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So..let me see APS has MicroOS on its start-up splash screen because it contributes so very little to the overall workings of the device...errr right.
And they acknowledge e.Digital in the engineering of the digEplayer in media articles because?????????...right...you know bubkis about what microOS can really do. But apparently APS does.
Does it say "fuelled by Ittiam." on the digEplayer start-up...No?? How come?
It is apparent to most that you are blowing smoke bigtime.
You are so blinded by even the potential sucess of this company that you conveniently ignore obvious facts like this.
I am happy to provide counterpoints where necessary...carry on
Funny, but microOS is good enough to power the most successful portable IFE solution with the greatest market penetration to date. Oh well, cognitive dissonance I guess...
OT Sirius Plans Video Service in 2006
NEW YORK (AP) - Sirius Satellite Radio Inc. on Wednesday said it is moving ahead with plans to add a video offering to its premium radio service next year, landing a deal to use Microsoft Corp.'s media software to power its mobile video platform.
Sirius also reached an agreement with the software giant to co-develop future video offerings in its latest assault on rival and industry leader XM Satellite Radio Holdings Inc. The service is expected to launch in the second half of 2006.
With its automotive partners indicating strong demand for entertainment products in new cars, Sirius said it anticipates providing two or three channels of premium content specifically for children.
``We will take the DVD experience to the next level, offering the best content easily available to families and consumers,'' Chief Executive Officer Mel Karmazin said in a statement.
Sirius, which along with XM has pioneered the expanding satellite radio market, broadcasts about 120 channels of commercial-free music and talk-radio programming to subscribers with satellite receivers, as well as via the Internet.
The company recently crossed the million-user mark, ending the year with almost 1.1 million subscribers, while XM reported closing 2004 with 3.1 million customers.
In early Nasdaq activity, shares of Sirius lost 5 cents to trade at $7.47, while Microsoft shares rose 7 cents to $26.91. Shares of XM fell 2.1 percent, or 74 cents, to $34.61.
Ohhh, so doing technology integration to develop a complete multimedia product...now that's a "value add".
Owd, are you following here?
Why don't you explain owd..you seem to have such a wonderful handle on everything from your astute readings of the SEC filings.
I mean..after all it IS all right there isn't it?
You don't mean to suggest that some company business remains opaque to your keen eye even though they are a "public" company?
How can it be?
How many digeplayers are still on order owd?
How many shipped through and are in daily use?
Were there special terms offered in order to land Ryanair? KLM? Aeroflot? etc. etc. What do you know about the deals brokered not by edig but by APS/Wencor? Diddly squat...yep, I thought so...
Come back to us when you have something more than idle speculation and fear mongering as is the usual case.
cheers
Some are too hung up on the particulars to be aware of the "value add" that we bring to the digEplayer platform and it's production. For the "can't see the forest for the trees crowd", it's about customization of the platform, drm and content security, battery life, etc. Made possible it seems not by the Ittiam reference platform but by microOS 3.1 and it's interfacing with the Ittiam design...
Seems like licensing and royalties all around to me...
Five entrepreneurs with solid records back in ring
Pacific Northwest is seen as a fertile environment
Friday, December 31, 2004
By JOHN COOK
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER
The entrepreneurial juices are flowing once again as several heavyweights from the Seattle business community dust off their gloves and return to the ring.
Some are former Microsoft Corp. executives who have built successful companies, while others are old-fashioned entrepreneurs who are capitalizing on changes in the airline, Internet or consumer product industries.
Whatever their backgrounds, the fact that they are starting companies in Seattle is a good thing.
It is tough work coming up with a short list of entrepreneurs from the Pacific Northwest, a place that for several reasons -- weather, geography and history among them -- seems to spawn new approaches to business.
''The Northwest has a lot of the things we like about West Coast entrepreneurs,'' said David Silverman, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist with 3i. ''You have all the benefits of the rugged individualism and fresh thinking, without the negative egotism that nauseates people about northern California.''
Now, with that said, here are five entrepreneurs worth watching in the coming year.
Bill Boyer: Look up the word ''entrepreneur'' in the dictionary and you should find a photograph of Bill Boyer.
The 40-year-old college dropout runs two coffee shops and a day spa in Lakewood -- and that's in his spare time.
Most of Boyer's work day is spent as chairman of Tacoma-based APS, a seven-person company he founded that has sold close to 10,000 portable entertainment devices to the world's biggest airlines. Airline passengers rent the battery-powered device, known as the digEplayer, so they can watch movies or television shows on long flights.
APS received an added boost in October when aircraft parts distributor Wencor bought the profitable company. The sale is not slowing Boyer, who still puts in 10 to 12 hour days wooing customers and developing new products for airlines.
Boyer also is writing a book -- from a ''blue-collar perspective'' -- about what it takes to start new businesses. And we forgot to mention that this workaholic, who got his start as an Alaska Airlines baggage handler, continues to hold a part-time job for the carrier at Sea-Tac Airport.
''It is kind of a stress relief for me,'' said Boyer, who works about 30 hours a month at Alaska.
Boyer's entrepreneurial energy does not appear to be waning. He is hatching a plan to start a low-cost commuter airline, an ambitious goal that he admits presents a new set of challenges.
''That's my dream,'' said Boyer, who has lined up investors, started writing a business plan and identified key routes. ''Once you have done it, you know how to do things. I have the confidence in myself that I can start it and finish it.''
Richard Barton: After stepping down from Expedia in March 2003, Richard Barton disappeared from the high-tech rat race. The founder and former chief executive of Expedia, who built the Bellevue company into the largest online travel agency, moved to Italy with his family for a yearlong sabbatical.
But now, the 37-year-old executive is back in Seattle. And he has started a new Internet services company called Zillow with Lloyd Frink, former Expedia senior vice president. They aren't disclosing much about the new company, although Barton said it will not compete with Expedia. More details are expected to emerge in the coming year, he said.
''We've taken a few spills and have learned a thing or two,'' Barton said in an e-mail response. ''I'd also forgotten just how much fun it is to be small, architecting version one of something that we think has the potential to change the world.''
Barton founded Expedia within Microsoft in 1994, took it public in 1999 and sold the remaining 46 percent of the company to IAC/InterActive Corp. for $3.3 billion in 2003. Barton, who holds a degree in industrial engineering from Stanford University, worked at Microsoft from 1991 to 1994.
Those who know Barton say he is a master marketer who expertly guided Expedia through the Microsoft bureaucracy and persuaded Bill Gates to place a bet on online travel.
''I think of Microsoft as Expedia's velvet incubator and Bill as our patient, supportive venture capitalist,'' Barton said. ''It was a lovely place to start up a company.''
With Zillow, it will be interesting to see how Barton operates without the support of a corporate parent. That's a challenge that the father of three young children is currently embracing.
''Cooking up Zillow with Lloyd, out on our own, is new kind of thrill -- it's walking the tightrope without a net this time.''
David Giuliani: Ever used a Sonicare electronic toothbrush? You may want to thank David Giuliani, who led Snoqualmie-based Optiva Corp. until its sale to Royal Philips Electronics in 2000.
Now, Giuliani, who was named ''Entrepreneur of the Year'' by the Small Business Administration in 1997, is trying to do for skin care what he did for dental hygiene.
Giuliani, along with several former Optiva employees, unveiled a new skin care brush in October that uses sonic technology to gently remove makeup, oil and dirt. Dubbed the Clarisonic, the $195, battery-powered device features an oscillating brush head that cleanses the forehead, chin, nose and cheeks. It also could have applications in the treatment of skin disorders such as acne and psoriasis.
Under development for three years at Bellevue-based Pacific Bioscience Laboratories, the Clarisonic will meet the ultimate test in 2005 as the company begins widescale sales of the device to dermatologists, plastic surgeons and other medical professionals.
If it is half as successful as the Sonicare toothbrush, Giuliani could have another major hit on his hands. The 58-year-old entrepreneur, who has started four medical device and consumer product companies during his career, believes that the Clarisonic has what it takes to transform skin care.
''We can't build enough of them,'' said Giuliani, whose factory is in the Factoria neighborhood of Bellevue. ''On a comparative basis, it shows all signs of exceeding Sonicare.''
Giuliani, the author of more than a dozen patents and an electrical engineering graduate of the University of California-Santa Barbara, is not the only Optiva alumnus worth noting. Jack Gallagher, the former president of Optiva, raised $3 million earlier this year for a new venture called Second Act Partners. Gallagher is not saying much about the company, which is developing a consumer health care device to improve oral health. Stay tuned.
Russ Horowitz: Aging rock 'n' roll stars often reconnect for reunion tours. The same could be said for Marchex co-founder Russ Horowitz, 38, who assembled the ''old band'' from the days when he led Internet superstar Go2Net.
The 1984 graduate of Lakeside High School (the same school that produced technology entrepreneurs Gates and Paul Allen) created Marchex with four former Go2Net executives in January 2003. Since then, the chief executive of the online marketing firm has acquired three companies, conducted an initial public offering and increased staffing to 207 people.
It is on track to do more than $43 million in sales this year, and earlier this month, it announced plans for a $180 million public offering -- not bad for a company that didn't exist 24 months ago.
