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11.21.01 IBOC DAB Benefits Will Be Few
One Observer Says ‘Pay No Attention to That Man Behind the Curtain’
by Aaron "Bishop" Read
I belong to a few online mailing lists. Recently, a well-meaning fellow on one radio group asked for opinions on what radio would be like in five or 10 years, what with digital radio and IBOC looming.
Hoo-boy. I steeled myself for the usual onslaught of e-mail.
If you know me, you know I’m opinionated. ("No, really?" my cube-neighbor pipes up. I smack him with my Nerf football). Also, I tend to join lists that attract folks like myself.
Not surprisingly, the posts flooded in. Also not surprisingly, the majority was pessimistic about the viability of IBOC.
"The audio quality just isn’t there." "The cost of conversion is too high." "The delay is too great." The usual suspects, if you will.
But then someone hit the magic answer: "The public won’t buy the receivers because there’s nothing better about IBOC for them."
Ahhhh. Give that man a cigar.
Benefits
It’s a question that must be asked before any business venture is started. Not "why is a customer going to buy this," but "why isn’t a customer going to buy this?"
Greg McLemore, founder of Pets.com, are you listening?
So what if IBOC is digital radio, anyway? Didn’t we learn our lesson from AM stereo? Didn’t Eureka flop in Europe?
Well, it’s a lot of extra bandwidth channels, so you could offer more services!
Hmmm, wait a minute. What exactly could we offer here?
Well, how about a national system that automatically switches from station to station to keep the same genre on (i.e., always keep the top 40 hits goin’ as you cruise from Boston to L.A.)? That’d be nice.
Hmmm, don’t think so; the system might switch a listener to a nearby competitor. Okay, scratch that idea.
Well, we could show cool announcements like "Call in and win!" Yeah, that’s cool. Hmmm, but it’s yet another thing to take my eyes off the road.
I live in Boston, which is right next door to Cambridge, where the lovable Click and Clack of NPR’s "Car Talk" have helped push through a ban on the use of cellphones while driving. I can see them choking in between their cackles when they hear about displays on a radio.
Starting to see a pattern here?
Well, Ibiquity, the surviving IBOC proponent, tells us IBOC will sound better! There we go, a real improvement!
Err ... wait a minute, FM radio already sounds pretty good. And here’s the real rub: it won’t sound any better in the car.
The numbers don’t lie: morning and afternoon drive are the main times people listen to most stations. And they’re in their cars, a notoriously poor acoustical environment.
So how will they tell the difference? They can’t. Jeez, I can only listen to my MiniDiscs in my car because they sound so awful on my home stereo, but fine when I’m on the road.
Speaking of which, haven’t we all noticed how ridiculously overprocessed most FM stations are these days? I listen to my local rocker to lose weight. After 20 minutes, I’m so fatigued I feel like I ran 10 miles.
How can they get away with it? Because most cars are so loud to begin with that you can’t possibly hear the audio loss from over-processing. But then why do they do it?
"Well hell, we gotta sound louder than the other guys," screams the PD. And God help us, but satellite radio’s coming down from above like the meteors in "Deep Impact" and they’re digital, too!
Keep up with the Joneses
Ahhhh, now there’s a reason to go to IBOC – because your GM / PD / SM / SA / VI (Village Idiot) heard the other guy is doing it, and if they’re digital, then they must be better, right?
Yes, I can hear you groaning now, and I feel your pain. I know more than a few of you engineering readers have installed a knob that does nothing at master control and pantomined turning the knob in the presence of the PD because he or she insists your station doesn’t have enough (pick one) "funk," "punch," "jazz," "life," "rock-n-roll," "presence," "awakeness" (yes, I have actually heard that one), "buzz," "loudness," or "that thing."
Oops, I just gave away our secret, didn’t I? Sorry, guys.
So what does this all boil down to?
I say IBOC is boiling down to something even my dog wouldn’t eat for most FM stations. Also it is a potential death knell for Class D, LPFM and small Class A stations that can’t foot the steep bill for a digital transmitter. Rosy picture, eh?
Sound like I’m overlooking someone? Nope, I haven’t forgotten AM stations. They’re about the only group I see benefiting from this. And it could be a nifty benefit. Certainly audio fidelity would improve.
We could see a nice resurgence of AM radio. Certainly it could be the lifeline that helps save AM from being hit hard by satellite radio … as both AM and FM may well end up be.
Ah-hah. We finally found a benefit that outweighs the detriments for IBOC. Hoo-rah!
I guess only time will tell, eh? Because this is where the curmudgeon behind the curtain puts away his crystal ball and gets back to pretending to work.
Aaron Read isn’t an engineer, but he plays one on TV. He says he spends far too much time at WBRS(FM) in Waltham, Mass., and Allston Brighton Free Radio instead of getting some real work done. Reach him at aread@speakeasy.net.
RW welcomes other points of view
To Beat the Cascading Bogeyman
With IBOC Coming, and More Codecs Than Ever Already in Use, Radio Struggles to Preserve Decent Sound
by Daniel G.P. Mansergh
What do you do when an audio feed has been stomped on several times before it reaches your station, and you need to encode and decode that audio even more before your station transmits it? How do you avoid ending up with ugly audio?
In today's broadcast production environment, many stations use digital audio from a variety of sources, much of it subject to different codecs applied to conserve storage space or to reduce the data rate for transmission over links with limited bandwidth.
MP3 files from the Internet, ATRAC-encoded audio recorded on MiniDisc, MPEG Layers II and III over ISDN, proprietary coding schemes for POTS transmission, and soon, the Perceptual Audio Coder employed as the compression technology for in-band, on-channel digital audio broadcasting - all find their way into the broadcast chain, making these perceptual codecs an essential part of the audio production toolbox.
However, applying multiple encode-decode cycles on the same piece of audio can cause significant degradation that decreases with each generation until the audio becomes unlistenable.
Unlistenable audio
This problem of "cascading codecs" is becoming more common, especially at radio stations that produce programs with audio from many sources, leading radio engineers to ask how an audio production and distribution chain involving multiple stages of perceptual coding should be designed.
A trio of presenters addressed the question at the Public Radio Engineering Conference in Las Vegas this spring.
Ken Pohlmann, professor of music at the University of Miami and author of "Principles of Digital Audio," reviewed perceptual coding theory and presented an overview of techniques used by codec designers to encode bit-reduced digital audio.
Ultimately, he said, no coding technique will be able to remove unnecessary bits from the data stream completely without leaving or creating artifacts. These artifacts can add up through serial application of the same or different codecs, creating audible defects.
"The lower the bit rate, the greater the chances for problems," Pohlmann said.
He discussed ways of assessing the characteristics and magnitude of particular coding artifacts. Traditional graphical methods for measuring audio signals are not particularly useful for detecting digital audio defects, he said, because single-tone, multitone or pink noise sources don't emulate the very short duration and narrow frequency bands typical of coding errors.
FFT analysis is capable of measuring the difference between samples of actual source material, but the volume of data can be difficult to interpret consistently, he said. Subjective listening tests are the most accurate way to evaluate codec cascading problems, Pohlmann said, and they have the advantage of accessibility. An engineer with a critical ear can easily set up an A-B test to examine a specific set of codecs.
Pohlmann played examples of encoded audio using two different MP3 codecs. As expected, the audio quality of music as it passed through one codec and then the other degraded gradually with each successive generation until it became unlistenable after the fourth or fifth pass.
The most dramatic examples were of the same codec applied to the same piece of audio multiple times. One of the codecs performed remarkably well, with only slight degradation after each pass, so that the fifth-generation audio sounded fairly close to the second-generation audio.
With the other codec, however, significant degradation was evident even after the first encode-decode cycle, and the audio was seriously impaired after the second cycle. Pohlmann used these examples to demonstrate that not all codecs are created equal, even those based on the same encoding algorithm.
Many perceptual codecs available for computers are written by software engineers, not audio engineers, he said, so users should experiment with products and choose those that perform best with other codecs in your particular broadcast chain.
Ibiquity's PAC
Alex Cabanilla, senior engineer with the PAC Group at Ibiquity Digital Corp., detailed the PAC codec architecture and the subjective listening tests on PAC-encoded audio conducted during the development of Ibiquity's IBOC system.
Ibiquity has conducted limited compatibility testing with cascading MPEG Layer II and Layer III codecs, Cabanilla said; but the company is looking to the users of PAC, both satellite radio and terrestrial IBOC broadcasters, to supply data for further assessment of any cascading problems.
Cabanilla discussed QPAC, a variant of the PAC codec developed by Ibiquity as a studio-side complement to the IBOC transmission system. Ibiquity designed the algorithm to allow storage, real-time audio transport and transcoding to PAC without requiring a decoding and re-encoding cycle, eliminating the possibility of cascading problems at this stage in the signal chain, according to Cabanilla.
Ibiquity's testing indicates that QPAC-to-PAC transcoding allows higher-quality audio than MPEG Layer II-to-PAC or Layer III-to-PAC broadcasting chains.
As development of the QPAC algorithm continues, Cabanilla said, Ibiquity will test QPAC in a variety of real-world applications, including STL transmission, digital storage, content production and satellite distribution. The company also plans to study intercodec cascading problems in greater detail.
Case study
Rich Rarey, master control supervisor at NPR and a Radio World columnist, described a troubleshooting project to demonstrate how adding one more digital codec to a transmission chain can cause audio problems in conjunction with other codecs.
WUNC(FM) in Chapel Hill, N.C., found that a translator in Buxton would transmit severely garbled audio of certain elements within NPR programs, but those elements sounded fine on WUNC. After evaluating and testing the signal chain, NPR and WUNC were able to replicate the problem with a particular piece of audio fed from Scotland to NPR using a G.722 codec over ISDN.
When played from NPR's MPEG Layer II audio storage system through an analog board to NPR's MPEG Layer II satellite system, then through WUNC's linear digital plant and a final MPEG Layer II satellite link to feed the translator, this audio element introduced enough digital artifacts to "break" the second satellite codec, affecting only the translator.
NPR has been more vigilant about the digital coding of audio feeds since the WUNC experience, Rarey said.
Now NPR does not accept audio feeds in MP3 format, because employing this algorithm can lead to degraded audio in fewer generations than does high-bit rate MPEG Layer II.
The presenters agreed that the specific codecs employed and the sequence of their use create wide variations in the nature and severity of audio degradation in a particular signal chain.
Their recommendations for minimizing problems were similar:
* Keep digital audio linear with high bit rates as long as possible;
* Know your codecs. Experiment and test to see what makes them "break";
* When you have to use a codec, keep the compression ratio as low as is practical.
They agreed that further research and development of new or modified coding algorithms optimized for multigenerational storage and transmission signal chains would be the best long-term solution to the cascading codec problem.
Radio World is interested in hearing from readers who have experience with cascaded algorithms, good or bad. Send e-mail to Lstimson@imaspub.com
http://www.rwonline.com/reference-room/special-report/02_rw_cascade_1.shtml
TI and iBiquity Usher in Era of IBOC Digital AM and FM Broadcast Technology at CES
Breakthrough DSP-Based Design Will Speed Manufacturers to Market
for 2003 Receiver Rollout While Minimizing Risk and Cost
TI and iBiquity Sign License Agreement, Demonstrate First
IBOC Receiver Solution With Top Manufacturers
LAS VEGAS, International Consumer Electronics Show (January 9, 2002) - Ushering in the era of In-Band On-Channel (IBOC) digital radio, Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI) (NYSE: TXN) and iBiquity Digital Corporation (iBiquity) this week are demonstrating the first IBOC digital radio receiver solution with five leading receiver manufacturers at the Consumer Electronics Show. The new DSP-based solution will enable receiver manufacturers to incorporate IBOC technology into radios for launch in 2003, which will feature static-free reception and CD quality sound and provide for a host of wireless data services. Visit TI in booth # 13737and iBiquity in booth #7627 at CES. (See www.ti.com/sc/dr1201nr and www.ibiquity.com)
The new license agreement between TI and iBiquity allows TI to use iBiquity's IBOC-related intellectual property (IP) and extends the relationship with iBiquity to develop future innovative product generations. Using TI's performance flagship TMS320C6000ä DSP platform, TI and iBiquity have reduced the number of DSPs from 12 in a test receiver to one on today's development board, making commercial IBOC digital radio a reality.
TI's solution is being demonstrated at CES by Alpine, Delphi, Harman Kardon, Kenwood, Visteon and others. Kenwood, one of the largest sellers of mobile aftermarket CD receivers and home audio/video receivers in the US market, will integrate the TI solution into a new line of digital aftermarket mobile and home receivers that is planned for launch at CES 2003.
"Kenwood is very excited to see this technology advance and become a commercial reality," said Bob Law, vice president of Kenwood USA. "Thanks to the TI/iBiquity solution, Kenwood will be one of the first consumer electronics manufacturers to deliver this revolutionary technology to market at CES 2003."
New Solution Enables Time-To-Market Advantages
By being first to market with an IBOC solution that hosts iBiquity's AM and FM digital radio technology, TI will enable manufacturers to complete their IBOC radio designs in 2002 so they can deliver proven products when broad consumer receiver rollout begins in early 2003.
Listeners will not be required to pay subscription fees for IBOC digital radio content, unlike existing satellite radio services, and the dial positions of their favorite channels will remain the same, allowing broadcasters to retain brand equity.
"We are right on target for launch of the technology at CES 2003, due in large part to the
IBOC DSP-based solution from TI," said O'Connell Benjamin, senior vice president at iBiquity. "The dedicated level of support we've received from TI shows their continued commitment to advance DSP-based solutions for emerging technology products."
Software Approach Minimizes Development Risk
iBiquity and TI have greatly reduced the risk of designing an IBOC radio by implementing the standard in software, as opposed to the more challenging ASIC route.
"Using the new DSP-based solution, consumer electronics manufacturers can develop their products with confidence, knowing upgrades for enhancements and new features can be accomplished simply with new software," said Naresh Coppisetti, TI's digital radio business manager.
Additionally, TI's digital baseband software architecture is compatible with its Code Composer Studio™ Integrated Development Environment technology and the standard tools environment will enable receiver manufacturers to add and customize software applications quickly and easily.
Simplify Digital Radio Designs Today With TI's Free White Paper
TI has developed a comprehensive white paper titled "The Future of Digital Radio: DSP" that discusses the advantages of designing a digital radio with a programmable DSP. It is available today at no charge at www.ti.com/sc/dr1201nr
Texas Instruments Incorporated provides high-performance, programmable DSP and analog-based solutions for many audio segments. TI offers a broad range of audio products with the performance headroom and flexibility in a low power solution for designs, including portable Internet audio players, digital radios, home jukeboxes and home theatres in a box. TI is the world leader in digital signal processing and analog technologies, the semiconductor engines of the Internet age. The company's businesses also include materials and controls, and educational and productivity solutions. TI is headquartered in Dallas, Texas and has manufacturing or sales operations in more than 25 countries.
Texas Instruments is traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol TXN. More information is located on the web site at www.ti.com
About iBiquity Digital
iBiquity Digital is the sole developer and licenser of digital AM and FM broadcast technology in the U.S., which will transform today's analog radio to digital, enabling radically upgraded sound and new wireless data services. The company's investors include 14 of the nation's top radio broadcasters, including ABC, Clear Channel and Viacom; technology companies Harris, Lucent, Texas Instruments and Visteon; and leading financial institutions, such as J.P. Morgan Partners, Pequot Capital and J&W Seligman. iBiquity Digital is a privately held company with operations in Columbia, MD, Detroit, MI and Warren, NJ. For more information, visit www.ibiquity.com.
Napa DAV398 digital FM mp3 player
http://www.amaxhk.com/products/napa/398/dav398.htm.
IBOC Digital AM and FM Technology Launch
Transcript of NAB 2002 Press Conference
NAB 2002, Las Vegas, Nevada (April 8, 2002)
David Salemi:
I’m very delighted that so many of you were able to join us today on this special occasion, which marks one of the most important milestones of radio broadcast history. I’m Dave Salemi, Vice President of Marketing, for iBiquity Digital Corporation. It’s my pleasure to welcome you this morning to our press conference announcing the official launch of IBOC AM and FM broadcast technology.
Let me take a moment to go over some show logistics. In the back of the room, there are press kits, which you are free to take. Also press releases have been posted to our website at www.ibiquity.com. As well, there are refreshments at the back of the room, help yourself.
iBiquity’s booth is located at L-2475, as you’re coming across from the Hilton into the radio hall, we are right there.
We have prototype demonstrations in our booth from several receiver-manufacturing partners: Kenwood, Visteon, Harman/Kardon, and JVC, receiving live broadcasts from Las Vegas stations, KLUC-FM and KSFN-AM.
Our president Bob Struble will be on a panel tomorrow, Going Digital to IBOC, hosted by Paul McLane, editor of Radio World, tomorrow morning at 10:30am.
iBiquity will also present four technical papers. Information is provided in the media advisory, located in the press kit.
Following our press conference today, you will have the opportunity to meet with our partners, Harris, Broadcast Electronics, and Nautel, on the exhibit floor, showcasing commercial IBOC Exciters now available to Broadcasters. As you’ll hear during this press conference, IBOC for broadcasters is now a reality.
As many of you know, this has been an extensive effort, supported by a number of industry groups. This unprecedented support has been critical to the success that is being celebrated today. It will be equally valuable as IBOC is introduced to the listening public. As in the past, iBiquity will continue to lead a coordinated approach, supporting the commercial launch of IBOC with members of the panel and others playing an important role in this process. During today’s press conference, we’ll ask each of our participants to highlight their role in the rollout of IBOC digital AM and FM. At the end of our discussion, you’ll have the opportunity to ask questions.
I’d like to begin our program this morning by introducing Bob Struble, iBiquity Digital’s President and CEO. Bob has been instrumental in the development of IBOC. First, in his role at CBS, where he headed up early efforts of USA Digital Radio, and later, by completing the merger with Lucent Digital Radio, to form iBiquity Digital. Bob’s leadership is one of the key reasons that we are here today celebrating the launch of IBOC digital AM and FM broadcasting and it is my pleasure to welcome him to the podium.
Bob Struble:
Thanks Dave.
In his introduction, Dave mentioned a few of the key points that I would like to highlight today.
First, as demonstrated by its availability on the show floor today, IBOC is now a reality.
Second, that this successful launch would not have been possible without many companies and industries coming together around a single solution. Because of this unprecedented cooperation and support, we are ready to deliver a technology that will greatly benefit each and every one of these industries, and perhaps more importantly, the listening public.
And finally, I’d like to address our plans to build on this success to seamlessly and rapidly introduce digital radio to the American public.
Let me begin by asking Jeff Mendenhall, Vice President of Advanced Development, of Harris Corporation, John Pedlow, President and CEO of Broadcast Electronics, and Scott Campbell, Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of Nautel to stand.
These are the companies responsible for getting IBOC exciters on the show floor and the prime reason we are welcoming a new era of broadcasting today. Thanks guys, and behalf of all of us at iBiquity, we know you will have a great show and please sell a lot of stuff.
In addition to the commercial availability of IBOC exciters, IBOC has recently crossed another important milestone. Over the weekend, the National Radio Systems Committee, the industry standard-setting body, jointly sponsored by the NAB and the Consumer Electronics Association formally endorsed AM IBOC, and recommended that the FCC authorize the technology for daytime use. The report noted, “IBOC offers the chance to revitalize AM broadcasting with its FM quality stereo reception, and improved immunity from noise and other impairments typical of AM broadcasting today.” The NRSC urged the FCC to move forward immediately with the approval of AM IBOC. The NRSC stated in its report that “by the FCC authorizing the digital services for daytime only, AM listeners will immediately derive the benefits of improved quality and durability with minimal potential of additional interference.” We are planning additional tests with the NRSC for nighttime operation, with the goal of obtaining an endorsement of nighttime later this year.
With the continuing support of the NAB and the CEA, and others who have seen the benefits of IBOC, we are fully confident that our good friends at the FCC will indorse IBOC this summer.
You know, despite all of the recent discussion of new media, one fact is often forgotten. And that is, radio is still a fabulous industry. AM and FM radio today still has unprecedented reach, with 95% of the American public tuning in to radio each week. This is due in no small part to radios unmatched ability to address local concerns, tastes, and needs. Throughout their history, radio broadcasters have demonstrated their ability to address these needs in their programming and have consistently evolved to meet changing tastes. We believe that one of the most important challenges that radio broadcasters face in keeping this industry so vital is a technical one. A challenge to offer the level of quality and interactivity that a generation raised on digital technology has now come to expect. Through the new capabilities that are being brought to market today, I am confident that broadcasters will continue to meet their audience’s needs with even greater success.
Beginning early next year, consumers will be able to purchase a new generation of IBOC-equipped radios, offering CD quality sound on the FM band and FM-like sound on the AM band. In addition, they will enjoy enhanced reception without static, hiss, fades that have challenged radio since its inception. And for those who do not immediately buy digital radios, they will continue to have access to analog AM and FM, because IBOC is designed and has been proven to work seamlessly in conjunction with the existing analog transmissions. IBOC not only offers this radically upgraded audio quality and reception, but also enables new wireless data capability, which will enhance the experience of all listeners.
Throughout its history, localized information has served as a key differentiator for radio broadcasters and will continue to do so. Nearly all stations depend on a mix of local news, traffic, weather, sports, and business coverage to serve their audiences. While the specific mix may vary from station to station, we believe IBOC will enhance all of these services. Through its ability to transmit information such as data and text, broadcasters can now share real-time information throughout the day, without interrupting their regular broadcasts. Something as simple as displaying the artist and song title, or the speaker featured in a call-in discussion can have a significant impact on attracting and retaining listenership. How about customized and on-demand traffic, weather, or headlines? All this and more will soon be available through wireless data transmitted in conjunction with the station’s audio. Advertisers are equally appreciative of a station’s local focus, as it has allowed radio to deliver targeted audiences with unmatched precision. Imagine now the benefits to advertising effectiveness and to a broadcaster’s bottom line, offered by the combination of radio’s strong demographics and the interactivity offered by wireless data. Information for contacting and acting on a specific ad will soon be displayed in conjunction with its broadcast in order to dramatically increase overall effectiveness. Over time, expect to see the development of new receivers that can capture this information for later recall as well as communicating buy orders directly to the advertiser, all at the touch of a button.
The scope of these benefits against their minimal cost might seem too good to be true, but this is the reality that we welcome and are celebrating today. One reflection of the strength of IBOC’s value proposition is the significant long-term support that it has received from the NAB and the CEA. We thank Eddie Fritts and Gary Shapiro (who should join us shortly), the presidents and CEO’s of these great organizations for that critical support, and for joining us today.
In addition, broadcasters themselves have demonstrated their commitment to iBiquity through equity investments by fourteen of the industry’s twenty largest broadcast groups. These groups have all supported the development of IBOC because they understand the importance of bringing digital technology to consumers, both to improve their service and to position themselves against new competitive threats.
John Dille, President of Federated Media and current Chairman of the NAB Radio Board, joins us today, representing radio broadcasters.
We also recognize that broadcasters alone cannot ensure the success of IBOC, and have tried to work closely with a number of other industry groups to ensure widespread consumer adoption. Consumer introduction of IBOC-equipped receivers is schedules to begin at next January’s Consumer Electronics Show, here in Las Vegas. You all may know that during the most recent CES, just three months ago, leading consumer electronics manufacturers, Harman/Kardon, JVC, Kenwood and Visteon, showcased prototype IBOC receivers using chip sets developed by Texas Instruments. Also at CES, we announced agreements with Ford and Visteon demonstrating critical support from the automotive industry for IBOC. In the past few weeks, we have announced that Alpine and Clarion have joined the growing list of companies licensing our technology for IBOC radios. And this morning we issued a press release announcing the support of IBOC by prominent retailers Crutchfield, Good Guys, Tweeter, Ultimate Electronics and the Progressive Retailers Organization.
Joining us today from the retail side, we have David Workman, President and Chief Operating Officer of Ultimate Electronics. To represent receiver manufacturers, we have Bob Law, Vice President of Sales and Marketing for Kenwood, USA, and Hiroakai Takama, Senior Manager of Alpine Electronics. I will introduce each one shortly and ask them to share their thoughts and plans for IBOC digital AM and FM.
One of the key issues uniting all of these groups is their understanding that IBOC receivers will service the digital gateway to the home and auto. Instead of asking consumers to change their current behavior, IBOC offers them the opportunity to enjoy the emerging benefits of the digital revolution, such as telematics and on-demand programming, through a familiar interface, the radio, that has always been an integral part of their lives. One need only look at the rapid adoption of other digital consumer technologies, be it CD’s, cameras, cell-phones, and most recently, and perhaps most successfully, DVD’s, to understand that digital technology is defining the media and entertainment industries in the 21st century. With the launch of IBOC, radio can now claim its seat at the digital table.
Over the coming year we will be working closely with leading manufacturers as well as retailers, to foster consumer demand for IBOC. As part of this effort, we have identified six target markets: New York, Miami, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Seattle, to focus the initial launch of IBOC. With each of these markets, we are working closely with all stakeholders: automakers, broadcasters, manufacturers and retailers to ensure that all is in place for a successful roll out. We will certainly hear more of this in the coming months, so stay tuned.
Let me now continue, by introducing someone who needs no introduction in these halls. Eddie Fritts began his 20th year as President and CEO of NAB this fall. During this time, NAB has become one of the most respected and effective lobbying organizations in the country. As a former owner of a group of radio stations in the mid-south, Eddie recognizes the value of local broadcaster's involvement of local broadcasters in the nation’s capital. Eddie has been a great and important friend to iBiquity, and it’s my pleasure to welcome him now to the podium.
