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MP3 to boost Sony UAE sales
Posted: August 26th, 2002
Devices to download music over the Internet will further boost sales of Sony hi-fi equipment in the UAE, reported Gulf News. MP3 units are now available in most mini hi-fi systems sold by Jumbo Electronics which has already seen Sony sales rocket 40 per cent in the past year. MP3 music is popular as a cheap way of obtaining music to replay on hi-fi
HMV to launch music download service
08:54 Tuesday 27th August 2002
Reuters
The UK retailer is the latest to attempt to cash in on the ongoing Internet music craze
Music retailer HMV Group is expected to announce this week the launch of a subscription digital music service to capitalise on the consumer craze for downloading music from the Internet, sources say.
HMV, in which music label EMI Group holds a 14.5 percent stake, is expected to announce as soon as Tuesday that it will be the first British music chain to launch a subscription music service from its Web site, www.HMV.co.uk.
The anticipated launch date is early September.
The retailer will team with On Demand Distribution (OD2), a British technology firm co-founded by recording artist Peter Gabriel, to make nearly 100,000 tracks from such acts as Elvis Presley and Kylie Minogue available to British users of its site.
Under the arrangement, users will pay a monthly subscription of £4.99 entitling them to a certain number of playbacks. They can also download the music to their computer hard drives or personal listening devices, the sources said.
OD2 provides music download technology for a variety of Internet firms including UK ISP Freeserve, Italy's Tiscali and Microsoft's Web portal MSN.
The recording industry has been stung by the success of free online file-swapping services such as Kazaa and Morpheus MusicCity and the growing popularity of consumers copying, or "burning", music onto recordable CDs.
BroadQ Turns Sony PlayStation 2 into a Digital Media Center
QCast™ Tuner software plays digital music and video on home entertainment systems
Austin, Texas - July 29, 2002 - BroadQ, LLC, www.broadq.com, a software company developing innovative solutions for communicating digital content, today announced QCast™ Tuner software, a content delivery solution that allows users to turn a Sony PlayStation 2* console into a digital media center. The QCast Tuner software is the first practical, easy-to-use, and convenient solution that provides remote access to computer based music, video, images or other digital content on home entertainment systems.
The QCast Tuner software features an easy-to-use, advanced media management interface allowing users to create and manage integrated music and video play lists on their television using a compatible infrared DVD remote control or game pad. The current version supports MP3, MPEG -1, MPEG-2, and MPEG -4/DivX digital media formats. Users will need to purchase a PS2-compatible network card to enable network distribution of digital content, such as the Sony PS2 Ethernet adapter card (available in August). QCast Tuner is optimized for media delivery over wireless 802.11a or 802.11b (WiFi) WLANs using Ethernet-to-wireless adapters.
"There is a nearly infinite supply of digital content available today, and everyone agrees that the problem is how to make it available on the TV. Most solutions involve selling another piece of specialized equipment to the consumer," said Stacy Cook, president and chief executive officer of BroadQ. "With QCast Tuner software, the consumer takes advantage of the electronics they already own. Today, there are over 13 million US homes with Sony PlayStation 2 consoles, and research indicates that 59% are connected to a television in the living or family room. By just adding water, or in this case QCast Tuner software, they have an instant digital home entertainment center."
The QCast Tuner software features:
User Friendly Interface - Easy navigation on the television.
Digital Media Support - MP3, MPEG-1, MPEG-2, as well as MPEG -4/DivX support.
Network Support - Sony PS2 Ethernet adapter support.
Media Management - Integrated play list capabilities (music and video).
Navigation - Sony PS2 game pad or PS2-compatible infrared DVD remote control.
Multiple User Support - Optional user profiles and directory-based content controls.
Dynamic Updates - Compatibility with new players, modules, media and codec support.
"The Sony PlayStation 2 has excellent decoding capabilities and when coupled with the processing power, storage and Internet connectivity of the computer, this combination creates a powerful and affordable thin client digital media center," said Eric Smith, chief technology officer for BroadQ.
System Requirements
The QCast Tuner software requires a Sony PlayStation 2 console, Sony PS2 Ethernet Adapter or other supported network adapter, Pentium II 300 MHz computer with 64Meg RAM, 20MB+ of free hard drive space, Linux or Windows 98SE/ME/2000/XP and Internet connectivity. Specific support for Macintosh OS9/OSX is planned in the near future (G3 or G4 processor, 64 Megs RAM and 20MB+ of free HD space required).
Price and Availability
BroadQ is currently accepting online orders for the QCast Tuner software and expects to begin shipping the Preview Edition of the product at the end of August. All orders for the Preview Edition will also receive an upgraded version of the software free of charge. The QCast Tuner software is available for $49.95 and includes a limited time offer of free shipping and handling on orders placed before August 25th, 2002, or while inventories last.
About BroadQ
BroadQ, LLC, is a privately held digital lifestyle and entertainment software company in Austin, Texas, developing innovative solutions for communicating digital content. The company's flagship product, QCast Tuner software, networks the PC to the consumers Sony PlayStation 2 to create a digital media center. BroadQ intends to be the premier choice for the management and delivery of digital content to consumers worldwide. For more information, visit www.broadq.com.
BroadQ and QCast are trademarks of BroadQ, LLC.
c0in
Newly Minted Apprentice
Posts: 78 Posted: 2002-06-15 20:06
www.hotmp3gear.com says:
"Format Supported: MP3 (30 to 320 Kbps - CBR and VBR) Reading MP3 VBR (30 to 160 kbps) Real-time encoding Photo Carousel to display image files MPEG4 playing (CIF format - 352x288 pixels, 30 frames/sec., MP3 sound track - VHS Quality)"
so will it be able to play AVI and Ogg media files ?!?!
c0in.
[ This message was edited by c0in on 2002-06-15 20:21 ]
whalersd27
Newly Minted Apprentice
Posts: 2 Posted: 2002-06-18 20:34
could't archos just develop a low cost portable cd device that had a divx decoder chip?. That way you just burn a divx movie to cd-r and you have a handy player for your tv. Don't get me wrong though the idea of a mini player is cool too
[ This message was edited by whalersd27 on 2002-06-18 20:30 ]
Speed72
Newly Minted Apprentice
Posts: 15 Posted: 2002-07-11 19:24
hi guys..
It´s a cool idea... but it has no vision of the market!!!
Ok! great camera! But it could be much more than that!!!
Imagine a Setopbox, whit this chip in it (capable of READING a full scale Divz), forget the HD and put a CD-RW in it, add a DVD-(s)vcd capabilitie a a TV-tunner and......VOILA!!!!!
The new Digital-recorder for the home user!!!!!
Easy!! and very, very marketable!!!!!
Note: the Divx encoding could be at this resolution... more time on a cd....
You guys at archos don´t need to thank me... ))) just do-it!
SpeeD
Charbax
Newly Minted Apprentice
Posts: 94 Posted: 2002-07-30 01:26
Speed, sure... standalone divx cd-player with tv-output would be nice..
ok now I'm hearing the thing is just about to be released... !!! FINALLY !!! . . . according to the support pages on archos.com (http://www.archos.com/us/support/tech_jbmm.html), the product page on archos.com (saying August 12th as shipping date), according to the yahoo group for JBMM-fanatics (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/archosmultimedia/)
(I have been looking alot forward to this JBMM all the way back since I first heard about it in december 2001)
OK, NOW, the latest info and press releases from DivX.com and Texas Instruments inform that the hardware that is inside the JBMM will be able to playback DivX video at larger than 352x288 resolution (through code-optimizations, which I believe the people at DivXNetworks and TI.com and Archos.com are hardly working on), full-resolution DivX-playback support is even menchened in the press releases!
So hold on to your hats. In September, a firmware update will be released to enable ones 290gram portable Archos JBMM to playback DivX video at full resolution! And probably also with all the newest DivX 5.02 mpeg-4 features (bi-directionnal, psychovisual, 2-pass..)
So hold on to your hats once more, This 400$ gadget is gonna be the first ever standalone DivX player, it will playback all the DivX movies that you have allready downloaded (you just need to transfer them to the JBMM using firewire/USB2 connector). Not only is it the first ever standalone and portable DivX player but it's also a DivX recorder (res of 352x288 full framerate encoded in real-time, hopefully even more thanks to optimizations to take advantage of Texas Instruments latest DSP processor to it's maximum).
The thing has PAL and NTSC tv-output, 4cm colour LCD, 5-houre battery life for video-playback (10houre battery for audio-only and picture slideshow) on it's Li-Ion rechargeable battery, the whole thing weigths just 290grams, fits in the pocket. It has smartmedia/compactflash reader, DVR-recorder and camera modules (for video and still photos with flash), the thing has a 20GB harddrive (you can if you want to pay upgrade to a 40GB harddrive instead)... blah blah blah blah...
I made a website here: http://storerobert.dk/AJBMM/
It shouldn't be long now for the first real good reviews of it to come on reliable hardware review websites, I have a feeling it will have been worth the wait.. and I don't really think we are gonna see any serious competitors (sony, panasonic, canon, casio, microsoft, sonicblue, apple)... or anyone come with anything like it for some time, even if those huge companies suddently really badly want to make such, it's gonna be difficult for any competition to copy. It seems to have taken the Archos engineers over a year to design and make this thing work, and I'm sure they are going to hold one to their secret, if it appears the design is a success.. and maybe they have patents now or something... though this knowledge could be bought away, and then lots of more things can happen..
Piper
Newly Minted Apprentice
Posts: 81 Posted: 2002-07-31 16:19
This is definately interesting, though I wonder about the DivX support and it's ability to output files at higher resolutions. The Bloxx box looks particularly interesting, though it's not as portable. A simple device which just played back DivX movies with a USB 2 or firewire interface would be ideal.
A cheap alternative to these devices is all the various CD-R based portable mp3 and VCD players - do a search on ebay. The output quality is probably comparable to the Archos. The price of these is also far less as well - typically under $100 US.
Just my 2 cents.
http://forums.divx.com/viewtopic.php?topic=22291&forum=4
Japan's KDDI Goes to the Movies with New Phone
Mon Aug 26, 5:29 AM ET
By Eriko Amaha
TOKYO (Reuters) - KDDI Corp, Japan's second-biggest wireless company, said on Monday it would launch a service in October that would allow users to send and receive videos on their mobile phones, intensifying competition in the hot sector.
The company said the offering was part of its drive to sign up seven million third-generation (3G) mobile subscribers by March -- five million more than it has now.
KDDI hopes the phone, one of four unveiled on Monday, will not only help it retain subscribers but snatch them from rivals such J-Phone, run by Japan Telecom Co and Vodafone Group Plc, which already has a movie e-mail service.
The new video camera-equipped phone, the A5301T, is a made by Toshiba Corp.
KDDI said it was the first mobile handset that could record video clips of up to 15 seconds. J-Phone's offering, the Movie Sha-mail, can record clips of up to five seconds.
KDDI has been offering a phone since December that allows users to download video clips, but not take moving pictures.
KDDI also said it would start offering new discounts to its users from October 1 to encourage them to use data transmission.
"We expect about 70 percent of our users to switch to high-end and feature-rich handsets," KDDI President Tadashi Onodera told a news conference.
The new video phone comes with a slot for a SD (secure digital) memory card to store up to 555 five-second clips.
It can take 310,000-pixel moving pictures that can be attached to e-mails and sent to other mobile phones or personal computers.
Weighing only 119 grammes, the new model is also packed with such features as a global positioning system ( news - web sites) (GPS) and a higher-resolution 260,000-color screen.
KDDI said it would let retailers set the price for the new video phones, but said the price would likely be set at the same level as other high-end handsets, which sell for anywhere between 10,000 and 20,000 yen ($85-$170).
CAMERA PHONES
As Japan's mobile market nears saturation, camera and video phones have emerged as a new growth driver for mobile operators.
J-Phone was the first carrier to roll out still-camera phones in late 2000. The product, with about six million users, has proved a huge hit and the company's Movie Sha-mail service has signed up about 560,000 users since its launch in March.
Overall, at least one out of very five mobile phones in Japan is currently capable of taking, sending and receiving photos, according to an industry group Communications and Information Network Association of Japan.
KDDI said it had reached two million 3G users as of August 23, outdistancing a 3G service offered since last October by NTT DoCoMo ( news - web sites) Inc, Japan's dominant telecoms carrier.
DoCoMo's 3G service offers data transmission of 384 kpbs (kilobits per second), 2.6 times faster than KDDI's 3G service, and allows face-to-face real-time communication.
But so far, only 127,400 people have signed up for the service because of a more limited calling area, shorter battery life and pricier handsets than KDDI's service.
The other three KDDI models unveiled on Monday are all equipped with a built-in camera, and are manufactured by Sanyo Electric Co and Kyocera Corp.
The cameras allow users to snap 110,000-pixel still photos.
KDDI's mobile arm "au," which offers 3G service, has currently 12.8 million subscribers, about 18 percent of Japan's overall mobile market.
AT&T taps SeaChange for VOD switch-out
By JEFF BAUMGARTNER
From CED Broadband Direct, August 20, 2002
Add SeaChange International Inc. to the list of video-on-demand vendors to benefit from the demise of Diva Systems Corp.
AT&T Broadband said Tuesday that it has tapped SeaChange to replace its existing VOD systems in the Atlanta and Los Angeles areas. The MSO said it expects to complete the transition by Oct. 31. Financial terms were not disclosed.
AT&T Broadband serves roughly 600,000 basic cable subs in Atlanta and about 500,000 basics in Los Angeles. In the L.A. area, the MSO is featuring Starz! and Showtime content for a subscription-VOD trial in the nearby cities of Westchester and Culver City.