Horowitz, who sold Go2Net to InfoSpace four years ago in a $2.7 billion stock deal, appears to be taking a page out of the old playbook to build Marchex. Growing quickly through acquisitions and staying laser-focused on the bottom line, Horowitz is starting to make a mark in the highly lucrative online marketing and Internet search categories.
In the biggest acquisition in the company's history, Marchex recently announced the purchase of thousands of Web sites -- including VideoCamera.com, Debts.com and LasVegasVacations.com.
Horowitz, who also founded a sports apparel firm and a merchant bank, has the tendency to quietly -- and unconventionally -- build big companies in the shadows.
Whether he will hit the jackpot with Marchex remains to be seen. But some early investors, who have watched shares of the company more than triple since its IPO in March, are betting that he will.
Jeremy Jaech: Jeremy Jaech turned 50 Wednesday. And while the co-founder of two of Seattle's most successful software companies could easily retire from the high-tech industry, Jaech is quietly working on his next startup.
Jaech, who co-founded desktop publishing pioneer Aldus in the 1980s and graphics software giant Visio in the 1990s, teamed up with his former business partners at Visio about a year ago to create The Graw Group.
The University of Washington computer science graduate also landed money from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and August Capital, two Silicon Valley venture capital powerhouses that backed Visio before it was sold to Microsoft for $1.3 billion.
Despite the high-profile team and backers, Jaech still isn't saying much about The Graw Group. It is said to be helping families, work groups and other communities stay connected through the Internet, an emerging and highly competitive area that sometimes gets dubbed social networking.
Jaech said the company plans to expand the circle of users testing the technology in January, with a commercial launch most likely in the spring.
A name change and rebranding effort also is in the works for early next year, he said.
After the blockbuster successes of Aldus and Visio, Jaech could hit the trifecta if The Graw Group meets expectations.
THE SERIES
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer's Business section is looking at what's ahead for the local economy with a six-day series, each day focusing on five things to watch in 2005.
Tuesday: Business districts
Wednesday: Companies
Yesterday: Technology trends and business issues
Today: Entrepreneurs
Tomorrow: Executives
Monday: Initial public offerings
P-I reporter John Cook can be reached at 206-448-8075 or johncook@seattlepi.com
OT Intel Boosts Investment in the Digital Home
Wednesday December 29, 11:00 am ET
SANTA CLARA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 29, 2004--Intel Corporation today announced that its venture investing organization, Intel Capital, has made three additional investments in companies developing innovative technologies for the digital home.
ADVERTISEMENT
The new investments, made from the $200 million Intel Digital Home Fund, include a first-time investment in Gteko Ltd., an ease-of-use networking and support software company, and follow-on financing for Synacor Inc., a provider of portals and technology for delivering bundled online services, and Zinio Systems Inc., a digital magazine distributor.
Financial terms of the new investments were not disclosed.
"These new investments were made to support widespread adoption, use and sharing of digital entertainment and information -- including music, games, news and video -- among multiple devices in the home and elsewhere," said Scott Darling, Intel Capital vice president and director of Enterprise and Digital Home sectors. "We plan to continue to invest next year in companies that enable PC and CE devices to work together easily and in companies that deliver premium content services over IP networks."
Gteko, based in Ra'anana, Israel, provides software and support services for leading technology companies, including HP, Cisco-Linksys and Canon, to automate certain technical support functions, such as first-time set up of a home network, for millions of computer users worldwide. For more information about Gteko, visit www.gteko.com.
Synacor, based in Buffalo, N.Y., provides portals and technology to Internet Service Providers (ISPs) enabling them to easily bundle a wide variety of free and paid subscription-only entertainment, educational and other services into their Internet portals. The company has integrated over 30 content and service providers into its product platform, Portelus(TM). Applying the cable TV business model to the Internet, Synacor offers ISPs one of the largest catalogs of subscription service providers available from one source today. The company's ISP network currently comprises over 5 million broadband subscribers. Intel Capital first invested in Synacor in 2003. For more information about Synacor, please visit www.synacor.com.
Zinio converts magazines to a digital format, replicating the printed version's look, and electronically delivers it to subscribers. The San Francisco company has delivered more than 26 million digital magazines from 200 popular titles, such as BusinessWeek, Motor Trend, Popular Science and U.S. News & World Report, to more than 1.6 million customers in 232 countries. According to the latest Audit Bureau of Circulation and BPA Worldwide publisher statements, the company has captured 61 percent market segment share for audited digital magazine circulation. Intel Capital first invested in Zinio in 2002. For more information about Zinio, please visit www.zinio.com.
"Since we created the Intel Digital Home Fund one year ago, we've now announced 12 investments," Darling added. "The companies we've invested in have contributed significantly to industry progress connecting PC and CE devices together, ensuring their ease-of-use, and paving the way for new services to deliver digital entertainment and information."
Intel Digital Home Fund investments announced earlier this year include BridgeCo AG, Cablematrix Inc., Digital 5, Inc., Envivio Inc., Mediabolic Inc., Pure Networks Inc., Staccato Communications Inc., Trymedia Systems Inc. and Wisair Ltd.
Intel Capital, Intel's strategic investment program, focuses on making equity investments and acquisitions to grow the Internet economy in support of Intel's strategic interests. Intel Capital invests in hardware, software and services companies in several market segments, including computing, networking, and wireless communications. For more information, visit www.intel.com/capital.
Intel, the world's largest chip maker, is also a leading manufacturer of computer, networking and communications products. Additional information about Intel is available at www.intel.com/pressroom.
Intel is a registered trademark of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries in the United States and other countries.
Other names and brands may be claimed as the property of others.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Contact:
Intel Corporation
That's funny..agora's activity seems to be stronger than ever..coincidence??..I think not.
It's clearly why eyeballs here are at an alltime low...
most of us are just creatures of habit..LOL
most of us leave that to the moderators and their collaborators.
Better still..why would you care since you don't own the stock and have brought up something based purely on speculation and innuendo???
lame attempt to try to discredit owd.eom
Wencor/APS Merger -- December 14, 2004-hadn't seen...
Click Here to Listen Now
This is Fred Ball for Zions Bank, speaking on business.
Frequent flyers will love a new product called VOD, which stands for Video On Demand. This is a portable entertainment device that can be rented and returned on the plane. VODs are able to store dozens of early release movies, as well as TV shows, music videos, cartoons and music from which passengers can choose.
The product was invented by Bill Boyer, a baggage handler for a regional airline in Seattle. He recognized the possibility to create portable entertainment devices that would allow passengers to control what they want to watch and when they want to watch it during the flight. Bill went from baggage handler to owner of the business, APS, Inc., which designs and produces the VOD devices.
Just over a month ago, Wencor, an international company headquartered in Springville, bought APS. Earlier this year on the program I told you about Wencor, which recently topped $100 million in sales and received its sixth consecutive award as one of the 100 fastest growing companies in Utah. The company typically supplies parts and repair kits for military and commercial aircrafts, but its acquisition of APS is the company's first venture into the airline entertainment business.
Brent Wood, CEO of Wencor, tells me the company's growth and success is due to finding and offering new airline products such as VODs. Wencor currently has a contract with eight airlines for the VODs, with four other airlines in the testing phase. Brent expects that number to double within the next year because of the popularity and benefits the VOD provides for airlines and their passengers.
The airlines that currently offer the VOD devices usually rent them on flights that last two and a half hours or more, and they charge $10 for the rental. So the next time you're on a long flight, look for this interesting product to literally make the time fly.
For Zions Bank, I'm Fred Ball. I'm speaking on business.
http://smallbiz.ksl.com/speak-11388i.php
FCC to Allow Wireless Access on Planes
Email this Story
Dec 15, 3:30 PM (ET)
By GENARO C. ARMAS
WASHINGTON (AP) - Domestic air travelers could be surfing the Web by 2006 with government-approved technology that allows people access to high-speed Internet connections while they fly.
"We are pushing the frontiers in order to bring the information age to all corners of the world," Federal Communications Commission Chairman Michael Powell said Wednesday after a unanimous vote approving the new technology for U.S. airlines. "We want it on the land, in the air, and on the sea."
The FCC also voted to solicit public comment about ending the ban on in-flight use of cell phones. Among the issues to consider are whether passengers want to be surrounded by cell phone conversations.
"The ability to communicate is a vital one, but good cell phone etiquette is also essential," Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein said. "Our job is to see if this is possible and then let consumers work out the etiquette."
The FCC approved a wireless Internet offering from Boeing Co. (BA) that uses satellites to get air travelers online. Boeing's "Connexion" service is offered by some international carriers, including some flights to and from the United States.
Domestic carriers have shied away from it in large part because of the cost of outfitting planes with the technology, estimated to be about $500,000 per jet.
Currently, the only way passengers on domestic flights can communicate with the ground is through phones usually built into seatbacks. That service isn't very popular: It costs far more than conventional or cell phones - about $3.99 a minute - and the reception often is poor.
The FCC on Wednesday approved a measure to restructure how such "air-to-ground" services are used and allow the airlines to offer wireless high-speed Internet connections through the frequencies used by the seatback phones. It would cost roughly $100,000 to outfit a plane with the necessary equipment.
