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For wireless auto electronics, the immediate future may be Bluetooth
Jul. 14, 2002
DETROIT (AP) - Very rarely has the death of a venture elicited as many ``told you so's'' as when Ford Motor Co. pulled the plug last month on Wingcast LLC, its attempt to give vehicles all sorts of onboard communications capabilities.
Analysts said the 18-month old venture, which never brought a product to market, was an expensive stab at using outdated analog technology to perform ambitious communications tasks known as telematics.
Now the automotive telematics industry is looking to a new savior: the short-range digital wireless communications standard known as Bluetooth.
A Nordic invention named for a 10th-century Viking king, Bluetooth allows various components of telematics systems to ``talk'' to each other through radio frequencies, allowing a driver to check e-mail, get directions, call for help, or even unlock the car if the keys are left inside.
With a 30-foot range, Bluetooth makes it possible to operate a cell phone with voice commands instead of hands -- even from outside the vehicle. The technology is already being used by consumers to network cell phones, handheld computers, laptops and printers.
Using Bluetooth in the car, a cell phone could sit in a driver's pocket or cup holder instead of a special cradle that would have to be replaced upon changing phones.
The technology would allow a cell phone to work as a modem, downloading movies, music and navigation information and funneling it into the car's onboard computer and onto displays.
The current leader in auto telematics is General Motors Corp.'s hard-wired OnStar system, which doesn't use Bluetooth.
That's fine with DaimlerChrysler AG's Chrysler Group, which this fall will begin offering Bluetooth system called UConnect as a dealer-installed option at a suggested retail price of $299 plus labor. A second version, to be offered as a factory-installed option will be available in early 2003.
``It has to be about flexibility, simplicity and affordability, or telematics will continue to struggle,'' said Chrysler Group telematics chief Jack Witherow.
The initial version of UConnect will offer voice dialing and an audio address book capable of storing up to 32 telephone numbers. Other yet-to-be-announced features will be available in the factory-installed version.
Designed to handle up to five phones per car, the services will appear as charges on a monthly cell phone bill.
Chrysler's move represents automakers' growing realization that developing telematics technology and services is best left to companies specializing in those fields.
``We think we ought to stick to our core strengths,'' said Witherow.
Such thinking prodded Ford to abandon Wingcast, a joint venture with Qualcomm Inc.
``We're still committed to telematics, but how we'll make good on that commitment has changed,'' said Ford spokesman Paul Wood, adding that the company has not yet settled on a new plan.
The telematics industry is growing at just two to three percent a year, according to a study by Cap Gemini Ernst and Young, but the potential is much greater.
Globally, the telematics market for hardware and subscription services will grow to $27 billion by 2005, from $3.6 billion in 2000, the study predicts.
In 2001, Americans bought 1.85 million vehicles equipped with some sort of telematics, according to a report released in April by the Telematics Research Group. That number is expected to grow to 2.6 million next year and 7.6 million by 2007, the report said.
Besides wireless downloads, Bluetooth will allow the car's components to ``speak'' to the driver.
For example, an alternator that may be six months from failing could trigger the telematics system to advise the driver and automatically call the dealer to order a replacement, said Jim Geschke, who runs the telematics business for automotive supplier Johnson Controls Inc.
One of the reasons Ford says it was caught off guard about recent problems with tread separation in Firestone tires and related accidents in its vehicles was an ineffective system for gathering accident and warranty claim data.
Robust Bluetooth telematics might have caught the problem in time, said Forrester Research's Mark Dixon Bunger.
For now, OnStar is the standard bearer in auto telematics with more than 2.5 million subscribers, according to Don Butler, vice president of OnStar planning and business development.
Launched in 1996, OnStar is not turning a profit despite its adoption by several Japanese and German automakers. Experts expect OnStar, which uses wires along with built-in wireless connectivity, to be eclipsed by Bluetooth-fueled systems.
``Customers want some cell phone connectivity but they don't want to worry about wires and microphones,'' said Mike Wujciak, an analyst with Cap Gemini Ernst and Young.
Butler insists his service's technology is more reliable than Bluetooth, because you don't depend on a portable phone that can be lost.
Chrysler's UConnect, however, takes the automaker out of the cell phone and service-providing business.
Instead, Chrysler hopes to earn revenue from the sale of Bluetooth units and perhaps receive a fee for each customer it refers to an outside service provider.
``It will be the flexible system that's going to win in the end,'' said Wujciak.
Yet while Bluetooth-based systems might provide more flexibility, the fact that OnStar counts more subscribers than all other telematics providers combined could make it difficult to overtake.
Metabyte Networks, Inc., is a personal TV technology and services company and an enabler of personal TV solutions. Metabyte Networks licenses the MbTV suite of products and services to consumer electronic companies, set-top box manufacturers, cable and satellite system operators and broadcasters.
When the MbTV client technology is embedded in a set-top-box or a hard disk-based video recorder, it automatically builds a profile (MbTV Thumbprint) of the consumer's TV watching tastes, while providing full DVR capabilities, such as record, pause and playback. The MbTV Thumbprints act as filters inside a set-top box or an enhanced TV to capture desirable content from the broadcast stream. MbTV enables personal TV services such as targeted advertising/t-commerce, video on demand (VOD), targeted t-coupons and TV portals.
The business model of Metabyte Networks compliments, not competes with, the business models of cable/satellite system operators, broadcasters, consumer electronics companies and advertisers. Network operators have the option of running their own services by deploying MbTV across a large subscriber base or can choose to deploy MbTV's end to end personal TV service.
Metabyte Networks was formed in November of 1999 when its parent company, Metabyte, Inc., spun off the MbTV division. Founded in 1993, Metabyte, Inc. is a privately held, fast growing entertainment and information technology company.
Investors in Metabyte Networks include THOMSON multimedia (NYSE: TMS), a world leader in digital consumer electronics, Canal+ Technologies, a leading international provider of interactive TV software solutions, Scientific Atlanta, a dominant force in worldwide set-top box deployments and Seagate, a leading manufacturer of hard disks.In addition, Metabyte Networks has alliances and strategic relationships with Microsoft, Nielson Media, Starz Encore, Western Digital and C-Cube.
What MbTV Provides to Consumers
Broadcast and Internet content are increasing, but our attention span is not. While the telecommunications and broadcast industries are solving the problem of providing high bandwidth to people's homes, MbTV addresses what is fast becoming the ultimate bottleneck - "bandwidth to the brain." Under development for nearly four years, MbTV addresses the consumers' growing need for quick, easy and private access to entertainment and information choices.
MbTV™ presents 100 things that are of interest to the individual, rather than 100 things that are of interest to the general population.
MbTV is a software technology and service.
When the MbTV client technology is embedded in a set-top-box or a hard disk-based video recorder, it automatically builds a profile (MbTV Thumbprint) of the consumer's TV watching tastes, while providing full DVR capabilities, such as record, pause and playback. The MbTV Thumbprints act as filters inside a set-top box or an enhanced TV to capture desirable content from the broadcast stream. Viewers in a household are presented the content that interests them instead of the general population.
MbTV is totally automatic and requires no special input from the consumer other than normal TV watching. MbTV integrates with the existing infrastructure, and is fully portable to all leading interactive TV operating systems and middleware. In addition, MbTV totally protects consumers' privacy by maintaining the vast majority of Thumbprints at the set-top box.