Although the company does not break out how many digital customers it has in each market, it does have a 30 percent digital penetration rate across its national cable footprint.
The MSO has already replaced Diva with iN Demand for its on-demand content aggregation requirements. AT&T Broadband also has announced VOD plans for Pittsburgh and San Francisco, but has not disclosed when those launches will occur or which vendors it will use.
"SeaChange has a long history with AT&T Broadband, with nearly 10 years of success in cable advertising insertion technology and hotel VOD, SeaChange President and CEO Bill Styslinger said, in a press release.
SeaChange also has an established history with Comcast Corp., AT&T Broadband's pending suitor, having been chosen to supply VOD systems in a spate of Comcast markets, including Alexandria-Arlington, Va.; Baltimore; Chesterfield, Va.; and Philadelphia, among others.
AT&T Broadband is the latest former Diva affiliate to come forward with a VOD system switch-out plan. Charter Communications, a former Diva investor, announced in June that it's installing nCUBE Corp. gear in several Scientific-Atlanta-based networks and Concurrent Computer Corp. in a spate of networks based on the Motorola Broadband platform.
Insight Communications, which uses the Diva platform in about 10 markets, has yet to announce a replacement video server/system vendor, but has already forged a deal with TVN Entertainment Corp. to supply its on-demand content transport and aggregation system. Charter also has signed a similar deal with TVN.
Diva filed Chapter 11 in late May, and Gemstar-TV Guide International stepped in to acquire Diva's software and technology assets for about $40 million as part of a pre-packaged bankruptcy deal.
DIVX and sigma designs--NO relationship
DivX..........................
-DivXNetworks Supports XVID Development Project In Fight To Protect Copyright
SAN DIEGO, CA and ERLANGEN, GERMANY--(INTERNET WIRE)--Aug 22, 2002 -- DivXNetworks, Inc., today announced full support for the XVID Open Source Codec project in their fight to protect their copyright. XVID recently announced that it had halted development efforts due to alleged copyright infringement by Sigma Designs. Read the official press release from XVID here: www.xvid.org/press/press-20020822-en.pdf.
XVID is a leading open source MPEG-4 video research project, founded by the German student Michael Militzer in August 2001 to continue the efforts of DivXNetworks' former OpenDivX ® project. XVID publishes its software under the GNU General Public License (GNU GPL). According to XVID's web site, the REALMagic MPEG-4 Video Codec software from Sigma Designs is in violation of the GNU General Public License and copyright law by including an illegal copy of XVID code in the software.
Jordan Greenhall, co-founder and CEO of DivXNetworks, offered this statement in support of XVID: "The DivX team is very saddened by these events. XVID is an exciting open-source codec project that has carried on the spirit of OpenDivX ® development efforts. We strongly support the XVID team in their struggle to protect the integrity of their project. We also want to formally announce that DivXNetworks has no relationship with Sigma Designs whatsoever, and no product designed or produced by Sigma Designs is DivX ™ compatible."
For more information, visit www.xvid.org or www.divx.com.
i see dataplay site now has up its headings for video players and PDAs---
Posted by: cksla
Date:7/21/2001
the day after the e.digital PR announcing its participation in the dataplay platform; fred falk and RP gave an interview which is still available on edig's website; one of the things that struck me about the interview was falk's seemingly unprovoked reference to mpeg4 video platform; i have always hoped edig was involved w/ packetvideo (and maybe they are) who is strong in mobile video mpeg4--- anyway the more i think about it, in light of the overall context of the interview regarding dataplay, i now suspect that reference was probably an indirect reference to the following:
varovision wings--
Enjoy Full-length
Movie with Your Hands
Digital Audio & Video
Portable Games
Portable e-Book
PDA
"Wings" is a portable multimedia player which provides to your hand, high-quality MPEG-4 video, digital audio, portable games, and e-book functions. Also, supports basic PDA functions for personal data management on its crystal clear color TFT LCD screen.
"Wings" will open a new era of portable multimedia entertainer which has a large color display and various optional modules.
Features
Storage media: DataPlay Disc(500MB)
3.9" 320 x 240 TFT color LCD with front light
Touch screen
Built-in speaker and headphone jack
USB interface to PC
Rechargeable battery and built-in charge circuit
CompactFlash slot for optional module
Functions
Digital Audio & Video Play
- Video format: MPEG-4 Video, 320x240, 24fps
- Audio format: MP3/AAC
Portable Games
e-Book
PDA Function
Options
- Camera module: Digital Still/Video Camera
- Wireless modem module
- TV receiver module
- GPS module
- Joy-stick
http://www.varovision.com/sub1/index.html
High-tech gizmos distracting drivers
By JIM WASSERMAN, Associated Press
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (August 22, 2002 3:03 p.m. EDT) - Gone are the good old days of distracted driving, when motorists merely juggled coffee, shaved, read a map, drove with a pet dog in the lap and lit cigarettes for the miles still ahead.
Today, millions of American drivers are taking traditional driver absent-mindedness to new heights.
Behind the wheel, they're talking on cellular phones, sending and receiving pages, checking sports scores on personal digital assistants and even sneaking a glance or two at television.
Though the much-maligned cell phone gets the headlines for stealing drivers' "glance time" and causing abrupt lane weaving, experts say it's the mere tip of the iceberg.
In California, a state that has long defined American car culture, more commute-weary residents are loading up their interiors with VCR and DVD players, fax machines and dashboard video screens for satellite navigation systems.
Experts attribute the trend to the state's legendary and worsening traffic, which traps people in their cars for longer stretches and further blurs lines between the office and front seat.
And that is raising new fears among an array of authorities from lawmakers to insurance companies of a spate of new road crashes as more people are literally driven to distraction.
Nationally, officials believe up to 30 percent of crashes are caused by driver distractions that include mobile communications devices.
A March report by the National Conference of State Legislatures suggests device-related distractions that killed an estimated 600 to 1,000 motorists in 2001 could kill 2,000 a year by 2004.
The report also cites "great potential" for even more dramatic increases in fatalities by the decade's end.
To those who spend most of their lives on the roads, the handwriting is on the asphalt.
"We see it all the time," says Leo Williams, a North Carolina trucker who watches passengers and drivers play video games, hold phones to their ears and work laptop computers.
At an I-80 truck stop east of San Francisco, New Mexico trucker Gene Smith adds: "Computers. They're going down the road with a computer on in the front seat. I see more of that."
"You can now buy aftermarket TVs and plug them into the dash and actually watch DVD movies," says Lt. Joel Broumas, who heads the traffic division at the Modesto Police Department in the Central Valley. "We stopped a kid who was driving a nice Blazer. He had one hooked up in the dash, about an eight- or nine-inch deal."
Academics have coined the word "carcooning" to describe how people increasingly outfit their cars for comfort, entertainment and productivity. Phone systems are built in. New stereos pull in satellite radio broadcasts and play MP3 files downloaded from the Internet.
"We're seeing a lot of requests for mobile video," says Doug Kalpakoff, salesman at Wireless World in Morgan Hill, Calif. "Fewer people are flying and more are driving. The most popular is the drop-down screen from the roof. We see that in larger SUVs."
Some stores, he says, now install video screens on front-seat passenger visors.
That's already alarmed some California legislators, who proposed bills this year and last to follow the lead of New York state and ban California drivers from using hand-held cell phones.
Both measures died after vigorous opposition by major wireless companies, who argued that the number of wireless phone users has jumped from 10 million in 1988 to 120 million in 2002 without a huge corresponding increase in car crashes.
Already, cell phones, in-car electronics and radio-CD systems represent the leading cause of inattention in crashes that killed 6,516 Californians and injured 413,913 last year.
Those causes ran well ahead of eating, smoking, children, pets, reading and personal hygiene. Yet many, including the California Highway Patrol, which last year joined 15 states that gather such statistics, believe cell phone and high-tech inattention is greatly underreported because most offenders don't admit to it.
Auto industry spokesmen say consumers drive the demand for devices that often distract them, and carmakers equally oppose limiting "what you can put in your car."
But Vann Wilber, director of vehicle safety for the Washington, D.C.-based Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers admits, "It's not a particularly precise science" between what overloads one driver and doesn't distract another. "It's kind of a new frontier in the study of human factors and human engineering."
On California's I-80, Williams and Smith grouse heartily about "the lady in the van, on the phone, smoking a cigarette, drinking coffee, fixing her hair and taking the kids to school." But Williams also confesses to a cell phone habit, saying "I can't say anything. I have one myself."
Smith also shows what's on his front seat. "They give me my load assignments on this," he explains.
It's a laptop computer.
ARCHOS 500204 Studio 20 MP3 Player & Hard Drive
Palm-sized MP3 Player and 20GB hard drive / Up to 20,000 minutes music in MP3 format
( AHS 500204 ) $259.88
: usually ships in 1 to 2 business days
http://www.jandr.com/JRSectionView.process?RestartFlow=t&IWAction=Load&Merchant_Id=1&Sec...
compared to edig 15GB for $329.88
Wireless Videophones: Now You See Them, Now You Don't
By Teri Robinson
Wireless NewsFactor
August 21, 2002
http://www.wirelessnewsfactor.com/perl/story/19103.html
With the rollout of 3G networks and the lure of multimedia messaging services, the future of videophones may be at hand -- as long as the carriers can agree on a standard, that is.
Desktop videophones dazzled visitors to the 1964 World's Fair in New York, spawned predictions of widespread use in 20 years time and, after a few well-spaced moments of glory, faded nearly completely from the average caller's radar screen. Will the same happen to wireless videophones? If not for MMS, the answer might be yes.
After all, some of the same problems exist today. Delays in transmission cause images to stutter across the small screens, making the video way too inferior to attract the business crowd. And the phone units themselves are costly, pricing the grandparents who would love to look adoringly upon their grandkids right out of the marketplace.
"It's pretty much a pipe dream and is not going to happen any time soon," Isaac Ro, an analyst with the Aberdeen Group, told Wireless NewsFactor. "It's hard enough to get great quality service for your regular cell phone."
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Real-Time Video Not Likely
He predicted that video would not become prevalent on wireless phones for five years -- or more. "How many people do you know that have a videophone on their desktop?" said Ro. Still, the wireless industry remains keen on the future of videophones, pointing to applications -- from videoconferencing to downloading movie trailers to augmenting text messages -- that will appeal to consumers and, possibly, business.
"There [will be] a few critical applications for people who really need it, but it will be a limited market," said Ro. He explained that users are not likely to spend an extra US$30 per month to "have spotty video for trailers," though.
No Shortage of Phones
Wireless videophones are getting a lot of attention these days, in part because carriers are rolling out 3G networks that will deliver the kind of high-speed wireless that supports video applications in Japan and Korea, and manufacturers are promoting handsets that can run them.
Motorola, Nokia, Samsung and Sanyo are among the vendors rolling out handsets that blend voice and image. Where they may find a pot of gold is in MMS (multimedia messaging service). "You can snap a picture and send it along with a message," said Ro.
That is precisely where Motorola sees a burgeoning market. The company is set to release what company spokesperson Sue Frederick calls the "first 3G device," the A830 phone "that will have a camera attachment that can capture video."
Video is supported any time a user is within the embrace of a 3G network. If the user moves outside the 3G, he or she can benefit from standard cellular service for voice calls. Frederick stressed that the new A830 phone is "robust," a must-have if video is to bloom in the wireless arena.
Text-Video Messaging
Motorola Venture, the company's venture capital arm, also has invested in PacketVideo to provide multimedia solutions for some of its 3G wireless communication devices. Under the terms of a recent agreement, certain 3G Motorola devices will include video playback capability via PacketVideo's pvPlayer, as well as video capture and encoding capability via PacketVideo's pvAuthor, which enables two-way video communication.
Denise Crew, a spokesperson for Nokia, told Wireless NewsFactor that Nokia believes that MMS "is where wireless video will be deployed quickly." There is a clear benefit, she noted. "You can really enhance a text message with a video and an audio file."
Augmenting Barry Bonds' 600th home run with a picture and the roar of the crowd, she said, "is quintessential MMS. So much more comes to life than a text message or voice call."
Samsung, too, has released an SCH-X200 phone that features a 12-line color LCD screen. It can play MPEG video and features a WAP (wireless application protocol) browser.
Very, Very Far Away
NTT DoCoMo launched its 3G service in Tokyo last year, unveiling a $600 video phone, the P2101V, equipped with a camera and a color screen intended to handle videoconferencing applications but, for now, aimed at MMS.
While Nokia's Crew sees MMS "coming to deployment in the next quarter," she notes that full-fledged real-time video over wireless phones, while "way cool," is "very, very far in the future."
Among the problems holding it back is standardization. "All [vendors] must agree on standards so we can be more competitive and offer the consumer a better experience," said Crew.
And if vendors have any illusions that the U.S. market will mimic Japan, they may want to reconsider. "It's a closed market -- all the phones are DoCoMo," said Ro. And, while DoCoMo had signed about 20,000 subscribers to its 3G service by the end of 2001, only a small percentage were actually using the P2101V phone.
OMAP5910 Integrates a TMS320C55x™ DSP core with an ARM925 on a Single Chip
Sampling today, the OMAP5910 processor integrates a TMS320C55x DSP core with a TI-enhanced ARM925 on a single chip for the optimal combination of high performance with low power consumption. This unique architecture offers an attractive solution to both DSP and ARM developers, providing the low power real-time signal processing capabilities of a DSP coupled with the command and control functionality of an ARM.