Left undecided was how many companies the FCC would allow, through an auction, to offer the services. Verizon Airfone, which is the only company that offers seatback phone service, maintains that letting one company handle the service would ensure the best quality.
Others, including AirCell, argue for two competitors to prevent one company from having a monopoly. FCC officials said the auction would take place within a year.
Once plans are completed and planes outfitted with the equipment, high-speed Internet access might be found on commercial domestic flights by 2006, said Jack Blumenstein, chairman and chief executive officer of Louisville, Colo.-based AirCell.
The timeline on when air travelers would be able to start using cell phones in flight is murkier, in part because both the FCC and the Federal Aviation Administration ban the practice.
The FCC took up the issue Wednesday in an effort to start public discussion, and commissioners might eventually relax the rules or lift the ban entirely. Of most concern to FCC officials is how using a cell phone in an airplane would interfere with cell phone use on the ground.
The FAA concern is over whether airborne cell phone could interfere with a plane's navigation and electrical systems, agency spokeswoman Laura Brown said. The technology used on seatback phones and being considered for use for wireless Internet hookups causes no such interference.
The FAA has commissioned a private, independent firm to study the issue. Results aren't due until 2006. The FAA will not make its decision on cell phone use until after the study is completed, Brown said.
Expansion of the use of high-speed Internet access and cell phones on planes could offer cash-strapped airline companies a new source for revenues, said Doug Wills, spokesman for the Air Transport Association, the major airlines' trade group.
Still, airlines must weigh the demand for such service against the desire of other passengers for a quiet cabin, Wills said. "Some people see a cell-free environment as a good thing," he said.
---
On the Net:
Federal Communications Commission: http://www.fcc.gov
OT Hmmm...Apple of IBM's eye?
By Cormac O'Reilly
Published Monday 6th December 2004 11:32 GMT
Opinion As the IT world digests the fact that IBM has, according to the New York Times, put its PC division up for sale, another set of speculation revs up.
No, not the fact that the rumored potential buyer is Chinese company Lenovo, nor the cruel related joke that many old IBMers caught in the sold PC division would quickly will appear on a Chinese take-away menu, thereby helping fix IBM's embarrassing pension funding problems.
Instead, an even better and more audacious speculation is that once publicly free of the PC division IBM will either buy, or form a close joint venture with Apple to sell its PCs, which coincidentally are now built around IBM's PowerPC chip.
Selling its PC Division would also pave the way for such an IBM move to be approved by the FTC. To add even more heat to already hot gossip, it turns out that Apple is not among the published list of early companies signing up for IBM's PowerPC consortia - a rather strange gap given Apple's now absolute dependency on that microprocessor range.
Well, you may ask, why would they sign up if a romance with IBM was in the air, or maybe even already consummated? And, knowing just how difficult it is to keep secrets these days, is it coincidence that some financial analysts have doubled their estimate of Apple's stock price expectation recently?
Just think how many positives for IBM such a marriage would provide. IBM would give the same credibility to the Macintosh computer, and its Microsoft-beating operating systems as it provided for the PC in the first place, thereby opening the flood gates of corporate demand.
Then of course there is Darwin, Apple's version of BSD Unix at the heart of its Mac OS X operating system, which would nicely provide IBM with a non Linux semi-open source alternative, and one that is focused on its on benchmark beating P (sorry G) 5 microprocessor. And of course there is all that synergy in the high performance, bargain priced Unix server and disk array products that Apple has taken to market, which must be hard to resist.
Hitching up with Apple would provide IBM with a real inroad into the fast growing 'lifestyle' market, something the men and women in blue suits kind of missed. Perhaps most of all, it would be a way for IBM to get even with Microsoft for all that bad blood over the early versions of Windows, which IBM partnered in, and apparently accidentally part-funded. Remember that what IBM got out of that for its money was an operating systems that chairman Gerstner famously named Warp, which turned out to be the speed at which it hurtled into oblivion.
Cast your mind back to Apple's announcement that hell had frozen over when they launched a Windows version of iTunes. I wonder what in hell will happen if there is any substance to this rumor. We shall see... ®
About Cormac O'Reilly: Late sixties IT industry entrant with early developer gigs in London at Abbey National
Ahhh.."they have become less attractive due to lower margins."
Did it ever occur to you that the lower margins might mean to the OEMs themselves who therefore shelved their plans...
no I guess not
Most likely hugh..Fusion and their OEM Bekos.eom
It's all right there doni..until you ask for details...then things kind of come apart and the bravado begins to dissipate...
Budget Airlines finally in India
Posted on Wednesday, December 01, 2004 @ 5:59 PM CET by sn26567
Alistairbastian writes ''Indian skies are set to witness an invasion of budget carriers in early 2005 with the government granting three low-cost airlines - Vijay Mallya's Kingfisher Airways, the Wadia family's Go Air, and Royal Airlines (former Modiluft) - permission to take flight. The civil aviation ministry last week granted its no-objection certificate to the three carriers, which will enable them to launch scheduled flight operations in India by early 2005, government sources said.
This will mark a fresh round of fare wars in the domestic aviation market with all 3 players promising to introduce services at fares that are about 25-30% cheaper than existing rates. Of the 3, Go Air seems to be the first to take to the skies with an official launch scheduled for the first quarter of 2005. While Mallya plans to launch his airline venture by April next year, Royal Air is slated to take off a month later in May. ''We will be starting our airline operations with a fleet of leased aircraft and substantial investments will be made in the venture,'' said Jehangir Wadia, director of the Wadia group, which also includes Britannia and Bombay Dyeing. ''Though we have named the venture Go Air for now, we are conducting consumer studies to finalise the brand for the airline.'' Meanwhile, Mallya is in the process of inducting brand new Airbus A320 aircraft for his venture. The liquor baron intends to introduce new concepts aboard his airline, which will include on-board auctions and model hunts, besides providing individual inflight entertainment systems for passengers. The aircraft will also be equipped with inflight communication systems like phone, fax and internet. The new promoters of erstwhile Modiluft - now renamed Royal Airways - have decided to shed frills in its new avatar. The airline is in the process of finalising financing options for taking to the skies next year.''
Cars seek tougher drives to lift media-heavy loads
By Charles Murray
EE Times
November 29, 2004 (9:00 AM EST)
CHICAGO — Nearly two decades after expanding the personal computer's possibilities, the hard-disk drive may be on the verge of launching another technical upheaval. This time, however, the disruption looms not on the desktop but on the dashboard.
Automakers, seeking to meet growing consumer demand for audio, video and on-board navigation, are gearing up for a big change in the way data is stored and retrieved in cars. With hard drives, they expect to offer consumers the ability to create and store in-vehicle libraries containing the equivalent of 200 CDs' worth of music, a hundred videogames and 60 movies. Moreover, the drives could prove the medium of choice for storing map databases, especially for navigation systems offering fast-changing, birds-eye imagery.
"More and more people have MP3 players and iPods, and so there is a strong consumer desire to store large volumes of files onboard vehicles," said Anand Ramamoorthy, director of systems solutions for the Automotive Business Unit at Renesas Technology America Inc. (San Jose, Calif.). "The large OEMs are looking for a cost-effective strategy to meet that need."
The buzz around automotive hard drives has grown so steady that some analysts and observers believe all of the 17 million new vehicles sold in North America each year could be equipped with disk drives within a decade. International Data Corp. predicts that automotive hard drive use will climb from 520,000 units in 2003 to 5.69 million units — and $381 million in revenues — in 2008.
"It's coming up on us very, very quickly," said Robert Schumacher, director of mobile multimedia for Delphi Automotive Systems (Kokomo, Ind.), a leading supplier of automotive electronics. "Eventually, every navigation system and every radio will have a hard drive."
Indeed, in some quarters, the trend has already begun. This fall, General Motors Corp. is rolling out hard drive storage, built by PhatNoise Inc. (Los Angeles), on four of its crossover sport vans. Each of the vehicles will offer a wallet-sized, 40-Gbyte hard drive cartridge that mounts in the overhead entertainment system and stores up to 10,000 songs and 40 movies.
Analysts said the trend is sufficiently strong to make even the industry's most skeptical engineers look long and hard at the technology. But concerns linger over the hard drive's reputation for fragility. Desktop PCs, after all, don't drive down highways and hit potholes at 65 mph. Nor do they deal with the outdoor temperature extremes of Nogales, Ariz., and International Falls, Minn.
Some automakers are examining how the technology might affect their brand image. "The last thing they want is to have cars in the shop all the time, getting hard-disk drives replaced," said David Reinsel, program director for storage research at International Data Corp.
To allay such concerns, a consortium of manufacturers intends to develop a standard for a lightweight, compact, removable hard-disk drive that could be used in automobiles. Drivers could bring the iVDR (for information versatile disk for removable usage) indoors with them after parking their vehicles.
"It would mitigate exposure to temperature extremes, data management problems and theft issues by virtue of the fact that it could be popped out and carried in a shirt pocket or purse at any time," IDC's Reinsel said of the platform envisioned by the consortium (www.ivdr.org).
