executives, who say they are closely watching the company, have had trouble tracking it down. Australian copyright authorities say they've investigated the company but haven't been able to find any evidence of its existence.
"There doesn't appear to be a company here," Michael Speck, manager of the Australia Record Industry Association's (ARIA) anti-piracy division, said in an interview late last week. "Simply issuing a press release isn't enough to capture them in our jurisdiction."
Sharman's low profile has helped it avoid some of the troubles visited on rivals StreamCast and Kazaa BV, both of which have been sued by the movie industry and the record labels. But the clock may be ticking for the company, which is being investigated by U.S. record industry executives, among others.
Sharman Chief Executive Nicola Hemming has remained silent, declining repeated requests for interviews over the past few weeks, saying through a representative that she's busy getting the company up and running. But whatever her plans, she's piloting her young company into a legal storm that will likely help define how music, video and software are distributed online around the world.
Biggest one standing
Until a little more than month ago, the Kazaa software was owned by Netherlands-based Kazaa BV, the same company that created the FastTrack peer-to-peer technology underlying Morpheus and fellow file-swapping software Grokster. All three software programs linked together to create a network that numbered in the millions or even tens of millions of people, who often used it to trade copyrighted songs, movies and software.
Kazaa BV announced in late January that it had sold the Kazaa Media Desktop software, the Kazaa.com domain name, and a FastTrack technology license to an Australian company: Sharman. Little was known about the company then, and details have emerged only sporadically.
Hemming is a former Virgin Interactive regional division head and Sega executive. A brief biography provided by the company lists her as having "experience overseeing entertainment software and leisure marketing ventures for companies including Viacom, Virgin and Sega." She last surfaced in media reports as the CEO of Sega World Sydney, an indoor theme park that closed its doors in 1998.
A Sharman representative said the company is based in Sydney and registered as a private limited company in Australia, despite what the ARIA anti-piracy division says. But no record of a "Sharman Networks" could be found in the Australian Securities and Investment Commission's (ASIC) online database of business names.
Hemming has yet to publicly explain why she became involved in the controversial world of file swapping. But in a 17-page letter to U.S. Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., last week, Sharman made it clear that it is girding for legal battle.
"It is time for Congress to step in and halt the 'whack-a-mole' litigation excesses of the music and movie industries," wrote Sharman lobbyist Philip Corwin. "We find this intransigent aggression to be remarkable, and lamentable, given the size of Kazaa's user base and the many ways in which the (industry) could derive substantial benefit from P2P distribution."
Man in the middle
Hemming came to the file-swapping world through the recommendation of an old U.S.-based associate, entrepreneur Kevin Bermeister. Bermeister, who was one of the founders of the Sega World project Hemming ran, is now CEO of Brilliant Digital Entertainment, a technology company that creates online 3D advertisement technology.
Since mid-2001, Brilliant Digital has distributed its software along with the Kazaa and the Morpheus software. The medium, and the wildfire success of Kazaa and Morpheus, proved to be a distribution gold mine for the struggling company, which saw its software installed on more than 40 million computers in less than a year.
When Kazaa BV founder Niklas Zennstrom and his partners started losing their taste for running a technology company along with distributing file-swapping software directly to consumers--and for the legal headaches that were coming with it--Bermeister said he suggested Hemming might step in. He wound up introducing the two, and Hemming proved interested.
"I knew Nikki and knew she was a great marketing executive," Bermeister said in an interview. "I knew she was very strong in consumer markets and thought she would be a good fit."
On Jan. 21, the sale of the Kazaa service to Sharman was announced. No financial details were given, and Hemming has not disclosed the identity of her investors.
Bermeister said neither he nor Brilliant Digital has a direct financial stake in Sharman or Kazaa BV and that he has "no intention of investing" in either one. He said his interest is in keeping the medium alive and healthy to keep his own software distribution moving.
His company or associates continued to help Hemming set up the company, however. Phil Morle, a former Brilliant Digital Web producer, registered the Sharman Networks domain name. He's now Sharman's technical director, according to a company representative.
The record and movie industries have begun taking a close look at Bermeister's involvement. The record labels and movie studios, which are suing StreamCast, Grokster and Kazaa BV, have served Brilliant Digital with a subpoena for information about its role in the file-swapping world.
The Recording Industry Association of America (news - web sites) and Motion Picture Association of America haven't definitively said they will sue Sharman or support a similar tactic by their Australian counterparts. But the groups clearly are paying close attention to the company.
"We're not unaware that others are involved, and we don't intend to suddenly become passive about enforcing our rights," said RIAA Senior Vice President Matt Oppenheim.
Picking sides
In the meantime, Sharman and Morpheus parent StreamCast have found themselves in an escalating battle of words.
The spat was sparked by the shutdown of the Morpheus network last week. Although apparently linked to a dispute between StreamCast and Kazaa BV over software licensing fees, StreamCast CEO Steve Griffin has also trained his rhetorical guns on Sharman. His words came after Sharman released a piece of software that automatically converted Morpheus users into Kazaa file swappers.
"I'm pretty shocked and appalled that, at a moment when Morpheus users around the world have been mysteriously attacked and prevented from connecting to the network, that mysteriously a new piece of software is going to let them reconnect," Griffin said.
Late Monday, Sharman struck back. Morpheus had also been complaining of a denial-of-service (news - web sites) attack that shut down its servers. Sharman said Monday that it too had been targeted by a denial-of-service attack--and that it had traced the attack back to StreamCast.
It wasn't immediately clear that this internecine squabbling was affecting actual computer users. Millions of people have been downloading each company's software since late last week and appear to be judging each on their technical merits in online discussion boards.
Sharman is calling for peace, even as it raises the rhetorical stakes.
