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A VLIW Broadband Signal Processor- Equator Technologies, John Setel O'Donnell, Co-Founder and CTO
Equator Technologies will unveil its next-generation processor for consumer digital media players and recorders. This highly integrated device is adaptable to multiple industry compression standards and is programmable in C and C++.http://www.mdronline.com/epf/conference.html
Strategy Analytics - Emerging In-vehicle Entertainment Systems Product Status
Strategy Analytics surveys show that safety and entertainment are at the centre of consumer demand and willingness to pay. In addition consumers are seeking to have a wider choice in entertainment products when they buy a new car. There are significant opportunities for emerging audio and display based entertainment systems, initially led by aftermarket activity but increasingly in the factory fitted market. During 2002 there has been significant growth in the availability and demand for compressable format CD players, primarily MP3 capable systems, multifunction entertainment systems, multiple in-dash CD players, and display based entertainment systems, primarily DVD based passenger entertainment systems. Strategy Analytics’ market analysis shows that MP3 has become a key feature on more than 30% of each manufacturer’s aftermarket product lines in 2002, as opposed to only one model in every line in 2001. Price positioning and identifying key target consumer markets will be key to addressing the emerging entertainment opportunities. At this early stage early market leaders vary according to region and type of emerging entertainment product, but the most notable early players include Pioneer, Kenwood, Alpine Delphi, Visteon and Sony.
Contents
1 Introduction
2 Key-Point Conclusions
3 CD based Audio Systems
3.1 Europe
3.2 United States
3.3 Japan and South Korea
3.3.1 Japan
3.3.2 South Korea
4 Rear Seat Passenger Entertainment (RSE) Systems
4.1 Aftermarket
4.1.1 Europe
4.1.2 United States
4.1.3 Japan
4.1.4 South Korea
4.2 OEM
4.2.1 Europe
4.2.2 United States
4.2.3 Japan and South Korea
5 In-vehicle Mobile TV Systems
5.1 Aftermarket
5.1.1 Europe
5.1.2 United States
5.1.3 Japan and South Korea
6 High Capacity Audio Storage
6.1 Europe
6.2 United States
6.3 Japan
7 Product Supply Relationships
7.1 Europe
7.2 United States
7.3 Japan & South Korea
Key Point Conclusions
EMERGING AUDIO ENTERTAINMENT SYSTEMS
The emerging technology in-vehicle entertainment systems market is currently dominated by compressed format CD – primarily MP3. Strategy Analytics’ market analysis shows that MP3 has become a key feature on more than 30% of each manufacturer’s aftermarket product lines in 2002, as opposed to only one model in every line in 2001.
Key new developments in 2002 have been focused on the inclusion of MP3, WMA (Windows Media Audio), CD-R, CD-RW and DVD capabilities in audio systems in the aftermarket. Active players in the emerging in-vehicle entertainment audio technologies market are wide ranging and the most notable players include Pioneer, Kenwood, Sony, Blaupunkt and Alpine.
Inclusion of MP3, WMA and CD-R/RW is a part of a wider trend towards increasing multifunction system activity both in the OEM and aftermarket. Active players in the multifunction system market include Siemens VDO, Becker, Alpine, and Clarion.
During 2002 MP3, CD-R and CD-RW capabilities were not very common in the OEM audio market, although there is increasing activity in the North American OEM market.
The aftermarket is still primarily for 1-DIN sized systems and Strategy Analytics expects a strong 1-DIN market for the next 2-3 years. There is increasing use of 2-DIN by OEMs, particularly in Europe because 2-DIN provides manufacturers the flexibility to offer customisation. In Q2-03 Strategy Analytics will publish an in-depth DIN Trends analysis for the OEM and aftermarket. Early European research indicators and market outlook are summarised in Exhibit 3.1.
During 2002 more than 6 leading suppliers including Pioneer, Sony and Kenwood launched their first hard-disk-based head units and first radios with removable media.
EMERGING DISPLAY BASED ENTERTAINMENT TECHNOLOGIES
The range of in-vehicle display entertainment systems increased significantly during 2002 in all geographical markets, and particularly in the US. This includes entertainment systems that also offer some navigational capability. Strategy Analytics estimates that around 400K RSE units were shipped in the US OE and aftermarket in 2002, representing around $429 million worth sales.
The high growth of DVD in the home has accelerated the transition of the automotive RSE (rear seat entertainment) system market from VHS to DVD.
Leading OE players include Delphi, Visteon, and JCI, and in the aftermarket Delphi, Kenwood, Sony, Pioneer, and Blaupunkt.
To date, in-vehicle entertainment systems have largely been aftermarket products, but during 2001/2 RSE systems have started to be installed as standard or optional feature on certain vehicle ranges, particularly in the US.
Systems are available as standard on high-end minivans and SUVs (sport utility vehicles) in the US, such as the Oldsmobile Silhouette Premiere Minivan, and optional on many others such as the Toyota Sequoia SUV. Prices start at around $1,000 for optional factory fitted systems.
Ceiling mounted screens are the most popular display location for aftermarket systems.
The location of the main console (where one inserts the tapes or DVDs as well as connects video games and camcorders) is usually either on the floor between the front seats or on the ceiling, and the screen is either mounted on the ceiling or on the rear of front seat headrests.
Computer gaming is starting to become available on rear seat entertainment systems, with a significant opportunity expected for plug ‘n’ play console gaming.
In-vehicle Television is a market that is still in its infancy and has a wide range of analogue and digital technology, and associated cost challenges that need to be addressed before it is adopted on a wider scale. The main problem hitherto has been one of poor reception either when a vehicle is in motion or in a built-up area, a limited target market opportunity in passenger car ranges, and growing concerns over driver distraction issues for dash located TV systems.
Currently the main in-vehicle TV market activity is in Germany, Japan and the US.
Further Information
For more information, please contact Kevin Nolan on +44 (0) 1908 423609 or at knolan@strategyanalytics.com
http://www.telematicsvalley.org/doc.htm/177/#
culater
Digital Media Becomes Focus as Microsoft and AOL Settle
By STEVE LOHR
he corporate armistice declared last week between Microsoft and AOL Time Warner reflected two companies moving from the past to the future.
The abandoned past included a last lingering vestige of the Internet browser wars of the 1990's, a private antitrust suit that Microsoft has now agreed to pay AOL Time Warner $750 million to settle.
The future involves using the Internet to deliver commercial program content, mainly movies and music, to consumers who are equipped with a growing array of digital devices to receive it, from personal computers to digital televisions to smart cellphones. And the two companies must do so in a way that is convenient for users and profitable for media companies, while keeping digital piracy to a manageable minimum.
Both Bill Gates, the chairman of Microsoft, and Richard D. Parsons, his counterpart at AOL Time Warner, spoke last Thursday about how their collaboration could accelerate the adoption of digital media for the Internet while maintaining copyright protection.
The central technology in pursuit of that goal is the software for handling and protecting digital media. And last week's pact included a long-term, nonexclusive license agreement allowing AOL Time Warner to use Microsoft's Windows Media software for distributing and playing back digital media.
The media player is the crucial piece in the puzzle. It resides on the user's computer or other device and opens a portal to what the industry calls rich media — movies, music, video — delivered over the Internet, just as the browser is a portal for viewing Web pages. The media player takes on additional importance because it seems to be the likely vehicle for some of the vital technology in the emerging field of digital rights management — a fancy name for piracy protection.
"The big battleground in software is going to be the media player itself," said Chris Charron, an analyst for Forrester Research. "The media player will become a more important link to own than the browser, and Microsoft recognizes that."
Can Microsoft dominate the market for digital media distribution software as it came to dominate the browser market?
The media-player market today looks quite similar in some ways to the browser market in, say, 1997. An early media-player leader, Real Networks, is under pressure from Microsoft, just as the commercial pioneer of the browser market, Netscape, was then.
Microsoft bundles its digital media software with its Windows operating system, a monopoly product running on about 95 percent of all personal computers. As for user acceptance, at the moment Microsoft's player is neck and neck with Real Network's Real One Player, with each having more than 300 million registered users.
But Real Networks, founded in Seattle in 1995 by Rob Glaser, a former Microsoft executive, is an embattled challenger. It lost $2.8 million on revenue of $47 million in the first quarter of this year, bringing its cumulative loss since it started to $261 million. A former highflier on Wall Street that raised a lot of money early, Real Networks still has $320 million in cash, so it has financial staying power for a while, but it must find a way to make money.
Yet there are significant differences between the markets for digital media software and browser software. One is simply the legal legacy of the browser wars. A federal appeals court has ruled that Microsoft repeatedly violated antitrust laws in its campaign to thwart the challenge that Netscape at one time seemed to pose to Microsoft's desktop monopoly. Last week's $750 million payment was to settle a related private antitrust suit brought by Netscape, which AOL purchased in 1999.
In an antitrust settlement last year with the government and several states, Microsoft agreed that it would no longer bully industry partners and others to choose its software over competitors' offerings. So some of the tactics Microsoft used in the browser battle should no longer be in the Microsoft arsenal.
In addition, an investigation of Microsoft by the European Commission is still in progress, and one of the remedies under consideration involves forcing Microsoft to unbundle its media player from its Windows operating system. Microsoft replies that, as with the browser, consumers benefit from the convenience of having the media player included with the operating system. The antitrust settlement in the United States did not require Microsoft to distribute the browser or the media player separately.
More important, the nature of the market for media software is different. For a browser maker, the crucial relationship — and channel of distribution — was with the PC makers, who were beholden to Microsoft because of its Windows monopoly. In digital media software, by contrast, the crucial relationship is with the owners of the content, the big media conglomerates, who have plenty of independent power and are not beholden to Microsoft.
Significantly, the long-term licensing deal included in the cooperation pact last week between Microsoft and AOL Time Warner was not exclusive. AOL Time Warner has been working with Real Networks for some time and will continue to do so.
The chances that AOL Time Warner will adopt Microsoft's technology are a lot better today than they were a week ago. "It's hard to be a partner with someone who is holding a gun to your head in court," observed Will Poole, a Microsoft senior vice president responsible for Windows and its digital media software.
But the agreement is by no means a guarantee that Microsoft will become AOL Time Warner's preferred media software supplier. "We don't ask for exclusive deals in this space," Mr. Poole noted.
Indeed, most major media companies are expected to deliver their movies and music formatted for both the Real Networks and Microsoft media players. For example, Movielink is a movie service set up last November by five Hollywood studios, including Warner Brothers. It charges $3 to $5 for movies sent over the Internet, and uses both Real Networks and Microsoft technology.
Though Real Networks and Microsoft are the leaders, there are other competitors in the field, and some big potential entrants. Apple Computer offers QuickTime media software, and with the recent introduction of Apple Computer's iStore online music sales service, first for Macintosh computers and later for Windows PC's, the company is becoming a more serious competitor.
Big consumer electronics companies like Sony, Phillips and Matsushita are also working on some software elements, like the MPEG-4 digital movie standard. Sony is also building up its capabilities in the digital rights management area; it created a stir in the software industry last year when it paid $28.5 million to license digital rights software and patents for InterTrust, a struggling startup.
It seems doubtful that either the major media companies or the consumer electronics makers would allow themselves to become overly dependent on Microsoft technology.
Another difference is that the market for digital media seems to be far less centered on the PC than the browser market was in the late 1990's. The number of cellphones that can receive music and video clips is growing quickly, though mainly in Europe and Asia so far. Cellphone makers have resisted Microsoft's effort to persuade them to incorporate its software.
For example, Nokia, the industry leader, plans to ship 12 million cellphones this year that can receive streaming media; they use a pared-down version of the Real Networks media player.
Dan Sheeran, vice president of marketing for Real Networks, noted that nearly three times as many cellphones are shipped each years as PC's. "When you move beyond PC's, Microsoft's history in the PC business puts it at a disadvantage," Mr. Sheeran said.
Another force that seems to work against a tilt to any single technology supplier, including Microsoft, is the thorny set of technical and business issues surrounding digital rights management. Technically, any copy protection mechanism, especially one that depends only on software, is susceptible to being broken. And then, any PC connected to the Internet can become a piracy factory — as the music file-sharing systems starting with Napster have shown in recent years. Fear of piracy has made media companies reluctant to offer their products on the Internet or adjust their business models for lower-cost Internet distribution.
"If the media folks could put copy protection in your ears and eyeballs, they would," said David Farber, a computer scientist at the University of Pennsylvania and a former chief technologist at the Federal Communications Commission. "They don't trust software."
culater
Broadband for the Car
By Kermit Whitfield, Senior Associate Editor
FireWire, a.k.a. 1394, is a high-speed multimedia standard with capacities that far exceed what is available in today's vehicles. Proponents say the growth of in-car electronic monitoring and entertainment eventually will make its adoption necessary. Others say it's overkill.
In a world where people are increasingly impatient if an Internet page takes “too long” to download—typically measured in seconds, but seeming like minutes—what are the chances that automotive-based multimedia systems are going to be able to perform at anything less than blistering speeds? Not good. Which is why “broadband” capability is being developed for cars and trucks. Specifically, an open standard anemically designated “IEEE 1394.” Apple Computer, which developed the high-speed serial bus, has a better name for this technology with bandwidth to burn: “FireWire.”
Interiors bristling with multiple flat panel displays may be commonplace within a decade. But in order to bring the movie multiplex into the car, automakers will have to implement high-speed multimedia networks like 1394, which has the bandwidth to support several channels of streaming video.
Already a leading standard in consumer electronics, 1394 is now almost ready for prime time in vehicles. It’s ability to simultaneously stream multiple channel of audio and high-quality video make it the technology that can transform vehicles into the multi-screened rolling entertainment centers envisioned in many concept cars. And work is underway to make it practical for the demanding automotive environment.
Automotive 1394 proponents know that the baseline standards developed for consumer electronics must be significantly modified to meet automotive requirements. So in January 2000, an automotive working group was formed between the 1394 Trade Association and the IDB Forum, which resulted two years later in the IDB 1394 standard for automotive. IDB 1394 specifies an automotive-grade physical layer that includes new plastic fiber optic cable and connectors, as well as a new power management scheme designed to preserve the integrity of vehicle batteries. Based on this work, Texas Instruments (TI; Dallas, TX), Renault, and the French software company Mindready produced an automotive reference platform designed to catalyze 1394 development. “We’ve provided it to most major OEMs and Tier 1 suppliers to help them cut down on the amount of time it takes to research 1394, and to show them the breadth of what the technology can do,” says Brad Little, automotive business development manager at TI.
According to Little, the biggest advantage of 1394 is its bandwidth. The fastest current automotive multimedia network operates at a signaling rate less than 50 Mbits/sec. Whereas the initial implementation of 1394 transfers data at 100 Mbits/sec., an expanded version will bump the rate up to 200 Mbits/sec. And the physical components of the system are specified for a 400 Mbit/sec. to accommodate future growth without changing hardware. Pom Malhotra, program manager at AMI-C (Automotive Multimedia Interface Collaboration*), which is tasked with setting common multimedia standards, puts the bandwidth numbers in perspective this way, “Basic command and control functions need less than 1 Mbit/sec. For audio streaming you need at least 10, low-quality video needs 20 to 50, and 50 and higher is for high quality video. If you are going to do DVD-quality video, then you are going to need the higher bandwidth.” In addition to video for entertainment, 1394’s high signaling rate can accommodate video from collision avoidance systems that needs to stay uncompressed to avoid compromising signal integrity. Other advantages include a network topology that facilitates the addition of a variety of OEM and aftermarket devices without having to cut fiber cables, and the fact that 1394-based systems are already well-established in the consumer electronics market, which could reduce compatibility problems if users want to plug-and-play their own hardware.
The question remains: how much bandwidth do you really need in a vehicle? Many in the automotive industry think that the 1394 rival MOST (Media Oriented Systems Transport), which has a 24 Mbit/sec. capacity, can meet automotive multimedia needs for years to come. “1394 can handle many, many channels of audio or video, but how many do you need running around in the car?” queries Dr. Robert W. Schumacher, business line executive, Wireless and Mobile MultiMedia for Delphi. Visteon’s Director of Electronics Product Development, Martin Thoone, adds, “People are pragmatic. MOST can do the job in automotive, so why do you need something else?” MOST certainly has a lot going for it. It is strongly backed by automakers like Mercedes and BMW; it was developed specifically for automotive applications, and perhaps most importantly it is already in several cars today. MOST developers are also working on versions that would boost signal rates to 150 Mbit/sec. to defuse the bandwidth issue. (It should also be noted that the two standards can co-exist on the same vehicle, and automakers are developing systems that utilize both.)
Still, 1394 may be the technology of choice within a few years. AMI-C’s Malhotra says, “When we have discussions about future technology roadmaps with OEMs and suppliers, the general consensus is that 1394 seems to have a longer technology road map since it goes into higher and higher bandwidths.” TI’s Little, who as the former chairman of the IEEE 1394 Automotive Working Group is not exactly a disinterested party, sees MOST not as competition but as a precursor and “launching pad” for 1394. He says, “I think we will see 1394 being implemented in some of the European platforms where they will have MOST on the embedded side of the network and gateway over to 1394 or have an accompanying 1394 network just for video. We’re seeing a big push there.” Malhotra says that this kind of interest in 1394 is being driven by market-specific requirements like streaming DVD-quality video. “I see the strongest interest for 1394 coming out of Japan and Europe and a passive interest on the part of the North American automotive manufacturers,” he says.
1394 should start showing up in production vehicles in 2006, but according to Little it will be available in the aftermarket later this year. As for which automaker will debut the technology, Malhotra says, “Renault is a very serious contender for taking 1394 into production. And there is also a lot of effort from the Japanese automakers.” Little will only acknowledge that Renault is the farthest along “publicly,” and hints that far more 1394 work is being done quietly in R&D centers than is readily apparent. If so, it may be that more people are beginning to think that too much is just enough.
*AMI-C OEM members include Ford, Fiat, GM, Renault, Honda, Toyota, Nissan, and PSA Peugeot Citröen.
http://www.autofieldguide.com/articles/060307.html
culater
RealNetworks drops MusicNet for Listen.com
By Tony Smith
Posted: 29/05/2003 at 08:59 GMT
RealNetworks has transferred its allegiance from major label-backed online music service MusicNet to Listen.com's Rhapsody offering. Real's new service will be called RealOne Rhapsody.
What's been grabbing web headlines is Real's plan to charge 79 cents per song, seen as a nod towards Apple's recently launched online Music Store, which charges 99 cents a song.
In fact, the services aren't that similar. Apple's charges for downloads, but RealOne Rhapsody's fee is simply for burning tracks users have already downloaded under through their $9.95 subscription to the service. Yes, 79 cents is below Apple's charge, but the cut is being driven by Listen.com, not Real, and Listen.com already charges 99 cents - the same as Apple.
Rhapsody is also a Windows-only service. Music Store is coming to Windows - by the end of the year, says Apple - but for now it's only available to Mac users.
Finally, all of Apple's songs can be burned to CD. That's not the case with Rhapsody, which restricts burning to two-thirds of its catalogue.
Real's move to drop MusicNet is interesting, but perhaps not surprising. MusicNet was jointly launched by Real and major labels EMI, BMG and Warner. Real CEO Rob Glaser moved over to head MusicNet on an interim basis, but has since ceded the hot-seat to Alan McGlade.
Real announced last month that it wants to buy Listen.com for $36 million. The acquisition is expected to be completed during Q3. Rhapsody, launched in 2001, has proved more successful than MusicNet, and Listen has built up a strong business licensing the service to ISPs, cablecos and the like. They re-badge Listen.com's service, but Listen does all the work behind the scenes.
Forrester Research said earlier this month that the market for downloaded music over the Internet will be worth $24 million in Europe alone this year, ballooning to $1.3 billion by 2007. Already the market is well established in the US, where downloads were worth some $15 million last year alone and are set to grow to $2 billion market by 2007.
Notably, Forrester reckons that the majority of sales will come from individual downloads rather than subscriptions. Forrester forecasts that by 2007 around two million subscribers will spend EUR125 million per annum, which will account for ten per cent of total digital music sales. ®
ElectricNews contributed to this story
Amazon Mulls a Music Store Wired News Report
Story location: http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,59026,00.html
11:20 AM May. 29, 2003 PT
Amazon.com said it plans to open several more stores on its online shopping website this year and confirmed it has been considering online distribution of digital media such as music for several years.
The Seattle-based Web retailer, which started a new office products category and an apparel store in the last year, said at its annual shareholders meeting that it would keep expanding as it aims to reach profitability this year.
Asked if Amazon (AMZN) was planning to open an online music store, a company spokesperson said, "We've been looking at it for years," but declined to say if such a service was in the works or whether one would be launched this year.
Amazon already has much of the technology needed to sell music online, since it sells digital books on its website and also offers short music clips for users to sample music when buying a CD.
culater
Microsoft looks to drive European auto market
By Christoph Hammerschmidt, EETimes.de
May 28, 2003 (12:49 p.m. EST)
URL: http://www.eetimes.com/story/OEG20030528S0026
UNTERSCHLEISSHEIM, Germany — Microsoft Corp. in making inroads into the automotive electronics market here with its recently announced Windows Automotive 4.2 operating system. Despite a slow start, the company said it has recorded 20 design wins in the European auto sector.
In an interview with EE Times.de, Jürgen Za, European marketing manager for Microsoft's Automotive Business Unit, said 17 of the design wins were for in-vehicles systems while the others were for after-market devices.
Still, industry experts noted that Microsoft is having a hard time gaining traction in the European market. The company said it has a strategy to counter these doubts.
“We keep strategic partnerships with automobile manufacturers,” Za said. “Within this framework, we are cooperating, for example, with DaimlerChrysler, Fiat, and Citroën.” Microsoft has also designed the navigation and user interfaces for the new BMW 7 Series.
Za said Microsoft viewa the automobile electronics market as divided into three parts. “The Japanese are one to two years ahead of the Europeans, and they in turn are ahead of the U.S. market by about the same amount of time,” Za said.
Microsoft does not want to bring to the auto market today's PC architecture with an Internet connection, e-mail, and the Windows operating system with its bundled menus. “We have learned very quickly that a traditional PC makes no sense in a car. Other solutions are involved in this environment,” Za said.
Motor controls, anti-locking brake systems, and EPS are “absolutely not our areas,” Za said. Microsoft instead is focusing on telematics, human-machine communications and the integration of multimedia devices, including PDAs, in an overall network.
Microsoft has identified two key market segments that it thinks it can gain a foothold in auto electronics. The first is software modularity, or the separation of form and function. “Our idea is to define the functionality of the software, and the automobile manufacturer will create the interface for it that fits its design concept,” Za said.
The second important area of expertise consists of integrating intelligence within an automobile. “We have strength in the field of connectivity—from Bluetooth through WLAN to TCP/IP. We want to include this."
