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friday afternoon ennui setting in so please disregard:
Q: What sector is getting the bulk of e.Digital research and
development budget?
A: In addition to ongoing development of portable digital audio
players, we are focusing on video ...applications
for our technology, and various services surrounding our Broadband Entertainment business development.
======================
19 Apr 2000 Talk w/ Robert Putnam!
THE Most Significant Remark: We expect to have a full motion video reference design available later this year, with 500 meg to 1 gig capacity which will allow direct downloading to your handheld.
========================
02 Jan 2002, A long talk w/Robert!
Question #2- Are we actually in DP video products?
Response #2- That is a big part of what we are doing.
===========================
let me ask a silly question--if you can Drag 'N Rip audio to your portable audio player why can't they do a Drag 'N Rip video to your portable video player-- a bit is a bit is a bit
============================
NOTE the "Built-in MP3 and video players' reference below:
[courtesy Bill MacKinnon from edig group]
Aug 16, 2002 (TELECOMWORLDWIRE via COMTEX) -- A new web site has been
launched by wireless technology company QUALCOMM Inc that is aimed at
showcasing 3G wireless technologies.
The 3G Today web site focuses on code division multiple access (CDMA)
wireless technologies. Included on the site is a wireless device database
that can be searched by brand, country, technology, operator, device type
and date of introduction. QUALCOMM has also included information on CDMA
wireless services and service providers on the site.
The web site can be found at http://www.3GToday.com.
____________________________________________
Over 14 Million 3G CDMA Reported* Subscribers Today
(As of July 31, 2002)
Welcome to the new world of wireless, where the vision of third-generation
(3G) technology is now a reality. The waiting is over. Commercial 3G
products and services are here today - and even better than you've
imagined. Get ready for high-speed wireless data. Phones with color
displays and camera attachments. Built-in MP3 and video players.
Downloadable games and graphics. New location-based safety and security
services. 3G delivers all of this, and more.
Millions of users worldwide
In October 2000, South Korea launched the world's first commercial IMT-2000
3G network using CDMA2000 1X and on January 28, 2002 it launched the
world's first commercial CDMA2000 1xEV-DO service. In October 2001, Japan's
NTT DoCoMo also launched commercial 3G service based WCDMA. And dozens of
other 3G CDMA networks are scheduled to be launched during 2002 by leading
wireless carriers around the world.
=============================================
Concerning the PacketVideo PVPlayer: " We are very familiar with them...it's a good company. This is just another product that is indicating the growth in this area."
Putnam] Regarding Packet Video, ? We are aware of who they are and their technology and we are glad they are local. ? (4-6-00)
=============================================
Rich Media Without Wires
The browser was just a start
Sasha Pave, Dir. of Technical Design/Founder of Lot21
Ready or not, wireless portable devices are hitting the streets in a big way. Already, the Phone.com browser is installed on millions of cell phones in America, and in other parts of the world the penetration is even more pervasive. The statistics are astounding:
There will be 21.3 million mobile data users in the U.S. by the end of 2001 says industry analyst firm the Yankee Group.
By 2003, industry analysts expect there will be more than 1 billion mobile phones in use across the globe according to a recent article in CNET News.com.
By 2004, a full 40 percent of e-commerce transactions outside the U.S. will be done via portable, cellular-enabled devices claims the GartnerGroup.
Smart advertisers are looking at wireless devices as marketing vehicles and are beginning to develop strategies for reaching customers today. Once the industry matures and richer media formats begin to appear, new advertising and marketing opportunities will quickly take shape. Advertisers familiar with the space will be in a unique position to capture more customers and speak to them effectively.
Not ready for prime time
Currently, the method for communicating with customers on portable wireless devices is relatively crude. Text is the primary format for communication on phone-style devices mainly because of the small screen sizes. PDA devices are beginning to outgrow a primarily text interface because of higher screen resolution and color, although the delivery is still rough.
Bigger, faster, with pictures
More and more companies are developing the future of portable wireless communication. Existing PC formats are finding their way onto smaller screens through digital streaming video, interactive animation, and advanced interfaces. Companies such as PacketVideo are porting MPEG-4 standard video players to PDA devices, along with Macromedia and Flash.
Streaming formats will most likely have to adapt to the bandwidth characteristics of wireless devices. Pre-caching techniques might offer wireless devices the ability to download while the device is not being used. Rich ad delivery on wireless devices would be possible through pre-caching technologies like Unicast's Superstitial™, which silently pre-caches while the user is not active. This allows for larger, richer delivery without latency.
Is Web technology enough?
Tremendous development efforts are going into richer media formats on portable wireless devices, and while these new developments will change the way people interact, they will also converge with device specific technologies. The most alluring technology to hit wireless devices is the Bluetooth standard, which allows devices to communicate with each other based on proximity. For instance, a movie theater could, in theory, send movie preview video clips to your cell phone as you wait in line at the theater. Airlines could provide flight information for those waiting at the gate for their flight. Restaurants could display images of their cuisine to users in a specific area. The list goes on.
A Brand with a Thousand Faces
As the digital world continues to grow out in just about every direction, the opportunities for advertisers to reach customers are going to skyrocket. Understanding how to speak with these customers in the right atmosphere, with the right tone and in the right format is going to be the key to the success of this new messaging. Brand extension over portable wireless devices is going to be an important first step in the future of digital marketing.
===================================
Qualcomm licenses MP3 patents for
upcoming chips, software
http://www.eetimes.com/story/OEG20010309S0005
It's not clear yet what kinds of music services and applications will be developed for third-generation (3G) handsets in the United States,but it's conceivable they will resemble wireless music services already launched in Japan. Last year, NTT Docomo Inc. and Matsushita Communication Industrial Co. Ltd. introduced a wireless music distribution network which allowed users to download songs onto Secure Digital flash memory card-compatible phones and audio players.
This scenario of wireless music services being tied to secure devices seems more likely now, given the legal battles raging between the major record labels and Napster Inc. (Redwood City, Calif.), signaling the demise of the music file-swapping service that lets consumers download music for free.
=============================================
Qualcomm Demos Real-Time Wireless Video Streaming
By Dan McDonough, Jr.
Wireless NewsFactor
September 20, 2001
Last Thursday, Qualcomm was able to stream real-time video using a 3G CDMA2000 1X mobile phone connected through a laptop via a Bluetooth dial-up network. For those who thirst for details, the mobile phone was equipped with a MSM5100 Mobile Station Modem chipset and related system software.
The phone's chip transmitted video at speeds faster than 144 kilobits per second (kbps) over the wide area network. Qualcomm said the Bluetooth connection offered comparable data rates.
Qualcomm's MSM5100 chipset also offers a bunch of other applications, bundled under the umbrella of the Wireless Internet Launchpad suite. Those applications include GPS (global positioning system), MP3 player software and MIDI (musical instrument digital interface)-based multimedia software, among others.
3G makes it relatively easy to access real-time video and other media on a wireless phone or other mobile device. Bluetooth allows users to easily send that streaming media to any other Bluetooth-enabled device -- without any wires or adapters. Combined, this is a pretty impressive and useful set-up.
It is so impressive that San Diego, California-based Qualcomm is not the only outfit plugged in to this dual-tech trend. Just yesterday, Toshiba started hyping its new Tecra and Portege laptop PCs, which are equipped with both Bluetooth and its local networking competitor, Wi-Fi, also known as 802.11b. Toshiba was quick to point out that its new notebook computers are the world's first such devices to offer both wireless networking technologies.
=================================================
========================================================
Power hogs are handheld woes
By Stephen Ohr
EE Times
(12/27/01, 11:56 a.m. EST)
Authorities on analog and mixed-signal technology believe that handheld electronics will soon incorporate an unprecedented number of features. Cellular telephones will likely have a color screen, a wireless Internet browser, the address book and calendar functions of a PDA, even an FM radio and MP3 music player. The big issue, technologists say, is how to pack all these features together without using a battery the size of a brick, or reducing battery life to 30 seconds.
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=233401
=========================================
Qualcomm (www.qualcomm.com) has teamed up with MP3.com to
develop on-demand access to digital music. MP3.com, an Internet music service provider, will work to create an application compatible withQualcomm's new Binary Runtime Environment for Wireless (BREW) applications platform. The BREW plat-form
supports Qualcomm's code-divi-sion-multiple-access (CDMA) format.
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=250288
=====================================================
and then there is reality:
http://www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/ptech/05/01/mpeg.standard.idg/.
hanuman--i dn disagree with you; most of these reports i have found are plain wrong, especially when trying to predict anything in the future; they do get some things right however when they try to predict what will happen in the past --LOL!!
02 Jan 2002,
BusyBump
A long talk w/Robert!
As I have been absent from the board for a long time, much of what I heard today may be already known, but I will post the entire talk anyway:
Question #1- What can we expect from e.Digital in 2002?
Response #1- In the 1st Qtr, CES. We will introduce new products...some DataPlay, some previously announced that had not made it to market. We will be unveiling automotive products as well as new video products. Also, during the 1st Qtr, we will introduce Bang & Olufsen products. We will continue to work with Lucent on expanding the voice recognition technology and adapt it to appropriate products. We will continue to promote the Edig brand of products as well as developing other OEM branded products and, of course, bundling. OEM branded Edig products and bundling are the keys to major revenues for 2002.
Question #2- Are we actually in DP video products?
Response #2- That is a big part of what we are doing.
Q#3- Do you expect voice recognition products to reach a substantial level in 2002?
R#3- As I said, we will continue working with Lucent in expanding speech interface in various products. Edig has taken a leadership role in this area and we will continue to lead the charge!
Q#4- Other than DP products and the unveiling of automotive products at CES, will there be any more surprises?
R#4- There will be upgraded versions of existing platforms as well as variations on our MicroOS,
Q#5- Can we anticipate more publicity ala F&H?
R#5- I think they are doing their job getting us lots of reviews. There will be many more forthcoming because there is a 2-3 month lag time getting these reviews in print and on the newstands.
Q#6- The TV spot Edig sponsored was good but I questioned the demographics. What was the thinking for selecting that spot?
Q#6- The price was very right but more than that, the commercial production was included. We now have a finished commercial that we can use elsewhere and improve the spot selection. Also, the time slot was good and we were aware of the boring nature of the other commercials, so we stood out well.
Q#7- The PPS has resisted all the products intros and PRs of the past two months. To what do you attribute this?
R#7- Everyone is in a wait and see posture in the current economy. The bottom line is revenue....revenue will drive growth. Certainly, OEM names will help and may even drive the PPS significantly but revenue is the answer.
Q#8- Speaking of revenue, will any preliminary sales figures for the last Qtr be released prior to the Quarterly Report in February?
R#8- We'll see!
Q#9- I recently visited a Bang & Olufsen store here in St. Louis and found a very knowledgeable salesman. I asked if he was aware of e.Digital and any new DAP products to be introduced this spring? He said he hadn't heard of Edig but was aware of "an MP3-type player that would work with our existing home audio systems."
R#9- That would be ours! It will be announced first in their catalog which will be out in the first Qtr and will be available on their retail shelves shortly thereafter. They pride themselves in design and functionality, so the design is theirs, the inner workings are e.Digitals! This is a very high-end store and will showcase Edig's technology very well!
In summation, he said that OEM branding and bundling were the keys to major revenues for 2002, that Edig had introduced products and led the way in a market that is coming into its own, that this product introduction has awakened serious interest among OEMs, that we will continue to follow-up and follow-thru with new products, new innovations, and make 2002 a bang-up year for Edig!
BusyBump
19 Apr 2000,
Another Talk w/ Robert Putnam!
It was lengthy so I will try to limit my comments to a few key remarks. (Much of the conversation was talking about the general trends in this emerging market.)
THE Most Significant Remark: " We expect to have a full motion video reference design available later this year, with 500 meg to 1 gig capacity which will allow direct downloading to your handheld."
Regarding Microsoft's MS Pocket PC: "We see this as too complicated to be a mass market product. We are looking for consumer friendly products like our music player with mass market appeal. How many people do you know that own a Palm Pilot, e.g? But, on the other hand, how many own a CD player?
COMDEX: "The spring COMDEX is a rather low-key affair. We do not have an official presence but you can bet that our players are being passed around in certain circles."
Concerning the PacketVideo PVPlayer: " We are very familiar with them...it's a good company. This is just another product that is indicating the growth in this area."
General remark: " We are concentrating on voice-activated products because that's where we see the future of handhelds....with larger screens and many broadband wireless applications."
As usual, he was most accomodating and, to tell the truth, occasionally lost me with some more technical explanations and answers to my questions! The above remarks shed some serious light on the direction Edig is moving and certainly made my day, one more time!! Good luck to us all!
thanks guys--- just wonder if he might sell some to get back $$ he invested and hold rest--pure spec on my part; but a businessman is a businessman
by george-i think you've got it; i tried posting 2 different versions just in case it might make a difference; the cached google version of the URL and the current version from the URL itself--both worked fine as you can see--- thanks a lot--
btw-- i really enjoy IHUB and its various features-good job
Final Thoughts on DiVX
by Marshal M. Rosenthal
Contributing Writer
(posted 06/09/2000) >
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Over the last few days, entertainment industry execs have been discussing DiVX, the new software technology developed overseas that allows users to compress the contents of a DVD into a file small enough to be transmitted over the Internet, and without compromising quality. Michael Collette, senior vice president of marketing for ICTV said that he sees the issue of piracy best addressed by denying users "access" to the illegal data by having content delivered to the television, not the PC (see Move Over MP3 - DiVX is Here).
Eric Olson, senior editor for Express.com, a Web site selling DVDs, games and music, discussed why he doesn't believe DiVX will wreak the same kind of havoc on the flourishing DVD market as MP3 did to CDs (where illegally copied MP3 files of copyrighted songs ended up on thousands of Web sites for users to easily download). (See DiVX -- Not a Threat to DVD Market? http://www.digitrends.net/digitrends/dtonline/features/contrib/m_rosenthal/dvd.shtml.)