"Our fight is not with another peer-to-peer system and shouldn't be," said Sharman spokeswoman Kelly Larabee. "There's no reason that Kazaa.com had any interest in seeing Morpheus go" away.
For player owners with CD player/FM-AM tuner head units, I recommend the iRock FM adaptor from CompUSA. It works for 10-15 hours on 2 AAA batteries and has a selector switch for 88.1, 88.3, 88.5, or 88.7 MHz. Plug it into your XP3/Treo/MXP-100 headphone jack, set your player volume to 22-26 range, place the iRock unit under your head unit or near your antenna, tune to the selected frequency, and you will get excellent results. My only gripe is that the iRock's cable is only 6" long; this can be remedied by buying a extension cable with plug and jack (male and female) stereo mini-phono terminations at Radio Shack. (Don't buy Radio Shack's FM adaptor; it's junk.) This adaptor also works well with home stereos or boom boxes with FM tuners (handy if your home unit's backplane connections are hard to get at).
Director of Merchandising for GoodGuys. com writes:
(Posted at RB by Swansons, http://ragingbull.lycos.com/mboard/boards.cgi?board=EDIG&read=919376 )
Subj: e.digital players
Date: 3/1/02 2:58:42 PM Pacific Standard Time
From: billr@webnw.com
To: **************
Thanks for your email. The new e.digital players will be available in both GoodGuys stores and online at goodguys.com. We hope to have them in stock in the next 10 days or so. They are posted on the website now if you'd like to pre-order one. It's a good idea, we have received a lot of interest about them.
Thanks again for writing in to goodguys.com.
Bill Roberson
Director of Merchandising
www.goodguys.com
Smay, if you don't already have a Zip/Unzip utility, you can get a free evaluation copy of Winzip at http://www.winzip.com/ddchomea.htm .
danigab, I haven't tried to install the XP3 upgrade yet. It may be similar in purpose to the Treo upgrade, which I think was supposed to speed up the initial read of the directory and improve the seek time when moving among tracks. What I really would like to know is if the upgrade will make the XP3 compatible with the new Nusic Explorer interface. The old interface definitely needed a fix or two. (File reordering, etc seem a little clunky.)
Firmware upgrade available for XP3/CHD1000:
http://emiglobal.com/faq/chd1000fu.html
A few more DP PDA links:
http://www.varovision.com/sub1/wings.html
http://www.impactra.com/Electronic%20Show%20.htm (This appears to be the player shown by Evolution)
http://www.impactra.com/eproducts-motion.htm
http://www.impactra.com/IMAGE/Motion-i_final.jpg
http://www.mrpalm.com/getcontent.php3?tid=25 (A Thai website... note vision4d.com link at bottom - not sure what to make of it.)
http://www.mesdigital.com/korean/mmsp_2.html (MagicEyes SOC with Dataplay capability; the guts of the Varovision Wings)
Drven's thoughts re negative margins:
RE: 10Q Silence - please discuss.
From venieris
PostID 166283 On Friday, February 15, 2002 (EST) at 5:21:30 PM
Response To: milplease PostID 166247
http://www.agoracom.com/nonmemforum/msgreview.asp?id=166283&refid=166247&orig=166236
Ron, we all know the company experienced losses but not because they enjoyed a negative gross margin. They just did not produce and sell many units. Each unit was in effect profitable but not enough of them were sold to cover all expenses. More explicitly, how much, for instance, of the monthly and annual burning rate is directly and indirectly attributable to the players? and how much of the same expenses were attributable to, say, telematics, engineering services, R&D related to improving the quality of existing products and putting together new ones as well as all other activities. Further, a number of revenue items were not recognized as such in the quarter in question. Only when you make these calculations and only then you can say whether the margin was negative or not. What the bashers say or don't say is attributable to their ignorance and/or their agenda.
Edig lost money. No question about that. We all expected that much. But not because their margins were negative. In fact, for the goods they sold, they had a very healthy per unit gross margin.
Equity funding--some thoughts from TWOMIL
From TWOMIL
PostID 166302 On Friday, February 15, 2002 (EST) at 7:39:34 PM
http://www.agoracom.com/nonmemforum/msgreview.asp?id=166302&refid=0&orig=166302
Who is investing in our company with the purchase of shares of the shelf registration is still not known. Conjecture about their being a long term holder will hopefully become known when the buyer is announced. Should they choose to remain annonymous and not be owners of over 5% of the common, that will also be their choice. Asking management about the intent of those who may be in discussions with eDig may not be disclosable on 2-19-02, but should be, at the discretion of the buyer, when stock is purchased.
I believe the shelf registration was done in such a way that discounted common will be offered to large purchasers. An expected discount could be 8 to 15% of market price. This would bypass the need for commissions and other costs for underwriting and therefore make this financing very cost efficient and provide no vehicles for offshore shorting. I suspect management has large contracted product orders from other retailers and oem's and that discussions have been in progress where equity funders learned about the nature of these orders and their profit margins. Should a funding take place within a week of the registration's approval it would be obvious that this game plan began a long time ago and has been carefully orchestrated to be timely, appropriate and efficient.
If these equity funds were going to be placed into a wholly owned subsidiary of edig, I would be inclined to consider that a large partner already working with us was involved. If these funds are going directly into edig as it's currently constituted, I would see the equity purchaser as some type of equity fund.
Most everything management has stated they would implement appears to be going forward. The information we're going to hear on Tuesday should be more detailed about both the upcoming financing as well as how we're going to place our products in retail outlets and continue to improve and further innovate our product line and those of our oems.
Good luck to all.