Eddie Fritts:
Well we are very excited, needless to say, that we are rolling out IBOC at the NAB show. We think it’s appropriate and we are supportive, obviously, and have been for a long time. We talked earlier today about the relevancy of broadcasting in our opening remarks and obviously we have not been found wanting because indeed it is, in our view at least, certainly relevant to the consumers of America. If we can improve that, we can offer better quality radio through IBOC and iBiquity. We think that it will validate us to the broadcasters, who are on the cutting edge, that we are not an old technology, and that radio is for tomorrow’s listener, and we are very proud of that. We think that iBiquity has it right, they are not using additional spectrum, they are able to conform this miracle, if you will, within the same allocated spectrum that radio has, and that is very important when you deal with government regulators and legislators who understand the importance of spectrum. So I think that is really terrific. And the second item that is very good about this process, to me, is that it is going to use, and will not make obsolete, your existing radio. We can have an orderly transition, and we can move forward, and existing radios will continue to “hear” radio, not as good as the IBOC, but they will be able to so that they can make that transition at the natural pace of the consumer. We also think that it is important that broadcasters, as they adopt IBOC, would be able to look at new opportunities for business. And in today’s climate, anything that provides an opportunity for business is going to be welcomed by local radio stations. We also think that it provides us the ability to push back on competitive threats, if you will. We know that the world is going digital. We know that cable, satellite, telephone companies, and computers are all moving into the digital ring, or are already there, for all intensive purposes. Television is moving into the digital arena and for radio to sit back and not have an avenue to be able to step forward, I think would certainly be a tragedy. We are very encouraged and enthusiastic about IBOC and iBiquity and in moving forward, and we think that when the consumer hears about it, they are going to love it and they’ll want more of it. That is something that I think will be very important, at least from the perch I sit, for our industry. So we are very excited about what is going to take place.
Something a little unusual occurred earlier this week. Bob mention that we are participating in the NRSC, The National Radio Systems Committee who are basically charged with making sure that commercial broadcasting and radio today looks at tomorrow and adopts tomorrow’s opportunities. As such, we have some forty people or so, in NRSC. These are highly trained technical people, who are from a diverse group, a combination of CEA designees and NAB designees. As I understand, they came to a unanimous decision. And it is very difficult to get forty broadcasters to agree on anything. But when you get forty technology people, who are also broadcasters who look at this and say “this is terrific” and “let’s go forward”, which I understand is part of this process, it’s important for us to get the FCC to adopt by NRSC recommendations. And we will do anything in our power to help expedite this process at the FCC. I think we have the right climate at the FCC now, we have the right technology, and we have the right product to move forward. So from the NAB prospective, and I know for the radio broadcaster’s job later, or from a radio broadcaster point of view, this is welcome news. This is a great opportunity for broadcasters to step forward and for radio to be able to participate in this digital era. We are pleased that Bob has had the perseverance, if you will, to stick through some tough times to get to this point. You talk about a fellow with a lot of political skills and a lot of negotiating ability, and this is true because his job has not been easy. There have been mountain after mountain for him to climb, and he has done a good job of that. And I think he’s brought us all together at this point in time. I’m excited, and I can’t wait to get out on the exhibit floor and see the products that are available, and to see exactly, and hear, how great this IBOC is going to be.
So, congratulations Bob, and to all of your colleagues, who have worked so hard, for so long to bring this day to us, that we are delighted to be a part of.
Bob Struble:
I hope more of this press conference is good for my ego. And Eddie, there are a few other hurdles to climb, so hopefully we will be able to put those political skills to good use going forward. Thanks as well, your support, and the support of the NAB has been absolutely essential to our IBOC commercialization efforts.
Now I’d like to introduce John Dille, President of Federated Media, and current Chairman of the NAB Radio Board. Throughout his years in radio, John has been very active in industry affairs, in addition to his current role as Chairman of the NAB Radio Board; he previously chaired the Radio Advertising Bureau, the NAB Congressional Relations Committee, and is the former President to the Indiana Radio Broadcasters Association.
John Dille:
Note that I am from Elkhart, Indiana; we are not a test market, at least not currently. Thanks Bob.
When I first heard about digital broadcasting, I thought this was going to be a marketer’s nightmare. Because when we first started talking about it, it was Eureka 147. Without quarreling with the technical aspects of it, I am sure that is excellent, it is the European standard and so forth. But for broadcasters in this country with well-established brands, if you will, the idea of moving to a whole new portion of the band was, to me, a nightmare. Well, thanks to Bob and his folks, and many others, IBOC has turned into, at least as far as I am concerned, a marketer’s dream. We don’t have to do anything, that’s what it is, in-band, on-channel. It’s a simple thing. I’m concerned that all these boxes and things are finished; I’ve got to please my listeners and convert it to money, and stay competitive. And that’s what this does. To me, it’s sort of a digital thermos bottle. How does it know? I don’t care whether it’s hot or cold, I don’t care whether it’s digital or not, it works. And it’s a good quality signal, and that’s a good thing. It provides us a seamless transition to keep our listeners happy, and keeps us competitive.
So Bob, let me just conclude by saying, get out your order book, I’ll deal today.
Bob Struble:
Guys in the front row, he’s your man, we’ve got our business development folks in the back, so John Dille, I think that was just an order. I hope so anyway.
Thanks John.
I am now honored to introduce Bob Law, who is the Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing for Kenwood USA. We started working with Bob and Kenwood in 1998, and in May of 1999, we announced Kenwood was the first receiver manufacturer to join us in bringing digital AM and FM radio to consumers. Over the years, Bob has been a great friend to iBiquity, we have called on him many times to run ideas by him and to gain insight into the consumer electronics industry. Kenwood is licensing our technology for a new line of digital after-market and home receivers that they plan to launch at the Consumer Electronics Show in January 2003.
Bob Law:
Thank you Bob.
You know, it wasn’t so many years ago that one of the most important specifications we published about our products was the tuner specs: sensitivity, selectivity, those types of things. In those days consumers always questioned the tuner performance. Well, for the past few years, I think they’ve come to take that for granted, and it really is a seldom-asked question anymore. And from a sales side, I think complacency for the product like that is not good for sales or good for our industry. We are very excited about the attention that we think digital radio is going to bring back to the category, and about the excitement it’s going to rekindle in the performance of the tuner section of our products and in radio in general. So, we are aggressively working with iBiquity with some of the digital content people, and so on, as we look for new ways to put this technology into our product. It’s been mentioned that we will be introducing hardware to the market in January 2003 at CES in both the home space, and the car space. I think that we look for this as a major opportunity and a major area of growth for us as we move forward. We’ve got significant engineering resources working on it within our company. And have made a really major effort as we move everything to digital. We have either stopped production, or dramatically reduced production probably on every other category of analog product within the consumer audio space. And radio remained one of the last that was going to convert to digital. I think that in 2003 probably 95% of our product line will be digital, and our digital tuners will now be part of it. So, we’re very excited and have enjoyed working very much with the iBiquity team.
Bob Struble:
Thanks Bob. The assistance you have given us has been absolutely critical.
Our next speaker is Hiroakai Takama, of Alpine Electronics. As I mentioned earlier, two weeks ago, Alpine announced it is licensing our technology for integration into receivers for the after market and for automotive manufacturers. Alpine is a tier one supplier of automotive electronics to BMW, Daimler-Chrysler, Ford Motor Company, Honda, Mercedes, and other leading automakers.
Hiroakai Takama:
Good morning ladies and gentlemen. I am happy to have the opportunity speaking in front of you today.
First of all, with Alpine’s ongoing development of multimedia platform concept, we are excited about digitalization of AM and FM radio band. And we think iBiquity’s IBOC technology is the final step in realizing a 100% digital media platform for mobile electronic products. We are looking forward to introducing leading edge radios that will receive IBOC broadcasts in 2003.
And finally, we are very pleased to be one of the first manufacturers to market with this significant technology.
That is all for me, thank you.
Bob Struble:
Thank you.
As I mentioned, to represent the consumer electronics retailers today, is David Workman, President and Chief Operating Officer of Ultimate Electronics.
Ultimate Electronics operates 46 consumer electronics stores in the Rocky Mountain region of the country under the brand names of Soundtrack, Ultimate Electronics and Audio King. David is also a board member of the Progressive Retailers Association, a 15-member retail industry trade association.
David Workman:
Well, speaking from the retail community, I couldn’t be more excited about a new technology to support the audio arena. We have had our share of new technology introductions and over the last few years, obviously, digital has been the driving force in those new technologies. I don’t know what Bob did, but now we have a new game to play where we don’t have competing standards, we don’t have a lot of confusion for the consumer. What we have is just a clear benefit and technology which we can take forward into the consumer marketplace.
We look forward, from the retail side, to work both with our manufacturing partners, as well as the local station groups, as we are a very large advertiser in the radio medium, to producing “consuminars” (consumer seminars) in those local markets to where we could get product in front of the consumer. With the track record that other digital products have had, we expect a very rapid adoption on the part of the consumer, assuming our manufacturing partners support us with product and the station groups support the local broadcast with digital signals. So, we’re very excited about it and look forward to a very prosperous couple of years ahead.
Bob Struble:
Thanks.
We were expecting, and still are expecting, Gary Shapiro, the head of the CEA, to stop by, he had another commitment.
Rather than wait for him now, what we would like to do is open it up for questions. Eddie’s got another engagement at 11:30, so, if you have questions for him, you might want to get them out of the way first. And I’m not sure if we have phone-in capability, but we’d like to take the questions from the floor here first. I guess we probably want you to step to the mike and read the questions there, because I think we are recording.
Why don’t you say who you are, too, as you ask?
Question One:
Hi, my name is [Marge Costello], CE Online News.
If I could address this question to the folks from CE hardware and retail community: Dave, you said that there wouldn’t be confusion among consumers and Bob, I know that Kenwood is supporting Sirius Satellite Radio, and Alpine is also involved in support for XM Radio right? Don’t you think that there will be some confusion in the mind of the consumer with all of these digital radio systems? I guess that’s a broad question, and secondly, as two manufacturers and retailers supporting satellite radio, how are you going to draw a distinction between what iBiquity wants to launch, and what you are supporting in the satellite radio field?
David Workman:
I’ll take the first shot.
I think that satellite radio companies really are marketing choice, channel count, but it really is a digital story. And obviously, iBiquity is marketing digitalization of the local stations that we are all very familiar with. The key, I think, in terms of the confusion statement that I mentioned, is that you have one standard in the market. Customers freeze up, basically, when they think that they can make a wrong choice relative to a digital product. And here, we are going to have one platform that will basically convert, seamlessly, the local market broadcasters over to a digital standard. So, I think that satellite radio, actually, I see these two products working very compatibly with each other, expanding the consumer awareness of digital broadcast. And one, obviously, is being marketed more on choice, but with a monthly fee, and the other, of course, is the free radio that we have known and loved for years. But, the fact is, is that it’s digital, and of course Bob and Hiro here will do the best they can to make sure that it’s seamless on the product side, so that the customer doesn’t have to go jump through hoops.
Bob Law:
I think that from our standpoint as a manufacturer, our job is to deliver the pipe, and then the consumer has to decide what they want to listen to. I think as a manufacturer, we absolutely believe, and I personally believe, that there is a tremendous value to local radio and what that is going to continue to deliver in terms of value to the consumer. And we think that there is definitely a market for both, but many consumers are going to want access to their local information and their local entertainment, and I think this just gives the local, terrestrial, broadcasters an equal footing with the satellite people in terms of the ability to deliver the content and digital quality.
Hiroakai Takama:
First of all, I think satellite radio and digital IBOC will coexist very well. And, I think we need effort, marketing effort, for making a clear understanding in the consumer: What is satellite radio and what is IBOC radio?
Question Two:
Yes, I have a question about what needs to be done to get radio stations signed in order to do broadcasts that would be received by the IBOC. Eddie, or anyone else in the panel who wants to talk about what the radio station has to do to get it running, and how much that costs.
Bob Struble:
I can take that one.
First of all, it’s a whole lot easier than television, which a lot of broadcasters are familiar with. I’ll give you cost figures, and I’ll give you what is involved. You see those three boxes over there on the table; those are the IBOC exciters, which will be marketed by our three manufacturing partners at this show. That is the bare minimum equipment that the station would need to go digital. And what else they might need depends on really, what their infrastructure is. We have used a range of cost for a typical station. At the low end, that would be around $30,000, at the high end, something like $200,000. We believe a fair average is about $75,000. So, again, to draw the comparison, tens of thousands of dollars for a radio station versus millions of dollars for a TV station. And the reason for that is because on TV you have to basically turn out the whole studio. You need new cameras, you need new studio equipment, you need new antennas, you need new towers, you need everything. With IBOC, you roll in, what we have done at our stations, twenty across the country that we have tested on, you roll in two refrigerator-sized racks that would fit in that corner over there, you plug them into the existing equipment. And three days later, or a week tops, you’ve got a digital radio station. That’s because we reuse the existing equipment.
The range is, of course, dependant on what you have. If you have a have a 1950 Gates tube transmitter, and there are still a lot of those out there, that will not pass a digital waveform, you are going to have to buy a new transmitter. If you bought something in the last ten years, odds are it is linear, odds are it is solid state, you’ve got a little bit of headroom, you probably would be just buying an exciter and some ancillary equipment, and be it the lower end of that range. So we think it, from an economic, and sort of, ease-of-transition standpoint, presents the broadcasters a much more effective and easy transition than that which we have seen with television.
Question Three:
And can you talk about; have stations already started doing this? Or when you would expect people to start?
Bob Struble:
Well, we have tested, with our prototype equipment around the country, as I mentioned, probably twenty different stations, commercial stations, have broadcast IBOC as part of the NRSC test program. These guys are just getting ready to sell exciters today, so, commercially no, no one has bought them yet. What we anticipate is that in the second half of this year, you will see broadcasters in those six target markets begin to light up stations. So, we would expect by the end of this year to have a fair penetration in at least those six key markets, and we expect some others as well.
Question Four:
Good Morning. [Gary Merson], HDTV Insider Newsletter. I have two questions…
How much initially will the cost of the IBOC technology add to the price of car as well as home receivers?
And my second question is; is the digital signal more robust in terms of reach and also in intercity, than the analog counterpart of the given station?
Bob Struble:
A couple questions there, and I’ll let the others also comment.
On the cost side, what we’ve tried to do, this was based on some experience with Eureka, as John mentioned which was really, continues to be, a disastrous roll out, because of the price of the receivers that were launched. What you see initially is a $100 dollar increment, in terms of cost, on radios going out. So if a radio were to cost $500 with the analog component, expect to pay $600 for the digital one. That will obviously work in some segments, these guys represent them. It will work in a high-end home stereo, it will work in an after market auto stereo, it will work in an OEM auto. It’s not going to work in a Walkman, or a boom box, or a clock radio. Now the good news is that Moore’s law works and ship prices come down. So, you can expect to see, roughly, a halving of those increments over time, so, 100 becomes 50, becomes 25, becomes 10. And then, what you would see is those lower end segments coming in afterward. So the classic launch will be, classically, those early adopter segments who can tolerate that $100 increment.
The second question you asked was, and guys, you can comment as well, the second question, before we get that, is the reach and the robustness of the signal. Two ways to answer that: in terms of robustness, what we define as performance against interference, the IBOC is much more durable than existing analog. We ran a test called the clicker test, which every time a listener heard interference, they pressed a button that was counted up. What turned out is that IBOC is seven times more immune to interference than the existing analog. So you do eliminate the hiss, the statics, the pops, multi-path goes away. It’s much more durable sound.
In terms of coverage, the answer is it replicates the existing analog coverage, and that is all it can do. Not technically, but because of a regulatory reason. We could easily boost the IBOC power, but guess what, then that steps on the station next door. And so, it’s a regulatory question because the band is so crowded, all you can really hope to do is replicate the existing analog coverage.
I don’t know if you guys had more thoughts on cost.
I’ve noticed my good friend, Gary, has shown up, so I’d like to give him a chance to say a few words. First I’m going to give a glowing introduction though.
A key factor in the success we have achieved to date has been the support of the CEA, under the leadership of Gary. Along with Eddie, Gary has been at the forefront of the profound changes that have swept through the media and entertainment industry over the past several years. Their joint work on behalf of IBOC has demonstrated an effective partnership between the broadcast, and the consumer electronics associations.
As President and CEO of the CEA, Gary has been a powerful advocate for the development of new technologies, and a staunch defender of consumer rights, and he is a key reason for the ongoing success of the annual CES show here in Vegas. Within all of these capacities, Gary’s success is due to his ability to build consensus positions that bring together various groups under a single umbrella that result in formative change.
Gary, you have been a great friend to iBiquity for a number of years, and as such it is my pleasure to welcome you to our program this morning.
Gary Shapiro:
Thank you, and Bob, I really appreciate it. I had a pre-existing commitment, a speaking commitment, here, at a keynote speech, so I, the fact that I showed up late only indicates that I had to keep another commitment. But it doesn’t reflect at all the strong commitment that we feel to iBiquity and in-band, on-channel, digital radio.
It’s been a very long haul, and the stirrings in the room, and when the book is written, we’ll talk about how Eddie and I didn’t used to sit at the same table on this issue. But, now that we do, on behalf of the 1,000 members of the Consumer Electronics Association, including dozens in virtually every radio receiver manufacturer, I’m really thrilled to be here to mark this very, very historic occasion.
Manufacturers, there is no question, are extraordinarily excited to see the rollout of AM and FM digital radio broadcasting come together. I’m happy to report, even as many of the nations largest broadcasters and retailers are announcing their support for this launch, major receiver manufactures are building IBOC capable radios for introduction at our 2003 International CES, which will be held here in Las Vegas, in January.
As digital products continue to drive consumer interest in consumer electronics, we believe that retailers involved in this launch have a tremendous opportunity to add a great new category of products to their shelves, and pull customers into their stores. We have been very active in this, as I indicated earlier, in making this dream of IBOC radio become a reality. We have participated in the National Radio Systems Committee with our partners at NAB, and we have brought together the receiver manufacturers working with the broadcasters and the equipment makers to set the standard for IBOC broadcasting. And, as you, I’m sure have heard, just this Saturday, the NRSC voted favorably to indorse iBiquity’s system.
At this year’s CES, Texas Instruments and iBiquity along with five receiver manufacturers demonstrated the first IBOC digital radio receiver chip set. Manufacturers including Alpine, Delphi, Harman/Kardon, Kenwood, Visteon, and several others demonstrated the new chip set at the CES. We expect these manufacturers will be joined by many others in showcasing new IBOC receivers at the 2003 show. Today’s announcement comes as a result of tremendous cooperation and a huge number of partnerships struck by the parties involved. We see an opportunity to expand upon this cooperation and coordination as we maximize the retail market for this technology. It is the consumers who really are going to benefit from this as they experience iBiquity radio. We look forward to the next step in the commercialization process and that’s clearly the launch of the actual receivers, both mobile and home receivers here next January.
Thank you.
Bob Struble:
Thanks Gary, let us continue with questions, thanks for rushing over, too.
Question Five:
[Jim Boyle, Wakovia], formerly First Union.
Mr. Struble, anyone in the top ten radio groups who haven’t committed formally or informally to this?
Bob Struble:
None that I am aware of, Jim. We are working hard and we would expect that you would see, now that equipment is available, that’s clearly step one. What we would expect you to see over the coarse of the summer, would be a series of announcements with broadcaster X and group Y about station A and station B and market Q and market R, getting ready to roll out for IBOC. So, we are working hard on those deals. I can say for sure that all major radio groups have been working hard to evaluate individual stations, what conversion requirements are going to be, what we need to do to move things along, what those costs are going to be, working them into their capital budgets, so we’ve got every confidence.
Scott [Stull], you might want to help me out. Is there anybody in the second ten who said, “No way, forget it”?
Scott Stull:
No, I think everyone at that level is evaluating it at the station level.
Bob Struble:
And our focus Jim, has been, clearly, on those top six markets, and if you do the analysis on who the station owners are in those markets, it’s pretty much, not exclusively, but pretty much our investors, so we have had long and productive relationships with those guys. And working with them on the transition has been a pretty natural evolution.
Jim Boyle:
Well, the top twenty would give you 50% of the industry, so, that gives you a good ramp up.
Mr. Shapiro, do you have any major holdouts in the manufacturers on this?
Gary Shapiro:
I think manufacturers are generally very excited about this. You know, some manufacturers will with any new technology take a wait and see attitude. Some are very good at getting new products to market, and others, you know, want to sell at Wal-Mart, and they may wait a little longer. But, no one comes to my mind who is not excited about the whole concept of this new category.
Jim Boyle:
John and Eddie, do you think this will be launched by the radio groups for offensive reasons, defensive reasons, or both?
Eddie Fritts:
I’d say both, that’s certainly our plan…
(Tape Change)
…it’s here, and it’s a good thing. We’re anxious to get going. We’ve been waiting for a while.
Question Six:
[Leslie Stimson] with Radio World.
Yesterday, the NRSC endorsed the AM IBOC system for daytime use only. Are AM stations going to want a system that is only good for the day?
Bob Struble:
We don’t think it is going to be just for the day. There is what the NRSC said, and we agreed, and concurred, and thought the action they took was appropriate and welcome, was that with the complexities of the AM band at night, more testing was required. So, we’ve got a program right now going on with the NRSC, with some major broadcasters, to do additional testing at night. That’s going on, we hope that the test program will be complete, and we can submit those results and get the issue behind us through the course of the summer. What the NRSC did say though, and we think this was a great vote of confidence, is, rather than bog down the process and wait for those nighttime results, we know we love it in the daytime, we know it represents, I think their words, a revitalization of the AM band. Let us come forward with the daytime endorsement, so we can keep the whole process moving forward both with broadcasters, with manufacturers, and with the FCC, as opposed to waiting for additional data that we are going to need to make a good determination at night. We believe we will have a nighttime system; we just need to do a little bit more testing. I would like to add though, even as we speak, this is the most thoroughly tested system in US broadcasting history. If you would compare it to some of the testing that was done on high definition television, or on low power FM for example, this has been orders of magnitude more testing. That being said, AM is a pretty complicated animal at night, and if we need to do some more testing, we will certainly do so.
Leslie Stimson:
And you think you can get those tests done by the summer?
Bob Struble:
I think it will be late summer, yes.
Leslie Stimson:
And I had a question for Bob Law and Mr. Takama; are you guys also talking with Sirius and XM about producing combined chip sets for combined receivers? So, AM and FM analog satellite IBOC?
Bob Law:
I think from manufacturing standpoint, ideally, to get to the point where we can combine the different technologies and then allow the consumer to make their decision in the case of the satellite folks, as to which one they want to subscribe to, or if they want to subscribe to either of them, and reduce the overall cost of the hardware to the consumer, that would certainly be the desirable direction to go. I don’t think that is going to happen in the near term certainly, there are a lot of things that need to be done to be able to pull this together. But I think that is definitely the objective of most of the hardware manufacturers and in discussions with the chip set providers.
Leslie Stimson:
How far down the line do you think that will be?
Bob Law:
I think it’s really difficult to speculate exactly. My guess would be at least two or three years.
Leslie Stimson:
Mr. Takama?
Hiroakai Takama:
I don’t have pre-ideas when those technologies will be combined in radio. But all of the media is based on digital technology. That is why we can expect good, efficient, combinations of those combining medias in one kind of platform.
Eddie Fritts:
Free over-the-air radio and television broadcasters will not be charging consumers a price for the end product in IBOC to get digital unlike other technologies, which we think is important.
Question Seven:
I’m [Jimmy Sheffler] with the Carmel Group. Bob, I have a couple questions aimed primarily at you, but I’d welcome comments from the other gentlemen.
On a micro and a macro level, who do you see as your main competitors? Micro being other companies, and Macro being other industry sub-sectors?
Bob Struble:
Micro, I never like to say we don’t have competitors, and we never say never, but, one of the key, defining features of our company is it’s clear that there will be a single standard in radio and all of the industry groups and the regulators of the NAB, the CEA, broadcasters, and consumer electronics manufacturers encouraged us, back in the day when there were multiple companies developing IBOC systems to get those companies together. We have been able to do that, so, iBiquity is now here, where before you had a USA digital radio and a [Lucent] digital radio, and further back, a Digital Radio Express. So, in the field of IBOC, we know of no other IBOC proponents. The competitors, on a more macro sense, I think you can ask yourself who are the competitors to radio broadcasters? Clearly if AM and FM radio would cease to be as vital and vibrant and as widespread as it is today, that would be a problem for our company. We don’t view that that is going to be the case, even in the wildest fantasies or predictions, I should say, of the satellite radio guys, a five or ten percent penetration into the radio market would be a huge success. So, if that were the case, and certainly radio broadcasters are working hard to make sure that it’s not even five or ten percent, let’s just hypothesize that that were the case, we still have that other 90 percent which are still listening to AM and FM radio. So, we think that that is a pretty good space. Broader, and farther a field, if you define radio as we do, as mobile information and entertainment, it’s any number of new services that can provide mobile information and entertainment to folks driving around. So, that’s web-enabled phones, that’s wireless palms, that’s pagers, telematics and cars. What we’ve consistently said to broadcasters is that the world is going digital, it’s probably important that you upgrade your technology to not only compete against those new competitive threats, but also to get your foot in the door of some important new revenue streams.
I hope that that was responsive.
Jimmy Sheffler:
I think it was.
As you took on your new position, August of two years ago, since that time, what would you say has been your single foremost challenge?
Bob Struble:
It has been, for awhile, I mean, after the merger got done, which was a challenge in itself, and of course, we had to integrate the companies, which is always challenging, but happily, in this case, went rather successfully. It’s all about commercialization. We have technology that we know works. It’s been tested on twenty stations over the last three years, we’ve got all kinds of data and mounds of public record that high, that says it works. But, it all works on a $30,000 prototype receiver, and I don’t think Bob Law is going to sell a lot of $30,000 receivers. So, we have needed to take that $30,000 receiver down to a $30 chip. We crossed that first milestone at the CES show when we showed our credit card sized development module working on a bunch of different radios, and we are well on track to make that happen in the near term, as we mentioned, CES next year with our manufacturing partners. For us, it’s really been not particularly sexy, but keeping our nose to the grindstone and executing on a commercialization challenge.
Jimmy Sheffler:
Okay, and my final question is, when you transition from analog to digital, typically, the bandwidth is enhanced considerably. How do all of the players in this field deal with the enhanced bandwidth?