The OMAP5910 is optimal for designers working with devices that require embedded applications processing in a connected environment such as internet appliances, web pads, telematics, medical devices and others. This technology combined with TI's software development support, OMAP Technology Centers, OMAP Developer Network, tools and software, enable designers to create applications with exceptional performance in record time.
The OMAP5910 processor is sampling today with volume production scheduled first quarter 2003. Contact your local TI representative for further information.
MP3 watch out, here comes VP3
Why a German lab could spoil the MP3 party. By Peter Rojas
Thursday August 22, 2002
The Guardian
Would the internet have ever caught on if every time anyone wanted to post a web page or distribute a web browser a royalty had to be paid? If HTML hadn't been freely available, the internet almost certainly wouldn't have grown as quickly as it has.
But unlike HTML, there aren't any standards for audio and video on the internet, just a bunch of competing formats. All of the compression techniques, or codecs, used to shrink audio and video files so they can be shared over the internet are each owned by a different company. The leading formats for online audio and video - Microsoft's Windows Media, Apple's QuickTime, and RealNetworks' RealMedia, DivX Networks' DivX, and Fraunhofer Institute's MP3 - are patented and require some kind of licensing fee for their use. That is, until recently.
With the release of the oddly named Ogg Vorbis, there is now an alternative. The product of a loose amalgamation of programmers, led by Chris "Monty" Montgomery, and working under the aegis of the non-profit Xiph.Org Foundation, Vorbis, as it's known, is a new format for compressing audio that is royalty-free and available for anyone to use without licensing fees or restrictions. The hope is to create standards for audio and video on the internet that belong to no one and are controlled by no one. Xiph.Org is already at work on VP3, another free and open format for compressing video.
While this may not seem like such a big deal, in actuality, whoever controls the codecs for audio and video on the web actually wields a tremendous amount of power over how music and movies will be distributed. Hollywood and the recording industry are clamouring for a crackdown on the sharing of music and movies online. Mindful of this, Microsoft has been pushing the entertainment industry to adopt its Windows Media format, which has built-in security features that could potentially restrict computer users from swapping files over the web. Microsoft would love to be the only place that the industry could turn to in order to securely distribute music and movies over the internet.
While it's still to early to tell whether Vorbis will emerge as a viable alternative to Windows Media and RealMedia for broadcasting over the web, it does pose a more immediate challenge to the current status of MP3 as the format of choice for digital audio files. Few people realise that MP3 is the intellectual property of a German research lab that invented the algorithm for compressing audio back in 1991. The Fraunhofer Institute holds the patent for MP3, which it did not enforce, allowing MP3 to become established as the de facto standard in the interim.
Fraunhofer decided in 1998 to collect royalties, and now requires software and hardware manufacturers to pay fees for each player or recorder sold or given away, and 2% of revenues for the distribution of MP3s online. They are asking even more for MP3Pro, the higher fidelity format it recently introduced. While those fees might not sound like much, with the price of MP3 players plummeting, a $5 licensing fee may soon be greater than the players cost to manufacture, preventing prices from dropping any further.
Because Vorbis matches or exceeds MP3 in terms of sonic fidelity, in theory it should prove an attractive alternative, since there are no licensing costs associated with its use. So should you ditch your MP3 player and your collection of MP3 files and start over with Vorbis? Not quite.
The upstart format is a long way from displacing MP3, which has millions of users now and, as the de facto standard for file-trading and portable digital audio players, is deeply entrenched in the popular mindset as the format for digital audio online. MP3 and Vorbis aren't mutually exclusive as formats. With a simple software upgrade, your MP3 player could easily play your Vorbis files, allowing collections of both files to easily co-exist.
You can find people sharing songs encoded with Vorbis on peer-to-peer networks such as Gnutella and KaZaA, and Vorbis.com has links to downloads of Vorbis-enabled software players.
RealNetworks, the company behind Real Player, has recently taken steps to incorporate Vorbis into its audio playback software, and WinAmp, the world's most popular MP3 software, supports the new format.
There are already some hardware players that support Vorbis, such as MP Sharp's Digital Jukebox. Some video game publishers have begun using Vorbis as the audio format for their games (Fraunhofer charges $2,500 for game publishers to use MP3), and the BBC is testing the use of streaming Vorbis for online webcasts of The Archers and other programming.
In the long run, even if Vorbis and VP3 fail to emerge as the formats of choice, it probably won't matter. Rather, the true significance of the effort of this group of volunteers to create free and open standards for online audio and video may be the dashing of Microsoft's, or any other corporation's, dreams of a multimedia monopoly.
WORLD THEATRE, INC. GRANTED BROAD PATENT GOVERNING DISTRIBUTION, SCHEDULING AND PROJECTION OF DIGITAL MOVIES AND ALTERNATIVE CONTENT TO DIGITAL CINEMAS AND ELECTRONIC BILLBOARDS.
New York, NY - August 21, 2002 - In a move further establishing the inevitable transition from 35-millimeter film to digital format, World Theatre, Inc. has been granted United States Patent Number 6,424,998 entitled "System permitting the display of video or still image content on selected displays of an electronic display network according to customer dictates". The new patent is directed to systems and methods for distributing and scheduling digital movie content to cinemas as well as distributing sporting events, concerts and other types of alternative content including advertising. The patent also addresses systems and methods of directly controlling networks of electronic displays (electronic billboards) and directly sending video or still image content to these networks to be displayed at selected locations and times.
Announcing the issuance of the patent Robert D. Summer, executive chairman and CEO of World Theatre, Inc. noted, "This U.S. patent for the systems and methods of distributing digital content to both cinemas and electronic billboards further enhances the value of World Theatre's intellectual property assets and portfolio of patents as developed by the company founder C. Eric Hunter. The issuance of this patent by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office also establishes the platform for additional patents we now have pending in the Digital Music, Interactive Advertising, Digital Film and Electronic Billboard Network sectors. The systems and methods addressed by the patent represent the culmination of a carefully developed and documented invention process." Further describing the scope and breadth of the patent Summer added, "The patent has been filed globally through national filings and is the first of many patents that address systems and methods for the secure distribution of digital entertainment and advertising.
Film Industry Background
For virtually the entire twentieth century the practice of distributing movies on film reels to movie theatres has gone fundamentally unchanged. The evolution of digital film has altered the entire landscape of the film industry. The "rules of the road" for content access and management for cinema owners and operators have in effect been rewritten in the digital era. The ability to distribute and schedule content via more efficient, timely technologies including high speed cable and satellite as well as through physical delivery of digitally stored content via optical disks, hard drive, flash and other means will enable the industry to create new profitable opportunities.
Cinema operators can vary schedules and change programming on an hour by hour/minute by minute basis, display alternate content and create additional sources of revenue through the exhibition of concerts and sports events in addition to movies. At the same time they are able to expand offerings to advertisers looking to target specific audiences with digital ads in defined time segments in conjunction with specific movies, concerts or sports events. For film distributors it has been estimated that digital projection could slash the $1.6 billion spent annually on printing and distributing film as well as greatly enhanced quality and security.
Advertising - Electronic Billboard Applications
Commenting on the significance of the patent for the advertising industry Kelly Sparks, president and chief operating officer of World Theatre, Inc. noted, "The networking and scheduling capabilities provided by the combination of technologies addressed in this patent will provide advertisers the flexibility and management control to maximize the value of their outdoor and public venue advertising programs. Targeted, time sensitive advertising will drive response to differentiated messages."
Electronic Billboard - Advertising Background
The time honored outdoor advertising technique of painting or applying printed sheets to outdoor billboards has also remained essentially unchanged throughout the twentieth century. The advanced scheduling of electronic billboards enables advertisers to efficiently use their budgets to more effectively reach specific geographic and demographic targets with compelling, illuminated, still or moving images.
About World Theatre, Inc.
World Theatre, Inc. is a privately held corporation founded in 1999 to create media and technology solutions that serve the advertising and entertainment industries. Its solutions eliminate the time between promotion, purchase and delivery allowing consumers immediate access to high quality digital entertainment, advertising and commerce. World Theatre's intellectual property assets include a significant portfolio of issued patents and pending applications addressing key technologies governing the management, distribution and protection of content for the advertising and entertainment industries as well as interactive technologies which allow products to be offered to consumers in ways unmatched by competing technologies. The company is headquartered in Raleigh, NC with offices in New York.
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AOL gets broadband boost through new AT&T deal
By Scarlet Pruitt
August 21, 2002 7:35 am PT
AOL TIME WARNER (AOLTW) said Wednesday that it is restructuring its long-standing cable partnership with AT&T in a deal that will not only allow the Internet and media giant to create a cable subsidiary that could go public as early as next year, but would create the first third-party broadband cable carriage agreement for America Online (AOL).
The deal effectively unravels the companies' partnership in Time Warner Entertainment, allowing AOLTW to assume complete ownership of the company's content assets, including Warner Bros. and Home Box Office (HBO), and create a new cable and television subsidiary, dubbed Time Warner Cable. AOLTW plans to put the new subsidiary up for IPO once the restructuring is complete.
As part of the deal, AT&T Broadband and Comcast, which have announced plans to merge and form AT&T Comcast, have agreed to make the existing AOL High Speed Broadband access service available on their systems. AOLTW said that it expects AT&T Comcast to reach over 10 million homes within two years of the completed merger, reaching key markets such as Seattle, Boston, Nashville, and Indianapolis.
AOLTW said that the high-speed AOL service could be rolled out to an additional 9 million AT&T Comcast clients in the future, provided both parties are happy with the partnership.
AOLTW hopes that the broadband deal breathes new life into its flailing Internet unit, which has had trouble sparking significant subscriber growth in recent quarters.
Under the deal, AT&T will exchange its current stake in Time Warner Entertainment for $2.1 billion in cash and $1.5 billion in AOLTW stock for a 21 percent stake in Time Warner Cable. This will leave AOLTW with 79 percent of the new cable entity, expected to serve approximately 10.8 million subscribers.
World Theatre is presently continuing development of its interactive television music network. As stated in the Overview, the launch date will be announced in upcoming press releases. Please continue to check the website frequently for the latest information.
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Multichannel Cross-Platform Synergy Is Fly
By Stacy Perman, August 2001 Issue
MTV has put this research to good use over the years, introducing popular interactive TV shows such as Control Freak, where MTV.com visitors can vote on videos to air on TV. "In the past five years, we've found that every time we've given our viewers access and influence to programs, they respond and they want more," says Nicholas Butterworth, CEO and president of MTV Interactive, the online division of MTV. McGrath adds, "When you do as much research as we do, you're much more likely to hit on what [viewers]; really want. [MTV360] is ours to screw up, if you will."
As a core component of MTV360, the network is relaunching MTV.com this August. The new site, which took a year to develop, intends to establish a focal point for music fans to connect to each other, to music, to artists, and to MTV programming. Users will be invited to create personal profiles, sign up for e-mail news updates, check out exclusive behind-the-scenes footage, chat via message boards and instant messaging, listen to as many as 40 different streaming radio stations, and, of course, vote on programming to air on MTV and MTV2. Fans will also be able to download music from five major recording labels for free during special promotions or for a fee ranging from 99 cents to $3.99 per song. (MTV is grappling with introducing a subscription-based service.)
While MTV360 is aimed at consumers, it's also a way for the network to leverage its clout with advertisers and cable operators. MTV will allow advertisers to ride the same 360 angle by bundling its three platforms. It hopes this package will also lure cable operators eager to sell high-speed Internet access to MTV's core demographic. "We're telling viewers that you are not really experiencing MTV without MTV2 and MTV.com," Butterworth says. "That gives cable operators a marketing platform for selling Internet connections to viewers." In today's soft ad market, the 360 approach is getting positive reviews. "You can't reach people well with just TV anymore," says Andrew Donchin, director of national broadcast for Carat North America, one of the world's largest media-buying firms. "You can buy a spot on MTV or a banner ad on MTV.com, but this is more involved. It is the best that MTV has to offer."
Whether MTV360 really clicks with viewers (or is a one-hit wonder that happened to appeal to Dave Matthews fans) is too early to say. But McGrath knows that MTV can't afford to wait for another network to crack the interactive TV code first. "Our viewers expect us to try things," she says. "It's when we stick with one thing and don't mix it up that we lose audience." She continues, "It's time to shake MTV and reinvent it again."
Sidebar
The Real World Clout of MTV
MTV is the most widely distributed TV network in the world. It reaches 76 million U.S. households and 140 countries around the world.
Forty million viewers tune in to MTV and MTV2 every week.
For four years, MTV has been the top-rated cable network for the 12-to-34-year-old audience, according to Nielsen Media Research.
MTV.com consistently ranks among the top five most popular online music destinations, according to Jupiter Media Metrix
On2 Previews Next-Generation Video Codec
By Mark Long -- e-inSITE, 2/22/2002
On2 Technologies has released a preview version of a new VP5 video codec that represents the company's latest advancement in digital video compression. Designed to deliver higher quality at lower bit rates than MPEG-2, MPEG-4, Real 8, Windows Media 8, Apple Quicktime 5 or DIVX, VP5 is available right now in both download and streaming versions through the RealPlayer at the company's Internet Web site at www.on2.com.
On2's current flagship product, the VP4, has already broken the 1-megabit barrier for full resolution, 60 field-per-second digital video delivery, reports the company. With the release of VP5, On2 is now claiming to have achieved up to a 50 percent improvement in compression capabilities over previous generation technology. The company also claims that VP5 can even outperform the proposed H.26L standard, even with all of its advanced options enabled, in terms of picture quality, data rate and performance, while at the same time maintaining lower decode and encode complexity. In addition, VP5 features a real-time encoding function as well as the ability to handle interlaced video content such as live television broadcasts.