Hmmmm - it appears that Good Guys doesn't carry any MP3 jukeboxes, at least not on their website. If the shelves are similarly stocked, the Treo and MXP-100 will have the field to themselves.
http://www.goodguys.com/srchresults_key.asp?keywords=mp3&P=1&NavMode=MoveNext&PageNo=2&a...
A supposition that's costing me some sleep... (from Jan 18th, 2001)
The way I see it, the non-standard file structure used by MicroOS would render data files created/assembled via MicroOS (in non-sequential but not necessarily non-contiguous blocks internally linked via header-embedded and possibly key-encrypted last/next pointer data) manageable but unusable by normal FAT-based file managers. The FAT disk mgmt system used to track file locations could be used to track what physical locations are in use by MicroOS files, but wouldn't necessarily have the ability to read their data in the proper, sensible sequence. That task would be done via a MicroOS kernel, using the MicroOS block header info (and a unique decoding key if desired/needed for security reasons) to determine the proper assembled sequence for the blocks comprising the file.
Without the MicroOS file manager, DOS/Windows/ etc could see and manage the files, (FAT knows where they are) but not successfully retrieve the contained data in the sequence needed by an application (FAT manager alone doesn't know the correct block sequence). Several layers of security are thus provided. Then again, maybe I'm making something out of nothing; that's why I need feedback from folks acquainted with the real facts re file mgmt/storage techniques & practices.
* * * * * * * * * * *
Reply from an programmer at Microsoft-Redmond...
"Thanks for the clarification and thus your premise is entirely feasible. Much of the file system in Windows is very abstracted from the hardware, so as long as MicroOS maintains the same interfaces to the FAT table then the actual file data can be anything. Also the MicroOS can use Windows installable file system -- like Unix. In fact, DataPlay uses this technique to enable their drive and my guess is that the MicroOS is serving as the underlying interface. Also the MicroOS can fit as a device driver. Or as Jimee pointed out replace the entire file system and be compiled directly into the kernel. I'm not familiar with the specific security aspects of the MicroOS but it is quite possible to use the MicroOS to replace part of all of another OS's file system -- thus the DOS2MOS as you and Haiyaku often allude. Once again I cannot absolutely say that VedaLabs is using the MicroOS but I'm beginning to clearly see why you are losing sleep."
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
OK, if you have absorbed and understood the above technobabble, understand the MicroOS base patent, and are aware that virtually ALL of the installed base of PCs uses one form or another of the standard FAT12, 16 or 32 file management systems, try rereading my original 'Sleepless' posts...
http://ragingbull.lycos.com/mboard/boards.cgi?board=EDIG&read=581952
http://ragingbull.lycos.com/mboard/boards.cgi?board=EDIG&read=581994
http://ragingbull.lycos.com/mboard/boards.cgi?board=EDIG&read=582014
Unless everyone at EDIG, INTC, ITRU, LQID, RNWK, SDMI, TXN, CRUS, etc is asleep at the wheel, some or all of MicroOS' patented technology might well have crept into the secure file protection/processing/distribution chain. If so, 'Global Standard' is not an unrealistic goal.
An addendum...
I see the possibility of locking content by encrypting the last/next pointers used by MOS via proprietary algorithm/key code, maybe licensed from Verance or someone else & grafted onto the MOS kernel. The same code would be used by the content distributor to generate the secure files to be distributed.
It was pointed out to me that the FAT systems also use last/next pointers in their block headers, just as MicroOS does. However, as I envision it, this external stuff would be added over the underlying MOS headers, which would just be regarded/treated by the FAT system as pure data, rather than headers appended to blocks of data. Only the MOS would see them for what they actually are (after the FAT system retrieves the raw data file from disk). When you transfer the PC-resident files to a portable device, the FAT headers are discarded, leaving only a pure MicroOS-based file to be processed by the device itself, leaving behind all the excess baggage and overhead requirements inherent to FAT-based file management. Needless to say, in the area of direct transfers to portables/mobiles from satellite/wireless transmissions or broadband cable modems, the FAT attributes/overhead aren't needed at all.
* * * * * * * * *
Caveat to the impatient:
I wouldn't count on any significant revenues from potential EDIG involvement in secure downloads, satellite radio or DataPlay disk mastering until those respective markets develop. This remains a highly speculative stock, although the sufficiently diligent already know that. If you go overboard on diligence, try not to miss the forest for the trees. (I certainly hope I haven't.)
* * * * * * * * *
A PS request: Please don't pester EDIG with attempts to ascertain whether or not they are using MicroOS as an encryption tool as I have speculated above. I briefly flew the matter by Robert and was totally stonewalled, not even a "no comment". Take it from a former military crypto gear repairman; such matters are never discussed with those not having a need to know.
Best wishes,
Tinroad
A later follow-up from a fellow long:
"I recall 'Mike' (I will call him that ) was indeed a senior DataPlay engineer. He spoke very highly of what EDIG had done for DataPlay. He talked about how they had 'Universal', or one of the other record company tied up, by hiring of a major record company agent who brought them in the 'fold' He then talked about the DataPlay disk, saying that they would sell that small disk for $10.00 dollars or less, with a CD already encoded on the disk. Then, the disk owner would have the option of logging on to their site, and for payments made he would be able to download more songs on to the disk that he had bought. It was at this stage that DataPlay would use a "KEY" to unlock the 'gate' which EDIG had helped put in place on the disk. That 'gate' is most certainly "another" use of MOS to permit 'secure' downloading of music from the internet."
An even later follow-up:
The stashing of portions of the MicroOS in silicon (via the Actel programmable gate array deal) only serves to enhance the security of MicroOS as a means of rendering files inaccessible without the proper hardware/software.