Today, read why Cat Fowler, vice president of marketing for Escient Technologies Convergence Group, doesn't see pirated copies online as being a serious threat for some time, and why Mark Ely, director of product marketing for Sonic Solutions, somewhat disagrees.
Time and Price Favor Those Selling Content
Escient Technology, LLC (Carmel, Indiana) is an incubator for high-tech companies, its current subsidiaries creating cutting-edge technologies, products, and services.
Digitrends: What factors are keeping consumers from downloading content for free online?
Fowler: First, DVDs are cheap to buy ($15 to $20 on the average), and second, there just aren't too many people willing to take the time to download a (reduced quality) version of a movie.
Digitrends: But with bandwidth increasing, won't more consumers be willing to wait to download a film for free?
Fowler: The kind of bandwidth needed for high quality video streaming is quite a ways off. For example, it takes roughly 20 hours using a 500kbit continuous broadband connection to download and store a full DVD (4.7 Gbytes). And even if using one of the better MPEG encoders (that can take the output of a DVD and recompress it as a smaller MPEG stream that approaches the quality of a VHS tape), you're still talking about several hours for downloading.
But I keep coming back to this: Are floods of people actually going to do this when the media is reasonably priced? I'm not convinced we're talking about millions of people who would go through all of the gyrations required to get pirated movies when all it costs is just $15 to go get a DVD that simply plays when inserted.
Digitrends: So you believe that consumers will continue to purchase content, rather that "steal" it because it's more trouble to deal with a pirated copy?
Fowler: Absolutely. When all is said and done, there will continue to be plenty of customers willing to buy the discs they want to play in order to get quality and ease of use. Commercial pirating (where a DVD is illegally copied and then sold to consumers without any compensation to the copyright holders) is probably the issue the industry should worry about--not the hacker looking to get his "kicks" by getting movies for free.
Read why Mark Ely, director of product marketing for Sonic Solutions--a manufacture of software solutions for DVD publishing and interactive, streaming video on the Internet--disagrees with Fowler.
Final Thoughts on DiVX
by Marshal M. Rosenthal
Contributing Writer
(posted 06/09/2000) >
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Over the last few days, entertainment industry execs have been discussing DiVX, the new software technology developed overseas that allows users to compress the contents of a DVD into a file small enough to be transmitted over the Internet, and without compromising quality. Michael Collette, senior vice president of marketing for ICTV said that he sees the issue of piracy best addressed by denying users "access" to the illegal data by having content delivered to the television, not the PC (see Move Over MP3 - DiVX is Here).
Eric Olson, senior editor for Express.com, a Web site selling DVDs, games and music, discussed why he doesn't believe DiVX will wreak the same kind of havoc on the flourishing DVD market as MP3 did to CDs (where illegally copied MP3 files of copyrighted songs ended up on thousands of Web sites for users to easily download). (See DiVX -- Not a Threat to DVD Market? http://www.digitrends.net/digitrends/dtonline/features/contrib/m_rosenthal/dvd.shtml.)
Today, read why Cat Fowler, vice president of marketing for Escient Technologies Convergence Group, doesn't see pirated copies online as being a serious threat for some time, and why Mark Ely, director of product marketing for Sonic Solutions, somewhat disagrees.
Time and Price Favor Those Selling Content
Escient Technology, LLC (Carmel, Indiana) is an incubator for high-tech companies, its current subsidiaries creating cutting-edge technologies, products, and services.
Digitrends: What factors are keeping consumers from downloading content for free online?
Fowler: First, DVDs are cheap to buy ($15 to $20 on the average), and second, there just aren't too many people willing to take the time to download a (reduced quality) version of a movie.
Digitrends: But with bandwidth increasing, won't more consumers be willing to wait to download a film for free?
Fowler: The kind of bandwidth needed for high quality video streaming is quite a ways off. For example, it takes roughly 20 hours using a 500kbit continuous broadband connection to download and store a full DVD (4.7 Gbytes). And even if using one of the better MPEG encoders (that can take the output of a DVD and recompress it as a smaller MPEG stream that approaches the quality of a VHS tape), you're still talking about several hours for downloading.
But I keep coming back to this: Are floods of people actually going to do this when the media is reasonably priced? I'm not convinced we're talking about millions of people who would go through all of the gyrations required to get pirated movies when all it costs is just $15 to go get a DVD that simply plays when inserted.
Digitrends: So you believe that consumers will continue to purchase content, rather that "steal" it because it's more trouble to deal with a pirated copy?
Fowler: Absolutely. When all is said and done, there will continue to be plenty of customers willing to buy the discs they want to play in order to get quality and ease of use. Commercial pirating (where a DVD is illegally copied and then sold to consumers without any compensation to the copyright holders) is probably the issue the industry should worry about--not the hacker looking to get his "kicks" by getting movies for free.
Read why Mark Ely, director of product marketing for Sonic Solutions--a manufacture of software solutions for DVD publishing and interactive, streaming video on the Internet--disagrees with Fowler.
just a question-- how many shares did Alex D. get at $0.33??
original site; i clicked on url posted in your post and cut and paste from the website--i.e., i still have the same problem sometimes
Final Thoughts on DiVX
by Marshal M. Rosenthal
Contributing Writer
(posted 06/09/2000) >
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Over the last few days, entertainment industry execs have been discussing DiVX, the new software technology developed overseas that allows users to compress the contents of a DVD into a file small enough to be transmitted over the Internet, and without compromising quality. Michael Collette, senior vice president of marketing for ICTV said that he sees the issue of piracy best addressed by denying users “access” to the illegal data by having content delivered to the television, not the PC (see Move Over MP3 – DiVX is Here).
Eric Olson, senior editor for Express.com, a Web site selling DVDs, games and music, discussed why he doesn’t believe DiVX will wreak the same kind of havoc on the flourishing DVD market as MP3 did to CDs (where illegally copied MP3 files of copyrighted songs ended up on thousands of Web sites for users to easily download). (See DiVX -- Not a Threat to DVD Market? http://www.digitrends.net/digitrends/dtonline/features/contrib/m_rosenthal/dvd.shtml.)
Today, read why Cat Fowler, vice president of marketing for Escient Technologies Convergence Group, doesn’t see pirated copies online as being a serious threat for some time, and why Mark Ely, director of product marketing for Sonic Solutions, somewhat disagrees.
Time and Price Favor Those Selling Content
Escient Technology, LLC (Carmel, Indiana) is an incubator for high-tech companies, its current subsidiaries creating cutting-edge technologies, products, and services.
Digitrends: What factors are keeping consumers from downloading content for free online?
Fowler: First, DVDs are cheap to buy ($15 to $20 on the average), and second, there just aren’t too many people willing to take the time to download a (reduced quality) version of a movie.
Digitrends: But with bandwidth increasing, won’t more consumers be willing to wait to download a film for free?
Fowler: The kind of bandwidth needed for high quality video streaming is quite a ways off. For example, it takes roughly 20 hours using a 500kbit continuous broadband connection to download and store a full DVD (4.7 Gbytes). And even if using one of the better MPEG encoders (that can take the output of a DVD and recompress it as a smaller MPEG stream that approaches the quality of a VHS tape), you’re still talking about several hours for downloading.
But I keep coming back to this: Are floods of people actually going to do this when the media is reasonably priced? I’m not convinced we’re talking about millions of people who would go through all of the gyrations required to get pirated movies when all it costs is just $15 to go get a DVD that simply plays when inserted.
Digitrends: So you believe that consumers will continue to purchase content, rather that “steal” it because it’s more trouble to deal with a pirated copy?
Fowler: Absolutely. When all is said and done, there will continue to be plenty of customers willing to buy the discs they want to play in order to get quality and ease of use. Commercial pirating (where a DVD is illegally copied and then sold to consumers without any compensation to the copyright holders) is probably the issue the industry should worry about—not the hacker looking to get his “kicks” by getting movies for free.
Read why Mark Ely, director of product marketing for Sonic Solutions—a manufacture of software solutions for DVD publishing and interactive, streaming video on the Internet—disagrees with Fowler.
bob--an example of the problem--
Over the last few days, entertainment industry execs have been discussing DiVX, the new software technology developed overseas that allows users to compress the contents of a DVD into a file small enough to be transmitted over the Internet, and without compromising quality. Michael Collette, senior vice president of marketing for ICTV said that he sees the issue of piracy best addressed by denying users “access” to the illegal data by having content delivered to the television, not the PC (see Move Over MP3 – DiVX is Here).
Eric Olson, senior editor for Express.com, a Web site selling DVDs, games and music, discussed why he doesn’t believe DiVX will wreak the same kind of havoc on the flourishing DVD market as MP3 did to CDs (where illegally copied MP3 files of copyrighted songs ended up on thousands of Web sites for users to easily download). (See DiVX -- Not a Threat to DVD Market? http://www.digitrends.net/digitrends/dtonline/features/contrib/m_rosenthal/dvd.shtml.)
Today, read why Cat Fowler, vice president of marketing for Escient Technologies Convergence Group, doesn’t see pirated copies online as being a serious threat for some time, and why Mark Ely, director of product marketing for Sonic Solutions, somewhat disagrees.
Time and Price Favor Those Selling Content
Escient Technology, LLC (Carmel, Indiana) is an incubator for high-tech companies, its current subsidiaries creating cutting-edge technologies, products, and services.
Digitrends: What factors are keeping consumers from downloading content for free online?
Fowler: First, DVDs are cheap to buy ($15 to $20 on the average), and second, there just aren’t too many people willing to take the time to download a (reduced quality) version of a movie.
Digitrends: But with bandwidth increasing, won’t more consumers be willing to wait to download a film for free?
Fowler: The kind of bandwidth needed for high quality video streaming is quite a ways off. For example, it takes roughly 20 hours using a 500kbit continuous broadband connection to download and store a full DVD (4.7 Gbytes). And even if using one of the better MPEG encoders (that can take the output of a DVD and recompress it as a smaller MPEG stream that approaches the quality of a VHS tape), you’re still talking about several hours for downloading.
But I keep coming back to this: Are floods of people actually going to do this when the media is reasonably priced? I’m not convinced we’re talking about millions of people who would go through all of the gyrations required to get pirated movies when all it costs is just $15 to go get a DVD that simply plays when inserted.
Digitrends: So you believe that consumers will continue to purchase content, rather that “steal” it because it’s more trouble to deal with a pirated copy?
Fowler: Absolutely. When all is said and done, there will continue to be plenty of customers willing to buy the discs they want to play in order to get quality and ease of use. Commercial pirating (where a DVD is illegally copied and then sold to consumers without any compensation to the copyright holders) is probably the issue the industry should worry about—not the hacker looking to get his “kicks” by getting movies for free.
Read why Mark Ely, director of product marketing for Sonic Solutions—a manufacture of software solutions for DVD publishing and interactive, streaming video on the Internet—disagrees with Fowler.
http://www.digitrends.net/marketing/13639_8796.html
Move Over MP3 – DiVX is Here
by Marshal M. Rosenthal
Contributing Writer
(posted 06/07/2000) >
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hollywood hates thieves—more to the point, film thieves. Consider the VCR. Studio executives battled long and hard over whom owns the rights to movies and television shows that consumers ultimately could record and premiere for profit. But just when you thought it was safe to go swimming again, a new technology comes along that’s even more worrisome than the previous predator.
Consider DiVX.
Now popular with hackers and those looking to pirate films, DiVX (unrelated to the defunct DVD rental system of the same name) is a relatively new software technology developed overseas that allows users to compress the contents of a DVD into a file small enough to be transmitted over the Internet, and without compromising quality.
Coming on the heels of DeCSS, a program that strips a DVD of its copyright protection and so makes it vulnerable to copying, DiVX opens the field for not merely copying a film for personal use but also for transmitting it over the Internet to “casual” viewers. Thus a user making an illegal copy can now share it with tens of thousands of other online users.
The Hollywood community has been actively working to discourage such piracy—both from those creating the technology to those using it. Film studios, in particular, have responded with strong measures against those using DeCSS. They’ve initiated lawsuits against those Web sites found to be harboring the program for downloading; individuals found to be passing the software via the Internet have been cited and sued; and the overseas-based creators of the software were located, reported to the authorities, and brought to court.
It can be expected that Hollywood will continue such efforts. That this new technology could adversely affect the “bottom lines” for those motion picture studios producing DVDs would seem a reasonable assumption. According to DFC Intelligence’s Digital Broadcast and Programming/Webcast Track subscription-based research service, broadband usage continues to rise, with projections of 240 million streams served by 2002. Broadband video usage on the PC screen also is expected to grow at close to double-digit rates.
To learn more about what Hollywood can do to stop the flow of “content-stealing” software, Digitrends interviewed a number of industry experts who all have strong opinions about the future of DiVX or some yet to be developed software that enables casual online users to easily and quickly download–or steal—copyright material. These interviews will run over the next few days. Today: Hear from Michael Collette, senior vice president of marketing for ICTV.
Protection Through Television
ICTV’s technology enables full Internet and broadband content to be delivered to television through any digital set-top box. Collette sees the issue of piracy best addressed by denying users “access” to the illegal data by having content delivered to the television, not the PC.
Digitrends: So the PC is really the problem here?
Collette: Yes. Right now, those viewing content through their PCs are receiving data—information they can acquire, store on their computers and manipulate. This enables them to receive a pirated file. That’s not the case when the user is watching a broadcasted signal, mixed with the Internet, because the user has no control over what he or she is seeing.
Digitrends: How does this work?