Tough enough for travel
Disk drive engineers learned important lessons about toughening up their products during the past 15 years, as laptops proliferated and drives evolved to suit them. "Since the advent of the laptop, hard drives have gone through a lot of refinement to become more durable for portable environments," said John Osterhout, director of consumer electronics marketing for Hitachi Global Storage Technologies Inc. (San Jose). "Before then, we never had to address shock, vibration and environmental issues."
The ruggedized drives models that have long been used in police vehicles have also held lessons for engineers of drives for broader applications.
Hitachi and fellow drive manufacturers Toshiba Storage Device Division, Seagate Technology Inc. and Fujitsu Computer Products of America are working hard these days to address the shock, vibration and temperature challenges for in-car disk drives.
One common method of coping with the ruggedness challenge is to use a 2.5-inch, 80-Gbyte drive but utilize only 50 percent of it. Limiting the usable disk area, engineers say, improves the drive's shock and vibration characteristics.
Equally important is the engineering effort to stretch the temperature range of disk drives from their desktop level of 0°C to 55°C to an automotive-grade - 20°C to 85°C. Achieving that broader range involves a migration from the more conventional, ball-bearing-style electric drive motors to one using fluidic bearings.
The key, say engineers, is the use of a fluid that won't get overly viscous at low temperatures but won't vaporize at the extremely high temperatures. To meet that need, engineers at Hitachi have combined an ester-based fluid with an electric motor drive shaft having a slightly smaller diameter than conventional motors. The shaft, which measures 2.5 mm in diameter rather than the usual 3 mm, can be driven more easily (with less torque) when temperatures drop to - 20°C and the fluid in the bearing grows more viscous.
"Finding a fluid that won't vaporize or get too thick requires a very fine balance," said Bill Heybruck, an engineering specialist for consumer electronics at Hitachi.
With such drives in hand, however, leading automotive suppliers and system integrators have begun launching disk-drive-based products for automakers. Such companies as Panasonic, Sony, Pioneer, Sanyo, Delphi and Denso are working with automakers on aftermarket products, and Delphi and Visteon are talking with OEMs about factory-installed hard drives.
PhatNoise, for its part, has jumped into the fray as a systems integrator, providing drive-based technologies complete with processors, as well as in-house-designed operating systems, codecs, vehicle interfaces and even PC software for downloading music and videos to the hard drive. The company's most recent system for GM, for example, employs a 300-MHz MIPS processor core and an embedded operating system built atop the Linux 2.4 kernel. PhatNoise has also worked with Volkswagen, Audi and Mazda on hard drive-based storage systems.
PhatNoise executives said their recent efforts with automakers have taken them beyond the point of offering a replacement for the CD changer, which is the way the company started five years ago.
"Once you put a hard drive in a car, you open up a whole class of applications," said Dannie Lau, executive vice president for PhatNoise. "You can store audio, video and videogames. You can store maps for navigation and even do multizone entertainment in the vehicle."
Although automotive hard-disk drive technology has seen much of its initial use in navigation systems for Japanese vehicles, its big growth area will be in entertainment applications, especially in North America, industry observers believe.
"Entertainment constantly moves up," said Schumacher of Delphi. "It has moved up from AM to FM to FM stereo to cassettes, CDs and DVDs. And, eventually, it's going to move up to hard drives."
Cos. to sell songs on file-share service
Nov 24, 9:14 PM EST
By ALEX VEIGA
AP Business Writer
LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Three major recording companies have agreed to make their music available to be shared and sold over a new online file-swapping service that aims to lure music fans away from rival services where trading of music and movies remains unfettered.
Universal Music Group, Sony BMG Music Entertainment and Warner Music Group - three of the four major recording companies - have licensed their catalog of music to Saratoga Springs, N.Y.-based Wurld Media, the firm said Wednesday.
Wurld Media plans to launch its file-sharing software, dubbed Peer Impact, early next year.
Details of the software and price model were not released, but the company said it would allow consumers to buy and share music, video and other content, while ensuring "that artists and rights holders receive their due compensation for each file shared on the network."
The company added that the service would only distribute media that is licensed or in the public domain.
"The online media market is presently split between authorized legal paid-download services and unauthorized free services," Greg Kerber, Wurld Media's chairman and chief executive, said in a statement. "The consumer is stuck somewhere in the middle, and that's where Peer Impact comes in."
Representatives of Universal and Sony BMG declined to comment. Calls to Warner were not immediately returned Wednesday.
The Wurld Media announcement follows recent reports that Universal and Sony BMG were making overtures toward making their music available for distribution on file-sharing networks.
Universal has licensed its music to a company founded by Shawn Fanning, creator of the original Napster song-swapping program, that has reportedly been working on technology to filter or block unauthorized song files from being traded over peer-to-peer networks.
Sony BMG has reportedly been in talks to sell its music on a new file-sharing service called "Mashboxxx," which is due to launch in January and also expected to incorporate technology to block computer users from trading songs without permission.
Still, doubts linger over whether the recording industry will be able to turn millions of computer users - now swapping billions of files online with programs such as Grokster, Kazaa and eDonkey - into paying consumers with licensed versions of file-sharing services.
"People who want to buy music have any number of legal alternatives now that work out extremely well, and people who want to share music can get it for free," said Josh Bernoff, an analyst with Forrester Research Inc. "This idea of monetizing P2P, it does save on bandwidth costs, but in the end, it's not likely to catch on."
----
On the Net:
Peer Impact: http://www.peerimpact.com
Creative declares marketing 'war' against iPod
Wed Nov 17,12:01 PM ET Technology - MacCentral
By Peter Cohen MacCentral
Creative Technology Ltd. Chief Executive Officer Sim Wong Hoo told reporters in Singapore his company plans to spend US$100 million in 2005 in a marketing war aimed squarely at Apple Computer Inc.'s iPod. "The MP3 war has started and I am the one who has declared war," Sim said.
Sim's comments came at a recent press event to celebrate the release of Creative's Zen Micro, a 5GB portable music player, according to a recent Reuters report. Creative in 2005 hopes to displace Apple as the top seller of MP3 players worldwide.
Creative already has a wide array of portable digital music players that use hard disk drives, MicroDrives and flash storage. The company's players come in a large assortment of form factors and capabilities. Despite that, Creative has suffered as Apple has taken a larger chunk of the digital music market with its iPod and iPod mini devices.
Part of Apple's iPod success has been thanks to the burgeoning popularity of its iTunes Music Store, whose Digital Rights Management (DRM)-protected files are playable on the iPod but no other portable digital music player. Apple has opened the store in the United States and a dozen European countries, and plans to expand it into Canada sometime this month. Creative has no music service of its own. Unlike the iPod, however, Creative's players can play back Windows Media Audio (WMA) files sold by many of the iTunes Music Store's competitors.
"I'm planning to spend some serious money -- I intend to out-market everyone," said Sim.
PortalPlayer rides popularity of the iPod
Nov 15, 10:25 AM EST
NEW YORK (AP) -- PortalPlayer Inc. is hoping it doesn't fall from Apple's tree.
PortalPlayer, which makes components for Apple Computer Corp.'s iPod music player, plans to go public this week, selling 6.25 million shares at $11 to $13 a share.
People familiar with the offering say demand for the shares has been strong, driven largely by the success of the iPod.
"It's on everybody's radar screen now," said Sal Morreale, who tracks initial public offerings for Cantor Fitzgerald LP in Los Angeles. "People want a piece of the iPod, and they haven't had too many chances."
PortalPlayer, based in Santa Clara, Calif., is a chip maker for personal media players. But its business is highly concentrated: 93 percent of its sales go to Shanghai's Inventec Appliances Co., which assembles iPods.
So far, PortalPlayer's sales haven't translated into profits, though its net losses have narrowed. Over the first nine months of this year, PortalPlayer lost $131,000 on revenue of $47.8 million, according to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. In the same period a year ago, it booked $12.8 million in revenue, for a $7.3 million loss.
Investors seem drawn by the continued growth potential of the iPod, which has become a must-have for some. In October, Apple said it sold 2 million iPods in its fiscal fourth quarter, up strongly from the 836,000 players sold in the same quarter a year ago. The sales helped Apple beat earnings expectations by a wide margin.
Since then, companies involved in the iPod have seen their stocks boom too.
Synaptics Inc., which makes the iPod's signature scroll wheel, is trading up about 45 percent. Audible Inc., which provides some of the digital content played on the iPod, is up 43 percent.
So there's plenty of upside to being involved in the iPod, but PortalPlayer notes in its SEC filings that the relationship with Apple makes it vulnerable. Apple could choose another supplier, or develop some of the components itself. "Any of these events would significantly harm our business," PortalPlayer said in SEC filings.
Even if Apple continues to use PortalPlayer products, the company still would be hurt if consumers stop buying iPods.
But most potential investors appear to think the current iPod success outweighs any future risks, Morreale said.
"You just mention iPod and folks go nuts," he said. "It's that simple."
Elsewhere in the IPO market:
Airline Competition Moves to In-Flight Entertainment
By Keith L. Alexander
Tuesday, November 16, 2004; Page E01
After battling the budget airlines on fares, the traditional carriers are now trying to match their rivals' in-flight entertainment offerings.