* * * * * * * * *
Disclaimer: None of my conjectures and speculations are to be taken as fact. Neither do I have any way to verify any of the anecdotal statements and opinions quoted above; they should also be construed as conjecture rather than as fact. Do your own DD before making any investment decision. I am a shareholder in e.Digital.
Mary/Pam... ya gotta wonder why the link ( http://www.starfish.com/products/truetech/microos.html
) got yanked. I remember calling RP's attention to the MicroOS moniker being used by Starfish over a year ago. Today, I used their website's search engine and got zero hits for 'microos'. Interesting.
ads, there is a definite connection between EDIG and Actel...
we employ their FPGA chips in some of our designs:
http://www.edig.com/news/releases/pr101601.html
Beyond the fact that PTSC and EDIG were both founded by Woody Norris, I know of no announced collaboration between us and PTSC.
For more info on PTSC, see http://ragingbull.lycos.com/mboard/boards.cgi?board=PTSC&read=56415
JimC1997 throws some gas on the fire:
http://ragingbull.lycos.com/mboard/boards.cgi?board=EDIG&read=901663
By: jimc1997 $$$$$
08 Feb 2002, 04:49 PM EST Msg. 901663 of 901667
(This msg. is a reply to 901609 by stockum.)
How likely is such an investment by IBM? In my opinion it would still be a very, very long shot for that to happen.
I would certainly love to see that, but I still have strong doubts because it seems almost too good to be true.
What leads others (I think that bimages, Sentinel and callmeplank were the first to speculate about this in recent posts) to look in the direction of a single large investor in the company are the unique provisions of the 1/18/02 term note. That loan agreement has some interesting restrictive provisions on the company's ability to raise equity capital.
They essentially require EDIG to do a single transaction of $10 million or more at market price and then refrain from any further equity placements until 1/18/03.
And that transaction must be exempt from registration requirements. I believe that a corporate purchase of equity in another corporation is exempt from such registration requirements.
There are also anti-dilution provisions in the loan that would seem to be there to protect that equity purchaser (and have the effect of protecting all of us existing shareholders as well!)
One aspect of the registration statement filing that had me puzzled was that e.Digital did not seem to be working with an underwriter for the ultimate sale of its shares. Instead the press release said "The company indicated further that it intends to offer and sell the shares of common stock for its own account and to utilize the net proceeds of any such sales for possible acquisitions of synergistic companies and/or technologies, expansion of distribution channels for its consumer product line, expansion of its OEM and ODM business in the automotive telematics market, for repayment of debt, and for general working capital purposes."
The only way that I can see the company doing this is to sell the shares directly to another company.
Even a mutual fund would likely require that the shares be sold through an underwriter since that would insure that the shares were being priced at a market rate.
But if an agreement has been made for an equity infusion from another company, then then market price would simply be used to price the value of the equity infusion.
Anonther reason to believe that this is a corporate investor is that the number of shares involved is suspiciously close to 15% of the outstanding shares of e.Digital. For various reasons public corporations rarely make investments in other companies above 15%. Yet any investment above 5% must be publicly announced and any investment above 10% makes that investor an insider and therefore subject to many restrictions on their subsequent ability to sell those shares back into the market.
So then the question becomes one of searching for likely suspects to make such an investment. The technology partners of e.Digital immediately come to mind: IBM, Texas Instruments, Lucent, Intel, DataPlay. Others who might make such an investment could include large electronics companies with whom EDIG has announced relationships such as Samsung, Toshiba, Fujitsu or Bang & Olufsen. An investment from one of the Asian manufacturers with whom e.Digital is working, such as Maycom or Musical is another possibility. Finally, if e.Digital is about to begin selling products to major retailers, a large retailer such as Best Buy could conceivably be investing in its new supplier.
So there are many reasons to believe that the equity investment will be from a single corporate entity and a long list of possibilities.
The next few weeks could be very interesting indeed as all of this plays out.
JimC
HANUMAN, why on earth would they want to do that?
Vivendi Debuts MP4.com
By By Michael Singer
http://www.ittoolbox.com/news/nr.asp?i=63934
Do you like to watch?
Vivendi Universal, the French-based entertainment conglomerate is hoping you do. The company's Net USA division Wednesday soft launched MP4.com .
The online destination is being touted as a place for users and filmmakers to share movies online. The full site is expected to hard launch by March.
The company says MP3.com, which Vivendi owns, inspired the MP4.com site, although the service is more focused on streaming video instead of downloads. The beta release includes movie trailers, music videos, games and animations. Vivendi says as the site develops, it will add more video- related content and features.
The site is expected to be chocked full of entertainment with the likes of George Carlin and Verve Pipe - as well as games like Half Life and other cool animations.
MP4.com's technology is based on pressplay , a joint music service between Vivendi and Sony Pictures Digital Entertainment . The look and the feel of MP4.com is very similar to Sony's Screenblast , broadband creation platform.
The site doesn't seem to take much to run either. Vivendi only requires a minimum of Windows 95 (*OEM Service Release 2) running on at least of 200 MHz Pentium with 32MB RAM and a soundcard. Macintosh users should be running OS 8.5 or newer with PowerPC processor.
The browser can either be Netscape Communicator 4.5 or newer or Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0 or better and Vivendi says the content on MP4.com can be seen with a 56K modem. But for the full effect, you should be running a broadband connection.
Based in Los Angeles, Vivendi Universal Net USA's Web property list both consists of Vivendi's own original properties and reads like a who's who of firms that Vivendi has acquired in the past year. It includes: MP3.com; EMusic.com; GetMusic.com; RollingStone.com; Inside Sessions; Flipside; Uproar; Iwin; Virtual Vegas; parts of Education.com and the MP4 video site. These sites have a combined U.S. visitor base of 36.5 million.