Bob Struble:
In this case, remember again, we are using the same spectrum, so, the fact that digital performs better in a given bandwidth is important to us, but in the initial stage of the technology hybrid, where you have the analog simulcast, you don’t get any more bandwidth. What you are doing is recapturing unused portions of the spectrum, currently occupied by the analog broadcast. So, the fact that digital is such a good performer, has enabled us to pull off that somewhat challenging feat of introducing an entirely new service in the same existing spectrum as the analog, so you really don’t get that benefit initially.
Question Eight:
[Paul McLane], from Radio World. I have a question for John Dille. Perhaps we saw the historic first purchase order for IBOC placed today, but for your group, and others in the industry, if we use iBiquity’s numbers of a rough average of $75,000 for hardware and additional licensing fees, which we haven’t discussed…
Bob Struble:
That’s in that number Paul.
Paul McLane:
That’s in the number, okay. So, $75,000 for an average station, some more, some less. Our industry doesn’t have a great record for adopting expensive technology without a mandate from the FCC. The AM stereo debate comes up all of the time in that regard. So, is this money in your group’s budget, and the budgets of radio stations around the country for the next two years? And, in a time where the economy has been down, and radio revenue has been down, are groups really prepared to spend that money now, to adopt it in time for these receivers to actually use this IBOC signal?
John Dille:
I think so. I mean, for the reasons you cite, and others, it will likely be staged in. But, we’re ready to go. And we will do a portion this year, a small portion, this year, and then put it in the budget for this fall for 2003, and so forth. And I think there will be a significant number of others, and I think that the top twenty groups are into it.
Bob Struble:
Just for comparison purposes, Paul, I’ll probably mess these numbers up, but we can get you the right numbers. What our business plan calls for and what is necessary this year is to get, roughly, 100 stations on the air in 2002. There are 13,000 radio stations out there. 100 stations out of 13,000, I think, is less than one half of one percent. In terms of cost, if you look at it in a revenue basis, if I use the 18 billion dollars of radio revenue, and you do 100 stations times $75,000, I think you come to a figure that is something like point zero one percent of industry sales. So, we would argue that as an initial rollout, and as insurance against some of this new competition, we think that makes quite a reasonable bet. Actually, if you compare them to some of these large numbers, absolutely trivial, in terms of cost.
Question Nine:
Good morning. My name is [Ronald Bakbrosen], I am from Brazil, and I represent the Brazilian Association of Broadcasting and the Brazilian Society of Engineering. I’d like to ask you one question. In the ITU, the International Telecommunications Union, there was an agreement for the development of a common digital system for HF. I’d like to know what iBiquity thinks about development of a common receiver for the IBOC and HF? There are two receivers for separating IBOC digital AM and FM and one receiver for HF digital transmission.
Bob Struble:
When you say HF, you are speaking of the Eureka system?
Okay, let me first update the group on some of the international activity.
The International Telecommunications Union, which in many ways serves as the FCC of the world, has endorsed both our AM and FM systems, as worldwide standards. Note carefully, not the worldwide standard, but as a worldwide standard. This basically means that any country in the world can adopt IBOC as their broadcasting technology, and they will have the full support of the ITU in doing that. There are also other standards out there. Eureka 147 is the European system, which has been up and operating, I think now, for five or six years. There is also a system for shortwave created by the Digital Radio Mondiale. And, all of those are basically digital radio standards.
Will there be integrated radios out there? Our answer would be to let the marketplace decide. If consumers or manufacturers or automakers demand that integration, then we would do it.
A couple stats on Eureka, at least the last I checked, Eureka has been around for six years in Europe. They have sold a grand total of 50,000 radios, 50,000. So the question that we get most on Eureka, and we’ve got good friends there, is, with Eureka such an abject failure, how is it that digital radio is going to be successful in the States? And we think that the advantages of using the same spectrum, the advantages of reusing the existing infrastructure, the advantages of reusing content, will quickly answer that question. But, if Eureka were to take a major turn, and somehow go through the roof, and become wildly successful, yes, I think you would see manufacturers demanding that we build combined radios, and we certainly would endeavor to do that. At this point, we see no reason to consider that. We have enough to worry about getting our own stuff out there, without trying to be integrated with a system that sold about 50,000 radios.
The DRM, by the way, has not come out with their technology yet, so there is nothing yet to integrate. But without losing focus, we believe the international market is extremely important. Brazil is a fantastic example. And our basic premise is that anywhere that there is AM and FM radio, which is everywhere, IBOC is a very viable product. And the same arguments that we have used in the States, a cheap conversion, an easy conversion, a seamless conversion, market-driven conversion, we think those apply in other markets as well.
Question Ten:
I realized I forgot to identify myself on my earlier question. [Katherine Lewis] with Bloomberg News.
I just wanted to clarify, when we were talking about the costs to radio stations, is there any licensing component to use the IBOC technology?
Bob Struble:
Yes, there is a software license, which is paid to us for the use of the system. It’s a small number, based essentially on the station’s FCC fee, so the stations which will benefit more and which are most able to pay, will pay a little bit more. The stations which are non-commercial, or smaller stations will pay a little bit less. If you would, I will give you some average numbers.
There is a choice that the broadcasters can make. If they want to pay us once, full up license, that’s about $15,000, on average. Again, it goes up and down, depending on your station classification. So, it’s like buying your accounting software. If broadcasters, being a somewhat cash-flow-sensitive lot, would like to pay us over time, they can do that as well. And I think those numbers are about $2,500 a year, for a period of ten years. So, we’re not talking about a huge amount of dollars. The major expenditure for a broadcaster on this goes to our friends seated up here, and that’s on the capital side.
Katherine Lewis:
And can you talk about the FCC process? How important is action by the FCC to the successful launch of this technology, and when do you expect some kind of move?
Bob Struble:
There are arguments that can be made, that say because we are using the same spectrum, and because there are no new allocations, and no new licenses required, there does not need to be FCC action. We don’t support that view, but we believe that because radio has such an important position in the national heritage and in the infrastructure of the nation, that the FCC needs to act and set a standard for IBOC technology. It is inconceivable that you could start driving in Washington and have your radio not work when you got to New York because there were different standards out there. So, we believe that the FCC has a responsibility to do that, and we believe that they will.
What we think is going to happen at the FCC is a two-step process. The FCC has already received the FM report from the NRSC. They put that out for public comments, there have been reply comments. The story was universally positive. Everybody basically says, “Yes, we like it” and “Move forward”. That same process will go forward now with AM. The FCC will get the AM report, we believe, next week. They will put that out for comments, everybody in the whole world can say what they think, and then there will be reply comments. And what we expect to happen at the end of this summer is that the commission will come out with a ruling that says: it’s digital, it’s IBOC, and it’s iBiquity, and it’s okay to start moving forward. The last the commission spoke publicly on this, at least on the record, they were considering other options: new band solutions, other things. We expect them to put that all to rest this summer and say, “Yes, it is in band, and it is iBiquity”. We also then, expect them to take a little bit more time and consider the detailed technical rules, which need to be in place to set an actual standard that will go through the same comments and reply comments period, and we would expect by late this year, more realistically, early next year, you will see the final adoption of a standard. So, that’s the plan.
Question Eleven:
Hi Bob. [Mark Roberts, Wachovia Securities]
You’ve been very cautious this morning about setting expectations for the rollout. It occurs to me in looking…
Bob Struble:
My guys would say I’ve been wildly optimistic, but thank you.
Mark Roberts:
This may sound a little bit out of left field, but if you look at other communications networks that involve an infrastructure deployment and subscriber equipment like digital satellite, or digital TV, or cellular, the capital cost of the infrastructure per radio station is quite marginal, relative to those networks. In addition, you are not charging the subscriber fee on the subscription side. So, looking at the mass-market adoption rate of those technologies, it seems to me that this could move much faster.
What is the production capacity per year of your partners per radio station? If the adoption rate accelerates faster than you expect, how many stations per year could deploy the new technology, and how big could the waiting list get?
Bob Struble:
You might want to ask our manufacturing partners, but the good news is that this gang has been through this with high definition television, and there was a substantial ramp up of production in the early stages of HDTV, I think that production is still around, and if our estimates were low, let’s say, and instead of converting 100 stations this year, we converted 1,000, my take would be that this year would be tough because we are still in the first generation of equipment. But, certainly into 2003, we would expect that there could very rapidly be a ramp up of production and a meeting of that need. So, I think this is possible, Mark, if there is a tremendous upside in the plan, let’s say, we have every confidence that on the transmitter side, which is where the bottleneck will really be, those guys will do what they need to do to ramp up production. You know, you’ve got 13,000 stations out there if my numbers are correct, I think we sell, guys in the industry, about 1,000 transmitters a year, 800 to 1,000, something like that. So, we have always assumed something like an eight to ten year transition period. If that were to get done in four to five years, instead of eight to ten, I would hazard a guess that these guys would be able to meet that need.
Anything else?
(Seeing none.)
Thanks for coming, thanks for participating in what we hope is a historic event, and for any broadcasters in the audience, go out and buy!
I will mention again, you’ve got exciters over there, this is the actual commercial IBOC equipment, take a look, take pictures, ask questions.
Thanks everybody!
FUJITSU TEN:
The Eclipse was the highlight of the CES show. They had a large center booth with a car that would knock your socks off with the sound that it would put out. The audio must have been worth more than the car itself. I counted at least fifteen representatives in the Eclipse booth. In a stand alone display, approximately 9-ft. high, three sided, and right in front of the Eclipse booth, was the e.Digital Eclipse powered by e.Digital product number CD5442 that also has global positioning, voice navigation, and was Bluetooth enabled. I talked to one representative, and I guess I was to technical, so he referred me to an engineer who was working with the e.Digital's design. As he was explaining all of the features, I noticed that the voice navigation board on display was made by Pronounced Technologies (no Lucent here) and was the key component to the Eclipse commander that was total hands free with voice command that would integrate all functions of your car, lights, locks, air conditioner, radio, global positioning, and most other functions for your car. Most Eclipse radios come with an E-COM button that you push to talk with the unit, so all Eclipse models with this E-COM functions will have e.Digital inside, which is just about every Eclipse unit out there. Another feature that e.Digital has in the unit, was a WriteBack (patent pending from e.Digital) capabilities, where a five minute buffer will store music or information that you could retrieve. Let's say you hear a song from a satellite radio station, you would be able to record that song on your 10 gig storage Eclipse radio immediately. Did I say 10 gig? This will also have a 20, 40, 80 gig of storage. This unit by Fujitsu Ten and e.Digital is the newest and the most advanced system they have developed together for the after market audio systems (Can you say Toyota?). e.Digital is also supplying the software and the Bluetooth technology to this unit. I remember back in 1999 at the shareholders meeting when I asked if e.Digital was working with Bluetooth and Fred's comment was, Atul Anandpura (VP, of Research and Development) would be in charge of that. Now, e.Digital products are Bluetooth enabled. You will be able to download to your car, music, or other information from your PC, as your car sits in the driveway
e.Digital is scheduled to unveil a new automotive stereo product based on the company's MicroOS(TM) 2.0 technology. The compact HDD-based design is the core of a complete, integrated automotive infotainment system developed with Eclipse by Fujitsu Ten and licensed for sale under the Eclipse brand name. Known as the MP-3 Changer, the system uses e.Digital's VoiceNav speech recognition interface to simplify use and promote safe operation while driving. The MP-3 Changer also introduces the first ever (Patent Pending) Write Behind capability for post signal music/information capture.
ibiquity:
Information for contacting and acting on a specific ad will soon be displayed in conjunction with its broadcast in order to dramatically increase overall effectiveness. Over time, expect to see the development of new receivers that can capture this information for later recall as well as communicating buy orders directly to the advertiser, all at the touch of a button.
Clarion to offer IBOC Digital AM and FM Radios
Leading Developer of In-Car Entertainment Systems and iBiquity Finalize License Agreement
Columbia, MD and Warren, NJ - (April 4, 2002) - iBiquity Digital Corporation, the sole developer and licenser of digital AM and FM broadcast technology in the United States, and Clarion Co. Ltd., an industry leader in the fast-moving field of in-car entertainment, announced today that Clarion has licensed iBiquity’s IBOC (In-Band On-Channel) AM and FM digital broadcast technology. Clarion will incorporate iBiquity technology into mobile receivers slated for launch at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in January 2003. Clarion will also incorporate IBOC technology for availability to automakers in 2004. Clarion supplies in-car entertainment systems to GM, Ford, Nissan and other leading automakers.
”IBOC’s digital audio and wireless data capabilities are a perfect fit with the radio and telematics products we are developing,” said Dr. Minagawa, Director and General Manager of R&D Division of Clarion. “In addition to exceptional audio, the technology will enable a host of new multimedia options in the vehicle, such as delivering traffic information on demand, enabling a visual component to radio for backseat listeners, and much more.”
Fujitsu Ten and iBiquity Digital Ink Technology Development and Marketing Deal
Agreement Furthers iBiquity Digital’s OEM Relationships and Hastens Advent of AM and FM Digital Radio
Detroit, Convergence 2000, (October 16, 2000) – iBiquity Digital, the leading provider of digital AM and FM radio broadcast technology in the U.S., and Japan based Fujitsu Ten, a leading automotive receiver manufacturer, today announced they have signed a Joint Technology and Marketing Development Agreement.
Under the terms of their agreement, the companies have agreed to further the implementation of iBiquity Digital’s AM and FM digital radio broadcast technology, iDAB™, and work together to develop a product marketing and technology development plan for Fujitsu Ten digital radio receivers.
Today, radio in the United States is broadcast using analog signals. iBiquity Digital’s iDAB technology will enable AM and FM broadcasters to transmit a digital signal capable of integrating CD-quality audio with crystal clear reception and wireless data signals. This integrated audio and data transmission capability will enable a variety of consumer applications, such as station and program content, stock and news information, local traffic and weather, and much more.
“This agreement is a big step in the direction of supplying our iDAB technology to auto manufacturers,” said Robert J. Struble, President and CEO of iBiquity Digital. “Fujitsu Ten is a leading supplier of mobile automotive radio products and we are very pleased that they have chosen to partner with iBiquity in bringing this next generation of AM and FM radio, with its enhanced sound quality and exciting new technology and applications, to America’s driving public.”
“iBiquity Digital, with its iDAB broadcasting technology, is a major force in the revolution of in-vehicle entertainment and information services,” Tatuo Ito, Department General Manager, Research & Development Department, Fujitsu Ten. “We are delighted to team with iBiquity Digital in the development of radio receivers for seamless digital broadcasts of high-quality audio entertainment and unprecedented new services.”
About Fujitsu Ten
Fujitsu Ten (http://www.fujitsu-ten.co.jp/english/) is one of Japan’s leading automotive components companies.Ê Fujitsu Ten manufactures and sells mainly automobile related equipment, including audio-visual products, car electronic devices, mobile communications radios and intelligent transportation systems. The Fujitsu Ten head office and main plant are located in Kobe with additional plants and sales offices located throughout Japan. The company also has offices in the United States, Europe, Singapore, Philippines, China and Australia.
About iBiquity Digital
iBiquity Digital is a technology developer whose mission is to develop and commercialize digital radio solutions, including its iDAB digital radio broadcasting and PAC™ audio compression technologies, that will transform the terrestrial radio industry from being primarily providers of audio-only analog to being providers of high quality digital audio and data services. In addition, PAC will be incorporated into XM Satellite Radio’s Satellite Digital Audio Radio System (SDARS).
iBiquity Digital was formed from the August 2000 merger of leading AM and FM digital radio broadcasting developers Lucent Digital Radio and USA Digital Radio. The company is privately held with operations in Columbia, MD and Warren, NJ.
iBiquity Digital’s investor group serves as a major source of guidance and support. The broad investor coalition includes 15 of the nation’s largest radio broadcasters, and other prominent technology, media and investment companies: ABC, Inc., New York (NYSE:DIS); Allbritton New Media, Inc., Washington, DC; AMFM, Inc., Dallas, (NYSE:AFM); Beasley Broadcast Group, Inc., Naples, Florida (NASDAQ: BBGI); Bonneville International Corporation, Salt Lake City; Chase Capital Partners, New York, an affiliate of Chase Manhattan Corporation (NYSE:CMB); Citadel Communications Corporation, Las Vegas (NASDAQ:CITC); Clear Channel Communications, Inc., San Antonio (NYSE:CCU); Cox Radio, Inc., Atlanta (NYSE:CXR); Cumulus Media, Inc., Milwaukee (NASDAQ:CMLS); DB Capital Partners, New York; Emmis Communications, Indianapolis (NASDAQ:EMMS); Entercom Communications Corporation, Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania (NYSE:ETM); Flatiron Partners, New York; Gannett Company, Inc., Arlington, Virginia (NYSE:GCI); Granite Ventures, LLC., San Francisco; Grotech Capital Group, Timonium, Maryland; Harris Corporation, Melbourne, Florida (NYSE: HRS); Hispanic Broadcasting Corporation, Dallas (NYSE:HSP); J&W Seligman & Co. Incorporated, New York; Lucent Technologies, Murray Hill, New Jersey (NYSE:LU); Pequot Capital, Westport, Connecticut; Pictet, Geneva, Switzerland; Radio One, Inc., Lanham, Maryland (NASDAQ:ROIA); Regent Communications, Inc., Covington, Kentucky (NASDAQ:RGCI); Riggs Capital Partners, LLC, Washington, DC; Saga Communications, Inc., Grosse Pointe, Michigan (AMEX: SGA); TI Ventures, Dallas; Viacom Inc., New York (NYSE:VIA); Visteon Corporation, Dearborn, Michigan (NYSE:VC); Waller-Sutton Media Partners, New York; Whitney & Co., Stanford, Connecticut; and Williams, Jones & Associates, Inc., New York.
Lucent Technologies and e.Digital Corp. select SanDisk to supply CompactFlash cards for portable EPAC Internet music player
FOR RELEASE WEDNESDAY MAY 26, 1999
MURRAY HILL, NJ and SAN DIEGO, CA - Lucent Technologies (NYSE: LU) and e.Digital Corporation (OTC: EDIG) announced today that they have selected SanDisk Corporation (NASDAQ:SNDK) to supply its 32-megabyte (MB) CompactFlash Card memory for use in their new secure EPAC (Enhanced Perceptual Audio Coding) Internet music player.
Lucent and e.Digital are jointly offering to OEM customers licensing of their reference design as well as the handheld solid-state music player. A 32-MB SanDisk CompactFlash (CF) Card will be included with each EPAC Internet music player sold.
More than 165 products with specific slots for solid-state CF cards have been introduced thus far, making it the most popular small-size storage card in the industry. SanDisk, which invented CompactFlash, sells CF cards in capacities ranging between 4 and 96MB.
The new pocket-sized EPAC Internet music player will provide CD-transparent quality play back and could include an FM radio tuner. Initially, the device will be bundled with one 32MB CompactFlash card and OEM customers will offer additional 32MB retail CompactFlash cards as accessories.
The new EPAC Internet music player is scheduled to ship to OEM customers in the fourth quarter of 1999. Also included with each sale will be EPAC encoding software and a CompactFlash card reader/writer external drive for desktop computers. SanDisk branded flash cards are sold in over 10,000 stores worldwide.
"We chose SanDisk as our flash memory card vendor because of their leadership in this market," said Joyce Eastman, director of audio initiatives in Lucent's New Ventures Group. "We are taking the current generation of portable players to the highest levels of audio quality and design.
"Together with e.Digital and SanDisk, we have designed an EPAC player that offers excellent sound quality and copyright protection," she said.
Fred Falk, president of e.Digital, said, "We are pleased to expand our ongoing relationship with SanDisk, the leader in flash memory for data storage. We chose the CompactFlash card for its small form-factor, high capacity, serialization feature, simple interface and reliability. Our SDMI (Secure Digital Music Initiative)-compliant music player features our patented MicroOS™ flash file system and plays music stored in Lucent's EPAC audio format, which offers high security features and excellent sound quality."
"With SanDisk CompactFlash being selected as the storage media for the EPAC music player, we are continuing to establish a strong foothold in the Internet music player market," said Nelson Chan, vice president of marketing at SanDisk.
"SanDisk has worked very closely with Lucent Technologies and e.Digital to establish a reference design, which we believe will spark new design wins for our CompactFlash card. We are pleased to be working with market innovators like e.Digital and Lucent and plan to continue this relationship for future products in this market," he said.
"Market research firms project that more than one million Internet music players will be sold next year, followed by sales of about eight million units the following year. Both our CompactFlash and MultiMediaCard are ideal storage solutions for these ultrasmall Internet music players. Both cards also include SanDisk's unique serialization, which provides copyright protection," Chan said.
Lucent Technologies, headquartered in Murray Hill, N.J., designs, builds and delivers a wide range of public and private networks, communications systems and software, data networking systems, business telephone systems and microelectronic components. Bell Labs is the research and development arm for the company. For more information on Lucent Technologies, visit the Web site at http://www.lucent.com.
e.Digital Corporation offers an engineering partnership for the world's leading electronics companies to link portable digital devices to PC's and the Internet. Engineering services range from the licensing of e.Digital's multi-patented MicroOS™ file management system to custom software and hardware development and manufacturing services. For more information on e.Digital, visit http://www.edig.com.
SanDisk Corporation, the world's largest supplier of flash data storage products, designs, manufactures and markets industry-standard, solid-state data, digital imaging and audio storage products using its patented, high density flash memory and controller technology. SanDisk is based in Sunnyvale, CA. Its SanDisk's Web site/home page address: http://www.sandisk.com.
LUCENT TECHNOLOGIES: Lucent and Lydstrom to jointly develop next-generation home audio recording device
July 5, 1999
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MIDDLETOWN, N.J., M2 PRESSWIRE via NewsEdge Corporation : Lucent Technologies (NYSE: LU) today announced that it will license its Enhanced Perceptual Audio Coder (ePAC) to Lydstrom, Inc. to use in a new personal media storage device which is capable of storing the equivalent of 5,000 compact discs. The device from Lydstrom, which will be available in December, 1999, is targeted at the growing market for networked home entertainment systems. The device will allow families to effectively manage and catalog various types of media, particularly current CD collections and audio downloaded from the Internet.
The Lydstrom system will use ePAC to compress Internet music at a rate of 11 to 1, delivering the highest quality Internet music in the industry. Users will be able to retrieve, store, catalog, and play multiple streams of audio to different parts of the home. ePAC is based on the Lucent Perceptual Audio Coder (PAC), the highest-quality digital audio codec in the industry. ePAC is used in an Internet music initiative that the Lucent New Ventures Group has developed. Lucent recently announced that ePAC will be used in a reference design for a handheld device that e.Digital, based in San Diego, will develop for December, 1999 delivery to consumers.
"The home entertainment industry realizes the benefits of Internet-driven content and Lydstrom is capitalizing on the growing need for consumer-friendly devices that can address the need for Internet/PC/home stereo convergence, " said Rachel Walkden, director of audio initiatives for Lucent's New Ventures Group. "The quality benefits of ePAC over competitive solutions become even more apparent when the music is played through a home stereo."
"Listening to Internet music is no longer confined to the PC-centric world. We've developed a next-generation audio player that delivers on-demand entertainment in an extremely intuitive manner," said Rahul Shah, president of Lydstrom. "The ePAC coder helps us to create a listening experience that has never occurred before. Now, the music lover is closer to having a virtual on- demand universal music library than ever before."
Lucent's New Ventures Group has been developing opportunities for audio technologies developed at Bell Labs, and has been working closely with the music industry. Lucent's New Ventures Group is a founding member of the Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI), the worldwide recording industry's effort to develop an open, secure access system for digital music.
ePAC is a new version of the Lucent Perceptual Audio Coder (PAC) developed by Bell Labs, the research and development arm of Lucent Technologies. PAC is an audio compression algorithm with the highest-quality audio at the lowest bit rates. At 128 kilobits per second, ePAC offers CD-transparent stereo sound. ePAC uses psychoacoustic modeling - that is, a representation of how humans hear sound - to compress music in a way that is not noticeable to the ear. Music is compressed at a rate of 11 to 1, thus reducing the transmission time/bandwidth and storage by the same ratio, while still retaining its fidelity. Several recent improvements in ePAC have pushed its performance levels to new heights, including: ePAC's improved quantization and coding, allowing higher quality audio at lower bit rates, and ePAC's improved psychoacoustic modeling from Bell Labs research, which provides CD-transparent sound at 128 kbps.
ePAC's variable bit rates and superior audio quality allow the coder to be used in multiple bandwidth applications. PAC was recently rated the best performing audio coding technology in a class of five tested in independent trials by Moulton Laboratories. In this test, PAC at 96 kbps outperformed the MPEG-2 Advanced Audio Coder (AAC). At 96 kbps, PAC also outperformed AAC at 128 kbps based on a repeatable statistical score. PAC is a technology which is supported across broad applications by Lucent. For example, Lucent Digital Radio (www.lucent.com/ldr), a wholly-owned venture of Lucent Technologies, will use PAC in its In-Band On-Channel (IBOC) digital audio broadcast (DAB) system. Lucent Technologies' famed research and development arm, Bell Labs, has been at the forefront of technology for the music industry for decades, with the introduction of sound for motion pictures in 1926; the invention of stereo recording in 1933; the invention of the transistor in 1947; the introduction of computer-synthesized music in the 1950s; the introduction of psychoacoustics in the 1960s; sub-band coding of audio in the 1970s; the introduction of linear predictive coding in the 1980s, and the Perceptual Audio Coder in the 1990s.
Lydstrum, Inc, with offices in Boston, MA and Arlington, VA, was formed to address the growing need for media management solutions in the home. For more information on Lydstrum, visit our Web site at http://www.lydstrom.com. For investment opportunities, please e-mail investors@lydstrom.com or call Sourav Goswami at 703-465-9558. Lucent Technologies, headquartered in Murray Hill, N.J., designs, builds and delivers a wide range of public and private networks, communications systems and software, data networking systems, business telephone systems and microelectronic components. Bell Labs is the research and development arm for the company. For more information on Lucent Technologies, visit the company's Web site at http://www.lucent.com.
Harris Corporation to Showcase "Radio Station of the Future" withInternet Broadcasting Capabilities at NAB Radio Show
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SAN FRANCISCO, September 25, 2000 -- The National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) has announced that it will team with Harris Corporation to construct a fully functional "Radio Station of the Future," showcasing Internet broadcasting technology, at the NAB Radio Show to be held September 20-23 in San Francisco.