MbTV enables personal TV services such as targeted advertising/t-commerce, video on demand (VOD), targeted t-coupons and TV portals. The MbTV services provide content producers and advertisers with the ability to directly target their content to reach precisely defined audiences
Jul. 14, 2002
Scientific Atlanta to use Moxi
By Dawn C. Chmielewski
Mercury News
One of the nation's leading television set-top box manufacturers has licensed the revolutionary Moxi's technology, which adds interactive TV features like digital recording and music storage to the little black boxes.
The ``Moxi box'' created a sensation earlier this year at the Consumer Electronics Show. It is designed to distribute music and movies anywhere throughout the home -- be it television set-top boxes, stereos and PCs.
In March, the Palo Alto company was acquired by Digeo, an interactive TV company chaired by Paul Allen.
Digeo's chief executive, Jim Billmaier, said the deal with set-top box maker Scientific Atlanta -- together with an earlier announcement with Motorola -- creates a national platform upon which to deploy interactive television services.
Senior analyst Sean Badding of The Carmel Group said that while Digeo-Moxi has gained widespread media attention because of its celebrated backers, he predicts it will ultimately lose out in the interactive marketplace to its little-known competitor, Metabyte Networks.
Jul. 13, 2002 Who's Who at the new HP
COMPANIES' INTEGRATION EFFORT UNDER WAY
By Michelle Quinn
Mercury News
The new Hewlett-Packard had no time for a honeymoon.
Nearly three months after consummating the largest and most fiercely fought merger in tech history, the Palo Alto computing behemoth and the former Compaq Computer of Houston are already down to the unglamorous, nuts-and-bolts business of making the marriage work.
Slowly, the two gigantic organizations are beginning to function as one. Employees are flying back and forth from San Jose to Houston. As the company shutters plants around the globe, new offices are being added to Executive Row, the company's command-and-control center at headquarters in Palo Alto. For now, some executives are temporarily stationed at worker-bee cubicles. Other executives are on the road for coffee meetings with employees or sitting down with customers asking what the company needs to do better.
It's premature to proclaim the union a success. But the new HP already received some praise from Wall Street in May when it launched its three-year product game plan and a redesigned corporate Web portal.
In June, industry analysts were pleased again when the company announced its integration effort was ahead of schedule and that it expected to have $500 million in savings in the first fiscal year.
The company says it has been able to pick up new customers along the way, such as Reuters from Sun Microsystems in mid-May. (Sun says it has picked up customers from HP as well.) And HP says it has reassured existing customers who worried that the potential integration chaos could cause the company to focus on internal problems, rather than the needs of customers.
``The only thing that changed was the business cards,' said Charlie Orndorff, chief information officer of Crossmark, a Plano, Texas, business services company that spent up to $4 million yearly for technology from Compaq.
Despite the cheerleading from HP and post-merger relief from anxious customers such as Orndorff, it is still too early to know how HP is performing. The firm doesn't report its earnings until mid-August. And there are many key decisions the company still faces, such as which plants to close and how to integrate two companies' technology infrastructure. (HP hopes to cut the combined company's 7,000 internal technology applications by half.)
The company, which employs 150,000 people worldwide, plans to cut 10 percent of its workforce to find cost savings, as well as an unknown number of temporary workers. The company would not disclose how many of those cuts have already been made. Since the launch of the new company, HP has dribbled out the news of layoffs and plant closures.
In recent weeks, the company has eliminated some of its consumer products, such as MP3 players, which were manufactured in Singapore. Earlier this month, HP announced it would trim its workforce at a former Compaq manufacturing plant in Scotland, bringing the total number of people laid off in the United Kingdom to 1,500 -- about 20 percent of its U.K. workforce. Industry analysts speculate that the company is also looking to ax HP's personal computer division in France.
On the domestic front, at least 600 jobs have already been eliminated at the company's server operations in Cupertino. HP also closed a distribution center in Swedesboro, N.J., resulting in the loss of about 500 jobs. The company has said it is still deciding what to do about Bluestone Software, which HP bought for $476 million in October 2000. HP has effectively replaced a Bluestone software product with a partnership with BEA Systems. It's unclear what will happen to Bluestone's 500 employees.
The company put as many as 4,000 of its IT contractors in the United States on an unpaid three-week vacation, which ended Friday, as HP evaluated the services the contractors provided.
``What we're seeing is a steady stream of cutbacks and layoffs,' said Martin Reynolds, vice president of Gartner Dataquest, a market research firm.
What is also going on is a complicated integration of two cultures. In the process, the company has reaffirmed Palo Alto as its intellectual center, relegating Houston, once the hometown of Compaq, to back-office status. All but one of the top executives will have an office in Palo Alto, even though three executives, including Capellas, have decided not to uproot their lives in Houston at the moment and move to Silicon Valley. Those who fly back and forth are said to be ``bi-coastal' -- in this case an allusion to the Texas Gulf Coast.
In deciding job cuts, HP first asked which products were stronger, HP or Compaq? Winners kept their jobs. Losers knew to look for new ones within the company or elsewhere. Sometimes, the company melded the best of both operations. Within its enterprise division, HP picked Compaq's high-volume servers that use Intel processors and run Linux and Microsoft NT operating systems. The business is based in Houston and will remain there.
The company chose HP's printer and scanning division, a market leader. (Compaq didn't have its own printer business.)
In component services and repair parts, HP went with pre-merger HP's operation, although neither company had a perfect model. ``We thought we need to really replace the system,' said Bob Napier, HP's chief information officer. ``I try to be ruthless. Stop the debate and pick one. In some situations, it's a tie. Sometimes we're not really happy with either solution. In that case, we choose one and get on with life.'
The company is committed to making sure cuts are equitable by any number of measures. For example, it is tracking how many former Compaq people are laid off, in comparison to the number of old HP employees. Executives are looking for ``dysfunctional managers' protecting pet groups, said Jeff Clarke, chief financial officer of pre-merger Compaq. Clarke, who co-leads the integration process, said that 20 percent of HP's executive ranks will lose their jobs compared to 10 percent throughout the company. ``The employee on the line is not going to be disproportionately impacted. We want to treat this in a fair manner,' Clarke said.
As for morale, HP is benefiting from an ugly job market, say industry analysts. Any disillusionment among those who stay is outweighed by the desire to remain employed. One recent defection was Mark Lewis, named last week as EMC's new executive vice president of new ventures and chief technology officer.
Lewis, a storage executive for years at Compaq, had been named HP's vice president of worldwide marketing and solutions in the network storage group. But Lewis wanted to be with a company solely focused on storage, unlike HP, which has an array of products. ``It wasn't a criticism of the company,' said Michael Gallant, an EMC spokesman.
Culturally, the company is still finding its footing. Napier is working on an acronym dictionary to cut down on what he calls ``acronym cross talk.' At HP, for example, the term ``IM' or information management, meant managing of data. In Compaq's universe, it meant information technology. ``You tend to build your tech slang in a way that has meaning to the organization,' Napier said.
The difference between the two companies is played out day to day, decision by decision. Compaq culture emphasized fast decisions and HP's a more deliberate approach. When the company was weighing to cut cost by trimming a manufacturing operation, Mike Winkler, executive vice president of HP worldwide operations, said his intuition was to close it. But after listening to those from pre-merger HP, the company decided to keep the facility open.
``Intuitively, the right decision is not always analytically the right decision,' Winkler said.