Collette: Unlike on the PC, the consumer does not “own” the data—which is being formatted and controlled from the “cable head” (the cable provider’s main server) before being transmitted. There’s no data to manipulate—everything has been converted already to a secure MPEG2 format that can’t be touched. The consumer can’t “steal” the file because the browser (the interface used on the TV) is owned and managed by the cable operator, unlike that being used on the PC. This degree of protection is similar to that of video-on-demand (VOD).
Digitrends: So protection for content being provided for television use is higher than what can be done on a PC-based system?
Collette: Unfortunately, yes. There’s no real way to stop a PC-based user from accessing copyrighted material that’s on the Internet. TV-based broadband, on the other hand, safeguards content because the servers and browser are at the “cable-head.”
Digitrends: If DiVX was no longer available, would that take care of the problem?
Collette: No, because even better compression schemes than DiVX are in the works. Besides, that’s not the real problem. Few people really watch movies on their computers so while someone getting a pirated copy of the Matrix from the Internet isn’t going to rent or buy it, he’s not going to be mass-producing it for his friends, either. But if that copy makes the leap from the PC to the television side of the room, if the pirated copy can be taken off the PC and played on a DVD player—then we have a problem because friends would then want copies.
Digitrends: If that happens, what could film studios do about it?
Collette: Move their content to the TV. Convergence space is a reasonable first step. As an example, a studio like Warner Bros. could shift its online strategy from bringing its content to broadband on the PC and instead aggressively promoting it on the TV front. Once this becomes acceptable to consumers, it changes their consumption patterns, since it’s easier to view on the television set than having to deal with all the problems of the PC. Since most content owners know that it’s nearly impossible to prevent dissemination of material over the Internet as things now stand, this kind of viewer shift could provide real relief. And with convergence continuing its march towards bringing all of the interactivity and strength of the Internet into the television, it would seem that the problem will solve itself in time.
==================Final Thoughts on DiVX
by Marshal M. Rosenthal
Contributing Writer
(posted 06/09/2000) >
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Over the last few days, entertainment industry execs have been discussing DiVX, the new software technology developed overseas that allows users to compress the contents of a DVD into a file small enough to be transmitted over the Internet, and without compromising quality. Michael Collette, senior vice president of marketing for ICTV said that he sees the issue of piracy best addressed by denying users “access” to the illegal data by having content delivered to the television, not the PC (see Move Over MP3 – DiVX is Here).
Eric Olson, senior editor for Express.com, a Web site selling DVDs, games and music, discussed why he doesn’t believe DiVX will wreak the same kind of havoc on the flourishing DVD market as MP3 did to CDs (where illegally copied MP3 files of copyrighted songs ended up on thousands of Web sites for users to easily download). (See DiVX -- Not a Threat to DVD Market? http://www.digitrends.net/digitrends/dtonline/features/contrib/m_rosenthal/dvd.shtml.)
Today, read why Cat Fowler, vice president of marketing for Escient Technologies Convergence Group, doesn’t see pirated copies online as being a serious threat for some time, and why Mark Ely, director of product marketing for Sonic Solutions, somewhat disagrees.
Time and Price Favor Those Selling Content
Escient Technology, LLC (Carmel, Indiana) is an incubator for high-tech companies, its current subsidiaries creating cutting-edge technologies, products, and services.
Digitrends: What factors are keeping consumers from downloading content for free online?
Fowler: First, DVDs are cheap to buy ($15 to $20 on the average), and second, there just aren’t too many people willing to take the time to download a (reduced quality) version of a movie.
Digitrends: But with bandwidth increasing, won’t more consumers be willing to wait to download a film for free?
Fowler: The kind of bandwidth needed for high quality video streaming is quite a ways off. For example, it takes roughly 20 hours using a 500kbit continuous broadband connection to download and store a full DVD (4.7 Gbytes). And even if using one of the better MPEG encoders (that can take the output of a DVD and recompress it as a smaller MPEG stream that approaches the quality of a VHS tape), you’re still talking about several hours for downloading.
But I keep coming back to this: Are floods of people actually going to do this when the media is reasonably priced? I’m not convinced we’re talking about millions of people who would go through all of the gyrations required to get pirated movies when all it costs is just $15 to go get a DVD that simply plays when inserted.
Digitrends: So you believe that consumers will continue to purchase content, rather that “steal” it because it’s more trouble to deal with a pirated copy?
Fowler: Absolutely. When all is said and done, there will continue to be plenty of customers willing to buy the discs they want to play in order to get quality and ease of use. Commercial pirating (where a DVD is illegally copied and then sold to consumers without any compensation to the copyright holders) is probably the issue the industry should worry about—not the hacker looking to get his “kicks” by getting movies for free.
Read why Mark Ely, director of product marketing for Sonic Solutions—a manufacture of software solutions for DVD publishing and interactive, streaming video on the Internet—disagrees with Fowler.
http://www.digitrends.net/marketing/13639_8796.html
re: divx
TO INVITE OR FIGHT
MAY 24, 2001 / Gotta hand it to Vivendi-Universal. Having sued MP3.com to within an inch of its life, helping to knock down its stock price from almost $70 to less than $3, it's now scooping up the rubble for $5 a share. Who says old media companies don't understand the new economy?
With last week's announcement that Vivendi would acquire MP3.com for roughly $350 million, the twin scourges of the commercial record business--MP3.com and Napster--are now firmly under corporate control.
Earlier, Bertelsmann struck an alliance with Napster after the record labels routed the file-sharing service in court.
Among the conspiracy-minded, in fact, there's a strong sense that the record companies' legal campaign against online music services was never really about combating piracy or protecting copyrights but about control over a new distribution channel. Vivendi's move to snap up a defanged MP3.com on the cheap is all the proof they need.
That probably gives the record companies more credit than they deserve, however.
The legal thrusts against Napster and MP3.com were sparked by panic more than anything else after the record companies were blindsided by a technology for which they were unprepared.
It also understates the degree to which Napster users were engaging in a form of copyright infringement (the MyMP3 service from MP3.com is another story).
What the new alliances with Napster and MP3.com represent, more than the culmination of any preconceived plan for gaining control over online distribution, is a belated recognition on the part of the media companies that they lack the expertise themselves to launch compelling online music services. They need to preserve some of the expertise developed by their former adversaries, even if that means sleeping with the enemy.
Bertelsmann, for instance, has said that it plans to incorporate its alliance with Napster into the MusicNet online service it is developing with AOL Time Warner, EMI and RealNetworks. Vivendi plans to fold MP3.com into the Duet online service it's developing with Sony.
That history poses some interesting questions for the record companies' cousins down the hall at the movie studios. Although no one has yet developed an unauthorized movie-swapping service to rival Napster, pieces of such a service already exist.
Movies are being traded through services such as Gnutella, while an unauthorized video compression system in the form of DivX is slowly establishing itself as a standard for online movie trading to rival MP3.
While DivX is now trying to go legit, it is following the same sort of "open-source" development process that led to MP3 taking over online music distribution.
If the music industry's experience is any guide, a significant amount of the expertise needed to develop compelling online movie services is likely to develop outside the studios.
The question the studios must soon confront is whether to get in bed with the DivX development community now or shun it and hope their own developers have learned enough from the record labels to beat DivX to the punch.
The answer to that question may not lay entirely in the studios' hands, however. The deals between Napster and MP3.com, on the one hand, and the major media companies on the other, were made largely by the record companies' corporate parents, just as the establishment of the Duet and MusicNet alliances were. The labels themselves have had relatively little to say on the matter.
In scooping up MP3.com, for instance, Vivendi established a unique reporting structure in which MP3 CEO Michael Robertson will report directly to Vivendi chairman Jean-Marie Messier, not to anyone at Universal Music.
Likewise, Bertelsmann's deal with Napster fairly blindsided its own record company, BMG, which until then had taken the hardest line of all against the service among the major record labels. So badly out of the loop was BMG, in fact, that CEO Strauss Zelnick and marketing head Kevin Conroy left the record company shortly after the decision was made.
That history could provide yet another incentive for the studios to get serious about embracing online distribution. Clearly, the corporate behemoths of which they're now part have made a strategic decision to embrace it, even if some of their own division heads are less than enthusiastic.
Even if the studios themselves aren't keen on the idea, no one in Hollywood wants to get caught out of the loop.
http://www.videobusiness.com/052401_sweeting.asp.
Echo Networks [strauss zelnick]
Echo Networks is the largest community-based streaming music site on the web. Echo's patent-pending GroupCast technology enables the dynamic customization of audio streams serving self-created groups of listeners. Founded in late 1999, Echo has strategic partnerships and extensive music licensing arrangements with Warner Brothers Music and Arista. The company counts Strauss Zelnick, the former CEO of Bertelsmann Music Group (BMG), as a board member and investor. Revolution Ventures invested at the genesis stage of the company, assisted on strategy, and was instrumental in attracting strategic investors like Peter Paterno, the former president of Hollywood Records (Disney).
Investors
Revolution Ventures, Fundamental Capital, Jeff Skoll (Co-Founder, eBay), Peter Paterno (former President, Hollywood Records/Disney Music), Strauss Zelnick (former President, BMG)
Fujitsu Ten to buy 25.1 pct stake in auto radio unit of Grundig - UPDATE
From bostonredsox
PostID 195942 On Monday, June 10, 2002 (EST) at 9:45:43 PM
06/10/2002
AFX News
(c) 2002 by AFP-Extel News Ltd
NUREMBERG, Germany (AFX) - Fujitsu Ltd has agreed to buy a 25.1 pct stake in the GCIS auto radio unit of troubled German consumer electronics company Grundig GmbH, Grundig said.
Financial details were not disclosed.
Fujitsu is acquiring the stake via its unit Fujitsu Ten Ltd, a joint venture with Toyota Motor Corp and Denso Corp.
The deal is expected to give Grundig a breathing space to solve its financial problems.
Banks have agreed to extend the company's credit lines until the end of August providing the deal with Fujitsu goes through, the FTD said last week.
The deal would also mean that the company would have longer than until the end of the year to find an investor, as originally stated, the paper cited sources close to 89 pct Grundig shareholder Anton Kathrein as saying
=====================================
Germany - Grundig needs to find investor by summer 2002
Grundig (Nuremberg, Germany), consumer electronics company, will not survive unless it secure fresh capital from an investor by summer 2002. It is currently holding advanced talks with three financial investors, although an agreement is not imminent. Anton Kathrein, majority shareholder, is prepared to give any potential investor a stake of up to 49% in Grundig, which would use the fresh funds to become a competitive business. Grundig controlled 19.1% of the German TV market in 2001, followed by Philips with 18.7%, Loewe with 11.4%, Sony with 7.6%, Panasonic with 6.2%, Metz with 6% and Schneider with 2.7%. The new investor will help finance Grundig's expansion strategy, with a massive marketing push planned in Asia, where the company has not sold its products since being sold by Philips in 1997. It plans to sign purchasing, sales and supply agreements with Asian partners. High restructure costs led to Grundig making a loss of around Euro160 mil in 2001, on sales of around Euro1.3 bil. Grundig is also in final talks to secure a partner for its profitable car audio business, and is close to finalising the sale of its office communications division. Separately, figures from GfK and gfu show that 9.9% of German households had a colour TV as of July 2001, with 78.5% having a VCR, 67.9% a HiFi system, 39.9% satellite systems and 17.5% camcorders. Original displays some data in pie chart and bar chart form.
Handelsblatt , 25 April 2002 , p11
Delphi Demonstrates Streaming Entertainment for Vehicles
Thursday, June 27, 2002 by Rob Granger
Delphi Corp. is developing technology to deliver real-time Internet and digital information to vehicles, even while they travel at highway speeds. The new innovation uses a wireless network, being developed by Mesh Networks, to enhance vehicle entertainment.
"Consumers are demanding more entertainment and information options in the vehicle and Delphi is satisfying that demand with the latest in in-vehicle communications," states Robert W. Schumacher, general director of Delphi's Mobile MultiMedia business unit.
Delphi's streaming entertainment technology provides real-time digital information to moving vehicles via a broadband wireless connection. Data is moved over a peer-to-peer network that consists of access points and wireless data repeaters. Information is transferred at speeds up to 6 megabits per second.
The network allows vehicle passengers on-demand access to the incredible variety of entertainment options offered by the Internet, including personalized MP3 music files, video programs, Web cameras, and audio from up to 4500 radio stations from around the globe. The system also allows users to play head-to-head games over the Internet. On-demand access to files such as digital music and home movies stored on a home media server or personal computer brings another dimension to in-vehicle entertainment.
According to Schumacher, the key to this technology is that there is no need for a hard drive or a personal computer in the vehicle to access the information. Also, the system works with the vehicles existing audio and rear-seat video systems, making integration simple and cost effective.
http://www.delphi.com
MERA Appoints Two Additional Board Members
Thursday, June 27, 2002 by Rob Granger
The Mobile Electronics Retailers Association has announced the election of two representatives of the manufacturing/importer community to its Board of Trustees. Andy Oxenhorn, president of JL Audio and Ray Windsor, vice president of Sales and Marketing of Eclipse by Fujitsu Ten. They were appointed by MERA's Board of Trustees to serve two-year terms. A recent change in the Bylaws of MERA provided for the addition of representatives from the manufacturer/importer members to serve as voting members of the Board of Trustees.
From it inception MERA has enlisted the guidance and wisdom of our manufacturing/importer community through the Manufacturers Advisory Council (MAC). This guidance has been very beneficial to the growth and success of the association. This positive change in the bylaws represents the forward thinking of MERA to involve more of their members in the planning and administration of the association.
MERA is currently involved in establishing various committees to take part in the development, implementation and execution of future programs and benefits. The appointment of these two board positions will help MERA take advantage of the vast knowledge that our manufacturing/importer members possess. Combined, all of this will take MERA to the next level of excellence.