The exhibit, to be located in the main lobby of the upper level of the Moscone Center convention hall, will serve as a focal point of the show. It will feature several new, professional-grade webcasting products from Harris, integrated by a Harris engineering team, as well as a display of the latest Internet broadcasting technology available from other exhibitors. The purpose, according to Gene Sanders, director of exhibit sales and service at NAB, is to familiarize radio station personnel with currently available technology that can help them thrive in the new world of radio on the web.
"Traditional broadcasters are looking at a whole new set of challenges and opportunities than they were just a few years ago," says Sanders. "Internet radio is a huge, developing market, ready to be explored and exploited, and more companies are getting into it. But it requires new tools, new operating models, and new ways of thinking. We wanted to introduce our broadcasters to what an I-radio studio might look like, and we chose to work with Harris, which is one of the leaders in the broadcasting business, with the ability and wherewithal to make this happen."
Harris will assemble and integrate a complete, webcasting studio, featuring a series of products that can fit seamlessly with a station's existing broadcast equipment, while making it easy for them to add Internet radio capabilities. These include a Harris Pacific Integrit-E Digital e-source Mixing Console; Harris Pacific Ether OR customizable studio furniture, ideal for webcasting or traditional studio facilities; and ENCOde! Streaming Web Encoder software, which, in conjunction with an ENCO DADPRO 32 digital hard drive system, can encode audio output into streaming data for a web server.
Harris' display of studio backbone products will be complemented by a closed-circuit feed of presentations by other webcasting and dot.com companies exhibiting at the NAB Radio Show. Viewers will get a preview of much of the latest webcasting hardware, software and communications devices, which they can then research more fully at exhibitor booths.
"With the increasing interest in webcasting, Harris has committed significant resources to developing a solution for both traditional radio stations and others who want to explore the new revenue streams the Internet offers," says Jim Hauptstueck, manager of digital audio products at Harris. "We certainly appreciate the opportunity to show off our webcasting package in partnership with NAB and other exhibitors."
The NAB represents America's radio and television stations.
Harris Corporation (NYSE-HRS) is an international communications equipment company focused on providing product, system, and service solutions that take its customers to the next level. The company provides a wide range of products and services for wireless, broadcast, network support and government markets. The company has sales and service facilities in nearly 90 countries.
Harris Corporation to license iBiquity Digital's AM and FM Digital Radio Technology
World's Leading Digital Transmission Equipment Manufacturer Will Produce Products for Radio Stations Using iBiquity's Proprietary IBOC Technology
Las Vegas, NV - NAB 2001, Booth R1975 (April 23, 2001) - iBiquity Digital Corporation, the leading developer of AM and FM digital broadcasting technology, and Harris Corporation, the world's leading manufacturer of digital broadcast transmission equipment, announced today at the National Association of Broadcasters convention in Las Vegas that they have agreed on the terms for Harris Corporation's license of iBiquity Digital's revolutionary In-Band On-Channel (IBOC) digital broadcasting technology. Harris will integrate iBiquity Digital's technology into a new line of IBOC transmitters and exciters, scheduled for launch at NAB 2002. IBOC transmission equipment is needed by AM and FM radio stations to transform themselves from providers of analog audio to providers of high quality digital audio and wireless data services.
"The broadcast industry has been waiting for this announcement," said Robert Struble, President and CEO of iBiquity Digital Corporation. "AM and FM radio stations are aggressively preparing to convert their stations to digital broadcasting, and a license agreement with Harris, the transmission equipment market leader, provides broadcasters assurance that IBOC transmission equipment will soon be available."
"This agreement is the culmination of our ten year effort working with iBiquity Digital," said Dale Mowry, Vice President of Transmission Systems, Broadcast Communications Division, Harris Corporation. "Harris looks forward to quickly introducing IBOC transmitters and exciters, building on our leading position of IBOC compatible transmitters currently in the market."
Today, radio in the United States is broadcast using analog signals. iBiquity Digital's technology uses an IBOC approach to broadcasting, enabling radio broadcasters to transmit a digital signal capable of delivering digital quality audio as well as wireless data for a wide variety of consumer applications, including traffic and weather information. In the future, in-vehicle radios, home audio equipment and potentially a host of consumer electronics devices, such as personal digital assistants and smart phones, will receive wireless data transmitted by digital AM and FM radio stations.
About Harris Corporation
Harris Corporation (NYSE:HRS) is an international communications equipment company focused on providing product, system, and service solutions that take its customers to the next level. The company provides a wide range of products and services for wireless, broadcast, network support, and government markets. Harris has sales and service facilities in more than 90 countries. Additional information is available at www.harris.com.
About iBiquity Digital
iBiquity Digital (www.ibiquity.com) is a leading technology innovator working to develop and commercialize digital radio and audio compression technology solutions. Its AM and FM digital broadcast technology, iDAB™, will transform the terrestrial radio industry from being providers of audio-only analog to being providers of high quality digital audio and wireless data services. PAC™ is a highly customizable audio compression technology currently being incorporated into wireless solutions, such as XM Satellite Radio's service. iBiquity Digital was formed from the merger of Lucent Digital Radio and USA Digital Radio. The company is privately held with operations in Columbia, MD, Warren, NJ, and Detroit MI.
iBiquity Digital's owners serve as a major source of guidance and support. The broad ownership group includes 14 of the nation's largest radio broadcasters, and other prominent technology, media and investment companies: ABC, Inc., New York (NYSE:DIS); Allbritton New Media, Inc., Washington, DC; Beasley Broadcast Group, Inc., Naples, Florida (NASDAQ: BBGI); Bonneville International Corporation, Salt Lake City; Citadel Communications Corporation, Las Vegas (NASDAQ:CITC); Clear Channel Communications, Inc., San Antonio (NYSE:CCU); Cox Radio, Inc., Atlanta (NYSE:CXR); Cumulus Media, Inc., Milwaukee (NASDAQ:CMLS); DB Capital Partners, New York; Emmis Communications, Indianapolis (NASDAQ:EMMS); Entercom Communications Corporation, Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania (NYSE:ETM); Flatiron Partners, New York; Gannett Co. Inc., Arlington, Virginia (NYSE:GCI); Granite Ventures, LLC., San Francisco; Grotech Capital Group, Timonium, Maryland; Harris Corporation, Melbourne, Florida (NYSE:HRS); Hispanic Broadcasting Corporation, Dallas (NYSE:HSP); J.P. Morgan Partners, New York, (NYSE:JPM); J&W Seligman & Co. Incorporated, New York; Lucent Technologies, Murray Hill, New Jersey (NYSE:LU); Pequot Capital, Westport, Connecticut; Pictet, Geneva, Switzerland; Radio One, Inc., Lanham, Maryland (NASDAQ:ROIA); Regent Communications, Inc., Covington, Kentucky (NASDAQ:RGCI); Riggs Capital Partners, LLC, Washington, DC; Saga Communications, Inc., Grosse Pointe, Michigan (AMEX: SGA); TI Ventures, Dallas; Viacom Inc., New York (NYSE:VIA); Visteon Corporation, Dearborn, Michigan (NYSE:VC); Waller-Sutton Media Partners, New York; Whitney & Co., Stamford, Connecticut; and Williams, Jones & Associates, Inc., New York.
Does Radio Have a Future?
4.1. Digital Broadcasting
4.2. Broadcasting via telephone
4.3. Speech recognition technology
4.4. Downloading music and MP3
4.5. Impact
Radio has been around for most of the 20th century and it will survive in some form well into the next millennium. Radio, as noted, is a universal information appliance. Radio and television are alike in that regardless of income they are virtual necessities in all households. The same cannot be said for other information appliances, which are luxuries in many households. Radio will remain a fixture in our homes and cars but it will be subjected to more change in the next ten years than over the past one hundred years.
4.1. Digital Broadcasting
Both in Canada and the United States radio stations plan to convert from analogue AM/FM broadcasting to digital transmission, although the two countries initially at least are using different technologies. Both systems will dramatically improve reception and sound quality and potentially increase the numbers and types of services that radio stations will be able to offer.
Currently there are probably as many as 500 million radios in Canada and the US that will not be able to receive these new digital signals. Naturally, there is some consumer resistance to abandoning existing radio equipment. Just over 50% of those surveyed in the 1997 Nielsen-CBC Research QRS national survey indicated they were not very or not at all interested in digital radio, when it was described to them. Only about 1 in 4 said they would pay $500 for a digital radio in their car. It can be presumed that analogue and digital radio will exist side-by-side for decades, unless the government establishes a timetable to phase out analogue broadcasting, making hundreds of millions of receivers obsolete. Complicating things is the fact that digital audio broadcasting will not be the only new technology that will affect radio in the next few years.
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4.2. Broadcasting via telephone
Telephone manufacturers, telecom carriers and others are developing third generation (3G) wireless phones and Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) that have the potential to impact radio in a major way. The first generation of wireless phones were cellular, analogue devices, used mostly for voice transmission. Next came PCS, digital phones that were superior in sound quality and other features, including slightly improved data transmission. The latest upgrade of the second generation phones will use General Packet Radio Services (GPRS) technology which will allow for much improved data transmission, effectively providing wireless Internet access at today's wireline speeds. In addition, subscribers to GPRS will be connected to the Net continuously but only charged for data accessed. The metering and billing for use, which goes beyond the mere logging of connection time, may prove to be the crux of the matter for content suppliers, who must find a way to make this pay. The user's access to specific web pages or content, as well as advertising potentially, must be metered. Content suppliers such as Reuters, The Weather Channel, Yahoo, Excite, Lycos, AOL , MSN, MapQuest.com and Netscape are already developing web content suitable for small screens using Wireless Application Protocol (WAP). Motorola and Cisco Systems Inc. formed an alliance earlier this year and plan on spending a billion dollars to develop an Internet Protocol wireless platform for the next generation of wireless devices. Motorola claims that there will be 1 billion wireless subscribers in the world by 2003.
Sarnoff Corporation and Wave Systems (which has developed an Internet meter-and-invoice chip that would reside in PCs and handheld information devices of all sorts) have partnered to create WaveXpress, an entirely new way of deliveringthe Internet wirelessly. Employing unused parts of a TV station's HDTV signal, WaveXpress will deliver the Internet at 300 times the speed of today's modems. Whatever the technical solution for wireless delivery of the Internet, it translates into localized traffic, travel, weather, shopping, financial and other convenience information being available to subscribers of these services anyplace, anytime.
Nokia, Motorola and Ericsson have formed an alliance and are developing third generation wireless phones and other Internet appliances that will be far superior in terms of their capacity to receive data. In many European countries, where advanced technical standards were accepted by the whole continent several years ago, digital wireless phones that send and receive e-mail are very common. Today the bit rates of cellular and PCS phones are slow and suitable only for short e-mail messages or text-based web pages. GPRS, and especially third generation phones and other portable devices that will come on stream by 2002, will be capable of receiving large amounts of data, large enough to allow 3G devices to connect to audio and even video Internet content in real time. A live, high speed wireless connection to the Internet via a portable device: competition for radio.
Who would want to read messages on a small screen or listen to music, news, traffic or weather information on their telephone? Some of the companies mentioned above and others with a vested interest have asked themselves the same question. Motorola and IBM, for instance are developing MobileGT, a computing platform for cars which will serve as a plug-and-play socket for phones, portable Internet appliances, GPS navigation, etc. Car owners will be able to plug whatever information appliances they choose into MobileGT-equipped automobiles. One such appliance could be CD Radio, a satellite feed of 100 channels of digital broadcast music and other audio, costing about $10 (US) per month, without any commercials. CD Radio has signed agreements with Alpine and Panasonic to manufacture the receivers which will consist of a micro-dish attached to the outside of a vehicle and a digital receiver. The company has also signed an agreement with Ford to provide the receivers as options in Ford automobiles.
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4.3. Speech recognition technology
National Semiconductor, developer of a new Internet-on-a-chip for use in small, handheld Internet devices, is also working on speech recognition technologies. This technology will allow one to give voice commands not only to a car radio but also a telephone or handheld appliance to send and to receive data. IBM, Intel and others have formed an alliance to develop Voice-to-text (VTT) and Text-to-voice (TTV) technology, which will be used in many applications other than the Internet, including medical and legal ones, and which will be ideal for sending or receiving e-mail while driving.
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4.4. Downloading music and MP3
One of the more interesting Internet developments in the past few years is music downloading. MP3.com, the leader in this area, offers web users a vast library of contemporary and classical music, over 500,000 selections, that can be downloaded free to the hard disk of your computer. The sound is near-CD quality. It can be played directly on your computer but several companies are pushing the envelope further and have developed handheld, walkman-type devices which can store the downloaded music, potentially dozens of CDs on one small device, that can be played anywhere. These devices, which don't have a generic name yet can be plugged into a home stereo or a car stereo for better sound fidelity. Diamond Multimedia has had its Rio player on the market since 1998. Dell plans to bundle a new Rio player with a line of its computers. Sony announced its digital music player last month on the 20th anniversary of the Sony Walkman. Sony has admitted that its player can't stop Internet music piracy, which is a major problem for the record companies. Lucent and e.Digital are taking this one step further and developing a copyright-secured system for a handheld digital music player.
Broadcast.com, which was recently purchased by Yahoo for more than $5 billion (US) offers several hundred radio stations on its web site, mostly American, that are now available to anyone in the world with an Internet connection. Few except perhaps true aficionados of a given sports team covered by a Broadcast.com distant station or an esoteric type of music/content will sit at their computer to listen. In the 1998 Nielsen-CBC Research QRS survey only 1 per cent of Internet users said listening to Internet radio or watching video was their favorite activity on the Net. But the number of listeners would increase dramatically if these stations could be received via a portable, handheld device.
AOL/Netscape have signed an agreement to co-market music with SHOUTcast.com, Spinner and Winamp. SHOUTcast.com provides the software and packaging content that allows individuals to program and broadcast their own radio station on the Internet. Spinner offers over 200,000 music selections on more than 130 specialized music channels and Winamp is a music download application with some 60,000 downloads daily.
The very latest Web audio initiative is TuneTo.com which promises to deliver uninterrupted, near-CD quality music over any speed of modem. TuneTo.com's technology will offer personalized channels of music that are monitored individually to include music you like and exclude music selections you do not like, the equivalent of "millions of radio stations," one for every listener. TuneTo.com will be non-commercial and there will be no cost to the consumer, which makes it a very viable alternative to other similar music services delivered via satellite to fixed stereo receivers. There are literally dozens of similar activities in development too numerous to mention here that are going to have an impact on radio in the next few years.
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4.5. Impact
The impact on radio of these Internet developments will be significant, not only because of the technology but also because of the underlying reasons that people use radio.
At the beginning of the century radio and the telephone started out on quite different paths to universal public acceptance and usage. Both have become essential in daily life but the telephone is undergoing a metamorphosis that will give it new functionality. The telephone is becoming, like radio, a wireless, portable device. Simultaneously it is increasing its utility exponentially by allowing subscribers to access digital information which can be either in text, audio or video format. The convergence of several technological developments is turning the plain old telephone into a multi-faceted information appliance, capable of personal communications as well as mass communications.
Over the next decade digital handheld web browsers with or without a phone built in and other technologies will make accessing Internet content as easy as turning on a radio. It is unlikely that many would abandon a programmed radio station for downloaded music files to their desktop PC, even if easily accessed. If, however, downloaded music were coupled with other technology described here, this combination of technologies could eat away at radio's share of our time. For example, a digital music player, loaded with ones favorite tunes could be plugged into a car stereo system to provide music and, through voice commands to a companion 3G phone or PDA, web-generated time, weather, traffic or sports could be accessed when desired.
Internet-delivered music and talk, as current and spontaneous as on the radio, will create new audiences, especially among younger age groups, and draw audiences away from conventional radio.The effect on radio will be significant and smart companies, including many in the radio industry, are already staking out their claims in this new media order.
Lucent Technologies, Texas Instruments and e.Digital announce secure Internet music download device
FOR RELEASE WEDNESDAY APRIL 21, 1999
MIDDLETOWN, N.J. -- Lucent Technologies (NYSE: LU) announced today that it is working with e.Digital (OTC: EDIG) on the development of a new handheld device for listening to downloaded music from the Internet. The new device, to be manufactured by e.Digital, will use the Lucent Enhanced Perceptual Audio Coder (EPAC™) and will employ e.Digital's patented MicroOS™ file management system.
The e.Digital device will use a new class of Digital Signal Processors (DSPs) manufactured by Texas Instruments (NYSE: TXN). The EPAC decoder is commercially available as a port to the Texas Instruments DSP and will be supported by other DSPs in the future.
Unlike other handheld devices on the market that play downloadable music using the MP3 format, the e.Digital device will play EPAC files.
"We are taking the current generation of hand-held players to the highest levels of audio quality and design," said Joyce Eastman, director of audio for Lucent's New Ventures Group. "We have produced what we believe will be a solid design for an EPAC player that offers high levels of security with excellent sound quality."
Lucent's New Ventures Group has been developing opportunities for audio technologies developed at Bell Labs, and has been working closely with the music industry. Lucent's New Ventures Group is a founding member of the Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI), the worldwide recording industry's effort to develop an open, secure access system for digital music. "Our new DSP is a new class of processor for a new market," said Gary Johnson, worldwide manager of DSPs for Texas Instruments. "We look forward to further work with Lucent and e.Digital on making our player a success in the market."
EPAC is a new version of the Perceptual Audio Coder™ - developed by Bell Labs, the research and development arm of Lucent Technologies - which is an audio compression algorithm with the highest-quality audio at the lowest bit rates. At 128 kilobits per second, EPAC offers CD-transparent stereo sound.
EPAC uses psychoacoustic modeling - that is, a representation of how humans hear sound - to compress music in a way that is not noticeable to the ear. Music is compressed at a rate of 11 to 1, thus reducing the transmission time/bandwidth and storage by the same ratio, while still retaining its fidelity.
Several recent improvements in EPAC have pushed its performance levels to new heights, including: EPAC's improved quantization and coding, allowing higher quality audio at lower bit rates, and EPAC's improved psychoacoustic modeling from Bell Labs research, which provides CD-transparent sound at 128 kbps.
EPAC's variable bit rates and superior audio quality allow the coder to be used in multiple bandwidth applications.
PAC was recently rated the best performing audio coding technology in a class of five tested in independent trials by Moulton Laboratories. In this test, PAC at 96 kbps outperformed the MPEG-2 Advanced Audio Coder (AAC). At 96 kbps, PAC also outperformed AAC at 128 kbps based on a repeatable statistical score.
PAC is a technology which is supported across broad applications by Lucent. For example, Lucent Digital Radio (http://www.lucent.com/ldr), a wholly-owned venture of Lucent Technologies, will use PAC in its In-Band On-Channel (IBOC) digital audio broadcast (DAB) system.
Lucent Technologies' famed research and development arm, Bell Labs, has been at the forefront of technology for the music industry for decades, with the introduction of sound for motion pictures in 1926; the invention of stereo recording in 1933; the invention of the transistor in 1947; the introduction of computer-synthesized music in the 1950s; the introduction of psychoacoustics in the 1960s; sub-band coding of audio in the 1970s; the introduction of linear predictive coding in the 1980s, and the Perceptual Audio Coder in the 1990s.
e.Digital Corporation offers an engineering partnership for th world's leading electronics companies to link portable digital devices to PCs and the Internet. Engineering services range from the licensing of e.Digital's patented MicroOS file management system to custom product development and manufacturing services. For more information on the company, visit http://www.edig.com.
Lucent Technologies, headquartered in Murray Hill, N.J., designs, builds and delivers a wide range of public and private networks, communications systems and software, data networking systems, business telephone systems and microelectronic components. Bell Labs is the research and development arm for the company. For more information on Lucent Technologies, visit the company's Web site at www.lucent.com
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For more information, reporters may contact:
Chris Pfaff
Lucent Technologies
908-582-7571 (office)
Email:cpfaff@lucent.com
David Bikle
Lucent Technologies
908-582-4120 (office)
Email:dbikle@lucent.com
iBiquity Digital Announces First Digital Radio Wireless Data Conference
Leading Broadcasters, Radio Manufacturers and Wireless Applications Developers to Meet October 18th to Discuss Digital Radio Datacasting Standards
New Orleans, LA -- NAB Radio Show (September 6, 2001) - iBiquity Digital Corporation, the sole developer and licenser of digital In-Band-On Channel (IBOC) AM and FM radio broadcast technology in the U.S., announced plans to hold its first Digital Radio Wireless Data Conference on October 18th at the Pontchartrain Hotel in Detroit. The Conference is being held in Detroit at the same time as the Digital Car Show attended by major automotive electronics and telematics suppliers.
Today, radio in the United States is broadcast using analog signals. iBiquity Digital's AM and FM digital broadcasting technology will enable today's radio stations to transmit a digital signal capable of delivering wireless data to receivers for a variety of consumer applications, including on-demand news, weather and traffic information, multimedia files, enhanced advertising and much more. In the future, in-vehicle and home digital radio receivers and potentially a host of non-traditional radio receivers, such as personal digital assistants and smart phones will receive wireless data transmitted by AM and FM digital radio broadcasters.
The Digital Radio Wireless Data Conference launches iBiquity's efforts to work with industry participants to define the standards for formatting and presenting wireless data using iBiquity's technology. The standardization effort will enable automakers, broadcasters, radio manufacturers, retailers, and wireless applications developers to design and deploy data applications that can reach a wide variety of digital radio receiving devices.
"The iBiquity team is dedicated to working with broadcasters to develop data services that maximize the value of digital AM and FM radio," said Patrick M. Walsh, Vice President, Wireless Data Business Development, iBiquity Digital Corporation. "The Digital Radio Wireless Data Conference will offer all participants an early look at the types of services enabled by digital radio and allow them to actively participate in working with iBiquity to define the standards for delivering digital radio services."
Automakers, broadcasters, radio manufacturers and wireless applications developers interested in attending the Digital Radio Wireless Data Conference should contact iBiquity at 908-580-7004 to obtain additional information.
About iBiquity Digital
iBiquity Digital is the sole developer and licenser of digital AM and FM broadcast technology in the U.S., which will transform today's analog radio to digital, enabling measurably improved sound and new wireless data services. The company's investors include 14 of the nation's top radio broadcasters, including ABC, Clear Channel and Infinity Broadcasting, a wholly owned subsidiary of Viacom; technology companies Harris, Lucent, Texas Instruments and Visteon; and leading financial institutions, such as J.P. Morgan Partners, Pequot Capital and Deutsche Bank. iBiquity Digital is a privately held company with operations in Columbia, MD, Detroit, MI and Warren, NJ. For more information, visit www.ibiquity.com.
Digital Radio Wireless Data Conference Overview
The Conference will be held October 18, 2001 at Detroit's Pontchartrain Hotel. IBOC Digital Broadcasting for the radio industry in the United States is fast approaching and will bring significant benefits to the 96% of Americans who listen to radio for 22 hours on a weekly basis. iBiquity's digital broadcast technology will offer radio stations the ability to transmit a digital signal simultaneously with today's analog service, all within the existing broadcasters frequency allocation with no changes or disruptions. In addition to compelling improvements in audio fidelity and reception, IBOC also will provide radio broadcasters the ability to transmit new and exciting wireless data services to consumers everywhere.
As the wireless industry continues to experience explosive growth, a number of innovative content, application and service providers are developing solutions that will utilize the wireless data capabilities IBOC will enable. Attendees of the Digital Radio Wireless Data Conference will hear first hand from the leaders in this emerging market. Discussions will center on plans for broadcasters and device manufacturers to deliver valuable services via this robust and efficient data pipe for the next generation of portable and in-vehicle infotainment platforms.
E.DIGITAL LICENSES AAC AUDIO COMPRESSION FORMAT FOR USE IN PORTABLE INTERNET MUSIC PLAYER AND JUKEBOX DESIGNS
SAN DIEGO, CA - August 29, 2000 - e.Digital Corporation (OTC: EDIG) today announced that it has licensed AAC (Advanced Audio Coding) technology for use in e.Digital's portable, multi-codec Internet music player and digital jukebox designs. e.Digital's MicroOSTM-based portable platform including AAC support can be incorporated into a variety of products including portable digital music players or jukeboxes, home and automotive stereos, and functionally-enhanced wireless phones.
Steve Ferguson, e.Digital's Director of Business Development, said, "AAC is one of the premiere music codecs and we consider it to be an important addition to our designs. We continue to focus on developing flexible, user-friendly portable Internet music player and jukebox designs for our OEM customers and licensees. With yesterday's announcement of music content coming from BMG and Universal in the AAC format, we are witnessing a major step forward in the new Internet music industry."
"We are pleased to have e.Digital license AAC for inclusion in their portable music player designs," said Ramzi Haidamus, Dolby Laboratories' Technical/Business Strategist. "e.Digital is well positioned to help hardware manufacturers deliver products that can play music from new and upcoming secure Internet music delivery services."
In addition to higher-quality music reproduction, AAC is being used in conjunction with Digital Rights Management (DRM) technologies, which control the unrestricted copying and unlawful distribution of songs. e.Digital's Internet music player and jukebox designs support multiple DRMs to protect music from piracy.
AAC is the latest audio codec standardized by the International Standards Organization (ISO) as part of the MPEG specification. AAC is a product of the combined efforts of several organizations including AT&T, Dolby Laboratories, Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits, and Sony Corp. Widely viewed as the successor to MP3, AAC technology is being adopted in applications ranging from electronic music distribution, digital radio in the United States and Japan, and digital television in Japan.
e.Digital's Internet audio player platform provides a broad range of functionality along with a flexible design enabled by their patented MicroOSTM file management system. The company has developed a menu of options to provide a quick time-to-market for manufacturers, licensees, or private-labelers interested in marketing devices capable of playing music downloaded from the Internet.
About AAC
AAC is high-quality audio coding technology and the solution of choice for many broadcast and electronic music distribution applications. AAC is compatible with all digital rights management, encryption, and watermarking solutions available today. In independent tests the coding efficiency of AAC proved to be superior to MP3, providing higher-quality audio reproduction at lower bit rates.