But some things have not dovetailed precisely at the new HP.
For one thing, employee badges look different. In Palo Alto, pre-merger Compaq employees in Houston are highly recognizable by their badges.
And merged though they may be, indigenous HP employees are still marked by their e-mail addresses, which have an underscore between the first and last names while their counterparts' at the former HP have a period between the names.
Detail by detail, day by day, the differences will fade.
USER COMMENTS 21 comment(s)
speaking of pizza... (1:59pm EST Fri Jul 12 2002)
a good cd should cost no more than a large good pizza... which here would be 7.00$ for a 18" from my favorite pizza shop. - by next362"
ouch (2:02pm EST Fri Jul 12 2002)
so if I give Dave a blank tape to record farscape for me, would that be legal since it was my tape to begin with? or would he have to record it and bring it to my place and watch it with me? or would I have to watch it at his place... dumb law - so it will probably be passed. Hopefully the Supreme Court will tell congress they're a bunch of spineless corporate lackies. - by Robguy
Not to be alarmist but... (2:08pm EST Fri Jul 12 2002)
...we have seen this coming a long time. I think a lot of people are realizing that, as much as possible, the Entertainment Industry is going to push as far and as close as they can to "pay per use" or something similar.
They have affected legislation causing a tax on practically anything recordable (tape, cdr, etc) to compensate them for "loss" due to duplication. They are now using the "5% drop in sales" in 2001 as a crutch to enact more legislation. Hey music industy...ever think maybe the reason you didnt make another $5-10 was because a) the economy was struggling for 18 months and b) the music you put out now is CRAP, and even the kids who suck up just about anything fadish or popular without thought are saying "I'm not spending $18 on a CD for this." Remember, its a FACT that in 1999, at the height of Napster, CD sales INCREASED over the year before. They like you to forget that now, of course, so they can ramrod legislation to take away any rights you might be allowed to have with something you purchased and own. If this gets out of hand, we will only be "leasing" music and movies, paying a fee per month/year or view. Consumers are catching on though, and turning on these anti-consumer practices by the mega-powerful entertainment industry. - by A-Team
Rob (2:15pm EST Fri Jul 12 2002)
"What I still don't get is why the recording industry hasn't realized that the world economy is in the toilet and that's why people don't buy as many CDs today."
Because that's not the way Capitalists think, that's why. They need a scapegoat. A slow world economy is not a good scapegoat, because you can't get laws written and lawsuits filed to change that. If good old fashioned competition and innovation don't work in the quest for more and more profits, then it's time to turn to the government (the former enemy, when times were good) for help. Capitalists suddenly become Socialists and want all the regulation, subsidies, law-writing, etc. they can get their hands on to prop up their "failing" business. - by Blah Blah Blah
MP3 (2:25pm EST Fri Jul 12 2002)
Damn, I havent bought a CD in my life. When I was younger, I copied my friends tapes. Then when CD's came out i copied them to high end tapes on a high end system. Now with my CD burner, i have a massive ammount of MP3 cd's that work in my car MP3 player, my computer, and in my MP3 diskman clone.
do I feel bad about getting it all for free? Nope. end of discussion
Ohh I did actually buy some tapes from Columbia House for a penny, but thats all. - by MP3 rules
$33.7 Billion (2:30pm EST Fri Jul 12 2002)
Think about that for a minute. They are complaing about $33.7 Billion. It boggles my mind. - by Boycott RIAA
Rich get richer etc..... (3:41pm EST Fri Jul 12 2002)
I don't really know what the entertainment industry is trying to prove. When vinyl was an option, I used my state of the art stereo system (which I still have today) from the mid-seventies to record from the record I just bought to tape (reel to reel and cassette). The record company got my money for the album, the type companies got my money for two different types of tape I got my album preserved in pristine condition and had one home tape (r t r) and one for my car (cassette). Everyone was blissfully happy. Now I have added a CD player to my system and a burner to my computer wih digitizing software and I'm burning those old albums of "Ten Years After", "Allman Brothers", "Doobie Brothers", etc. etc. etc. to CD. I buy blank CD-R's to do this, of course. But someone along the musical business line has already made a bundle off of me. What do they want to do to me now? BTW I do download and burn music off the net, but the stuff I want is "old-timey" and unwanted by the current, crap-loving generation. What am I trying to say? Shit, I don't know as I am an.... - by oldmutha
oldmutha (3:49pm EST Fri Jul 12 2002)
"What do they want to do to me now?"
"They" want to wring every cent out of every musical note ever recorded. "Old timey" and "unwanted" music is still a multi-million dollar industry. As long as there is some profit to make, there will be profiteers to try and see that that happens. I, personally, think that the best music came from the hard rock era of the late sixties and seventies, but since it still makes money as good stuff always does, the record companies will do whatever they can to find ways to charge us for it. Copyright laws have always been in effect with ways to circumvent them. If these idiotic laws pass, there will be "loopholes", there always are and it will be the Americans or the Brits who will find them..... - by oldieslover
CD Doomed Format (3:56pm EST Fri Jul 12 2002)
* They are not human-scale (slip from your hand easily and ever watch a child fumble with one?)
* They scratch easily and are ruined
* Clumbsy to store
* Look good hanging from a low-rider mirror
* They wear out
* Contain contemporary music of little value relative to the price, particularly if you have already paid for the "license to listen" in another media (that's wholly ignored)
* When purchased, you get an uneasy feeling that most of the money you paid goes to production slimebags and not the recording artist(s)
* The futurists predicted that we would have by now electricity that was "too cheap to meter" instead, we allegedly have entertainment that is too expensive not to meter
- by George Jetson
Busted! (5:24pm EST Fri Jul 12 2002)
Wait'll the TV Networks start asking Federal Angencies to bust people for taping 'Touched by an Angel' and loaning it to a friend who also missed last week's episode.
Or arresting someone's wife or children because they were listening to a CD owned by their husband or parent (Sorry, only the purchaser is legally allowed to listen to the CD.)
How about busting librarians because they loan out books (Author's hate libraries because it cuts their book sales in theory).
This is just one step on the slippery slope to taking away the fair use rights of content owners (I tape the movie, I own the tape because it is supported by adverts, I buy the CD - I own the CD's content, I buy the book - I own the books content and as long as I don't reproduce it for profit, I should be able to loan a friend a tape of a TV show that was aired over the public airwaves or other forms of spectrum, or loan a CD to a family member, or loan a book without fear of prosecution.)
It's time to send the entertainment industry a wake up call that we will not give up our rights. - by ReaponWex
Once again... (5:28pm EST Fri Jul 12 2002)
Write your senators, representatives, and Attorney Generals!
Don't write once and forget about it. Write a letter once a week or more! Don't let them forget about it, and your concerns as a citizen. Let them know they won't get your vote next time if they don't listen to you and represent you as a citizen rather than representing Big Business.
The entertainment industry has lobbyists writing letters on a daily basis, making phone calls, and doing everything they can to ursurp your rights and concerns as a citizen. - by ReaponWex
Yah... (10:43pm EST Fri Jul 12 2002)
What I still don't get is why the recording industry hasn't realized that the world economy is in the toilet and that's why people don't buy as many CDs today.