"The brain trust that our manufacturer members represent is incomprehensible," states Vicky Scrivner, MERA's president. "We must do everything that we can to take advantage of this experience and knowledge."
These newly established positions on MERA's Board of Trustees carry two-year terms. Any current manufacturer/importer member of MERA can apply to MERA's nominating committee if they are interested in serving on the Board of Trustees.
MERA would like to welcome Andy and Ray to the Board of Trustees and look forward to their input over the next two years.
http://www.merausa.org
Construction of New Car Audio Plant in Thailand
FUJITSU TEN LIMITED (head office: Kobe, Hyogo, president: Takamitsu Tsuchimoto, capital: 5,300,000,000 yen) is constructing a new plant in the Rojana Industrial Park located in Rayong, Thailand. Scheduled to be completed in the beginning of July and to commence operation in early August, the new plant aims to bolster FUJITSU TEN's expanding car audio business in the ASEAN region.
Presently, FUJITSU TEN (THAILAND) COMPANY LIMITED (FUJITSU TEN THAILAND), a joint venture manufacturing and sales company in the Bangpoo Industrial Park, Thailand, is producing car audio products for automobile makers in Thailand. The production function of this plant will be transferred to the new plant when completed in order to manufacture products for the ASEAN region and Japan.
Due to the construction of the plant, the capital of FUJITSU TEN THAILAND was increased from 5,000,000 bahts to 200,000,000 bahts as of December 21, 2001.
[Outline of the new plant]
1. Location: Rojana Industrial Park in Rayong, Thailand
(Rayong: a part of the eastern coastal industrial zone located 150 kilometers southeast of Bangkok)
Address:
Rojana Industrial Park, 253 Moo 11, Tumbon Nongbua, Amphur Bankai, Rayong 21120, Thailand
2. Land/building: 32,000 squere meters/5,000 squere meters, one-story ferroconcrete building
3. Products: Car audio products (integrated radio/cassette players, integrated radio/CD/MD players, integrated radio/CD/cassette players, etc.)
4. Production scale: 600,000 units in fiscal 2004
5. Number of employees: 400 persons in fiscal 2004
6. Investment: 700,000,000 yen
7. Completion
@@/operation commencement: July/August, 2002
July 05, 2002 10:31 JST Fujitsu Ten to Construct New Manufacturing Plant in
Thailand. Fujitsu Ten, a car stereo and vehicle electronics company of ... ...
riddle: when does less than a one day difference equal a one month difference?
answer: when it comes to the odyssey 1000--
August 15, 2002
MP3 Player Does Double Duty as a Spare 20-Gigabyte Drive
By MARK GLASSMAN
The Odyssey 1000, the latest MP3 player from e.Digital, does look quite a bit like the trendy white music box from Apple Computer. Both players are about the size of a pack of cigarettes, and both have their controls arrayed in a hollow circle below a liquid crystal display screen....
The Odyssey will be available in stores in September for $350.
===
Aug 15 Confernce Call
Odyssey 1000 will be flagship product for the year, enabling broadband entertainment
Odyssey 1000 ordered scheduled to be in stores in October
PlayLouder to offer music downloads on MSN and Tiscali
By Dan Williamson, London, Revolution UK Online, August 16, 2002
Online music firm PlayLouder is to launch a music download subscription service on MSN and Tiscali.
PlayLouder will offer users of both portals a compilation of alternative music tracks plus reviews from its music site (www.playlouder.com).
Services will be powered by download firm On Demand Distribution (OD2), which was founded by ex-Genesis front man Peter Gabriel. Visitors will be able to download new samples every month, with tracks becoming unusable at the end of each period if ‘permanent’ versions of the compilation aren’t purchased.
A spokesman for PlayLouder said the service should be available from September, but could not confirm what it would cost. “We get commission, but it’s up to MSN and Tiscali what they charge,” he said.
PlayLouder’s ability to offer the service follows an agreement to license its portfolio of digital music from the Beggars Group of labels to OD2 and its online music subscription service, WebAudioNet.
The agreement means OD2’s service will host material from music labels including XL Recordings, Beggars Banquet, Mo’Wax and music acts including Prodigy, Basement Jaxx and White Stripes.
MP3s are good for music biz - Forrester
By Andrew Orlowski in London
Posted: 16/08/2002 at 10:51 GMT
Forrester Research has surveyed a thousand music customers and concludes that MP3 downloads are good for the music business.
Twenty per cent of those surveyed - two groups Forrester describes as "music lovers and music learners" - buy 36 per cent of CDs, and these enthusiastic downloaders said MP3s had no effect on their CD purchasing.
"The idea that digital music is responsible for slump is completely false," concludes Forrester analyst Josh Bernoff.
The news will dismay the entertainment pigopolies*.
Forrester attributes the 15 per cent slump in music sales to a number of other factors. The economy is in a slump, there's much more competition from games, from DVDs - which saw an 80 per cent rise in sales - and most interestingly - from the "limited playlists" rotated by commercial US radio stations.
Forrester notes that one company, ClearChannel controls 60 per cent of radio, so new artists don't get the opportunity to be heard.
"Playlists are very short," it notes.
And that's how the Recording Industry of America Association (RIAA), the music Pigopolists' trade association, likes it. It has lobbied hard to tighten its grip on alternative promotional channels recently, forcing many small webcasters off the air by imposing royalties that traditional radio stations don't have to pay.
Forrester is upbeat about the industry's prospects - if only they were smart enough to embrace downloads. But Forrester concludes that it is essential that citizens have variety - "more than two or three labels worth of choice" - and that their right to control music, to copy and burn it, is preserved.
"Labels have to stop focussing on distribution, and concentrate on promotion, and new accounting systems," says Bernoff.
"There's a chance that labels can monetize peer-to-peer networks," he adds.
================================================
http://www.forrester.com/ER/Research/Report/Summary/0,1338,14854,FF.html
31% of consumers download music and burn CDs often.
These frequent digital music users buy 36% of all CDs.
Why the music slump? It's the economy, not downloading.
Paid services don't match the "Music Bill Of Rights."
Paid downloads will restore sales growth in 2004.
In five years, 39% of digital sales will be downloaded singles.
Established acts like Springsteen reap download rewards.
Labels concentrate on promotion and accounting systems.
Film studios find that peer-to-peer is great for business.
Figure 1. All Four Digital Music Segments Haven’t Slackened On CD Buying
Figure 2. Current Paid Services Fail The Music Bill Of Rights
Figure 3. Forecast: US Digital Music Users And Downloads, 2002 To 2007
Online Resources
Methodology
Companies Interviewed For This Report
Related Research
Truth or consequences for beleaguered music executives.
Is the server business about to get Real?
Finally, an iPod for the rest of us.
Can StreamCast survive?
18 March, 2002 MP3 engineers tackle digital cinema
By BBC News Online's Ivan Noble
at CeBIT 2002 in Hanover
The German research society which came up with the MP3 format for music has turned its sights on making the filmmaking business go digital.
"Our aim is to implement a complete digital processing chain for cinema, from the camera via production, post production, distribution and screening," the Fraunhofer Society's Dr Siegfried Foessel told BBC News Online at the CeBIT fair in Hanover.
Fraunhofer engineers are experts in data compression, handy for making music files portable on the internet and essential for dealing with the giant volumes of data generated by film.
But the challenge they face extends further - to replicating the exceptional range of light captured by conventional cinema film and taking 3D sound to an entirely new level.
The Fraunhofer Society is showcasing its latest technology at the CeBIT trade fair in Hanover in Germany.
Camera technology
Modern digital video cameras simply cannot capture the dynamics and subtlety of cinema lighting, or reproduce the high resolution of cinema film.
Even cameras built for high-definition television cannot match the quality of chemically processed analogue film.
So Fraunhofer engineers are working on new cameras which use complementary metal oxide silicon (CMOS) sensors instead of the usual charge-coupled devices (CCDs).
They are working, too, to tackle the problem of shifting giant volumes of data around.
Data mountains
"Even with digital video, which is a much lower resolution than cinema, you'd need 670 gigabytes of data for a 90-minute film," Dr Foessel said.
That volume of data would fill a thousand CD-Roms.
At full cinema quality, Fraunhofer engineers estimate they would need to handle five gigabits of data every second.
The answer is clearly to come up with a compression scheme to describe the high quality cinema images in a more efficient way, just as MP3 does for music.
"We want to take the existing Jpeg2000 coding process and adapt it for cinema applications," Dr Foessel said.
His colleagues aim to cut the volume of data in real time by at least 90% and then store the film on a laptop-like device.
Hi-fi for all
Reworking the whole cinema process is providing opportunities for better sound, too.
"We are moving on from things like Dolby 5.1 sound to a situation where you have hundreds of loudspeakers in an auditorium.
"Then we can create a kind of individual sound experience for each cinemagoer," said Dr Foessel.
"We can create a much better three-dimensional sound stage and, for instance, make individual instruments sound like they are coming from behind the projection screen."
Demonstration cinema
Existing 3D sound systems work well for cinemagoers sitting within a relatively small optimal zone but can suffer quality losses outside that zone.
The digital cinema team had already built a demonstration auditorium, he added.
The Fraunhofer Society is a state and industry-backed research consortium named after the 19th Century optical instrument inventor Joseph von Fraunhofer and employs about 9,000 people.
Its digital cinema technology is on display at the CeBIT fair until Wednesday in Hall 11, stands A10-14.
14 Aug 2002, 10:58 PM EDT Msg. 20017 of 20040
Eyenx presentation
Eyenx is a small company. The old company Eyelink Technology has disbanded after a disagreement with a management person. Essentially the same management team is there. The technology used before was called NetPhone. The compression technology used was developed by some PhDs in California, and it's not something we know of. The technology was somewhat well received by the consumers which tried it. They distributed the software via Zdnet and Download.com. They also had a 6 month marketing trial with two large telcos. These telcos are two of the biggest ones. The telcos were very happy with the results of the trial, and they said they wanted to distribute the videoconferencing software along with a camera and microphone to new DSL subscribers. According to the Eyenx people, this is the "killer app" that the DSL companies wanted. They did not mention any cable companies. Eyenx plans to retail the product for $39.95 via mainly downloading from an e-commerce website or the free download sites I mentioned earlier. There will be a trial period of approximately 2 weeks. If the telcos distribute the software along with the DSL subscription, the fee revenue per software package will be discounted. From what I see, the business model works if the software is accepted by the mainstream public. The Eyenx management was trying to raise $500,000 in private equity at that meeting for a 5% piece of the company. All vendor services are now compensated with common stock which means On2's engineering services are paid with stock in the company. During the Q & A session, I brought up the question of how recent issues concerning the continued existence of the On2 would impact Eyenx. The CEO said the compression technology is like a part in a machine, and that the codec can be replaced with another codec. Keep in mind that this was in front of whole bunch of potential investors. The previous videoconferencing product they had was shelved due to poor video quality. A couple of minutes later, one of the development persons there said the On2 VP5 codec is the "heart and soul" of the SeeNx product. Some guy in the room commented on whether or not the videoconferencing product will be able to be watched full-screen. He said he enjoys watching video at full-screen. Management said the old product had video in a 4x6 window, but the new one would have the ability to go full-screen. They showed a demo of an On2 clip recorded in real-time. Put this in your Truecast player truecast7.on2.com/greetings.vp5 It's an On2 engineer demonstrating the ability of VP5 realtime encoding at 128kbps. The quality was bad ass at such a low bit-rate. I knew at that point a couple of the heavy hitting investors in the room were convinced of the viability. I was going to raise my hand and tell them to stream the Beautiful Mind trailer, but I decided not to since I don't think they want people to invest in On2 but rather Eyenx. They went about demonstrating the interface which was plain and simple in order to appeal to all breadths of consumers from little kids to elderly folk who don't understand computers too well. They are focusing on the average broadband consumer.
On the drive home, I was thinking about the financial aspect of investing in On2 or Eyenx. At full capitalization, Eyenx would be $20 million. Currently, On2 is below $10 million. Most of the technical work is going on in New York with On2's staff basically creating the engine for the videoconferencing product while the GUI shell is created in Dallas with Eyenx's staff. Talking to Abbas, I asked him what makes Eyenx a better investment than On2. He said marketing strength. He acknowledges that On2 has some of the smartest technical people in the field, but revenues are not there. It brings me back to what the heck is going on at On2? I talked to a couple of people there, and they said they were amazed at the quality of the movie trailers at the On2 website. I agreed and told them that it makes me crazy thinking all this great technology is going to waste.
I asked a lot of questions, and there are some facts I can't disclose due to NDAs. However, that is the gist of the presentation, and what Eyenx is about. I did ask the CEO what if On2 goes bankruptcy, they said would be first in the bidders line for VP5. Eyenx initiated communications with On2 and not the other way around. I really do believe VP5 is well-known to be the best compression technology out there. My question I ask of everyone is whether management is cutting the mustard. What Abbas did tell me is that their management is up to the task.
August 15, 2002 Packing a Digital Bag on a Student Budget
By DAVID POGUE
Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company
This week a report from the InsightExpress research firm shed some fascinating light on the high-tech buying habits of the college-bound. These days, parents aren't as involved as you might expect in helping their teenagers decide which computer, MP3 player, digital camera or palmtop to buy. Up to 76 percent of the time, students decide which models to buy without parental help (or parental interference, depending on how you look at it). And 40 percent of the time, the students even pay for the stuff themselves.
Therefore, the remainder of this college buying-guide column is Rated T: no one beyond the teenage years is permitted. I'll wait here until your parents are out of the room.
All right. Now that it's just you and me: there's good news and bad news about buying electronics. The bad news is that power and coolness cost money. The good news is that if you shop for stuff that's only 10 percent less powerful and cool than top-of-the-line, you save half the price.