PDAs central
PDAs assume a central role in Microsoft's multimedia scenario for automobiles. It envisions a range of devices next to radios, CD players and navigation systems. “Today there are PDAs that cost a fraction of today's high-end entertainment devices and have significantly greater functionality, including e-mail, navigation, address management, calendars, and even video,” Za said.
The interaction between driver and system should take place through speech recognition and text-to-speech software. Here, too, Microsoft has developed areas of expertise. For example, news headlines could be delivered to a PDA and read aloud by in-vehicle speech systems.
Za said PDAs could serve a pivotal function between traditional IT and the specialized world of automobiles. “It must be possible to network a PDA or a Smartphone with a navigation system, so the driver only has to direct a command to the computer, through speech input." Then, "the navigation system retrieves the address from the PDA or smartphone, and programs itself accordingly,” he said.
Two-way telematics is another key focus for Microsoft.. Car radio or a networked PDA can receives current traffic information and stores it in the navigation system. On the other hand, sensors can monitor vital functions. When limits are exceeded through the air interface, for example, they could be reported to the manufacturer.
Manufacturers "would have a great interest in such data,” Za noted. With the data, a manufacturer could significantly increase product quality and reliability and reduce costs.
The captured data could also be used to refine future automobile production. The information collected will be used to increase quality, highlight and eliminate weak points in a vehicle, and extend the customer relationship management chain to the driver.”
The company also wants to update car software through telematics devices. Before that can happen, big hurdles must be surmounted. Regular software updates are far trickier in automobiles than other consumer products. “In the automotive environment, no single system is like all others. Rather, there are individual solutions on the market,” Za said.
A multiplicity of auto devices and platforms should be replaced by standard hardware, he added. "Suppliers may not feel good about this, but there is no way around it. Only in this way can update scenarios be realized in a simple manner and prices be brought down to a reasonable level."
The uncontrolled growth in the number of hardware platforms is creating logistics and support problems for automobile manufacturers. “The fragmenting of hardware platforms is no longer tolerable. This is also the understanding of OEMs and companies such as DaimlerChrysler," the Microsoft executive said.
One goal is to create a standard "telematics box" that would drive down costs and make it practical to install the devices on all new cars. The device would consist of a navigation systems and a device that could send status reports to the manufacturers.
Another applications involves using GPS to record mileage distances for business trips. Data could be captured and printed out on a expense reports that could then be sent direct to a company accounting office.
http://www.eet.com/sys/news/OEG20030528S0026
culater
ot-Computers That Speak Your Language
http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/roush0603.asp
culater
ot-ATC (American Technology Corp)article-
Directional beams refocus sound science
By Warren Webb, Technical Editor -- 5/15/2003
EDN
Although the setup was simple, the demonstration was almost unbelievable. A portable CD player fed a small amplifier that in turn drove a special speaker. I stood beside the 7×7 flat speaker, and yet the sound seemed to emanate from the far wall. I could change the apparent point of origin of the sound by simply changing the direction of the speaker. And still I heard no direct sound from the speaker beside me. When I walked directly in front of the speaker, the sound felt as though it was created right at my ears or inside my head. If I moved a foot to either side, the sound was gone. Spooky. Ultrasound energy and the nonlinear properties of the air around us made possible this demonstration, which seemed to defy the laws of physics and the science of sound.
I was in the San Diego offices of ATC (American Technology Corp), which is working on the equipment to focus sound for a variety of incredible applications. For example, international gatherings, such as the United Nations, could have translations beamed directly to individuals—Spanish at one seat and Arabic at the next—all without interference or earphones. A coach could use a directional megaphone to beam verbal instructions to a single player on the field. Or the kids in the back seat of the car could listen to hip-hop while the parents played oldies in the front—without headphones. Tomorrow's multichannel surround-sound entertainment systems will be able to beam virtual speakers to any point on the walls or ceiling. Simpler applications will enable shoppers to hear private product promotions at locations in grocery stores or museum patrons to hear audio descriptions within a few feet of each exhibit.
According to Elwood "Woody" Norris, ATC's chairman, the company's goal is to direct and focus sound in a manner similar to what we can do with light. Although this statement seems to contradict our high-school-physics notion that sound waves travel in spherical waves from the source, speaker designers have for years struggled with sound-directivity problems. As the frequency increases, sound becomes more directional, so manufacturers add horns and other mechanical devices to their tweeters to spread high frequencies over the listening area. As frequencies continue to increase into the ultrasound region, sound waves become so directional that they can find use in 3-D medical-imaging and ranging applications. And don't forget that bats use their high-frequency sonar to catch flying insects while flying full speed in total darkness.
Nonlinear air
Although the concept has been around for years, ATC has refined an ultrasound-to-audio parametric generator that uses the nonlinear properties of air to translate a set of ultrasonic frequencies into sound that we can hear. Early parametric-generator experimenters used arrays of hundreds of discrete ultrasound emitters, although results were often poor because of mismatched amplitude and phase responses. The latest ATC parametric sound generator is a monolithic, thin-film structure that maintains coherent amplitude and phase across the entire device in a package measuring less than a half-inch thick (Figure 1). Because the emitter is larger than the wavelength of the frequencies involved, it emits the ultrasound wave as a pure plane wave with virtually no expansion in the beam diameter with distance. In general, the dispersion is less than 3° in either direction or a total of 6° overall. ATC calls this ultrasonic beam hypersonic sound.
The real magic of hypersonic sound occurs when modulated ultrasound energy hits the air in front of the emitter. Under certain conditions, the air acts as a mixer that combines signals to produce sum and difference products like a downconverter in a radio receiver. Variations in the speed of sound cause this phenomenon. At normal atmospheric pressure and a temperature of 20°C, a small audio signal travels through air at approximately 343m/sec. As the amplitude of the sound signal increases to more than approximately 100 dB, the speed of sound changes over the course of a single cycle. The upper part of the waveform sufficiently compresses air molecules to increase the local temperature and pressure and, therefore, slightly boost the speed of sound. Likewise, the negative portion of the waveform slows sound propagation. These speed variations result in a distorted waveform that resembles a triangular wave (Figure 2). Because triangular waves are rich in harmonics, the speed variations demodulate the ultrasound signal.
To review heterodyne fundamentals in the frequency domain, assume that the modulated ultrasound signal contains 50- and 51-kHz tones. If you pass this signal through a detector or a nonlinear device, your output will contain both of the original signals plus a sum signal at 91 kHz and a difference signal at 1 kHz (Figure 3). Additional harmonics also exist at much higher frequencies. The interesting output is the difference tone at 1 kHz, the only signal in the human audible range of 20 Hz to 20 kHz. To extend the example, you can substitute a complex audio waveform for the 51-kHz tone to produce any audible sound anywhere along the beam of ultrasonic energy. In general, 100 to 110 dB of ultrasonic-sound-pressure level produces an average 90 dB of audible sound. The actual conversion efficiency in air depends on frequency, distance, and modulation parameters.
$600 beamer
Although inherent distortions exist in the process due to unwanted harmonics, emitter inefficiencies, frequency variations, and modulation losses, ATC has developed an amplifier-and-emitter product that delivers clear audio with minimum power consumption. The model R220A uses single sideband-modulation techniques along with distortion-correction preprocessing to increase parametric-conversion efficiency without increasing bandwidth (Figure 4). A proprietary power converter provides amplification and modulation in a single process. The self-contained unit requires only a source of audio and ac power to function. The model R220A is available now for $600.
The R220A operates in both direct and virtual modes. In the direct mode, the unit points directly toward a listener, and the listener hears the sound because he or she is standing in the ultrasound beam. Other listeners standing off to the side or to the rear of the unit hear no sound from the emitter. However, if the listener is outside the sound beam and the ultrasound column strikes a hard surface, the audible sound reflects back into the environment. The listener perceives the sound as originating from the reflective surface, not the hypersonic sound unit, and the reflective surface acts as a virtual-sound source. In addition, hypersonic sound does not follow the traditional loudspeaker-inverse-square law, which dictates that you have a 6-dB decrease in level for every doubling of the distance from the source. This fact means that hypersonic sound can travel much greater distances while maintaining intelligibility than the sound from conventional speakers.
Although ATC has a 15-Mbyte demonstration video, along with other technical information on its Web site (www.atcsd.com), you cannot get the full impact of hypersonic-sound technology without experiencing it for yourself. You will not believe your ears. As with any new technology, it offers benefits and possibly entails unforeseen headaches. So, the next time that little voice in your head tells you to do something, go somewhere, or buy something, take a look around to see whether this new ultrasonic technology is pointed in your direction. (Click here for some additional photos.)
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Acknowledgments
Thanks to Elwood "Woody" Norris and Robert Putnam of American Technology for their valuable insight and assistance with this article.
http://www.e-insite.net/index.asp?layout=article&articleid=CA296500&title=Today's+Feature&am...
culater
Odyssey Takes on iPod
By Troy Dreier
May 14, 2003
Total posts: 1
Product: e.Digital Odyssey 1000
List price: $349
Requires: Pentium 233 (or equivalent) or higher; 64MB RAM; 90MB hard drive space; USB port; CD-ROM drive; Windows 98 SE, 2000, or XP
Company Info: e.Digital Corp., 858-679-1504, www.edigital.com
Editor Rating:
Rate it Yourself
When you're the fastest gun in town, everyone's gunning for you, which is why the Apple iPod may be looking over its shoulder at the e.Digital Odyssey1000 ($349 list). Until very recently, the Odyssey was in position to take on the 20GB Apple iPod. But that was before Apple's late-April announcement that new 10GB, 15GB, and 30GB models would replace existing models. Whether this will affect the 20GB Odyssey remains to be seen. Nevertheless, the Odyssey is sure to enlist fans with its eyebrow-raising features such as voice navigation and an FM tuner, and with its price--$50 less than the new 15GB iPod and $150 less than the 30GB model, reviewed here earlier.
The Odyssey is more similar to the iPod than different. It can play MP3 and WMA files, has 8 minutes of skip protection, and can function as an external hard drive. Its long-lasting rechargeable battery gives 11 to 12 hours of use.
Apple iPod 30GB; Apple iTunes 4.0
More MP3 Players
The 4.4- by 2.9- by 1.0-inch (HWD) Odyssey is a bit bigger than the 4.0- by 2.4- by 0.7-inch 30GB iPod, and heavier at 8.2 ounces versus 6.2. The player's collapsible headphones don't produce sound as clear as the iPod's ear buds, and it has only six equalizer settings compared with the iPod's 22.
The Odyssey apes the iPod even down to its button layout, which is also circular. The iPod's design results from the unit's thumb-controlled scroll wheel. The Odyssey has no apparent justification for this design choice, which serves only to make the five buttons around the circle small and awkward to push.
The 12-preset FM tuner works well. The voice navigation, however, is abysmal. In theory, the Odyssey will open a folder or song automatically when you speak the name, but we never once got the feature to work correctly. We had better luck, however, with the basic voice navigation commands (Previous, Next, and Open).
The voice recorder for making notes performed as it should. Our only complaint is that the notes are time-stamped, and our unit had the date set wrong. The player is supposed to get the date automatically when synched with a PC, but ours didn't.
The Odyssey comes with MusicMatch software for ripping CDs and with Music Explorer, e.Digital's Windows Explorer-like software, for transferring files. Using the included USB 2.0 cable, we downloaded 614MB of MP3s in 1 minute 38 seconds over a USB 2.0 connection and in 13 minutes using USB 1.1. Transferring is easy, but not automated as with the iPod. On the plus side, the Odyssey--unlike the iPod--has no copyright protection, so you can easily share songs among PCs.
Although the Odyssey is a bargain, the iPod's position as the top MP3 player is safe, for now. Despite its interesting features, the Odyssey lags in performance.
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149,1087484,00.asp
culater
Film Rentals, Downloaded to Your PC
By DAVID POGUE
ECADES ago, a Mad magazine cartoonist, Dave Berg, offered a vision of how the Soviet Union might win the cold war. Here in America, a never-ending succession of labor-saving devices - escalators, cars, remote controls and so on - had already created the most sedentary society on earth. All the Soviets had to do was wait until we evolved into living Weebles, complete with tippy, round bases and vestigial leg sprouts. Then they would just knock us over with the butts of their rifles.
The cold war is over, but the trend toward the elimination of all muscular effort continues apace. If you're a movie lover, for example, you can now rent a Hollywood film by downloading it directly to your Windows PC, saving yourself two exhausting trips to Blockbuster. You don't even have to return the movie when you're done; the movie file automatically deletes itself from your hard drive 24 hours after you first click Play. Of course, you're also spared the caloric expenditure involved in rewinding a tape.
Since the demise of movies.com and intertainment.com, only two contenders are left standing in the downloadable-movie racket:
movielink.com and cinemanow.com. (A third, starzondemand.com, is in the works.) Each charges about $4 or $5 to watch a recent movie, roughly the same amount the video store does.
Now, if you wonder why anyone would ever want to download and watch a movie on a PC, you are not alone. The downsides are daunting.
First, each movie file is huge; you need to clear a landing strip of 500 to 800 megabytes on your hard drive. Second, dial-up users need not apply, and even with a cable modem or a digital subscriber line, all of that data takes a long time to arrive: 20 to 90 minutes for a typical two-hour movie depending on the speed of your broadband connection. (You could probably bike or walk to Blockbuster in that time, but of course that would entail exercise.)
Worst of all, you have to watch the movie on the PC, which usually means listening to the soundtrack through cheap speakers, watching on a smallish screen and sitting on a chair that was never intended for leaning back, motionless, for 120 minutes. CinemaNow's site offers instructions on connecting your PC to your television, but the layout of your home, and your tolerance of ugly wires, may rule out that configuration.
Still, plenty of people are willing to overlook these drawbacks. About 30 percent of American households are equipped with high-speed Internet connections, and thousands of people regularly download movies from software-piracy sites like KaZaA.
You can probably guess where all this is going: Movielink and CinemaNow were created as legitimate, Hollywood-sanctioned alternatives to free, unauthorized services. (Movielink was started by Sony Pictures, and joined by Warner Brothers, Paramount, MGM and Universal; CinemaNow is financed by Microsoft, Blockbuster and Lions Gate Entertainment.) Their emergence roughly parallels the creation of the much-hyped pop-music download services that the record companies created, following precisely the same "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" philosophy.
There's a key difference between the movie-download sites and the music-download sites, however: the music sites show a glimmer of promise.
How CinemaNow stays in business is a marvel. The site is so marred by typos and poor programming, it could have been a high school sophomore's first Web design project. After you provide your credit-card information during the registration process, you're asked for it again on the next screen, and yet again each time you buy a movie. It's like a hovering Blockbuster employee who follows you around the store, asking every 30 seconds: "And you're sure you can pay for this, right?"
CinemaNow is a subscription service. You pay $10 a month for unlimited access to about 400 of what CinemaNow calls premium movies. Sounds good - until you realize that all 400 run along the lines of "Oliver Twisted," "Addicted to Murder III: Bloodlust" and "Witchcraft XI: Sisters in Blood." (Wish I could claim credit for such wit, but those are actual titles.) Clearly, CinemaNow is stretching the word "premium" from here to Ripley's Believe It or Not.
Another 300 movies are in the 18-and-over category called After Dark. (Come to think of it, maybe how CinemaNow stays in business isn't such a mystery after all.)
Where does CinemaNow get this cheese? The site's invitation to "filmakers" (sic) to submit their homemade creations on VHS cassette may be a clue. ("Please remember to include your name," it says.)
Most of these "premium" movies are available only as streams, meaning that they play directly from the Internet without being downloaded to your hard drive first. On one hand, you don't have to wait a long time for downloading; movies begin playing after only about one minute. On the other hand, the video quality is therefore dependent on the speed of your connection, which generally means that you can't watch the movie at full-screen size.
Note, too, that streaming movies take another minute to respond each time you try to jump around using the scroll bar, making you wonder if CinemaNow shouldn't be better named CinemaMomentarily.
CinemaNow also offers about 110 more recognizable productions: "Swimfan," "One Hour Photo," "National Lampoon's Vacation" and so on. The only major movie companies represented are MGM, Warner Brothers, 20th Century Fox and Lions Gate. ( Disney, Sony, Paramount, Universal, DreamWorks and Miramax are missing.) Even if you've been dutifully paying your $10 a month, these movies cost you an additional $4 or $5 each.
Most are genuine downloads, easy to navigate on playback, and high in quality. Of course, quality is a relative term; movies from Movielink and CinemaNow offer about the quality you will find on VHS tape (although the text in credits is especially blurry), and the sound is in stereo, not surround sound.
Even here, CinemaNow is a disappointment. The selection of movies is pitiful (about 110). It's confusing that some movies are downloadable while others are only streamable (thanks to the patchwork of rights granted by the movie companies). Finally, you can't download a movie onto a laptop for viewing later on planes, trains and automobiles. As copy protection, you can't even watch a CinemaNow movie without an active Internet connection, even if you downloaded it to your PC.
Movielink is much better. Its library includes only about 350 movies, but at least they're recent, name-brand titles from the five participating movie studios and others. (How recent? CinemaNow and Movielink both get movies during what's called the "pay-per-view window" - that is, after they've arrived in the video stores but before they appear on TV movie channels.)
Nowadays, Internet rights are sorted out contractually before movies are released, making them quickly available online after their theatrical run; rights for pre-Internet movies require individual negotiation. New movies, in other words, are likely to expand Movielink's catalog faster than old ones.
In any case, there is no monthly fee for Movielink; you pay only when you download a movie. Nor are you required to be online when you play back a movie; if you download directly to a laptop, you're free to watch it in transit.
Apart from their 24-hour availability, today's movie-download services offer no advantages over TV, video stores and NetFlix.com (a mail-order DVD-rental outfit). Movielink and CinemaNow stand out primarily for their puny selection, poor video quality and overly rigid copy protection.
It boggles the mind that these services don't exploit the potential of the Internet. Any number of improvements could make them more attractive than other video outlets. Online movie stores could offer tens of thousands of movies, dwarfing the selection of video stores. Digital rentals could last two weeks, not 24 hours, without costing the companies a penny more. And there should be a choice of download speeds; people willing to wait longer for superior quality should be allowed to. It is executives, not technology, who keep these services from greater success.
Movielink, CinemaNow and the movie studios ought to put some muscle into improving the concept. That would be worthwhile exercise indeed.
culater
Apple doubles online music sales
Apple's new iTunes online music store has continued its run-away success, with more than two million songs downloaded within its first 16 days.
The online store has more than 200,000 songs for sale, costing 99 cents each.
Worries in the record industry that customers would cherry-pick hit songs have not come true, with more than half of all songs purchased as part of full album downloads.
However, there are indications of first cracks in the revenue model. Some Macintosh users have reportedly begun to circumvent Apple's copy-protection software and began to swap songs online - without paying.
US, Macintosh only - for now
So far the service is accessible to less than 5% of the world's computer users, those owning an Apple Macintosh and living in the United States
A Windows version of iTunes is planned for later this year, and an overseas expansion is on the cards as well.
The iTunes web site allows customers to listen to brief snippets of songs before deciding whether to buy them.
By clicking a button the music is downloaded to their computer and can then be "burned" on CDs, copied to up to three other Macintoshs, or transferred to digital music players like Apple's popular iPod.
Apple's online music store is the first of its kind that shows any clear commercial success.
Most record companies have tried in some shape or another, but failed to attract customers in large numbers.
Getting music online was popularised by file-swapping service Napster, which is now-defunct.
It allowed Napster users to swap songs with each other, but without paying any royalties to artists or record companies.
Napster was taken to court and shut down, because its service was based on a central registry of available files held on Napster's computers.
Other file-swapping services like Kazaa and Morpheus use different decentralised technologies that allows users to track down and download music, and have so far escaped any legal sanctions.
But analysts and music executives now report the emergence of web sites and software that enables Macintosh users to make unauthorised copies of songs downloaded from iTunes.
Industry executives interviewed by Reuters news agency say that so far Apple's success outweighs the services problems, although one was quoted as saying that "no solution is bullet-proof".
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/business/3029613.stm
Published: 2003/05/15 06:15:14 GMT
© BBC MMIII
culater
Why the Recording Industry Loves Tech
Forget what you've heard -- the RIAA believes technology holds the key to music's future. All you have to do is give that future a chance.
By Hilary Rosen, May 2003 Issue
As head of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), I've been the public face for an industry that's endured significant -- some would say tumultuous -- changes during the last few years. It seems widely assumed that we at the RIAA revel in our role in stamping out music pirates. True, it's a necessary part of the job, and also the right thing to do -- if you believe, as I do, that misusing someone's copyrighted property is wrong. But here's something that may surprise you: I'm every bit as passionate about music as you are.
The reason we do what we do is not a love of litigation but rather a love of music. What other form of entertainment can move you the way music does? And what other form can move with you during every part of your day? Don't overlook these simple facts -- they're the reason that, contrary to the predictions of some doom-and-gloom naysayers, the record industry is poised to rebound.
And what will the vehicle for this rebound be? Technology. Yes, technology.
In fact, record companies and tech firms have long had a symbiotic relationship. Every new music format of the last half-century has come as the result of collaboration between our industries. And in January we announced a set of joint policy principles with two leading tech-industry groups, the Business Software Alliance and the Computer Systems Policy Project, which collectively represent virtually all the big players: Apple (AAPL), Cisco (CSCO), Dell (DELL), IBM (IBM), Intel (INTC), and Microsoft (MSFT).
One of the key planks of these joint principles calls for "private and governmental enforcement against infringers." This is critical to fostering innovation -- after all, recording artists and software developers alike do what they do at least in part for financial gain. And it bears repeating that this is the view not just of the RIAA but of the technology companies as well. They support appropriate enforcement against copyright pirates every bit as much as we do.
Here's something else that may surprise you though: Another important plank in this agreement is a firm commitment to opposing government-imposed technological mandates. The RIAA believes in innovation. And we believe that consumers in the marketplace, not the government, should decide which technological innovations will thrive.
Indeed, the recording industry has spent hundreds of millions of dollars developing new business models to serve music consumers in exciting new ways. While everyone knows that the marketplace for digital distribution of music has been too slow to develop, it is here now. Today there are several legitimate online services, with content from every major record company, that allow consumers to stream music and listen to it through their computers or download it and burn it onto a CD. Hundreds of thousands of tracks, both new hits and catalog favorites, are now available with the click of a mouse. These sites ought to have a fair chance to compete in the marketplace.
I used to say that the record business was like a soft-drink company that sold its products in nothing but 64-ounce bottles, because our product was principally the full-length album. Well, thanks to electronic distribution through multiple types of networks with varied business models, we now have the equivalent of cans and six-packs and fountain drinks. Consumers can buy digital music à la carte or sign up for subscription services offering unlimited downloads, and they can take their tunes with them wherever they go.