"VP5 can do at 340k what VP4 does at 500k and other proprietary codecs do at 600k," said president and CEO Douglas A. McIntyre in a prepared statement. "This codec delivers a similar performance advantage over other codecs from 30kbps to multiple megabit encoding. This advance means that On2 compression no longer has any direct competitors for higher-quality video at lower data rates, not Windows Media Player, not Real 8, not Sorenson and not Divx. This codec is in a class by itself."
The completed version of VP5 is expected to be available on multiple platforms, such as the Internet, set-top boxes and Digital Signal Processors by the middle of Q202. On2 already counts a number of large streaming and set-top box integrators among its licensed customers.
Equator Technologies has already integrated On2's VP4 technology with Equator's MAP-CA DSP. Texas Instruments has also licensed VP4 for inclusion on TI's 62x DSP for video and imaging applications. RealNetworks has licensed VP4 to allow its consumers to play files encoded using On2's VP4 format in the RealPlayer. In addition, On2 and Korea-based Picosoft are jointly designing a low bit-rate, ADSL, video-on-demand set-top box that will integrate On2's VP4 codec, client and server software and Equator Technologies' MAP-CA processor. Picosoft intends begin manufacturing the box for Korea ADSL users beginning in 2Q02.
Earlier this month, On2 responded to the MPEG LA's MPEG-4 metering scheme by offering the company's VP3.2 open-source codec to the Internet Streaming Media Alliance as a viable alternative to the MPEG-4 standard. "The promise of MPEG-4 has now been compromised by the MPEG LA fee structure," said On2 CEO Douglas A.McIntyre in a letter to the Internet Streaming Media Alliance earlier this week. "We are prepared to enter into whatever arrangements are appropriate with ISMA to re-open the door to open standards." To read more, go to: "On2 Bashes Lovely Rita Meter Maid."
LOL--TI's OMAP Platform Revolutionizes Next Generation Wireless Appliances
Texas Instruments' Building Broadband Series
from the March 19, 2001 issue of Broadband Week
Perhaps no technology has taken the world by force over the past few years as wireless technology. Digital voice services for wireless devices have allowed consumers unprecedented connectivity and access to information.
Now, the next generation of wireless devices will extend wireless connectivity even further by delivering broadband data streams into wireless handset appliances--anytime, anywhere. Known as 2.5 and 3G wireless technology, this new level of wireless connectivity promises bandwidth up to and exceeding 2 MB per second. These new devices will allow consumers to enjoy instant access to streaming multimedia audio and video, web browsing, location-based services, gaming and mobile-commerce applications.
Dataquest estimates that the number of digital handsets will more than double by 2003, from 400 million in 2001 to 865 million in 2003, spurred by 2.5 and 3G broadband developments.
One of the technology drivers that enables advanced realtime applications in 2.5 and 3G technology is high performance, low power digital signal processors (DSP). Recent advancements in DSP technology by Texas Instruments not only extends the battery life of these next generation wireless devices, but also enhances the performance and quality of more complex content. These applications include multimedia content, interactive gaming, location-based services and mobile e-commerce.
OMAP Investment Program
The OMAP Investment Program is designed to accelerate the creation of DSP-based software applications for advanced, next-generation mobile devices.
"Wireless will be the catalyst for applications that deliver high-speed services to users in real-time, whenever they want it, wherever they are," said Tom Engibous, chairman, president and chief executive officer of TI. "We need to accommodate applications that encompass the human ability to dream and innovate."
The OMAP Investment Program is prepared to invest up to $100 million over the next 12 to 18 months to help software developers accelerate the creation and deployment of next generation, DSP-based wireless applications.
"Adding mobility is the next major step in the Internet's evolution, and it enables entirely new applications," Engibous said. "The wireless Internet will combine real-time signal-processing technologies, such as streaming video and audio, location-based services, speech recognition, mobile e-commerce and security into single applications."
The OMAP architecture is at the heart of TI's wireless solution. The OMAP architecure delivers enhanced performance while using only one quarter the power required by alternative RISC-based solutions for 2.5 and 3G wireless applications, enabling feature rich wireless devices with longer battery life. TI's OMAP architecture and tools support provides software developers with easy access to real-time DSP functionality without requiring DSP programming expertise.
The key DSP component of TI's OMAP architecture is the TMS320C55x DSP. It provides superior multimedia performance (more than five times the performance of the leading DSP on the market - TI's TMS320C54x DSP) while delivering the lowest system-level power consumption. A TI-enhanced ARM core contains an added LCD frame buffer to run command control functions and user interface applications.
By leveraging this dual-core approach for wireless applications, software code can be optimized to deliver the best possible system performance and lowest power consumption, critical in wireless devices. The TI-enhanced ARM microcontroller is well-suited for control-type code and processing for the man-machine interface. The C55x DSP is best suited for signal processing multimedia applications, such as MPEG4 video, speech recognition and audio playback. TI's OMAP architecture optimally combines these two processors, maximizing the benefits of each.
But the microcontroller cannot provide the signal processing power necessary for real-time applications without sapping the battery supply. A RISC processing alone would display video in fits and starts while a consumer was issuing voice commands using a 3G phone.
By coupling a DSP with a RISC processor in parallel, the OMAP architecture gives OEMs access to DSP capabilities while providing command control functions for which RISC processors are best suited.
Wireless Networking Tools
Two new wireless networking technologies--Bluetooth and IEEE 802.11--will help shape future wireless networks. As home and office networking continues to gain momentum, wireless networking will be increasingly significant as consumers and business users find that with IEEE 802.11 and Bluetooth they can avoid the hassle of wiring their homes and offices by using these "no wires" networks. Bluetooth will be used for enabling personal area networks while IEEE 802.11 will be used for local area networking.
TI has built a high-performance Bluetooth chipset at economic price points. In turn, manufacturers of Bluetooth devices will allow consumers to communicate via mobile phones, computers and PDAs over short-range wireless connections.
TI also is building chipsets for IEEE 802.11b wireless LAN technology, improving system performance and affordability. The higher performance technology will allow for multimedia-rich, in-home applications, such as high definition digital TV and streaming.
The OMAP processor software includes a DSP/BIOS Bridge that allows programmers to use standard operating systems to address the dual processors as a single unit. Because the OMAP architecture is open, third-party developers and independent software vendors can create applications for many OEMs that use OMAP architecture.
The DSP/BIOS Bridge API is abstracted from the high-level application developers by a set of DLL and drivers that is provided in the development toolkit. That allows developers to work seamlessly with the DSP functionality in TI's OMAP architecture as they would work with traditional RISC-only processors.
Recently, TI has announced a number of key OMAP collaborations. Microsoft Corp. is collaborating with TI to support Windows Media Audio, Video and digital rights management technology on TI's DSP-based processors. For instance, Windows Media Video 8 delivers near-VHS-quality video at rates as low as 250 Kbps and near-DVD-quality video at rates as low as 500 Kpbs.
Earlier this year, TI announced a similar arrangement with Real Networks. Consumers who own TI OMAP-based wireless Internet appliances will be able to watch breaking news and sports highlights, listen to music, and receive breaking entertainment news and weather updates via RealNetworks streaming formats.
The future
More than 60 percent of all digital wireless phones in the world have TI's DSP-based digital baseband and analog baseband technologies. Nokia, Ericsson, Handspring and Sony have endorsed next generation solutions using the OMAP architecture. TI's OMAP architecture and development program will allows OEMs to provide consumers with media-rich experiences using 2.5G and 3G technology.
http://www.broadbandweek.com/ti_series/articles/0319_nextgen.htm
NSV is a new video format. It is designed to be easily streamed, support any audio and video codec, and be usable on nearly any platform. Currently NSV utilizes MP3 for audio and VP3 for video. Support for more codecs will be added soon.
On2 Throws More Open-Source at MPEG-4
6/24/02 Compression technology company On2 Technologies (AMEX:ONT), fighting for more acceptance of its VP3 open source codec, has joined forces with open source foundation Xiph.Org Foundation to build a royalty-free streaming media platform.
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On2 Technologies Announces VP3.2 Support in Winamp3
Nullsoft's Winamp3 Player and its NSV Format Use On2's Breakthrough Opensource Video Codec
New York, NY, August 12, 2002 On2 Technologies Inc., The Duck Corporation (AMEX: ONT), today announced that Nullsoft's multimedia player, Winamp3, now supports its VP3.2 video codec directly in the NSV (NullSoft Video) format. AOL purchased Nullsoft in 1999. The player can be downloaded at http://www.winamp.com. Several of the videos at the site, including the Witchblade and Austin Powers videos, are in the NSV/VP3.2 format. "It is very gratifying to get this kind of acknowledgment from the Nullsoft developers, knowing that they can chose from a great many video codec options", said Douglas A. McIntyre, On2 President and CEO. "We hope that this means accelerated adoption of the On2 VP format."
About On2 Technologies, The Duck Corporation On2 Technologies (AMEX: ONT) is a video compression software company. On2 licenses its high quality video codecs for use in set- top boxes, consumer electronics devices and wireless applications. In addition, On2 offers a suite of products and services, including high-level video encoding, customized technical support, and consulting services. Headquartered in New York City, the Company has an office in Albany, NY, and operations in London, UK, and Seoul, Korea. On2 may be reached at 145 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10013, telephone 917-237-0500 or info@on2.com. Investor inquiries should be sent to invest@on2.com.
Contact info:
June 2, 1999 America Online to Acquire Internet Music Companies Spinner Networks and Nullsoft Inc. for $400 Million in Stock
America Online has made its first move into the expanding digital music world by acquiring two Internet music companies, Spinner Networks and Nullsoft for $400 million in stock. Spinner, which is based in San Francisco, runs a popular music station that functions as an Internet radio station. AOL will pay a total of approximately $400 million in stock to acquire the two companies; however, it would not disclose how much it would pay for each company. Insiders see the deal as a response to their rival Yahoo! Inc., who acquired Broadcast.com for $5.7 billion in stock in April.
AOL's New Music Plan May Be a Real Threat
Rob Glaser and AOL: on the outs?
FORTUNE
Monday, July 8, 2002
By Fred Vogelstein
Ever since Rob Glaser left Microsoft in 1994
to found RealNetworks, he has lived life as
a fly in the ointment. That isn't meant as a
slight. Anyone who has competed
head-to-head with Bill Gates knows that
being tenacious, scrappy, and a little
annoying are prerequisites for survival. His
perseverance has paid off: Today, when it
comes to listening to music or watching
video online, there are basically only two
ways to go--Windows' Media Player and
Glaser's Real Player.
A big part of Glaser's survival has been
Real's close relationship with AOL (which like FORTUNE is owned by AOL
Time Warner). But that relationship may soon be headed for divorce court.
Why? Real is beginning to resemble a competitor rather than a partner.
RealOne, its latest offering, is a multimedia subscription service that looks
just like AOL and uses Microsoft's Internet browser, not AOL's. Worse yet, at
$9.95 per month, the service is cheaper than AOL, and for broadband users
it's sometimes better. After only six months RealOne has some 700,000
subscribers, while subscriber growth at AOL's flagship service is slowing. In
addition, AOL pays Real some $6 million a year to license its software. Yet
AOL techies say privately that they never liked Real's technology very much.
To combat the Real threat, FORTUNE has learned, AOL has been quietly
developing its own music player using a set of audio and video standards
called Ultravox and .nsv, developed by Nullsoft and others. (Nullsoft, founded
by wunderkind and WinAmp creator Justin Frankel, was snapped up by AOL
in 1999.) What AOL plans to do with all this is still unclear; neither AOL nor
Real would comment. Its goal could simply be to use the standards as a
cudgel to get Real's and AOL's interests more aligned. But industry watchers
bet that AOL has much bigger ambitions for the project, such as replacing
Real's technology with its own in future versions of AOL's software and using
its heft to undercut Real's deals with content providers. There is even
speculation that AOL plans to use these standards to make its prodigious
music, movie, and video libraries off-limits to anyone not using the player.
Of course, if other music and movie companies don't play along, the gambit
could fail badly. But years ago, when e-mail was in its infancy, AOL's
proprietary setup was a key driver of its growth. Whatever AOL's intentions,
it's clear that another round in the online music wars is about to get under
way
================================================
Texas Instruments licenses new MP3Pro
By Gwendolyn Mariano
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
September 19, 2001, 6:10 PM PT
Texas Instruments said Wednesday that it has agreed to support a new digital music format that creates files using half the space previously required for MP3s.
Texas Instruments said it is licensing Thomson Multimedia's MP3Pro format, which compresses standard audio tracks without significantly compromising sound quality. Manufacturers will be able to support the new format by updating their Internet audio devices using Texas Instruments' DSPs (digital signaling processors), which handle audio and video compression in real time.
"It makes sense that TI will support it. They support everyone, and so it was a matter of time before they supported it to show how flexible their DSP is," said P.J. McNealy, a media analyst for GartnerG2, a division of research firm Gartner. "But I don't necessarily see hardware manufacturers or consumers demanding support for this because there's so many codecs out there and this one isn't leaps and bounds better than the rest."
Forthcoming music-subscription services such as Pressplay and MusicNet, which are backed by the major record labels, have yet to adopt MP3Pro. They have instead struck deals to use rival digital music formats from companies such as Microsoft and RealNetworks. Until label-backed services pick up MP3Pro, there's not going to be "screaming demand for it," McNealy said.