The Desktop Computer
According to that InsightExpress report, it's 90 percent likely that you already have a computer. Still, chances are 1 in 4 that you're shopping for a new PC anyway, maybe to replace that antique Pentium III machine that you got way back when "Seinfeld" was still on the air.
The first order of business is making sure whatever you buy meets the requirements of the college. You probably got these specs in the mail; if not, check the school's Web site. In any case, you'll be told whether both Macs and PC's are welcome; what kind of network the school offers (standard Ethernet or wireless Wi-Fi), so that you can buy the corresponding network card; and whether the school offers juicy student discounts. If so, you may be able to shelve this entire decision until you arrive on campus.
Otherwise, you'll discover that generic Windows PC's are dirt cheap these days. At the moment, for example, Gateway offers its sleek 500SE tower with a 1.8-gigahertz Pentium 4 chip, a 20-gigabyte hard drive and a 17-inch monitor all for $700 after rebate — a terrific deal. (Except where noted, all computers described in this article also include 128 megabytes of memory and a CD burner, which is practically a necessity these days. You can generally upgrade this drive to a combination CD burner and DVD player for another $200 or so.)
You might also consider the new eMac, which Apple designed partly with dorm rooms in mind. Its rugged one-piece, self-contained case consumes a small fraction of that Gateway's desk space and reduces cable clutter to almost nothing. Its experimental-looking shape suggests the space shuttle's nose cone done in white acrylic. Its $1,049 student price (available at www.apple.com/education/emac ) buys you a 17-inch screen, a 700-megahertz G4 chip and a 40-gigabyte hard drive; $300 more upgrades the CD burner to a drive that plays and records both CD's and DVD's. (The $50 tilt-and-swivel stand is a must.
If it's worth paying a little more for coolness and style, check out the new breed of one-piece flat-panel computers. Dispensing with the big beige box, they occupy about as much desk space as a personal pan pizza. And the flat-panel screen is bright, flicker-free, compact and energy-stingy. The 15- or 17-inch flat screen on the iMac, for example, floats in the air on an adjustable chrome stalk ($1,300 to $2,000). Windows fans can get the same advantages of compactness and clean design in Gateway's new Profile 4 ($1,000 to $2,000), which goes on sale next week.
The Laptop
Of course, if you have that much money to spend, you'll probably get a lot more joy out of a laptop — which not only gives you the space savings and the flat screen, but also lets you hang out anywhere.
Most Windows laptops are black, boxy and aesthetically challenged, but not all. MicronPC's new TransPort V1000 is all blues and silvers and has every connector on earth (including four U.S.B. ports, an S-video output and even a FireWire socket). A configuration with a Pentium 4 chip (1.6 gigahertz) and a 10-gigabyte hard drive goes for $1,360 at www.micronpc.com/whats_new. It weighs 7.5 pounds, but at least it won't blow away in the courtyard.
The shiny white iBook, on the other hand, may be the perfect student laptop. For $1,200, you get a great-looking machine with a 20-gigabyte hard drive and a CD-ROM drive. (Another $300 buys you more speed and a combination CD burner and DVD player.) It weighs only 4.9 pounds and gets five hours of battery life per charge, compared with three or less for Windows laptops.
The Music Player
If you're a music lover, going to college will probably feel like going to heaven; the MP3-file craze was practically born on college campuses.
One inexpensive way to do music is to buy a portable CD player. Many models, including the Sony D-CJ01 (about $130), can play CD's that you've filled with MP3 files from your computer. Presto: you've got a double-duty machine that plays both discs from the record store and MP3 files from your roommates. (Good thing no adults are reading this. Record company executives would be furious at that last line.)
If you prefer portability to economy, though, you need a true MP3 player, a more expensive proposition. The Pogo RipFlash, for example, is just over 2 by 3 inches but costs $179 (for the 128-megabyte model, at www.pogoproducts.com). Its killer feature is the ability to create MP3 files directly from any source, even your voice, without a PC.
Now, 128 megabytes of memory holds about two hours of music. Only $120 more, though, buys you the best-designed MP3 player on the market: Apple's sleek chrome-and-white iPod. The $300 five-gigabyte model holds 66 hours' worth of music, runs 12 hours per charge and is available in both Mac and Windows versions. (A FireWire connection on your PC is required.) More money buys you capacity up to 20 gigabytes, enough to play music continuously from now until Thanksgiving break.
The Digital Camera
Asking "What digital camera should I get?" is like asking "What kind of car should I get?" It's hard to answer without knowing a little more about what you're looking for.
But let's say you're fine with a two-megapixel model, which has enough resolution for superb 5-by-7 prints. You might favor models that accept Compact Flash storage cards, which are relatively inexpensive and available in huge capacities. Best, too, are cameras that accept AA-size batteries (including AA-size NiMH rechargeables, which you should also buy), so you're never caught cameraless because the proprietary battery isn't charged. And you can't go wrong with a camera that is fully automatic but offers manual controls just in case.
Canon's new PowerShot A200 fits all of these requirements, offers extras like a low-light focus-assist lamp and — oh, by the way — takes awesome pictures. At $175, it's even inexpensive. (That's partly because it has no optical zoom — a feature that adds another $100 or so to a digicam's price.)
The Palmtop
Before you buy a hand-held organizer, you must face the critical operating-system question: Palm or Pocket PC? Because Palm-compatibles have 90 percent of the market, most of the great software programs are available only for the Palm operating system, including the 400 programs listed in the College category at www.palmgear.com/software.
Sony's new if arbitrarily named PEG-SL10 Clié, which uses the Palm operating system, is a steal at $150. It is supersleek, has a thumbwheel for scrolling and offers four times the screen resolution of standard Palm organizers for extra-crisp text. Among color-screen models, the Palm 130 ($250) is an ideal choice, thanks to its superbright screen (indoors), break-resistant plastic screen and choice of interchangeable faceplates ranging from snakeskin to wood grain.
Both the Sony and the Palm come with Documents to Go, software that lets you edit Microsoft Office files right on the palmtop. You can use Word to write a letter to your parents — and Excel to show them how much money you saved on your gear.
matt/bob--please look at the folowing post--this happens very frequently; is something being done to correct this problem?
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=459317
iTV endgame—August 2002
By Duffy Hayes, Senior Editor
With MSOs focused on delivering efficient high-speed data services, and readying their networks for the inevitable monster of video-on-demand, the market for interactive television services looks as if it’s been lost in the shuffle...again.
It’s not a question of familiarity, by any means. Applications that allow viewers to play along with a game show, or order pizza with their remote control, or check the balance of their savings account, or hyperlink to a Web site for added program details, are certainly available and ready for deployment today. iTV developers have been showing these off at industry trade shows for years.
But undeniable momentum or actual deployments have been hard to come by. MSOs haven’t bought in to the idea that they can make mountains of new dough by skimming two percent off Domino’s Pizza purchases by their subscribers. The iTV business model hasn’t sufficiently been proven; having set-top boxes in the field with limited processing power hasn’t helped the cause much either.
In times like these, it’s said that misery loves company.
Today, players in the iTV game are taking a hard look at the process of how interactive applications get from the drawing board to subscribers’ TV screens, and they’re finding a fractious, multi-platform development environment, marked more by proprietary technology rather than common application platforms.
The iTV industry is hoping to remedy the situation through standardization and additional strength in numbers. New initiatives in interactive content production are adding to the ongoing efforts to standardize hardware and middleware and are becoming forums of shared technologies and intellectual property. But whether a common application platform can become the catalyst for real iTV growth is a question the market will have to answer.
To date, however, it hasn’t happened. That’s in spite of the efforts by CableLabs to specify middleware under its OpenCable Application Platform (OCAP) effort, which adopted many of the guidelines established by the European MHP standardization group. CableLabs recently published its OCAP 2.0 specification, which addresses execution and presentation platforms on set-top boxes, but the iTV industry hasn’t exactly gravitated to the specification en masse.
“(Middleware vendors) like Liberate, OpenTV and Canal+ have selectively adopted standards that they feel comfortable with, that they feel are going to predominate,” explains Bob Harrison, a solutions architect with Spyglass Integration, whose integration lab is the melting pot in which many of these disparate platforms undergo interoperability testing. “However, what they’re really not doing is saying there’s a common platform that exists across all of the vendor spaces,” Harrison adds.
And therein lies the problem, according to many developers. Today, VOD vendors, t-commerce vendors or interactive game developers can architect an application that works similarly from platform to platform. Overall design is essentially the same. Many of the interactive elements can be retained from design to design, but when it gets down to execution on proprietary middleware or set-top platforms, developers are forced into a cycle of form-fitting their creations to work in specific environments.
“What we’re seeing is basically an 80-20 rule–where 80 percent of the service architecture, design and concept is preserved as you go from platform to platform,” Harrison says. “But there is this 20 percent factor, which says I need to make it run on Liberate, or OpenTV, or whatever.”
GoldPocket Interactive is one interactive production company feeling the pain of having to write multiple versions of interactive content for multiple platforms. As a developer, it’s seen that “20 percent” Harrison describes up close.
New programming from the Game Show Network, including Russian Roulette and Friend or Foe, includes interactive play-at-home capabilities, for either set-top or
PC interactive platforms. iTV programming
for each show is enabled by GoldPocket EventMatrix technology. The Game Show Network now boasts a total of 35 hours of weekly interactive television programming, much of it powered by GoldPocket proprietary technology.
“We felt an increasing frustration of driving content for a whole bunch of different platforms,” says Martijn Lopes Cardozo, vice president of product management with GoldPocket. “From a content perspective, each platform has its own characteristics.”
So, back in March, GoldPocket decided to do something about it. In talking with companies across the interactive value chain–from hardware, to middleware, to application development, to networks and broadcasters–it was hearing a similar refrain: that iTV growth has been hampered by a lack of standardization in the content production process.
Out of those discussions came the iTV Production Standards Initiative, with GoldPocket’s Lopes Cardozo serving as chair. The main thrust of the group is to create a unified specification for the production of interactive content, specifically defining naming conventions for all of the metadata sent along with MPEG video. Interactive metadata is added to traditionally produced video to create iTV applications. Essentially, embedded within interactive content are certain “tags” and “markers” which are the nuts and bolts that make up interactive elements like poll questions, hyperlinks or game properties.
The group, which many have taken to calling the GoldPocket Initiative, felt it was important to deliver an initial specification as quickly as possible, as a way to get the ball rolling and come up with an industry consensus along a faster timeline. The group’s 1.0 specification is a subtle re-working of GoldPocket’s proprietary “schemas.” In essence, it is GoldPocket’s system of encoding XML-based metadata repackaged as an industry standard.
To get a spec to market right away, the group “decided to basically open up the way we have produced interactive events, and give away part of our intellectual property in order to drive the iTV industry forward, and make it easier for other people to use the same common language,” Cardozo explains. It is a calculated risk on GoldPocket’s part to share its proprietary nomenclature, which today accounts for about 75 percent of the metadata encoding market, “but the way to grow the industry from here is to allow other networks, and even competitors, to use it,” Cardozo predicts.
So far, the group has been steadily creating an organizational structure, with more than 450 companies signing up in support. Member companies represent each stage in the interactive content production process, as the method by which metadata gets added to television content differs from application to application. Be it in script writing, post-production, or networks and programming, the iTV Production Standards Initiative has members in each of the stages of interactive content production working through the specification process.
Right now, the body’s Working Group has a goal of releasing the 2.0 specification by September, and it’s been hard at work revising the 1.0 spec to include input from all of the member companies. Between now and then, other factions of the initiative are working to promote adoption through specific case studies in an effort to prove viability to operators reticent to take the iTV plunge.
More than a one-horse town
Interestingly, another group within iTV is working to standardize iTV content production, albeit in a more specific, targeted area. This concurrent effort, called the TVXML Forum, also aims to unify part of the content production process around the XML tagging scheme.
However, this group has a laser focus on potential iTV messaging applications, and its objective is to unify communication protocols between the television, mobile phone and home PC platforms. Its Holy Grail is to create an environment that fosters the development of unified messaging applications that run on set-top platforms, but incorporates all of the different ways in which people communicate today.
Like GoldPocket, the TVXML Forum is being driven mainly by a single company, with proprietary technology it thinks can be adopted industry-wide. TVGate, the iTV messaging division of software provider Comverse Technologies, is behind the TVXML effort, and has seen first-hand how difficult it is to design communications applications across multiple middleware and hardware platforms.
“TVXML assumes existing middleware and set-top boxes will remain relevant for the next few years. The standard is orthogonal to existing standards like MHP and OCAP, and the communications infrastructure that TVXML provides sits on top of the middleware,” says Ezra Mizrahi, a vice president of product management and strategic marketing with Comverse-TVGate. “It actually creates new opportunities by opening existing infrastructure to interactive applications, regardless of middleware or set-top box. It will ease the integration of communications applications and will reduce the integration process with varying operator environments.”
If his group can gain industry traction and acceptance, a spate of new interactive messaging applications might find their way onto cable systems. It could foster the convergence of the TV, the phone and the PC. Possibilities include having applications like chat or instant messaging on your TV screen, telephony via TV, caller ID information displayed on-screen, Yellow Pages listings on-screen, etc.
To get there, TVXML will have to adopt iTV schemas specific to the messaging environment, and then translate that into television presentation. Initial TVXML standards define a client-server paradigm. The schemas specify how to run iTV messaging applications, either from a set-top box or from an application server. So far, the group has developed three specific TVXML schemas for adoption: one defining messaging data and an associated set of APIs; one defining billing parameters; and a third schema dedicated to provisioning.
Unlike the GoldPocket group, TVXML didn’t develop an initial specification for the industry to chew on. The group launched formally at the National Cable Show in New Orleans in May, but it’s aiming to announce a formal working group that will develop an initial specification at the IBC Show in September. The group hopes to have a spec submitted by 2003.