The company says filmmakers will be able upload a handful of smallish streams at no cost. To display large file videos will cost a fee.
internet.com corp.
Copyright 2001 INT Media Group, Inc. All rights reserved. Republication and redistribution of INT Media Group content is Expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of INT Media Group, Inc.. INT Media Group, Inc., shall not be liable for any errors or delays in the Content, or for any actions taken in reliance thereon.
Copyright 2002 internet.com Corporation
rstring, the 'small print' could also be interpreted as indicating that EDIG already knew (at the time the note was drawn up) that someone was interested in taking at least a $10,000,000 equity position (or perhaps a couple of same) in the company. JMHO, of course.
'Dictator' sought to jump-start auto telematics
By Charles J. Murray
EE Times
February 8, 2002 (11:15 a.m. EST)
http://eetimes.com/sys/news/OEG20020208S0033
(kudos to whinee11 at RB for this find)
TROY, Mich. — Telematics industry executives called this week for a "benevolent dictatorship" to lead them to standardization of automotive multimedia systems, and thus bring profitability to their nascent market.
"We need a Hewlett-Packard or a Sun or a Microsoft to take up the drive toward standardization," said Harel Kodesh, chief executive officer of Wingcast LLC (San Diego). Wingcast is a joint telematics venture formed by Ford Motor Co. and Qualcomm Inc. "Someone has to drive a stake in the ground and say, 'Here's what we are going to do.' "
Speaking after a roundtable discussion on the state of the telematics industry sponsored by the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) and Hewlett-Packard Co., Kodesh joined other executives and engineers in questioning whether the auto industry is moving quickly enough to create standards.
Participants in the SAE event agreed that automakers will not begin to see profits from telematics implementation until they develop standards, and thus find a way to leverage the innovations of third-party applications vendors.
Their comments also raised questions about the Automotive Multimedia Interface Collaboration (AMI-C), the three-year-old organization formed by the worldwide automotive community to standardize telematics designs.
"We're not getting there fast enough for the good of the industry," Kodesh said. "With all due respect to AMI-C, we need a benevolent dictatorship to step in. Otherwise, this is not going to happen."
Their comments echoed those of engineers at DaimlerChrysler, BMW and Volkswagen, all of whom dropped out of AMI-C a year ago, charging it failed to move fast enough. Before those three had departed, AMI-C counted the world's 12 biggest automakers among its membership. Today, the coalition still includes Ford, Fiat, General Motors, Honda, Mitsubishi, Nissan, PSA/Peugoet-Citroen, Renault and Toyota.
AMI-C executives acknowledge that telematics standards development has not proceeded as they had hoped. But they argue that automakers must maintain control over the entire process.
"The problem they are citing is fair — everyone wanted to be done by now," said Don Ingersoll, vice president of operations for AMI-C. "But there are certain things that can't be handed off to someone else. The car makers are the ones who are on the hook if something goes wrong."
Participants at this week's roundtable insisted that AMI-C is still needed, but they saw its role more as a ratifying body than as a leader.
"The nine OEMs can still help drive the standards, but . . . they need to go where the industry and the markets lead them," said Mark Rahrig, general manager of HP's automotive business unit (Livonia, Mich.). "If the standards don't give value to the customer, this isn't going to fly."
Real-time problems
Executives at the roundtable, which included Wingcast, GM, Acunia Inc., HP, Reynolds and Reynolds and the Michigan Department of Transportation, lamented today's lack of profits for automakers in telematics, which is seen as having great long-range promise.
"The situation right now is not pretty," Kodesh said. "GM and Ford are making very brave and forward-looking decisions to stick with telematics. If you look from their point of view, telematics is just more cost right now."
Expert panelists said that automakers aren't recovering the costs incurred by the creation of telematics control units and won't recover them until volume rises significantly. The group agreed, however, that volume won't come until OEMs better understand how telematics will help them.
So far, they said, safety and security have served as the top selling points for telematics systems. But experts don't expect telematics to prosper until it expands beyond those areas.
"You're selling a product where the biggest success occurs if the customer never uses it," Kodesh said of the safety and security devices. "This is not a very good long-range sales technique."
Panelists agreed that real-time traffic reports could be a promising growth area for telematics but also acknowledged that the field won't take off until the number of users grows substantially. Real-time traffic, in which vehicles automatically report their locations and speeds to the Internet to create an up-to-the-second model, requires a large number of reporting vehicles to provide sufficient information. Panelists said that to make traffic models viable in certain heavy traffic areas, at least 3 percent to 5 percent of vehicles on the road must report.
"An anonymous OEM said that if it equips one out of every five vehicles it sells, it could provide traffic reports that cover the entire country of Germany," said Steven Buytaert, co-CEO of Acunia (Cambridge, Mass.).
Still, automakers and telematics companies wonder where all those buyers will come from. "Today, the OEMs are left holding the bag," Kodesh said. "In some programs, they don't make enough money on the entire vehicle to cover the cost of the telematics unit."
Motivating consumers
The panelists agreed that consumers would pay for telematics units if they clearly understood the benefits and features. Right now, however, they have no compelling reason to make the initial purchase.
That's why a growing number of telematics providers and automotive engineers say they are concluding that standards need to be put in place faster.
To start, they said, the automotive community must first standardize a voice portal (an HTML-type language for voice communications), so that third-party vendors can create applications that allow drivers to talk to the telematics head unit and listen to its responses.
The engineers and telematics providers said the community also needs a standard way to identify someone when that person moves from home to car to office to airport to rental car.
"We need a way to federate identification," Kodesh said. "So that if you give your American Express ID or your Wingcast ID or your pin number or phone number, all the information will point to one place — namely you."