AAC provides up to 48 channels of audio, sample rates of up to 96 kHz, and can achieve ITU-R broadcast quality at 320 kb/s for a 5.1-channel audio program. Developed and standardized as an ISO/IEC specification by four industry leaders (AT&T, Dolby Laboratories, Fraunhofer IIS, and Sony Corp.), AAC is supported by a growing number of hardware and software manufacturers. For more information about AAC, please visit the AAC website at www.aac-audio.com.
About Dolby
Dolby Laboratories (www.dolby.com) is the developer of signal processing systems used worldwide in applications that include motion picture sound, consumer entertainment products and media, broadcasting, and music recording. Based in San Francisco with European headquarters in England, the privately held company also has offices in New York, Los Angeles, Beijing, Shanghai, and Tokyo.
About e.Digital
e.Digital Corporation offers an engineering partnership for the world's leading electronics companies to link portable digital devices to PCs and the Internet. e.Digital develops and markets to consumer electronics manufacturers complete end-to-end solutions for delivery and management of open and secure digital media with a focus on music players/recorders and portable digital voice recorders. Engineering services range from the licensing of e.Digital's patented MicroOSTM file management system to custom software and hardware development, industrial design and manufacturing services. For more information on the company, visit www.edig.com.
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Safe Harbor statement under the Private Securities Litigation Reform of 1995: This document contains forward-looking statements relating to future performance, technology and product development that may impact on future results and the future viability of the company. Actual results could be affected or differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements as a result of risk factors such as: future products and results; technological shifts; potential technical difficulties that could delay new products; competition; general economic conditions in the markets in which the company operates; the ability of the company, its customers, and suppliers to solve latent Year 2000 compliance issues; pricing pressures; and the uncertainty of market acceptance of new products by OEM's and end-user customers.
Note: e.Digital and MicroOS are trademarks of e.Digital Corporation. Dolby and the double-D symbol are trademarks of Dolby Laboratories. All other company, product, and service names are the property of their respective owners.
CONTACTS:
e.Digital Corporation
Robert Putnam
(858) 679-1504
robert@edig.com
The MWW Group (for e.Digital)
Matt Messinger
Public Relations
(201) 964-2377
mmessing@mww.com
Dolby Laboratories
Jim Arnold
(415) 645-5116
jja@dolby.com
Kristin Thomson
(310) 203-0550
kthomson@miller.shandwick.com
Sirius Satellite Radio First to Introduce Next Generation of Sound-Enhancing Technology
Company Plans to Activate New System Prior to National Launch on July 1
NEW YORK, June 10 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Sirius Satellite Radio (Nasdaq: SIRI - News), the premier satellite radio broadcaster, today announced that it will introduce a new, advanced audio enhancing technology in time for its nationwide service roll out on July 1.
(Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/19991118/NYTH125 )
This new version of the PAC v4 Audio Codec, developed by iBiquity Digital, is derived from a series of unique technologies that include the latest generation of psychoacoustic modeling, based on a deeper understanding of hearing physiology.
"We are thrilled to be introducing this new technology in time for our national service launch," said Joseph P. Clayton, President and CEO of Sirius Satellite Radio. "Combined with our S>PLEX statistical multiplexing capabilities and our in-depth programming, Sirius subscribers will now enjoy the highest levels of audio quality available in today's radio broadcasting environment."
"We've been working together with Sirius for several months now to develop this new software in time for their upcoming national launch," said Dr. Deepen Sinha of iBiquity. "The result is that Sirius listeners will experience brilliantly clear, rich sound quality that takes full advantage of the tonal ranges in the music offered."
According to iBiquity, this new version of PAC v4 Audio Codec is the most advanced audio compression software available on the market, and a significant advance over the previous generation of perceptual codecs. It responds rapidly to the dynamics of audio signals to provide an 'open sound-stage' effect, with a high dynamic range and stereo separation. It also uses a sophisticated model for encoding audio signal harmonics to achieve higher coding efficiency for complex signals.
In addition to the psychoacoustic modeling, the technology incorporates unique features such as an adaptive filtering capability and efficient multi- stage noiseless coding.
Designed by a research team led by Dr. Sinha, and formulated to work hand- in-hand with Sirius' S>PLEX technology, this new version of PAC v4 provides optimum sound quality for all channels, while maintaining maximum bandwidth efficiency.
S>PLEX is the sophisticated system, deployed by Sirius, which allocates bandwidth in real-time to music channels with more demanding sound, such as classical, jazz, and rock.
About iBiquity Digital (http://www.ibiquity.com)
IBiquity Digital is the sole developer and licenser of digital AM and FM broadcast technology in the U.S., which will transform today's analog radio to digital, enabling radically upgraded sound and new wireless data services. The company's investors include 14 of the nation's top radio broadcasters, including ABC, Clear Channel and Viacom; leading financial institutions, such as J.P. Morgan Partners, Pequot Capital and J&W Seligman; and strategic partners Ford Motor Company, Harris, Lucent, Texas Instruments and Visteon. IBiquity Digital is a privately held company with operations in Columbia, MD, Detroit, MI and Warren, NJ.
About Sirius
From its three satellites orbiting directly over the U.S., Sirius (http://www.sirius.com) broadcasts 100 channels of digital quality radio to motorists throughout the continental United States for a monthly subscription fee of $12.95. Sirius delivers 60 original channels of completely commercial- free music in virtually every genre, and 40 world-class sports, news and entertainment channels. Sirius has agreements to install AM/FM/SAT radios in Ford, Chrysler, BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Jaguar, Volvo, Mazda, Dodge, Jeep®, Volkswagen, Audi, Nissan and Infiniti vehicles. Kenwood, Clarion and Jensen satellite receivers, including models that can adapt any car stereo to receive Sirius, as well as home and portable products, will be available at retailers such as Circuit City, Best Buy, Good Guys, Tweeter, Ultimate Electronics and Crutchfield.
Any statements that express, or involve discussions as to, expectations, beliefs, plans, objectives, assumptions, future events or performance with respect to Sirius Satellite Radio Inc. are not historical facts and may be forward-looking and, accordingly, such statements involve estimates, assumptions and uncertainties which could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed in any forward-looking statements. Accordingly, any such statements are qualified in their entirety by reference to the factors discussed in our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2001. Among the key factors that have a direct bearing on our results of operations are our dependence upon third parties to manufacture, distribute, market and sell Sirius radios and components for those radios; the potential delay in implementing our business plan; the unproven market for our service; our competitive position; and our need for additional financing.
SOURCE: Sirius Satellite Radio
Microsoft and Pioneer Announce Support for Windows Media 9 Series In Pioneer's Upcoming Digital Network Entertainment Products
Powered by National Semiconductor's Geode Processor, DigitaLibrary Is the First Home Theater Device to Include Support for Windows Media Video
The DigitaLibrary (TM), which is the first in Pioneer’s line of DNE products, will be launched later this year as the first home theater device to include playback support for Microsoft Windows Media Video technology.
Click for high resolution image.
REDMOND, Wash. -- July 15, 2002 -- Microsoft Corp. and Pioneer Electronics (USA) Inc. today announced that Pioneer's upcoming Digital Network Entertainment (TM) (DNE) products will support the new Microsoft® Windows Media (TM) 9 Series, previously code-named Windows Media "Corona. The DigitaLibrary (TM), which is the first in Pioneer's line of DNE products, is scheduled to be launched later this year as the first home theater device to include playback support for Microsoft's Windows Media Video technology. The flexible design of the DigitaLibrary makes it possible to add support for the next-generation Windows Media 9 Series audio and video technology when it becomes available.
The DigitaLibrary will enable a rapidly growing number of digital media enthusiasts to access Windows Media content directly from selected online content providers, and to take their expanding collections of digital audio and video from their PCs and play them back securely anywhere in their home.
"Windows Media 9 Series innovations in audio and video compression, combined with Pioneer's DNE products, offer great new opportunities for our customers to link their PCs to their home theaters and to have access to their digital music, photos and video anywhere throughout the home," said Bob Niimi, senior vice president of business development for the Home Entertainment Division at Pioneer. "Pioneer chose to support Windows Media 9 Series audio and video technology because it clearly demonstrates a shared commitment to create and offer innovative, high-quality home entertainment experiences to consumers."
"Today's announcement by Pioneer, one of the leading innovators in high-quality home theater technology, shows how the wealth of digital media on the PC is also rapidly becoming more accessible in the living room," said Dave Fester, general manager of the Windows Digital Media Division at Microsoft. "This is a great example of the new digital media experiences Windows Media 9 Series will enable consumers to enjoy."
Pioneer selected Microsoft Windows Media 9 Series audio and video technology to provide the audio and video decoding for its DNE products because of its superior audio and video quality in the smallest bandwidth or file size. Pioneer also will support Windows Media digital rights management (DRM) technology and its broad use for secured music and video playback. The advanced technology of Windows Media Audio makes it possible to store twice as much CD-quality music in the DigitaLibrary compared with other audio codec technologies such as MP3.
Pioneer also will support Windows Media Video for both streamed and downloadable video and for home movies created using Windows® Movie Maker in Windows XP. Support for Windows Media 9 Series audio and video technology means users will get a further 20 percent quality improvement on this already industry-leading audio and video compression. Pioneer selected National Semiconductor Corp.'s Geode Processor to offer this breakthrough support for Windows Media Video, as well as Audio on a chip, a first in the consumer electronics industry.
Microsoft also today announced that Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates will announce the public availability of the entire Windows Media 9 Series platform for the first time in Los Angeles at the Hollywood and Highlands Complex on Wednesday, Sept. 4. Windows Media 9 Series will ship in its final version later this year.
Why I Download: Confessions of a Music Junkie
Mike Prevatt, Las Vegas CityLife
July 11, 2002
I am a thief.
I am a thief because I acquire music from the Internet. Habitually. Gleefully. Unapologetically.
I download, I stream, I burn, I rip and I glow. I shuffle through playlists, scour file sharing engines, peruse Web sites for music video selections and compile songs for mixes I make for my friends with less tune-hunting time than I have.
I do it all to find The Song. The One that elevates me when I'm down or, conversely, compliments the hurt after a rough day. The One that makes my adrenaline surge, my serotonin flood, my blood rush to my head. The One that connects me to another person. The One that connects me to the artist who authored it. The One that connects me to myself.
And yet, I'm told that by doing so, I am conducting burglary. I am accused of being unlawful. Unethical. Unloyal to musicians, even.
Unloyal?
I spend thousands of dollars on prerecorded music every year; I spend hundreds on concert tickets; and I even spend $13 a month on satellite radio service. I stomach MTV and broadcast radio. DVDs? I have almost as many music titles as I do cinematic ones. Singles? Still buy 'em. Imports? Worth the extra dough. I've even dabbled with vinyl and I don't even own a turntable.
You could never convince the music business that it's enough. Hell, you couldn't even convince me that it's enough. I'm listless and perpetually unfulfilled when it comes to music.
As a rabid fan, I am always craving music -- new, old and current. I want to know what people were listening to back in the day, what they're listening to now and what they'll be listening to in the future.
I'm not an addict. I just love music. I'm willing to do anything to get more of it. And in all likelihood, so are you.
You Say You Want a Digital Music Revolution
People like me have been listening to music on the Internet for more than eight years now. In the mid-'90s, you could find burgeoning Web sites that featured some sort of musical demonstration. Some songs played as soon as the homepage came up. Some could be streamed, where a temporary file is "forgotten" as soon as it was over (like a radio broadcast online). And some were available for download, meaning you could save them in your computer. The song files were typically primitive, but it was another way to experience music.
Along came the Moving Picture Experts Group, Audio Layer III, or MP3 for short. In 1997 or so, a couple of college students got a whiff of the compressed file that could playback songs a couple notches below compact disc quality, but better than that of streaming audio. They also discovered an "Amp" engine that could play the files. They threw a Windows interface on the Amp, called it WinAmp and began to distribute it on the Net. That's when it all went downhill. Or uphill, depending on how you look at it.
In 1998, university students armed with dormitory broadband (non-dial-up, high-speed) Net access, along with tech-suave geeks and music fans worldwide, began to acquire copyrighted music online for their personal WinAmp players. Within one year, MP3 became the standard format for listening to songs on the Internet, and their distribution over thousands and thousands of unregulated web sites meant that virtually any song ever recorded was available. Portable devices, spearheaded by RioPort, allowed the songs to move from desktop to a mechanism the size of a pack of cigarettes. People could store their new files on blank discs, to be read in other people's computers -- or better, they could decompress the files, save them and play them in certain CD players. One Web site, MP3.com, a massive community of artists and computer users willing to share their music, developed virtual storage lockers for fans and their music.
But that was just the start of what people were already calling the digital music revolution. In 1999, Shawn Fanning, an 18-year-old Northwestern University dropout, wondered if there was a way for computer users to easily swap song files online. He created Napster -- and in early 2000, the file-sharing, peer-to-peer service revolutionized the music industry forever. A year after its release, 60 million people downloaded the free software and adopted it as their one-stop music warehouse.
A kid in Tokyo could have the same music library as one in Omaha, Neb., with just a few clicks.
This, predictably, didn't sit well with the Big Five labels (Sony, Universal, BMG, EMI and Warner); and in 2001 their lobbying arm, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), convinced a federal judge to shut Napster down. The problem? Artists, labels and publishers were not being compensated by the free trade of song files over the Internet. Sure, there were several ways to obtain music on the Net -- even other song-swapping programs like Napster. The inventors of MP3 had made it easy for people to develop programs and software for it; there was no regulation or encryption that would hinder the advancement or potential of the technology. But no single entity had popularized the free distribution of music like Napster. By temporarily disabling the company/service, now being swallowed up by BMG, there would be less peer-to-peer downloading, less copyright infringement and less money loss in the music business. Right?
Wrong. Bustling during and after Napster's reign were file-trading services like Gnutella, Grokster, Morpheus, Aimster, Limewire and KaZaA (which currently boasts 91 million handouts of its program on CNET's Download.com) -- among others, providing easy-to-download, easy-to-use technology by which music fans could swap songs. Though the RIAA has sued nearly all of the companies behind the aforementioned services, most of them have done nothing but increase the amount of free music downloading on the Internet. In 2001 alone, nearly 8 billion song files were reportedly traded online.
With a number that huge, it's extremely likely either you or someone close to you obtained a recording online at no cost.
Too Little, Too Late
While music mavens were gobbling up digital music to our hearts' content, the music industry literally sat and did nothing. Not understanding the technology, the impact of an intangible format such as MP3, the distribution potential online or its own customers, the Big Five failed to develop their own mechanisms for marketing and selling music on the web -- and paid for it big time.
During this year's South By Southwest conference in Austin, Texas, the head-hung-low industry revealed how the digital music revolution not only snuck right past it, but robbed it. Last year, the top 10 bestselling albums -- the bread and butter of the business, many say -- sold 25 percent less than the year before. Sales overall were down between 5 and 10 percent, depending on which statistic you read. And no single album sold more than 5 million copies.
To add insult to injury, recordable compact discs -- which many digital music fans use to store MP3s and burned or recorded music -- outsold prerecorded albums 3-to-1.
Why? The industry refused to give consumers what they wanted.
For eons, the industry conducted business on its own terms, and people had to go along with it. This recently included CDs with a suggested retail price of $18.98, and very little in the way of digital alternatives. Now that consumers have found a way around the standard CD format -- and its high cost -- the labels are scurrying to catch up.
Universal and Sony teamed in 2001 to create Pressplay, which is one of two high-profile subscription services offering legal downloads. EMI also joined the service. In addition, MusicNet (or RealOne) was launched last year by Warner, BMG and EMI -- in conjunction with RealNetworks -- as another subscription-based function. These two services took the master recordings of the labels' music and made them available to computer users. Both services, which cost about $10 a month, claim that they offer high-quality music and that the artists get compensated. A no-lose situation, right?
Wrong. There are several problems with Pressplay and MusicNet -- and it's the music consumers who pay.
First, the Big Five failed to agree on a single service that would allow all of their music -- 85 percent of the recorded music out there -- to be accessed. (Big surprise -- they can't agree on much of anything, really.) So now, music fans must know the label that released the song they desire in order to download it, or subscribe to both services. Someone seeking rocker Tom Petty's "Wildflowers" won't find the song on Pressplay, as he is signed to Warner; it is only available on MusicNet. Conversely, you won't spot rapper Jay-Z's recent material on MusicNet, as he has been linked with Universal since 1997.
Second, the songs are not in MP3 format. You must use their players to hear the songs. Many of the songs are in streams, which often come out of speakers in a faded, echoey manner. And if you download a song, it can never be a permanent part of your collection. Once you quit the service, the files go along with your subscription.
Third, there is no unlimited amount of downloads for either service. In some instances, you can only download two songs from the same artist during one month. To accrue more download opportunities, you need to subscribe to premium plans, which come at a higher monthly rate.
Other ventures, such as Streamwaves, EMusic and Listen.com, are making inroads with the Big Five to make more music legitimately available. Listen.com, in fact, recently became the only service to offer music from all five labels. Sony and Universal are also facilitating the direct purchase of songs and albums online, from 49 cents a single to $9.99 an album -- clearly a step in the right direction.
The major flaw with these efforts is they offer no incentive to the music devotee to pony up the dough. If I've been downloading some or all of my music for the past year for free, why should I start paying now?
Been Caught Stealing
Even a hardcore music fan like me knows that downloading music from KaZaA and the likes is pretty much illegal. Then again, so are smoking pot and speeding, and some of us think nothing of committing those crimes. But there's a conscience to acknowledge when it comes to freely swapping songs online, and it pertains to the creator of the music. Without the download option, we might normally buy the physical recording in the store or through e-commerce means. Then, the artist could theoretically be compensated for his work.
Downloaders take the musician and his work for granted, but God forbid anyone should raise hell about the subject. Hard rock act Metallica tattled on 300,000 Napster users who traded its songs, and it subsequently suffered massive backlash from its fans and the media. Michael Greene, president of the Recording Academy, launched into an outrageous diatribe during this year's Grammy Awards that called file sharing "the most insidious virus in our midst" and a "life-and-death issue." The widely ridiculed speech was rumored to be one reason behind his forced resignation in April.
Still, one can't ignore the idea of an artist and his need to make a living.
"I think there's a terrible perception that artists shouldn't do anything for themselves," says Don Henley, pop musician and staunch critic of free file trading. "It's almost like there's a guilt factor that we didn't earn any of this, unlike other professions. [Some people think] music should be free, and the people who make it are not supposed to really be in the business for themselves, or looking out for themselves. They are just supposed to be providing free entertainment for the rest of the world."
The arguments among peer-to-peer advocates and users range from the fair use of recorded material (VHS taping) and the innocence of KaZaA and the likes in facilitating piracy, to the notion that users will ultimately support artists they download financially by purchasing their CDs and attending their concerts. But many in the industry aren't buying it. They use the decreasing sales numbers as evidence of their plight. They also point to mislabeled files, poor recording quality and unreliable service as reasons to forgo file trading services and opt for label-sanctioned services like Pressplay, MusicNet, MP3.com (now owned by Universal) and Listen.com.
The RIAA has long used litigious intimidation to counter what it sees as widespread piracy. Now, it may seek to punish the real perpetrators: you and me. Recent developments suggest the labels are discussing ways to sue file traders -- in particular, those distributing the highest volume of copyrighted material -- a tactic they have previously shunned. The threat is clear: Play by our rules or we'll take your ass to court.
The Defense
For a music fan, the web is a limitless supply of tunes and resources -- legit or otherwise. In eight minutes, with high-speed Internet access, you can download KaZaA, figure out how to work it, and then download -- say -- Dirty Vegas' "Days Go By." You can visit Launch at Yahoo and watch hundreds of music videos on authorized streams. You can hear snippets of songs at Amazon.com, to see if buying a particular album seems worthwhile. You can preview the yet-to-be-released Flaming Lips album on MusicNet or a new Red Hot Chili Peppers song on AOL. Or you can choose a song off Limewire (one of the few Macintosh-friendly peer-to-peer services), look at whose copy you're downloading and see if that user has any other selections you might be interested in.
This phenomenon has commercially aided artists more than the record labels would like to admit. A few examples:
* In 2000, Brit rock act Radiohead's Kid A was already being downloaded from the file swapping services, before it was released in October. This, despite concerted attempts from the band's label (Capitol) to keep it out of the public's hands before release. No matter -- the album, considered to be the band's most un-mainstream work, sold 200,000 copies in one week, landing Radiohead its first No. 1 effort and eventually going platinum.
* Rock band Wilco, after being dumped by Reprise Records in 2001, streams its new work, Yankee Foxtrot Hotel, online before it finds a distributor. In April, Nonesuch releases it on CD, and the critically hailed work is on pace to be the band's most commercially successful album to date.
* Punk-oriented group the Offspring had the most illegally downloaded song of 1999 with "Pretty Fly For a White Guy," and still sold more than 4 million copies of its Americana album. Pretty fab for an oft-downloaded band.
Why We Do It
We download because we are tired of radio either not featuring enough variety or playing too many advertisements. Thanks to the narrow playlist of media conglomerates like Clear Channel, the majority of broadcast radio no longer caters to anyone but fans of top 40. Online we can hear countless unsigned and unbroken artists; it is there they thrive beyond their hometowns.
We download because MTV and VH1 rarely play videos anymore, and when they do it's the same label-hyped artists over and over again. MTV2 has sought to focus on videos and not programming, but it is not available to the majority of cable subscribers. Going to Launch, Sputnik7.com or even the artists' web sites can allow us to see the visual accompaniment of songs from all genres.
We download because we will not pay $20 for albums that typically feature one or two songs of quality or appeal. Even with Best Buy, Wal-Mart and Target pricing albums below $14, and sometimes as low as $6, there is no way to obtain a fraction of the music being marketed relentlessly by major labels. And forget about being offered a decent array of singles, forcing us to fork over the $20 for the full-length.
It is increasingly hard to find music worth that amount of money, and the industry is reluctant to accept that.
We download because it is difficult to sympathize with a business that claims its artists are losing money to the file sharing phenomenon, and then typically pays them last -- after the label, the managers, the lawyers, the label's promotion department and everyone else involved in making and promoting the record. Artists make little, if any, money from albums unless they are megasellers. It is through touring and merchandise sales -- and maybe publishing royalties -- where artists have any hope of recouping the costs of making an album and earning a living. Downloads can't infringe upon concerts, radio play and T-shirts.
We download because the government -- largely uneducated on the issue of copyright infringement on the Net -- has been slow to legislate whether we're actually stealing or not, and intervene on the issue of proper licensing payment.
We download because we love music. We want unlimited music, which we can use in any way we want, for the least amount of money. The Internet, right or wrong, provides us with the means to accomplish that. The white label versions, rarities, hard-to-find b-sides, out-of-print titles, live performances, hard-to-find remixes -- they're all floating in the cyber ether, within grasp at any moment. How do you convince a music junkie to ignore that?
And we download because for the first time in years, after the price-gouging and marginalization of the art form we love most by the music industry, we have something to be excited about. And it wasn't started by the Big Five -- it was started by music fans and computer users. We changed the music experience forever.
Immediately after relocating to Los Angeles, former CityLife A&E Editor Mike Prevatt received such an overwhelming surge of culture and intellectualism he blacked out right on the sidewalk. A nearby transvestite resuscitated him, and now he's steadily acclimatizing. When he's not parked on the SoCal freeway system, he checks his e-mail at angelcitybuzz@yahoo.com.
PS2 MP3 player by Paradox
Something that many of us have been hoping for seems to be now available.CDFreaks reports the following:
Paradox -> Releases first MP3 player for PS2 works great, even though its in beta v1.0. Users can burn a regular CD or DVD filled with MP3 tracks.
There has been a release for a mp3 player for the PS2. It is expected to play MP3 files. Since the PS2 only supports MODE 2 LEVEL 1 images, 8+3 characters for the files, but as the player can read the CD-information in low level, it supports 31 characters names including file extension.
CDFreaks.com
And the good stuff is available at the PSXForum:
Its finially here... An MP3 player for the PS2. Plays mode 2 mp3 cd's which can easily be created with the included utils.
Download it now for the Utilities section on the left menu.
PSXForum.com
I unfortunately don't have a PS2 to test this with, but if it works then it's a one good reason more to buy one!
Written by cd-rw.org (7/14/2002 13:20)
Online Music For-Pay: Not Ready for Primetime
July 15, 2002
Art Epstein
Since Napster's demise, many of the tech-savvy, free-music loving members of the gay community have long been awaiting the second coming (ahem): good music we can download right at home, at a fair price. And we're getting closer.
But the big-name services being offered have some serious drawbacks for anyone who downloads the service's music, then leaves the house and takes the music with them.
First, for any lesbian and gay readers who have been under a digital rock for the past five years, Napster was a free, file-sharing program that allowed its millions of online users to "share" with anyone who came knocking, the music (saved as MP3 files) on the user's computer's hard drive.
So, if one used Napster's easy-to-use service and typed in "Over the Rainbow" in the "search" window, you might have seen some 17 covers of the song (yes, it's sacrilege, but Ms. Garland was not the only one to sing it). And lo and behold, there was the Guns N Roses version you longed for! With a high-speed Internet connection, you could then download the infamous rockers' cover directly onto your own computer in about two minutes. Quick, easy-to-use and free.
Of course, the sticking point came from those pesky lawyers for the music industry who claimed that the "free" part of the "file-sharing" was, to use an indelicate term, "stealing." So free music, courtesy of Napster's brilliant technology, went bye-bye.
In the intervening years, the recording industry has tried to give online-music fans more of what they wanted, aware that people still wanted their music downloaded instantly, but at a fair price (I thought "free" was fair, but evidently only to people lacking in any ethics. Go figure.)
Is the Answer Listen.com?
Not long ago, Listen.com licensed the entire song catalog of Vivendi Universal's Universal Music Group, making it the first legal (there's that word again) online-music service to be able to offer songs from all five of the major recording labels. I practically did the Macarena when I heard that good news…until I did more research. The system is far from satisfactory.