Spyglass architect Harrison thinks TVXML is off to a good start. “I think there’s a lot of promise there. I think they’ll get some traction,” he says. If he’s right, the television screen may just become the center of a unified messaging world, and consumers might be enticed to spend another $5 to $7 a month.
Compounding the problem of a fractious iTV industry is the lack of any unified industry association, or influential body governing the future direction of interactive television services. Within related industry associations, there are factions and committees dedicated to the advancement of the interactive community, but each usually represents just a solitary piece of the iTV value chain.
For example, there is a group within NAB, but it is focused, obviously, on the broadcaster and network perspective of iTV. NCTA’s group reflects the MSO and a few vendors’ points of view. The advertising community has looked at ways to leverage interactive services through the American Association of Advertising Agencies (AAAA). But all this simply contributes to the fractiousness.
So, in an effort to fulfill a perceived need for some sort of unified forum, a select group of iTV veterans decided an iTV industry forum was overdue. Composed of leaders from companies like Wink, Liberate, WorldGate, OpenTV and others, the group set out back in July to establish what is now called the Interactive Television (or iTV) Alliance, with the stated goal of providing a unified voice over the future of interactive television.
One of the first jobs the new group took on was to define and include each market with a potential stake in the growth of interactive television. It began by defining seven areas: content, distribution, advertising, applications, hardware, data/commerce and production.
“This was a way to get everybody who’s dealing with interactive television to be agnostically pushing in the same direction,” explains Ben Mendelson, one of the founders and current president of the iTV Alliance.
The group held its first informal meeting in May at the National Cable Show in New Orleans, and today counts about 200 companies or individuals committed to the effort. So far, only the body’s co-chairmen have been named to leadership positions for the organization, with Art Cohen of ACTV and Ken Papagan of Delmar Media.NET named to initially lead the group. The group hopes to hold an official meeting by the end of the year.
But, don’t look for this new industry alliance to play a prominent role in furthering any of the important standardization efforts described heretofore. According to Mendelson, the group will initially focus on generating consumer interest for interactive services, and won’t play an active role in the assuredly sticky process of defining, drafting and driving industry content production standards.
“Standards discussions are difficult in any industry. If you start focusing on them with an industry-wide group like this, a lot of your time and energy will go to just standards,” Mendelson says. “We don’t want to do that. We want to talk about all of the big issues about how to promote interactive television. We want to get people excited so that network operators can feel comfortable that they’ll make enough money from iTV to deploy the technology.”
In that vein, the group will focus on developing three key initiatives over the near term. First, the group will be working to develop a comprehensive consumer outreach campaign, which will include production of an infomercial touting the capabilities of today’s iTV applications. Second, it’ll work to create a virtual Enhanced Advertising Lab, which will be a forum for large national advertisers to interact with iTV vendors to come up with creative ways of incorporating advertising in future iTV applications. And lastly, the group will work to define “two-screen” interactive applications (ones that combine television and Internet technologies) through an Extended Television Initiative.
Whether these and other industry efforts surrounding iTV can make a dent in the consciousness of operators–currently preoccupied with video-on-demand, high-speed data, and even telephony–remains to be seen.
Will streamlining the interactive content production process make more iTV content available? Probably. In their effort to reduce churn and differentiate from satellite competitors, will cable operators ditch VOD and HSD in favor of interactive TV? —ID
Analysts said MP3 CD players would account for about half the portable audio market in 2004, suggesting the potential for growth is greater than any other digital music devices.
Korea-Japan showdown in MP3 CD player
Korea has largely controlled the global MP3 CD player market up until recently, thanks largely to the fact that the size of the market is still small and technologies are fast evolving. But things are now set to change, as Japan becomes serious about challenging Korea's market share.
Japanese electronics makers have paid little attention to the MP3 CD player market in which mainstream users are familiar with music CD burning technology and MP3 files.
It was early this year that Sony introduced its first MP3 CD player model. But the product did not create the stir that the Japanese electronics giant had hoped.
Meanwhile, Korea's MP3 CD player maker iRiver Inc. is leading the market with its "IMP-350" which is just 16.7mm thick.
The Korean company has secured the top slot in sales on the Amazon.com chart for the past eight months, showcasing its price competitiveness and product quality for global users. Sony did not enter the top five of the chart, implying that the small Korean MP3 upstart is staying ahead - at least for now.
iRiver was a sensation in the fledgling market by rolling out super-slim player. Before iRiver debuted on the market, mainstream MP3 CD players were usually 30mm thick. iRiver's 16.7mm technology, unsurprisingly, appealed to users eager to reduce the load in their bags.
However, the Korean firm is not in a position to remain complacent as Japanese companies are gearing up to stage a real fight.
Sony, Panasonic and other major electronics makers are set to introduce much more powerful models. Panasonic, for one, is rolling out 14.5mm player named "SL-J900" which weighs just 178g. The formal launch date is Sept. 10.
Sony is also preparing to soon launch a sequel to the CJ-01, its first MP3 CD player.
At the same time, some Korean and Japanese firms are forging technology-sharing partnerships, putting a new spin on the race for the initiative in the portable multimedia device market.
Eratech, a Korean venture startup that has developed its own MP3 CD technologies, said it is close to sealing an OEM (original equipment manufacturing) deal with a Japanese electronics maker. Eratech officials said the deal is likely to be concluded by the end of this month.
With Japanese rivals moving swiftly to catch up, Korean manufacturers are also taking steps to defend their market share.
iRiver is planning to launch its latest model, the "IMP-400." The company said it would not focus on the slim design this time, as the thickness of mainstream products is already reaching their physical limits. Instead, user convenience and other features will be upgraded, it said.
The MP3 CD player frontrunner is particularly strong at applying sophisticated design and introducing extra features. Unlike other manufacturers, iRiver supports dozens of languages for its LCD (liquid crystal display) panels.
Bigger LCD panels and better display technologies are crucial for MP3 CD player users. While compact MP3 players usually handle 20-30 songs due to their memory limits, MP3 CD players are capable of holding more than 150 digital song files.
Therefore, a bigger screen that allows users to identify the title and other information is a very important feature.
Analysts said MP3 CD players would account for about half the portable audio market in 2004, suggesting the potential for growth is greater than any other digital music devices.
Separately, Korea's compact MP3 player market, which revolves around built-in memory rather than CD-R, is facing a slowdown both at home and abroad, hurt by the weaker U.S. dollar, continued troubles with the global high-tech industry and uncertainty over the online exchange of MP3 music files.
Korea has been leading the MP3 player market thanks to the hardware manufacturing foundation linked to other digital devices and the booming high-speed Internet market. More than 60 percent of all Korean households are now hooked up to the broadband network, fueling the growth of online content businesses including MP3 files.
Just a few months ago, local MP3 player makers were optimistic about the outlook for the second-half sales. But they are now beset by a slew of negative signs.
Latest government data showed that the first-half export off MP3 players amounted to $57 million (68.4 billion won), down 13.9 percent from $66.3 million in the year-earlier period.
That marks a setback for the country's MP3 player industry. Experts said that the weakening value of the U.S. dollar against the Korean won is hurting the price competitiveness of domestic MP3 makers on the export front.
The United States - the biggest MP3 market - is mired in turmoil sparked by a string of accounting scandals and lackluster earnings of some high-tech heavyweights, casting a dark cloud over the export outlook in coming months, analysts said.
Despite the obstacles, government officials projected that local makers would ship MP3 players valued at $114 million in 2002, up 27.4 percent from the previous year.
MP3, or MPEG Audio Layer 3, is an audio compression technology that is part of the MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 specifications. MP3 uses perceptual audio coding to compress CD-quality sound by a factor of 12, while providing almost the same fidelity. MP3 music files are played via software or a physical player that connects to the PC for transfer.
(insight@koreaherald.co.kr By Yang Sung-jin Staff reporter
2002.08.15
================================
e.DIGITAL UNVEILS NEW ULTRA-SLIM SILHOUETTE
MP3 CD PLAYER
Sleek Design, Superior Sound Quality Using WOW Effect
by SRS and TruBass Make Player a Hit
(SAN DIEGO, CA - June, 25, 2002 ) - Music lovers now can play their favorite music CDs on SilhouetteTM, e.Digital Corporation's (OTC: EDIG) , stylish, ultra-slim, portable CD player that provides users with a three-dimensional listening experience. Silhouette is capable of playing prerecorded music CDs or CDs containing MP3 or Windows MediaTM format (WMA) files. Silhouette combines SRSTM and TruBassTM audio enhancement to produce the WOWTM Effect for treble enrichment and deep, rich bass enhancement.
According to Tom Boksa, e.Digital’s vice president of Consumer Electronics, “With Silhouette, music aficionados can play prerecorded music CDs or CDs they have burned, allowing them to enjoy their favorite music tracks in an ultra-slim, portable music player that produces superior sound quality. And at a suggested retail price of $149, Silhouette is the perfect summer companion for music enthusiasts on the go.”
Sporting a sleek design and mirrored finish, the .70 inch (18 mm) Silhouette weighs in at a mere 6.9 ounces (196 grams), and is one of the slimmest MP3 CD players available. It effectively combines exceptional audio quality with a user-friendly interface so users can play either burned or prerecorded music CDs in a small, lightweight device. Silhouette also comes with a wired remote as part of the standard package, making navigation a snap. The versatile Silhouette player includes the following features:
MP3, WMA, and CD playback
Rechargeable NiMH batteries that quick-charge in just 4 hours
Bookmarks up to 256 songs for playback
Dual Play Modes play all songs or bookmarked songs only
WOW Effect using SRS and TruBass audio technology
Animated LCD with user adjustable backlight settings
Remembers recent settings of up to 12 CDs (song, bookmark list, play mode, repeat option)
Firmware upgradeable
Anti-shock protection up to 16 minutes
Five named equalizer settings
Multiple language support
Variable Bit Rate support: 8 kbps – 320 kbps
Frequency Range: 20Hz – 20KHz
Signal to Noise ratio: 90 db
It’s easy to navigate the Silhouette using either the control panel or the multi-function wired remote control. Users can bookmark their favorite songs, even during playback, and use auto sorting to sort their titles alphabetically. The LCD displays the current song title and song folder as well as the next track queued for play.
All Silhouette packages include a user guide, portable stereo earphones, a remote control, an AC adaptor/charger, a carrying case, and two rechargeable stick type NiMH batteries that provide up to 10 hours of playback time per charge. Options include an external battery pack that supplies additional power using two AA batteries for a total of 22 hours playback time, and a remote control with LCD. The Silhouette will be available to consumers in August 2002.
A c t e l ’s e X F P G A s
Enabling the “Wired” Lifestyle
Have you had enough of the seemingly
hopeless search for the
ultimate low-cost solution for
low-power, high-performance
designs? The search is now over:
Actel’s eX family of FPGAs has
optimum circuit design capability
and will meet all your power, speed,
package, and price requirements.
Targeted for the e-Appliance and
communications infrastructure markets,
eX enables designers to use
single-chip programmable logic for
their traditional low-density ASIC
requirements without the long
leadtimes and costly NRE charges.
Save Energy—
Lower your Power
Consumers don’t care what the
standby current of a component in
their device is…but they do care
about how often they have to
replace their batteries. Recognizing
this, designers of consumer electronics
are focusing on using chips with
low power consumption. The eX
family of FPGAs combines the
inherently low power attributes of
Actel’s antifuse technology with a
low power “sleep” mode to extend
battery life. Another benefit of low
power consumption is increased
device reliability, an important consideration
in the communications
infrastructure market. The eX
devices’ 2.5V core operation offers
additional power savings, while
their I/Os are capable of driving
2.5V, 3.3V, or 5.0V, and are 5.0Vtolerant.
The I/Os are also hot-swap
compliant, requiring no special
power-up or -down sequence.
Performance
With internal clock speeds greater
than 300 MHz and clock-to-out
delays as fast as 4.2 ns, Actel’s eX
FPGAs offer the high performance
that designers need without a power
penalty. The eX family offers ‘ease
of speed’ with its fine-grained
architecture and segmented routing
structure. With eX you don’t have
to use any tricks or performanceenhancing
techniques to meet your
design requirements.
As soon as I got
back from LA and
Robotica, it was time to
head north to San
Francisco, the site of this year’s West
Coast Embedded System Conference.
From humble table-top hotel show
of yore, ESC West has grown with the
embedded market to become, as oldtime
TV impresario Ed Sullivan
would say, “a really big show.” So big,
it finally outgrew its home in San Jose
and had to make the move to “The
City.”
“The City,” as in the city where
panhandlers like suffering
SOMA (south-of-Market-Street)
start-ups courting a VC politely
say, “Hey, while you’ve got
your wallet out, could you
make it $5 or $10?” In fact,
that panhandler could be a
recently downsized entrepreneur.
Easy dot.com, easy dot.go.
On the other hand, SF offers
plenty of fine sights to see and
restaurants to sample.
Amazingly, the Circuit Cellar
crew ended up in a decent hotel
for only $139 a night. It’s true
www.circuitcellar.com/online CIRCUIT CELLAR® ONLINE June 2001 1
The Embedded System
Conference always provides
a lot of food for thought, and
Tom shows us that this
year's event was no exception.
Having outgrown San
Jose, San Fran is now
home to ESC, with a whole
new wave of applications
opening up. Voice recognition
gear was probably the
hottest item on the scene,
along with web-enabling and
listening chips. Will the spoken
word replace keyboards?
Watch and listen
for the answer.
parking was extra, an astounding $35
a day, but it was actually a bargain
compared to the absurdly high prices
of the overheated south in Silicon
Valley proper.