Panelists said the industry also needs to settle on a multimedia bus, which would work through a common gateway that connects to a vehicle's proprietary buses. Under this plan, the standard multimedia bus would connect to the radio, cell phone, DVD players and navigation systems while the proprietary buses would control the engine, transmission and airbags. Until now, they said, AMI-C has had little success in reaching agreement on a standard multimedia bus.
"AMI-C has created a standard but nobody is using it," said Paul Hansen, publisher of The Hansen Report on Automotive Electronics, in a separate interview after the roundtable. "The bottom line is they haven't accomplished much yet."
Participants in the roundtable said that the standards problem can be solved faster if one "benevolent dictator" steps in and pulls the industry in one direction. By doing so, they said, a common foundation can be created that would allow third-party vendors to create applications that would bring consumer value to the telematics industry. They said neither the auto industry nor telematics companies like Wingcast and Onstar can create all of that value.
PC model
"First, you need to introduce the value proposition, maybe even without standards," Kodesh said. "Then you can go back to the standards body and say, 'This works. Now ratify it.' "
Roundtable participants said that model is similar to the one that was used by the PC industry. There, they said, Microsoft developed a de facto standard in Windows that enabled programmers to create applications to sit atop it.
AMI-C executives argued, however, that the PC-industry model would not work in the auto world. AMI-C and the auto industry in general use a model of "progressive maturity," in which they set initial specifications, then run the concepts through validation and physical testing, the executives said.
"Car makers won't accept ideas that look good on paper," said Ingersoll of AMI-C. "We've got to do testing and validation, and that's what we're doing now with a number of technologies."
AMI-C executives said that their organization has also struggled to get multiple automakers to agree on standards.
"The complexity is monumental," Ingersoll said. "It's tough enough to get engineers in the same organization to agree, let alone engineers from different auto companies around the world. But we still have to go through that process. The worst thing we could do now is to rush to a quick solution and have it fail."
Still, telematics executives insisted that they can't begin to foster an atmosphere of innovation until they set some standards. "You have to have a standard model," Kodesh said. "Then programmers will know what's inside the car and they can develop applications on top of it. Before you'd know it, that standard model will be a melting pot for all the new telematics features."
Such features would include navigation, real-time traffic, safety and security, remote emissions certification, diagnostics, e-mail and Internet access, among others.
Kodesh and others suggested that several companies could play the same role in the automobile that Microsoft played on the desktop.
"On the data side, we are looking to companies like Hewlett-Packard or Sun or Microsoft to say, 'If you can accept this model, we will evangelize it for you,' " Kodesh said. "Maybe people don't want a company like Microsoft to make a lot of the money, but at least that way we would have a standard."
Roundtable participants suggested that other standards bodies, including the World Wide Web Consortium and IEEE, have operated in the same way.
"If you're going to reach telematics nirvana, this might be the way to do it," Kodesh said.
TWOMIL chats with Jim Collier:
http://www.agoracom.com/nonmemforum/msgreview.asp?id=164575&refid=0&orig=164575
This afternoon I spoke with JC for about 20'. It would be likely that the registration will be approved in 2-3 weeks. Management always has expressions of interest by those wanting to invest in this co.. This shelf registration is certainly no different. He would not state names of persons or entities or even sectored interests who are interested nor would he confirm that they are in fact even present at this time.
I was interested in how investors would be advised about the S3, and he indicated they revised a much more detailed letter that was to accompany the filing. This revision was necessary to be more conforming with SEC requirements.
Upon the filing of the 10q, a letter will be issued detailing much of what lies ahead and giving more information about the use of proceeds, etc..
On 2-19-02, the day after President's Day NYSE holiday, co. officers will host an open question audio conference with internet broadcast attended by analysts. Shareholders will be able to submit questions via em to the co. and selected ones will be read and answered on this forum. The estimated time duration for this will be 90'. That forum should provide many answers to the general public and shareholders about the co's status and future plans.
I view this as a very ambitious method to inform and guide investors. JC is very eager to make this presentation. Co. officers and others in attendance at this forum will be FF, Furman, CFO., J. Collier, COO, and Wendy Ravenal in marketing.
I don't have the names of the various analysts, but would hope we would know more about this list by late next week.
Good luck to all
lickily, Musical is the OEM for the Evolution player.
I wonder if EDIG already has a buyer for those shares?
And, strictly FWIW, any and all voice recognition software needs an operating system and hardware on which to run. Lucent offers a compact and well tested OS needing only 600 Words RAM and 100 words of ROM, tailored to run well on DSPs. Other companies such as Pronounced would also need such an operating system for their software to be employed in small, low power mobile devices.
Lucent voice recognition for MP3 players:
http://www.lucentssg.com/speech/MP3.pdf
OVERVIEW
Lucent Technologies’ Bell Laboratories has a distinguished history of pioneering the development of innovative voice and audio technologies. Bell Labs’ Wi reless and Multimedia Systems Department (W&MSD) has developed a range of DSP based voice and audio processing technologies that enable portable MP3 player manufacturers to incorporate new, user-friendly, hands - free features into their products. Bell Labs’ W&MSD has accumulated significant expertise in the integration of these technologies to enable interesting applications for customers worldwide. Although Bell Labs’ voice and audio software has been developed primarily for DSP-based devices, the software may be readily ported to RISC processor based devices.
SOFTWARE/TECHNOLOGY DESCRIPTION
Bell Labs’ wireless and multimedia systems hands-free and audio processing software and technology may be licensed individually or in “bundles.” Each software function has been efficiently coded to run on a fixed point DSP requiring minimum throughput (MIPS) and memory. Of particular note is Bell Labs’ proven ability to integrate its software and technology in ways that enable customers to develop products with either new capabilities or products that are very cost effective to implement. An example of how the software may be integrated to achieve this for the MP3 player industry is provided in the “example” section.