Rhapsody, Listen.com's "celestial jukebox" service, does have the makings of a worthwhile service. And it's only $9.95 a month. However, for those of us weaned on Napster (along with some of us still using the smaller rivals that sprang up since Napster's demise), the constraints placed upon Listen.com's service by the recording labels make it rather unattractive, even at its low price.
For instance, Rhapsody doesn't offer the ability to burn a song released by a major label onto a CD. Indeed, if your PC isn't connected to the Internet, you can't hear anything you've paid for at all. So, if you were hoping to take the music that you bought along with you to the gym on your MP3 player, you can forget it; ditto for burning the music onto a CD for use on your home stereo system.
If one looks at Listen.com's Rhapsody, MusicNet (backed by AOL) or pressplay and stacks them up against the still-free file-sharing services operating right now (like Kazaa, LimeWire or BearShare), their offerings are simply not in tune with what customers want.
And we're not grousing about paying the label-sanctioned services for music. Most of us, at this point, are willing to pay. But the pay services themselves offer serious drawbacks along with their fee.
As mentioned, there is no portability with Rhapsody - no burning, ripping and enjoying your tunes on Fire Island. And the other "legitimate" services sharply limit CD burns, or charge extra for them.
Compare this with LimeWire (the one I mostly use because it's Mac-compatible). Sure, you will not find the vast selection you want - something the legit services offer. But once you've found what you want on LimeWire, you can take it with you, burn it, it's yours to do with as you please in the privacy of your own digi-home.
But Rhapsody says we can't do that. Yes, we've paid for it, but we have to listen to it the way they dictate. Except for a few members of the S&M community who may enjoy this restriction (perhaps this will become a new form of kink), how many people will actually go for that? Not many, I predict.
Another fatal flaw of the "legitimate" services: monthly pay-as-you-go fees. Stop paying up, and anything you haven't burned onto a CD (which you usually can't do) becomes unplayable and disappears. Remember, we've paid for it - but they can still repossess it. In other words, it's like renting something and when the agreement is up, you have to return it - or else.
I'm willing to rent movies, but music? This is a strong-arm tactic that only makes the free-music lovers want to dig in their heels even more.
Will the sale of music CDs in retail stores suffer because people prefer to download their selections instead? Yes, but the lower sales will supplanted by online purchases and downloads. But that won't happen until the big music online services allow us to listen to our downloaded music with the same infinite variety of our store-bought music.
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This article is sponsored by IBM: Technology Leader for the GLBT Community
http://www.gfn.com/business/story.phtml?sid=11854
Who's afraid of digital rights management?
Wed Jul 10, 3:26 PM ET
John Carroll
COMMENTARY--Microsoft's announcement of its "Palladium" projecthas generated a lot of negative comments in thetechnology community. As an implementation ofspecifications put together by the "Trusted ComputingPlatform Alliance" (TCPA) lead by Intel, it usespublic key cryptography to identify the originator ofcode or data located on a system (among other things).
On the one hand, this could potentially make itharder for viruses to get a toehold on your system. On the other hand, it also makes it possible fororiginators to control how their code or media isused. Such bulletproof Digital Rights Management(DRM) capability is highly controversial. RossAnderson of Cambridge describesTCPA systems' effect on users as follows:
TCPA and Palladium do not so much provide securityfor the user, but for the PC vendor, the softwaresupplier, and the content industry. They do not addvalue for the user. Rather, they destroy it, byconstraining what you can do with your PC - in orderto enable application and service vendors to extractmore money from you.
Such claims are overly simplistic. Digital RightsManagement will certainly give media companies theability to control the manner in which consumers uselicensed media, which could be considered a"limitation." Looked at from a different angle,however, the protection of license rights couldattract companies, both large and small, to thedigital space, leading to more choices for consumers.
There are three primary advantages to strong DRM:
1. More investment in digital content. Majormedia companies invest billions every year into theirbusinesses, yet spend little on digital content. Why?
Digital copies are perfect whether it's the first orthe 100th copy. With Napster ( news - web sites) and its clones showinghow popular such copying can be, media companies favorold fashioned distribution technology which hasdemonstrated its ability to generate revenue over anenvironment where the returns are questionable. Should DRM become widespread, however, media companiescan be expected to shift their resources to digitalcontent, resulting in an explosion of services limitedonly by the capabilities of the computing environment.
2. DRM as the great leveler. Largecorporations are not the only creators of content. Irecently purchased a digital video camera, and havebeen amazed by the broadcast quality of the image itproduces, not to mention the ease with which I canedit that media on a desktop computer. Similarly, Ihave friends who have an entire sound studio in aspare room of their house. Media production is nolonger the exclusive domain of big companies. Technological advances and mass production has broughtmedia production capability within the purchasingrange of the average consumer.
A mechanism by which small-scale producers cangenerate revenue will help to boost the market forsuch media. The Internet has always been promoted asthe great equalizer, giving the little guy a voice ina world formerly dominated by those with the money todistribute through traditional channels. The Internetas a global medium already serves as a low-costdistribution network from which thousands ofsmall-scale software producers benefit. Strong DRM isthe final piece in the puzzle, making it possible forthem to ensure a revenue stream at lower cost. Thiscan only serve to boost the prospects of small contentand software producers, growing their businesses andmaking them better competitors to large corporations.
3. Good DRM means more legal free media, and lowerprices. Media studios in a non-DRM world are lesslikely to release much free media due to the habit itforms among consumers. Once a consumer is accustomedto downloading one free song, it is not that difficultfor them to find and download the whole album.
A bulletproof DRM system would make legal free musicmore common, given that the media companies can beassured of a revenue stream from the fee-based,DRM-protected media. Eminem ( news - web sites)'s recent single was oneof the most traded songs on the Internet beforethe album was released, helping to create a buzzaround the new album. I could see more studioswillingly tapping into that marketing opportunity ifthey were assured payment on the rest of the album.
Lastly, strong DRM increases the number of payingcustomers, giving producers more price flexibility. Digital distribution also costs less, making it easierfor smaller competitors to participate in the market. As discussed in item 2, universal DRM makes it easierfor smaller companies to generate revenue, makingtheir businesses more viable. An environment withmore competition borne of lower distribution andcollection costs and greater price flexibility willtend to drive prices down.
A TCPA computer would limit what consumers can do withprotected code and data on the system. This issomething to which we are already accustomed withother products we buy. We disallow trademarkinfringement so that companies can build brandrecognition that consumers can trust (grandma can'tmake Levi Strauss jeans in her spare room). We don'tallow people to republish Stephen King books at nocompensation to Mr. King or the publishing house withwhom he has a contract. People can't release for salea compilation of hits by the Police without paying theowner of those songs a licensing fee. Theselimitations are all designed to ensure the existenceof incentives to create.
The incentives created by strong DRM would drive aproliferation of digital content, attracting bothlarge and small producers to enter the market. That benefits consumers, and more than makes up forthe "harm" caused by limits on what consumers can dowith their computers.
John Carroll is a software engineer who lives in Switzerland. He specializes in the design and development of distributed systems using Java and .Net.
Who's Wiring Hollywood? ALBHY GALUTEN
by Matthew Greenwald
"Who's Wiring Hollywood?" interview, March / April 1997 issue of The Network News (Vol. VII, No. 2)
Albhy Galuten has always had a yen for new technology from his beginnings as an Atlantic Records staff producer through his pioneering work developing enhanced CDs at ION to his current position at Universal Music Group (formerly MCA Music Entertainment Group) as VP of Interactive Programming. While at ION he co-developed the first multi-session audio discs, a format that evolved into enhanced CDs. He also facilitated the introduction of enhanced CD technology to Microsoft, Apple and several major record labels.
But there's also the music side: in 1978 Albhy won two Grammies, including Producer of the Year, and has produced 18 No. 1 singles which have generated sales of more than 100 million records. And he's one helluva piano player.
Here Albhy gives us his thoughts on the virtues and shortcomings of new technology.
Q: What is the scope of your job and responsibility at Universal?
A: A lot of what I do is covered by non-disclosure [restrictions], but I'm mostly the blue-sky geek on the lot. That is, I look at technology that will have influence on our business in roughly one to five years. I deal a lot with long-term strategy, so I wouldn't necessarily hire someone to build an enhanced CD (ECD) as much as I would hire a tools vendor to build engines to create an ECD, or have a piece of software written to connect our CDs to our Web site or deal with the digital distribution of audio, strategic alliances, etc.
Q: Your pet project is ECDs. What can consumers expect to get out of this? Have they shown a willingness to purchase such products on a widespread basis?
A: It has nothing to do with willingness to buy. Our model is that regular CDs have enhanced portions. So for instance, if you bought the new Romeo and Juliet soundtrack, you bought an enhanced CD. You didn't buy it because it was an enhanced CD, but because it was an audio CD that has an enhanced portion. My goal is to reach the point where virtually every CD that one buys within a year and a half will provide connectivity and added data. The enhanced portion is not to get people to buy more CDs, it's to increase functionality and provide connectivity to the CDs that people are already buying.
Q: How do you sell, or intend to sell, ECDs? Do you anticipate that retailers will give a specialized item like this shelf space, or do you intend to sell ECDs online or over Universal's Web site or in some other fashion?
A: There are some stores, such as Virgin Megastore, that have endcaps for ECDs, but we're not really active in that area. In my mind the ECD is the next generation of the audio CD. It's not a question of how you sell them if you put your next record out. For instance, if you buy the new Bobgoblin CD, an ECD, it will be in the same section as the audio-only discs. There are a lot of CDs that you may not realize are enhanced.
Q: The Stones' album ("Stripped") was one of the first ECDs to hit the mass market, correct?
A: Yes, but it was in the old ECD format, which was a bit problematic. It wasn't the "Authorized Albhy Format" [*laughing*]. The other labels didn't listen to me a couple of years ago and made some mistakes, but now they've all come around to using the more correct format. The Rolling Stones' title did not play in some car stereos.
Q: How does what you're working on enhance the value of an artist's material, particularly to the consumer?
A: It provides a direct relationship between the artist and the consumer. Very soon you will be able to put a CD in, press a button and find out what happened last night on tour, or find out when they're coming to your town, or when the next CD is coming out.
Q: Have consumers been oversold on the capabilities of new technologies?
A: No, I don't think so.
Q: How do you address the fact that the average consumer still doesn't have a computer system upon which he can enjoy an ECD?
A: I don't have to address that, that's the [consumer's] issue. Computer systems are changing and getting much more powerful very quickly. What I'm trying to do is define standards. Remember, my universe is supposedly aimed at what will be happening three years from now. It's almost impossible to buy a new computer nowadays that isn't powerful enough to play an ECD. The old base of computers that can't play ECDs is disappearing very quickly. People now, for the most part, are buying audio CDs for the audio. So if they're buying an ECD for the same price that they are paying for an audio CD, how can they gripe? It's free, use it or not.
Q: You've been at Universal for about a year and a half -- how does what you've done and what you're doing here set this company above and apart from its competitors?
A: I think that we are the only company looking for standards to set for the industry that will be viable ten years from now. Other companies' technology initiatives are primarily based on marketing. We're looking at what the average consumer can expect when he puts a CD in a computer, because this is what he'll expect when he puts a CD in his TV three years from now. I want to put stuff on a CD that is still relevant in a year. Many of these issues are ones that only we are looking at now, all the issues that pertain to copyright and file formats. We're looking at all the structural issues that underline the business. I spend more time working on strategic alliances with software vendors and tools vendors.
Q: Is this part of your department's five-year strategy?
A: Yeah, which turns out to be a five-year strategic plan for the music industry.
Q: You're still conducting research on ECDs; who funds this? Universal? Or does the record industry have a fund for this sort of thing so that the benefits can be shared by the industry?
A: The truth is that it's not very expensive. For instance, when you look at my Web site (http://www.mca.com/newumg), you'll see that there are specifications for start-up applications. We've gotten some feedback. It's not very expensive, but it takes so long to go through the channels. Engineers used to sit around for months working on specifications. They'd do a draft, send it to someone else, revise it a few times, and then it would go before a commission. That just doesn't work anymore.... sometimes four years go by and nothing gets built! Now that we have the Internet, the turnaround time for specifications is in months, not years. It's market- and industry-driven now, not engineer- or university-driven.
Q: You served as VP of Technology at ION before coming here. What happened to ION? Did the LA office fold?
A: Yeah, they were a tools company. They were spending a lot of money and they grew up, so now they build tools and software. They're still good technologists, but they're not doing titles [anymore].
Q: Didn't they have BMG funding?
A: They did, but that deal ended.
Q: What was the original purpose and what went wrong?
A: Originally they were CD-ROM developers with their own distribution, and they made titles. I think that we all found out -- some of us kind of knew ahead of time -- that making music titles for CD-ROMs just wasn't a profitable business. You basically spend half a million to a million dollars and a year or two to make a title. Well, there's no justification that people will spend the kind of money to warrant that. I think that "eve" (Peter Gabriel's second CD-ROM) is a good title, but they spent two years and one million dollars to make that, and they'll never recoup their money. But what I liked about ION was that they understood the technology and the paradigm, so they were the company I went to when I made the first ECD. When I was there, we evangelized it for the record industry. ION did some great work.
Q: What are your thoughts on digital distribution? What do you think the future holds for traditional retail?
A: I think that we're going to move within the next ten years to about 50% digital distribution. It's hard to say, but it is clear that within five years we will have some sort of credit card-sized device, and will be able to walk up to a terminal, click on our three favorite CDs and put them on there in seconds, pocket them and play them in the car.
Q: What are MCA Records/Universal's direct-to-consumer sales plans based on any new technology available?
A: It's not my domain. I know that all of the labels are dealing with selling direct to the consumer, but everybody walks carefully because of retail. Certainly Dave.com walks so carefully that they don't fulfill any of their orders [*laughs*]. I ordered four enhanced titles 4-5 weeks ago and offered to pay for overnight delivery and they still haven't shown up.
Q: How do you see the record industry expanding into technological realms in the near future?
A: Ubiquitous connectivity and, at some point, some percentage of digital distribution of audio.
Q: Which labels have made the most notable inroads using technology?
A: Obviously, Sony is spending the most money, even if it's Visa's money. Warner Bros. is spending a lot of money for their Road Runner trials. Overall, the record industry is not spending money in this area. AT&T recently announced that over the next fiscal year $9 billion would be spent on infrastructure, basically for the Internet. Microsoft recently announced that they will be spending $1 billion as well over the next three years for original content on the Web. The record industry isn't spending this money.
Q: Does Web presence boost sales substantially?
A: Not really, there's no evidence that the Web influences our bottom line in any way. We're not breaking even yet.
Q: How have the Internet and the WWW changed the record industry, in your view?
A: They provide an outlet for true alternative stuff which doesn't really generate revenue. They also provide a greenhouse for communications infrastructures, micro marketing and direct communication. So there are inklings of what ubiquitous communications infrastructure is all about. Ultimately it will be as significant as the Industrial Revolution, and much more significant than television or radio. The effect on our lives is significant. There's no reason why my server access has to be different at home from here; I should be able to walk up to a computer terminal in a hotel room, swipe my card and go to work on my desk top the same as if I were at home. There is nothing technologically stopping us from doing that, and it will be the norm in three to five years.
Q: Which among your characteristics has best served you in your career?
A: Paradigm shifting, the ability to discard old paradigms. To cut your losses quickly. I remember producing Streisand's "Guilty" record and we started tracking some things and even though we'd paid big bucks for some musicians, I saw the chemistry wasn't right. I had to pay them a bunch of money to leave and hired other musicians. And we ended up with her biggest selling CD ever. I was able to let go of that. I think that's very important, whether you're dealing with music or new technologies.
Q: What do you consider the biggest success of your career?
A: I have to say my wife and children [*laughs*]. If I have to put one thing above all else, it's gotta be that! I mean, how can you sit here and compare basically inventing enhanced CDs with producing "Saturday Night Fever"? Nothing compares with my wife and children!
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FPGA/DSP blend tackles telecom apps
By EE Times
Jul 1, 2002 (7:41 AM)
URL: http://www.eetimes.com/story/OEG20020628S0097
Jennifer Eyre, Senior DSP Analyst, Berkeley Design Technology Inc., Berkeley, Calif.
Implementing the digital signal processing (DSP) tasks in telecommunications applications typically requires chips with very strong number-crunching capabilities. At the same time, telecom applications place stringent constraints on cost and power consumption. DSP tasks in telecom products have historically been carried out with DSP processors or application-specific ICs. On the one hand, ASICs can achieve high levels of performance with hard-to-match cost and energy efficiency, but they require massive design efforts. DSPs, meanwhile, ease the development process, and provide adequate performance and reasonable efficiency for many applications.
Throughout most of their history, field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) have rarely been used to implement DSP tasks. Until fairly recently, FPGAs lacked the gate capacity to handle demanding DSP algorithms and didn't have good tools support for tackling DSP jobs. They have also been perceived as being expensive and power hungry. All this may be changing, however, with the introduction of new DSP-oriented products from FPGA heavyweights such as Altera Corp. and Xilinx Inc., both based in San Jose, Calif.
Altera's recently announced Stratix family and Xilinx's Virtex-II family both offer significant DSP-oriented architectural enhancements. For example, both products offer hardwired on-chip multipliers embedded throughout the reconfigurable logic array that are intended to accelerate the multiply-accumulate (MAC) and similar operations common in DSP algorithms. By including some hardwired processing elements, FPGAs can improve their energy efficiency and cost performance while offering outstanding DSP performance. In addition, both companies offer sophisticated DSP-oriented development aids, such as intellectual property library blocks for common DSP functions and interfaces to high-level DSP tools such as Simulink. And, perhaps most important, chip densities have increased to the point where FPGAs can implement even highly challenging DSP tasks.
The computational requirements of today's telecommunications applications often exceed the performance available from even the fastest DSP processors. This makes the new breed of DSP-enhanced FPGAs a potentially attractive solution for certain applications. A key challenge for system designers, though, is understanding where it is appropriate to use these new devices.
Unfortunately, designers have been stymied by the lack of a reliable way to evaluate the DSP performance of FPGAs or to compare their performance to that of DSP processors. Clearly, there is a need for DSP-oriented benchmarks that will enable engineers to make these comparisons.
Benchmarking
Good benchmarking requires careful selection of benchmarks and a well-developed methodology. Berkeley Design Technology Inc.'s benchmarking of processors for DSP applications uses a suite of common DSP algorithms, such as finite impulse response (FIR) filters, optimized in assembly language on each processor. A processor's results on each benchmark can be thought of as "basis vectors" that can be combined to estimate performance in an application. When BDTI began considering how to benchmark FPGAs, it quickly became obvious that this approach wouldn't translate well. One key problem is that the small algorithms used to benchmark processors don't do a good job of evaluating the real-world processing capabilities of FPGAs.
On a processor, the architecture and instruction set are fixed-the main degrees of freedom when implementing a function are in choosing instructions and in how the instructions are ordered. DSP developers working with processors tend to optimize the processing-intensive "kernels" of the application individually, then combine them to form an overall application implementation that is near-optimal. On an FPGA, however, it is unlikely that developing optimized implementations of algorithms one at a time will yield particularly good, or meaningful, overall results. This is because, unlike on processors, the degrees of freedom when implementing a DSP application on an FPGA are myriad.
For example, the developer can dedicate more or less hardware to a given algorithm, making application-level resource utilization trade-offs. This may result in a highly optimized implementation of one algorithm at the expense of another-as may be the case, for example, if one algorithm uses all of the hardwired multipliers, leaving none for the other algorithms. For each algorithm, the developer can use a fully parallel implementation, a fully serial implementation or anything in between. It is unlikely that every constituent algorithm will be optimized for maximum performance; instead, developers work to optimize the application as a whole.
As a first step toward providing meaningful DSP performance data for FPGAs, BDTI recently developed a new telecom-oriented FPGA benchmark for use in a forthcoming industry report, "FPGAs for DSP." Rather than using a single algorithm as a benchmark, this new benchmark specifies a full (though simplified) single-channel communications receiver. It is designed to be representative of the kinds of processing found in communications infrastructure equipment for applications like DSL, cable modems and fixed wireless systems. It includes blocks for demodulation, filtering, time-frequency domain transformation and channel decoding. Input and output data formats and sample rates, along with other implementation details, are specified as part of the benchmark definition. Benchmark results are reported in terms of the number of channels that can be supported on a single chip and the associated cost per channel based on the chip cost. These results can be used to compare an FPGA's performance to that of DSPs.
In cooperation with BDTI, Altera has implemented the new benchmark on one of its forthcoming Stratix FPGAs and has reported preliminary results to BDTI. Similarly, Motorola Inc. has provided preliminary results for one of its high-end DSPs, the 300-MHz MSC8101 (based on the StarCore SC140 core). Looking at these results, it appears that even a midrange DSP-enhanced FPGA from Altera's Stratix line will be able to handle more than an order-of-magnitude more channels than the MSC8101 for a similar projected per-chip price. Further evaluation is in progress, but these early results suggest that the new breed of FPGAs may be a very attractive solution for some DSP-oriented applications.
Although benchmark results are important, there are many "soft" considerations that are of equal importance when choosing between an FPGA and a DSP processor.
One of these is the availability of relevant staff expertise. For example, most DSP application developers are not familiar with the design flow of FPGAs. Implementing even a simple FIR filter on an FPGA requires a totally different design process (and mind-set) than implementing the same function on a DSP processor. Altera and Xilinx offer tools and libraries to help simplify the process, but there will be a formidable learning curve for engineers who are primarily accustomed to working with processors. In addition, the time required to develop an optimized implementation of even a relatively modest DSP function for an FPGA can be orders-of-magnitude longer than that required to crank out the code for a DSP.
Optimal FFT
For example, one source told BDTI that it can take six man-months to develop an optimal fast Fourier transform (FFT) implementation for an FPGA, compared with our own experience of needing about a week to write and optimize FFT code for a high-end DSP. Altera's and Xilinx's libraries of functions help address this issue-but often, the function that's needed isn't exactly what's in the library or isn't in the library at all.
In the coming months, BDTI will continue to gather more data and refine its FPGA benchmarking methodology. With FPGAs fast becoming credible competitors to DSP processors, the question of which one is best for an application is becoming more important-and more interesting. As is always the case with benchmarking, the numbers alone are only a piece of the answer.
IP transport the ideal vehicle for Internet audio
By EE Times
Jun 24, 2002 (7:38 AM)
URL: http://www.eetimes.com/story/OEG20020621S0072
Randy Cole, Chief Technology OfficerInternet Audio, Jason Kridner, Senior Software ArchitectDigital Audio, Texas Instruments, Dallas, Jason Lin, MTS, Digital Audio, Texas Instruments
Selecting transport mechanisms for a digital media device is one of the most important choices designers have to make. Consumer electronics manufacturers and technology providers are seeking a standard for interoperability with digital media devices, and Internet Protocol is being considered as a key component to this initiative.
Today's portable digital audio players use proprietary protocols for communications over USB, between the host PC and the portable player. The result is that consumers need to install a customized driver, and possibly new jukebox software, before importing a music library. For the designer, this means a version of the driver has to be written for each operating system, each jukebox and each new communications link.
Designers have three options for interfacing a digital media player to a host: IP, Mass Storage Class or a proprietary interface. Extensions can be made to a Mass Storage Class interface to add features and allow differentiation, but the result is a hybrid that remains proprietary with customized software support. Of the three interfaces, only IP allows indirect connections via a bridge or router, support within virtually any operating system, and a high degree of scalability. Also, there is an enormous amount of open source IP software available that designers can use to expedite their product development.
IP is the solution for most digital audio systems, although the smallest devices may not have the muscle to support IP yet. IP-based interface software in the portable digital media player and the host PC automatically supports almost every communications link, including USB 1.1, USB 2.0, IEEE 1394, IEEE 802.11, HPNA, HomePlug and Bluetooth. Semiconductor makers, including Texas Instruments, support IP code stacks for use in a variety of devices like personal video recorders, jukeboxes, flash/hard disk players, home network routers, PDAs and wireless headsets.
Somewhat paradoxically, IP not only enables open standards, but also promotes branded product differentiation. Envision connecting a media player to a networked PC and an icon appears. The icon opens a Web interface that is able to manage jukebox software or point to a Web location where music can be downloaded. This application easily co-exists with other previously installed jukebox software, adding new controls and icons that are exported by the device.
When a "new" device is plugged into a network, establishing a connection via IP requires three steps: getting an IP address (addressing), advertising the device's presence to hosts and/or peers (discovery), and sending a description of the device's capabilities (description). Once a connection is established, the device can control or be controlled by other devices (control), send or receive event signals (eventing), and transfer data between applications (presentations).
Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) is a framework that enables all of these functions. UPnP was originally designed by Microsoft and released royalty-free to the UPnP Forum, which was established to allow interested companies to further develop UPnP.
Within the UPnP framework, existing protocols were adopted or extended to handle required functions. To get IP addresses, UPnP uses Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) or Auto IP, a new Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) standard. The HTTP protocol was extended to support "discovery," creating HTTP Multicast User Datagram Protocol (UDP) for a device to advertise its presence, and HTTP Unicast UDP for a control point to answer the device. A device "describes" itself using Extensible Markup Language (XML). Addressing, discovery and description are required components of UPnP implementation.
Control, eventing and presentations are optional components of UPnP. Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) is a draft W3C standard based on XML used by UPnP for information exchange and control. Event messages use General Event Notification Architecture (GENA), another IETF-defined protocol. With UPnP's baseline functionality, the user interface can be presented as an HTML document, or additional IP-based protocols can be used to export the services available on the digital media player.
Standard services for discovering the media content, managing connections and discovering a device's media-rendering capabilities, will likely be established in a future UPnP AV specification. However, it is unlikely the UPnP AV specification will identify any particular content transfer protocol.
Of these, Web-based Distributed Authoring and Versioning (WebDAV) is the best tool for communication and synchronization between high-level applications like software jukeboxes. WebDAV is the only protocol that utilizes the ubiquity of the HTTP protocol and augments it by formalizing the file transfer methods, while reusing UPnP components, such as HTTP and XML. The final differentiating factor in usage of WebDAV is that it is supported within all of the most commonly used operating systems, including Windows XP and Mac OS X.