Low-cost carrier JetBlue Airways has raised the expectations of airline passengers with its 36-channel satellite TV programming at each seat. Other budget carriers -- including Frontier Airlines and Delta Air Lines' unit, Song -- have followed JetBlue with similar services.
Now, American Airlines, the world's largest carrier, has begun a 12-week test of a new handheld entertainment system that plays movies, music videos, TV shows, video games on a 9-inch screen and contains local or national newspapers. The carrier will still offer its usual entertainment -- headphones that plug into the seat arm for movies and music.
American's foray into individualized entertainment comes as the bigger traditional carriers search for new revenue to bolster their weak bottom lines. Unlike the low-cost carriers that provide their offerings free of charge, the major carriers are providing the handhelds for a fee in coach (free for first class and business passengers). American is testing a charge of $10 or $12 for its coach passengers.
United just completed a month-long test of providing a Panasonic DVD player for a $12 fee to passengers aboard its low-fare unit Ted on flights between Denver and Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Travelers had 10 to 12 movie choices. First-class and business travelers on United got complimentary DVD players on flights from Los Angeles and San Francisco to New York's John F. Kennedy International.
Alaska Airlines launched its digEplayer portable entertainment system earlier this year. Coach passengers pay $10 for the system, similar to American's, on transcontinental flights. The airline plans to roll out the device on all flights three hours or longer by the end of the year.
"The response from customers has been very good," said Greg Latimer, Alaska's director of brand and product marketing. "JetBlue really demonstrated that in-flight entertainment could be a differentiator."
Dulles-based Independence Air says its financial troubles won't stop it from offering satellite TV in the seatbacks of its Airbus jets as early as January. Independence Air plans to offer 24 channels via EchoStar satellite TV. Independence spokesman Rick DeLisi said the carrier has not decided whether it will charge a fee for the service.
For its part, Southwest Airlines remains staunchly opposed to in-flight entertainment. Ed Stewart, the airline's spokesman, said Southwest studied the possibility of adding in-flight technology but found it was not cost-effective because most of its flights are short, about an hour or so. "We don't think our customers really want to pay for that," Stewart said.
Some frequent fliers said they welcomed the handheld devices if they were complimentary. Otherwise, they weren't interested. "I can attend a movie, even if I pay full price, for several dollars cheaper," said Fern M. Malila, a computer sales specialist from Oakton.
Chet Pryor, an English professor at Montgomery College, has used Alaska's system. The downside, he said, is that very frequent fliers -- those who travel several times a month -- will find movies and shows on the devices that they've already seen on previous flights.
American's handheld devices, called personal entertainment appliances, are a relatively inexpensive way to improve the entertainment menu for passengers without having to rewire its fleet of aircraft.
American will initially test the devices on flights three hours or more across the country, between Chicago and the West Coast, and between Dallas and Seattle. Depending on passenger demand, American could roll the devices out systemwide by spring, said Mary McKee, managing director of American's in-flight product service.
The American handheld offers 12 to 20 movies that have just finished their theater run and are near being released on DVD or video. BizClass recently tried out the device and found it included Ben Stiller's "Starsky and Hutch" and "The Manchurian Candidate," an R-rated film that had been scrubbed of adult language and content for a general audience.
The device also played the latest CDs from Sting, Alicia Keys, Stevie Wonder and Loretta Lynn and TV shows such as "Spin City," "Cheers" and the CBS drama "Without a Trace." Its video games included Video Poker, Blackjack and Space Fighter.
Question of the Week: Has your laptop
Entertainment hits new heights
Device gives fliers choice of movies, music, newspapers, books, games and TV shows
By Mark Skertic
Tribune staff reporter
Published November 15, 2004
American Airlines will begin testing a new entertainment offering Monday that packs a cineplex-worth of movies and a shelf-full of books into a 3-pound package.
The personal entertainment appliance, or PEA, also has audio books and text versions, TV shows such as `Frasier" and "Without a Trace," daily newspapers, games and music videos. All are available with the swipe of a credit card in a reader on the side of the machine.
The devices are a new way for an industry hit hard by tough competition, rising fuel costs and plummeting profits to make some additional revenue by offering a service people want.
"It's growing because there is a growing expectation," said Rob Brookler, spokesman for the World Airline Entertainment Association, an industry trade group. "It's a part of our lifestyles. People walk around with their cell phones, they have wireless access. ... When they get on a plane, they don't want to be told they only have one movie to watch, no questions asked."
The airline will begin testing passenger demand for the PEA on its O'Hare to Los Angeles route. The device is a modified laptop that's about the size of a copy of "The Da Vinci Code."
The days when everyone on the plane watched the same movie or chose from a handful of prerecorded music are ending. Three hand-held entertainment-device manufacturers are vying for a slice of a growing marketplace.
The machines give passengers more choices--a business traveler can watch Will Smith battle machines in "I, Robot," while kids in the next row can watch "Finding Nemo"--and give airlines a much-needed revenue stream.
American will charge $10 or $12 to use the PEA during the test period, trying to determine the best price, said Mary McKee, managing director of in-flight products for the airline. For one charge, the user gets unlimited access to anything on the device for the duration of the flight.
"It's audio-video on demand, which means you watch it when you want to and stop it when you need to stop it," McKee said. "And you can skip around. So you can start a movie, and decide you want to listen to music.
"There's a lot of content, and even in a five-hour flight there's no way you're going to get through it all."
Airlines have been searching for new ways to entertain passengers on long flights. Lufthansa offers the wireless system Connexion developed by Boeing. AirTran Airways has announced it will provide XM satellite radio on its flights. And JetBlue has TV screens installed in seatbacks that show DirecTV satellite programming.
The PEA was developed by IMS, a Southern California software and systems company.
"At the end of the day, it's all about the content," said Joseph Rosen, IMS chairman. His firm has designed the system to be updated daily, so it has current newspapers and can quickly offer other new programming.
Competitors include the DigEplayer, a similar device that is the brainchild of an Alaska Airlines baggage handler who took his idea to his bosses.
"The system has to be simple to use and robust, a little rugged," said Bill Boyd, who still carries baggage a few weekends a month to stay in touch with his old friends.
Last month, Boyd's company, APS Inc., was purchased by Wencor, an aircraft product and parts distributor. Alaska Airlines, Hawaiian Airlines and Ryanair are among those using DigEplayer, and other airlines have expressed interest in testing it, Boyd said.
Virgin Atlantic Airways is using General Dynamics Corp.'s Yes, short for your entertainment station. Yes systems, which are typically given new movies and other programming once a month, can be hand-held or installed in seatbacks.
The device American is testing allows unlimited use with one swipe of a credit card. A passenger can start a movie, pause it for a nap, play a few hands of blackjack and read the paper. Users wear headphones--machines have two jacks, so two can share a machine--and there are no external speakers.
During the test period, American will be surveying users about how they like the device, including whether they want their movies edited for potentially objectionable content. "The Manchurian Candidate" movie selection on the PEA has been edited, but the airline wants to know if that is a service most want, McKee said.
"Some people are going to say `If I'm paying $10, I want to see the movie the same way I'd see it in a theatre,'" she said. "We're choosing to go the conservative route, initially, which is to edit any R-rated movies that we show."
The airline will test the product through early next year, including tests on the Chicago to Seattle route in late January. Ft. Lauderdale to Los Angeles and Dallas to Seattle routes also will be tested.
Brookler is optimistic.
"As the technology becomes more affordable, it's going to make its way onto more aircraft," Brookler said. "And for airlines, there is definitely the potential for revenue generation."
Photos Plus Music Equals an Expensive iPod
Sun Nov 7, 1:57 AM ET Technology - washingtonpost.com
By Rob Pegoraro, The Washington Post
First Apple put some color on the iPod, when it offered the iPod mini in a palette of pastel hues, and now it has put some color inside it, in the form of the new iPod Photo.
This update to Apple's near-ubiquitous music player lets you carry around your computer's entire photo library as well as your music collection. You can rock out to that carefully compiled set of U2 rarities while you browse through the summer vacation pictures, all using the same pocket-size device.
Apple is late offering this feature: Photo-capable MP3 players have been around for several years, but they have yet to take off in the market. If the reason for that lack of success is poor quality, the iPod Photo ought to change things in a hurry. It shows all the elegant simplicity you'd expect in something crafted by the relentlessly design-conscious folks at Apple.
But after testing the iPod Photo over the past week, I don't see that happening. This device is very good at what it does, but its photo capabilities seem unlikely to get enough everyday use to justify their extra cost.
That would be $100 more than a music-only iPod of the same capacity, if you buy the 40-gigabyte, $499 iPod Photo. Apple also sells a 60-gigabyte model, the one I reviewed, for $599; that does offer about twice the storage of any other iPod (a hair under 56 gigabytes of usable space), but it also costs more than many new computers.
Those added dollars buy you a sharp, clear but cramped color screen -- just over 1 1/2 inches wide by 1 1/4 inches tall, with 220 by 176 pixels of resolution -- software to browse through photo albums and set up slide shows, and a cable to display those photos on a TV.