1. Voice Recognition
Bell Labs offers context-dependent phonetic voice recognition software that performs extremely well in noisy environments—a must for use with portable MP3 players. Both speaker independent and speaker dependent versions of the software are immediately available and optimized for the TI C54x fixed point DSP but can be readily ported to other DSPs and/or RISC processors as desired.
Features will depend on the capabilities of the processor used and include:
• Large vocabulary (> 60,000 words with up to 100 active phrases at one time)
• US English (other languages in development)
• Fast response time (< 300 msec)
• Scalable design
• Resources required: 15-100 MIPS (depending on the number of active phrases) 12 Kword RAM, 100 Kword ROM, and 3.5 Kword for program memory (on a TI C54x DSP)
Bell Labs also provides a PC tool for creating new vocabularies that may be integrated with jukebox or audio manager software as described in the applications section.
2. Client-Server (Distributed) Text-to-Speech
Bell Labs has developed unique distributed Text-to-speech (TTS) software that enables client terminals based on inexpensive DSP or RISC processors, such as portable MP3 players, to have a “voice.”
This innovative client-server TTS software is based on a patent-pending scheme that places the sophisticated and resource demanding linguistic processing of TTS software on a server (e.g., a PC). The text is converted into phonetic information that is provided to the client terminal over a communications link that could be wireless or simply a cable connection. The client terminal runs the synthesis portion of TTS software on an inexpensive DSP or RISC processor to reconstruct the speech.
Bell Labs’ distributed TTS software significantly reduces the amount of information that needs to be provided to and stored in the client while providing the quality of performance usually associated with server-only TTS software. The total number of bits associated with the phonetic information provided to the client is comparable to the number of bits
associated with the ASCII text.
Features of Bell Labs’ distributed TTS software include:
• Client resources required: 15 MIPS and 1.5 Mword ROM, 16K RAM on a TI C54x
• Server quality TTS
• Client software may be used independent of a server if the phonetic transcriptions are stored locally
3. Voice Memo Recorder
Bell Labs offers voice memo recorder DSP software that enables drivers to record voice memos for later playback. Features include:
• Coder: 24 MIPS and 8K ROM, 1K RAM on a TI C54x
• Decoder: 4 MIPS and 3K ROM, 1K RAM on a TI C54x
4. Real Time Operating System and System Integration Software
Bell Labs also offers real time operating system (RTOS) software that manages the DSP hardware resources to support their operation. Lucent’s RTOS is compact and well tested. It is built from a kernel with associated drivers which allow interface to various hardware devices on the DSP board. The
RTOS software has the following requirements:
• 2 MIPS and 600 Words RAM, 100 Words ROM
5. MP3 Codec and Audio Equalization Software
Bell Labs can also provide DSP software for MP3 encoding/decoding and various audio equalization settings. Features will be provided upon request.
EXAMPLE: PORTABLE MP3 PLAYER
A key feature of portable MP3 players is the increasing memory that allows hundreds of musical tracks to be stored and played back. Manually navigating through such a large number of audio selections using a small liquid crystal display (LCD) will prove tedious and unsatisfactory to most users.
With Bell Labs’ voice recognition software, users of portable MP3 players would have the option of selecting their favorite artist and musical track from an intuitive, highly accurate voice driven menu. The voice driven menu would be setup with
jukebox or audio manager PC software allowing users to efficiently customize keywords for main menu headings and subheadings according to individual preferences. During the setup of the voice driven menu, the jukebox or audio manager software can exploit the ID3 tag information to make the process of entering artist and track names a simple “point and click” process for the consumer. In addition, as the various information is entered into the voice driven menu by the user, the jukebox or audio manager software can automatically run the linguistic module of Bell Labs’ distributed Text-to-Speech (TTS) software to convert the information into speech prompts as described further below.
Of course, Bell Labs’ voice recognition software can also be used to control other player functions, such as tone or equalization settings, pause, replay, skip a track, etc., if so desired.
A significant feature of Bell Labs’ distributed TTS software is that it enables appropriately processed ID3 tag (or, optionally, user supplied) information to be converted into speech, thus giving the MP3 player a “voice” that can prompt the user by naming artists or song titles from various categories. This would work as follows:
The standard ID3 tag (or optional user supplied) information entered into the voice driven menu is processed by the linguistic processing module of Bell Labs’ TTS software which is an application that runs under the jukebox or audio manager PC software. This converts the ID3 tag information into compact
phonetic information—a “phonetic ID3 tag”—that is included with the standard ID3 tag information of each MP3 file. After the MP3 files and tag information are transferred to the player, the synthesis portion of the TTS software runs on the player’s DSP and converts the ID3 phonetic information of the particular track into speech that the user would hear over the headphones.
SAMPLE DIALOG 1:
MP3 Player: “Name the artist or band
or music type”
User: “Sting”
MP3 Player: “CD or song?”
User: “Song”
MP3 Player: “Which song?”
User: “Every Breath You Take”
[MP3 Player starts playing a song “Every Breath
You Take” by Sting]
Voice Interaction Samples
SAMPLE DIALOG 2:
MP3 Player: “Name the artist or band or music type”
User: “Celine Dion”
MP3 Player: “CD or song?”
User: “CD”
MP3 Player: “Which CD?”
User: “What are my choices?”