Still, Thomson Multimedia and the Fraunhofer Institute, the companies behind the digital music format, have been interested some software and hardware developers in the new technology. MP3.com signed on last week to make songs available in MP3Pro on a joint Web site with Thomson. A new plug-in for AOL Time Warner's Winamp online music player is also available from various Thomson sites. In addition, InterTrust has integrated MP3Pro with its digital rights management platform, Thomson said.
Launched in June, MP3Pro includes a new player and "ripper," or file creator, which enables music fans to create near-CD quality digital music files around half the size of the previous format. In addition, MP3Pro files will work with software and devices based on MP3, Thomson said.
MP3Pro files are recorded differently from the previous format, however, and the new files may sound worse on systems designed for standard MP3s. MP3Pro uses two separate streams of data to improve audio quality; only one of those streams can be detected by older players.
Support for the MP3Pro by Texas Instruments "is instrumental in helping us expand our reach to portable Internet audio devices and will help to carryover the momentum of MP3 to the more advanced MP3Pro," Henri Linde, vice president of new business, patent and licensing unit for Thomson Multimedia, said in a statement.
Research analyst Susan Kevorkian of IDC agreed that to keep sales high it's important for consumer electronics manufacturers to build devices that support an array of the emerging file formats.
20 Aug 2002, On2 status--AOL?? fisherguy
Well now. Is the picture any more or less fuzzy for everyone? Looks like On2 isn't yet willing to pack it in and slip quietly under the waves after all is it? Must be a real disappointment for all the ambassadors of ill will who have been trying to shovel dirt on the company's grave as of late. I suppose there will be strong arguments from the bashers that recent events are merely forestalling the inevitable demise of the company. Certainly nothing is yet guaranteed about the future of On2. However, the restructuring of the company's operations coupled with the commitment made by management to work for no pay for the next 4 months speaks strongly to a conviction on the part of those in charge that better days lie ahead.
What better days are we looking forward to? To start with we are looking for the company to move decisively into the black. Coming out of this quarter and going forward the company should be profitable; and, if revenue projections previously provided prove accurate, the company could actually start to build a cash cushion. Next, we are looking forward to actual, commercial deployment of On2's products by its signed customers. Already it looks like Picosoft is prepping to begin set top box deliveries in 4th qtr. (Picosoft's publicly stated time frame - not On2's). World Theatre is looking at early year 2003 to release. QBKK and MCS are not are clear on their schedules, but every day of delay means the deployment dates have to be getting sooner - unless they never plan to move forward at all. Real? If anything the Real/On2 relationship seems murky. Real has paid to get their hands on VP technology and exclude certain others from doing so. They have yet to undertake any initiative based on VP, but can they afford not to? Bottom line is that recurring revenue from any one of On2's current partners can make the company successful.
But lets look a bit more proactively at a potential customer we don't have yet. AOL. If there's any customer that can really make this company its AOL. But what's up with AOL? Everybody wants to know. For the past year AOL seems to be in pretty much disarray with no clear strategy or execution under way to stake out the high ground in the digital media landscape. In the mean time their arch foe Microsoft continues plowing ahead prepping new products and offerings designed to eat AOL's lunch. So what's up with AO? Are they just sitting around blowing bubbles?
Trying to read AOL is at best difficult. Clearly there have been many issues of organizational integration plaguing AOL since the Time/Warner merger. These have spilled across many of their divisions and likely play into their seeming lack of initiative over the past several months. That doesn't mean though that AOL is oblivious to the challenges that competitors, namely Microsoft, are attempting to mount. Nor does it mean that AOL is not going to be equipped to respond to those challenges. I suspect that they are probably a lot better prepared than many outside observers realize.
Of most interest to On2 investors are the three key AOL properties - AOL subscription service, Time/Warner cable network, and various video media production companies (e.g. Warner Bros. ) agglomerated under their name. Things are starting to move. Over the past couple of years Time/Warner cable has been upgrading its cable systems to handle digital. That work has been completed at considerable expense. What's next? Obviously they have to begin to generate new and improved revenue streams to pay the costs of this upgrade. One of those streams seems certain to be Video On demand, which has yet to be rolled out by them in serious commercial fashion. Think its not coming? News now comes out that AOL is buying the ATT portion of Time Warner Entertainment. Finally AOL will have complete control of the cable franchise and the ability to roll out consistent service offerings across the entire network. It has released a new version of the AOL browser with specific support for broadband services, although the compelling offerings that would attract or retain subscribers has yet to show up. Think that such offerings won't appear? AOL recently released a new generation multi-modal media player in the form of Winamp, a product clearly capable of streaming a variety of both audio and video formats.
Lets think a little bit about events as they have unfolded over the past year. Last spring, the AOL/Real exclusive player license expired. At that time betting was that they would negotiate a new deal as a means of blocking Microsoft. The license has not been renewed. Now AOL releases its own Winamp product and vague, foggy references are circulated regarding a mysterious, technological advancement AOL has developed to improve streaming via its routers. I now am thinking that AOL is positioning itself to jettison Real. Makes sense also when you think about the subscription service that Real is pushing, which more and more seems to be a competitor for AOL subscribers. Last year, on expiration of the AOL/Real license, Microsoft and AOL got together to talk about a deal for keeping the AOL service icon on the Windows desktop. Microsoft told AOL the price of the renewal included AOL making Windows Media Player its exclusive player. AOL told Microsoft to get lost, whereupon Microsoft immediately began a campaign to woo away AOL subscribers over to its MSN service.
Today its a pretty safe bet that AOL isn't going to be using Microsoft as its source of media player technology. Its looking more and more possible that they won't be using Real either. If this proves to be the case and AOL moves ahead with its own media player then what options are out there for the underlying enabling technology that makes their media player work. Under this scenario it ain't going to be Microsoft's codec and it ain't going to be Real's. What's left? MPEG-4 and On2 VP. That's what left. What's wrong with MPEG? Oh, just a little matter of the royalty arrangements for one, and the fact that part of any royalties AOL would pay to use MPEG would flow back into Microsoft's coffers since they're one of the MPEG patent pool participants. Also, just a bit bigger matter in that there has yet to be an MPEG-4 codec solution demonstrated that can do what On2's VP4/5 codec can do, and there is no evidence to think that one will appear in the immediate future either. How long does anyone think AOL can wait for a competitive product to come out of MPEG? Kind of leaves one wondering about what if any relationship AOL might have with the one company which has delivered a commercial product that does work and handily beats it competition's products. Makes one wonder about AOL's relationship with On2 doesn't it?
Well, those who have been involved with On2 long enough know that a relationship has existed, and does exist. On2 was paid by Warner Bros. to encode a gob of material a year and a half ago under VP3. None of this material has yet been publicly released. On2 has operated under a nondisclosure with AOL for considerable time. Its still subject to this NDA. Now, interestingly, Winamp is released by AOL and it just coincidentally is using open source VP3 as its only embedded video codec. Coincidence? Sure. I personally doubt it. Embedding the VP3 codec permits AOL to release previous VP3 encoded material at any time. But I'm telling you that VP3 is a mere feint by AOL because VP3 won't be and can't be the codec that gives AOL the competitive edge it needs to take on Microsoft Corona or to give Real its walking papers. VP3 is two generations old and is not good enough to out duel either Microsoft's pending Corona or Real's recently released RV9. VP3 may not be good enough, but VP4/VP5 most assuredly is. Its better than good enough ... its kick ass. And if AOL has serious aspirations of knocking out Microsoft and Real, then ultimately VP5 or VP6 is where AOL has to be headed.
So there you have it. I told people well over a year ago that the AOL train was where we wanted, needed to be. I am becoming more convinced everyday that On2 is on board the train. It just isn't ready to be divulged by those in the know that On2 is riding the rails with AOL. On2 on its part is prohibited by their NDA from talking about anything involving AOL. AOL isn't going to say what's going on because its not in their interests to prematurely disclose who they are picking as their technology standard. They don't want to tip Microsoft off ahead of Corona's release. Right. But why then wouldn't they bail On2 out of their cash crisis if they were seriously planning to use VP4/VP5? Simple. If they invested in or financed On2 at this point that information would need to be publicly disclosed and the AOL/On2 connection would become just as clear as if they issued a press release trumpeting their selection of On2's product. Might as well call Bill Gates up on the phone and tell him whose technology Microsoft needs to redesign Corona against. I am convinced that AOL is simply not prepared to disclose what their technology initiative is comprised of until they want to or have to. That time comes when AOL is ready to deploy. When is that? Subsequent to Microsoft shooting its wad with Corona and sometime before the end of the year. Corona supposedly makes its debut in September or October. Once Microsoft's thunder dissipates AOL will has its shot. So I'm anticipating AOL wants nothing revealed until later this fall.
Agree, disagree with my hypothesis. Until factual evidence materializes to substantiate it that's all it is. But here's one last piece to chew on. Given the recent circumstances of On2's existence: the cash crisis, the shortfall of 2nd qtr. revenues against prior projections; the apparent invisibility of timing for deployment on the part of QBKK, MCS, Picosoft (up till today at least), et al, the apparent lack of interest in presumed major customers anteing up what looks like chump change to keep On2 afloat; what would be the rational basis for company management to commit to working for the next 4 months for free? Or wasting their time trying to keep On2 on life support just to end up pulling the plug early next year? My point is that it wouldn't be rational - not unless management is pretty firmly convinced a big paycheck is coming down the road. This paycheck could certainly come from any number of currently signed customers and I actually think paychecks will start coming in from several of them. But I have strong suspicions that the biggest pay check may be coming from somebody that hasn't yet been heard from.
August 14, 2002 Broadband Future Is Bright
http://www.internetnews.com/stats/article.php/1446801
May 8, 2002 Liberty Media Shifts iTV to High Gear
By
By Erin Joyce
Liberty Media Corp. (NYSE:L) is shifting into high gear with its interactive television strategy, acquiring control of OpenTV Corp. (NASDAQ:OPTV) for $185 million in cash and stock.
In addition, the company controlled by deal-making mogul John Malone formed a subsidiary to pursue broadband interactive television developments; it also entered into a deal to acquire interactive television company ACTV (NASDAQ:IATV) for $2 a share.
With many television technology stocks at depressed prices, and interactive services catching on with cable subscribers, Liberty Media is apparently positioning itself at what analysts might call "attractive levels."
Shares of OpenTV, whose interactive television software sits in more than 24 million set-top boxes worldwide, had jumped by 92 cents, or 20 percent to $5.35 after the news was announced.
ACTV (NASDAQ:IATV) was up by 57 cents, or 51 percent to $1.70 Wednesday.
At the same time, Liberty Media formed a subsidiary, Liberty Broadband Interactive Television, Inc. (LBIT), and named Peter C. Boylan III as its president and chief executive.
In addition to managing the OpenTV investment, Boylan is to focus on developing and investing in the interactive television sector, said Liberty, which holds 90 percent control of LBIT.
"The iTV sector along with other technology areas have been out of favor with investors for the last few years, creating a unique opportunity for us at this time," Boylan said in a statement.
"I firmly believe that with Liberty Media we can create substantial shareholder value in this sector while forging new, mutually beneficial relationships and partnerships with multi-channel video providers and programmers seeking to enhance their existing applications, traditional advertising business and associated revenue streams."
Liberty Media and Boylan have been rubbing elbows in the broadcast/technology sector since 1995 when Liberty invested in United Video Satellite Group, the forerunner of TV tech company Gemstar TV-Guide International (NASDAQ:GMST). Boylan recently resigned from his positions as co-COO and co-president with Gemstar.
The Englewood, Colorado-based Liberty, which invests in broadband and communications businesses, said it agreed to acquire 365,460 Class A Shares and 30.2 million Class B shares of OpenTV Corp. The shares are held by MIH, which invests in and offers interactive services to overseas customers.
Once completed, the OpenTV deal would give Liberty Media over 46 percent ownership and 89 percent of the voting shares in the Mountain View, Calif.-based company. Under the terms of the letter agreement with ACTV, Liberty (which currently owns about 16 percent of the New York-based ACTV's outstanding shares), would purchase all remaining shares for $2.00 each.
With about 55.8 million shares of ACTV's common stock outstanding, the deal could be worth roughly $92 million. But the companies said there were no assurances that the boards of directors would approve the tender.
The Boylan connection to the Liberty stake is important, said Phil Swann, president and publisher of TVPredictions.com, a news and analysis site about the industry. Boylan's prior experience with Gemstar leads to Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., which has major stake in Gemstar. "And Murdoch is a huge supporter of iTV," Swann said.
That's one reason he thinks Liberty's moves could put other downtrodden iTV companies in play, notably personal video recorder company TiVo (NASDAQ:TIVO) and iTV software company Wink Communications (NASDAQ:WINK).
"Look at TiVo, which is now around $4 (per share) after burning a lot of cash," he said. And shares of Wink Communications have seen "more swings than Mike Tyson at a pre-fight press conference."
TiVo has great brand association, and Wink's products are in 5 million set-top boxes. "That makes them great targets" with the media world's wheeler dealers.
Talking back to the tube
From Knowledge@Wharton
Special to CNET News.com
June 30, 2002, 6:00 AM PT
[previously posted by gernb]
Imagine being able to turn your television on, pick the program you want to see from your customized prerecorded list, pull up an on-screen menu to check the latest weather, instant message a friend, and order pizza from your remote control, all without leaving your couch.
Welcome to the world of interactive television.