Since portability is a compelling feature for music fans, these new ways of distributing music can bring added value to all sorts of new consumer electronics. As I prepare to leave my post this year, I'm proud that part of my legacy will be the role I played in championing new technologies. But the financial incentive required to keep music fresh and popular must be a shared commitment between the music industry and the technology community. Continued investment in and development of the legitimate online music marketplace, along with appropriate antipiracy enforcement, is the ultimate pro-technology strategy for both creators and consumers.
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Hilary Rosen is the chairman and CEO of the Recording Industry Association of America, based in Washington, D.C.
http://www.business2.com/articles/mag/0,1640,48752,00.html#
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ot-Linksys churns out gear amid buyout
Weeks after Cisco announced acquisition, SOHO network leader continues cooking up innovative products.
By Toni Kistner
Network World, 05/12/03
Everyone's got an opinion of what Cisco's announced acquisition of Linksys will mean in the long term. But in these early days before the deal is finalized, Linksys appears to be doing business as usual - innovating like crazy and tackling new markets with unmatched gusto.
At the recent NetWorld+Interop show in Las Vegas, Linksys said it will continue to focus on consumer products and also is expanding its business-class line to include VPN routers and higher-capacity gigabit switches, which it sells through value-added resellers (VAR).
Linksys is scheduled in June to ship the Wireless-B Digital Media Adapter, a device that is expected to stream pictures and MP3 files from a PC to a TV, stereo or entertainment center. The box connects to entertainment devices via RCA connectors, and to networks via 802.11b wireless. Later this year, Linksys hopes to unveil a second-generation device that would stream video. For that, Linksys plans to use faster 802.11g technology and quality-of-service features found in the IEEE's 802.11e specification. 802.11e is required for streaming video, and a draft specification is expected by the summer. The media adapter, which Linksys will position against similar devices from Sony and HP, will cost between $150 and $200.
Linksys says it will begin shipping next month a wireless gaming adapter. The adapter links via RCA connectors to the Microsoft XBox, Sony PS2 and Nintendo GameCube, and to a wired or 802.11g wireless network. The adapter would let the device access the Web so users could play online games from their living rooms without stringing cables to the closest broadband-connected PC. The box will cost $130 to $150. Linksys chose 802.11g technology over 802.11a, saying the cost of an 802.11a version "would be too high for retail."
In July, Linksys says it will introduce the Wireless Music Station, a wireless MP3 player for cars. The device - which the company developed with telematics company Zandiant - sits either in the glove compartment or trunk like a CD changer and connects to home networks via 802.11b wireless. (How the device will be installed in cars is still being worked out.) From a PC, a user could download MP3 files to a "car music" file, then drag and drop the file to your "car" device in Explorer. Linksys says entertainment retailers such as Tower Records can use devices like these to stream promotional music to users devices when they drive within range. The yet-to-be-named player is expected to cost from $150 to $200, depending on hard disk size. Likely, Linksys would offer a version that plays six hours of music, and one that plays 12.
Around September, Linksys is scheduled to debut home automation services offered through broadband service providers and VARs, including a Web security camera that can be accessed remotely. Because the camera is connected to a wired or 802.11g wireless network, users could type the device's IP address from a Web browser to monitor rooms in their home, their doorstep, or wherever they place the camera. Other devices would allow them to control lights, door locks and sprinkler systems. The products use standard technology - X-10, IRDA and sensors. Linksys is building the camera and developing the software user interfaces. The services are in trials now; pricing has not yet been set.
Other less-developed plans include networking over coaxial cabling and voice-over-IP phones. "We might make a version of Cisco's 802.11b phone for [small office/ home office] once 802.11e is ready because you need QoS for voice apps," Linksys says. "But if we do, it can't cost more than $199. Any more than that, and the buyer needs a VAR to help guide the purchase."
Linksys also is focusing on what it calls business-class solutions for VARs. These products include managed and gigabit switches, an area where the company sees Dell as its rival. New products will include 16- and 24-port gigabit switches, due out in the fall.
Last fall at Comdex, Linksys introduced a network-attached storage (NAS) device for the VAR market, the EFG80. This summer, Linksys is set to introduce a 120G-byte NAS and a wireless NAS. The Linux-based wireless NAS would come in 802.11a+g or 802.11g versions, with likely capacities of 80G and 120G bytes, the company says. The wireless NAS will be for small companies that need to add storage to a wireless network neatly, as well as consumers who need a media server to store audio and video files. Pricing has not been set.
In June, Linksys is scheduled to begin rolling out several products using Intel's new line of network processors (IXP420, IXP421 and IXP422) geared to small office/home office and small-to-midsize businesses, announced in February. Included is a new wireless access point for mom-and-pop hot spots and small businesses. The access point would offer dual-mode 802.11a and 802.b/g connections, and includes SNMP management and power over Ethernet, which obviates the need for an AC power connection, according to the company. In September, Linksys says it will add a wireless access point/router to the line that includes a VPN.
Also in September, Linksys is scheduled to begin shipping a line of VPN security routers, targeted at small and corporate branch offices. Details and pricing are not set for the eight- and 16-port models, but Linksys says it plans to position them against VPN routers from SonicWall and WatchGuard.
http://www.nwfusion.com/net.worker/news/2003/0512netlead.html
culater
ot-Optimizing multimedia software for consumer products
By Bjorn Hori, DSP Engineer, Jeff Bier, General Manager and Cofounder, Berkeley Design Technology, Inc., Berkeley, Calif.
iApplianceWeb
(05/13/03, 11:10:32 PM EDT)
Audio and video software for consumer media products can be quite complex, combining real-time signal processing, network protocols, complex I/O, and sophisticated user interfaces. Code and device optimizations, for example, can be problematic in the context of many embedded consumer applications where the requirements for performance, low power, minimal memory space and low cost are often in conflict.
Audio and video codecs, in particular, are typically the most resource-hungry components of the software in a consumer media product. The combination of high data rates, demanding algorithms, and the need to use inexpensive, and possibly low-power processors, means that careful optimization of codec software is almost always required in order to create a competitive consumer media product.
Even in cases where such optimization may not be strictly necessary, it is often beneficial-it can lower power consumption, free up processor resources to permit the addition of more features, or facilitate the use of a less expensive processor.
The codec software optimization process can focus on a number of different performance metrics, e.g., execution speed, memory use, or energy consumption. In some cases optimizing for one metric also optimizes another, while in other cases optimizations conflict. Most often, developers optimize primarily for execution speed, memory use, and energy consumption, while maintaining sufficient video and audio quality.
Extensive execution-speed optimizations are usually required to achieve real-time performance goals. The need for such high levels of optimization is primarily driven by the combination of two factors: the high computational demands of compression and decompression algorithms (which execute complex mathematical operations at high sample rates), and the use of low-cost processors with limited performance.
The optimization process an embedded developer should follow is iterative, beginning with profiling, followed by analysis, then implementation of specific optimizations. This cycle is repeated until performance targets are met.
The first step is to profile the codec software at the function level. This yields information about the percentage of the total execution time attributable to each sub-function, or the number of times each sub-function is called. Typically, the results loosely adhere to an 80/20 rule: 20% of the software is responsible for 80% of the execution time, and vice-versa. Of the three general classes of operations -initiialization rate(I), control rate(K) and sample (S) rate - the S-rate operations are the ones that typically dominate processor loading.
In this classification, the frequency of occurrence differs by two to three orders of magnitude between adjacent levels. Thus, execution cost of operations at each level also differs by two to three orders of magnitude. Optimizing I-rate and K-rate operations typically has little impact on overall execution time because these functions occur relatively infrequently; however, S-rate operations, which have high frequencies of occurrence, must be thoroughly optimized for maximum efficiency. Signal processing functions typically have outer loops at the K-rate and inner loops at the S-rate. The 80/20 rule suggests that codec software contains a relatively small number of functions with S-rate loops. This attribute can greatly simplify the optimization process, since only a small fraction of the total functions in the codec typically require careful optimization.
There are many optimization techniques that can be useful for media applications. Two categories include processor-independent software optimizations and processor-specific software optimizations.
Beginning with the most time-consuming function, as identified by profiling, we can analyze the function and begin to develop an optimization strategy. For example, a common strategy is to first consider processor-independent optimizations that maintain portability of the software.
Optimization decisions
If additional optimization is needed, proceed with processor-specific high-level language optimizations, such as algorithmic transformations. Such high-level language processor-specific optimizations do not eliminate portability, but the optimizations may not yield good performance on another processor. Finally, additional processor-specific optimizations may be implemented at the assembly language level. These optimizations offer the potential to deliver the greatest gains, at the expense of portability.
Most A/V compression algorithms are first implemented in C. In many cases, the first implementations of a codec are not written with maximum efficiency in mind. For example, reference implementations are often intended for clarity of documentation rather than for efficiency. T
Therefore, it is often possible to reduce the processing and memory requirements of a codec significantly by modifying or rewriting the high-level language code. For example, most compilers employ an optimization technique called "strength reduction," in which costly operations are replaced by simple ones where possible.
There are some situations where the compiler isn't smart enough or lacks sufficient information about the algorithm to apply strength reduction, but a good programmer is able to rewrite the code to avoid costly operations. If the costly operations are in S-rate loops, the savings can be substantial. Other processor-independent optimizations include function in-lining and recycling of memory buffers.
Flattening the function call hierarchy by in-lining functions can yield significant speed-ups when low-level, frequently used operations have been placed in their own functions. Recycling memory buffers primarily decreases memory use, but can sometimes also result in speed-ups due to improved memory system performance (e.g., improved cache hit rates).
A number of processor specific optimizations may also apply at the high-level language or assembly code level.For example, algorithm modifications involve changing the internal operations of an algorithm in order to better match the available hardware resources. Many algorithm modifications involve trade-offs between memory use and computation.
Many algorithms use large look-up tables. These look-up tables may occupy more memory than is available in the target system or than can be efficiently accommodated by the processor's level-1 data memory (the memory closest to processor core). In such cases, a typical strategy is to replace the look-up table with algorithmic steps that compute the values formerly held in the table. A compromise approach is to reduce the size of the look-up table and to interpolate values that have been omitted from the table. This compromise typically requires less memory than the purely table-based approach and less execution time than the purely algorithmic approach.
Operation criteria
Another classic example is an FFT implemented with a radix-4 vs. radix-2 butterfly. The total number of mathematical operations (the sum of additions and multiplications) is similar for either implementation. However, the ratio of additions to multiplications differs between these implementations: the radix-4 implementation requires more additions and fewer multiplications than the radix-2 implementation. If the available hardware resources favor addition over multiplication, then the radix-4 implementation may offer better performance.
Similarly, the FIR (finite impulse response) filter algorithm can sometimes be modified to better match the hardware resources. For example, the coefficients and inputs can use a single shared index variable if the coefficients are re-arranged in memory. In some cases branch testing against a zero or negative loop-counter register is directly supported in hardware, so a count-down loop is more efficient than a count-up loop.
Assembly language is the tool of choice for the ultimate in processor-specific optimization. After carefully analyzing the most critical sections of the algorithm and the details of the processor architecture, the assembly language programmer can often gain impressive speed-ups relative to the performance of compiler-generated code.
It is often the case, for example, that compilers do not make use of the processor's full instruction set, and almost never make use of specialized processor features such as single-instruction multiple-data (SIMD) instructions, which allow multiple operations to be performed in parallel. By working in assembly language, developers gain access to the full range of the processor's capabilities.
Due to the large amounts of data handled by A/V applications, the processor's on-chip and off-chip memory system is often a critically important determinant of performance in these applications.
For example, many low-cost embedded processors have small on-chip level-1 data memories-far too small to hold critical blocks of data and coefficients for audio and video decompression algorithms. In such cases, the level-1 data memory tends to be the performance bottleneck and the processor is unlikely to achieve anything near the level of performance suggested by its peak MIPS rating.
This problem can be compounded by the fact that processing one video frame often requires accessing data from two or three adjacent frames. The instruction memory can become a bottleneck too, since video algorithms in particular can require a large amount of code.
Memory access optimizations can greatly improve overall performance by minimizing memory access overhead. For example, the default unit for processing in video algorithms is a frame. That is, the algorithm performs one operation after another on a frame of video until the entire processing sequence is done, and then begins again with the next frame.
Frames, however, are typically much larger then the processor's level-1 memory. Thus, processing an entire frame requires pulling in new portions of the frame and overwriting old portions of the frame at each processing step, over and over again through the entire processing sequence. An optimization to this method is to change the fundamental unit of operation from a frame to a subset of a frame that can fit entirely in the level-1 memory. Now the entire processing sequence is performed on the frame subset that stays resident in the level-1 memory. This type of optimization improves execution time and can reduce power consumption by reducing external memory accesses.
This article was excerpted from ESC paper 266, titled "Developing A/V Software for Consumer Media Products."
http://www.iapplianceweb.com/story///OEG20030513S0049
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OT-Making sense of broadband
The technology’s rapid spread will affect the market structures of many industries. Be prepared!
Scott Beardsley, Andrew Doman, and Pär Edin
The McKinsey Quarterly, 2003 Number 2
So many broadband providers disappeared after the dot-com boom that casual observers might think broadband itself has met with indifference from Internet users. Nothing could be further from the truth; in fact it has enjoyed striking growth throughout the world over the past three years. This expansion has implications not only for providers of broadband access and content but also for companies beyond the telecommunications and media sectors.
The market is growing strongly
The number of broadband users around the globe rose impressively during the past 36 months. By mid-2002,1 we estimate, operational broadband networks had a reach of well over 300 million households in the world’s 20 largest economies (Exhibit 1). More than 40 million households and businesses actually subscribed to broadband (Exhibit 2), and more than 100 million people around the world had access to it.2 It is actually on track to become one of the fastest-growing technology-based consumer offerings ever in certain markets. In the United States, broadband will likely reach the 25 percent penetration mark more quickly than either PCs or mobile telephones did.3
Active residential lines are spread fairly evenly across the Americas, Asia, and Europe, though only a few countries—Canada, Germany, Japan, South Korea, and the United States—account for 84 percent of the total. Market penetration is most advanced in South Korea, where more than half of all households subscribe,4 while Belgium, Canada, the Netherlands, Sweden, and the United States have all reached penetration rates ranging from 10 to 25 percent (Exhibit 3). The vast majority of broadband connections are made over upgraded telephone or cable TV networks, though even faster newly laid fiber-optic ones are doing well in a handful of markets, including China, Italy, and Sweden. Other technologies are proving valuable for particular customer segments: satellite for people in remote areas, to name just one.
Surprisingly, the market has continued to grow well even when conditions elsewhere in the telecom and Internet sectors were dire. During the first six months of 2002, the number of new subscribers increased by a quarter overall, while in 9 of the top 20 economies it increased by at least half (Exhibit 4). Even the more mature markets of Canada, South Korea, Sweden, and the United States expanded by as much as a third. That strong growth seems likely to continue. Our research shows much untapped demand for broadband (Exhibit 5). Only in the most highly penetrated markets—Canada, South Korea, and the United States, for example—do those who have already switched outnumber those who are likely to do so. Moreover, the more price-sensitive users are likely to switch if prices fall, and in countries with lower narrowband penetration, many users are going directly to broadband without first subscribing to the narrowband Internet.
How broadband access markets will develop
The experience of today’s leading broadband markets suggests that most others will develop in three phases: launch, expansion, and saturation. Each phase has its particular challenges for network operators and its own market dynamics, and each offers varying prospects for companies outside the telecom and media industries. Mature markets will offer the widest range of opportunities for these other businesses, but they should prepare now: broadband markets can grow fast, and key customers may be among the earliest to switch.
1. Launch
Most countries are still in the early phase of broadband development, with fewer than 10 percent of all households subscribing. A small number of early adopters attracted by high-speed Internet access—often no more costly than their current extensive use of narrowband—and by the convenience of keeping their telephones free while they surf lead demand for the technology. Supply, however, is constrained: incumbents tend to delay any serious move into broadband until it starts competing for their valuable customers and even then need time to roll out networks to the population as a whole. Prices, given the early adopters’ willingness to pay, therefore remain near their fairly high initial levels.
During the launch phase, broadband’s impact on industries outside the telecom and Internet sectors remains limited. But this period isn’t likely to last more than three years, and in the meantime managers should anticipate the technology’s potential effect on their Internet-related business.
2. Expansion
Belgium, Canada, Japan, the Netherlands, Sweden, and the United States are now in the expansion phase, when the number of subscribing house-holds rises to 40 percent of the total, from 10 percent. Demand is fueled by "modern networkers"—people who find the utility and convenience of broadband attractive but are less "techie" and more price sensitive than early adopters. Supply becomes easier: most users can subscribe to at least one broadband network, and many also have a choice of one or more competitors. Customer segmentation, sales and marketing, and mass-market provisioning become vital to the operators’ success. Prices are likely to become more differentiated, in line with different users’ needs, and eventually to fall, thus attracting new users.
During this phase, companies in general should start tailoring their Internet-related business to the needs of broadband users. One option is to join with leading broadband operators to form partnerships that will help sell the technology. The partners might share sales and marketing skills, retail channels, and customer relationships; they could also co-market broadband with Internet services or help tailor it to their particular industries and market niches.
3. Saturation
South Korea, parts of the United States, and some smaller markets in the Asia-Pacific region (including Hong Kong and Singapore) are reaching the saturation point. At this level of penetration, more than 40 percent of all households have broadband, supply becomes nearly ubiquitous, and potential customers have access to at least two competing networks. Potential customers who still don’t have broadband are waiting for prices to fall or for content and services to improve.
The time needed to reach saturation varies according to local conditions, such as Internet penetration and competition. But our research suggests that many markets now in the expansion phase will likely become saturated within three years. Much depends on how well the operators manage their sales and marketing, customer churn, and content and service strategies. During this phase, the largest access providers can play a crucial role in expanding the market by stimulating new, possibly "killer," on-line content to be provided over their networks. Access providers that fail to do so risk stiffer competition for a stagnating market and, perhaps, price wars.
Strong infrastructure-based competition, notably from independent cable companies, characterizes the markets with the most robust penetration and competition. But in many markets, cable has yet to achieve its full potential, either because cable networks belong to incumbent telecom companies that don’t want to cannibalize their voice and data traffic or because the core TV business of the cable companies is subject to regulations that make it hard to accelerate broadband’s diffusion. If the technology’s full potential is to be unlocked in these markets, regulators must ensure that infrastructure-based competition flourishes there.
At the saturation point, a critical mass of subscribers allows broadband to provide a viable platform for a range of applications that can be used not only by Internet-related businesses but also by businesses generally. This is therefore the phase when companies beyond the strictly network and Internet realm will have the greatest opportunities from broadband.
What happens next?
Broadband is already beginning to make real money for the leading network providers—usually incumbent telecom operators and cable TV companies rather than start-ups—that survived the first round of the broadband battle. In otherwise flat markets, these providers earned $20 billion in revenues from broadband Internet access in 2002 and are now reaching sufficient scale to make it profitable. For these companies, broadband access will remain an important source of growth for years to come. Few have yet made a return on their up-front investment, but analysts at Bear Stearns, Daiwa Institute of Research, and Goldman Sachs estimate that the broadband business of KT (formerly Korea Telecom), the most advanced player in this field, has had a positive EBITDA5 for two years and expect it to have a positive cash flow this year. As other broadband markets reach South Korea’s proportions, their local network operators are likely to perform comparably. In the United States, the operating margins of the major cable providers’ broadband services may exceed those of conventional TV services this year.
So far, however, faster and better access to the Internet is the sole killer application of broadband (Exhibit 6). To make serious profits from it, network providers must find something that excites users more. Admittedly, there are some noteworthy gaming ideas and lots of pilots for video on demand, and interest in home networking (in which several devices in a home or office tap one broadband line) is now growing. But nothing has so far appeared that, from a commercial point of view, will disrupt markets in the way the Internet itself has. Network operators, rather than striving to find new killer applications on their own, will have to collaborate with businesses in other fields to stimulate new content and applications. Such partnerships will probably involve the development of new business models to share revenues fairly.
Yet even without new applications, a bigger broadband market will affect any enterprise that now uses the Internet for business, since broadband users spend more time on-line, engage in more e-commerce, and are generally more satisfied than are their narrowband counterparts. As a result, Internet users with broadband access are rapidly coming to dominate the figures for time spent on-line and the quantity of data downloaded. Moreover, the diffusion of broadband appears, surprisingly, to accelerate the growth of Internet access: several operators report that 30 to 50 percent of their new broadband subscribers hadn’t previously used the Internet at home.
As the number of broadband users and of points of use per home increases, people change the way they spend time on-line; more of them, for example, adopt wireless home networking, a popular Christmas gift in the United States in 2002. And we observe that once the number of subscribed homes in an area reaches critical mass—from 25 to 50 percent—people seem to use the Internet not just for chat and e-mail, which are based on text and simple graphics, but also for "peer-to-peer" applications involving the exchange, among many homes or among many places in a single home, of digital music, video, and large data files. The broadband Internet thus becomes a more important marketing, sales, distribution, and communications platform for all industries. The challenge will be to find a business model that can tap into the market for hitherto (largely) free peer-to-peer interactions. Subscription-based revenue sharing and volume-based pricing could be two avenues to explore.
Media and entertainment are the industries most obviously affected by this trend. Broadband offers a new distribution path for video-based entertainment, a medium for new interactive-entertainment services (such as interactive TV) that need a lot of bandwidth, and a way to integrate several media over a single connection. The Milan provider FastWeb, for example, can now supply 100,000 paying households in Italy with true on-demand video, high-speed data, and digital voice, all delivered over a single optical-fiber connection. As mature markets reach scale with large on-line audiences, broadband may start to realize some of its underlying—and long-hyped—potential for advertisers.
It isn’t clear yet exactly what kind of content and services nonmedia com-panies might provide through broadband. But it is already changing the architecture of many companies by enabling them to centralize their data and applications and to give fast access to distant users. Its spread will also steadily accelerate the acceptance of teleworking and the provision of teleservices of all types; as universities drive their curricula on-line, for instance, remote-learning services will improve greatly and new educational possibilities will arise. And in a variety of areas, including financial services, health care, the public sector, and retailing, we are beginning to see broadband deployed in ways that, on a larger scale, could alter the way markets work. The use of interactive video to deliver professional banking-advisory services is one such example; others include the use of high-speed data transfers to separate service "factories" from customers in accounting firms and to enable health care professionals in a number of locations to share X rays and CAT scans.
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Leaders in every industry—not just telecommunications and media—should keep a close eye on the development of broadband in their markets to be ready for the moment when this technology starts to refashion their own value chains.
Notes:
Scott Beardsley is a director in McKinsey’s Brussels office; Andrew Doman is a director in the London office; Pär Edin is an associate principal in the Stockholm office.