----
No kidding!! Actually music and the entire industry is quite literally in the toilet. Take a good look at the musical groups and bands, most have dark motives and are vulgar in speech and in behavior. But you must remeber we are talking about enertaintment. Which thrives on money and greed and sleeze as in, it sells. Did it ever occur to this industry that people have minds that think independently and would rather stay away from mainstream music or the whole enterianment business. The Internet has changed everything, we no longer have to take what is thrown at us, we can look elsewhere for more uplifting things. Sory but not even oldies music is going to save the digital music problem. - by 00010789
Yah... (10:50pm EST Fri Jul 12 2002)
What I still don't get is why the recording industry hasn't realized that the world economy is in the toilet and that's why people don't buy as many CDs today.
----
No kidding!! Actually music and the entire industry is quite literally in the toilet. Take a good look at the musical groups and bands, most have dark motives and are vulgar in speech and in behavior. But you must remember we are talking about entertainment. Which thrives on money and greed and sleaze as in, it sells. Did it ever occur to this industry that people have minds that think independently and would rather stay away from mainstream music or the whole entertainment business. Besides the funny thing is the people who are against the RIAA are the one whom download illegal music. If your so against them, why support them by breaking a copyright law and downloading their product.? The Internet has changed everything, we no longer have to take what is thrown at us, we can look elsewhere for more uplifting things. Sorry but not even oldies music is going to save the digital music problem. - by 00010789
simple predicion... (1:39am EST Sat Jul 13 2002)
they want to maximize their profits... understood. but even if they get that law passed...
Uncle Sam will never be able to police the internet. there are too many people and ways to hide what they are doing. period.
the record industry must get the singers to change their lyrics to sell products. some sort of advertising, that cant be cut out. this will be their only hope for revenue. - by captainAl
What gets me... (2:28am EST Sat Jul 13 2002)
When I was a kid, I busted my ass all summer long in sweaty kitchens so I could buy their music. I didn't know the band got nothing, and I certainly couldn't grasp just how rich those labels were. As far as I'm concerned THEY are the theives, I'm just taking what's mine.
What gets me is that when I log on to my network, with my buddies, that's my business. That's my sacred spot, thouch that and fuck you. But all the signs are pointing in the direction that they're arming themselves to take away my right to my network, my privacy, my business, my holy sacred space. And about that I'm madder than I've ever been about anything, ever. - by Rob
Yeah me too (2:58am EST Sat Jul 13 2002)
I don't think they're greiving. You've got to have a heart to greive. And then you've got to have lost something. They still think they can win. And they will if we don't do something. - by Andrew Hill
not about stealing, about fair-use... (4:31am EST Sat Jul 13 2002)
mp3 rulez, there is nothing honorable in never paying for any music ever. in fact, i find that quite reprehensable. If i like a cd, i buy it (albeit, it has to be under 13 bucks). and i always buy local musicians music if i can. YOU are the reason the rest of us might get screwed over. CD execs would use kids like you who never pay a dime as examples to all of us who mp3 songs not worth buying (mainstream radio crap) or dont wanna buy a cd with one good song.
on the other hand, this in essense is about fair use. I buy a cd, i should be able to back it up, burn it, play it, or even let friends borrow it temporarily without having to worry about breaking any unconstitutional laws.
worse still, laws like these can make hardware incapable of playing media like your childs first steps or music you recorded yourself (think watermarks...dvd players and cd players wouldnt play material without them)
no, this corpoarte whoring is reprehensable, and hopefully someone like the supreme court will put a stop to it - by zsubnot
$15 per hour at Pizza Joint?!!! (8:05am EST Sat Jul 13 2002)
Holy Crap! Where do you live Rob that kids working at pizza joints get paid $15 an hour?!!!
In America they get paid minimum wage ($6 up to $6.90 - these days). At least they sure as heck did when I worked in one. Even many people working at BOEING don't make $13/hr. And yes, that's before Taxes.
Let me know where this is so I can move there! Unless, of course, you're talking about those fake Canadian $. :)
heh heh...
- by I need a raise
No Tips (8:17am EST Sat Jul 13 2002)
Oh yeah, and the delivery tips never brought the total anywhere near $15 either.
But then perhaps it was because I was delivering in an affluent area. Many of the wealthier citizens loved to take the pizza company at their word "No Charge for Delivery".
I found that the people who were obviously less well off tended to tip better than the yuppies and such. Interesting, No?
And don't tell me that that's how these people became wealthy. They did NOT become wealthy by being skin-flints over 1 or 2 dollars a week, It's just a disgusting state of mind they get into that makes them give credance to such crap.
Oh well, it stopped being a concern for me years ago. But I'd still like to know where I can get the $15/hr for doing pizza work. Just maybe it would be enough to pay for all the car repairs that wracking up several hundred miles a week will do to your car while doing deliveries.
- by I need a pizza
re: Emusic (9:40am EST Sat Jul 13 2002)
I looked at their site, they really do have oldies junk. The only albums that sounded good was CCR, the rest was stuff from the forgotten closet like the Jethro Tull Christmas Song or groups I'd never heard of.
Most of these new bills about downloading MP3's don't concern me as I think I've downloaded maybe a dozen of them ever.
But I am concerned about CD's being set so they don't play on a computer (My CD player is an old SCSI external drive with speakers attached. It plays CD's as a standalone.) and the drive to make it all pay per use. I'm not thrilled at the idea of having to pay even a penny to watch a movie I bought on DVD, especially after a few years have gone by.
I'm also not thrilled at the prospect of movies and CD's I might make on my own not being able to play because of some new digital rights whatever.
The overpriced album with two good songs on it or the crud movie with nothing but special effects has been going on since we had vinyl records and Betamax tapes. Just now they're wanting to make sure we pay the fee everytime we see these things ad infinitum.
And Rob, $15 an hour? Where I live that's a good wage. - by Ziwiwiwiwiwiwiwiwiwi
5 dollars for albums or i continue to go to the kid on the corner (2:09pm EST Sat Jul 13 2002)
5 dollars for albums or i continue to go to the kid on the corner
that is all - by will
Digital music roundup: Fair use, piracy, and oldies
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posted 1:47pm EST Fri Jul 12 2002 - submitted by Rob Hughes
NEWS
A U.S. bill has been drafted that aims to limit fair use rights. The bill is not an addendum to the controversial DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act), but is actually a separate bill with two discrete parts. The first limits fair use so that copies made of materials under fair use cannot be "shared" with others. This includes making a tape of a TV show and letting your friend borrow it, but if passed the bill would define a specific non-DMCA law that would prohibit file-sharing, separately closing what could be seen as a loophole in the DMCA and fair use rights. The second part of the bill would allow Webcasters not to be penalized for temporary copies of streaming media stored on users' hard drives. Read more on the proposed bill at CNET.
The recording industry is also appealing to listeners' sense of goodwill, and asking people to stop downloading and recording music for free. Putting an end to Napster hasn't helped the issue at all, and there is more music available free online now than there ever was when Napster was operating. The recording industry notes that there was a 5% drop in sales down to US$33.7 billion in 2001. Read more on that at Reuters.
Universal Music is allowing MP3 downloads from about 1,000 "oldies" albums from the '50s to '70s. To get the downloads, you have be a subscriber to its Emusic.com service and pay $10-$15 a month. Universal notes that there is no risk offering the oldies downloads since such artists are not selling many albums nowadays. Universal's President said, "Our feeling is people are not going to say, 'Boy, I don't have to buy the CD now.' We'll see what happens." Read more on that at MarketWatch.