The iTunes software bundled with the iPod Photo (in versions for both Mac OS X (news - web sites) and Windows 2000 (news - web sites)/XP) will copy all or part of your digital-photo library to the device. If you use Apple's iPhoto or Adobe's Photoshop Album or Photoshop Elements, photo albums or collections created on the computer will show up on the iPod Photo as well. You can also copy any individual folder of pictures.
Browsing through picture archives on the iPod Photo is as easy as flipping through music playlists; spin a finger around the iPod's ingenious click-wheel control to choose individual photo albums and select a picture, then press left or right on the click-wheel to go back or forward in the album. You can also turn any album into a slide show by matching it with a music playlist stored on the iPod.
In practice, viewing pictures on the iPod Photo is not always a delight. Its screen, less than half the size of a handheld organizer's LCD, is too small to display fine detail without distracting visual artifacts -- the pattern on a checked shirt looked like the whorls of a fingerprint. The iPod also takes a few seconds to draw thumbnail views of each photo in an album when you select it, a slight delay that can be distracting.
You can view photos and slide shows on TV by connecting an included adapter cable to your set's audio and composite-video input ports, then selecting an option in an onscreen menu to activate TV output. Most digital cameras offer the same basic capability.
By default, photos are copied to the iPod Photo in compressed form to save disk space; this doesn't affect how they look on the device or on a TV, but it does increase the time needed to copy them to the iPod the first time. This also prevents you from copying your photos from an iPod Photo to another PC.
You can avoid both problems by selecting a less-than-obvious option in iTunes to preserve photos' full resolution -- even the 40-gigabyte iPod Photo has more than enough room to allow that. (If you want to simply haul photos from computer to computer, without viewing them on the iPod's screen, any old iPod will suffice if switched into the "disk mode" that lets it double as an external hard drive.)
When playing music, an iPod Photo looks and works like a garden-variety iPod, except that it displays any album cover art stored in iTunes.
Those images, however, show up no bigger than a thumbnail. If you haven't bought any songs from Apple's iTunes Music Store, which includes cover art with each download, you may not even know this feature exists, since iTunes (unlike Microsoft's Windows Media Player) doesn't automatically show album art for songs in a collection.
Apple did manage to add photo capability without adding much size or weight. The iPod Photo is only slightly thicker and heavier than a music iPod -- 3/4 inch thick and 6 3/4 ounces. Nor is there any compromise on battery life: I got 16 1/2 hours of music playback with the screen's backlight off, 90 minutes more than Apple's estimate. With the screen illuminated full time for slide show viewing, the battery lasted about 5 1/2 hours.
Like other iPods, this model doesn't allow easy replacement of its internal, rechargeable battery. Apple charges $99 for that service, while third parties offer it for a bit less.
This entire package is certainly much more pleasant to live with than such competing devices as the Archos Gmini 400 audio/photo/video player. This $399, 20-gigabyte device is a bit smaller, a bit lighter and a lot cheaper than the iPod Photo and offers the bonus feature of video playback, but it suffers greatly from a senselessly cluttered interface and the lack of any photo-synchronization option.
But the iPod Photo's biggest obstacle isn't other products, it's human nature. As I wrote several weeks ago when I reviewed a Portable Media Center handheld, it's a lot harder to gawk at pictures while walking, running or driving than it is to listen to music; none of Apple's engineering wizardry can change that.
Living with technology, or trying to? E-mail Rob Pegoraro at rob@twp.com.
Airlines putting entertainment in hands of their passengers
Posted on Thu, Nov. 04, 2004
By KIRSTEN TAGAMI
Cox News Service
Even as they face mounting losses, airlines are trying to find new ways to make flights more fun.
The latest offering: hand-held entertainment devices that display movies, books, newspapers, magazines, TV shows and games.
Personalized electronic entertainment has been around for several years, mainly in the form of seat-back video offered on low-fare airlines like JetBlue and Delta Air Lines’ Song unit. But built-in systems are expensive to install and don’t always work well.
PEA
Enter lightweight, portable devices like the Pea — which stands for Personal Entertainment Appliance — the digEplayer and the Yes Solo machine.
American Airlines, the world’s biggest carrier, will begin testing the Pea soon.
American Airlines, the world’s biggest carrier, will begin testing the Pea soon. For about $8 to $10, coach customers will be able to choose from content such as games and magazines. They also can pay a few dollars more for “early window” movies released about 90 days before they’re available on DVD. The devices are likely to be free in first class and business class.
The wireless Pea looks like a laptop computer and has a place for customers to swipe credit cards to pay for movies or for shopping.
Atlanta-based Delta said it is looking at ways to improve in-flight entertainment with updated technology but hasn’t decided which system to use.
DigEplayer
One pioneer in the hand-held entertainment arena was digEplayer, created by an entrepreneur who worked weekends as a baggage handler for Alaska Airlines.
The device is being used by KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, Hawaiian Airlines and others. The digEplayer has movies and audio that are updated every 30 to 60 days.
The Pea, on the other hand, can accommodate overnight content updates.
YES MACHINE
The Yes machine — Your Entertainment System — made by General Dynamics will offer 3-D interactive maps and flight information; real-time text news, sports and weather; the Internet; and live satellite TV.
The device is being tested in a limited number of seats on Virgin Atlantic.
Some airlines have chosen to sit out this latest airline trend, at least for now. AirTran Airways figures there isn’t that much customer demand for the new devices.
“A lot of our customers have their own DVD players and other toys they bring onboard,” spokesman Tad Hutcheson said. “We encourage that.”
Record Labels Said to Be Next on Spitzer List for Scrutiny
By JEFF LEEDS
October 22, 2004
Elliot Spitzer, the New York State attorney general, has recently taken on a procession of corporate powers from Wall Street analysts to mutual funds to insurance brokers. Now he is casting his eyes on the music industry, particularly its practices for influencing what songs are heard on the public airwaves.
According to several people involved, investigators in Mr. Spitzer's office have served subpoenas on the four major record corporations - the Universal Music Group, Sony BMG Music Entertainment, the EMI Group and the Warner Music Group - seeking copies of contracts, billing records and other information detailing their ties to independent middlemen who pitch new songs to radio programmers in New York State.
The inquiry encompasses all the major radio formats and is not aiming at any individual record promoter, these people said. Mr. Spitzer and representatives for the record companies declined to comment.
The major record labels have paid middlemen for decades, though the practice has long been derided as a way to skirt a federal statute - known as the payola law - outlawing bribes to radio broadcasters.
Broadcasters are prohibited from taking cash or anything of value in exchange for playing a specific song, unless they disclose the transaction to listeners. But in a practice that is common in the industry, independent promoters pay radio stations annual fees - often exceeding $100,000 - not, they say, to play specific songs, but to obtain advance copies of the stations' playlists. The promoters then bill record labels for each new song that is played; the total tab costs the record industry tens of millions of dollars each year.
The new scrutiny comes at an inconvenient time for the major record companies, which have been pressing federal and state law enforcement officials to shut pirate CD manufacturers and the unimpeded flow of copyrighted music online.
The statute involved is a federal one and the case would not seem to fit neatly into Mr. Spitzer's jurisdiction, but state attorneys general typically have wide latitude to investigate issues involving consumers and businesses in their states.
In this instance, Mr. Spitzer might proceed on the ground that broadcasters' dealings with middlemen severely limit the opportunities available to those artists who cannot afford to hire them.
These promoters flourished throughout the 1980's and most of the 1990's, but their influence began to weaken after Congress deregulated the radio industry in 1996, allowing for an extensive consolidation that tilted the balance of power to a handful of newly created broadcasting mammoths.
With their newfound power, some big chains, including Clear Channel Communications, at first tried to tap a bigger share of the labels' promotional dollars, and designated specific independent promoters to be the exclusive representatives for particular stations.
Promotion prices continued to rise, but at the same time the consultants had less influence over airplay, record executives say.
In 2002, the industry's lobbying organization, the Recording Industry Association of America, called on the government to strengthen anti-payola laws and examine questionable practices, including independent promotion. (Association officials are considering whether to provide new comments and information to the Federal Communications Commission as part of that agency's review of radio promotion, people in the music industry have said.)
Cox Radio, and later Clear Channel, said they would not renew their contracts with any promoters.
Since the big companies severed their ties to the practice, record labels - suffering from piracy and other financial woes - have sharply scaled back payments to the middlemen, and by some estimates pay them as little as $30 million annually.
One promoter, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Mr. Spitzer's investigators "are not going to find anything; they're 20 years too late."
But questionable practices persist in a variety of markets and music formats.
In the late 1990's, the Justice Department began a broad investigation of payola that eventually encompassed dozens of Latin and urban- music radio stations across the nation. It won convictions against two top executives at Fonovisa, the biggest independent record label in the Spanish-language market, and a top radio executive. No cases have been brought in the urban-music category. Unlike the promoters in the rock and pop fields who receive payments as stations add a song to their playlist, many urban-music consultants receive initial lump sums to finance the marketing of a new single, and distribute the money as they see fit.
U2 Back in Black iPod
by Charlie Amter
Oct 20, 2004, 6:35 PM PT
U2 is hoping consumers will find what they are looking for this fall--in the form of a special-edition Apple iPod loaded with the band's new album.