The authors wish to acknowledge the critical contributions to this article (and to the McKinsey broadband special initiative during the past three years) made by Joe Berchtold, Veit Dengler, Jon Garcia, Jeff Karish, Luis Ubiñas, Jon Wilkins, and more than 30 broadband experts around the world.
1These are the most recent comparable data available for all of the countries surveyed.
2We assume that in many households more than one person can access the service and that many other people can use broadband at work or at school.
3At the current pace of growth, broadband will achieve 25 percent penetration in the United States within 6 years of its commercial launch. PCs reached this level in 15 years, mobile telephones in 13, and the World Wide Web in 7.
4Hong Kong and Singapore have high penetration but don’t rank among the 20 largest economies.
5Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization.
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Rip, Mix and Run
By Niall McKay in Silicon Valley, May 12 2003
Apple's recent announcement of the iTunes Music Store shifts the digital media landscape.
Niall McKay
Both users and analysts have praised Apple's recent announcement that it will sell individual songs for 99 cents through its iTunes Music Store as the first "workable" digital music distribution scheme. It is indeed an important landmark for the industry. On the down side, the service is still pretty limited with just 200,000 individual tracks.
That is less than what is available on Kazaa or Limewire. Later, Apple says, it will add independent labels and artists. This could give rise to new pricing models. On the upside Apple has inked deals with the five major record labels. So it is likely it will grow. It has also managed to persuade them to endorse a digital rights management or a DRM solution using MPEG-4's AAC (advanced audio codec) that is not completely draconian.
So why, you may ask, is this important to the wireless community? Well, Apple's Music Store will probably provide a stepping-stone to a model that will eventually be used in the wireless industry. At least, music industry officials have said that Apple's small but loyal following (no doubt including a lot of executives and musicians) are an ideal test bed for digital music distribution. Indeed, downloading music through its iTunes software, storing it on a desktop computer hard disk and syncing it with an mobile device - be it a phone, PDA or music device will likely be the dominant model. It will be several years before downloading music directly to a mobile device is both practical and affordable.
Now, the analysts have made all the usual (optimistic) predictions about the size of the content market in years to come. Ovum, for example, predicts that the global market for consumer mobile data services will reach $71 billion by 2007. Gartner projects that online music sales will bring in $92 million this year. However, the iTunes Music service surprised the analysts by bringing in over $1 million in its first week.
The industry is gushing about the iTunes store because it enables ownership (or sort of ownership) of the music you buy. Music, like family photos, wedding videos, and pictures of one's true love are very personal. While the Eminem generation are more progressive than the baby boomers and probably don't need to posses the vinyl or CD, most will want to at least own the bits.
True, you can buy and download music to cell-phones and PDAs today. But the business model is unworkable (for the artists), the restrictions ridiculous (for the users) and the network slow (for everybody).
Of course, any per packet charging model will kill the wireless data market. That is why closed networks failed and the Internet succeeded. But there are other reasons why online and wireless music markets have so far failed. Catastrophic hard disk failures, terrible restrictions as to where and when you can play your music, and of course completely pointless subscription based downloading services such as Pressplay and MusicNet which are owned by the recording companies. Imagine if the Virgin Mega store only sold virgin label records. Now, however, desktop computer are becoming increasingly reliable and backing up data is easier with new firewire hard disk solutions.
Having said that, once you get used to a digital music collection you can never return to the world of feeding CDs (even by the 100) into changers. Recently, the techno artist Moby told Rolling Stone magazine. "I can't imagine music any other way. I can be sitting on an airplane and think to myself: wouldn't you like to listen to the first Roxy Music record?" And there it is."
The iPhone?
Currently, there are all sorts of rumors about Apple bringing out a wireless device. Apple groupies have even imagined what this device will look like. The URL iPhone.org points to the Apple's Web site and there are some very interesting images floating around the Internet.
What we can definitely expect, however, is an even groovier iPod digital music player. The next stage will be to add wireless support, hopefully, both 802.11 and Bluetooth and perhaps a bigger, color screen. That way not only will they be able to auto dock with one desktop in the home but they will be able to do it on the road as well over Wi-Fi. One could even imagine a way of buying songs or play lists from, say a friend's computer.
However, there are three things that make it relatively easy for Apple to get a foothold in the music market. Firstly, it has, relatively speaking, a tiny share of the computer market, so it is not really a threat to anybody. Secondly, it owns a walled digital garden so it controls both the hardware and the software. And thirdly, it has a very loyal following. In fact, Apple is a kind of mini techno cult with well-healed followers who are prepared to buy anything Apple. No PC users for example, put a little Microsoft logo stickers on their bumpers but you see those infernal little Apple stickers everywhere.
Becoming a music distributor is all very well and fine when you are the little guy in the market. Everybody loves the baby, but Apple has a habit of getting an extraordinarily arrogant and greedy (it's top down thing) when it gets a little on top of things.
So while Apple is the innovative little style bunny it's easy for users to love it. But that is not why the company lost market share the first time around.
The second major problem that is emerging is that if Apple is successful then it will own the hardware, the software and the channel. Is that a good thing? If it keeps bringing out good products and a reasonable price it's good.
Last month, rumor had it that the company was trying to buy Vivendi Universal. One has to ask ones self is Apple a monopoly in the making?
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'Napster effect' hits US shows
Darren Waters
BBC News Online entertainment staff
On Monday I watched the latest episode of ER just a few days after it was broadcast in the United States.
But I was not in the US - I sat in front of my computer at home to watch the programme, which I had downloaded from the internet in the interests of research in about five hours.
The growing online availability of TV programmes, and films, is the latest threat to the entertainment industry still reeling from the effect of peer-to-peer programs, such as Kazaa and the now-defunct Napster.
After ER, I watched the latest instalment of thriller 24, a new episode of Frasier and a new episode of Friends, again all in the interests of research.
Almost all the programmes had been broadcast less than a day earlier in the US, many months before viewers in the UK and Europe will see them.
One friend who downloads drama The West Wing is more than a year ahead of episodes in the UK.
I used a program called BitTorrent to download the shows, a piece of software which allows multiple people to download the same programme at the same time.
It is not the only piece of software one can use, but uniquely BitTorrent allows multiple users to exchange the same information.
As I download Friends, another user is taking it from me, who in turn is providing it to someone else, and so on.
The effect is that the more people who are trying to access the programme, the easier and quicker it is to obtain.
'Speed issues'
But Jacqueline Hurt, a solicitor specialising in media law, said the programmes were being distributed without licence and therefore illegally distributed.
"Until now the effect of the internet on TV and film has been small because of the speed issues involved in downloading.
"But with the increased take up of broadband, and if the quality was acceptable, then this could be a big issue for broadcasters and programme-makers."
At the moment, the numbers using programs like BitTorrent are limited but if the practice were to take off then it could have widespread implications, she said.
But broadcasters, especially those in the UK, remain unaware of the growing trend of downloading programmes.
Yinka Adegoke, deputy editor of New Media Age magazine said: "No-one I know in the industry is aware of it and it is just not on the agenda."
Hit shows
"The value of a programme to broadcasters will go down if the programme is readily available on the internet," warned Ms Hurt.
Why should Channel 4 spend its money importing hit US shows when they have been available online for weeks, if not months?
Mr Adegoke said the TV industry, like the music industry before it, would be taken completely by surprise.
"If this goes from being a niche activity to the mainstream it will be virtually impossible to stop.
"This is exactly what happened to the music industry.
"Once the genie is out of the bottle you can't put it back in."
The range of shows is restricted at the moment to the biggest US shows and to programmes with loyal fan bases, such as science fiction.
A popular programme can take between five and seven hours to download, while a film can take twice as long and a more obscure programme up to a whole day.
But for broadband internet users this is no deterrent: it costs nothing more to stay online for 10 hours than five minutes so many Bit Torrent users leave their computers on overnight or all day.
BitTorrent itself does not advocate infringing copyright and the program can be used for exchanging any type of information, but the most popular is certainly TV shows and films.
The TV industry is already aware of many BitTorrent sites, and is closing them down as fast as it can find them.
But with web space so readily available it only takes a short time to put up a web page and link to the latest programmes.
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A Talk with iTunes' Conductor
Apple's Phil Schiller explains how the hot new digital music service will help curtail piracy -- and sell lots more Macs and iPods
Phil Schiller has had a busy week. Apple's senior vice-president for worldwide product marketing and chief pitchman has just overseen the wildly successful launch of Steve Jobs's new iTunes Music Store, available in the new iTunes 4 software. In the service's first week, Apple (AAPL ) sold over 1 million songs at 99 cents a pop, setting a new record for download sales and forever changing the landscape of the digital-music business. I recently spoke with Schiller about the thinking that led Apple to make its bold move. Here are edited excerpts of that conversation:
Q: What will it take to make the iTunes Music Store profitable for Apple?
A: We're not looking at it in terms of a stand-alone business. It's part of all the things we're doing at Apple. And first of all, I hope it can drive more iPod business. That has been very successful for us, and we would like to see that continue to grow.
In addition, it's part of the whole digital-life strategy, and it has been very successful for us. iTunes has become the most popular application used by Mac customers -- more popular than mail or word processing. To date, we have distributed 20 million copies of [iTunes software]. I explain that as a way to point out that digital-lifestyle applications are becoming a reason for purchasing a computer. And music is probably the most important one.
Q: Are you actually hearing that in feedback from people who purchase Apple computers?
A: Yes. When we talk to customers about their top reasons for purchasing a computer and the top applications they want to run on their computer, increasingly these media applications are becoming the top reasons. That's why [the launch of the iTunes Music Store] is a watershed event.
For the first time, we have an end-to-end digital-music system that covers the way you buy the music, they way you manage the music, and the way you listen to the music. That has never been offered before.
Q: Are you seeing a lot of people who are buying their new Apple computers and an iPod in the same purchase? What effect is iPod, iTunes, and music having on "beyond the box" sales?
A: We do see a fair number of those. I can't give you exact numbers. But we do see lots of existing customers buying [iPods], as well as Windows customers.
Q: How flexible will you be on price per song? Some analysts have said 99 cents per song is too high. It seems like a neat opportunity to, say, try lower prices to move back-catalog stuff or create a more fluid pricing strategy.
A: This is the first time anyone has offered a per-song store where every song is offered for 99 cents. In addition, you get all the rights on all the songs. It isn't that some songs let you burn and others don't, and some songs can go into a portable player, and some have to be streamed. That's how everyone else has tried to do this before -- complex rights, different rights for different sets of music. Apple has gotten a broad set of rights across all this music. That's a landmark.
Q: What percentage of Macs out there today can take advantage of the iTunes Music Store? You need OS X to buy music online with iTunes 4.
A: We count somewhere north of 25 million active Mac users in the world. Over half of that user base [own] systems that can run Mac OS X. We think the numbers are quite large.
Q: Is there any digital-rights management (DRM) built into the downloads themselves, or is it all in iTunes 4?
A: No, it's all built into the [iTunes] system. Our goal is to make it transparent for the user so that they never have to think about DRM. We're using a DRM technology under the hood called FairPlay. It's a DRM technology used by iTunes and QuickTime at the system level.
Q: So if I burn a disk off iTunes 4, will there be some kind of identification marker so that if I place it on KaZaA it will be traceable to me?
A: If you're talking about burning a regular music CD, no.
Q: Any plans for video down the road?
A: No, right now we just want to make the world's best music store. But I want to point out that iTunes includes particular music videos in the store. You can view some amazing music videos for free.
Q: How will the iTunes Music Store help solve the piracy problem?
A: Our position, as it was with the iPod, is that the solution to music piracy is not a technological one. No one can make the perfect safe to put things in. And it won't be a legislative solution of someone passing a magic law that stops all piracy.
In the end, the solution will be a behavioral one. Many people will choose the legal and fair route. That's what we hope we've done here -- create something that's in many ways better than the free services.
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The Flash Menagerie
As handheld devices proliferate, so too do the memory chips that they rely on. Here's a field guide.
Image courtesy of SanDisk.
By Steven S. Ross
Gadget Master
May 7, 2003
Those little flash memory cards are showing up in digital cameras and organizers, MP3 players, audio and video recorders, and even phones. There are six different types of card. But the lack of standards is even worse than it appears at first glance. A multiplicity of incompatible flavors has emerged even within those types. There are, for example, super-compact versions of the already petite Memory Stick, Secure Digital, and MultiMediaCard formats. Sony offers a large-capacity Memory Stick Pro that won’t work in most Memory Stick devices. All told, there are at least 10 separate card standards and shapes (see Memory Card Comparison).
The first step in sorting out the choice of formats is easy: avoid the SmartMedia card. It is not made in capacities larger than an anemic 128 MB. Interest in SmartMedia cards appears to be on the wane, and the last press release on the SmartMedia Web site dates back to last October. The card’s big supporters, Olympus and Fujifilm, have adopted a new format: the XD Picture Card. This device has faster input/output performance than Smartmedia and could eventually provide capacity of 8 gigabytes.
I’ve been successful so far in settling on two standard formats for all my portable memory needs. I use CompactFlash (CF) for my still photography and Secure Digital (SD) for everything else. CF is the memory capacity leader and tends to be the cheapest per megabyte. SD, much smaller, is the most popular card in new, tiny devices such as credit-card sized point-and-shoot digital cameras, and the Palm Tungsten series of personal digital assistants. I try hard to buy only products that can take one or the other so I can move cards from one device to another and so that I can avoid taking a bulky “six in one” card reader on trips. My Magellan GPS uses SD cards instead of the proprietary memory modules employed by some competitors. I’ve avoided proprietary Handspring Springboard modules, too.
My quest for standardization has forced me to cross all devices in the Sony catalog off my list. Sony, which developed the Memory Stick (and its smaller brother, the Memory Stick Duo), is hell-bent on using the Memory Stick in all of its products. Few other vendors have bothered.
Although I may be able to continue to avoid Sony, I can’t be without a cell phone. The tiny new MiniSD card or Reduced Size MultiMediaCard (RS-MMC) will probably be included in my next phone handset, because these cards are even smaller than SD; they were specifically developed for this market because when it comes to phones, smaller is better. MiniSD looks like the winner in the standards race between these two midgets; I haven’t caught a single product announcement featuring the RS-MMC, and it is almost identical to MiniSD anyway. Sandisk is already shipping MiniSD cards.
As price per megabyte comes down, standardization arguably matters less. Right now, you can get 256-megabyte SD or CF cards for well under $100. But each image produced by the newest 6-megapixel cameras will swallow 18 MB, so the ideal card size requires more megabytes, negating the drop in per-megabyte price. Also, when I'm dropping off a card at the store to have an image printed, I'd rather leave behind a small, cheap old card than a 256 MB or 1-GB unit. If I standardize on one card type, I can more easily use my old cards for this purpose, even after I upgrade to more capacious cards for new cameras.
Memory Card Tips and Tricks
Not all CFs are alike. There is considerable variation among CF cards from different vendors. Click here for a detailed performance comparisons of CF cards, by camera model and card brand.
Beware of supersized memories. CF cards now come with capacities up to 4 gigabytes; SD cards are at 1 GB and climbing. But few existing devices recognize more than 1 GB. If you format cards larger than 32 MB on your computer, Windows XP defaults to what is known as FAT32 mode (FAT stands for file allocation table, which keeps track of where files start on the drive.) A typical flash card device such as a digital camera cannot read FAT32 files at all. One lesson: Unless you know how to change the Windows defaults, format your card in the device that uses it. Another: Don’t invest in a super-size card unless you know your device can handle it.
Voltage isn't important. CF cards can be interchanged between 3.3-volt and older 5-volt systems. All other cards were designed to run between 2.7 and 3.6 volts in the first place, so there are no devices that use 5 V.
Handle with care. Keep cards in their cases and watch where you put your fingers; the delicate contacts for all except CF are exposed to dirt and scratches. Memory Stick contacts have deep ridges that provide fairly good protection against scratches, but not dirt. SD cards have tiny (0.6 millimeter) ridges (see image), which offer some protection against scratches. MMC, XD and SmartMedia contacts are flush or nearly so. Cleaning with lint-free cloth helps.
Know the workarounds. There are ways to get around some incompatibilities. Passive adapters allow small cards to be used in place of their big brothers. MiniSD can be used in place of SD, Memory Stick Duo in place of Memory Stick. There’s a CF adapter for XD cards.
While various industry-supported licensing groups are talking about establishing even more memory card standards, few standards that are mentioned on the licensing groups’ Web sites have been turned into products yet—and in fact few might ever be. The High-Speed MultiMediaCard (HS-MMC) standard from Toshiba, Fujifilm, and Olympus, for instance, will move data at up to 52 megabytes per second —if it ever arrives. Right now, flash memory cards offer typical transfer rates well below 3 MB/s. The Secure Digital card triumphed over the planned Secure MultiMediaCard (SecureMMC) although the SD security standard has been hacked and no one actually uses it. (The SD card itself is popular, but the extra software on the card that was supposed to make files copy-proof just takes up space.) MagicGate is Sony’s name for the file security used on Memory Sticks; few (if any) use it, either. In fact, the Secure Digital Music Initiative consortium that spawned these standards is no longer active.
Secure MultiMediaCards and SD cards are based on similar standards, so there is some compatibility. MMCs can be used in electronic devices with expansion slots that are made for SD cards. SD cards cannot be used on devices with slots made specifically for MMCs, but just to add to the confusion sometimes the slots are called “MMC” and can take either type. Your PDA, for example, can probably use an SD card even though the manual often specifies MMC. But check before you buy. Low-cost read-only memory, used for distributing software and e-books for PDAs, is available in MMC format but not SD.
If you've already gone too far in acquiring an assortment of flash memory cards of different types, and have piles of them collecting dust in your desk drawer, don’t dwell on how much you paid for these devices. That will just make you angry. I have a five-year-old, 4-MB MMC that I once used to hold still photos taken with my MiniDV video camera. It cost about $80 and is too small to hold anything useful today. The same card is available now on e-Bay—for only $1.
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Evolutionary
Digital Means Leaner & Meaner Competitors
May/June 2003
By Thomas Lorenz
Illustration Campbell Laird
Two years ago a small startup company from Ontario, Calif., burst onto the digital versatile disc (DVD) player scene and quickly overtook the world's top DVD brands, becoming the new U.S. market leader. How did it happen?
Apex Digital is just one of the new brands that have recently captured market share using a low-cost strategy that leverages inexpensive Chinese manufacturing resources. A low-cost strategy is nothing new. So what is really going on?
Digital advances are fundamentally changing the CE industry and forcing companies to alter their business models. Just look at DVD player sales, which are soaring despite an adverse economy. The fastest-growing consumer product ever, DVD players have reached 35 percent of all U.S. households in just four years. Contrast this with CD players, which took nearly eight years to reach 25 percent of homes and VCRs, which took 12 years to achieve this success. The growth is being fueled by extraordinarily rapid retail price reductions. In just two years, the cost of a low-end DVD player dropped from $125 to $49, spurring even more demand.
Although some say this is a normal product life cycle, the astounding success of the DVD player is actually the first step in an evolutionary shift in the CE industry.
The semiconductor supplier can enable nonessential yet nice-to-have features that soon become must-haves in the war among rival brands.
The Complex Advantage
Older consumer devices based on analog architecture, like VCRs and TVs, use multiple integrated circuits (ICs). Portable CD players, for instance, use between three and five chips. Adding a new feature to these products requires an extra application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC)—a complex task.
Companies that can compete in this space are vertically integrated. These giants design and produce products in their own factories, which allows them to control and maintain high quality. But they also use their own semiconductor operations, giving them a competitive advantage by being able to build and introduce new features.
Digital products, on the other hand—DVD players, A/V receivers, digital cameras, MP3 players, PVRs, cell phones and DTVs—have architectures dominated by a processor, similar to a PC. All system functions are integrated in a single chip. This so-called application-specific standard product (ASSP) takes care of the essential system functions with dedicated silicon and runs most features in software. Because of this, new features can be easily added at almost no cost. And all features can be implemented, whether or not they will be used, since the cost after the initial software investment is minimal.
Digital devices also are easier to build, lowering the barrier to entry for equipment manufacturers and opening the door to new competitors. The binary nature of digital devices translates into production quality: the device works or it doesn't. Production can easily be outsourced to low-cost manufacturing bases such as China. This allows new entrants to deliver nearly the same level of quality as established competitors. To complicate matters further, consumers are learning that the difference in quality between a branded and an unbranded product is minimal and are buying the less expensive one.
This is obvious in the DVD market. New generations of "single chip" DVD player solutions are replacing the functions of the 10 to 12 separate ICs of just two years ago. Although total system cost has declined greatly because of this chip consolidation, the ratio of semiconductor value to a product's retail price is much higher than it was in the analog world.
The value of IC content in the analog world was about 10 percent of the retail price, while in digital devices, the ratio is 20 percent to 30 percent. Even a low-end DVD player that retails for $50 has some $15–$20 worth of semiconductor material in the system, compared with roughly $5 for a similarly priced but older consumer device.
This disparity is due to the makeup of digital systems. In the digital world, semiconductors control the whole system's functionality, replacing other non-semiconductor content in analog devices. These differences are impacting everyone—manufacturers, semiconductor companies and consumers.
Turning Point
Opportunities and challenges abound for established manufacturers with brand-name products. The programmability of digital devices means easier, faster and cheaper ways to differentiate products. Multiple price points can be achieved without creating completely new designs.
In this digital environment, flexibility and speed are critical for manufacturers to succeed.
For instance, upgrading a low-end DVD player to a midrange one is done by switching on DVD audio software and changing the audio converters in the systems. The cost to manufacturers is very small and creates opportunity for higher margins and profits.
Software developers are now the ones who are rapidly rolling out innovative new features. Since ASSPs are more difficult to program than general-purpose processors, the semiconductor supplier provides most of the software. After the initial development costs, the added expense of most features is virtually nonexistent.
Because of this, the semiconductor supplier can enable nonessential yet nice-to-have features that soon become must-haves in the war among rival brands. For example, merchant IC company Cirrus Logic introduced DTS Surround Sound, a rival standard to Dolby Digital Surround Sound®, for A/V receivers in 1999. This "software only" feature helped Cirrus and its customers gain market share. Soon, most semiconductor suppliers and A/V manufacturers offered DTS as a standard. This would not have succeeded in the analog days of home audio.
New markets are springing up based on this functionality, such as audio jukeboxes, and on the convergence of previously separate technologies, such as DVD receivers. These high-growth segments offer lucrative opportunities for manufacturers to expand their business. Bose, a leader in the audio world, used digital technology to expand into video. Leveraging its expertise in audio, it launched a highly successful line of DVD receivers.