ROB'S OPINION
Those music industry chaps are quite funny. If you look at the 5 Stages of Grief, you can get a feeling of what's going on now in the music industry:
Denial - "What's the Internet?"
Resentment - "Sue everybody!"
Bargaining - "Please, don't use free music. Here's some oldies for your consideration."
Depression - "Why us? People will lose jobs ..."
Acceptance - "Okay, let's put together an Internet music agenda that makes sense."
I must confess I wrote something like that in a newsletter a while ago so it's not exactly fresh, but I do want to point out that the music industry is somewhere around Stages 3 and 4. The labels are trying to bargain by offering a bunch of oldies that don't sell for free over a music service that charges a large amount. Of course, the bargainer (often "God" in grief, but in this case the buying public) will not accept the terms.
The record industry could have been revolutionized with a valid money-making model if Napster had been purchased right away by major recording studios and people were charged $5-$10 a month for access to the "celestial jukebox" of MP3s--any song at any time downloadable with minimal restrictions.
Before I forget, that bill taking away fair use rights seems to have quite an agenda. It's not clear on the surface, but if you think it's about letting grandma borrow your copy of ER you are mistaken. The RIAA and other media groups want to have additional legal ammunition against people who share files over the Internet. RIAA surely views the DMCA as a possibly flawed law as well which may in time be struck down by the Supreme Court, and it wants to strengthen other laws around it and this is one of them.
What I still don't get is why the recording industry hasn't realized that the world economy is in the toilet and that's why people don't buy as many CDs today. It's not that hard to figure out. A lot of people don't make $60-$100K a year anymore. When you're making decent money like that, blowing $15 on a CD is like nothing. When you're working at a pizza delivery service or a contract job where you make $15 an hour before taxes then CDs are not the easy buy they used to be.
Sony chews on smaller Memory Stick
By Richard Shim
Special to ZDNet News
July 12, 2002, 11:10 AM PT
Sony is looking to take a bigger piece of the removable-flash-memory market with a smaller memory card.
The consumer-electronics maker announced Friday that it will begin selling a 16MB Memory Stick Duo card in Japan beginning July 20 for around 2,800 yen, or $24.
Memory Stick Duo is a smaller version of Sony's removable-flash-memory card format Memory Stick, which is roughly the size of a stick of chewing gum. Both card formats were created as storage options for portable consumer-electronics devices.
Memory Stick is used in devices such as handhelds and digital cameras. Memory Stick Duo is about one-third the size of the original, and is meant to fit into devices such as cell phones and small digital audio players.
There were 20 million shipments of Memory Stick cards as of March, according to Sony.
The entrance into the cell phone and digital audio player markets should help boost Memory Stick's share of the removable-flash-memory card market, according to Alan Niebel, analyst with research firm Web-Feet Research. Memory Stick trails the SmartMedia, CompactFlash and Multimedia Card formats.
Web-Feet estimates that this year 5.1 million removable flash-memory cards will be shipped to be used in cell phones and that 1.4 million of those will be Memory Stick cards. The total number of cards is expected to triple next year, to 15.5 million cards, and Memory Stick is expected to account for about 5.2 million units. Removable-flash-memory cards were a $1.3 billion market last year, according to Niebel.
Japanese cell phone operator NTT DoCoMo announced Friday that it will begin selling a new phone, the i-shot mova D25li, in Japan on July 15 that can use Memory Stick Duo cards. The new phone comes with a built-in camera, and images can be stored on the 8MB Memory Stick Duo card that comes with the phone.
Sony representatives said Sony is working to sell Memory Stick Duo on a worldwide basis, but they would not comment on specific regional release dates. Typically, Sony brings products to the U.S. market a couple months after announcements in Japan.
The 16MB Memory Stick Duo card will come with an adapter so it can be used in devices that use the larger Memory Stick format. Sony is looking to offer Duo cards with more memory capabilities.
Samsung Electronics Targets $80 Bil.in Sales in 2005
By Nho Joon-hun
Staff Reporter
Samsung Electronics is confident of realizing revenues of $80 billion in the year 2005 when its market capitalization is expected to reach $105 billion, a top Samsung official said yesterday.
Speaking at the World Congress of Korean and Ethnic Korean Scientists and Engineers, Lee Yoon-woo, CEO of Samsung's device solution network division, said Samsung's brand value will also increase to $15 billion.
``Our vision is to emerge as a global blue chip company by the year 2005 with revenues of $80 billion,'' Yoon said. Samsung Electronics posted sales of $24.4 billion last year.
For this to happen, Samsung intends to increase the number of its products that are in the world's top 10, adding digital television, third-generation mobile communications devices and peripheral computer equipment to the list.
Samsung currently has products in the global top 10 in the dynamic random access memory (DRAM) chip, static RAM, liquid crystal display, computer monitor, video cassette recorder and code division multiple access (CDMA) handset markets.
In addition to a tripling of revenue, Samsung Electronics's market capitalization is expected to increase from last year's $3.4 billion to $105 billion in 2005, Yoon asserted.
``At the same time, the brand value of Samsung Electronics will surpass that of other leading electronics companies like Sony, reaching $15 billion, up from last year's $6.4 billion,'' he said.
With ambitious goals, Samsung Electronics is moving briskly to secure the best brains in the business to boost its research and development efforts, Yoo added.
``Securing the best manpower is the prerequisite to becoming a truly global blue chip company, and we are placing top priority on this mission,'' the Samsung CEO explained.
Samsung currently has a combined workforce of 64,000, including those working in its facilities overseas, and 24 percent of them are devoted to research and development tasks.
Aside from presenting the vision for 2005, Yoon also discussed a number of projects that Samsung Electronics is pursuing to realize the convergence of digital technologies under the theme ``Digital & Co.''
jakenho@koreatimes.co.kr
입력시간 2002/07/12 18:
someone mentioned e-books the other day--
Hitachi Starts Distributing Electronic Books Jointly with NTT DoCoMo, Sharp
July 12, 2002 (TOKYO) -- Aiming at October 2002, Hitachi Ltd. plans to provide its electronic book distribution service for PDAs jointly with NTT DoCoMo Inc., Sharp Corp. and Digi-Book Japan Inc.
They will decide more details about the price, kinds of books to be distributed, and other matters around September 2002.
Hitachi will be responsible for managing the distribution and charging systems of electronic books. NTT DoCoMo and Sharp will build their respective Web sites for distributing contents that users may access with their PDAs and from which users can download their favorite electronic books. In addition, the two companies also will collect users' access fees from their Web sites. Conversion of books' contents into an XMDF format used for electronic books will be the responsibility of Digi-Book. This service will be provided for users of such PDAs as Sharp's "Zaurus" and Pocket PC, Windows CE and Palm for the time being, but Hitachi is planning eventually to distribute electronic books to mobile phones.
Hitachi has been suffering less growth in the PC, server and other hardware markets, and trying to enhance businesses in the software development and service fields. It has been developing and promoting businesses with multiple companies also in B-to-C services using networks, such as the electronic book distribution service the company announced.
July 11, 2002 Flash Cards Add Memory to Grow
By MARK GLASSMAN
s separation anxiety keeping you distracted? Can't bear the thought of leaving your data home alone? The Cruzer, a new portable storage device from SanDisk, promises to put your mind at ease by taking your files out of your hard drive's hands and putting them squarely in your own.