The idea of having consumers actively engage in the television experience isn't new. After all, shopping channels like QVC have turned viewer-to-buyer conversion into a science. Cable and satellite systems have greatly increased the number of channels available to consumers, and pay per view (PPV), where viewers use the telephone to rent access to certain programs, is a fixture at most hotels. In an effort to drive traffic to the Internet, TV show hosts often exhort viewers to log on to Web sites and take companion surveys, enter sweepstakes and download recipes.
More recently, the spotlight has been on personal video recording (PVR) technology, which is offered by devices like TiVo and Sonicblue's ReplayTV. These products take the VCR one step further, offering hard disk-based recording of favorite programs, pause-and-rewind capabilities for live television, and the ability to skip commercials during playback.
In Europe and elsewhere, satellite system providers such as BSkyB and Canal Satellite are offering enhanced features. By connecting their set-top box to their phone line, viewers can access e-mail, shop, bank, place bets, and more. Many providers are also experimenting with video on demand (VOD), which allows consumers to request and view content whenever they want without having to record it first.
Ask, and ye shall receive
"Video on demand is the next big thing," says Gerald Faulhaber, professor of public policy and management at Wharton. "It will change the way people watch TV. We're going to start moving away from a traditional model of channels, each of which carries a 24-7 video stream, toward a model where people request shows they want to see. There probably still will be channels (after all, you have to see "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" somewhere for the first time) but this is going to be a sea change in the industry."
For entertainment and cable companies, video on demand is more of a sound economic model than t-commerce, says Charles Benson, a 1996 graduate of Wharton and former vice president of Liberty Digital, a subsidiary of Liberty Media. "The most basic form is pay per view, where viewers call or click on the remote control to watch a previously scheduled program. Near video on demand, or NVOD, uses the same PPV technology, but the cable operator offers many more windows of the program--say, airing it every half-hour--so the consumer doesn't have to wait too long to watch it at any given point.
In true VOD, the consumers can start watching the movie whenever they want and are free to pause, rewind or fast-forward and watch it at will during a specific time window of, say, six hours or 12 hours. "There are all kinds of reasons that many people are not connected to the Net, but everyone has a television set."
--Gerald Faulhaber, professor of public policy, Wharton
"As for deployment, there are two schools of thought on VOD," Benson said. "One is a head-end based system, where the content is broadcast to the viewer in a stream from the cable operator's server. The other is a model in which the content is downloaded to the viewer's set-top box and resides there for a specific number of hours before it is automatically erased. I don't know which model will win, but my guess is it may be the head-end based model so studios have some control over the content distribution."
Fast-forward
Eddie Monnier, a 1996 graduate of Wharton and vice president of corporate development for Liberty Broadband Interactive Television, believes the device most likely to succeed will be a set-top box with user-friendly integrated PVR technology. "I consider myself quite technologically savvy, and I had some trouble setting up my stand-alone PVR to work with all the other systems I had," he said. "This stuff has to be very easy for consumers to set up."
Often, Monnier said, consumers don't understand why they need something until they're using it. "People who don't have a PVR often wonder why they would ever want to pause or rewind live television. But skeptics said the same thing about the microwave, asking why they would ever need to bake a potato in eight minutes. Once they use it, it's a different story. For instance, when I'm at a hotel while traveling for business and I don't catch what someone said on the news, I instinctively reach for the remote to rewind--but then I remember that I can't do that there as I can at home!"
Laurence Marks, a 1996 graduate of Wharton and vice president for content development at Static, a subsidiary of OpenTV, notes that when the PVR is integrated with the set-top box, cable companies might balk at including the commercial-skipping feature. "Some of the cable companies' money comes from firms to whom they sell advertising. It will be difficult for them to put that skip button on the remote controls."
Indeed, several entertainment companies have filed suit against Sonicblue, claiming that the ad-skipping technology in the ReplayTV device violates content-providers' copyright. Five consumers, assisted by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, have countered by filing a suit against the entertainment companies, seeking to affirm their right to use their ReplayTV boxes to skip advertising and digitally record content.
Show me the money
Television can certainly influence consumers to buy products--Home Shopping Network and QVC are examples of success in that arena--but exactly how much commerce can be integrated into entertainment remains to be seen.
"As for the classic example--viewers being given the opportunity to buy an article of clothing that Monica is wearing on "Friends"--I don't think that will really materialize into an attractive business opportunity," Monnier said. "There are two questions to be asked. One is: Do consumers want it? I think the answer is no--when they're sitting down to be entertained, I'm not sure they want to switch from that into shopping mode. The second is: If consumers do want it, can you make a business out of it?"
If one spins out the hypotheticals, notes Monnier, a lot of issues come up. "Suppose you want to sell a sweater that a character is wearing during one episode. How do you accurately predict demand? How long do you keep it in stock and maintain fulfillment, especially if the episode goes into reruns after it airs?" "With such highly targeted ads and the accompanying technology, we can evaluate what people are viewing in unprecedented ways."
--Eddie Monnier, vice president of corporate development, Liberty Broadband Interactive Television
Enhanced television features, however, might be a different story. Who is going to pay for these services? "It depends," Monnier said. "Some types of programs and events have enthusiasts who would be willing to pay a subscription fee for access to multiple camera angles, instant replays and the like. Think NASCAR in the U.S., Formula One in Europe, or World Cup soccer anywhere in the world. In other cases, networks might offer these features if they believe that such enhanced features will net them more advertising dollars or reduce churn among viewers."
But even simple TV portals have run into stumbling blocks, Benson noted. "The portal concept isn't catching on so well because you need a more advanced set-top box for fancy user interfaces. There have been a lot of technology glitches in the software and middleware required, and program guide providers such as Gemstar-TV Guide often hold many of the patents on interactive guides. Sometimes their guide takes up so much memory that you can't run too much else on the box."
The Web channel?
When it's done correctly, Faulhaber believes, interactive television has the potential to bring the still-offline couch potato market to the Internet. "There are all kinds of reasons that many people are not connected to the Net, but everyone has a television set. It just has to be really entertaining and easy." Just as handhelds evolved from Newtons to Palms, he says, MSN TV and AOL TV will give way to more compelling interfaces when the time is right.
But many feel that the television just isn't the right device for a Web-surfing experience. "I personally am not a believer in using television to surf the Web," Monnier said. "The Web is completely a consumer pull experience; it is a one-to-one, active-mode experience where the user is at most 18 inches or so from the screen. Television, on the other hand, is a push experience. Interactive television will allow consumers to incorporate some pull into their TV viewing experience but it will still be a largely passive experience.
"I think Web on television has not been able to reach critical penetration levels because those who like getting that information on a television eventually just graduate to a PC. So getting the Web on a TV just isn't interesting."
Discomfort on Madison Avenue
As consumers get more and more control of the TV experience, where does that leave advertisers?
"For advertisers, who are used to being able to schedule commercials at particular times, the idea of allowing people infinite flexibility to watch shows at other times may not fit with their scheme. So they might have to find ways to insert commercials through set-top boxes to these people who are constantly time-shifting," said Joseph Turow, professor of communications at Penn's Annenberg School for Communication.
"Madison Avenue will increasingly have to prove its worth," Monnier said. "With such highly targeted ads and the accompanying technology, we can evaluate what people are viewing in unprecedented ways."
"I believe advertising will become truly targeted," he notes.
Benson agrees, and points out that good commercials do get viewed. "It will be a wake-up call for the advertisers to get more creative on their commercials. They have to figure out other ways to reach consumers. After all, we do sit and watch Superbowl ads. I've rewound and watched commercials even when using TiVo."
Turow notes that the growing popularity of interactive television features raises interesting questions about viewership and about the viability of local TV stations.
"Historically, we have been used to the idea of program flow, and entire schedules of shows are created with the idea of people continuously watching the lineup," he said. "The idea of flow is now changing. The network may become more of a brand that the consumer turns to just to consider which programs are worth adding to his personal schedule. If people are cherry-picking programs that way, they might not go to their local stations at all."
To read more articles like this one, visit Knowledge@Wharton.
All materials copyright © 2002 of the Wharton School of the University
Wink Communications, a developer of interactive TV
advertising software, announced on Tuesday that its shareholders have
approved its previously announced acquisition by Liberty Broadband
Interactive Television (LBIT) for about $100 million in cash. "I am
pleased that the shareholders have approved the merger," said Wink CEO
Maggie Wilderotter. "The complementary strengths of LBIT assets will
provide a unique opportunity to accelerate the ITV business domestically
and globally." LBIT is a division of Liberty Media, which of late has also
acquired interactive TV software provider OpenTV for $185 million, as well
as the stake it didn't already own in interactive ad software firm ACTV.
Alameda, Calif.-based Wink's technology allows owners of Wink-enabled
set-top boxes to interact with ads and other TV content using their
television's remote control.
liberty media/opentv/wink
Wink Communications, a developer of interactive TV
advertising software, announced on Tuesday that its shareholders have
approved its previously announced acquisition by Liberty Broadband
Interactive Television (LBIT) for about $100 million in cash. "I am
pleased that the shareholders have approved the merger," said Wink CEO
Maggie Wilderotter. "The complementary strengths of LBIT assets will
provide a unique opportunity to accelerate the ITV business domestically
and globally." LBIT is a division of Liberty Media, which of late has also
acquired interactive TV software provider OpenTV for $185 million, as well
as the stake it didn't already own in interactive ad software firm ACTV.
Alameda, Calif.-based Wink's technology allows owners of Wink-enabled
set-top boxes to interact with ads and other TV content using their
television's remote control.
Wink Communications Shareholders Approve the Liberty Broadband Interactive Television Merger
ALAMEDA, Calif., Aug. 19 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Shareholders of Wink Communications (Nasdaq: WINK - News) approved the merger between Wink and a subsidiary of Liberty Broadband Interactive Television (LBIT) at a special shareholder meeting held at Wink's headquarters today. Over 69% of the outstanding shares were voted in favor of the merger.
(Photo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/19991103/WINKLOGO )
"I am pleased that the shareholders have approved the merger," said Maggie Wilderotter, Wink's chief executive officer. "The complementary strengths of LBIT assets will provide a unique opportunity to accelerate the ITV business domestically and globally."
Company Background
About Wink Communications - Wink is the leading mass-market interactive television solution in North America, giving viewers a free and convenient way to interact with programs and advertisements while they continue to watch TV. By clicking a button on their remote control during an enhanced program or advertisement, viewers can access program-related information (such as weather, sports updates, trivia and play-along games) request product samples, coupons and other free offers from advertisers or make purchases instantly. The company's end-to-end system enables advertisers and programmers to process transactions while offering viewers instant interactive entertainment and information retrieval. Wink's technology also collects, analyzes and routes viewer behavior and response data to give advertisers and broadcasters a tool to collect consumer and viewer research and to evaluate the success and value of their television campaigns. Introduced in June of 1998, Wink is currently distributed through partnership agreements with major cable and satellite operators, network and cable broadcasters, national advertisers and manufacturers of consumer electronics equipment.
The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 provides a "safe harbor" for forward-looking statements. Certain information included in this press release (as well as information included in oral statements or other written statements made or to be made by us) contains statements that are forward-looking. Such forward-looking information involves important risks and uncertainties that could significantly affect anticipated results in the future and, accordingly, such results may differ materially from those expressed in any forward-looking statements made by or on behalf of Wink.
Wink Communications filed a proxy statement and other relevant documents concerning the merger with the SEC. Investors are able to obtain the documents free of charge at the SEC's website, www.sec.gov. or from Wink's Investor Relations Department at 1001 Marina Village Parkway, Alameda California, 94501, telephone 510-337-2950.
NOTE: WINK is a registered trademark of WINK Communications, Inc. All other products or brand names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.
SOURCE: Wink Communications
AT&T-AOL Deal Is Expected Soon on Unwinding of Cable Partnership
By Martin Peers, Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal
NEW YORK -- AOL Time Warner Inc. (August 20) and AT&T Corp. are expected to announce as early as Tuesday a deal under which AOL will buy AT&T out of a content and cable partnership between the two companies, ending years of talks. ADVERTISEMENT
The deal will give AOL full ownership of the Warner Bros. film studio and Home Box Office and will likely also result eventually in a public offering of a minority stake in its giant cable systems, making it easier for AOL to pursue acquisitions in the cable-TV sector. At the moment, Warner Bros., HBO and most of Time Warner Cable are held in the Time Warner Entertainment partnership, controlled by AOL but about 27%-owned by AT&T.
Under the deal, AT&T is expected to get a stake of between 20% and 22% in a newly created Time Warner Cable company, as well as about $2.1 billion in cash and $1.5 billion in AOL stock. The proceeds will eventually end up with Comcast Corp. (NasdaqNM:CMCSA - News; CMCSA, CMCSK), which inherits AT&T's stake in the TWE partnership as a result of its acquisition of AT&T's cable systems later this year.
As part of the deal, Comcast is expected to agree to allow America Online to sell a high-speed version of its Internet service on Comcast's cable systems, a big win for AOL. This would be the first cable system to carry the AOL service aside from Time Warner Cable.
Comcast is expected to sell the stake in the new Time Warner Cable company in a public offering when market conditions improve. It will also eventually sell the AOL shares.
The former Time Warner created the TWE partnership in 1992 to help reduce debt but it has spent most of the past eight years trying to unravel the partnership, which investors complained made the company's balance sheet hard to analyze. AOL's new chief executive, Richard Parsons, had made simplifying the company's structure a priority.
Still, investors are concerned about the cost of a TWE restructuring, particularly at the prospect that AOL will have to pay out cash when the company's financial flexibility is limited by its heavy debt load.