Unlike the case with most other communications links, there is no widely accepted industry standard for IP over USB. Microsoft's Remote Network Driver Interface Specification (RNDIS) has the largest installed base, minimizing the need for additional driver development.
The RNDIS solution works by appearing as an Ethernet adapter and a small Ethernet network to the host PC. The virtual Ethernet network is very simple to emulate, with no real-world issues to handle. The media device is connected on the far side of this network, creating only an endpoint
One of the biggest disadvantages of using IP for media device interfacing is that the overhead of a TCP/IP stack can reduce throughput significantly. The situation will improve over time, but, for current applications where throughput and quality of service are critical, designers can provide "tunneling" software in the PC and player, enabling the connection to run at full speed, where the player is connected directly to the PC via USB or 1394.
Another major challenge is program size. A significant amount of additional code is required to support the multiple protocols required for UPnP, and the additional memory requirements bring extra cost. Overlaying can reduce the impact on memory, as well as reusing HTTP and XML code from the UPnP stack.
IP transport may not yet be appropriate for some small-scale embedded devices, but designs that can support it will have significant advantages for both the consumer and the designer. Most importantly, IP transport appears to be the key to interoperability, something that is clearly lacking in current digital media devices as more and more content becomes available and consumers buy new digital media products.
Memory systems define consumer options for portable audio players
By EE Times
Jun 24, 2002 (7:40 AM)
URL: http://www.eetimes.com/story/OEG20020621S0073
Jon Maken,Senior Manager, Product MarketingCirrus Logic, Austin, Texas
Although experimentation will continue with portable Internet audio players, three device classes will dominate the market for the next few years: portables based on flash memory, optical spinning media, and hard disk drives. Recent flash memory price drops from more than two dollars to less than 55 cents per megabyte continue to spur growth for flash-based players. Expect this market to segment into low-end and high-end devices ranging from less than $70 to approximately $299 as consumers with active lifestyles demand a variety of innovative and ultra-portable form factors.
Optical spinning media-based portables will emerge as the dominant force. Consumers demanding the most cost-effective systems will make this class the high volume segment over the next few years due to low costs of CD-R/RW discs, consumer familiarity with the CD media, and low player costs in the range of $49 - $129.
Hard drive-based portables or jukeboxes using either 1.8-inch or 2.5-inch hard drives will deliver a fundamental advantage over all other portable devices - massive amounts of storage capacity enabling consumers to store an entire music collection on a small, convenient form factor. Consumers demanding transportability and easy access to their entire music collections will continue to drive growth in this segment.
Today's portable Internet audio customers want functional, easy-to-use devices that have long battery life and are perceived as affordable. For systems designers, this means delivering sufficient performance to playback the mainstream digital audio formats; quick system power-up with minimal delays in skipping between tracks; intuitive and easy-to-use interfaces; and a balance between performance and battery life.
As if these challenges weren't enough, navigating the digital content protection waters requires right-sizing the security capabilities to deliver cost-effective, future-proof designs. Unresolved technical and business issues as well as existing and proposed legislation continue to make this a work-in-progress.
Designers should provide a baseline security implementation flexible enough to work with Digital Rights Management (DRM) solutions, such as those from Intertrust or Microsoft. Designers should also look for solutions providing flexibility and scalability in hardware and software security.
For its part, Cirrus Logic developed what we call the MaverickKey, a method of creating a unique chip ID at manufacturing time by combining a 32-bit unique key and a 128-bit randomly generated key for each chip. A DRM can use this ID, which cannot be altered once set, to authorize or authenticate an individual Internet audio player.
Among market demands, system designers should provide full support for mainstream codecs (such as MP3, Windows Media Audio and Advanced Audio Coding) with enough performance to manage the system and user interface while providing a minimum of 10-12 hours of playback. Full support for ID3 tags and playlists for easily managing digital audio files is also a must. And, OEMs must deliver easy-to-use software compatible with mainstream encoding and audio management software for the PC and Mac.
A prerequisite for flash-based portables is a minimum of 32 Mbytes of onboard flash with an expansion slot to add more flash memory as prices decline. Also system processors should be housed in a package capable of enabling ultra-portable form-factors.
Optical spinning media portables need support for mainstream CD media types such as CD-DA, CD-R, CD-RW, 12 cm and 8 cm formats and the ability to scale to support newer optical media types. These systems should have anti-shock circuitry and firmware to minimize music skipping during system shocks. Processor hardware and firmware support for managing and error correcting low-quality CD media is a requirement to ensure maximum playback capabilities.
Hard drive-based portable jukeboxes need processors with the scalability to enable real-time encoding and storing during playback, high-quality onboard analog-to-digital converters for recording from any audio source, and an intuitive interface to support easy and quick searching and accessing the thousands of available songs.
One example of a scalable system chip for portable Internet audio players that attempts to balance performance and headroom with the power management capabilities is Cirrus Logic's EP7312. For decode purposes, we chose 74 MHz ARM7 in combination with a 48 Kbyte, zero wait-state internal SRAM memory for MP3, WMA or AAC decode workspace and buffering. The on-chip SRAM memory enables designers to reduce, and in most cases eliminate the need for external RAM while providing just enough scalability to allow support for code such as servo control code. A 90MHz version was designed to enable PC-less, real-time CD/MP3 encoding and storing during playback.
Ultra-low 90mW typical power at 74 MHz with less than 0.03mW standby was achieved by integrating a power management architecture that shutdown non-essential components and used internal timers and interrupts to allow both internal and external control of entry and exit into power management states. An integrated PLL adjusts processor frequency depending on operating mode, thus optimizing performance and power consumption. The PLL also eliminates the need for extra clock circuitry normally required to playback audio files across the most common sample rates.
Wireless mesh shares MP3 files
By Masood Garahi, President and CEO, Allen H. Kupetz, Director of Sales, K. Terrell Brown, Market Strategist, MeshNetworks Inc., Orlando, Fla., EE Times
Jun 24, 2002 (7:44 AM)
URL: http://www.eetimes.com/story/OEG20020621S0070
You pull up to a light, and the car next to you is playing a song you wish you could hear from the beginning. So you pull out your PDA, type in the title or the artist's name, and about 5 seconds later you are listening to that song. Your MP3 player cannot do that today. Your satellite radio will never do it. But you can do it in a wireless ad hoc peer-to-peer mesh network.
The song was delivered to you as an MP3 file. MP3 technology has led to the creation of new companies and new devices (Apple's iPod, SonicBlue's Rio series and Digit@lway's lipstick-size DMK), and enough litigation to keep a whole generation of lawyers employed. But all these companies fail to address mobile distribution-namely, how to make any audio file available anywhere, anytime.
The MP3 format exploded in popularity primarily because it allowed bandwidth-limited users to share music, particularly important for teenagers using a dial-up connection. But an MP3 player still has a finite amount of memory, so there is only so much music you can download to your PC and then upload into your MP3 player to take with you. In the MP3 format, 1 Mbyte is roughly equivalent to 1 minute of music.
By freeing users from the limited capacity of their local storage, an infinite amount of music becomes available. Streaming MP3s from network-based storage or from other MP3 devices can supplement or even replace the local storage of MP3 files on the device.
Some believe that 2.5- and third-generation cellular, which offer the promise of greater bandwidth than the cellular systems deployed today, may allow them to send and receive highly compressed MP3 files economically. But these cellular architectures will not support the peer-to-peer file swapping inherent to the Internet and existing MP3 swap sites. However, wireless ad hoc mesh networks do.
Our small company has developed a mesh routing technology that can enable mobile ad hoc networks. Each user device acts as a router/repeater for other devices. This means that users cooperate rather than compete for network resources. The device's ability to function as a router/repeater allows users to hop through other users to reach network access points. Hopping increases both the network throughput and the coverage area by leveraging users as part of the network.
This network architecture supports the ability to store MP3 files at home or on a network server, and then stream them wirelessly to cars, laptops, PDAs or wireless MP3 players. Users would also be able to share files directly with other users in an Internet-like wireless environment. We believe that this technology will result in most MP3 players being wirelessly enabled in the future. It also means that expensive, single-function satellite radios could be replaced by much less expensive and much more personal wireless MP3 players.
Mobile routers
Our company's networks operate in a distributed meshed architecture rather than the centralized hub-and-spoke design of traditional cellular telephone networks. This key is that the individual subscriber nodes-in this case, MP3 players, PDAs, laptops, automobiles-also act as mobile router/repeaters for neighboring nodes.
Wireless traffic is routed from the subscriber node to Intelligent Access Points that act as wireless or wired gateways. Traffic from the IAPs then is routed to the Mobile Internet Switching Center, which directs the packets to the voice public switched telephone network or to the Internet as needed. This switching center is also responsible for call control and other back-end operations.
The digital ASIC required for a device to ride on this mesh network is functionally equivalent to an 802.11 baseband chip. That is, it includes the modem, media-access control layer and our Ad Hoc Routing engine, along with resources that support network management and security. The ASIC interfaces to off-the-shelf RF transceiver chip sets on one side, and PC Card or CompactFlash interfaces to the subscriber host device on the other. Designed for battery-operated mobile devices, it operates with a 1.8-volt core and 3.3-V I/O, and includes low-power and sleep modes.
Such a network could improve both distribution and storage of digital audio, giving rise to new business models for the entire recording industry. The traditional value chain flows from artist to recording company, then is distributed to music stores and radio stations, and finally to the end listener. The future audio value chain will flow from artist to studio, then to MP3 clearinghouses and radio stations, and then to the listener. There are potential new revenue opportunities for organizations to act as clearinghouses that legally acquire MP3 files and digitally distribute them to subscribers and radio stations.
The recording industry successfully fought MP3 file sharing with its lawsuit against Napster. However, the recording industry has potential gains in this model, namely, acting as studios and clearinghouses. This will substantially reduce their costs of production, distribution and inventories, thereby considerably improving margins and profitability. The device's owner is known to the network operators. On-demand streaming MP3 also will end the annoyances of DJs, commercials, bad songs or searching for a few favorite tunes among a stack of CDs.
Rights concerns limit distribution
By Andrew Wolfe, Chief Technology Officer, SonicBlue Inc., Santa Clara, Calif., EE Times
Jun 24, 2002 (7:43 AM)
URL: http://www.eetimes.com/story/OEG20020621S0069
Imagine yourself in the following scenario: You drive out to the mall on a Saturday afternoon to buy a pair of the latest Air Jordans. As you enter the mall, you see a scruffy-looking guy in the parking lot selling some that "fell off the back of a truck" for $20. Do you buy them or head inside to the store? Like most people, you probably pass up the opportunity to save a few bucks and legitimately buy the shoes from a retailer, packaged in a box, fully guaranteed and without the accompanying guilt.
Now consider an alternative scenario. As you prepare to hand $200 over to the guy in referee stripes, he mentions that this year, Nike has some new rules about the shoes. You are permitted to wear them only in your house. You can't wear them in your car, at the gym or to work. If you'd like, you can buy three more pairs for those locations. By the way, he's only offering size 12 today. Suddenly, that guy in the parking lot isn't looking so bad.
Essentially, this is the dilemma that digital-music customers face today. Customers want to purchase Internet-based digital music for new consumer products like the Rio, but the experience of buying it is extremely poor. Through a myriad of rules, limited selection and miserable usability, the owners of most commercial music have driven customers away toward other solutions, whether that involves file swapping or, more commonly, buying old formats like CDs and creating unrestricted MP3 files.
When we introduced the MP3 player, we learned a great deal about how unique music is as a product. Customers are emotionally attached to the music they buy. It's not at all unusual to keep an album for your entire life. Consumers regularly listen to an album 10 or 20 years after they purchase it. Few products are so intensely tied to our self-image. Because of this, people want to own music, and the voracious desire to acquire more and more of it has driven an abundance of available content. The downside of that personal attachment to music is that customers are highly intolerant of anything that reduces the quality of the buying or listening experience.
A viable online music industry requires a product that meets all of the current expectations of consumers. These include:
Selection: Customers expect to have access to the complete music catalog of every major label.
Ease of use: Buying and using online music must be at least as easy and as satisfying as buying a CD is today. Any security mechanisms need to be invisible to customers who are not engaging in piracy. Listening to music should be no more complex than pressing the play button.
Portability: Music you buy should be usable on every digital music device you own. Current digital-rights management (DRM) technologies support device portability if content owners allow their customers to exploit it.
Quality: Even in compressed digital formats, customers expect to see the level of pride and workmanship that artists have traditionally demanded for their products.
New capabilities: Consumers understand that advanced digital devices and services provide advantages over traditional formats, including the ability to better organize, search and manage content; more information about the music and the artist; and links to tools and communities that enhance the experience.
Sustained value: Customers consider music to be a lifetime purchase. Music I buy still needs to be usable if I get a new PC or a new Rio music player.
Respect: Consumers expect to be treated as valued customers throughout the process, not as potential thieves.
The good news is that technology is no longer a barrier to creating an online music economy. There has been an explosion of digital-music devices since the first Rio was introduced four years ago.
Today, I can rip my CDs onto my computer and listen to them there, or I can rip them onto my Rio Central home music server and listen on my stereo. From there, I can stream the music over my home network to my Rio Receiver in my bedroom. I can burn a 200-song CD-R for my son to listen to on his RioVolt Portable CD in his room. I can copy a dozen or two songs onto my Rio 800 flash-memory player to take to the gym, or I can copy all 4,000 songs in my collection to my Rio Riot hard-disk portable player to take with me on an airplane. I listen to the same 4,000 songs on my Rio Car system on my way to work each morning. I can enjoy my digital-music files in as many places and in as many ways as any previous music format. In fact, it is a better experience since I often have my entire collection with me away from home.
Security is also no longer a barrier to online distribution. DRM technology is available from Microsoft, Real, Audible and others that effectively limits illegal distribution of content. This technology is already supported on many of the music devices from Rio and others and can be effectively applied to all of the devices described above. Every major record label has deployed one of these technologies to some extent.
Format compatibility is often mentioned as the final barrier to online music infrastructure. Content owners insist that a single standard format and a single standard DRM must be adopted before a market can be established, just like for CDs or DVDs. This is an obsolete argument. Modern music devices are software-based and can easily support multiple content formats and DRM mechanisms without any impact on the user. Even a typical DVD player today supports almost a dozen different disk formats.
Huge impact
The impact of "getting it right" will be huge, driving growth in music devices, semiconductors and content. When music becomes more useful and more enjoyable, people buy more of it.
Digital distribution also creates great new opportunities for artists and labels. New music can be promoted quickly and cheaply. Distribution costs are lower, resulting in increased profit margins. Digital distribution systems also provide huge opportunities for collateral marketing. Many music fans will opt into fan clubs, online communities and other affinity groups. Digital-music systems allow consumers to enjoy their music more conveniently and in more places. Perhaps most important, labels get sustained, direct relationships with their customers.
The music industry has made great progress in the past year toward this model. The PressPlay music service has a broad selection, allows users to build collections and permits burning CDs of some content for other devices. Now is the time for the industry to deliver a high-quality consumer-oriented music service.
INTERTRUST AND DATAPLAY ANNOUNCE PARTNERSHIP FOR PROTECTING PORTABLE MEDIA
DataPlay digital media and Rights/System's powerful new media platform poised to replace the compact disc
August 6, 2001 - SANTA CLARA, Ca., and BOULDER, Colo. - InterTrust Technologies Corporation (NASDAQ: ITRU), provider of the leading trusted Digital Rights Management (DRM) technology, and DataPlay, Inc., developer of the universal media format for all things digital, today announced a strategic relationship to create a portable media distribution platform for protected content such as music. Universal Music Group, EMI Recorded Music and BMG Entertainment are all planning to release pre-recorded music on DataPlay digital media for use in multiple consumer electronic devices.
InterTrust and DataPlay will create a format for DRM-based content storage on DataPlay digital media. Consumer electronics manufacturers, including Samsung, Toshiba and SONICblue (makers of the Diamond Rio), which are developing DataPlay-enabled devices, will also be able to license the format. InterTrust's recently announced Rights/System provides a secure environment for music with a transparent user experience. Users can play their InterTrust-protected content in any DataPlay-enabled device. Users will also have the ability to move the content to their desktop computers and portable devices. For content providers and consumers, this seamlessly integrates content purchased online and content bought on DataPlay digital media.
"A standard for protected portable media is essential to create the CD's successor," said Talal Shamoon, EVP business development, InterTrust. "InterTrust believes that DataPlay's position with 3 of the 5 major labels and its cutting edge format delivers a compelling consumer entertainment experience. A ubiquitous protected format beyond the CD is the only way to conclusively halt music piracy, while giving consumers the rich experience they want."
"DataPlay's partnership with InterTrust reinforces its mission to provide a new media format for consumers that maintains security and control for the distribution of electronic content," said Todd Oseth, senior vice president of corporate development from DataPlay. "The scalability and flexibility of Intertrust's platform allow us to easily integrate the DataPlay solution with any content, device or distribution method."
"We are pleased to see InterTrust and DataPlay working together to create a flexible specification for delivering our artists' music and enhanced content," said Albhy Galuten, Sr. Vice President, Advanced Technology, Universal Music Group's eLabs. "Combining DataPlay's new digital media format with InterTrust's DRM technology will give consumers the flexibility and convenience they want."
To support the DataPlay platform, InterTrust developed a special version of its technology for portable devices, Rights/PD, and a dedicated 'packager' that places the content in a secure format. InterTrust is also adapting its PC plug-in for music players, to enable playing and importing content from DataPlay digital media, as well as the activation of additional content that resides securely on the digital media - a unique Dataplay feature. InterTrust's Rights/System servers complete the infrastructure and allow retailers and distributors to activate content on the digital media and send protected content to consumers in a user-friendly fashion.
About InterTrust Technologies Corporation
Over the past eleven years, InterTrust has dramatically changed the landscape and importance of DRM. As the first company to devise a digital commerce network, the MetaTrust Utility, to help other businesses manage and protect their proprietary data, InterTrust acts as a neutral third party to ensure security and interoperability over the Internet and other electronic devices.
InterTrust's more than 40 licensees and partners include Adobe, AOL/TimeWarner, BlockBuster, BMG Entertainment, Cirrus, Compaq, Digital World Services, Enron, Magex, Mercurix, Mitsubishi, Nokia, Philips, Samsung, Texas Instruments, Universal Music Group, and Wave Systems.
About DataPlay, Inc.
DataPlay, Inc. was incorporated in November 1998 to develop a Web-enabled digital content recording and distribution media for portable Internet appliances and hand-held consumer electronic and entertainment devices. Headquartered in Boulder, Colorado, the Company employs more than 175 people in the United States, Singapore and Japan. Visit DataPlay on the Internet at www.dataplay.com.
Distribution/protection dilemma
By Albhy Galuten, Senior Vice President, for Advanced Technology, Universal eLabs, Universal Music Group, Santa Monica, Calif., EE Times
Jun 24, 2002 (7:35 AM)
URL: http://www.eetimes.com/story/OEG20020621S0068
What if there was a free publishing Web site, called, say, Bookster? One could easily take the 10 best-selling books in any given week, cut off the spines, scan the pages into a computer, convert them to text using optical character recognition, hire a few college kids to proofread them and have all 10 on the Internet within 24 hours. This hasn't been a problem for the book industry, because electronic books are not yet as good as their print counterparts, and people don't like reading novels on their PCs. In the next few years, however, we will see flexible, light, pocket-size, backlit viewers that offer better resolution than a printed book. They will be able to easily hold hundreds of books or thousands of magazines and will go for weeks without recharging.
The point of this example is that the problem of unconstrained content copying is not specific to music. It's an electronic media problem. Music, like the canary in the coal mine, is just the first to feel the effects in store for all media.
Some people carry video cameras into the theater, film the movie and then sell DVDs in territories where pirated movies are the norm. Most people don't. We have decided, as a society, that risks associated with this kind of piracy are outweighed by the benefits of things like not being searched when we go to the theater. We will find a balance for music, books and games. The question is: How do we, as technologists, give reasonable protection to the creators of intellectual property while still deploying attractive products that give good value to the consumer?
We have all heard the myth that you can't protect content, that people will be able to hack any security and therefore studios should stop trying to protect their content and find a new business model.
The fact is that security has worked for years. Cable and satellite systems use it all the time to protect pay channels and video-on-demand. Certainly not everyone pays, but most people do. What about DVD video? True, CSS-the technique used to protect DVD movies-has been hacked. That hasn't stopped the selling and renting of movies on DVD from being a good business.
Complex problems
The problems surrounding the electronic distribution of music are very complex, and the technology is still developing.
We like our music to be portable. We listen to it in our cars, in our bedrooms, in our garages, when we are jogging or flying in a plane. This leaves out so-called conditional-access solutions that are typically used in cable and satellite systems. They require a connection. There are new physical formats, like DVD-Audio and Super Audio CD, but the CD serves the public pretty well and it will take time for those higher-resolution formats to replace the CD.
Peer-to-peer services seem to indicate that consumers like to download music. They like convenience and they like depth of choice. They like sharing their favorite songs with their friends. Let's take a look at what would be required of a system that supported all this but still protected the rights of the creators.
First, let's assume we want to protect the intellectual property of the creators. This means that there should be some security applied to the content. This security should allow a reasonable amount of sharing so that we can turn our friends on to music and so that we can try out new music ourselves. However, this security should make it difficult to "share" unreasonably. It would be fine to send a song to a friend who could listen to it once or twice. It should not be able to make numerous copies to sell in the schoolyard or to give away to the anonymous masses.
My music-by which I mean any music I have the right to play whether by purchase or subscription-should be available wherever I listen to music. I should be able to listen in every room in my house. I should be able to listen when I am in my car or anywhere I have a portable device. In an ideal world, I should have access to it in hotel rooms or at parties-any place I can be authenticated.
My music should play on all my new devices. I can't play cassettes in CD players and I can't play CDs in memory-based devices. The new music I purchase, however, should be playable in the new devices I buy. Because of the security requirement above, this can't be accomplished by removing security. This has to be accomplished using interoperable security mechanisms.
So let's address the problems in order. Digital rights management (DRM) is maturing as a security technology. There are a number of systems that work reasonably well in PCs.
In portable devices that are not always or ever connected, it is a bit more complicated. There are two solution paths emerging. The first approach is to migrate DRM to portable devices. As devices get more powerful, they are able to support sophisticated technologies. Those devices need to be connected to a network at least some of the time.
The second approach tries to address a trickier problem: devices that are never connected. The most mature technology in this area is Copy Protection for Pre-Recorded Media from Toshiba, Matsushita, Intel and IBM (see www.4centity.com/tech/cprm/). The feature set is, by necessity, more limited than a connected PC.
Next-generation convenience can be provided in two ways. You can carry the music with you or you can have it available wherever you go. As the size of hard disks continues to grow, the issue becomes more and more one of governance, not one of storage. Some estimates say that all the commercially released music ever recorded will fit on a single $100 hard disk well before the end of the decade.
The question is, how does an intelligent system know what it can or can't play and when? There are two basic approaches. The first is to authenticate the user. In that scenario, I could have access to my music anywhere in the world.
The second is to define a limited number of personal devices that would be capable of rendering "my" content. When I buy a new portable or a new car, I add it to the network. When I sell it or lose it, I remove it from my personal network.
The first ultimately provides for more convenience and is clearly where so-called Web or network services are headed. The second is, in some ways, easier to implement but perhaps not as useful in the long run. For either of these two scenarios we need interoperability. For instance, music could be transferred from a PC to a Sony Memory Stick Walkman using Microsoft's DRM and a proprietary plug-in from Sony.
Studios pause as audiophiles embrace digital
By Rick Merritt, EE Times
Jun 21, 2002 (10:37 AM)
URL: http://www.eetimes.com/story/OEG20020621S0067
The next big format for music may be just plain bits. Many audiophiles who have amassed collections of vinyl records, cassette tapes and compact disks see digital as the ultimate format-though it's not clear where users will house liner notes and album cover art.
But those are secondary considerations as music hovers on the brink of the digital age. The biggest hurdle by far is creating a copyright protection technology that gives studios enough confidence to release their wealth of content. So we asked top technologists on either side of the question to give us their views on the way forward.
Albhy Galutin of Universal Studios' music group (Santa Monica, Calif.) lays out his requirements for next-generation players. Andy Wolfe of Sonic-Blue Inc. (Santa Clara, Calif.) makes the case from an OEM's viewpoint that all the ingredients are embodied in today's products and it's time for studios to ante up. Expect both sides to continue to struggle with the issues for some time in the courtrooms as well as on the design benches.
Below this great debate, a host of other design issues awaits developers of Internet audio products. In exclusive contributions in this issue and online (www.eet.com), startup Mesh Networks Inc. (Orlando, Fla.) and industry veteran Texas Instruments Inc. (Dallas) discuss separate ideas for networking portable players. Cirrus Logic (Austin, Texas) lays out what it believes will be the successful product types, and an analyst from Berkeley Design Technology Inc. (Berkeley, Calif.) gives tips for walking through the minefield of testing these devices.
We round out this package with a discussion of the nuances of some of the latest audio codecs and, more broadly, in digital audio signaling.
Despite the copyright battle and other issues, Internet audio remains a market with some momentum. Market watcher Forward Concepts (Tempe, Ariz.) estimates 7 million portable MP3 players shipped in 2001 and nearly twice as many will go out the door this year from a growing array of OEMs.
Factor into that mix an expanding product set of wired and wireless, portable and rack systems-indeed, even cell phones, PDAs and CD/DVD players are building in MP3 decode capabilities. So in the future, "Internet audio" may not indicate a specific kind of system so much as a capability many consumer gadgets share, putting us all in contact with our favorite tunes.
Now, where are we going to put those liner notes?
DVD driving consumer electronics convergence
By Alson Kemp, Senior Field Applications Engineer, Cirrus Logic, Fremont, Calif., EE Times
Jan 3, 2002 (1:46 PM)
URL: http://www.eetimes.com/story/OEG20020103S0060
The DVD player is the fastest-selling consumer device of all time, and the increasing consumer acceptance of DVD technology is paving the way toward the integration of computers, communications and consumer electronics. That convergence of technologies is setting the stage for a new era of consumer entertainment electronics that will see the home entertainment media center emerge as the household gateway to a rich and growing spectrum of content.