Manufacturers Beware
Tremendous challenges also threaten the established market participants. The barriers to entry have been significantly lowered. Entries are coming from low-cost original device manufacturers (ODMs) out of China (Shinco, Mintek, Cyberhome and others), new brand-only companies (e.g., Apex), and PC companies (HP, Apple and Mustek and others) that leverage their established brand name to enter the market.
These competitors are most visible in products such as MP3 players, DVD players and low-end digital cameras. The ODMs and the new brands, however, pose the biggest threat. They not only use the ultra-low-cost Chinese manufacturing base, but they leverage aggressive chip integration into a cost advantage. In addition, they have a more aggressive gross margin business model than established brands. Merchant IC suppliers provide the advanced software and hardware platforms that let them close the technology gap with the established brands.
In this digital environment, flexibility and speed are critical; the faster manufacturers can react to new features, new markets, new competitors and new manufacturing bases, the more profits they reap. This is gradually splintering the model of the vertically integrated company. Now, flexibility, speed and the lower costs for outsourced production are more valuable than the advantages of in-house production. These changes happened in the PC, cell phone and game console industries, where outsourced manufacturing has become the de facto business model.
CE companies are moving in this direction as well. The major DVD player manufacturer already have shifted some of their production to Chinese partners. China is expected to produce 70 percent of all DVD players by 2005. The only exceptions from the onslaught of low-cost producers are digital camcorders and DTVs, which are still difficult to manufacture. But it won't be long before competitors are nipping at their heels.
Semiconductor Changes
The same forces that are breaking up vertically integrated manufacturers also are eroding the advantage of the in-house semiconductor supplier. Captive semiconductors were once a strong competitive advantage for OEMs because they provided fast, cost-effective ASIC solutions, enabling new features and functionality. In the new digital world, this competitive advantage is gone.
The semiconductor supplier can enable nonessential yet nice-to-have features that soon become must-haves in the war among rival brands.
Merchant IC suppliers can benefit from a multitude of customers at a cost advantage, since ASSPs are no longer tied to a specific product or customer and since most features are created entirely via software. This lets merchant IC companies achieve significant economies of scale as they spread software investment over many applications.
Many of the major brands already choose outside suppliers for their applications. This trend occurs with both audio and video manufacturers. All the A/V receiver manufacturers except Sony use external suppliers. In the DVD space, only Sony and Panasonic are still captive, but even they may be switching to merchant ICs for their low-end devices.
Some of the captive semiconductor suppliers may follow the example set by the ST Micro spinout, Thomson Multimedia. Separating semiconductor operations from the rest of the business lets both groups actively compete in the market.
The opening of once-captive OEMs to external partnerships, the inflow of new OEM competitors, increased semiconductor content and accelerated market growth driven by customer demand are transforming a flat commodity market into one of the fastest-growing semiconductor segments. Feature innovation, as well as aggressive cost reduction through system integration, is the key success factor for semiconductor companies.
Software has become as critical as the actual chips. The merchant IC companies' product is no longer just a chip; it is a complete manufacturing kit with a full set of software. Successful system integration is based on deep system knowledge and a broad technology portfolio—especially in convergence A/V products, in which an understanding of video and audio technology is a must.
Consumer Expectations
Consumers expect better quality, more flexibility and new features, at a lower price. Because of all the new features, consumers may end up with redundant purchases and unused functions. Most new DVD players can display picture CDs. You can view digital pictures on a big-screen TV rather than print them, if you choose. Digital cameras record short movies, digital camcorders take pictures, MP3 players offer voice recording, and so on.
Digital architecture also has the potential to deliver "future proofing," or the capability to update equipment without purchasing new products. Through software upgrades, consumers can obtain new features or fix known bugs. This capability is now available only on a limited basis, but it is expected to become more important as digital devices become more complex and powerful.
The digital revolution is just beginning. Consumers can look forward to DVD players with MPEG-4 and DivX playback; audio systems with Class-D amplifiers that make previously clunky products as small as laptops; digital photo archiving with a DVD recorder; PVRs without the service payments; music jukeboxes that can turn a CD collection into a searchable database; DVD audio and SACD; HDTV; media servers; and, of course, all the endless possibilities of connected devices.
Upgrading from analog to digital system architecture is radically changing the CE industry and opening the door to greater innovation, turning the industry into an exciting growth opportunity. It is altering the way products are designed, built, marketed and sold. The industry is still at the beginning of the digital revolution, with endless new functionalities and features to come.
Thomas Lorenz is marketing manager for Cirrus Logic Inc.
culater
Fort TV
Today you're free to mail a friend a videotape of a TV show, but new digital defenses may stop you from e-mailing them
By Brian Smith
How many of you have fond memories of watching the original "Star Trek" serial during its premiere run on NBC between 1966 and 1969? Very few, probably. "Star Trek" is the classic—but by no means unique—example of a TV show that made far, far more money in syndication, long after its initial run on broadcast TV.
By earning a hit show as much as US $2 million per episode,this so-called off-network syndication is clearly the profit center for most shows. And that fact goes a long way toward explaining why the advent of high-quality digital TV (DTV) broadcasting has TV executives in such an uproar. If hit TV shows were digitally downloaded during their initial run and then easily available over the Internet, what TV stations would pay to rerun them?
The issue has generated heated debate not just on the technical how-to of protecting broadcast content but on what leeway consumers should expect in making personal copies, time- and space-shifting and archiving them, and sharing them with family and friends.
Last August, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) got involved. It issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking asking questions about protecting in-the-clear (unencrypted) digital broadcast content from unauthorized retransmission over the Internet.
The FCC notice was prompted by congressional hearings on the activity of a diversity of companies and associations known as the Broadcast Protection Discussion Group. After examining methods of protecting broadcast content, the group had ended its discussions inconclusively. It had not been able to select a particular approach, or agree on a set of objective criteria for choosing content protection technologies, or decide how any chosen method would be enforced. The group's deliberations raised a host of questions about the expectations of private persons over content usage, methods for selecting suitable content protection technologies, who would control and manage such technologies, and how to deal with the likely hacking of any protection technology. Also on the table was the fact that analog versions of the digital signals could not be readily protected, because their reception on legacy analog devices in consumers' homes was on occasion guaranteed by law. Note that the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act stipulated that a broadcast protection system should not affect the consumer's ability to copy in-the-clear broadcasts for private, noncommercial use.
From air to Internet
In the United States, terrestrial broadcast signals have historically been transmitted without being encrypted. Protecting them from unauthorized transmission over the Internet, therefore, requires receiving devices to identify certain content and proceed to protect it before it can be misused.
Hence a set of bits known as the redistribution control (rc) descriptor (written as rc_descriptor) is included in the Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC) standard for DTV transmissions, commonly known as the Broadcast Flag. When active, the flag means that "technological control of consumer redistribution is signaled." This descriptor only provides a mechanism for identifying the digital content to be protected by equipment in the consumer's home—it does not trigger an encryption or other protection mechanism at the broadcast station.
For the receiver, one faction in the discussion group proposed that protection begin at the point of signal demodulation. This is the first point at which the rc_descriptor could be read, and if the descriptor were not active, no further action would be required.
If the rc_descriptor were active, however, a variety of protection mechanisms would be required. First, it should not be easy to tap the unencrypted digital signal within the receiving device. It happens that in a typical consumer electronics device, like a TV set, there are no standard data buses, no widely recognized connection points, and no readily modifiable software; in effect, the inherently closed consumer device physically protects the content from all but the most determined and skilled attackers. But a PC environment is quite different, so some PC companies have suggested there is only one way to protect the signal: encrypt identified DTV content on the DTV tuner card at the point of demodulation, maintain the encryption throughout the device, and decrypt the signal only after it is sent to a display. Conceptually, this sounds straightforward—unless the consumer elects to edit, color-correct, or process the signal, which would entail decrypting, decompressing, and re-encrypting the signal in a way that it never appears on any accessible bus in the clear.
Assuming that content within the receiving device is secure, protecting content transferred outside the device is the next hurdle. Theoretically, a PC that handles encrypted broadcast content, either from an internal DTV card or from another source, should not be able to pass that content to the Internet in a form that can be decoded on the receiving end. This prohibition could be enforced with a link authentication/encryption scheme that does not work in an Internet protocol (IP) environment. Unfortunately, denial of transmission over any IP path runs right up against the growing popularity of in-home IP networks over which, if anywhere, protected content should be able to flow. Additionally, consumers expect to pass such private content over the Internet to relatives, vacation homes, and the like, at least to some degree. Today this can be done by physical means (a VCR tape or recordable DVD disc), so why not by e-mail?
The commonest non-IP high-speed digital interconnects are the IEEE 1394, the universal serial bus (USB), and the digital video interface/high-definition multimedia interface (DVI/HDMI). One form of protection for these links, proposed by Philips, was to require an authentication handshake between the source and sink. By this "gesture," the sink indicates it's a compliant device, one that will not pass protected content to the Internet or to a noncompliant device. Following the handshake, the source would send the unencrypted content over the link along with an indication that it was to be protected. This setup would have eliminated the need for distributing and maintaining an encryption system, but the TV content industry feared the in-the-clear signal might be monitored by rogue devices.
A more secure alternative also required an authentication handshake, followed (if successful) by encryption of the flagged content and its transmission over the link along with the protection indication. This was the proposal of the 5C group of companies (Hitachi, Intel, Matsushita, Sony, and Toshiba), using an encryption scheme called digital transmission content protection (DTCP). While technically the suggestion seemed satisfactory, unpalatable requirements and restrictions lay embedded in the technology license. For instance, it disallowed the transfer of broadcast content to a device not protected by the 5C system or to any other system not approved by the licensing administrator, in effect giving that body oversight over any potentially competitive protection methods.
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No solution affords protection from broad public redistribution while still allowing "e-mailing to grandma"
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As for direct digital recording of flagged content, as on a DVD recorder, that presented another problem. The 5C group proposed encrypting such content on the disc using the content protection for recordable media (CPRM) system. The drawback was that the discs could be played back only by new CPRM-compliant DVD players—and not by the millions of consumer DVD players in private homes. It was suggested that recordings compatible with legacy devices could be made using the recorder's analog inputs, an arrangement that would avoid triggering encryption on the disc. True enough, but the various decompression, digital-to-analog and analog-to-digital conversion, and recompression stages prior to recording would degrade the picture.
The biggest blow came when the discussion group realized that the system being considered might be used to launder DVD content. Imagine a future prerecorded DVD, watermarked with "copy never," being "ripped" onto a PC hard drive. The PC could format the DVD's content into an ATSC-compliant MPEG2 transport stream, insert the rc_descriptor, and modulate the output using the ATSC technology employed by broadcasters. Then when a compliant recording device with an ATSC tuner/demodulator received the content and found the rc_descriptor, it would assume that the content was from broadcast, ignore the watermark, and allow unfettered copying (although not Internet retransmission). Accordingly, the discussion group proposed barring modulation devices from processing any content containing the rc_descriptor.
The analog hole
All the protection mechanisms deal only with broadcast content in its digital form. No analog outputs, whether standard or high resolution, are protected by this system. This results in the conundrum of extensive protection of digital content side by side with ready availability of analog versions of the same content, capable of being digitized and compressed by many modern PCs and then transmitted freely.
Closing this hole would be hampered by the need to support digital-to-analog converter devices for the quarter of a billion TV receivers already in people's homes. One idea has been watermark systems that hide copy-control information in the content, allowing old analog devices to work properly, but disallowing redigitization of the analog signal on future devices with watermark detectors. Of course, as it will take some years before unprotected analog-to-digital conversion devices are retired, this would be a long-term solution.
How long-term? A new multi-industry group has been established to look at technological approaches for dealing with the analog hole. But the Analog Reconversion Discussion Group has not yet set a timetable for completion, and there is no assurance that the outcome will have any more success than did the previous discussion group's activity.
Some of those who responded to the FCC's request for comments on this issue have questioned the practicality of retransmitting broadcast content over the Net, given the large amount of data involved and the relatively slow Internet connection speeds (HDTV content requires over 19 Mb/s). Even that rare, pristine, uninterrupted 1.5-Mb/s broadband connection would take more than a day to transfer a two-hour movie, making widespread retransmission unlikely. Content owners, though, point to the march of technology, which they believe will ultimately result in faster broadband connections and more efficient compression techniques.
No solution has been proposed and vetted that affords digital content robust protection from broad public redistribution while still permitting "e-mailing to grandma" and the direct digital home copying beloved by the consumer. Stir in the analog hole, the likelihood that any proposed system can ultimately be hacked, doubts as to whether a problem exists at all, and the recent upsurge in consumer purchases of DTV products, and the stage is set for an ever noisier debate.
culater
Lights, Camera, Controls!
The possibility of one DVD spawning countless perfect digital copies is, for the movie industry, the scenario for the ultimate horror show
By Michael Jay Geier
Of all the forms of recorded entertainment, by far the most expensive to produce is the feature film. With costs sometimes exceeding US $100 million, movie studios play a high-stakes game and can't afford to lose revenue to large-scale piracy or even casual copying of movies among friends. The biggest fear is that consumers will not only copy DVDs, but also share them on the Internet.
For most of the history of the motion picture industry, piracy wasn't an issue; few had the means to view films outside a movie theater. That all changed with the 1976 introduction of home video recording. After a long legal battle between content owners and Sony Corp. (Tokyo), which had introduced its Betamax videocassette recorder (VCR), consumers had the right as well as the means to record copyrighted material on magnetic tape and use it in any way they saw fit—as long as that use wasn't itself a copyright infringement, like making copies for sale or passing them around to friends [see "Extreme Lawsuits"].
But the VCR is an analog medium, recording signals by means of an electrical undulating, or analog, signal, that corresponds to the original, incoming signal. This fact imposed inherent limits on copying: copies were never as good as the originals, and quality degraded through multiple copy generations.
Still, the movie industry perceived any copying as a threat and looked for a way to protect the video signal emanating from the VCR. The means was at hand: video signals contain lots of unseen information required for display, such as sync, blanking, and color reference signals. These unseen components can be manipulated to prevent copying with little disturbance to normal TV playback.
An effective method of analog video signal protection that is used on nearly all video home system (VHS) movie releases to this day was developed by Macrovision Corp. (Santa Clara, Calif.). Various small companies released low-cost "Macrovision stoppers," but they never caught on with the general public. The U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 makes such devices illegal, but they can still be easily obtained.
Then came DVD
The DVD was introduced to the U.S. market in 1997, some 20 years after the Betamax. In two years, it became the most quickly accepted consumer electronics product in history. Storing movies in digital form, DVDs offer vastly superior picture quality compared to tape, and theater-quality sound. Like CDs, they potentially allow unlimited copying with no degradation from one generation to the next.
Movie studios feared DVDs could destroy their business and resisted releasing movies in the new format, stalling the introduction for over a year while the technology was altered to protect the content. The encryption system adopted to prevent copying was the content scramble system (CSS). With CSS in place, home copying of DVDs was curtailed, but in October 1999 the DVD world changed dramatically. A 16-year-old Norwegian programmer, Jon Johanssen, created a software utility he called DeCSS, which broke the CSS scrambling and allowed the reading of encrypted DVDs.
When Johanssen posted the DeCSS code on the Internet, the movie industry reeled. CSS, the linchpin behind DVD security, could now be unlocked by
virtually anyone. The legal battle that followed hinged on the controversial stipulation in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act that any method created to circumvent a publisher's copyright control technology was illegal. The case was decided in the studios' favor. With that decision, all links to the DeCSS code were forced off the Internet, and the CSS system continues to curtail casual home copying.
Nonetheless, DeCSS is still around, and though it requires some technical expertise to apply, the studios are not happy about it. Adding to their concerns is the proliferation of DVD-recordable drives in desktop and even laptop computers, and the new stand-alone (non-computer) DVD recorders already on the market and likely to become quite popular in the next year or two.
Watermarking fingerprints
So several approaches beyond CSS for preventing the copying of $30 DVDs to $1 blank discs are being considered. Some of these mechanisms block copies from being made in the first place, others stop the playback of copies after the fact.
As with copying from a VCR, the DVD's signal can be transferred to a blank DVD, VHS tape, or computer hard drive via the analog outputs going from the DVD player to the television set, but with much less degradation than that seen with analog videotape. Macrovision's technology will stop such copying, but is not hard to circumvent.
The most viable proposal for thwarting analog copying is watermarking, in which an invisible "fingerprint" of digital data is encoded into each of the movie frames. The watermark remains machine-detectable after analog copying. When a recording device designed to support this form of copy protection detects the watermark, it may refuse to record the content. And, if such watermarked content is recorded onto a blank disc by a rogue recorder, future players, which will look for watermarks, could still recognize that the disc is a recordable type rather than a pressed DVD, and refuse to play it.
As an added benefit, home movies transferred from a camcorder would be unaffected. But films captured by a camcorder in movie theaters would be stopped cold, thanks to the watermarks in the images picked up by the camcorder. (Though producing inferior images, such copying is a major source of pirated movies.)
Watermarking, which can prevent both analog and digital copying, involves tradeoffs affecting the visibility of the watermark, its ability to withstand attack, and cost of implementation. But it works, and the copy protection technical working group has, after six years, narrowed the list of viable systems to two [see "Behind the Scenes"]. Such content already exists (the BBC has watermarked some of its shows and movies for quite a while), but current recorders, players, and computer DVD drives do not look for watermarks. Once a standard is implemented, new DVD players will be able to control the playback of watermarked content.
But what's to stop a true pirate from pressing thousands of nonrecordable DVDs, making bit-by-bit copies? To block a pressed bit-copy from playing, the player must tell the difference between authorized and unauthorized discs. So authorized DVDs must include some feature nearly impossible for pirates to duplicate.
In the groove
Royal Philips Electronics NV (Amsterdam, the Netherlands) is promoting "disc wobble" (also called wobble groove) technology as a solution. This technique encodes hidden protection data onto the lead-in groove along the inner edge of a DVD in a difficult-to-duplicate manner. Normally, a DVD's grooves form a smooth spiral, with the data encoded as reflective and absorptive spots along the path. Disc wobble reshapes the groove by wiggling the path back and forth ever so slightly in a pattern that conveys the ons and offs of digital data.
The wobble is too fast for the laser pickup head to physically follow, but the error signals that keep the head's lens on track move in step with the wobble. This allows the protection data to be read by an appropriately equipped player, entirely separate from the normal movie data recorded in the track. If a decryption or authentication key is encoded in the wobble, devices that use this technology will play only wobbled discs. Used in conjunction with watermarking, disc wobble could ensure that watermarked content would be played only from wobbled—that is, authentic—DVDs. And because of the sophisticated tools needed to manufacture such discs, pirating wobbled discs would be next to impossible, at least for now.
Will such technologies stop DVD copying so that movies cannot be as easily traded as digital music files? Protection measures can, and probably will, be quite effective once today's DVD players are replaced with a new generation of machines that respects these proposed forms of copy protection. Today's DVD players will become obsolete if and when these new measures are encoded on all DVDs.
culater
The Copyright Wars
A new world of digital entertainment beckons, but industry clashes impede progress
By Tekla S. Perry
When you opened your Web browser this morning, the start page listed the Oscar winners. Bowling for Columbine and The Chubb Chubbs had never made it to your local Cineplex, and you feel like you're missing out.
Or maybe you just started reading the hot new novel Gilligan's Wake and decided that to truly appreciate the author's artistry, you ought to review a few episodes of the classic 1960s television show on which the novel is based.
Whatever it is that has captured your attention, you want it now. You want to do a quick Internet search, type in your credit card number, and download the gigabytes you crave.
Well, you probably can't, at least not easily, and probably not legally. Much of the technology is here, but the utopian future—digital entertainment at your fingertips—risks being stalled by the lack of consensus on digital copyright control. Today there is no universally compatible, standard means of ensuring that the people who bring you creative works—the artists, the musicians, the studio owners, the distributors—get their fair share of your money every time you obtain a piece of their work. There isn't even agreement as to how many times you should pay for "content": once per viewing (or listening), once per person, once per household, or once for every single device in the household.
Meanwhile, the technology needed to deliver that content—those movies, audio tracks, and TV shows—is taking off. Digital compression works today and gets better all the time. Recordable DVD drives are on the market, and the new blue-laser discs, the first of which were introduced in Japan last month, are each able to hold an entire high-definition feature film. Broadband connections, which now take hours and hours to pump a feature film in low resolution to your home computer, are getting faster as well.
Obviously, the widespread dissemination of these technical advances that could deliver a boost to both the consumer electronics and communications industries is being held back by the inherently different goals of the product and the content creators. The consumer electronics industry wants abundant content to be readily and cheaply available to drive the sale of the new products needed to download, record, and play it. The entertainment people deservedly want remuneration for the use of their content—but what uses are reasonable to charge for is a debatable matter.
The right to fair use
This last point of contention arises out of an established legal concept called fair use. It refers to your right to copy copyrighted material for certain purposes without permission from the copyright holder.
The Sony Betamax case in 1984 established in the United States a fair use right to time-shift a television show, that is, record it to watch at a later time. That right has been extended, with little controversy, to a right to space-shift—for example, to make a copy of a favorite CD for listening to in the car, and to make a reasonable number of backup copies, in case, for example, your child puts your rare, out-of-print disc in the toaster. Not allowed under this heading is copying for commercial purposes—you may not, for example, copy a season's worth of "The Sopranos" to your TiVo recorder and then charge your friends and neighbors to attend a viewing marathon.
In the analog era, preventing copying beyond fair use was basically left to the judicial system. That meant, in effect, that major violators (those who made and sold masses of copies) were prosecuted, and minor violators, such as those who made a copy of a CD for a friend (you know who you are), were left alone.
But the entertainment industry thinks this judicial control is not enough in the digital age. One reason is its dread that copying will spread uncontrollably. Two factors limited the proliferation of analog copies—they had to be distributed on physical media, and the tape hiss and other noise introduced by the copying meant that none was ever as good as the original. (Copies of copies are close to unbearable.) Digital copying has no such impediments. A digital copy of a digital TV show is as good as the broadcast and can be distributed to your entire e-mail list with the stroke of a key. Said Scott Dinsdale, executive vice president for digital strategy of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), speaking at the Consumer Electronics Association's 2002 Fall Conference in San Francisco: "The ability to share programming was one thing when it was limited to two to three friends, but now it's a million friends."
Degrees of control
From Hollywood's point of view, the best way to prevent copying from getting out of control is to prevent copying at all. "What we really want to do is not to stop copying, simply to stop redistributing. But the technology available doesn't distinguish between the two," said Larry Kenswil, president of the eLabs division of Universal Music Group (Universal City, Calif.), speaking at the January Consumer Electronics Show (Las Vegas, Nev.).
Meanwhile, the consumer electronics industry, while working with the entertainment industry on copy protection technologies, is not willing to make copying outright impossible. Without the freedom to copy music from CDs to digital jukeboxes and portable players, for instance, entire categories of products, like MP3 players and hard-disk recorders, would disappear. People just aren't going to pay for the same album three or more times—once to use in their car CD player, again to use in their home audio jukebox, and once again to listen to while jogging.