People Who Stream Each Week Buy Significantly More CDs Than Most Americans According to Latest Arbitron/Edison Media Research Study
Residential Broadband Adoption Doubles in 18 Months
NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug. 19, 2002--Weekly "Streamies" - people who have watched or listened to streaming media online in the past week - bought more than one and a half times the number of compact discs (CDs) in the past year than the average American, according to a new study by Arbitron Inc. (NYSE:ARB - News) and Edison Media Research.
The study, "Internet 9: The Media and Entertainment World of Online Consumers," found that weekly Streamies bought 21 CDs in the past year, compared to the average American, who bought 13 CDs.
"While some in the record industry have viewed streaming as a threat, this research indicates that Streamies are a very lucrative group of record buyers," said Bill Rose, vice president and general manager, Arbitron Webcast Services, Arbitron Inc.
The study also found that residential broadband adoption has doubled in just under 18 months. Those with a cable modem or DSL Internet connection at home jumped from 12 percent in January 2001 to 28 percent in July 2002.
These and other new findings from the study will be presented during a live webcast on Thursday, September 5 at 12:00 Noon EDT. Those interested in viewing the free webcast can register at www.arbitron.com or www.edisonresearch.com.
Other issues addressed in the study are:
Consumer perceptions of radio, TV, newspapers and the Internet;
Internet access and online buying trends;
Streaming (audio and video) usage trends;
Streaming subscription and advertising;
Usage and perceptions of local media Web sites;
Awareness and interest in satellite radio.
The findings reported here are based on a July 2002 survey consisting of 2,511 telephone interviews with a randomly selected national sample of Arbitron's Spring 2002 radio diary keepers. Since 1998, Arbitron and Edison Media Research have conducted nine groundbreaking studies of the Internet and streaming media, one every six months.
MULTIMEDIA IN THE BEACH BAG: INFINEON ENABLES PDAS TO BECOME ENTERTAINMENT CENTERS
(Ybreo PR)- Lugging around books, CDs, and batteries, writing postcards and glueing stamps during the best weeks of the year could very well soon become a thing of the past, thanks to technology know-how from Infineon. A 256-Mbit memory which is now being shipped to manufacturers will make the PDA (Personal Digital Assistant) much more of a multimedia tool. Since this chip has twice the capacity and half the size of comparable products, manufacturers of PDAs will soon be able to integrate more complex applications: listening to MP3s, reading eBooks, surfing the Internet, calling the loved ones at home, playing video games, making digital pictures and of course e-mailing greetings. And the real beauty is that, with the power consumption cut in half, the battery will still be good when people on the beach watch the last rays of the sun disappear behind the horizon.
More performance - less power consumption
The 256-Mbit Mobile RAM is not only suited for PDAs but also for all mobile devices where low power consumption is critical: handhelds, next-generation mobile phones, digital cameras, and Web pads. The memory requires only about half the energy of conventional DRAMs for mobile applications, significantly extending the battery life. This is achieved through a power management that is built into the memory chip.
A DRAM must regularly refresh its entire memory, even in stand-by mode, which will continuously require power. With the solution from Infineon, these refreshes only take place in the memory cells where data are actually stored. The refresh rate in the Infineon chip is also temperature-dependent: the lower the operating temperature, the lower is the refresh rate. This reduces the power consumption by more than 50 per cent, allowing longer use of the mobile device.
Never stop thinking - what the future will bring
Infineon will soon even release a Mobile RAM based on the same technology with a capacity of 512-Mbits which will allow manufacturers of portable devices to integrate more demanding applications. Infineon is also developing a special memory for mobile phones, a so-called CellularRAM, which supports services as MMS (multi media message) and i-mode (high speed data transfer). With this product, the company will particularly address the 2.5G and 3G mobile phone market. The expertise is already available: After all, every second GSM mobile phone today already contains an Infineon chip. More information about the Mobile RAMs from Infineon is available at www.infineon.com/mobile-ram.
About Infineon
Infineon Technologies AG, Munich, Germany, offers semiconductor and system solutions for applications in the wired and wireless communications markets, for security systems and smartcards, for the automotive and industrial sectors, as well as memory products. With a global presence, Infineon operates in the US from San Jose, CA, in the Asia-Pacific region from Singapore and in Japan from Tokyo. In the fiscal year 2001 (ending September), the company achieved sales of Euro 5.67 billion with about 33,800 employees worldwide. Infineon is listed on the DAX index of the Frankfurt Stock Exchange and on the New York Stock Exchange (ticker symbol: IFX). Further information is available at www.infineon.com
RealNetworks releasing new media player
By HELEN JUNG, AP Business Writer
SEATTLE (August 20, 2002 10:13 a.m. EDT) - RealNetworks Inc. was to release a new version of its Internet media-playing software that lets users burn music onto compact discs, watch digital videos and play most audio and video - even if it's programmed in a competitor's format.
The company also planned to announce its fourth major subscription service for consumers, RadioPass, which offers access to thousands of Internet radio stations for a monthly fee.
The company's subscription services, which provide about 25 percent of its revenue, have been a bright spot as other parts of its business have sagged with the soft economy.
RealNetworks' latest version of RealOnePlayer software builds on the company's "Helix" initiative, which was announced in July. At that time, RealNetworks announced new technology that allows companies or others wanting to broadcast programs over the Internet to send it in a single format and still reach most computer users - even if users rely on audio and video software from competitors Microsoft Corp. and Apple Computer.
Tuesday's announcement concerns the computer users. Now, on their end, they can use a single program - RealOnePlayer - to view almost any broadcaster's program, regardless of the technology format the broadcaster chooses.
This "universal" media-playing feature is only available to those who subscribe to either the new RadioPass subscription or RealNetworks' SuperPass service, which offers news, entertainment and other exclusive content service for $9.95 a month. RealNetworks also offers a free version of the new RealOnePlayer that excludes the feature.
The announcements come as cross-town rival Microsoft prepares to launch the latest version of its new Windows Media Technologies software in September.
The Redmond software empire has steadily gained market share - offering a free product that comes with its dominant Windows operating system software - and made significant improvements over the years to its media-playing software, analysts said.
Some wonder whether RealNetworks is feeling the pressure.
"You can see they've got to do something and they've got to do something big and they have to do it fast," said Josh Bernoff, principal analyst for Forrester Research. "I think you do have to look at it through the lens of what options does this company have left."
He added that the new player likely won't draw new subscribers, but will help keep the current 750,000-plus subscribers happy.
And RealNetworks may find success in acting more and more like a cable company, where it combines technology with programming that people can't find anywhere else.
"They're really amping the whole subscription model," said John Fletcher, associate analyst for Kagan World Media. "They're definitely leading the marketplace in turning the Internet into a more cable-like environment."
Competitors say major labels favoring pressplay
By JON HEALEY, Los Angeles Times
(August 20, 2002 11:22 a.m. EDT) - pressplay, a joint venture by Universal Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment, recently overhauled its service to give consumers more of what they want from online music. Now, pressplay's competitors are pressing Universal and Sony to let them do the same.
In particular, they want better access to the two record labels' music catalogs, arguing that it would violate federal antitrust law for the Sony Corp. and Vivendi Universal units to favor their joint venture over independent online music companies.
Antitrust investigators in the Justice Department already are examining the major labels' licensing practices, as well as scrutinizing pressplay and MusicNet, a joint venture controlled by AOL Time Warner Inc., parent of Warner Music Group; Bertelsmann, which owns BMG; and EMI Group, which controls EMI Music Publishing. For their part, the record companies say their efforts have been completely lawful.
The five major record companies hold the copyrights to about 85 percent of the music sold in the U.S., with Universal and Sony claiming about 40 percent. Companies that want to sell downloadable songs or offer subscription music services have to obtain licenses from the copyright holders, setting up the major labels as gatekeepers to the online market.
That market is in its infancy, and neither the label-owned services nor the independents have more than a few thousand subscribers. The most popular players are the ones without licenses - the file-sharing networks that let consumers make copies of songs free.
On Aug. 1, pressplay launched a version that lets subscribers download an unlimited number of songs through the Internet for a flat monthly fee. Those tracks expire when the subscriber's membership ends, but for about $1 more per song, subscribers can download permanent copies that can be recorded onto CDs or moved to portable devices.
No other subscription music service offers unlimited downloads from Universal, Sony or any other major record company. And pressplay makes available permanent copies of more Universal and Sony downloads than any other online outlet.
Sources at several independent online companies said they weren't getting the same deals as pressplay, although labels' offers have been improving dramatically. They say they've had trouble getting wholesale prices for permanent downloads and obtaining the same songs that pressplay does - especially from Sony.
These executives, who spoke on condition of anonymity, also complained that Sony and Universal have been willing to try out new features and business models with pressplay before making them available to its competitors.
To some label executives, the complaints from the online music companies are just sour grapes. The online companies' requests have shifted over time, they say, and that's why they're not all in the same posture in terms of licenses.
Jonathan Potter of the Digital Media Association, a trade group for online media companies, said the new offerings are significant improvements that make pressplay's service more appealing to consumers. "But when are Sony and Universal going to offer independent online music services the same bundle of rights they have licensed to pressplay?" Potter asked. "I hope that will be soon."
Lawrence Kenswil, president of Universal Music Group's eLabs, said, "We would be happy to make a deal, similar to the one we made with pressplay, with anyone who comes to us with a similar business proposition."
Sony officials were less direct. After noting a variety of deals it has with a number of digital music services, the company said, "SME will continue to aggressively pursue relationships with additional online music companies to have our artists' music commercially available to consumers in as many ways as possible. Each service is offering a different consumer proposition, and we must evaluate each one on a case-by-case basis to ensure that we and our artists are compensated appropriately for the use of the music."
In addition to the Justice Department's investigation, the labels also are under pressure from some members of Congress. Reps. Rick Boucher, D-Va., and Chris Cannon, R-Utah, have introduced a bill that would require the labels to offer the same or better licensing terms to independent companies that they do to pressplay and MusicNet.
With all the activity in Washington as well as the progress made at the negotiating table, some online companies are confident they'll be able to match pressplay's deals soon. Besides, the record companies have an economic interest in having as many online distribution partners as possible, said Jim Long, chief executive of RioPort Inc., an online music distributor that has music-downloading licenses from all five labels.
"It is clearly in the best interest of their shareholders for them to do that, and this has been proven for 100 years by companies like 3M, General Electric and Johnson & Johnson," Long said.
"They understand that the way you build great companies is to have the appropriate arm's-length relationships and an even playing field."
Mike Bebel, chief executive of pressplay, said that any advantage his company has in terms of licenses and features is only temporary.
"We understand that everybody is headed in the same direction," Bebel said. "We think that the landscape will be pretty even not too long from now."
att broadband/seac/VOD
Aug. 20, 2002--AT&T Broadband has selected SeaChange International, Inc. (Nasdaq: SEAC) to replace its video-on-demand (VOD) systems for cable properties in Atlanta and Los Angeles. The transition from AT&T Broadband's existing DIVA VOD systems to SeaChange's platform is scheduled for completion by October 31, 2002.
SeaChange President and CEO Bill Styslinger stated: "SeaChange has a long history with AT&T Broadband, with nearly 10 years of success in cable advertising insertion technology and hotel VOD. SeaChange is proud to have been selected to provide the platform for AT&T Broadband's residential VOD business in these two markets."
equator/picosoft/on2/adsl
Aug. 20, 2002--Equator Technologies Inc., a leading provider of high-performance, programmable and power-efficient system-on-a-chip processors for video streaming and image processing applications, and Picosoft Co. Ltd., a leading application software developer in Korea, today announced the development of a low bit-rate ADSL video-on-demand (VOD) set-top box based on Equator's high-performance, award winning MAP-CA(TM) processor. The Picosoft VOD system will be deployed over ADSL networks in Korea and other markets, with rollout scheduled for the fourth quarter of 2002.
The new set-top box was developed using Equator's Dolphin(TM) reference platform, which enables OEM manufacturers like Picosoft to bring new products into production in record time. To achieve high-quality video at the lowest possible bit rates, Picosoft chose On2 Technologies' VP4 video codec and TrueCast server technology, which allow the set-top box to provide DVD-quality video at bit rates lower than 1 Megabit/sec. Network operators can now offer high-quality video to nearly 100% of their customers without the significant investment in cable infrastructure that was previously required.
"With In-Stat/MDR projecting 17 million subscribers worldwide for VOD over Internet in 2006, there is a tremendous market opportunity for ADSL-based set-top boxes," said Avi Katz, president and CEO of Equator. "We are delighted that Picosoft selected Equator to play a pivotal role in their VOD system offering. By using our Dolphin reference platform to speed the time it takes to bring products to market, Picosoft was able to maintain focus on its core business of application software."
"We selected Equator's MAP family of chips as it allows us to rapidly deploy advanced high-quality VOD services and significantly expand our product features. With the Equator Technologies, Inc. MAP-CA as the heart of our system, we can offer our customers a recurring value through product upgrades and feature additions," said Yoo Ju-Han, CEO of Picosoft. "The Dolphin reference design significantly improved our time to market and gave us a jump on our competition."
Report: Future Bright for Online File-Sharing
Thu Aug 15, 1:34 PM ET
Jay Lyman, www.NewsFactor.com
A new report from The Yankee Group predicts that free file-sharing systems -- such as Kazaa, Morpheus and Limewire -- will flourish over the next few years as legitimate music services struggle to provide what users want.
The report, which said consumers downloaded more than five billion audio files from unlicensed file-sharing services in 2001, indicates that the number of downloaded files will grow to nearly 7.5 billion in the next few years, when legitimate services will begin having an impact.
The Yankee Group predicts that unlicensed file-sharing will decline to 3.9 billion in a few years, while legitimate music services gain momentum.