MP3 Player: ”Your choices are: “Falling Into You”, “Let's Talk About Love”, “The Color of My Love”
User: “Let's Talk About Love”
[MP3 Player starts playing a track from “Let's Talk About Love” CD by Celine Dion]
User: “Next Song”
[MP3 Player starts playing the next song from the CD]
Re LGE multi-codec player...
looks like we aren't the only ones who suffer delays:
http://www.lge.com/about/news/news_read.jsp?cpage=1&searchstring=&seq=1910
Regist Date 02/12/2001
LGE Introduces New "Multi Format" MP3 Player ¡»
- Can playback not only MP3 files, but also other music files thanks to superb sound quality and compression rate
- Compact design of mixing squares and circles - for the N generation
- To target international markets as a new multi-format MP3 player
LG Electronics is set to introduce a new, multi-format MP3 player (Model: MF-PD370) that can playback a variety of next generation digital music files including MP3 as well as AAC and WMA files thanks to its leading-edge sound quality and compression rate. The new product will be on the U.S. and European markets from March and will be available in Korea this September.
Multi-format playback allows users to choose different types of music files according to taste such as new file formats like WMA (Widows Media Audio) and AAC (Advanced Audio Channel) that offer sound quality that is on par or better than CDs. Their compression rate is better than MP3 files by about 30%, allowing users to store more data on limited memory.
The new multi-format MP3 player is elegantly designed like a compact case for women with a slim body that mixes squares and circles with a round mirror in the center. The player can also conveniently worn around the neck with a chain, making it also a fashion accessory item. Such features make it very suitable for the active N generation.
Moreover, the new product can support not only existing memory cards like MMC (Multi Media Card), but also SD cards that reduce transmission time by half with a speed of 30 seconds. To respond to the rising concerns about copyright protection, it also supports WMA DRM (Digital Rights Management) technology, an illegal copy prevention standard introduced by Microsoft.
LGE plans to introduce more than 5 models of MP3 products this year. It also plans to launch active marketing campaigns to reach its sales target of more than 400,000 units like last year in international and domestic markets.
As a part of its efforts to create new demand for MP3 players and to increase its market presence, LGE will be introducing players with MP3 encoding features enabling music conversion to MP3 file formats as well as products that are both MP3 and CD players.
.....and more recently:
http://www.lge.com/about/news/news_read.jsp?cpage=1&searchstring=&seq=1766
Regist Date 09/03/2001
Subject LG Electronics Develops 3 Types of Next Generation MP3 Players
- Boasts high sound quality and compression rate¡¦Can playback different types of next generation music files (AAC, WMA)
- Can easily convert general music into MP3 format for playback without PC
- LGE to target Korea and international markets by continuously developing new MP3 related multi-feature products
LG Electronics has successfully developed 3 types of next generation MP3 players (Models: MF-PE500/ MF-PD365 /MF-PD355). The new products will be introduced to Korean and international markets in October.
The new products support USB (Universal Serial Bus) connection for easy download of MP3 files from PCs. They also come with multi-format features to enable playback of different music files in addition to MP3 files. In particular, there is even a MP3 player (MF-PE500) that can convert conventional audio CD and other music sources into MP3 files without a PC connection.
First, MF-PE500 - LGE's next generation MP3 player - is a MP3 player rich in functionality. It can convert a variety of audio sources - regardless of signal type (analog or digital) - into MP3 music files for playback. Recording music has never been easier with an embedded MP3 encoder/ decoder, which allows CDs to be recorded with an audiotape.
The product has maximum capacity of 128MB and can use both a conventional memory card MMC (Multi Media Card) as well as a SD card that has almost double the transmission speed with less than 30 seconds per song. Moreover, with a multi-format feature, listeners can select different types of music files according to his or her liking. New file formats like WMA (Widows Media Audio) and AAC (Advanced Audio Channel) offer much better sound quality than CDs and has about a 30% better compression rate than MP3 files so that more data can be stored in finite memory.
Second, MF-PD365 with its elegant and slick design is the successor of MF-PD360 introduced last year. This ultra light (60g) product can also be used as a fashion accessory as a necklace. Its enhanced X-live sound system delivers high quality surround sound. The MP3 player also comes with blue color backlighting LCD and continuous playtime of 10 hours. To ensure user convenience, it also comes with 3 remote control units and jog-dial.
And the third model, MF-PD355, is a MP3 player with enhanced portability to allow users to enjoy music on the go. This wristwatch type model with a cyber design is designed to appeal to the N generations enjoying a techno lifestyle. High-speed playback, skip to previous/next song, repetitive playback, random playback, and bookmark features are easy to operate while the LCD screen displays track number, title, singer name and battery status.
Since developing the world's first cassette/ MP3 player in April 1998, LGE has been pioneering the market by continuously developing cutting-edge MP3/dual mode products.
LGE plans to introduce more than 5 new MP3 models before the year's end. As a way to help drum up new demand for MP3 players, new models will include MP3 player with MP3 encoding support for easy conversion of conventional music files to MP3 files as well as dual mode type that can play both MP3 files and CDs.
Another Boulder company starting to hit the big time with the help of consumer branding is DataPlay, a maker of a computer media disk that holds movies, videos or games. The disk can be used instead of a CD-ROM, which consumers think of as the typical storage device for such media, says David Melancon, a principal of Kindred and Keziah LLC in Boulder. Kindred and Keziah recently helped the company formulate a strategy to sell the new product.
With market research, Kindred and Keziah found the DataPlay disk appealed mainly to kids, Melancon says. It then crafted a strategy to help DataPlay sell more of its disks.
“We help companies look at what emotional connections consumers have with their brand, so it was how they used movies, CD-ROMs and tapes,” Melancon says, declining to give specifics for proprietary reasons.
Kindred and Keziah’s strategies also have been used nationally to help brand such diverse products as Drambuie liquor, Coca-Cola and discount broker Charles Schwab.
http://www.bcbr.com/display.phtml?VI=P2026&Section=Section1&Page=24