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"You can't be convicted of breaking into your own house"JOE KRAUS, cofounder, DigitalConsumer.org
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At the same time, the electronics industry is not going to put out technology for totally unrestrained digital copying, in case the content owners retaliate. So the introduction of new products, such as portable TV players that download content from home video recorders into pocket-sized devices, is reportedly being delayed. The fear is that systems will never even be imagined because of the copy control constraint. Consider the broadcast flag, a technology intended to prevent unauthorized retransmission of digital TV broadcasts by inserting a coded signal into programs (though the signal may also end up preventing copying). Had some form of it existed 30 years ago for analog products, the consumer VCR, sales of which were worth over US $2 billion annually in the late 1990s, might never have reached the market, says Joe Kraus, cofounder of DigitalConsumer.org (Palo Alto, Calif.).
Consumer groups like Kraus's are up in arms concerned about losing existing fair-use rights. The erosion has begun. First to go was the ability to make a backup—you can do so with CDs, but not readily (or legally) with video DVDs. To cite a typical situation, Lisa Nee, a mother of three in Mamaroneck, N.Y., has purchased the 2001 movie Shrek three times in the past year because discs in her hectic house get stepped on, buried in the toy box, and occasionally thrown, and the scratches they acquire make the movies stick or stutter.
Had she wanted, with a little time and effort, she could have copied the protected DVD to her computer hard drive—but not legally. Under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998, you can be prosecuted simply for breaking copy protection, regardless of your use of the material.
Less daunted, Washington Post reporter Rob Pegoraro, during a Consumer Electronics Show panel, noted that he had copied a DVD to his notebook computer's hard drive using DeCSS (a program widely available on the Internet for decrypting code in the DVD content scramble system). He did it so that he could watch the movie on an airplane unburdened by the extra weight and power drain of his computer's DVD player—and violated the letter of the law, though not the standard of fair use.
Kraus thinks this is crazy. "You can't be convicted of breaking into your own house," he says, and since the reporter owned the DVD, it was, in effect, his house. Kraus's organization is targeting the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act for repeal, on the grounds that the act allows the copyright holders to make law, for if they decide something shouldn't be copied, and put a copy control in place, it becomes illegal to break that control and copy. "Should a copyright holder have that much power?" he asks.
While entertainment, consumer electronics, and consumer groups do battle, the situation is fast becoming quicksand, in which we're all at risk of bogging down. I'm not trying to raise a couple of criminals, but a few months ago my children were entertained at a friend's home by a motion picture shown in the home theater, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. The movie had been downloaded a few weeks earlier from the Internet, at a tolerable quality, shortly after it had started playing in local theaters.
You, too, if you attended a wedding in northern California recently, could be a lawbreaker. A January article on wedding planning in the San Francisco Chronicle's Sunday magazine reported that today's most popular wedding favor is a collection of the happy couple's favorite songs—burned onto a CD, or hundreds of CDs, certainly without permission of the copyright holders.
The situation is truly a mess, and resolution will not be quick or clean. In this special report from the copy protection battleground, IEEE Spectrum visited the war on its many fronts, from the legal and the legislative to the many technical skirmishes now being fought.
So wave your broadcast flag, load your DVD burner, or pack up the CDs you filled with MP3 tracks and send them with a letter of apology to the MPAA or the Recording Industry Association of America. It is time to pick a side; the fight for the future is now.
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Acknowledgments
IEEE Spectrum editors wish to thank the following reviewers for sharing their expertise for this report: Whitney Broussard, partner, Selverne, Mandelbaum & Mintz; Rob Koenen, vice president, Intertrust Technologies Corp.; and David Ostfeld, partner, Chamberlain, Hrdlicka, White, Williams & Martin.
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ARTWORK: TAVIS COBURN
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To Probe Further
On the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, see the Web at http://www.loc.gov/copyright/legislation/dmca.pdf and http://www.educause.edu/issues/dmca.html.
Revisit the Betamax case at http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/B/htmlB/betamaxcase/betamaxcase.htm.
For a comprehensive list of links to material on technical and legal issues related to digital rights management systems, go to http://www.law.berkeley.edu/institutes/bclt/drm/resources.html.
The Campaign for Digital Rights, an on-line consumer group concerned with fair use of digital media, is at http://ukcdr.org/issues/cd/. The Electronic Frontier Foundation is also involved in protecting consumer rights; see http://www.eff.org.
The Recording Industry Association of America, at http://www.riaa.com, acts as a clearinghouse for information on piracy.
Copy copy-protected CDs using http://www.fatchucks.com/z3.cd.faq.html (it lists all known such CDs). Bypass SafeAudio using http://www.cdfreaks.com/document.php3?Doc=48&Page=2.
Legislation - "The Congressional Corral"
Information on the Audio Home Recording Act of 1992 is available at http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/ch10.html.
More about proposed legislation affecting consumers' fair use rights, including the BALANCE (Benefit Authors without Limiting Advancement or Net Consumer Expectations) Act of 2003, the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Consumer Protection Act, and the Digital Media Consumers' Rights Act, appears at http://thomas.loc.gov.
Europe - "Europe's Regulatory Gridlock"
Versions of the European Union Copyright Directive, in a variety of languages, and some precursor documents are at Eurorights.org; see http://www.eurorights.org/eudmca/.
A UK consumer advocacy group, the Campaign for Digital Rights, has an annotated version of the directive at http://ukcdr.org/issues/eucd/eucd.html.
A good site generally for European copyright issues is the European Community's intellectual property page at http://www.europa.eu.int/comm/internal_market/en/intprop/docs/.
Legal - "Extreme Lawsuits"
For insight into copyright law, see "The Digital Dilemma: Intellectual Property in the Information Age," a 2000 report exploring in detail the copyright issues raised by digital content published by the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board, National Research Council.
To receive BNA's Internet Law News, a free daily e-mail update of legal developments related to digital computer networks, compiled by Michael Geist of the University of Ottawa Law School, go to http://ecommercecenter.bna.com.
CDs - "For Your Ears Only"
Apple's notes on methods for ejecting protected CDs that get stuck in Mac drives can be found at http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106882.
Macrovision Corp.'s Web site address is http://www.macrovision.com.
Cactus Data Shield's patent, No. 6208598, is on view at the U.S. Patent library site: http://www.uspto.gov/patft/index.html.
Spoofs - "Digital Decoys"
KaZaA, one of the leaders in peer-to-peer client software, is on the Web at http://www.kazaa.com.
Details about the company that creates MP3 spoofs for the recording industry are at http://www.overpeer.com.
DVDs - "Lights, Cameras, Controls!"
For information about DeCSS, the DVD decoding methodology, see http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/DeCSS/ and http://www.opendvd.org/.
General information on many aspects of DVD technology appears at http://www.dvddemystified.com/dvdfaq.html#4.8.
For more details about Philips' disc wobble, or "wobbled groove," technology, see http://www.semiconductors.philips.com/news/publications/content/file_1027.html.
Broadcast: - "Fort TV"
To find out more about the efforts of the Home Recording Rights Coalition, look at http://www.hrrc.org.
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For Your Ears Only
Retrofitting a long-established technology with copy controls is hard, but it can be done
by Michael Jay Geier
That new CD by the Seedless Tomatoes really rocks! You bought it, and you're ready to "rip" it into an MP3 audio file for your pocket-sized MP3 player and maybe burn a copy for the car's CD changer, too. Hey, go ahead, it's yours, right? Well, music lover, enjoy that unrestricted freedom while you can. Ripping CDs could become impossible—perhaps illegal, as well.
When CDs were first marketed in the mid-1980s, consumer digital recording of any kind was far enough in the future that the implications of unprotected content were barely considered. No one had heard of the Internet.
"Burn, baby, burn"
But after recordable CDs hit the market in 1991, momentum on copying the discs began to build. Copies of original CDs were perfect and could themselves be copied ad infinitum. When blank disc prices dropped, people began copying CDs for their friends, just as they had with cassettes.
Adding to the ease with which copied discs could be exchanged was the rise of the Internet and the increasing availability of unlimited access to it. That access, coupled with the widespread use of MP3 audio-compression technology, enabled the swapping of music files on a scale never before envisioned. (MP3 technology is based on layer 3 of the MPEG-1 standard, which describes the sound channels of digital video transmission.)
Recording companies began looking for ways to put the genie of infinitely copyable digital music files back into the bottle.
One of the factors the companies focused on first was the original standard that defined the CD audio format in 1980, known as Red Book. Created by Sony Corp. (Tokyo) and Royal Philips Electronics NV (Amsterdam, the Netherlands), Red Book has only one provision that allows for copy protection, the serial copy management system. This consists of a few copy-generation control bits slipped into the digital stream. Intended to prevent digital audio tape (DAT) recorders from making copies of copies, it has no effect on PCs.
Since the Red Book standard is well entrenched, with virtually all audio players built to its specifications, little room is left to implement additional copy protection of CDs. Nonetheless, the recording industry is tinkering with the underpinnings of the CD format itself while trying to disturb normal playback on CD players as little as possible.
All the protection systems used today exploit several key differences between audio players and the CD-ROM drives of computers. The goal is to prevent the unrestricted reading of audio data to a PC. Audio players, for instance, interpolate over data-read errors, such as those caused by scratches, making it possible for copy protection schemes to introduce correctable errors that shouldn't be audible but confuse CD-ROM drives. Such drives do not interpolate over errors; their primary use, storing computer files and applications, requires essentially perfect recovery of recorded data. When reading audio discs, they extract the data, byte by byte, even if it's in error. If lots of errors accrue, the result is a badly flawed, unlistenable music file—exactly what the record labels want if a CD has been copied.
Adding deliberate errors to the CD master would seem to be a perfect solution since it can be done within the Red Book framework. But if enough errors are introduced to ruin CD-ROM-drive ripping, the interpolation may become audible on CD players. In fact, if a CD bears enough bad data, the player may mute, skip, or even stop. So a balance must be struck between playability and protection.
A protection device now being used on nearly 60 million discs already sold is Cactus Data Shield, produced by Midbar Tech (Tel Aviv, Israel, now a subsidiary of Macrovision Corp., Santa Clara, Calif.). To obstruct ripping, Cactus alters the CD's table of contents, which points the player to the individual tracks, in ways especially difficult for CD-ROM drives to resolve.
Cactus also adds a data "session," an extra track that only CD-ROM drives will find. When you try to play the CD on a computer's drive, the alterations to the table of contents make software players like Windows Media Player unable to locate the first audio track, causing the PC to load a proprietary player contained in the data session. That player will play the audio at a greatly reduced bit rate, and will not let you copy it.
Other protection schemes, like Macrovision's SafeAudio, alter the Reed-Solomon error-correcting codes normally used to ensure accurate data recovery. The alterations cause most CD-ROM drives to reject the related pieces of data. Playability is again at issue because CD players vary widely in their ability to accept apparently bad data. Some will play a flawed CD just fine, some will mute during extended interpolation attempts, and some will give up and quit.
What's more, adding errors may shorten the life of a CD because it reduces the capacity of players to interpolate over errors from accumulated dirt and scratches. SafeAudio-encoded CDs have also been known to lock up computers and even require sending Apple Macintoshes, which do not consider these a recognizable format, out for repair to remove a stuck disc.
With Macrovision's recent acquisition of former rival Midbar, though, SafeAudio is being supplanted by Cactus Data Shield. While Cactus also introduces some errors, it flags them as control data, making them a little less likely to do damage because control data can more easily be ignored when playing a CD than can audio bits.
With full compatibility of copy protection schemes and Red Book players always in question, Philips, the co-inventor of the CD standard, has denounced any deliberate deviation from it. The company insists that altered discs not be permitted to carry the official CD logo or be called CDs.
'Twixt rock 'n' roll and a hard place
As both a major consumer electronics maker and a content provider, Sony, which co-established Red Book, also offers the Key2Audio protection system. While promising no changes to the audio bit stream, and thus no audio degradation, Key2Audio relies on a separate data session and some fiddling with the disc's table of contents to confuse PCs.
But early versions of Cactus and Key2Audio have been thwarted by users who obscured the data session, which is near the edge of the disc, simply by scribbling over it with a felt-tip pen. To prevent further manipulation, both Midbar and Sony have new versions of their products that make the line between the data and audio sessions visually indistinguishable, so that the data session cannot be easily marked.
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"Publishers have had a lot of success at getting copy controls into new standards" —SETH SCHOEN, staff technologist, Electronic Frontier Foundation
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A new entrant into the fray is Microsoft Corp. (Redmond, Wash.) with its new Second Session technology. This adds an extra data session containing Windows Media Player files and a set of rules for their use. Some record companies are considering including it on CD releases later this year.
Still, given the open nature of Red Book's digital audio, and the widespread file swapping on the Internet, it's unlikely that today's music can be protected. It takes only one person with a digital CD player-to-PC connection to rip songs and spread them around. And, of course, all these protection methods address only digital data streams. A good analog transfer, easily made by connecting a CD player's audio outputs to a computer sound card's audio inputs, sounds indistinguishable from the original. It creates a swappable file that neatly bypasses all the schemes.
Some digital copying is still possible, but, as with the analog method, only at the actual, real-time playback speed of the CD. As Eyal Shavit, Macrovision's senior director, technology strategy, explains: "If you take a Cactus CD, and you have a Sony/Philips digital interface format output, you will be able to get the content that way. There is a way to prevent such copying, but right now it is not a major concern."
In time, new standards, like DVD-Audio and Super-Audio CD, both of which offer superior sound quality and leave the Red Book format behind, will contain robust copy protection, putting the issue to rest. Says Seth Schoen, staff technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco: "Publishers have had a lot of success at getting copy controls into new standards. They're not having very much success retrofitting copy controls into existing standards."
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Music swappers willing to buy songs too - survey
Wednesday May 7, 7:56 pm ET
By Sue Zeidler
LOS ANGELES, May 7 (Reuters) - Offering some insight to the recording industry as it struggles to boost sales online, a survey released on Wednesday found that Web surfers who download music from song-swap sites are more likely to buy music online, as well as offline at retailers.
The research put rap music as the No. 1 genre purchased by online fans, which may help record companies gain a better understanding of who their online customers are.
The survey was based on 36,000 Internet users and released by Web tracker Nielsen//NetRatings, a unit of NetRatings Inc (NasdaqNM:NTRT - News).
It showed that nearly 31 million active Internet users aged 18 or older -- representing 22 percent of the active Internet universe -- downloaded music in the past 30 days, and 71 percent bought music in the past three months.
Nielsen//NetRatings said the research indicated that in the past three months, online music enthusiasts were 111 percent more likely to buy rap music than average Internet users.
Nielsen//NetRatings classified online music enthusiasts as users who had downloaded music in the past 30 days, whereas the average Internet users are people logging onto the Internet for surfing and other purposes.
Dance and club music ranked No. 2, with downloaders 106 percent more likely to have purchased dance and club music than the average Internet users during the last three months and 77 percent more likely to buy alternative rock.
R&B, soul music and rock rounded out the top five.
Greg Bloom, senior Internet analyst at Nielsen//NetRatings, said that understanding the preferences of online music enthusiasts may help recording executives in their attempts to successfully woo fans from the free swap, or peer-to-peer services, which let people get songs without authorization.
The major record labels, including AOL Time Warner Inc. (NYSE:AOL - News), EMI Group Plc (London:EMI.L - News), Bertelsmann AG (BERT.UL), Vivendi Universal's (Paris:EAUG.PA - News; NYSE:V - News) Universal Music and Sony Corp. (Tokyo:6758.T - News), blame the popularity of such free services as Kazaa and Morpheus for sharp declines in CD sales.
But other industry watchers argue that declining sales are the result of fewer hit albums being released and a weak economy.
"The de facto standard may be a few years away, but understanding the genres of music that sell well online and offline will be crucial to generating revenue along the way," Bloom said.
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The dollar store
Maury Wright, Editor-in-Chief -- 5/7/2003
CommVerge
We've followed the roller-coaster-like path of compressed digital music since issue one of CommVerge (see " Listen up," January 2000), and we've often lauded music's potential for driving the converged-network trend. Indeed, music enthusiasts have consumed bandwidth and storage space even though the music industry has insisted on standing by and forfeiting potential profits.
In recent months, the industry has grudgingly moved forward with the advent of services like Pressplay. But until Apple rolled out its iTunes Music Store this past week, nobody had hit on the right business model. As we've argued all along: Get the model right--and a buck per song nails it--and the music industry can start making money rather than paying lawyers.
I'm not saying Apple's offering is perfect. I've read some of the complaints from the minority of people who hate the service. But Apple did get a lot of things right, and the things the company missed on are not all its fault. Anyway, I'd submit that the sale of 1 million songs in the first week proves that many consumers like the service.
I'll admit up front that I haven't used the iTunes Store--I don't own a Mac. But I have a friend who has, so I do have near-firsthand knowledge.
In addition to a great pricing model and the absence of a monthly fee, the Apple service allows customers far more flexibility than existing services. First and foremost, the music that you purchase doesn't expire. You can burn purchased music onto CDs, play the music on iPods, or enjoy it via as many as three networked Macs. I've read flame-mail that considers this too limiting, but it's very open relative to how the music industry has controlled content thus far. It's the right step toward a transition to paid music services, which in turn is a necessary cog in the transition to economic health.
The flamers also lament the apparent fact that in the event of a computer catastrophe, you have to pay again for any music you lose. My response would be that you have to buy a new CD if you break your old one as well. And who knows, if downloadable tunes catch on, maybe the restriction will be relaxed.
Despite the initial success of the iTunes Store, both short- and long-term problems confront both Apple's effort and other such services.
I've consistently heard complaints from iTunes users about missing songs. Understand that I'm not talking about artists that are not yet included on the service (though that is also a problem). I'm talking about finding your favorite album but discovering that your favorite track from that album is missing. This will be a deal-breaker for many music fans, and it brings us back to the failings of the music industry.
The royalty/content-ownership trail in music simply must be fixed. For a given song on a CD, as many as a dozen people might have their hand out looking for royalty dollars, and the owner of each hand must agree to issues such as whether users can download the song.
This won't do. We can't have the lyricist, composer, singer, producer, and others all having a say as to whether a particular track comes to a service like Apple's store. The consumer won't accept the situation where one track is downloadable and the next isn't. Content owners need to put uniform licensing at the top of their to-do list.
I also fear that those of us in the Windows majority won't get access to iTunes anytime soon. I realize that this is good for Apple, but it's bad for the overall business.
The truth is that the open Windows platform makes the music industry's collective heart miss a beat. And it's not just Windows PCs that are the problem. The plethora of MP3 players that are already in users' hands have no DRM (digital rights management) capabilities.
I suspect that iTunes will come to Windows users, but only to those who buy a Windows-enabled iPod or another portable player that supports the same AAC audio codec and DRM scheme. The powers-that-be in music will not stomach a service that could result in downloadable tunes being posted for widespread sharing. (Never mind that CDs themselves still permit no-holds-barred copying and that services such as KaZaA provide a forum for free exchange; the industry is trying to plug those leaks as well.)
I'd certainly prefer to think that the iTunes service is just the beginning of a proactive effort by the music industry to drive compressed digital music as a product. Digital music still has a chance to positively affect network-bandwidth demand, storage systems, broadband demand, and many other aspects of the converged-network food chain. What's more, any uptick in network usage trickles down to boost chip and subsystem sales.
We need applications like digital music to help restart industry growth and ultimately drive economic recovery. With the participation of the major content owners including BMG, EMI, Sony Music Entertainment, Universal, and Warner, Apple's Music Store is certainly a step in the right direction. Now if we could just get those companies to enforce uniform licensing for content.
http://www.e-insite.net/commvergemag/index.asp?layout=article&articleid=CA297339&pubdate=5%2...
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Most Innovative Solutions Awards
May/June 2003
By John Kelly
We have chosen the top 30 submissions for STM's Most Innovative Solutions Awards. You will read more about each solution in the
July/August edition of STM. Ten customers will present their solutions at SpeechTEK Fall ‘03. Congratulations to all of the winners!
*Note that the first company in each listing is the customer and the second is the vendor.
1. ABN AMRO, NetByTel and SpeechWorks - ABN AMRO implemented a packaged loan capture application.
2. Apple Ophthalmic, ZyDoc - SpeechDoc integrates transcription services, patient history records and electronic data capture
using speech, mouse or keyboard.
3. AT&T Natural Voices, AT&T Labs - A natural-language, spoken-dialog application was deployed for customers to obtain
information and services.
4. Bank of NY, Phonetic Systems - The offering supports dynamic directory updates, call completion and location management for
all calls.
5. BBC Television Centre, Telephonetics -Enables BBC employees to make calls by saying the name of the person they want to
reach.
6. Bell Canada, IBM and Nuance - Bell Canada has implemented a voice recognition persona by the name of Emily to the
310-BELL(2335) Voice Portal.
7. Blackfoot Telecommunications Group, Telelogue - The Voice Directory Application (VDA) provides 411 services to Blackfoot's
customers, allowing callers to be automatically connected to the requested telephone number.
8. Cellcom, NSC - The speech-driven corporate address book holds employee names and telephone numbers.
9. Chrysler Group, Clarity and Peiker - Uconnect, Chrysler Group's in-vehicle, hands-free, voice-activated communications system,
is offered as a Mopar dealer-installed option in most of the 2003 model year vehicles.
10. CIBC, SpeechWorks - CIBC introduced Audio Access Automated Banking Machines (ABMs) as part of plan to expand
barrier-free access and upgrade ABM service across Canada.
11. Daimler Chrysler, Temic - The speech-controlled navigation solution enables the entire destination to be entered by using
speech.
12. Davey Tree, Vocalocity - This system allows field service crews to call into an automated system to record their daily activities.
13. DePaul University -Translates spoken English into correct ASL syntax, semantics and vocabulary for the hearing impaired.
14. Domino's Pizza, Jacent Technologies - The solution, OrderStream, is a packaged, voice-ordering system for automating takeout
and delivery operations.
15. DYMO, Tell-Eureka - Callers follow step-by-step troubleshooting instructions from the automated LevelOne system, freeing live
agents for more complex problems.
16. e.Digital Corp, IBM and Lucent/BellLabs - The MXP-100 is a handheld MP3 music player/voice-recorder which utilizes VoicNav.
17. Ford, SpeechWorks - The Ford Model U features conversational speech technologies in a small footprint, specifically designed
for automobiles and mobile devices.
18. Lloyds TSB, SRC - The hosted speech service handles three types of employee share schemes, enabling callers to register,
choose investment options and select how dividends are paid.