The Cruzer, which perpetuates the high-tech tradition of misspelling old words to name new gadgets, joins the latest crop of thumb drives, miniature external hard drives that store data using flash memory. The device connects to Macintosh and Windows systems through a retractable U.S.B. plug.
The Cruzer is about the size of three packs of gum stacked side by side, which makes it a bit bulkier than most of its competitors. But its data is saved on removable flash memory cards, so storage space, unlike that of smaller thumb drives, is limited only by the kind of card you use. The device accommodates Secure Digital and MultiMedia Flash cards.
Prices vary with the capacity of the card bundled with the unit, starting at $60 for a Cruzer with a 32-megabyte card. The high-end unit with a 256-megabyte card is $200. Additional cards ranging in price from $25 to $100 are available through the company's Web site, www.sandisk.com.
Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company / Permissions / Privacy Policy
read this and then think about the highlighted portion and portable video music is the obvious logical extension of what the next generation of MTV watchers will want and expect
Video Scratching on M-M-Macs
By Leander Kahney
2:00 a.m. July 12, 2002 PST
A couple of years ago, three New York video artists were trying to get their experimental films shown in the city's art galleries and movie festivals, but they didn't like the staid atmosphere these events engender.
So they took their movies to raves and nightclubs, and in so doing, they've not only become leading practitioners of the new art of video-scratching, they're finally being invited to perform at festivals and art galleries.
Jack Hazard, 27, Bruno Levy, 22, and Richie Lau, 26 -- collectively known as Squaresquare -- are pioneering scratching and remixing live video.
Just as scratching and sampling has forever changed music, video scratching is starting to revolutionize musical performances.
The process is remarkably similar. Using a pair of Titanium G4 PowerBooks and Apple's Final Cut Pro 3 video editing software, the Video DJs (VJs) can match the rhythm of any video footage to the tempo of the music.
Using a standard video-mixing desk, the VJs blend and cross fade between two feeds, one from each PowerBook. A video-editing jog-shuttle allows them to scratch the video; so Fred Astaire is made to go through the same graceful twirl back and forth to the rhythm of a drum and bass track.
"We can make a direct association between the music and the video," said Hazard. "Motion becomes dance. Any motion becomes rhythmic."
The video is projected onto a club's giant screens, often flanking the DJ or performer. The trio have played clubs and raves from New York to Atlanta, Baltimore, New Orleans, and Miami, sometimes up to four nights a week. The largest crowd was 10,000. Their sets will often last six hours; they once played for 12 hours straight.
"I think they're phenomenal," said Caroline Hoste of Music2Productions, a worldwide management and booking agency based in Vancouver. "Watching the crowd respond to the visuals as well as the music makes it the ultimate musical experience."
Hoste said she'd been to clubs all over the world and has only seen one other act – the Morpheus Project of Vancouver – to match them.
"(Squaresquare) are the cutting edge," she said. "When I saw their stuff kick off in New York, I wanted them to do all the stuff for my clients."
Squaresquare use all kinds of different footage for their performances. They mix pre-recorded sequences and 3-D animations with live footage from the club, including the DJ and the dancers.
The footage comes from lots of different sources – '40s musicals, kung-fu movies, nature documentaries, newsreels of the space shuttle.
They mix in a lot of pop culture references, from the Simpsons to Pee Wee Herman dancing on a bar. The effect is transforming. Old black-and-white footage of a circus clown spinning on his head is mixed with footage of contemporary break dancers. "In that context, he's not a clown any more," said Hazard, "he's a break dancer."
"(Clubbers) grew up watching MTV," added Hazard. "They can't hear a song without seeing a movie in their heads. They hear music and they want to see an accompanying movie. They just accept it. They've been watching MTV for 20 years."
Squaresquare avoid drug-like visuals. "There's a lot of psychedelic junk out there," said Levy. "We try to stay away from that. We try to give people imagery they can relate to."
"It's not just for LSD trippers any more," added Hazard.
As well as the PowerBooks, which have about 100 Gbytes of storage space apiece, the VJs use a pair of 200-Gbyte Firewire hard drives; giving them about 600 Gbytes of video clips to play with.
"The PowerBooks give us incredible flexibility," said Hazard. "They've become video samplers. What was being done with audio sampling years ago, we can now do with video mixing."
Because they have access to so many clips, they often let the music trigger the visuals. If a didgeridoo suddenly starts playing, they search their clip database under "D" for didgeridoo footage and instantly mix it into the feed.
Hazard likened the effect to call and answer in jazz, except in this case it's between the DJ and the VJ.
Levy said it had a dramatic effect on clubbers. "In an empty club where no one is dancing, if we make the clips dance, people get up and dance too."
Almost unheard of a year ago, video scratching is starting to take off. When Squaresquare started, they were a rarity. Levy said they often had to carefully explain to promoters and DJs what Squaresquare did. Now he meets VJs at every Manhattan club he goes to.
The trio are starting to accompany live acts, which presents the challenge of finding visuals to illustrate a three-minute song or tell a short story, like a music video.
They were recently approached to play at a New York film festival in January. "We've come full circle," said Levy.
Squaresquare will be performing at a Wired News-sponsored technology showcase called Lapdance during Macworld New York.
- - -
Wired News is sponsoring the coolest party at Macworld. On July 18, Lapdance will feature some of New York City's hottest PowerBook DJs and video mixers at the Remote Lounge in the East Village, beginning at 9 p.m. It's free, open to all and there will be a two-for-one special on drinks (with voucher, available at Macworld).
Mobile SVG Player Moves To The OMAP Platform
By Mark Long -- e-inSITE, 7/11/2002
BitFlash and Texas Instruments (TI) have announced that the BitFlash Mobile SVG Player will be made available as part of standard software that will be offered in support of TI's OMAP platform.
Providing handset OEMs with the ability to incorporate the BitFlash player into 2.5G/3G mobile phones and wireless PDA designs, the offering features a small footprint that the two companies claim is ideal for handset manufacturers who are under pressure to offer increased functionality without dramatically increasing the cost of production. The Bitflash Mobile SVG player is also compatible with the new 2D graphics multimedia standard mandated by the Third Generation Partners Program (3GPP) for multimedia messaging services (MMS) on next-generation devices. The 3GPP standard was developed to allow handset users to receive animations, cartoons, e-cards, e-mail attachments and other multimedia-rich, interactive graphics on their 2.5G and 3G mobile devices.
"Now that Mobile SVG is a 3GPP standard, device manufacturers and wireless operators will require a Mobile SVG player as a default component," said OMAP marketing director Paul Werp in a prepared statement. "BitFlash's Mobile SVG technology provides mobile phone and wireless PDA manufacturers ease of portability, allowing them to run predictable, high-quality scalable vector graphics on any high-level operating system that runs on the OMAP platform."
As a subset of the scalable vector graphics file format, Mobile SVG is specifically designed to handle graphics and text in the XML language. The technology has not only been formulated to scale without compromising resolution, but also support keyword searches, interactivity, hyperlinks, and other functions such as zooming and panning.
BitFlash Mobile SVG Player on the OMAP platform is scheduled to become available in 4Q02.
Tomorrow's cars are like portables on wheels
With all the electronics packed into the next generation of automobiles, designers are finding it necessary to employ "portable" design techniques.