But best of all, SF’s Moscone
Convention Center is much more spacious
than the Civic Center in San
Jose. If attendance appeared to be
down, it was not surprising considering
the economy, the change in
venue, and compressed schedule from
the last West Coast show. I personally
welcomed the fact that there was
room to breathe in the aisles. No
more having your booth in a tent in
the parking lot either.
Enough of the travel log. No matter
where the show is held or the state of
the economy, as long as silicon keeps
marching on, embedded is where the
action is. Check it out.
’NET BET
Is it safe to say that anything and
everything with an electron moving is
a candidate for web- enabling? The
only way to find out for sure is to try
it and see if folks buy it.
How fast and how far the Internet
penetrates the embedded realm is a
simple matter of Econ 101. The less it
costs to get on the web, the more
designers will give it a whirl. There’s
a huge interest in products and strategies
that lower the I-way toll.
Tom Cantrell
Escape to SF
a
SILICON
UPDATE
Photo 1— The BlueTarget design from Smart Network Devices
combines the brains of Hyperstone and the Bluetooth brawn
from Cambridge Silicon Radio.
Terrestrial tunes
Earthbound digital radio gets chip support
Maury Wright, Editor-in-Chief -- CommVerge, 8/1/2002
Satellite digital radio has debuted to mixed reviews, and many people still think that terrestrial digital radio will be more compelling because listeners will receive their favorite existing stations in pristine digital quality. Expect the IBOC (In Band On Channel) technology that will occupy the same frequency space as existing stations to begin rolling out around the Consumer Electronics Show next January.
STMicroelectronics just became the second chip vendor to announce support for IBOC. The company has announced a two-chip IBOC design that consists of the TDA7515 analog front-end, which downconverts the incoming signal to a 10.7-MHz intermediate frequency (IF), and the DSP-based TDA7580, which directly digitizes the IF and handles digital and analog radio-processing tasks.
By working directly with the IF signal, the DSP code in the TDA7580 can implement equalization features that combat multipath interference, greatly improving reception of weak signals. Moreover, the software approach will allow receiver manufacturers to design a fallback mode in which the radio can swap from digital to FM at the edges of the digital signal range. ST jointly developed the digital radio software with Bose.
ST has been the sole source of digital radio chips for XM Satellite Radio's network and now joins Texas Instruments as a supplier to the IBOC community. TI built the multichip IBOC prototype implementation shown at CES last year, and at the same show announced a single-chip implementation of the DSP section of the design.
Smart mouth
Speech recognition for smartphones
Margot Suydam, Technology Editor -- CommVerge, 8/14/2002
In the mobile world, quick access to information is the key. But that's a growing challenge for today’s devices, which must be not only feature-rich but also as tiny as possible. Luckily, many high-end devices come equipped with ample processing power, and more and more these days, that power is being harnessed to provide speech-interface features. With more vendors porting their speech software to mobile processor platforms, it looks like speech recognition is positioned to claim a place for itself in the burgeoning smartphone market.
Sensory, a provider of embedded speech technologies, this week joined the ranks of speech-technology providers who have chosen to port their software to the Texas Instruments OMAP platform.
Offering low power consumption and high performance, TI's OMAP processors provide the hardware muscle required to enable new mobile applications. Sensory’s Fluent Speech software-development kit for OMAP supports the TI DSP and the TI-enhanced ARM9 processor in the OMAP1510 application processor, and is also compatible with the OMAP710 device.
First publicly demonstrated on a convergence phone at the TI Industry Analyst Conference in May, the OMAP-optimized version of the Fluent Speech engine will enable voice-driven user interfaces on 2.5G and 3G devices. The embedded software is well-suited to tasks such as contact lookup, voice-activated dialing, Internet favorites, command and control, and password security. And the recognition engine functions without a network connection.
Fluent Speech is an accurate, noise-robust, small-footprint voice-recognition engine that requires no training, according to Sensory. The phonemic speaker-independent recognizer is part of a technology suite that includes continuous-digit recognition, speaker verification, and support for multiple languages.
In supporting OMAP, Sensory joins ART (Advanced Recognition Technologies), which recently ported its latest speech-recognition product, smARTspeak XG, to the OMAP platform. Bringing phonemic recognition to wireless mobile devices, smARTspeak XG provides embedded, speaker-independent name dialing and other command functions. The XG version is an evolution of the smARTspeak NG previously ported to the OMAP platform.
Driver's seat
Bluetooth takes its place in the car
Margot Suydam, Technology Editor -- CommVerge, 8/14/2002
Although it's taken a lot longer than its fans once expected, Bluetooth is slowly but surely cementing its position in the mobile universe. In particular, the much-hyped technology is scoring success in automotive applications.
The driving forces behind the trend are Bluetooth's proliferation in cellular handsets and the need for hands-free telephony in the car. At least among Americans, the majority of cell-phone talking takes place inside cars, so automakers are looking for elegant ways to link handsets with onboard systems. Moreover, Bluetooth car kits are relatively simple and inexpensive to install, leading automakers to adopt them proactively—in recognition of the growing probability that they’ll eventually be federally mandated.
With the launch of Chrysler’s UConnect system, 2002 will mark the first appearance of Bluetooth as automaker-approved equipment in a new vehicle. Chrysler will offer the hands-free, voice-activated system this fall as a dealer-installed option in selected 2003 models. UConnect will then debut as a factory-installed option in early 2003.
Meanwhile, consumers who like the idea of in-car Bluetooth connectivity but aren't ready to buy a new Chrysler might want to check out Uniwill Computer's Bluetooth Voice Box, launched this week. Containing a Bluetooth chip from Cambridge Silicon Radio (CSR), the Voice Box contains a microphone and speaker, thus enabling hands-free operation even when the mobile phone is in a bag or pocket.
The Voice Box, officially known as model B090S1, is due to go on sale for $59 in Europe and North America in Q3. CSR's single-chip BlueCore Bluetooth implementation contributes to the device's compact dimensions (62.5 by 92 by 25 millimeters), according to Uniwill.
The Voice Box is compliant with version 1.1 of the Bluetooth specification and takes its power from the car's cigarette lighter. No other connection is required. Moreover, the Voice Box is a Class 2 Bluetooth device, which means it can connect to mobile phones within a 10-meter range—enough for even the most absurd stretch limo. Full-duplex telephony with acoustic echo cancellation, volume control, and full Bluetooth handset profile all mean that the Voice Box offers a high-quality wireless connection to the mobile phone. An automatic setting allows calls to be answered and immediately put through to the box, and a mute button provides for privacy without forcing the user to search frantically for the mobile phone.
Business Week Online is currently featuring a special report on
the digital music industry, offering four articles on the major labels'
moves into digital distribution; the growing success of online music
clubs, such as Columbia House; classical music services online; and how
independent musicians are using the Internet to their advantage.
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/tc_special/02digitalmusic.htm
from world-theatre:
Thank you for your continued interest in World Theatre. As you have seen from our web site, several updates have been made which highlight the advancements made by the company to date. Specifically to answer your question, the launch date of our fully interactive TV network, which was targeted for 2002 has been moved to 2003 as we ready digital content and finalize broadcast schedules. Keep watching our web page for exciting new announcements and details.
DRM: The guardian and protector of digital media
Digital Rights Management promises to make the ’Net safe for digital content distribution, while also expanding consumer choice in delivery devices
http://www.cedmagazine.com/ced/2002/0402/id4.htm
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By David Iler, Contributing Editor
The brave, new world of digital media over the Internet is entering its second generation, with content owners learning the harsh lessons of outlaw distribution that characterized the first wave. The major lesson learned is that a powerful guardian and protector is essential for content owners to take advantage of the distribution capabilities of the Internet.
The acronym stamped on the chest of these cyborg guardians is DRM–for digital rights management.
DRM is not only the security blanket that can keep frightened record companies and movie executives sleeping well at night, but can unleash sophisticated marketing and wide distribution of content to consumers to enjoy on a number of devices, including personal computers, handheld devices and set-top boxes.
“The choice of digital rights management [technology] is more significant than the choice of a streaming format,” says Talal Shamoon, executive vice president of InterTrust Technologies Corp., a DRM company headquartered in Santa Clara, Calif.
The implications for the cable industry are significant, as local storage in set-top boxes and home networking connectivity may require an evolutionary step beyond today’s conditional access systems, a fact beginning to resonate with the industry’s engineers.
In a nutshell, DRM works by delivering to users encrypted files that can only be opened and executed once specific permissions and authorizations have been granted. Without them, the files cannot be accessed. A number of companies have emerged to address the IP-based DRM market, although through strong, sweeping technology and sheer weight of force, InterTrust and Microsoft Corp. have elbowed their way to the fore.
DRM dealmaker
InterTrust has been busy forging alliances with a variety of companies, and maintains “a very broad body of intellectual property in trusted computing,” says Shamoon. The company holds 22 U.S. patents and has 90 patents pending worldwide.
Partners and licensees include AOL Time Warner Inc., Nokia Corp. (also an investor), Digital World Services (a subsidiary of Bertelsmann AG) and Pace Micro Technology plc, which in November, joined InterTrust in the development of DRM-enabled digital set-top boxes for broadband IP operators.
InterTrust has also enlisted digital asset management provider Artesia Technologies Inc., streaming and on-demand provider nCube Corp., customer management and billing developer Portal Software Inc., network infrastructure company SkyStream Networks Inc., MPEG-4 developer Envivio.com Inc. and Sun Microsystems Inc. as partners for what it calls the Rights/Alliance.
InterTrust is in the process of rolling out a new, second-generation platform, Rights/System, comprised of three components–Packagers, Servers and Clients–that runs on Sun’s platform and is targeted to, among others, cable and satellite television providers.
In practice, the Rights/System Packager generates two files: the encrypted content file and a rights file, termed Rights/Pack. Metadata, or information that describes the content, and usage rules for the content, comprise the Rights/Pack. Offering some flexibility, new usage rules can be added after the content has been encrypted, without recalling the content file.
The encrypted content file is sent to the content distributor’s Web server, while the rights file is shipped off to a Content Rights server, thereby physically separating the rights from the content itself.
Once a consumer purchases the content through the distributor’s e-commerce system and the transaction has been approved, the Rights/System Authorization Generator sends an authorization to the consumer’s device. The Rights/System software client uses the authorization to access the Rights/Pack–both the encrypted content and the usage rules. The user can then retrieve the content according to the rules described in Rights/Pack. Allowances can be made for the content to be transferred to devices other than the one that actually downloaded the content, such as a portable MP3 player.
“The technology is highly portable–we’ve ported it to multiple environments,” says Shamoon. InterTrust has developed client software for personal computers, portable devices, mobile phones and set-top boxes.
Encrypted content files can also be distributed to other potential users. But to access the files, these users are directed to the distributor of the content where they can obtain rights to use it. In this way, providers can offer incentives to those who download the content through “tell-a-friend” promotions.
The PC client, says Shamoon, is actually a plug-in for media players made by Real Networks Inc. and Microsoft. InterTrust’s association with Envivio, meanwhile, gives it a foothold in the emerging MPEG-4 media standard.
The Rights/Client software, says Shamoon, is a small, 100-kilobyte piece of firmware that was designed to be integrated into a set-top box “with no hardware requirements.” The Rights/System servers, including the Authorization Generator, Content Rights Server and System Operations Server, are based on Sun’s Java network technology.
The company has also developed two silicon DRM products: TrustChip and RightsChip. TrustChip is a micro-controller, more specifically, a Cirrus Logic Inc. Maverick semiconductor based on a secure hardware reference design. The RightsChip is essentially a smart card. To help proliferate its technology, InterTrust has also engineered software development kits for third-party application development.
Shamoon indicated that InterTrust is willing to integrate its platform and technologies into cable and/or satellite TV platforms, and is involved in discussions with unnamed service and technology providers.
Windows and DRM
As one would expect, Microsoft is a leading player in DRM technology, building Windows Media Rights Manager (WMRM) technology into its Windows Media Player, the streaming media player that’s bundled with newer versions of the Windows operating system. WMRM works by creating “packaged media files” containing an encrypted media file that has been locked with a “key” ID and, optionally, additional information, such as the Web address of where the license may be acquired. An encrypted license, with the key, is distributed separately.
The packaged file is saved in Windows Media Audio (.wma) or Windows Media Video (.wmv) formats. The file can be distributed on the Web as a download, streamed from a media server or e-mailed or distributed on a compact disc. In this way, copy-protected files can be distributed, although licenses to play the content are not transferable.
A content provider selects a “license clearinghouse,” which can be a server maintained by Microsoft or the provider. The server stores the specific rights conditions and business rules for the content and implements the WMRM license.
Dowload PDF Acrobat version of Figure 1 here
Figure 1: This diagram illustrates the InterTrust Technologies Rights/System DRM model for distributing content over the Internet. The separation of the content from the rights package is a key attribute of most DRM systems.
Consumers must first acquire a license key to unlock the file and play it. WMRM either directs the consumer to a registration page on the Web to provide payment, or “silently” retrieves a license and key from the clearinghouse server, depending on the business model employed for the content.
To execute the digital media file, consumers need a media player that supports WMRM, such as Windows Media Player. After obtaining the license, the consumer can play the file based on the rules/rights dictated by the license. That license can specify start times and expiration dates, duration of allowable play, number of times the content can be accessed, and rights to transfer the file to a CD recorder. With specific rights, consumers might also be allowed to play the content on a specific computer and/or copy it to a portable device.
Extending Windows DRM
CinemaNow Inc. made a significant splash in February when it announced a partnership with MGM Home Entertainment to offer selected MGM movie titles on its Web site in streaming and downloadable formats.
Click image to enlarge
Figure 2: When a user requests access to a digital asset from CinemaNow, the PatchBay middleware executes a series of commands to verify whether the user is permitted to view the content, and sets rules on how the user may access it before the content is delivered.