19. Mashreqbank, Mindscape - The service offers Toll-Free Voice Recognition Banking in both English and Arabic.
20. Microsoft, Fonix - Fonix VoiceDial allows the user to push one button on a Pocket PC Phone Edition device and use speech to
dial any phone number or contact.
21. Property24, Intelleca Voice & Mobile Limited - Named Property24 Voice, this service brings the advantages of an Internet home
search to customers using a landline or cell phone in South Africa.
22. Ramapo Radiology Associates, ScanSoft - The speech software allows radiologists to automatically transcribe their diagnosis of
X-Rays.
23. Rogers AT&T, Nuance - Rogers AT&T's speech-enabled customer-care application handles 90% of all calls, saving the company
$3-5M in 2002.
24. Samsung Telecom USA, Voice Signal - The A500 offers speaker-independent digit dialing allows any phone number to be dialed
by speaking the number.
25. Sears, Nuance and Walsh Media - This system allows the customer to schedule an appointment and identify the basic problem
for more efficient repairs.
26. Singpost, SpeechWorks - SingPost deployed a speech-enabled, automated system that offers the public access to over
122,000 postal codes.
27. Thrifty, SpeechWorks - Thrifty installed a speech-activated reservation line for rate-check with the ability to transfer reservation
callers to live agents with intelligent screen pop.
28. Ticketmaster, Edify - The voice self-service applications will be used by Ticketmaster call center agents to automate the
company's front-end call director process.
29. Time Customer Service (TCS), NetByTel - TCS has deployed an automated module that allows callers to speak their new name
and/or address information.
30. UT Southwestern Telecom, SpeechWorks - UT Southwestern uses a customized SpeechSite system which assists university
operators in handling routine requests.
I would also like to welcome to our Editorial Advisory Board Dr. William Byrne and Dr. Caroline Henton. Dr. Byrne is the manager of
design and development, Voice Center, SAP Labs and an assistant consulting professor at Stanford University. Dr. Henton is the
CTO of Talknowledgy. http://www.speechtechmag.com/issues/8_3/cover/2004-1.html
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Wireless Renaissance
Transforming the wireless world with 'Sip and Slurp' devices
March/April 2003
by Michael Grebb
Illustration by Marc Burckhardt
A new wireless world awaits consumers. No longer will consumer electronics products have to be tethered to wires to connect them to the Internet, other devices and the various other features that consumers love. These days, consumers can buy CE products, such as personal digital assistants (PDAs) with infrared ports, that have made wired connections irrelevant.
Device makers increasingly are including wireless add-ons such as PCMI slots for wireless Ethernet connections. "We're getting ready for the proliferation of all kinds of wacky things," says David Chen, a partner at OVP Venture Partners, a venture capital firm with offices in Portland, Ore., and Seattle. "We have opened up the world to computer and CE products being wireless."
Of course, the wireless renaissance still is a work in progress. So far, wireless networks have been slow and clunky. Others use unlicensed spectrum bands historically limited in their power and marred by interference. But wireless networks are improving, getting faster and changing the kinds of features consumers expect to find in common CE devices.
Manufacturers may someday feel compelled to include broadband wireless capabilities in everything from stereo equipment to videogame consoles to PDAs. And it may happen sooner than they think. "We're getting ready to see the Akihabara-ization of wireless," Chen says, citing the district in Japan where CE firms test-market the latest gadgets and futuristic products.
Marketing Efforts
Indeed, when it comes to CE devices, the United States may be on the cusp of a shift in consumer attitudes. Digital subscriber lines (DSL) and cable modems have been rolling out for years. In September 2002, the National Cable Television Association announced that there now are 10 million cable modem users in the United States. However, broadband wireless networks have lagged as industries haggle over standards and debate business strategies. In addition, efforts to find suitable 3G spectrum have been hung up in court battles and governmental wrangling (see sidebar).
One thing remains clear: More robust wireless networks are needed before sending large data or image files can become a way of life. The only question is when and whether consumers will truly bite. "Pretty soon, we're going to be able to do anything," notes Stephen Jacobs, a professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology. "The question is, what do consumers want? Right now, it's pretty much throw it against the wall and see what sticks."
Of course, the CE industry is hardly a stranger to the realities of marketing new products. Consumers are seldom specific in saying exactly what they want, and they tend to change their minds. But the wireless industry has started to make the future of CE products at least slightly clearer by launching a precursor to 3G (known euphemistically as 2.5G) in various markets around the country. Sprint PCS's "PCS Vision" service touts data rates rivaling some DSL and cable-modem connections—or at least optimally fast dial-up speeds.
In September, Verizon Wireless launched its "Get It Now" campaign, in which customers can download videogames, pictures and other robust content to next-generation handsets. And AT&T Wireless recently launched its "mMode" service, which offers similarly robust content.
It's too early to tell whether the 2.5G marketing campaigns are resonating with consumers, but carriers say they are encouraged by early results. For example, AT&T Wireless spokesman Rich Blasi says that about 40 percent of customers who sign up for mMode also sign up for optional data services. "There are a lot more cool things people can do now," he says. "The gaming experience is becoming better… Obviously, you have a lot more data to play with." He says that average mMode speeds are about 40–50 kilobits per second (kbps) but that new technologies, such as those using the EDGE (enhanced data for global evolution) standard, will enable speeds up to 150 kbps.
To be sure, the advertising and media-driven buzz have prompted higher sales of new handsets with color screens and other features. Consider this: Although 2001 was the first year in which wireless handset sales declined, Nokia reported a fourth-quarter net profit of $1.1 billion for 2002, more than double its 2001 result. Nokia said it sold 46 million mobile phones in the fourth quarter, giving it a 39 percent market share. But the company warned that its first quarter sales for 2003 could be lower than a year ago. Motorola, meanwhile, said it expects industry-wide mobile phone sales to reach 430 million to 440 million in 2003 and also forecast an industry-wide 10 percent rise in semiconductor sales.
To add to the speculation, Intel plans to add communications capabilities to its 90-nanometer manufacturing process, which should lead to single-chip, handheld devices that can process signals from any number of wireless networks, as well as spur smaller and cheaper infrastructure equipment.
Making Money Wirelessly
Content providers already are salivating, hoping that as these new technologies flood the marketplace, consumers will come to expect such features. The Walt Disney Co. and Disney-owned cable network ESPN plan to provide ringtones with animated graphics, animated screen savers and videogames for Sprint's PCS Vision service. Consumers will pay $1 to $2 per ringtone animation and $3 to $4 per videogame. Disney also has partnered with AT&T Wireless to provide three download packages, with names like "Disney's Fun for Families"—all designed to get consumers excited about robust wireless features.
Of course, family fun isn't the only pastime that will drive sales of CE devices with broadband wireless features. Nick Hunn, managing director of TDK Systems says that while voice will remain the killer application of the wireless industry, the "three Gs"—girls, gambling and gaming—likely will be the main broadband applications toward which consumers gravitate. In some cases, he says, wireless carriers may even face moral and liability issues as the universe of content available through a wireless device expands.
Hunn says, people also could turn devices into "mobile gambling units," allowing someone in a state where gambling is illegal to access gambling sites hosted from servers in other states or countries.
Blasi says that AT&T Wireless' probably would avoid offering controversial services, such as gambling or pornography, but he acknowledges that consumers will have the freedom to download data from other sources on the Internet. "We can't stop somebody from surfing the Web and downloading something wirelessly," he notes.
New Business Models
The questions of how consumers will use these devices, how often and where, are open. "It's an uneasy mix between what consumers want to do and what the technology can do," says Chris Gilbert, CEO of IPWireless, a San Bruno, Calif.–based company whose technology hopes to pump speeds of up to nine megabits per second (mbps) over upcoming 3G networks. Such speeds might be superfluous for many mobile wireless applications, but IPWireless is already talking to Microsoft's X-box division about embedding high-speed wireless connectivity in next-generation game boxes.
By 2003, IPWireless hopes the technology will allow X-box gamers to play against others anywhere in the world, regardless of the wireless network being used. In the United States, Gilbert says, the company will use the MMDS (multichannel multipoint distribution service) fixed wireless spectrum, which has broadband capability. "You won't be playing with the guy next door," he says. "You'll be playing with a guy in China."
San Francisco–based Telespree wants to outfit wireless devices with a small line of code, enabling them to jump on and off the Internet seamlessly. "If you have devices that can automatically get to networks, can you sell them differently?" asks Gail Redmond, Telespree's vice president of marketing. For example, she says the maker of a videogame console could buy two million minutes directly from a wireless carrier and then resell them in subscription form to gamers. The result would be getting new devices on wireless networks without the typical setup costs borne by the carrier. "The last hurdle is whether we can think of new business models," she says.
Key to making such models work is tweaking various swaths of spectrum for optimal performance. In fact, many now believe that 3G will evolve into a hybrid of licensed spectrum and unlicensed bands using the Wi-Fi 802.11b protocol. The protocol already is used to create broadband wireless local-area networks (LANs)—also known as "hotspots"—in airports and coffee shops across the country.
Sip and Slurp
Consumers with an 802.11b-enabled laptop or PDA already can dial into a hotspot router and then connect to the Internet. "3G will just be a convergence of 802.11b and 2.5G," says OVP Venture Partners' Chen. "The term is 'sip and slurp.' You have networks that allow you to sip all the time and slurp when you ask them to."
Dave Juitt, chief technology officer and chief security architect of wireless LAN company Bluesocket, says consumers don't care what network they are on, only that it works. So devices will search for available bands automatically, "and the device will be smart enough to know the difference," he says.
Ford Cavallari, senior vice president for the broadband and media practice of Boston-based Adventis, says some PDA devices such as Sharp's "Zaurus," which uses a Linux operating system, already can alternate between 802.11b and 2.5G network usage. "When you have that plugged in and mobile, you can do a lot of interesting things," he says.
Agrees Blasi: "What you will have are Wi-Fi and 3G networks that work together. We see them as complementary. One will not replace the other."
Playing Catch-Up
The United States has gotten off to a late start compared with markets in Europe and Japan, where broadband wireless is either deployed or closer to reality. "The U.S. is going to be much delayed compared to the rest of the world," says Ajay Kumar Grupta, vice president and general manager for the Americas at Hughes Software Systems. "But the key issue is not getting more bandwidth but getting more interoperability."
Otherwise, manufacturers and carriers could risk turning off consumers before they have had a chance to try out new services. Says TDK's Hunn, "The biggest block here is, what is the desire of consumers for these devices and how much will they pay." CE device manufacturers may find out sooner than later.
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ot-Staying Connected at 35,000 Feet
Tech Policy
March/April 2003
Electronic products seem as plentiful as carry-on food on today’s commercial flights. Passengers are likely to be toting one or more portable electronic devices, many with wireless capabilities, onto airplanes configured with in-flight systems that offer new and personalized entertainment, information and communication services.
For years, the use of wireless devices on airplanes has been restricted in the name of safety. Now policy makers and industry must better manage the use of wireless consumer technology products coming onto the airplane.
Wireless Policy
Airline policies restricting the use of portable electronic devices are based on federal law, which generally prohibits such devices aboard commercial aircraft. However, the same law exempts devices that the aircraft operator has determined will not cause interference with the aircraft’s navigation or communication systems.
The main concern: Wireless consumer devices emit radio waves. Today’s laptop computers, PDAs, cell phones, tablet PCs, wireless accessories and electronic games may have one or more wireless technologies built in, such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS or GPRS.
Portable electronic devices without wireless capabilities—such as CD or DVD players—may emit radio signals as a byproduct of their operation, though such devices usually conform to standards governing such emissions. During noncritical phases of flight, airlines generally allow the use of devices that do not emit radio signals intentionally.
Regulatory approaches for electronics that are part of a “closed system”—such as an in-flight entertainment system—are different from those for electronics that are part of an “open system.” In an open system, equipment on the aircraft might eventually connect wirelessly to consumer devices carried onboard.
Electronic systems installed in the aircraft are tested and certified to federal aviation standards and remain in a fixed configuration; on the other hand, portable consumer electronics, especially wireless devices, are rapidly evolving products that conform to various industry and federal standards.
Re-evaluating the Rules
Given the multiplicity of consumer wireless devices and the need for additional research and examination of their use on aircraft, many in the public and private sectors have called for the Radio Technical Commission for Aeronautics (RTCA) to convene a new committee.
The RTCA functions as an advisory committee to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and develops consensus-based recommendations regarding communications and navigation system issues. The RTCA is expected to form a committee to evaluate the use of electronic devices on airplanes during 2003.
The RTCA last examined the issue in 1996. Re-examining the subject offers an important opportunity for the consumer electronics industry to work together with the aviation industry and federal policy makers. The CE and aviation industries have a shared interest in offering passengers the opportunity to safely use their electronic devices while airborne.
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DivX gets physical
Matthew Miller, Special Projects Editor -- 3/26/2003
CommVerge
A worldwide user community with a population of 75 million can't be wrong. That fact explains why consumer-electronics vendors are sitting up and taking notice of the DivX video codec. Although the format, which compresses video seven to 10 times tighter than MPEG-2, got its start as a piece of PC software, chip-level support and a certification program initiated by DivXNetworks are now driving it into more hardware products.
Like MP3 before it, DivX caught fire on the Internet because it allowed a heretofore unwieldy form of entertainment to be transmitted easily via email and downloads. As a result, the format has inspired fevered trading of video clips--both legal and pirated--as well as new content creation.
But for all its popularity, the format has been confined more or less to PC applications. Some PC video cards can decode DivX video and then output it to a television for living-room enjoyment. A hard-disk-based handheld product, the Archos Jukebox Multimedia (left), allows DivX fans to tote their favorite clips around and view them on either a tiny LCD or (via an output port) a TV screen. And one software product, BroadQ's QCast Tuner, sends PC-based DivX clips to televisions by routing them via Ethernet through Sony PlayStation 2 video-game consoles that are equipped with a $50 add-on network adapter.
However, it now appears that DivX access is about to get a lot more convenient in the living room and elsewhere. For starters, DivXNetworks has begun a testing program that, according to the company, will lead to DivX-certified portable video players, DVD players, video and still cameras, set-top boxes, media gateways, and even high-definition products.
Participants in the program include consumer-electronics companies, makers of embedded software, and chip vendors. Companies building DivX capabilities into silicon include Texas Instruments, Philips, Equator Technologies, and--as of today--Cirrus Logic. The latter company announced today that it will incorporate DivX decoding into its DVD player chips, a move it expects will result in DivX-enabled DVD players that retail for less than $149 by late this year.
Consumers in some markets don't have to wait that long way to enjoy some fruit from the certification program. European consumer-electronics maker KISS Technologies recently introduced two DivX-enabled DVD players powered by DivX-certified chipsets from Sigma Designs. Both players can decode DivX video stored on CD-R/RW or DVD-R/RW discs, and the higher-end of the two models (pictured at the top of this article) also features an Ethernet port that presumably allows it to access DivX video from a networked PC or the Internet.
The spread of DivX to DVD players and other hardware products carries with it a tasty bit of irony. Followers of the DVD arena may recall an earlier technology with a similar name, "Divx." Championed a few years back by retailer Circuit City, a few consumer-electronics manufacturers, and the Hollywood studios, Divx was essentially a pay-per-view scheme using DVDs as a distribution mechanism. Divx DVDs retailed for far less than normal DVDs, but users were expected to pay $3 to $5 for additional viewings beyond an initial 48-hour period (a Divx player required a phoneline connection so it could report to central servers). Consumers resoundingly (and rightly) rejected this intrusive scheme in favor of full ownership of their favorite movies.
Anyway, the original developers of DivX (the video codec) apparently chose the name as an amusing jab at Divx (the pay-per-view plan). Today, one wonders how the advocates of the original Divx--who lost big money when the effort crashed and burned--will feel when they once again see a "DivX" logo adorning a DVD player.
http://www.e-insite.net/commvergemag/index.asp?layout=article&articleid=CA287175&pubdate=3%2...
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E DIGITAL CORP (EDIG.OB)
form 8-K
ITEM 4. CHANGES IN REGISTRANT'S CERTIFYING ACCOUNTANT.
On March 18, 2003, Ernst & Young LLP resigned as the Registrant's independent auditor. The audit reports of Ernst & Young LLP on the financial statements of the Registrant for fiscal years 2002 and 2001 contained no adverse opinion or disclaimer of opinion and were not qualified or modified as to uncertainty, audit scope or application of accounting principles, except that Ernst & Young LLP's report for the years ended March 31, 2002 and 2001 included an explanatory paragraph regarding the Registrant's ability to continue as a going concern.
During the Registrant's two most recent fiscal years, and the interim period in fiscal 2003 to the time of termination, there were no disagreements with Ernst & Young LLP on any matters of accounting principles or practices, financial statement disclosure or auditing scope or procedure. The Registrant has authorized Ernst & Young LLP to respond fully to any inquiries of its successor accountants.
During the Registrant's two most recent fiscal years and the subsequent interim period in fiscal 2003 to the date of the resignation of Ernst & Young LLP, Ernst & Young LLP did not advise the Registrant of any reportable conditions relating to weaknesses in internal controls.
On March 19, 2003, the Audit Committee of the Registrant recommended and the Board of Directors approved Singer Lewak Greenbaum & Goldstein, LLP as the principal accountant to audit its financial statements.
During the Registrant's two most recent fiscal years and the interim period in fiscal 2003 until the engagement of Singer Lewak Greenbaum & Goldstein, LLP, the Registrant did not consult Singer Leewak Greenbaum & Goldstein, LLP concerning the application of accounting principles to any specified transaction, either completed or proposed, or the type of audit opinion that might be rendered on the Registrant's financial statements in circumstances in which a written report was provided or oral advice was provided that Singer Lewak Greenbaum & Goldstein, LLP concluded was an important factor considered by the Registrant in reaching a decision as to the particular issue.
The Registrant has requested that Ernst & Young LLP furnish it with a letter addressed to the Securities and Exchange Commission stating whether or not Ernst & Young LLP agrees with the above statements.
A copy of such letter, dated March 19, 2003, is filed as Exhibit 16 to this Form
8-K.
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Wave propagation
Is 802.11's growth just getting started?
Matthew Miller, Special Projects Editor -- EDN/CommVerge, 3/20/2003
Three years ago, IEEE 802.11b was an obscure technical standard. Mentioning it elicited little more than blank stares. Since then, Wi-Fi has become not only a powerful force in the electronics industry but also a true societal phenomenon. Today, 802.11 is practically a household name.
Yet the technology's rise shows no signs of leveling off. If anything, the pace of 802.11-related announcements has accelerated in recent months. Wi-Fi is sinking its roots deep into the technology landscape. Meanwhile, enterprising people are nurturing the various varieties of 802.11 and even crossbreeding them with other promising technologies. As hard as it may be to believe, Wi-Fi's growth has only just begun.
But don't take my word for it. Come along as we explore Wi-Fi's future with respected visionary John Patrick, an IBM veteran who has a proven track record in prognostication and a compelling argument that we're still underestimating 802.11.
Patrick, who spent 35 years at IBM, most recently as vice president of Internet technology, is also a founding member of the World Wide Web Consortium at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the chairman of the Global Internet Project. Now president of his own company (Attitude LLC), an author (Net Attitude, 2001, Perseus Publishing), and a frequent keynote speaker, he is widely acknowledged as one of the first people to recognize the true potential of the Internet back in the early 1990s.
"If you want to be connected,
and if you have a reason to be connected, then you should be able to do so anywhere. And that's the way it's going to be. There's no doubt in my mind."
--John Patrick, Attitude LLC
In short, when Patrick talks, people listen. And these days, he's spending quite a bit of time talking about Wi-Fi. "From my perspective, Wi-Fi is to wireless as the Internet was to wired communications 10 years ago," he says.
Patrick expects Wi-Fi to grow into a truly pervasive form of Internet access, one that goes far beyond today's smattering of hotspots. As that happens, he also expects to see Wi-Fi emerge as a mobile-phone technology, throwing a wrench into the plans of the cellular carriers.
"[Wi-Fi is] one of those things where the reality exceeds the hype," Patrick says. "The reason is that it embraces and extends and surrounds and goes under and over and around the Internet."
Natural fit
Wi-Fi is on a path to true ubiquity, Patrick says, because it "snaps right onto the Internet." It's a complementary technology that we will one day consider as essential as Internet access itself. Whereas today we have spotty Wi-Fi access, Patrick foresees a world blanketed in Wi-Fi signals.
"If you want to walk in the park and just smell the roses, that's great," he says. "But if you want to be connected, and if you have a reason to be connected, then you should be able to do so anywhere. And that's the way it's going to be. There's no doubt in my mind."
Because 802.11 operates in unlicensed bands of spectrum, Patrick says, all sorts of entities will play roles in making it pervasive. Not just profit-oriented companies but also noncommercial entities such as community groups and municipal governments will spread the seeds of ubiquitous coverage.
We see this happening already, of course. In the commercial realm, for example, there's the high-profile company called Cometa Networks. A joint venture of AT&T, Intel, and IBM, Cometa recently announced plans to light up 20,000 Wi-Fi hotspots in the top 50 US metro markets by 2004.
As for grassroots endeavors, Patrick cites, for example, New York's infamous "warchalking" movement and TurboWeb, a small company on the UK's Isle of Wight. The latter uses 802.11 hardware to distribute a satellite Internet connection among island residents who would otherwise have no access options.
Mesh momentum
Wi-Fi's spread is about to get a big boost from mesh networking, Patrick believes. The mesh concept, touted in various forms by companies including MeshNetworks, Etherlinx, and SkyPilot, differs from traditional cell-based topologies in that it spreads routing intelligence throughout the network. In essence, each access point and/or client device in a mesh network also becomes a router/repeater, greatly extending the network's coverage area.
A company called CloudX is performing a proof-of-concept test for mesh networking with 802.11 technologies around Lake Tahoe, Patrick says. The company brings broadband into a community via a traditional method, such as a T1 line or a microwave link, but then extends that connection through the neighborhood using rooftop mesh routers.
If your brain has room for yet another "802.xx" term, Patrick believes that a new standard called 802.16 will help to accelerate the meshing trend. The standard, also known as WirelessMAN, defines a high-speed air interface for fixed-wireless systems operating in a wide swath of spectrum. In Patrick's view, 802.16 will serve as a backhaul link connecting 802.11-based access networks to the Internet backbone. Service providers will use 802.16 to bring broadband into remote communities, then employ Wi-Fi mesh networks to extend access through those neighborhoods. "The advantage of 802.16 is that you don't have to pull any cables," he says.
Public speaking
As Wi-Fi coverage expands, so too will the number of devices with built-in Wi-Fi access. Already a standard feature on many notebook PCs, 802.11 of one flavor or another will quickly become a necessity for handhelds as well.