According to Forbes.com, the biggest band in the world has partnered with the computer company to not only hype U2's new single, but to sell a special edition black iPod preprogrammed with the group's forthcoming How To Dismantle an Atomic Bomb.
Neither the band's label, Interscope Records, nor Apple would comment Wednesday on the report, although the deal is expected to become official next Tuesday, when U2's Bono and the Edge are scheduled to join Apple boss Steve Jobs for a press conference in San Jose, California.
In addition to U2's 11th studio record, due Nov. 23, the new customized iPod reportedly will come preloaded with some of the band's past catalog work--a digital greatest hits, of sorts. The customized black iPod will retail for $30 over the standard list price.
U2 is currently in heavy rotation in a series of TV spots that jointly promote Apple's iPod and iTunes Music Store and the band's new single, "Vertigo." (The track is currently number 44 on Billboard's Hot 100 and the most downloaded track on Apple's iTunes.) The band has previously made exclusive tracks available for download on the iTunes Music Store, which just last week announced that music fans have purchased and downloaded more than 150 million songs from the online store.
Music industry heavies are already proclaiming the new deal as a historic shift in music marketing.
"For U2, this is brilliant marketing," William Morris' Marc Geiger, who manages the Pixies and Nine Inch Nails, told E! Online Wednesday.
"[The commercial featuring "Vertigo"] is artistically credible and I think it sets the stage for future branding opportunities with companies like Apple," Geiger continued. "The U2-iPod deal doesn't compromise either brand, and it adds to both."
Anticipation is indeed running high for the new U2 studio set, and Apple executives are counting on capturing thirtysomething fans of the Irish band who have been pondering an iPod purchase--waiting for the right moment to buy.
The select few insiders who have heard the new material have been blown away. U2 fan site @U2 quotes VH1 Senior Vice President Bill Flanagan saying the record is "the best album they have ever done. It's going to knock [listeners] out."
The album's release will apparently not be impacted by the disappearance of an early version of the album. A compact disc containing unmixed versions of the tracks went missing from a recording studio in Nice, France, in July, prompting worries that the songs could be leaked to the Internet, potentially costing the quartet and Interscope millions in lost revenue. At the time, U2 said if leaked tracks began sprouting up on file-sharing sites, the band would rush-release the album on iTunes Music Store.
In other U2 news, Bono has been selected to receive the inaugural TED prize--a technology, entertainment and design award that includes $100,000 to be used to grant three wishes. The award will be presented at the annual TED conference, set for Feb. 23-26 in Monterey, California.
Total Number of Aircraft 80 Update : October 2004
http://203.155.121.81/fpi-aboutus-en.htm
MODELS
AIRCRAFT TYPE
Number of Aircraft
Number of Seat
First Class
Business Class
Economy Class
Boeing 747-400
9
405
18
62
325
9
389
14
50
325
Boeing 747-300
2
405
18
62
325
Boeing 777-300
6
388
-
49
339
Boeing 777-200
8
358
-
55
303
Boeing 737-400
7
149
-
12
137
Airbus 330-300
8
317
-
50
267
4
305
-
42
263
Airbus 300-600
10
247
-
46
201
11
260
-
28
232
MD - 11
4
285
10
42
233
ATR - 72
2
66
.
-
66
Total Number of Aircraft 80 Update : October 2004
Aeromedia LLC provides advertising and promotional content for menu driven Video on Demand entertainment systems.
Aeromedia LLC was formed in 2003 to coincide with the release of the digEplayer 5500™, APS, Inc.’s developed the world’s first completely self contained, portable in-flight entertainment system. The digEplayer 5500™ with a 40 gigabyte hard drive coupled with patented compression and encoding technology can hold over 60 feature length movies, TV shows and dynamic music content for passengers on any type of aircraft.
Most airlines will feature only nine to twelve movies per content cycle (30-60 days depending on the airline) because it would be cost prohibitive to provide more. Because of the compression technology, Aeromedia can place more information, advertising and other promotional content on the system.
The advertising space prior to the start of the movies on the standard embedded systems has been a staple of the in-flight entertainment industry for many years. What makes Aeromedia different is the ability to provide the extra informative, advertising and promotional content. The digEplayer™ has added a “Destination Information” channel on the Alaska Airlines and Hawaiian Airlines systems. Tailored for the digEplayer™, this channel provides the passenger with current info about hotels, restaurants, attractions and shopping in each of their major markets served by the airlines. The addition of this channel provides a revenue source for Aeromedia and our partner airlines, but it allows advertisers with a low cost way of getting to the highly attractive airline passenger.
Aeromedia’s clients have a variety of opportunities to get their message out to the airline passenger. This inexpensive and highly effective service can help bring the advertisers message alive whether a: 30 second television commercial prior to a movie or the “billboard ad” on the highly useful “Destination Information” channel.
Moo, IR is line-of-sight and therefore would be a poor choice to broadcast around a house. I believe the media center PCs are using WiFi wireless to broadcast. This requires that you purchase receivers for each tv you want to broadcast to.
Hope this helps...
Wal-Mart Wants $10 CDs
Biggest U.S. record retailer battles record labels over prices
Wal-mart wants every CD you buy to cost less than ten bucks. And the nation's largest retailer -- which moved a quarter of a trillion dollars' worth of goods last year -- usually gets its way. Suppliers who don't accede to Wal-Mart's "everyday low price" mantra often find their products bounced from the chain's stores, excluded from being sold to the 138 million people who shop at a Wal-Mart store every week.
In the past decade, Wal-Mart has quietly emerged as the nation's biggest record store. Wal-Mart now sells an estimated one out of every five major-label albums. It has so much power, industry insiders say, that what it chooses to stock can basically determine what becomes a hit. "If you don't have a Wal-Mart account, you probably won't have a major pop artist," says one label executive.
Along with other giant retailers such as Best Buy and Target, Wal-Mart willingly loses money selling CDs for less than $10 (they buy most hit CDs from distributors for around $12). These companies use bargain CDs to lure consumers to the store, hoping they might also grab a boombox or a DVD player while checking out the music deals.
Less-expensive CDs are something consumers have been demanding for years. But here's the hitch: Wal-Mart is tired of losing money on cheap CDs. It wants to keep selling them for less than $10 -- $9.72, to be exact -- but it wants the record industry to lower the prices at which it purchases them. Last winter, Wal-Mart asked the industry to supply it with choice albums -- from new releases from alternative rockers the Killers to perennial classics such as Beatles 1 -- at favorable prices. According to music-industry sources, Wal-Mart executives hinted that they could reduce Wal-Mart's CD stock and replace it with more lucrative DVDs and video games.
"This wasn't framed as a gentle negotiation," says one label rep. "It's a line in the sand -- you don't do this, then the threat is this." (Wal-Mart denies these claims.) As a result, all of the major labels agreed to supply some popular albums to Wal-Mart's $9.72 program. "We're in such a competitive world, and you can't reach consumers if you're not in Wal-Mart," admits another label executive.
Tensions are not as high now as they were last winter, but making sure Wal-Mart is happy remains one of the music industry's major priorities. That's because if Wal-Mart cut back on music, industry sales would suffer severely -- though Wal-Mart's shareholders would barely bat an eye. While Wal-Mart represents nearly twenty percent of major-label music sales, music represents only about two percent of Wal-Mart's total sales. "If they got out of selling music, it would mean nothing to them," says another label executive. "This keeps me awake at night."
Wal-Mart would not directly comment on tensions with the labels, but Gary Severson, Wal-Mart's senior vice president and general merchandise manager in charge of the chain's entertainment section, did allude to the dispute about music prices. "The labels price things based on what they believe they can get -- a pricing philosophy a lot of industries have," he says. "But we like to price things as cheaply as we possibly can, rather than charge as much as we can get. It's a big difference in philosophy, and we try to help other people see that." Virtually no industry executives would publicly comment about their company's relationship with Wal-Mart. But off the record, many record-industry executives shared their concerns. "I don't think there is a music supplier in America who really enjoys doing business with Wal-Mart," says one major-label rep.
No one in the music business ever expected Wal-Mart to become the most powerful force in record retailing. In the past, the business was shared among smaller local and regional chains such as Musicland, which once had an estimated ten percent of the market. But as Wal-Mart and other national discount operations such as Target and Best Buy have grown -- approximately half of all major-label music is sold through these three -- an estimated 1,200 record stores have closed in the past two years, according to market-research firm Almighty Institute of Music Retail. Last February, Tower Records, with ninety-three stores, declared bankruptcy and is now up for sale; Musicland has already changed owners, with many local outposts shuttered.
Wal-Mart is like no traditional record seller. Unlike a typical Tower store, which stocks 60,000 titles, an average Wal-Mart carries about 5,000 CDs. That leaves little room on the shelf for developing artists or independent labels. There's also scant space for catalog albums, which now represent about forty percent of all sales. At a Wal-Mart Supercenter in Thorton, Colorado, for example, there were no copies of the Rolling Stones' Exile on Main Street or Nirvana's Nevermind. While most of the latest hits were priced at $13.88, some records -- from the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack to the latest by Yellowcard -- were displayed for $9.72. Says Severson, "Paying fifteen dollars for a piece of music is a difficult value equation for customers."