"Efforts by the record labels to use the courts to quash music piracy have failed, and legitimate online music services have had little impact," said Yankee Group senior analyst Michael Goodman. "The future of music, however, resides on the Internet and its dramatically lower distribution costs."
The Free Flag
Goodman told NewsFactor that despite the recording industry's legal attacks on Napster ( news - web sites)-like peer-to-peer services, free file-swapping systems continue to gain users.
"You're never going to shut down the free services," Goodman said. "You knock these out and there are another 70 to take their place."
The newest free file-sharing services are avoiding Napster-like problems by not using centralized servers. Some services are also moving their operations off-shore and out of reach of the Recording Industry Association of America ( news - web sites) (RIAA), which has zealously tried to stop the file-sharing activity in court.
Label Legal Attack
The latest Yankee Group report echoes complaints that the RIAA's legal efforts, which include seeking court orders to shut down Internet sites, have largely failed.
In response, RIAA spokesperson Amanda Collins told NewsFactor that the recording industry has, in fact, been successful in court.
"While litigation is not a business model, the courts have agreed with us every step of the way that these illegal sites are guilty of copyright infringement," Collins said.
Keys to Success
The Yankee Group said that in order to succeed, legitimate sites -- such as MusicNet, Rhapsody, MusicNow and Pressplay -- must offer a wide range of content from all five major record labels as well as from independents.
The report concluded that they must also give consumers ownership -- including the ability to copy songs -- and must make downloadable files portable, meaning that they can be played on different devices at home, at work and while mobile.
"Consumers want to burn music," Goodman said. "[Services have] got to give them ownership, and you need content."
Goodman said that the latest versions of legal sites are improving by "loosening their business rules" and providing limited recording ability. But these legitimate challengers still have a ways to go.
DRM Is Futile
The Yankee Group also said that the recording industry must differentiate between legitimate music services and their free rivals by adding unique content and services.
The report noted that efforts to lock in content through digital rights management (DRM) technology is a lost cause, and said that consumers who want to share music will find a way to do so, "thereby defeating all realistic DRM capabilities."
Goodman suggested that content owners should use DRM instead to promote sales and increase revenue by letting users, if they wished, copy music files with software that delivers advertisements for similar music.
"You get opportunities to sell out of DRM instead of putting up a wall," Goodman said, adding that a single DRM workaround equates to widespread distribution quickly over the Internet.
Going Legit
While the report said that the next few years will be dominated by free file-sharing services, it does predict that legitimate, licensed services will gain users and are sure to have an impact on online music trading in the years ahead.
Goodman said that the success of legitimate services depends on a change in the current relationship between the record industry, which must learn to share control of content with users, and consumers, who will need some time to adapt to fee-based services.
Asked about the requirements for creating a successful legitimate site, the RIAA's Collins said, "We agree that you can't compete with free. The record companies are online and are licensing new deals all the time."
Portable displays shine
By Elie Antoun, President and Chief Executive Officer, MediaQ, Santa Clara, Calif., EE Times
Jul 24, 2002 (8:50 AM)
URL: http://www.eetimes.com/story/OEG20020724S0037
Not long ago analysts were predicting rapid expansion of most mobile-platform markets, but many now report declining, weak or flat sales for handhelds and mobile handsets. Next-generation hybrid PDA/mobile phones, like their PDA and cell-phone counterparts, incorporate many improvements-brilliant graphical user display interfaces, compact form factors and a host of new capabilities. But to the disappointment of mobile OEMs such as Samsung and Handspring, the new hybrids have been unable to whip up a buying frenzy among consumers.
Despite the tough economic conditions, MediaQ has sustained substantial revenue growth throughout the downturn by taking advantage of a continuing shift in the market toward color screens and the development of new multimedia applications.
Looking forward, we still see excellent growth opportunities for portable devices capable of delivering a richer multimedia information environment. Additionally, as service providers implement third-generation wireless networks, they will provide new capabilities for handheld systems to combine text, graphics, video and audio in a single mobile platform. Emerging applications such as video mail, mapping services, wireless Web access, gaming and streaming video for downloading of music videos will require systems that can produce a higher-quality, higher-resolution user viewing experience.
To achieve these performance levels, handheld designers will have to overcome major performance bottlenecks. They will need high-performance silicon capable of providing enhanced basic graphics and multimedia functions to meet the new performance demands without violating their designs' strict power, space and cost budgets. Only with a new generation of hardware accelerator chips will designers be able to blend these new computing and wireless capabilities into a new set of products. Once handheld manufacturers are able to achieve that goal, however, we believe that these new handheld devices will allow consumers and IT buyers to adopt compelling new applications that will expand the mobile appliance market.
We believe our energy-efficient, multimedia-enabling chips will play a valuable role in helping OEMs, application developers and service providers work together to create a new mobile industry infrastructure that will help drive consumer and IT spending in a sluggish economic environment. While the timetable for the development of that infrastructure is still difficult to predict, the demand for richer user information environments and the silicon needed to support them is inevitable.
Fraunhofer Institute and DivXNetworks Join Forces to Create Multimedia Digital Rights Management Solution
Renowned Research Institute and Pioneering Digital Video Company Work Together to Design and Integrate Secure Systems for Delivery of Audio and Video
San Diego, CA, and Providence, RI, April 3, 2002-DivXNetworks, Inc., the company that created the revolutionary patent-pending DivX™ video compression technology, and the Fraunhofer Center for Research in Computer Graphics (CRCG), Inc., a division of the largest research institute in Europe, today announced a partnership to jointly develop and integrate digital rights management solutions for digital video and audio.
The research and development partnership will leverage Fraunhofer CRCG's digital audio security expertise with DivXNetworks leadership in digital rights management (DRM) for digital video. Fraunhofer CRCG has developed innovative digital security for the distribution of digital audio, including next-generation audio watermarking technology. DivXNetworks has created and implemented a leading solution for protecting high-quality video content that includes content and transaction watermarking, digital encryption, and business rules management. Together, the two organizations will work to refine and improve their multimedia solutions designed to provide content owners with a high degree of security and confidence while offering consumers improved choices for entertainment, education and communication.
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Security Solutions for Multimedia Streaming Environments
Contact Petar Horvatic
Problems with Multimedia Distribution
With over a half a century of technological evolution and constant innovation, the worlds computing infrastructure has perfected a way people live, work, communicate and exist in the cyber world. The science of producing, redistributing, copying and experiencing the digital data, especially high-quality multimedia, has reached serious legal, sociological, economic, and moral implications. The new, rapidly evolving digital distribution paradigm, has left many unanswered questions, in particular those regarding multimedia security, copyright laws, and management of digital rights.
The digital music debacle involved around the occurrence and use of the mp3 audio compression format concerning Napster, internet file swapping program, and RIAA(Recording Industry Association of America) has left everyone wondering if a practical, solutions in managing digital rights and policies is even possible to achieve and enforce in today's world.
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) passed by the congress in 1998 has been designed to address the copyright issues in the new era of digital asset management and electronic commerce. However, it has done little to promote a sensible and practical examination of the issue of digital rights management (DRM).
Today, in the post-Napster era, MPAA(Motion Picture Association of America) and major Hollywood studios are faced with the similar future. Hundreds of thousands of unprotected full-length high-quality films are transferred over the Internet daily. Now, more than ever, the need for practical security solutions applied to digital multimedia environments is evident.
Our Solution for Secure Multimedia Distribution
For a number of years, Fraunhofer CRCG, has been developing security technologies geared towards protection of digital multimedia data. Our adaptive, content-based audio techniques provide a simple, effective solution for protection against audio/video piracy by means of added security measures to the digitized audio during production, distribution and use of music. Added security features are implemented in real-time in software, suitable for conventional IP-based audio streaming, and do not compromise by any means, the quality of audio listening or network bandwidth.
One of the most recent multimedia security activities at CRCG is geared toward protection of video streams. Popularity of the new divx, MPEG-4 video format, which aims to deliver DVD-quality movies at bitrates comparable to those of a usual cable modem or a DSL line, threatens to leave the movie industry in jeopardy. For this reason CRCG's goal aims to formulate new security technologies that could provide potential solutions to the newly developing crisis in the video industry. In order to achieve this goal, CRCG will rely on several of our core security technologies while extending them to address the current problems.
http://www.crcg.edu/research/projects/secure_streaming.php3
The DivX Revolution
by Glen Berry (Feb-01-2001)
Anyone familiar with software upgrades knows the pain of staying at the forefront of the technological revolution. The early adopter mentality will certainly keep you on the bleeding edge but it also requires a great deal of patience: patience with bugs, with poor documentation and a lack of availability. At the moment, the MPEG-4 compression codec is in those painful first steps. As discussed in a previous article, MPEG-4 (also known as DivX) promises to make every filmmaker's dream come true: highly compressed video with little quality loss, perfect for Internet distribution. However, the format still has some hurdles to overcome.
The process for creating an MPEG-4 movie is much the same as creating an MP3 file. If your original source is a DVD or VCD, the file needs to be "ripped" (transferred to your computer's hard drive) to be encoded. Another program, like FlaskMPEG, is used to encode video files with the MPEG-4 codec. Note that the resulting file format can be anything (.mpg, .avi, .asf). This is a significant difference from MP3, which acquires its own file extension (.mp3).
A present hurdle that MPEG-4 needs to overcome is inconsistent playback quality. One contributing factor to playback problems is poor-quality encoding. This, for example, can be seen in most of the MPEG-4 content currently available online. Similar to MP3s, most of the DivX content online can be found through Napster-like file sharing programs like Gnutella and is typically in the form of pirated VCD and DVD releases. As one would expect, the inconsistencies and quality control of amateur pirates usually leads to poorly encoded films.
Another major problem that presents itself is the stability of MPEG-4 playback in the two popular playback devices: Windows Media Player and the Global DivX Player. Both players will recognize the movie file formats (.mpg, .avi, .asf) but sometimes encounter problems if they are compressed with MPEG-4. The most common reason is that the player has problems recognizing the codec. This can be attributed to the fact that "The codec is still in very early stages, so performance and stability isn't too great…" (DivX Digest).
Despite these problems, MPEG-4 is making considerable steps forward in gaining support from vendors. One website, PacketVideo is touting the MPEG-4 codec as a means to stream video content to wireless devices such as Pocket PCs and cell phones. In a Jan. 8, 2001 press release, PacketVideo announced that they will "collaborate to bring full-motion video and audio content to mobile devices" with Motorola. Although these plans are in more of a process stage rather than execution, it demonstrates a willingness by big names in the industry to support MPEG-4.
So why, as an independent filmmaker, would you want to deal with all these issues? Because the results can be simply amazing. One of the first independent film projects to be distributed with MPEG-4, the short film "405" by Bruce Branit and Jeremy Hunt, proves to be an excellent example. A high-quality special effects film, "405" loses little in the translation to MPEG-4. The screen size is half that of an NTSC video screen (320x240 pixels) and the resolution isn't nearly as sharp as DVD MPEG-2 but the entire 3-minute piece is only 7.56 MB, a ridiculously low file size. Based on the strength of their Internet only short piece, both Branit and Hunt were able to secure contracts with CAA, one of Hollywood's top talent agencies. Both filmmakers are also currently negotiating with studios to produce a feature film.
Whether or not you decide to wrestle with MPEG-4 at this stage of the game or wait for others to break trail for you, this video format is sure to be the next standard. Its development is definitely something to keep an eye on. For more information on the MPEG-4 codec you can check out DivX Digest.
don't forget:
Intel plans portable video player
By Richard Shim
Special to ZDNet News
July 24, 2002, 5:00 AM PT
Intel aims to boost consumer interest in PCs and its processors by announcing components for a portable personal video player on Monday.
Intel's Emerging Platforms Lab will announce hardware and software that will help manufacturers design a device that can store and play digital media, according to sources familiar with the company's plans.
Intel won't manufacture the device, but the design is meant for a player to be the size of a paperback book that downloads content from a PC via a USB 2.0 port or through wireless 802.11b networking technology.
The device would include an Intel XScale processor, hard drive and liquid crystal display. The devices are expected to be available from manufacturers next year for about $400.
Intel spokesman Manny Vara confirmed that Intel is working on components for portable media devices, but declined to comment on the details.
Intel has previously developed devices that act as an extension of the PC, such as digital audio players and digital cameras, in the hopes of encouraging consumers to buy computers using Intel chips. The Santa Clara, Calif.-based company even had a division that concentrated on developing consumer electronics devices but closed its late last year because it didn't meet the company's requirements for long-term growth.
Intel will allow manufacturers of the device to determine many of the exact specifications, such as hard drive capacity and screen and battery size. A common configuration will likely include a 20GB hard drive and a 4-inch passive matrix display.
Intel will announce customers for the components later this year. The software will include video, audio and JPEG codecs optimized for XScale, letting consumers to playback video clips, songs and pictures.
Intel aims to avoid the legal battles with entertainment companies that device makers, such as Sonicblue with its ReplayTV DVR, has faced by restricting the degree that content can be distributed. The player can only download digital audio and video content from a device owner's PC but consumers will not be able to share content with each other's devices.
"Making it so that consumers have to depend on the PC is a blessing and a curse," said Richard Doherty, analyst for research firm Envisioneering. "Not having peer-to-peer capabilities makes it a lot trickier for consumers to use."
Digital piracy has become such a hot-button topic that entertainment companies are pressing legislators for the ability to disable peer-to-peer networks and individual PCs.
Doherty noted that Intel may be too restrictive with digital rights management, which could limit the appeal for consumers.