And if you think those Wi-Fi chips will only be used for "data" connections, Patrick has news for you: On an all-IP network, the distinction between data and voice is purely artificial. As he is fond of pointing out, "the packets don't care" what they are carrying. Spreadsheets, email messages, and voice conversations all look the same. Moreover, contrary to popular belief, voice doesn't eat a lot of bandwidth. "I keep telling people," Patrick says, "that it only takes 6000 bits per second to have a crystal-clear voice conversation."
The implications are clear, Patrick contends: Once Wi-Fi access points and Wi-Fi client devices are pervasive enough, VoIP (voice over Internet protocol) will catch on as a Wi-Fi application. Moreover, Wi-Fi VoIP providers will be able to undercut the cellular industry's convoluted rate structures. After all, for a service provider running an all-IP network, the incremental cost of a long-distance call will be nearly zero, and "roaming" will be an antiquated concept.
Wi-Fi already delivers data rates far higher than any 3G network. When it delivers voice service too, cellular carriers will have reason to worry. "I think, unfortunately, that Wi-Fi is going to disintermediate the 3G and 2.5G cellular services," Patrick says. Those technologies will have their niche, he notes, "but whenever you have a choice, you won't use them." Given this, Patrick says he's not certain that wireless carriers will be able to recoup the investments they've made in 2.5G and 3G technologies and spectrum licenses.
History repeating
Overall, Patrick observes, the Wi-Fi space today looks much like the Internet in 1993. It's a fast-moving area with solid standards and a strong grassroots component. No one is quite sure where or how to make money with it, and people have concerns over issues like scalability and security. Yet despite these issues, the technology delivers overwhelming benefits. And its ascent appears unstoppable.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Author Information
Special Projects Editor Matthew Miller (mdmiller@reedbusiness.com) eagerly awaits his Wi-Fi phone.
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ot-Microsoft Selects Fonix VoiceDial(TM) for Best Application in Microsoft Mobile Solutions Challenge
Wednesday March 19, 6:09 pm ET
Fonix VoiceDial Wins in Both 2002 Smartphone and 2002 Pocket PC Phone Edition Platform
SALT LAKE CITY, and NEW ORLEANS, March 19 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Fonix Corporation (OTC Bulletin Board: FONX - News), a leading provider of speech interface solutions, announced today Microsoft's selection of Fonix VoiceDial(TM) as best application in the Utilities category for both the 2002 Microsoft Smartphone and 2002 Pocket PC Phone Edition devices. The awards were presented to Fonix today in the first annual Microsoft Mobile Solutions Challenge at the 2003 Microsoft Mobility Conference in New Orleans.
"Fonix is proud that Microsoft has recognized how VoiceDial enhances the user experience," said Tim K. Hong, Director Mobile Wireless at Fonix. "This is strong validation of the value VoiceDial brings to mobile operators and handset manufacturers. With no training required and accurate speech recognition, VoiceDial enables users to interact with their device using only their voice. As devices continue to become smaller, more powerful and always connected, speech becomes imperative as a natural interface. Fonix will be actively marketing VoiceDial to customers like T-Mobile, AT&T Wireless, Sprint, O2, Samsung, Orange, Siemens, and Hitachi."
The Microsoft Mobility Developer Conference is the premier developer event for building and bringing to market wireless applications for Microsoft Windows® powered mobile devices.
VoiceDial reflects Fonix's vision to improve devices in the growing mobile and wireless market with an accurate, intuitive interface-voice, making these smaller devices easier and safer to use. This concept is revolutionary in a market where users must still use small keypads or a stylus to control their PDAs or dial a phone. Solutions like VoiceDial bring the Freedom of Speech(TM) to wireless and mobile, creating a user-intuitive, easier and safer experience.
About Fonix Corporation
Fonix Corporation (OTC Bulletin Board: FONX - News) is a leading provider of natural-user interface technology solutions for wireless and mobile devices, Internet and telephony systems, and vehicle telematics. Leading chip manufacturers, independent software and hardware vendors, and Internet content and service providers incorporate Fonix technology to provide their customers with an easier and more convenient user experience. Fonix products, including Text-To-Speech (TTS), Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR), and Handwriting Recognition (HWR), provide the most natural communication solutions available. For additional information, visit www.fonix.com , or contact a Fonix representative at (801) 553-6600.
Investor Contact, Michelle Aamodt, (801) 553-6600, invrel@fonix.com.
Media Contact, Victoria Stirling, (801) 553-6600, mediarel@fonix.com
Note: The statements released by Fonix Corporation that are not purely historical are forward-looking within the meaning of the "Safe Harbor" provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, include statements regarding the Company's expectations, hopes, intentions, and strategies for the future. Investors are cautioned that forward-looking statements involve risk and uncertainties that may affect the Company's business prospects and performance. It is important to note that the Company's actual results could differ materially from those in such forward-looking statements. Risk factors include general economic, competitive, governmental, and technological factors as discussed in the Company's filings with the SEC on Forms 10-K, 10-Q and 8-K. The Company does not undertake any responsibility to update the forward-looking statements contained in this release.
Fonix and DECtalk are registered trademarks, and iSpeak is a trademark, of Fonix Corporation. Microsoft and Windows are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and other countries. All other trademarks or registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners
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Nokia Harmonizes Music And Convenience With New FM Radio Headset
Mar 19 2003
Today in New Orleans, the city known around the world for its musical heritage, Nokia announced the new FM Radio Headset, an innovative mobile enhancement that adds a touch of music to the mobile experience.
The FM Radio Headset is expected to be available during the second quarter of 2003, and will initially be compatible with the Nokia 6100 phone.
High-quality stereo earpieces and a digital tuner combine for maximum sound clarity, while an integrated volume control, radio station seek and a send/end button allow the user to access conveniently both radio and phone functions directly from the headset unit. The dual earpieces have the added benefit of delivering phone conversation audio to both ears, ending the need for the user to cover one ear in noisy situations. Replacing dead alkaline radio batteries is also a thing of the past because the FM Radio Headset draws its power from the phone's rechargeable battery.
To use the FM Radio Headset, Nokia owners with a compatible phone simply need to connect the unit to the Pop-Port (TM) connector on their handset, use the built-in LCD display to tune their favorite stations and put on the earpieces. When a phone call comes in, a press of the send/end button switches the FM Radio Headset from radio to phone mode, and when the conversation is over, it automatically goes back to the radio.
"The FM Radio headset is a great example of how Nokia Original Enhancements can allow owners to customize their Nokia phones to best fit their lifestyle," says Sarah VanSiclen, director of mobile enhancements for Nokia Americas. "For people who see music as a central part of their lives or just enjoy the diversion that listening to the radio can provide, the FM Radio Headset represents a fun and easy way to add an FM radio into their wireless phone."
Note: The device mentioned in this press release has not been authorized as required by the rules of the Federal Communications Commission. This device is not, and may not be, offered for sale or lease, or sold or leased, in the United States until authorization is obtained. Nokia intends to obtain FCC authorization prior to commercial launch of this device.
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OT-Iraq War Diary - March 19, 2003
IST 16:30
DEBKAfile Exclusive: Tareq Aziz, Taha Ramadan defect
According to an exclusive report reaching DEBKAfile from its military and intelligence sources, top members of the Saddam Hussein regime have begun to desert him. Sources in Kurdistan report that deputy prime minister Tareq Aziz visited Turkey and instead of returning to Baghdad headed into Kurdistan and went into hiding under Kurdish protection. He is said to be under interrogation by American intelligence officers. Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan has not been seen in Baghdad for three days and may too have fled the country.
Both men were elevated to their positions in 1991 after long service to Saddam Hussein as his most trusted lieutenants.
From northern Iraq we hear that hundreds of Iraqi soldiers and officers are streaming to the Turkoman town of Tozkhurmato, discarding their weapons outside the town and turning themselves in.
From the warfront we hear that the Marine column crossing the demilitarized line from Kuwait is moving toward Nassariyah in southern Iraq, its objective being to cross the Euphrates and reach Baghdad in two or three days.
IST 15:10
Invasion begins
US war commanders grabbed the element of surprise after all. While most analysts and forecasters predicted a mighty aerial-missile blitz over Baghdad as the war's opener, the campaign began Wednesday, March 19 with a lighting advance by Marine forces into southern Iraq along the Shatt el Arb River towards the big naval base and town of Umm Qasr. Fighting alongside the Americans are two brigades of the British 1st Armored Division and naval vessels landing Marine units south of Basra. The first clash of the war occurred shortly after in the mouth of the Khawr al-Zubayr river, a few miles south of Umm Qasr.
The US-UK column is heading at top speed for the oil fields of southern Iraq which have been surrounded by American and British special forces since earlier this month. DEBKAfile's military experts view this first major military move in the war as a bold tactic to prevent the sabotage of the oil fields, with the largest field in southern Iraq, Rumailah, at highest risk.
A second column of US 3rd Infantry Division troops crossed into the demilitarized zone on the Iraqi border with Kuwait accompanied by thousands of tanks, combat vehicles and fuel trucks.
IST 24:00
Stalled by Sandstorm
Tuesday night, March 18, clouds of gritty flying desert sand put the hundreds of thousands of allied troops poised on the southern and western front lines for the order to advance into Iraq on the defensive. The flight crews of warplanes and helicopters, the tanks crews and the soldiers - on "Black Stage One", meaning to hold protective suits and gear ready for immediate use - were pre-empted, though not by Saddam Hussein. They had been caught by the first sandstorm of the season, a murky cloud blanketing a key area from Kuwait up to Baghdad.
The region will be prone to these storms from now until the first burning days of summer. Tuesday evening, US and British commanders discovered that the tanks to have rumbled forward in a vast column on Basra in the south and Baghdad further up in the center, had been stalled by grainy sand that gets into everything. The helicopters for flying the bulk of the assault troops to their target zones on three fronts were unable to take off and, worse, their engines and electronic instruments were clogged with the insidious sand.
This was the main reason for the decision by the allied war command to hold back the advance until the weather cleared, further frustrating the already restive troops.
DEBKAfile's sources report that military weather forecasters promise the sandstorm will blow over Wednesday, leaving three to four days of clear skies before the next oppressive cloud of dust and sand descends on the area of attack.
Northern Front
Because of the bad weather in the south and west, the only real movement Tuesday occurred on the northern front. Following the signing of their secret accord with the United States, the Turks opened up their air space to American transports and fighter-bombers. Despite vehement denials from Turkey, our sources report that at long last the Americans were able to fly into Turkey troops of the 4th Cavalry Division who had been standing by in Fort Hood, Texas, waiting for the Turks to make up their minds. Some of the division's troops may be discharged first at Bulgarian and Romanian bases, making their way overland to Turkey and thence into northern Iraq. Tuesday, March 18, US freighters were able finally to enter Eskenderun port and discharge the 4th Division's heavy tanks.
This turn of the wheel is momentous. It enables the Americans to deploy armored forces on the northern front, which was in grave doubt until the Turks came round.
Another two key developments on the northern front:
The United States, Turkey and Iraq's Kurdish chiefs and Turkomen leaders forged a deal permitting Turkish troops to enter northern Iraq. More details are expected on the size of the Turkish force and the extent of its penetration for setting up positions. This was the quid pro quo for Ankara's consent to five Kurdish brigades of the two main militias, the PUK and PDK, entering the oil city of Kirkuk with the American forces.
Here too the delay exacted a price. The highways of Kurdistan were blocked with many thousands of Kurds fleeing north into the hills out of their cities for fear of Iraqi army reprisals, including chemical and biological attacks on civilians. This exodus was bound to slow the military advance in the north.
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Pay Back Time...
By David Manners, Electronics Weekly -- Electronic News, 3/13/2003
The tech slump is a sign that God exists, reckons John East, CEO of Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Actel Corp.
'We had a higher and longer boom than we ever had before, because we had two booms concatenated -- we had the dot.com boom and the telecoms boom -- and because the boom was unreasonably high and unreasonably long, so we're now going to pay with an unreasonably low and unreasonably long bust,' East said. 'It's the proof there is a God -- he's being fair.'
So when does it end? 'If I knew that I'd be dangling my legs over the side of a boat smoking a big fat cigar,' replied East. 'The cycle is on a five year period. The crash from the peak of the boom can take three to six months -- but typically no more than three -- and then you have two years of muddling along at the bottom, and then about two years with some reasonable growth, and then you get one year of boom.'
'And you can tell it's a boom,' he added, 'because I'll come to town and tell you how smart I am -- that all our plans are working out.'
Where are we now in the cycle? 'The industry fell off a cliff in January '01 and here we are in March of '03 and we're still muddling along the bottom,' East said, 'You could say: 'Now it should start getting better'. But it was the highest and longest boom, so it's going to be the lowest and longest bust so, instead of a two year period, it may be a three year period -- I'd be surprised if it got to four or five -- but it wouldn't surprise me if the rest of this year isn't just muddling around -- it's not getting worse -- it's just not getting better.'
Against this unpromising background East is transforming both Actel's underlying programmable logic technology and its market focus. The technology is moving from the fast, but niche, anti-fuse technology, to a flash-based technology, while the market focus is moving from high-priced ICs for telecoms to low-priced ICs for everything else.
'Two or three years ago programmable logic companies were booming because they were selling circuits for $500 or $1000,' says East, 'And they were selling them to the telecom community -- who might say they were worried about price, but what they were really worried about was how to get a switch on the market sooner than the other guys.
'That was a bubble,' East said. 'When the bubble's gone, and you go back to the real world, the real world in ICs is not about $1,000 products -- it never has been -- the usual industry price points for ICs are $1, or $5, or $10 -- probably not $50, and certainly not $500 -- so the first problem we're trying to fix is how to put a nice product family on the table that is affordable at a lot of price points between $1 and $10.'
Key to doing that is Actel's collaboration with Infineon Technologies AG to put its flash-based programmable logic FPGA family called ProASIC onto a 0.13-micron process. Since this involves a 'triple jump' from 0.25-micron technology, by-passing the 0.18- and 0.15-micron generations, it will have huge effects.
Obviously, one effect is the $1 to $10 price point. A second effect is power reduction. A third is security -- making a customer's design uncopyable. And the fourth is a new variant on the old soft error problem -- which East calls 'firm errors' -- which used to be attributed to alpha particles from radiation, but is now attributed to neutrons.
'Ten years ago a neutron couldn't upset a flip-flop, because a flip-flop was big and it took more energy than a neutron had, but now a neutron can upset a flip-flop -- and an FPGA has ten million flip-flops,' East said.
'So we're trying to solve a cost problem cost, a power problem, a firm error problem -- soft error if you prefer to call it that -- and a security problem,' East said. 'When the 0.13-micron product comes out, I'll come to town personally and tell you 'We have solved these problems.''
How close is he to coming to town? 'Things are coming on very well -- we've seen any number of test runs that have come out, and it's looking very good for us,' he replied. 'But I've been around so long I know that everything that can go wrong will. So I've left it to saying: 'By the end of this year we'll see something.' But my internal target is a little sooner than my external target.'
East's goal for the flash-based ProASIC line is very simple -- to deliver as many gates for as little cost as possible. Speed and power, though important, can largely be left to the effects of scaling.
Eventually, he sees 1 million gates for $1. Asked: When? He replied: 'In terms of die cost -- taking packaging considerations out -- I'd say you could do that -- if you're good -- at 90nm; if we're not so good, we'll do it at 65nm.'
At 65nm, another problem for all flash-based processes crops up. 'All the top semiconductor companies are working on developing new generations of non-volatile memory,' East said. 'It's clear that flash floating gate, as it's structured today, gets harder and harder to do as you to shrink because you are not able to do the tunnel oxide any thinner, and you have to have the same programming voltages, but it's harder and harder to have the same programming voltages when you're shrinking everything else.'
For a solution, East inclines to the Metal Nitride Oxide Semiconductor (MNOS) approach being used by AMD, Motorola, Saifun and Infineon, among others, and variously dubbed NROM, SONOS etc. An Actel team is looking at adapting the ProASIC architecture to an MNOS-type process.
So, as always, life remains tough for the Silicon Valley CEO -- battling, on a daily basis, the challenges of competition, recession, neutrons, oxides and God.
http://www.e-insite.net/index.asp?layout=article&articleid=CA284236&verticalID=160&verti...
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"We've seen continued customer interest in our ASIC-like eX FPGAs for e-Appliance and portable applications, such as digital music players, due to the security and low power features of the architecture," said John East, president and chief executive officer at Actel. "Actel's eX FPGAs, combined with e.Digital's innovative technology, offers significant advantages in functionality, security and dynamic power consumption, propelling this solution into a broad range of next-generation e-Appliance and portable products."
http://www.edig.com/news/releases/pr101601.html
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Cell Phones Get Removable Flash Cards With Expanded Memory
By Mark Long -- e-inSITE, 3/17/2003
NEW ORLEANS--During this week's CTIA 2003 exhibition, SanDisk Corporation will be demonstrating new thumbnail-sized flash memory cards that have been designed to boost the available storage capacity of handheld devices ranging from 2.5/3.G mobile phones and digital cameras to MP3 players and handheld video games.
Measuring 21.5 x 20 x 1.4 mm, the company's miniSD card has a footprint of only 430 square mm. The new device, which features personal information management (PIM), email and voicemail capabilities, will also be based on the company's NAND flash and SD controller technology. SanDisk expects to offer a wide range of memory capacities in the new miniSD format, with 16, 32, 64, 128 and 256 megabyte (MB) versions expected to begin shipping later this year.
Mario Morales, vice president at market research firm IDC, predicts that overall demand for flash storage cards in cellular handset applications should reach 218 million units by 2007.
"New applications such as digital imaging, MP3, gaming, Internet access, and other storage-intensive features will continue to drive strong demand for small form factor, high capacity, removable storage cards, especially the miniSD form factor," said Morales in a statement issued last week. "As a leader in this space today, SanDisk is well positioned to take advantage of this growth opportunity."
According to SanDisk CEO Eli Harari, many of the new cell phone models that are slated to debut this year will feature integrated 1 or 2 megapixel cameras. This camera phone rollout is expected to substantially boost the company's market prospects.
"This new market represents a considerable incremental opportunity for the sale of our miniSD cards, starting as early as the second quarter for the low capacity bundled cards sold to OEM's, and as early as the second half of the year for the higher capacity flash storage cards...for use in these camera equipped cell phones," said the SanDisk CEO in a statement issued last week.
"With the new miniSD form factor, we believe mobile phone designers will have a much easier time and greater freedom in fitting a card slot into their designs. End users will benefit by being able to use the miniSD adapter to exchange data between their miniSD-equipped mobile phone and any SD compatible host, such as a digital camera, PDA or laptop PC."
Both electrically and software compatible with the existing SD standard, the new The miniSD card also employs the same SD interface, which incorporates security features for content protection (CPRM-Content Protection Rights Management). As an extension of the existing SD card standard, the miniSD card is also expected to enable mobile phone and consumer electronics developers to upgrade their current SD-based designs with no changes to software or electronics required. In addition, SanDisk plans to offer an adapter for converting the miniSD card into the SD card form factor.
Volume shipments of a new 16MB miniSD are expected to roll out to OEM customers within the thirty days to OEM customers. The company expects to begin shipping 32 and 64 MB cards beginning in 2Q03, while the 128MB and 256MB version are expected to begin delivery in 2H03.
SanDisk is also showing off its new 128 megabyte (MB) MultiMediaCard, a flash memory card targeted at audio player and new multi-function cell phone applications. The 128MB MultiMediaCard, which also can be used in most portable devices equipped with an SD memory card slot, has a suggested retail price of $74.99 and will begin shipping to retail stores later this month.
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HP Extends Mobile Lifestyle with New Wireless Wide Area Network Offerings
Monday March 17, 7:45 am ET
Customers Connect HP Notebooks, Tablet PCs and Pocket PCs Through New Wireless Products and Services
NEW ORLEANS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 17, 2003--HP (NYSE:HPQ - News) today announced a broad range of wireless wide area network (WWAN) products and service offerings that further enable a mobile lifestyle while delivering outstanding value.
The new technology and services allow mobile professionals using HP notebooks, Tablet PCs and Pocket PCs(1) to securely connect to a variety of high-speed (3G) wireless networks, simplify the wireless connection process and increase productivity.
HP is delivering wireless connectivity products and solutions across the entire wireless spectrum (including PAN, LAN, and WAN) for mobile products. The range of wireless cards and airtime plans on multiple networks available through HP include:
-- AT&T Wireless -- GSM/GPRS
-- Sprint PCS -- CDMA/1XRTT
-- T-Mobile USA -- GSM/GPRS
-- Verizon Wireless -- CDMA/1XRTT
A Choice in WWAN Connectivity
HP is first major technology products and services company to offer mobile customers a choice when accessing wireless data over either CDMA/1XRTT or GSM/GPRS (general packet radio service) networks via a handheld, notebook or Tablet PC. HP now offers customers the option of four wireless carriers and cards for their devices, allowing customers one of the widest choices in wireless coverage nationwide.
Designed to simplify and minimize the implementation efforts of corporate IT departments, this solution can be deployed across various devices. Customers have the ability to choose cards and airtime plans through HP, making one-stop shopping for wireless access a reality.
GSM/GPRS solution carriers include AT&T Wireless and T-Mobile. CDMA/1xRTT carriers include Sprint and Verizon. Estimated U.S. pricing for these cards start at $179 including rebate.(2) More information is available at http://www.hp.com/go/ipaqsolutionstore.
About HP
HP is a leading global provider of products, technologies, solutions and services to consumers and businesses. The company's offerings span IT infrastructure, personal computing and access devices, global services and imaging and printing. HP completed its acquisition of Compaq Computer Corporation on May 3, 2002. More information about HP is available at http://www.hp.com.
(1) A standard WLAN infrastructure, other Bluetooth(TM) devices and a service contract with a wireless airtime provider may be required for applicable wireless communication. Wireless Internet use requires a separately purchased service contract. Check with service provider for availability and coverage in your area. Not all Web content available.
(2) With activation through HP Wireless. Actual prices may vary.
The Bluetooth trademarks are owned by Bluetooth SIG, Inc.
This news release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions. All statements other than statements of historical fact are statements that could be deemed forward-looking statements. Risks, uncertainties and assumptions include the possibility that the market for the sale of certain products and services may not develop as expected; that development and performance of these products and services may not proceed as planned; and other risks that are described from time to time in HP's Securities and Exchange Commission reports, including but not limited to HP's annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended October 31, 2002, as filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on January 21, 2003, and subsequently filed reports. If any of these risks or uncertainties materializes or any of these assumptions proves incorrect, HP's results could differ materially from HP's expectations in these statements. HP assumes no obligation to update these forward-looking statements.
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Contact:
HP
Sheila Kalra, 281/514-6552
sheila.kalra@hp.com
or
Hill and Knowlton for HP
Erin Tanji, 281/514-6741
erin.tanji@hp.com
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