Richard Nass, Editor-in-Chief
You may be asking yourself why a magazine that specializes in "portable" technology is reporting on automotive electronics. The usual criteria for inclusion are that the system must be powered by a battery and contain a microprocessor, microcontroller, or DSP. An automobile certainly fits those criteria. There is, however, a much better reason for our coverage.
When you consider the amount of electronics that's being embedded in today's high-end (and tomorrow's mainstream) automobiles, it's obvious that the total power consumption must be kept as low as possible, for a few reasons, including the size and electrical noise considerations.
Automotive designers are faced with the dilemma of squeezing a lot of electronics into a small space, much like the problem faced by the designer of a notebook computer, PDA, or cell phone. There are also many different power supplies crammed into a small area.
Says Dave Bell, vice president of Linear Technology's Power Business Unit, "You have to worry about efficiency, not because of battery life, but because of the heat that's generated in a small space. On top of that, there's concern over interference issues. When you're dealing with audio and video, you need to keep the switcher noise from interfering with the FM band or producing wines and buzzes in the audio."
Industry analysts estimate that the total amount of electronics in the car will increase from last year's $89 billion to $121 billion this year. Part of this is in engine control, part is body control, etc. But the area that's growing the fastest is the entertainment, or telematics, area. Semiconductor content increased from $199 to $239 in 2000. That's just semiconductors, not total electronics. High-end cars, like Mercedes and BMW, now have more than 60 embedded microcontrollers.
A problem with the high semiconductor content is that some of these controllers remain on, even when the car isn't running, such as the security system. Even if the power draw is fairly modest, if the car isn't used for a few weeks, the battery could be drained.
Helping to combat this problem are some fairly rigorous standards for low quiescent current on devices like switchers and converters. For example, the LT1766 dc-to-dc converter, developed by Linear Technology, has a standby current that's below 100 µA.
Safety first
The latest electronics in the telematics arena are designed to connect the driver to the car, as well as to the outside world, but to do it in a manner that keeps the driver's hands on the wheel and eyes on the road. In Japan, the telematics place an emphasis on navigation, where the primary objective is how to get to and from different addresses. In the U.S., safety is the primary application. In Europe, the focus tends to be a combination of the two.
One way to link the driver to the car is to connect the portable devices that tend to be used there, such as a cell phone or PDA. By combining a Bluetooth link with voice activation, the task of using the phone in the car is greatly simplified. Going one step further, connecting the car-phone combination to the PDA could add a voice-activated calendar and address directory, which could be connected to the navigation/GPS system. So when you tell the car you want to go to a particular destination, it knows where you are and how to get there.
Texas Instruments recently released an IEEE 1394b bus solution that supports in-car infotainment applications, such as rear-seat entertainment. This solution works in conjunction with the company's Bluetooth chipsets. The IDB-1394 technology supports 1394b at 100 Mbits/s over 10 m of plastic optical fiber (POF) or unshielded twisted pair, category 5 (UTP5) cable. Developers can then choose between POF, which minimizes electromagnetic interference (EMI), and UTP5, which reduces overall node cost. The Bluetooth chip sets enable hands-free car kits, and when used with the IDB-1394 bus, allow for complete advanced telematics communications in automotive applications.
Available processing power
NEC produces a family of automotive-based microprocessors that fit into the non-mission-critical space. It covers infotainment (information plus entertainment) features like voice activation, multimedia applications, and the navigation and entertainment systems.
The 64-bit MIPS-based VR4181A processor integrates more than 18 peripherals and interfaces with a VR4120A processor core. It can handle voice-activated and Internet-application systems, as well as audio systems that require a display. The interfaces include I2C and I2S.
At the high end, NEC offers its Vr5500 family, which are suited for three-dimensional applications, such as navigation systems and virtual dashboards, ones that are user configurable and contain no gauges.
The NEC automotive-based devices are specified over the full automotive spec range, -40°C to +85°C. "Most consumer companies will only cover an ambient temperature range of 0°C to +70°C. That's all they'll guarantee," claims Kevin Tanaka, staff product marketing engineer at NEC. "For our parts, we are covering the full automotive spec range, and we ensure that we can cover the 10- to 15- year life spans that the automotive systems require."
STMicroelectronics has developed a processor that specializes in voice recognition in automotive applications. The Euterpe digital voice processor includes a DSP core that's optimized for audio applications, analog-to-digital and digital-to-analog converters, code and data memory, external memory management, and an I2C interface for communication with a host processor.
Using third-party DSP code, the Euterpe can perform speech recognition, text-to-speech, speaker verification, noise suppression, echo cancellation, and other voice-processing functions. Developers can also add their own code to diversify their products.
Bringing information to that processor is the specialty of Philips. "Our business concentrates on the transceivers, the part of the bus that translates the currents and voltages into digital signals that go to the microprocessor," says Brian Brewster, strategic marketing manager for Philips Semiconductors' Automotive Business Line.
The buses that carry that information include the control buses, CAN, LIN (local-interconnect network), and some emerging buses, including one for air bags. But those buses are continually changing. CAN essentially dominates in Europe, and is becoming more popular in North America and Japan. Although CAN is relatively slow.
Brewster continues, "People don't realize how many different nodes there are in a vehicle, particularly in luxury cars. The problem of linking all these is becoming quite an issue. It can get a little scary when you look at the complexity of these vehicles."
Passing the test
As far as testing is concerned, IFR Systems has an assembly-line approach that checks the installation integrity of the infotainment subsystem. The system is a collection of RF test equipment that couples to antennas mounted above the vehicle. It sprays the vehicle with test signals of a controlled and precise level (see the figure).
"We're not trying to measure the performance of the radio and other items. That's done exhaustively by the component manufacturer before the device is shipped to the assembler," says Tony Rudkin, a business manager for systems at IFR. "We're testing the process, not the component. The main concern for us is the cabling, the antennas, the items that the manufacturer (assembler) fits to the car.
"Manufacturers are surprised that we are failing cars that they thought were okay," continues Rudkin. "Because our test is more rigorous than the tests people did before— which, in many cases, is to drive the car out of the plant, listen to the radio, check that the phone works by calling a base station, etc.—we're testing the car at the limits of its sensitivity range. So it replicates what would happen if you drive the car well away from a base station or broadcast station, when you're on the edge of the service area."
By spraying a vehicle with test signals of a controlled and precise level, the installation integrity of the infotainment subsystem can be checked.
Microsoft is trying to tie together some of the non-mission-critical systems in the automobile with its latest incarnation of Windows CE, aptly named Windows CE for Automotive 3.5. This version covers areas such as hands- and eyes-free communications, speech recognition, robust graphics capabilities for faster map drawing, faster start-up times, and reliable Internet access.
Motorola, one of the pioneers in automotive electronics, provides the brains for the engine controller, as well as the controller that remembers how and where the driver likes his seat positioned, and the airbag sensor. The company is also working on features like automatic cruise control, where the speed can automatically be adjusted based on traffic conditions.
"Our portion isn't necessarily to implement these changes, but to provide the building blocks that allow these changes to occur," says John Hansen, director of marketing for driver information systems at Motorola.
In the automotive industry, there are essentially three reasons why any new electronics or capabilities of any type are introduced. One is that a new technology can do the same job more cost-effectively. Second is that the perceived value reaches a high enough level. For example, if a new feature allows the car dealer to increase the price of the car by a high enough percentage, then it makes sense. And the third reason is legislation.