CinemaNow has developed a middleware application called PatchBay which builds upon Windows DRM technology and extends its functionality to meet the needs of content owners like MGM. According to Brad Serling, chief technology officer for CinemaNow, PatchBay was developed because the company wanted to create its own toolset to manage distribution and rules to control the cost and availability of content.
For example, with PatchBay, CinemaNow can, depending on the requirements of its content partners, charge a different price for a movie accessed through WindowsMedia.com than if it’s accessed through the CinemaNow Web site. The platform can also account for availability and pricing of titles based on geographic territory, thus accommodating movie studios’ often complex rights and distribution deals.
When a movie is downloaded on the CinemaNow site, the user is presented with a credit card screen and a payment request. The first time the user hits the “play” button on his Windows Media Player, the player “talks” to PatchBay, telling it that user “X” wants to watch the movie and requests a license. PatchBay then tells WMRM whether to issue a license.
“The key is, any time a request is made (to play a file), Windows Media Rights Manager has to issue a license,” says Serling.
Importantly, PatchBay also works with CinemaNow’s back-end systems by tracking several key data metrics, including specific title requests, user demographics and credit card approvals/declines. Through PatchBay, CinemaNow can also share revenue with content holders, as well as determine its own profitability based on sales and the costs of sending the files to users.
In this way, CinemaNow is leveraging WMRM by building an engine that stores pricing, reporting and tracking data.
“We’ve adapted Windows Rights Manager to the VOD world,” says Serling. With WMRM, CinemaNow can “package content once and have all cost scenarios stored in PatchBay,” he adds.
PatchBay resides on servers running Windows 2000 and the Microsoft SQL 2000 Enterprise Edition database application. Territorial rights information is managed by Digital Envoy’s NetAcuity geographic-targeting technology running on a Linux server. CinemaNow has also integrated DoubleClick Inc.’s ad manager and VeriSign Inc.’s verification and payment collection services into the platform.
CinemaNow has licensed PatchBay to Walker Asia Entertainment Pte. Ltd., which will offer CinemaNow’s video-on-demand services in Singapore, with additional sites expected to launch in Asia this year.
Other DRM technologies
DivXNetworks Inc., a broadband video distribution technology provider, has opted to build its own DRM scheme into its Open Video System, according to company co-founder and Director of Product Development Joe Bezdek.
He says that while many existing, off-the-shelf DRM technologies have been designed and optimized for digitized audio, the DivX DRM system is crafted specifically for full-length video.
Taking a broader view of DRM to include text, images, audio and video, is SealedMedia Ltd. The company’s technology is designed to conform to the separation of rights and content paradigm, but also accommodate roaming and subscription licenses. Rights to access content are encoded into separate licenses that contain the content encryption keys. Licenses are stored on a networked SealedMedia License Server in a password-protected, owner-specific account.
Distance learning, says Martin Lambert, chief technology officer and co-founder of SealedMedia, is an application that can require cross-media protection, with video and attendant text files and images comprising a content package.
Conditional access and DRM: One in the same?
Just as the distinction between IP delivery and MPEG delivery of video content is converging, so is the case with DRM and conditional access technologies. Some might say that DRM describes what proven, industrial-strength conditional access technologies used by cable operators accomplish today.
However, because of advanced services such as personal video recording with storage-enabled set-top boxes, coupled with home networking, DRM is becoming a topic of discussion within the cable industry.
“We’re going to need something like DRM to be an evolution of conditional access,” says Jean-Pol Zundel, chief software architect with Comcast Corp. This is particularly true, he notes, when one considers that the TV may not always represent the “end of the line” for content. What’s needed, he adds, is a protection method that’s “more attached to the asset itself.”
“As usage becomes more complex, you’re going to [require] something more sophisticated,” says Zundel. “There’s no question [DRM is] somewhere in our future,” he adds, stressing, however, that the technology has little or nothing to do with IP as a transport method.
Zundel points out that the OpenCable Application Platform (OCAP) contains basic conditional access application programming interfaces (APIs) that enable (among other things) the opening and display of content. It may make sense, he says, to add APIs to the spec for advanced conditional access, which might allow or restrict the copying of content from one device to another.
Also thinking along these lines is Motorola Broadband Communications. Senior Director of Secure Systems Technology Eric Sprunk says the company is applying its MediaCipher conditional access system to local storage content in order to control, among other things, the number of times stored content may be viewed. In addition, MediaCipher is being applied to content delivery that’s not necessarily MPEG-based.
To help accomplish this, Sprunk says Motorola is supporting an implementation of a standard originated by ABC/ Disney–Extended Copy Control Information (ExCCI)–which, in part, specifies a set of functions to allow persistent stored media on a hard drive.
Factor in the industry’s point of deployment (POD) requirements, and the conditional access/DRM picture becomes a little fuzzy. For now, Motorola, says Sprunk, is “pursuing a form of DRM that will go out in our non-POD products. ID
Dave Iler , Contributing Editor
Don't short this "story" 2002-08-07
A stealth VOD boom augurs well for two equipment providers
by Dave Sterman, equity research columnist
Investors have soured on "story" stocks—companies with scant present earnings that promise explosive growth down the road. For contrarians, that means it's time to look for compelling stories.
Concurrent Computer (CCUR) and Seachange International (SEAC), the leading purveyors of video-on-demand (VOD) servers to the cable industry, offer an interesting case in point.
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The VOD "story"
The delivery of content directly to consumers was supposed to revolutionize the telecom industry. Nearly a decade ago, Ivan Seidenberg, CEO of Bell Atlantic (predecessor to Verizon (VZ)), revealed splashy plans to build a video empire upon his telecom platform. And the crown jewel: VOD, where customers could watch any movie at any time.
Technology and money were in short supply at the time, forcing Seidenberg to abandon his dreams.
Companies mentioned in this article
Concurrent Computer (CCUR)
Seachange International (SEAC)
But his vision is now, belatedly, being realized by the arch-enemy: cable companies. They've begun to aggressively roll out service, and found a great deal of interest from consumers.
You'd never know it by looking at their stock prices, but Concurrent Computer and Seachange International are shaping up to be the direct beneficiaries of the coming VOD boom.
In the past year, Time Warner Cable, Cox, Comcast, and Charter have all started modest rollouts of VOD service. In selected markets, they've bought a few VOD servers, quietly spread word of its availability, and then watched to gauge consumer reaction.
Reports for further inquiry
RBC Capital Markets. Concurrent Lands Real-Time Deal with Aerospace Company.
Jefferies & Co. AOL Time Warner to Offer VOD To All Markets by YE02.
H.C. Wainwright. CCUR-Let's Get ready to Rumble.
H.C. Wainwright. Initiating Coverage on SeaChange with a Neutral Rating.
Their push into pay-per-view a number of years ago was generally underwhelming, so cable operators had reason to be dubious of consumer demand for VOD.
But their fledgling VOD has gained surprising traction. A series of articles in the July 15 issue of Multichannel News highlights the head of steam that VOD is building.
Cablevision, for example, has found that consumers have ordered an average of nine programs a month. And HBO, which offers its programming in a pay-as-you-go VOD format within selected markets, says that consumers are ordering up 12 hours of programs a month.
To further the value proposition for cable operators, they're finding that churn is dropping sharply in markets where VOD has been rolled out. And that's why they're giving away "free" VOD content as well.
It's important to note that VOD is catching on despite scant marketing dollars. As sentiment builds that consumers want-and will pay for-VOD, look for a more aggressive rollout in the quarters to come, triggering strong demand for Concurrent's and Seachange's VOD servers.
The picture slowly brightens
You can already see the demand evident in Concurrent's quarterly performance. Sales, which bottomed at $14.1 million last September, rose to $25 million in the March (third) quarter. (Growth would have been even more impressive were it not for the flat results posted by Concurrent's non-VOD division, known as Real-Time).
Reported EPS in that quarter was $0.04, trouncing the break-even estimate. CIBC's Alen Bezoza thinks Concurrent will again exceed estimates when it reports Q4 results on August 23.
Looking ahead at the fiscal year that has just begun, management has refrained from providing guidance. But a case can be made that strengthening demand for VOD systems should lead to 30-40 percent top line growth in that division, and 20 percent growth companywide.
For its part, SeaChange also looks poised to post heady growth. H.C. Wainwright's Lawrence Harris predicts that EPS will surge from $0.10 in Fiscal (January) 2003 to $0.47 in Fiscal 2004. Shares trade for just 12 times that 2004 estimate.
And each of these companies could see their growth trajectory stretch out for several years. That's because VOD has been rolled out in only on third of the major cable markets. And even where deployment has begun, additional servers need to be added to handle an expected surge in demand for VOD services.
As it stands, Concurrent and SeaChange International each control about a third of the VOD server market. Those shares could rise as privately held competitor Diva has filed for bankruptcy. (Charter, a former Diva customer, has recently become a customer of Concurrent).
Shares of SeaChange appear cheaper on a price/sales and a P/E basis. But many analysts think Concurrent has shown greater momentum in the VOD industry. CIBC's Bezoza tells Multex Investor that "Concurrent deserves to trade at a higher valuation than SeaChange, since they've already proven leadership in the space."
Nevertheless, both shares look very cheap in relation to their growth rates. That's because investors aren't buying "story stocks" right now. It doesn't help that the entire cable sector is going through one of its cyclical swoons.
And shares were also spooked by rumors that Sun Microsystems (SUNW) and Silicon Graphics (SGI) were eying the VOD market. But an entry by either of those firms would be difficult, as Concurrent and Seachange already act as first and second sources in almost every major cable account.
Cable operators have tended to have unique requirements, and have historically relied on a handful of equipment vendors such as General Instrument and Scientific Atlanta (SFA). VOD servers are tweaked to handle video, IP and other cable telephony protocols.
Lastly, cable operators have been dragged through the mud by Hollywood studios that want to ensure that they receive an appropriate slice of the revenue pie. Revenue sharing issues are now close to being resolved, which should act as a catalyst for higher spending on VOD equipment.
Hollywood's participation is becoming less relevant as more "free" VOD content becomes available. A wide range of cable networks are rolling out their own VOD packages for consumers.
And that's helping cable companies to showcase the appeal of VOD to consumers. As demand grows, look for the major studios to hop on, just as they did with DVDs once that medium proved successful.
In this current market, "story stocks" such as Concurrent and SecChange have become "show me" stocks. Later this year, they should dispel their doubters by posting very strong growth.
SecureMedia and DivXNetworks Extend Encryptonite License Agreement
- SecureMedia's Patented Encryption Technology Helps Secure DivXNetworks Open Video System for Video-on-Demand Over IP Networks
Natick, MA August 13, 2002 SecureMedia, Inc. today announced that it has extended an existing agreement with DivXNetworks, Inc. for licensing of SecureMedia's Encryptoniteä digital content encryption technology. DivXNetworks, the technology company that created the revolutionary patent-pending DivX video compression technology, has been using Encryptonite as the encryption cipher component of the DivX Open Video System video-on-demand solution.
The DivX Open Video System is the world's first and only solution for the protected distribution of video-on-demand over broadband IP networks using DivX technology. Currently live with over 20 content providers and well over a thousand pieces of content, the secure video-on-demand service enables consumers with high-speed Internet connections to purchase rentals of selected films and begin viewing the film almost immediately. The DivX Open Systems employs Encryptonite technology to encrypt content in addition to a proprietary DivX digital rights management (DRM) solution that includes geographic region enforcement, business rules and key management, key rotation and several other techniques. Compatible with the international MPEG-4 standard, DivX video compression technology has become the de facto standard for digital video, providing an amazing 7:1 compression ratio from MPEG-2 file sizes while giving full-screen, DVD quality playback.
SecureMedia provides excellent encryption technology for the component-based digital rights management system we've built at DivXNetworks, said Eric Grab, Director of Engineering at DivXNetworks (www.divxnetworks.com).
SecureMedia's patented Encryptonite technology enables persistent protection of digital content from the point of content origination to the point of consumption. Encryptonite was designed specifically to address the security requirements of leading content owners for distribution of their media assets through broadband IP networks. Encryptonite can secure virtually any media type and format without adding any measurable overhead to the content file itself. SecureMedia provides the Encryptonite technology in an easy-to-use Software Development Kit package.
“We are very pleased to be extending our business association with DivXNetworks where our core encryption technology will be applied to the high quality video distributed through the Open Video System, said Fred Ellis, CEO of SecureMedia. Our implementation with DivXNetworks reflects the open platform, media agnostic nature of our Encryptonite security solutions.
About DivXNetworks
DivXNetworks is a leading technology company that enables the rapid proliferation of video content over Internet Protocol (IP) networks by combining the lightweight, ubiquitous access of the Internet with DVD-quality video performance. The company’s approach is built upon the success of the DivX™ codec, a leading standard for MPEG-4 video distribution with over 60 million users worldwide, and the DivX Open Video System, a next-generation content delivery system that provides unsurpassed aggregation, promotion, and distribution of video content for mass markets. DivXNetworks is headquartered in San Diego, California, with a satellite office in Los Angeles. For more information about DivXNetworks, visit http://www.divxnetworks.com.
About SecureMedia, Inc.
SecureMedia, www.securemedia.com, is a leading provider of open platform, media agnostic encryption and rights management solutions for the delivery of video-on-demand and other digital content over broadband IP networks. The Company provides a range of content security solutions from the comprehensive Encryptonite Systemä digital rights management solution to software toolkits, hardware cores and plugins for third party media delivery systems. SecureMedia’s customers represent industry leaders and include NTT, Sumitomo, DivXNetworks, Equator Technologies, Picosoft and RealNetworks. SecureMedia has offices in Boston, San Francisco and Auckland, New Zealand with a representative in Tokyo, Japan.