For the music industry, having such a dominant retailer is like being stuck in a bad marriage. Whereas traditional music retailers took advertising money from the labels to push new releases in Sunday newspaper circulars, Wal-Mart barely advertises locally. It relies on national campaigns, where it promotes its own low-price policy. "Wal-Mart has no long-term care for an individual artist or marketing plan, unlike the specialty stores, which were a real business partner," says one former distribution executive. "At Wal-Mart, we're a commodity and have to fight for shelf space like Colgate fights for shelf space."
In the same way that Wal-Mart made it difficult for local mom-and-pop retailers to compete with its low prices, it has hurt smaller music stores. "When you're buying CDs for twelve dollars and selling them for ten like Wal-Mart, it makes the rest of us look like we're gouging the customer, when we're not," says Don Van Cleave, head of the Coalition for Independent Music Stores, a retail consortium. "It's supertough to compete with that price point." Even online, Wal-Mart sells songs for eighty-eight cents, compared with ninety-nine cents at the market leader, Apple iTunes Music Store.
Getting Wal-Mart excited about carrying a record is at the top of every label's to-do list, but it's harder than it sounds. There is an immense cultural chasm between slick industry executives and Severson's team of three music buyers at Wal-Mart headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas. Only one of the three had ever worked in music retailing -- until that person moved to a new division in August and was replaced by someone who previously bought Wal-Mart's salty snacks. (Wal-Mart also relies on buyers at its two distribution companies, Handleman and Anderson Merchandisers, who purchase records as well as stock the Wal-Mart stores.)
"Content-wise, Wal-Mart is limited about what they sell," says one label chieftain. "Wal-Mart is Middle America's shopping headquarters, with different buying habits and consumer tastes than those who live in Manhattan and L.A." When founder Sam Walton christened the first Wal-Mart in 1962, music was never a priority -- it wasn't an everyday, easy-to-stock product like light bulbs, since the Top Ten changed so much. The chain also had specific objections to music. Walton wanted all stores to remain family-friendly, and in the rural South, rock & roll had the potential to turn away many customers. In 1986, the Rev. Jimmy Swaggart led one such campaign to ban music from Wal-Mart, saying rock fostered "adultery, alcoholism, drug abuse, necrophilia, bestiality and you name it." Albums and magazines about rock (including Rolling Stone) were temporarily pulled from the Wal-Mart shelves.
Wal-Mart's wariness about music ended once the music industry adopted a voluntary advisory sticker on albums deemed to contain adult language or sexual content. Today, before any new album is released, someone at each label is charged with asking, "Do we have any Wal-Mart issues?" If an advisory sticker is placed on an album, the label will put out a clean version about ninety percent of the time. Since the edited version of a hit record usually averages only about ten percent of a record's total sales, they do it mostly to keep Wal-Mart happy.
Wal-Mart has loosened up a bit, too. Eminem's albums, stickered or not, are not carried by the chain, but it does sell the 8 Mile soundtrack. And it carries an edited version of 50 Cent's debut. Since the labels are so adept at self-policing, though, censorship controversies are now rare. "There have been examples in the past, but it's not a current issue," says Severson.
Wal-Mart has also urged the labels to create exclusive new products that would lower music prices. In a short-lived test, Universal excerpted seven songs from existing albums by acts such as Sum 41 and Ashanti and sold them at Wal-Mart for $7. Few other labels wanted to participate. "They proposed it to a bunch of artists and managers, but everyone was worried that we are sending a message that instead of the sixteen-track album we sold, those nine extra songs were filler," says a label executive.
Some record executives think they can survive Wal-Mart's push. They argue that the hottest acts will always command a premium price. "50 Cent sold 7 million copies," says one rep, "and I guarantee that many of those sold for fifteen, sixteen dollars." And they believe that Wal-Mart will want to carry those hits because they draw customers. "If they can't find a record at Wal-Mart, people will go elsewhere," says one executive. "We should play hardball." But each label is watching the others to see if any make major concessions to Wal-Mart's demands for lower prices. A label that gives in could gain shelf space at the expense of another. "If you lose an account, one of your rivals could get more product in the store and get one up on everyone else," says a major-label rep. "You have to tread cautiously."
The tug of war between the labels and Wal-Mart isn't going away soon. The chain is aggressively opening new stores -- fifty-seven in October -- including some in urban areas. So unless it makes good on its threat to cut back on its music section, it will continue to grow as the top record store and become even more powerful. Laments one industry rep, "There is some impending doom associated with us not helping them."
Price War: Does a CD have to cost $15.99?
Major labels insist that the low prices mass retailers such as Wal-Mart and Best Buy demand are impossible for them to achieve. But Best Buy senior vice president Gary Arnold counters, "The record industry needs to refine their business models, because the consumer is the ultimate arbitrator. And the consumer feels music isn't properly priced." Labels point to roster cuts and layoffs as evidence that they can't sell CDs cheaper.
This breakdown of the cost of a typical major-label release by the independent market-research firm Almighty Institute of Music Retail shows where the money goes for a new album with a list price of $15.99.
$0.17 Musicians' unions
$0.80 Packaging/manufacturing
$0.82 Publishing royalties
$0.80 Retail profit
$0.90 Distribution
$1.60 Artists' royalties
$1.70 Label profit
$2.40 Marketing/promotion
$2.91 Label overhead
$3.89 Retail overhead
WARREN COHEN
(Posted oct 12, 2004)
Olympus Introduces New Music Players
Camera company offers new M:robe music players, one with included digital camera.
Christopher Breen, Playlist
Tuesday, October 12, 2004
Olympus, known for its digital cameras, is entering the increasingly crowded personal music player market with its M:robe series of players. The M:robe 500i, with a 20GB hard drive and a built-in 1.22-megapixel digital camera, and the M:robe 100, with a 5GB hard drive, offer several features not found in other players.
One feature is a touch-screen display for navigating the interface. For instance, touching the Photo icon on the MR-500i's main menu instantly brings up the camera features. The players also include a Lyrics feature that presumably scrolls the words of songs with embedded lyrics across the display.
The $500 M:robe 500i also sports a Remix feature that allows you to create "mini movie productions" that sync to the music on your player. The device's 3.7-inch VGA touch screen can display these remixes as well as photos you've taken with the built-in camera or imported to the device via USB.
Surely with there super low overhead and huge margins,
Well see there you go again...margins in this bidness seem to be pretty thin. My understanding of their business model was to license their reference platforms and OS to as many folks as possible and collect licensing fees and royalties..now if we make some coin by overseeing manufacturing well that's just gravy.
Now apparently, the several thousand units purchased by multiple airlines are about to result in the digster producing a record quarter for revenue...
Profit? Well, we'll just have to wait and see like always..
We know what you're expecting
The CEO told me about the record quarter and I'm holding him to it.
So sorry it pains you that it just might come true
continue with your extravagant interpolations of the SEC filings...they really do make for fascinating reading
did you used to work at Enron?
iRiver Turns Focus on In-Dash MP3 Players
By Richard Menta 10/12/04
With all the hub-bub of the Apple iPod and the upcoming iPod Killers that it will go head-to-head against this holiday season, iRiver has announced that they will turn their attention to an area that offers huge promise for digital music appliances but is presently underserved - the car.
Not since the Rio Car have we heard much about this niche. It seems like a natural, a hard drive based-player that holds your entire record collection, leaving the car floor free of CD and cassette cases. One that pulls from the dash when you want to load a significant volume of songs and takes flash media when the user only wishes to transfer a few tunes.
The 256MB Rio Cali is available on Amazon
Yes, it seems like a natural and yet we have not seen many such products yet. The aformentioned Rio Car (originally the Empeg Car made by a British outfit later purchased by then Rio parent SonicBlue) and a Hungarian unit we reviewed a couple of years ago called the Dension Car are two of the very few examples. Most in-dash players today are simply CD players that read the MP3 format.
One can speculate why adoption has been slow with all the file traders, but this has left opportunity for others and iRiver is the next to address it.
Marilyn Chen, iRiver's CEO, made the announcement today that her company will develop in-dash players for the car. According to Chen, the units will "integrate an MP3 player, satellite radio and email functionalities on a single-chip solution".
iRiver has been one of the more successful competitors against the dominant iPod, carving out a modest slice of the overall market for digital music portables. Still, while the company has new products to go directly against iPod the decision to open into new markets is not only welcomed, but strategically sound now that digital music has gone main stream.
Chen did not say when the first models will appear or if the company is working with any automobile manufacturers to offer models to be installed on the assembly line. She did say that the company was moving to an OEM, OBM, ODM business model meaning they will supply players under other's brand names.
The company is also near completion of a new plant in China that will produce over 700,000 units per month when fully functioning.
as usual you greatly overinterpret this missive to the SEC. I do NOT read that edig is at fault for this backlog..could it not very simply be a parts supplier...yes..of course it could.
your interpretation is always the most negative interpretation possible...to each his own
Record quarter should lead to HUGE profits, right?
I don't know..ask XM or Sirius...their subscription numbers continue to grow...how are their profits?
and the inability to deliver a prodcut on time (fact),
what fact? where did you get this "fact"? seems like...well...innuendo