But the convergence of disparate consumer electronics technologies into a unified consumer electronics device has been hampered to date by at least three factors: analog-coded media, analog/hard-coded processing and little commonality among systems.
Until recently, the various consumer electronics device types have required very different media (tape or disk) and analog/digital processing. And they have involved very little general-purpose processing. For example, a CD player or a VCR has little need for a 32-bit microprocessor. With no general-purpose processing power, there has been little common firmware and no common software elements.
Many pieces of consumer equipment now have large, functionally identical portions of silicon that will open the way to convergence. The major functional blocks used in consumer entertainment equipment include an MP3 player, CD audio player and DVD player, as well as a personal video recorder (PVR), a digital cable decoder and/or a satellite receiver. That requires the typical AV receiver or DVD player to incorporate such functions as MPEG video decode, MPEG video encode, audio DSP, Internet communications and cable/satellite receiver decoding. A minimum hardware implementation would include a microprocessor, hard drive and CD/DVD loader. Hybrid media devices could replace the VCR with DVD-R using an MPEG encoder; a DVD player with a satellite television receiver could replace the separate pieces of equipment.
Parts like Cirrus' CS98000 media processor are geared toward converged systems. Dual RISC microprocessors allow a highly tailored real-time operating system running on one CPU to provide time-critical video and audio services, while the second CPU is free to run more general-purpose applications, such as the human interface or network connectivity. An ATAPI/IDE interface provides connectivity for both a high-performance DVD loader and a hard disk drive. A digital video signal can be fed into the digital video input and can be mixed or implemented "picture-in-picture" with the DVD video.
Integrated media
Incorporating all of the functional blocks in one unit converts a DVD player, set-top box or AV receiver into an integrated media center. This piece of equipment includes the functionality of a DVD player along with the features of a set-top box or personal video recorder. Already, DVD players have assumed the functionality of CD players.
However, the technical hurdles and protocols required by the added functional blocks complicate the addition of other functional blocks. For example, to incorporate cable or satellite receiver functionality, the system architect must understand and implement security protocols for restricted or pay-per-view channels.
By adding a cable or satellite receiver to a DVD player, the DVD player gains the functionality of a set-top box. The receiver retrieves the proper channel from the cable or satellite feed, selects the desired MPEG stream from among the streams encapsulated in the channel and decompresses the MPEG video data. As mentioned above, the unit must also implement the satellite or cable provider's security protocol and channel guides.
A hard disk drive can also be added for the storage of persistent user data such as e-mail, new programs, compressed audio and Internet-quality video. The hard drive would also be used to store the system software and operating system. Adding a hard disk drive and an MPEG encoder to DVD drives implements personal video recorder functionality. Although satellites and digital cable transmit MPEG compressed video, the PVR will likely need an MPEG encoder and/or transcoder to compress analog video signals.
The DVD player appears to be a catalyst for the convergence of disparate consumer electronics technologies into a unified consumer electronics device. The race to create the first fully converged DVD device is on, and the ultimate winner will be the consumer.
Small gains in power efficiency now, bigger gains tomorrow
By EE Times
Jul 9, 2002 (10:28 AM)
URL: http://www.eetimes.com/story/OEG20020709S0022
Jim Doyle, Senior Member of Technical Staff, Bill Broach, Design Manager, both of Portable Power Systems, National Semiconductor, Santa Clara, Calif.
Consumers expect that advanced 2.5G and 3G cellular phones will come in the same form factors and exhibit the same battery life as existing 2G cellular phones. 2.5G and 3G "smart" phones offer users voice, data and multimedia capabilities such as mobile access to e-mail and personal information, robust Web-browsing capabilities, audio and video playback and streaming, and rich gaming. New cellular "smart" phones will use data services to enable new ways to communicate, access information, conduct business and learn.
But the added functionality and features of 3G cellular phones coupled with the requirement for backwards compatibility necessitates a tenfold increase in circuit complexity. This complexity in 2.5G and 3G handsets puts a strain on the power budget that can be relieved only by a top-down approach to power management coupled with advanced power-management devices and techniques. Unfortunately battery technology has not kept pace with increases in circuit technology. While digital electronics continues to double in capacity every 18 months as Moore's Law predicts, batteries are a relatively mature technology. Little increase in the energy density of nickel metal hydride (NiMH), lithium ion (Li-Ion), and nickel cadmium (NiCd) batteries is expected, and new technologies such as fuel cells are years away from commercial viability. Consequently, increased standby and talk times for cellular phones will result only from advances in circuit design if larger battery packs are to be avoided to preserve existing form factors.
The power consumption of a mobile handset can be compared to the fuel efficiency of an automobile. The automobile that we have today was not designed with fuel efficiency in mind. It can be slightly improved by advanced engine management or mechanical techniques, but automakers have had to completely redesign the power train at the system level to realize dramatic improvements in fuel economy. Similarly, much of the circuitry found in a mobile handset was not designed with maximum power efficiency in mind. While the highly efficient and optimized power management of discrete voltage regulators can help the battery life of an advanced 3G handset, a top-down approach to examine the entire system will be necessary to further optimize the battery life.
Top-down analyses of cellular phone power budgets reveal that the digital circuitry consumes about 35% of the total power in a cellular phone. Today's 2G cellular phones rely primarily on low-dropout regulators (LDOs) to supply the power for the various subsystems in the handset. This approach is proving impractical for 2.5G and 3G cellular phones because designers are realizing the digital circuitry in deeper and deeper sub-micron processes. For example, a baseband processor fabricated in a 0.13-micron process would require a nominal 1.3V supply. A single Li-Ion cell supplies a nominal 3.6V. However the actual supplied voltage can range from a fully charged 4.2V to a low of 2.7V, so significant voltage must be dropped across the LDO, resulting in an average conversion efficiency of only 36%.
Therefore, designers of 2.5G and 3G cellular phones are employing more efficient switching regulators for digital supply voltages. A well-designed switching regulator can reach conversion efficiencies well over 90%. Some synchronous step-down dc/dc converters are optimized for powering ultra-low voltage circuits, such as handset DSPs, from a single Li-Ion cell. These provide up to 400 mA with pin programmable output voltages to allow adjustment for baseband-processor voltage options without board redesign or external feedback resistors. Cell phone regulators often utilize a miniature chip-scale microSMD package to conserve space, and minimize the number of external capacitors required for filtering and voltage reservoir. For example, the LM2612 uses only two external capacitors - one 10-µF and one 22-µF - and one 10-µH inductor. And since portable devices spend significant time in low-power modes, a pulse frequency modulation (PFM) lowers the switching frequency to provide high efficiency conversion even under very light loads.
One paradox of low power operation is the switching regulator's need to supply current to the always-hungry central processor, even as it uses practically no current of its own. One device that will appear during the summer (the LM2608) substitutes a very low Iq (19µA typical) linear mode for PFM. That is, the device behaves like a switching regulator under high current load conditions, and a linear regulator under light load conditions. This device provides up to 3 mA for deep sleep operation in advanced handsets. It offers a programmable output voltage set and can be mask-programmed at the factory for non-standard voltage sets.
Scaling voltages
If we use the automotive metaphor, there are several techniques for adjusting the power consumption of baseband processors and other handset power consumers. One possible scheme is adaptive voltage scaling.
Adaptive voltage scaling links the baseband processor and a switching regulator in a complete closed-loop system that dynamically adjusts the digital supply voltage to the minimum level needed for proper operation. Scaling the baseband processor's input voltage results in quadratic savings in power because the power dissipated by any digital VLSI circuit is proportional to the square of its input voltage. A handset implementing AVS in voice-mode, can reduce the baseband power dissipation by a factor of two over conventional circuit implementations.
There are other places in a cellular phone where switching regulators can be used in place of LDOs. For example, the transmitter power amplifier (PA) is a huge component of a cellular handset's power budget. Typical transmitter efficiencies are in the order of 30% to 40%, best case. A PA is optimized to have highest efficiency at maximum transmit power. Since most handsets operate relatively close to basestations, the handset radios reduce transmit power to the minimum needed to maintain quality communication. At the reduced power levels, the PA efficiency suffers. By employing adaptive voltage scaling and adjusting the power amplifier's voltage optimally, transmitter efficiency can be increased by 10% to 20%.
A device such as National's LM2614 allows active voltage scaling for the PA via a simple user application circuit. This circuit can be configured by the user to provide the desired control and transfer functions to position Vout for optimal PA efficiency. Like the LM2612 and its linear mode sibling the LM2608, its switching activity can be synchronized to an external clock. External compensation can be effected with two SMT components, allowing the switching regulator circuit to be tuned for the desired loop response regardless of the user's choice of operating frequency or output filter components. This device is the subject of intense design activity among 2.5G handset manufacturers.
Products optimized for use in WCDMA and other advanced applications are being released later this year. Featuring the same high efficiency, current mode architecture as the previous designs, they integrate the control circuitry required for active output voltage programming. In addition, they provide an integrated bypass FET for operation under end of battery life conditions and include design improvements intended to benefit system manufacturers. One such improvement is a precision trim for current limit, which allows the system designer to specify inductors within a closer tolerance than has typically been possible in the past.
By applying system-level energy conservation methodologies, a handset designer will be able to dramatically increase the usable life with a given battery size. Through careful application of high-efficiency power conversion, closed-loop voltage optimization and the careful analysis of system energy losses, improvements of as much as 5 times in battery life are achievable.
Smart wireless products demand complex power management
By EE Times
Jul 9, 2002 (10:30 AM)
URL: http://www.eetimes.com/story/OEG20020709S0025
Reno Rossetti, Senior Applications Manager, Fairchild Semiconductor, San Jose, Calif.
Cellular telephone technology is one of the best success stories of recent years with its capability to keep the user working untethered for an entire day, and requiring only a single overnight recharge. The ultimate vision for this technology is the "smart phone," having the advanced functionality of a hand-held computing device and mobile phone in one convergent device. Reaching that level of functionality without compromising the usage model of the cellphone will present enormous challenges for the electronics industry and in particular for power management.
The wireless landscape is today — and will remain for many years — very fragmented along both geographical and communications standards lines. Three generations of digital cellular technologies; second (2G), third (3G) and in-between (2.5G), already coexist.
Japan is ahead of the pack with 3G (W-CDMA and CDMA2000 flavors), while U.S. manufacturers are building the infrastructure to provide 2.5G technology, at this very time. Europe and Asia are somewhere in between in development. The Japanese typically do not own home computers and are relying increasingly on their cell phones to exchange text messages, as well as to access email and the Internet.
If this trend of relying on overlapping technologies takes hold elsewhere, the future of smart phone devices, which combine the computing capabilities of a hand-held device and the communications capabilities of a cellular telephone, is assured. That smart phones have a real possibility to become the next "disrupting" technology seems to be confirmed by the recent entrance in the wireless arena of powerful novices like Intel and Microsoft.
The majority of cellular and hand-held devices are powered today by a single cell Lithium-Ion battery. The wireless semiconductor "smart" ICs in the signal path of this technology follow an established industry-wide trend, and are mostly designed in submicron, low voltage and high-density processes. Consequently, the power management ICs are low voltage devices themselves, bridging the gap between the power source voltage range (2.7 to 4.2V) and the operational voltage of the signal IC's (1 to 3.5V). Such low operational voltages, in conjunction with the necessity of low quiescent currents for long stand-by times, have established low voltage CMOS (0.5 micron minimum features) as the process of choice for wireless voltage regulators. Since space is at a premium in these applications, these voltage regulators come in very small packages, from leaded to leadless to "chip scale" configurations.
For a 2.5G digital cellular telephone, in the class of the recently announced T68 mobile phone by Sony Ericsson, each block requires a specialized power supply. The RF section is particularly sensitive to noise and is best served with low noise linear regulators, while other sections will be served by either linear or switching regulators, which is based purely on architectural and cost constrains.
A possible implementation strategy for this configuration uses a variety voltage levels and regulator techniques. The battery can directly power the audio LDO since its output voltage (2.5V) is below the minimum operational battery voltage (2.7V). The rest of the LDO outputs fall somewhere inside the battery range of operation (2.7 to 4.2V) and consequently need a higher supply voltage, in this case provided by the boost converter. The DSP core at 1V will need a dedicated buck converter, while the LCD display contrast at 20V will need a dedicated boost converter.
A lot of activity is going into wireless and hand-held devices thanks to their potential to, at some point, intercept and to take over a share of the cellular market. The block diagram of a 2G wireless hand-held, in the class of the recently announced Palm i705 would show how each block requires a specialized power supply; but because of the absence of a DSP and of the SIM card the power management is a bit leaner than for the previous case. An implementation can be obtained with a total of five regulators.
Other important elements of both cellular phones and hand-held devices are the external AC adapter and the internal charger. Many AC adapters on the market are very simple implementations based on a transformer, bridge rectifier and a resistive current limit. More sophisticated controls can be obtained with integrated controllers. A Lithium-Ion charger is a constant-current/constant-voltage regulator that is either implemented with specialized controllers or by pulse width modulation of a pass transistor controlled directly by the CPU.
Cell management
Another important consideration in wireless hand-held designs is the in-battery electronics, namely that section of power management residing inside the lithium cell. The energy density of lithium-Ion cells makes them dangerous elements that need a very precise protocol for charge and handling. Overcharge, as well as undercharge, must be prevented, which leads to reduced energy storage. To this end, protection electronics measures the battery voltage and opens a pass transistor as soon as the charge voltage threshold is crossed.
Fuel gauging is necessary to be able to display the state of charge of the battery and to predict the residual time of operation in battery mode. This is an interesting and challenging feature because residual time of operation matters to the user only toward the end of the battery charge, exactly when the accuracy of the prediction begins to falter. In fact, no matter how precise the measurement system is, eventually the residual time of operation will translate into an amount of residual charge that is of the order of magnitude of the system precision, leading to increasing prediction errors as the battery approaches the empty state. This requires in amazing level of precision in the current measurement, or Coulomb counting, with analog front-end amplifiers resolving micro volts of voltage drops across small sense resistors, followed by 10 bit or higher order A/D converters.
At the 3G juncture, the system complexity for cellular and smart phones will be such that one DSP will not be enough to support video and audio compression and an additional DSP or ASIC will be necessary. In turn, this will increase power consumption and reduce battery operation time. Adaptive Computing Machines, or ACM's, are a new class of ICs appearing on the horizon that promise to solve the power dissipation problem by means of a flexible architecture optimizing software and hardware resources.
Power management in wireless devices is a pervasive issue encompassing every element in the signal as well as in the power path. With systems complexity increasing dramatically from one technology generation to the next, the long duration of untethered operation in wireless devices can be preserved only with the introduction of new breakthrough technologies.
New architectures, such as the aforementioned ACMs as well as the conversion of large scale IC's from bulk CMOS to Silicon on Insulator (SOI), should go a long way toward reducing the power dissipation of the electronic load. At the other end of the equation, new and more powerful sources of power, perhaps fuel cells, should be able to provide higher power densities inside the same cell form factor. The entire technology arsenal should be able to continue to provide more features without compromising performance
Power conversion technologies have achieved impressive efficiencies already, reaching peaks of 95%. Accordingly, they are a critical element of the power management equation but not its bottleneck. The analog building blocks for effective power management of a wireless device in its present and future incarnation are already in place and it is common today to find them assembled inside custom combo chips integrating the entire power management function, on board, of a single IC. Voltage regulators will continue to follow the CMOS minimum feature reduction curve, staying only a few technology generations away from the loads they are powering — state of the art 0.13 micron minimum features. Accordingly, they will continue to be able to adequately sustain the power, performance and cost curve that will be required to power future generations of wireless devices.
Power-hungry portables eye voltage regulator
By Stephan Ohr, EE Times
Jul 9, 2002 (10:27 AM)
URL: http://www.eetimes.com/story/OEG20020709S0013
If current projections have any merit, cell phones that double as personal digital assistants and, to some extent, portable computers will soon be upon us. To the normal cell phone functions, OEMs are already adding electronic address books and calendars in an integrated handheld device with a color LCD screen that doubles as a touch-sensitive dialing pad.
But the third and fourth generations of cellular telephones promise data streaming, enabling e-mail and Internet browsing, complete with downloaded MPEG audio and video playback. Anyone sophisticated in electronics knows that to process video-even in a digital format-you need to pump the circuits harder, you need faster clocking and you need amplifiers-all features that wind down the battery sooner. Start adding audio, video and data services, and getting more than 15 minutes of battery life out of a cell phone will be the dominant power-management issue for this year and next.
In their exclusive online article for this week's In Focus (www.eet.com/in_focus/), National Semiconductor's Jim Doyle, senior member of the technical staff, and Bill Broach, design manager, describe cell phones using an analogy to the car. We can continue to eke out small returns in fuel economy with improvements to the cooling system, water pump, generator and electrical-distribution system. Like improvements in voltage regulator efficiency in a mobile phone, these will offer incremental advances year by year and model by model. But massive gains in automotive fuel efficiency won't come without a massive overhaul of the engine and power transmission system-perhaps even a replacement of the shop-worn internal-combustion engine with a hybrid model.
While National has a battery of products designed to efficiently control voltages and currents through different parts of a cell phone/PDA combo, Doyle and Broach point out that the real gains come when the handheld system is redesigned in its entirety with power management as a priority. Consequently, this week's contributors, in print and online, can be categorized according to how much a part of the total system their power-management solution is likely to become.
With some of its portable processors-the StrongARM in particular-Intel Corp. counted the number of clock cycles required to perform certain tasks and assigned priorities for those jobs. The energy consumed by each task (the battery drain) turned out to be a function not only of the voltage (and clock frequency) required but of the number of cycles it took to complete the task. A high-energy, high-priority task need not drain the battery if it was short in duration. Similarly, a low-energy task could prove a drain on battery life if it seemed to go on endlessly.
Extending battery life
This notion is advanced by Andrew Girson, CEO of InHand Electronics (Rockville, Md.), in his contribution. InHand is a developer of reference platforms for handheld PDAs. Among the tools the company markets is a cycle counter software package that plots clock frequency against specific tasks (such as memory transfers) and again against battery life (in hours). As it turns out, data transfer rates between memory locations are relatively insensitive to CPU clock frequency, but running the clock faster would drain the battery faster. The recommendation, clearly, is to preserve battery life by using a slower clock during memory transfers-but this may not be true for all tasks.
Other system-oriented exclusive online contributors look at a means of tailoring portions of a cell phone system to use power more efficiently-ideally, drawing juice only when and if it is needed. Toshiba's Ritch Russ (Raleigh, N.C.) points to lower battery voltages that need less regulation but more closely match the IC requirements. Texas Instruments' Masoud
Beheshtiat (Dallas) advocates Coulomb counting rather than voltage-level measurements for smart battery-monitoring systems. And Karl Volk of Maxim Integrated Products (Sunnyvale, Calif.) offers a power circuit for RF devices whose voltage output tracks the power envelope for a CDMA handset transmitter.
With Faults of Free MP3 Software, It Pays to Pay
By Michael Tedeschi
Special to The Washington Post
Sunday, July 14, 2002; Page H07
The CD once seemed like the perfect way to store music -- small, durable and with excellent sound quality. But now it's not enough. We want to be able to put our entire record collection on the computer, then take parts of it on the go in portable digital-music players and recordable data CDs. That means we need software that can convert, play, manage and transfer digital music files in the overwhelmingly popular MP3 format.
Oh, and we'd like this software to be free. Unfortunately, unless you use Apple's free, Mac-only iTunes, that's not possible. The free versions of most digital-music programs cost you in terms of lower sound quality, slower CD writing and missing functions.
Microsoft's Windows Media Player, included with Windows XP, is a prime example. Windows Media Player uses the same core features as other music software to play and organize MP3s -- it groups songs by playlists and offers a radio-like interface for tuning into streaming audio and video. Microsoft's program, like many other music applications, also lets you change its interface "skin" and the visualization patterns it displays while playing music.
But Windows Media Player lacks such functions as sound equalization and the ability to lengthen or shorten gaps between tracks. Worse yet, it can't convert (or "rip") songs on CDs into MP3s, instead supporting only Microsoft's Windows Media format. That format touts smaller file sizes, but its files don't work in a lot of digital-music software and hardware.
Fortunately, several developers offer MP3 plug-ins for Windows Media Player. We tried InterVideo's MP3+DVD XPack (Win XP, $19.95 at www.intervideo.com), which is an easy, cheap solution to the problem. (InterVideo's MP3-only XPack is a bargain at $9.95.) But this plug-in doesn't otherwise improve Windows Media Player's limited capabilities.
RealNetworks' RealOne (Win 98 or newer/Win NT or newer, free -- or $19.95 for advanced features -- at www.real.com) focuses on streaming RealAudio and RealVideo but also plays files in most other audio and video formats. This robust support of streaming media makes RealOne's MP3 tools look weak in comparison. And its free version limits MP3 recording to an anemic 96 kbps -- good enough for spoken-word recordings but not music. For full MP3 support, you'll need to shell out $19.95 for the Plus version (it's hidden behind the "Free RealOne Player" link on Real's home page).
Two other programs to consider, Ejay's MP3 Pro (Win 95 or newer, $30 at www.ejaymusic.com) and MusicMatch's Jukebox 7.2 (Win 98 or newer/Win 2000 or newer, free -- or $20 for advanced features -- at www.musicmatch.com), focus on music alone. Both look and function like more powerful versions of Windows Media Player.
MP3 Pro is the program to choose if you want some basic sound-editing tools to set up fade-in and fade-out effects and clean up noise from your MP3s. (Or consider the free sound editor Audacity, reviewed on the next page.) Unlike Windows Media Player, RealOne or MusicMatch, MP3 Pro includes a built-in database of 1.5 million albums, which means it can assign artist and title info to your MP3s without needing to look up the data online.
MusicMatch Jukebox 7.2 offers the cleanest interface of all these programs, making it quick and easy to rip MP3s from your CDs, sort them, then burn them onto blank CDs either from playlists or by dragging and dropping MP3 files into a window. Its pay version adds faster ripping and burning, plus useful track-tagging and print features.
Both the eJay and MusicMatch applications support the new, more efficient MP3Pro music format, but the lack of support for it in other hardware and software makes it a dubious feature.
So what's the best pick? If your main interest is in music, download the free or demo versions of the Real, eJay or MusicMatch programs to see which one suits your tastes -- then buy the full version. It will be worth it. If you prefer an all-in-one audio and video tool, get an MP3 plug-in for Windows Media Player.
© 2002 The Washington Post Company
Music-sharing Web site faces shutdown
Soribada (www.soribada.com), Korea's largest Internet music-sharing site, is now on the verge of collapse as the court accepted the recording industry's request for an injunction banning exchanges of MP3 music files.
On Thursday, the Suwon District Court ruled that Soribada, a Korean version of Napster Inc., should not allow its subscribers to copy and exchange MP3 music files, suggesting that Korea's P2P (peer to peer) file sharing confronts a serious threat to stay afloat.
The court's decision is also expected to throw a cold shower on the booming MP3 music exchanges among ordinary music lovers on the Web. MP3 refers to a compression format that turns music on compact discs into small digital files.
The Recording Industry Association of Korea had lodged a complaint against Yang Chung-hwan and his brother, the operators of Soribada, for violating music copyright laws.
Similar to Napster, Soribada does not have its own database system. Nor does it charge a fee for the transfer or data search of files available. Thanks to the vast database of digitalized music files, millions of users log on to the P2P site to download latest MP3 music files, sparking numerous complaints from recording labels and music producers.
If Yang and his brother opt not to appeal the case to a higher court, their popular Web site will be shut down, marking a turning point in the conflict between those who prefer unregulated circulation of digitalized music and recording companies brandishing copyright infringement rules.
The dispute dates back to late 1999 when the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) sued Napster, then a five-month-old start-up, saying its software creates a black market for copies of digital music.
The Korea court's ruling on Thursday, therefore, is expected to have sweeping implications for the copyright squabbling on the Web. The court decision, in fact, clarified that copyrighted materials should be protected both online and offline.
The development also signals that Soribada and other P2P sharing Web sites in Korea should adopt reasonable payment systems designed to protect copyright holders if they ever want to operate such fire-sharing services.
The U.S. court also banned the free download of MP3 music files on Napster Web site, forcing the file-sharing service operator to ditch its freebie model to embrace a paid one.
Analysts said the ruling on Soribada is likely to affect not only MP3 music files on the Web but also other digital formats, contents and services.
Warez sites, where users share illegally copied software tiles, could face tougher crackdown by the local authorities and the protection for Web site designs, service structures and other digital materials would be stepped up in coming months.
The problem is that the shutdown of Soribada does not end the file exchange on the Web in Korea once and for all. There are about 1,000 P2P Web sites here, which means recording labels and law enforcement officials have to do a cat-and-mouse race with those fly-by-night file-sharing operators.
Therefore, the emergence of a second Soribada is fairly possible, particularly considering that Korea has an advanced broadband Internet infrastructure and many users are sophisticated enough to sidestep copyright regulations by resorting to unofficial, private channels to share their digital contents.
Some critics said that the court ruling could end up carrying a symbolic meaning only, while a majority of local users continue to bypass the regulations through a variety of covert channels.
Meanwhile, MP3 player makers are now scrambling to come up with ideas to grapple with the situation in which users cannot log on to Soarly considering that Korea has an advanced broadband Internet infrastructure and many users are sophisticated enough to sidestep copyright regulations by resorting to unofficial, private channels to share their digital contents.
Some critics said that the court ruling could end up carrying a symbolic meaning only, while a majority of local users continue to bypass the regulations through a variety of covert channels.
Meanwhile, MP3 player makers are now scrambling to come up with ideas to grapple with the situation in which users cannot log on to Soribada any longer. Korea is one of the major MP3 player manufacturers due largely to the popularity of Soribada's file-sharing services.
But the demise of Soribada could put a damper on the sales of MP3 players, something that local manufacturers did not want to happen for fear of losing their market opportunities.
Netizens, who enjoy Soribada, expressed disappointment about the court's decision, arguing that the government should not - and could not - regulate the private exchanges of personal digital contents.
(insight@koreaherald.co.kr)
By Yang Sung-jin Staff reporter
2002.07.13