An example of where legislation comes into play is in the tire-pressure monitoring system (TPMS). This is a mandated technology for all 2003 model cars that puts a sensor, a microcontroller, and a transmitter into each tire. The system monitors the tire pressure and transmits that information to a central location in the car. The information is then available to the driver, particularly if a problem arises. The technology is similar to what's used for the key fob, the remote keyless entry that unlocks the doors. The information is sent over an RF link.
Moving to 42 V
Another area that's under investigation for automotive designers is the use of 42-V electronics. A level of 42 V was chosen because it equals three batteries in series. In addition, under 50 V is generally considered a "safe" range, although the hybrid cars on the road today run at a higher level.
Two or three years ago, experts predicted that 42-V cars would be here today. However, the evolution has taken longer than expected, and it will be another three or four years before these vehicles are in production. The need for the higher voltage stems partly from the amount of higher power electronics coming to the automobile, things like electric steering, brakes, and valves.
In the first generations, there will probably be hybrid 12- and 42-V cars. The use of dual voltages will result in a need for high-power converters to go between 12 and 42 V. Some things simply work better at 12 V, such as the headlights and incandescent bulbs in the car. Component designers claim they can make more rugged headlamps with the thick filament that runs at12 V, compared with what's needed at 42 V.
Linear Technology's LT1339 is an example of a high-power converter that will work in a 12/42-V system. Says Linear Technology's Bell, "Many of our automotive customers are looking at doing a three-phase LT1339 device, where they would drive three of these parts phase-locked to each other to build a 1.5-kW converter."
While there's agreement that cars will go to 42 V, there are some differences of opinion as to why the change will occur.
"You hear stories like, 'We need higher voltages because there are so many electric loads on the car, we can't cope.' That's not necessarily true because you can just make a bigger alternator at 12 V, unless you have an incredible amount of load," claims Steve Clemente, a senior technologist at International Rectifier. "The most important reason to employ a hybrid system like this is for fuel efficiency."
Going to 42 V will enable the use of an electric motor to handle the "start-stop" functionality. In other words, when you stop at a traffic light, the engine shuts off completely. When you push on the accelerator, an electric motor gets the car going and starts the engine.
When the car isn't running, the power comes from a battery. Before you reach the next traffic light, you recover the consumed energy and recharge the battery. If the battery gets to a point where it really gets discharged, then the engine would be recharging the battery during normal operation.
Such a hybrid system will allow for the use of smaller engines. If more power is needed, the electric motor can be used as a boost.
A 42-V car also makes it easier to integrate a "drive-by-wire" system. This is a term that's been thrown around lately, and means different things to different people. But in general, it's the move from mechanical control linkages to electronic linkages. Take the steering, for example. Instead of having a physical connection from the steering wheel to the wheels, you'd have an electronic sensor that would sense movements in the steering wheel.
Before something like this can be implemented, it must be extremely reliable. One drive-by-wire standard calls for dual message sourcing, so that each message is sent twice. Error checking and correction is also done to ensure that the proper message is sent and received.
Another key feature is the need for a graceful fix. This means that some backup system must be employed, rather than having a system (like the steering or brakes) simply shut down. For example, in today's power steering technology, when the power steering mechanism fails, the driver can still steer the car. It's more difficult, but it can be done.
The next step would be to have the car drive itself. "That's in the research stage today," says Motorola's Hansen. "It's one thing to be able to get a car to drive around a test track. It's a very different thing to have a non-human-driven car react if a ball jumps out in the road. How will it know that there might be a child coming right after that ball? A computer-controlled car isn't there yet."
IFR Systems
Wichita, KS
(800) 835-2352 or (316) 522-4981
www.ifrsys.com
International Rectifier
El Segundo, CA
(310) 252-7105
www.irf.com
Linear Technology
Milpitas, CA
(408) 432-1900
www.linear.com
Microsoft
Redmond, WA
(425) 882-8080
www.microsoft.com/automotive
Motorola
Austin, TX
(512) 895-2085
www.motorola.com/semiconductors
NEC Electronics
Santa Clara, CA
(408) 588-6000
www.necel.com/microprocessors/index.cfm
Philips Semiconductors
San Jose, CA
(408) 474-5000
www.philipssemiconductors.com/markets/automotive/ivn/
STMicroelectronics
Lexington, MA
(781) 861-2650
www.st.com
Texas Instruments
Dallas, TX
(800) 336-5236
www.ti.com
Portable Design April, 2002
Author(s) : Richard Nass
http://pd.pennnet.com/Articles/Article_Display.cfm?Section=Articles&Subsection=Display&ARTIC....
culater
STM Demos Multimedia Application On VLIW Micro Core
By Mark Long -- e-inSITE, 1/8/2002
First samples from microprocessor collaboration with HP redefine price/performance/power trade-off
STMicroelectronics has developed an MPEG-4 decoding application demo for the company's first VLIW (Very Long Instruction Word) microprocessor core, called the ST210. Based on an evaluation chip called the ST200STB1, the demo was developed within a few weeks of the first silicon becoming available. During the demo, the ST210 decoded MPEG-4 data in real time.
The new ST210 core, which is based on technology jointly developed by ST and Hewlett-Packard Laboratories, is a scalable and customizable core family designed for embedding in multimedia System-on-Chip (SoC) devices. The first member of the ST200 family, the ST210, reportedly executes four instructions per clock cycle while maintaining the low power benefits of a 250-MHz clock frequency. The ST200 cores are primarily targeted at video/audio streaming applications such as MPEG-2, MPEG-4 and MP3 in digital consumer applications.
Customer samples of the ST210STB1 chip, evaluation platforms and development tools are scheduled to begin shipping later this month.
Starting from scratch: the genesis of DataPlay
Starting from a concept only, how do you develop a completely new optical disc format? Patrick Stapley maps the progress of DataPlay so far, looking at how the company has harnessed the power of the industry as a whole to turn the DataPlay concept into a working product.
BY PATRICK STAPLEY
It was three years ago that entrepreneur Steve Volk put a small team of experts together to 'thrash-out' and 'flesh-out' an idea for a new optical disc format. Volk's vision - to develop a miniature Web-enabled digital content recording and distribution media for portable Internet appliances and hand-held consumer entertainment devices - what was to become known as DataPlay.
To develop a brand new optical format from the ground up required a rock solid base to work from, and Volk who had a background in hard disc drive development, was only too aware of this. He had previously founded Intégral Peripherals, a Colorado-based manufacturer of mobile disk drives, and PrairieTek which was responsible for the 2.5-inch disk drive used in today's notebook computers. During the early months he and his team meticulously laid these foundations before finally seeking venture capital in mid 1999. It was then that DataPlay went in search of the industry partnerships that would be fundamental in bringing the format to fruition.
"For us to develop a product of this scope from ground zero with all the bases - electrical, optical, firmware, hardware, mechanics, casting, production lines and so on - would be virtually impossible without these partnerships," says Dave Davies, chief technical officer, DataPlay. "We could have perhaps taken certain elements in-house, but it makes very little sense. Why not partner with someone who already has the expertise and save money and time. The things we do mostly ourselves, are the overall design concept, for example the detailed optical design of the head and the head media interface."
According to Davies, the DataPlay concept was so strong and the team of people behind it of such a high standard, that getting companies to 'sign-up' presented little difficulty. In fact so great was the response that DataPlay found itself turning some potential partners away. Many also wanted to consolidate their relationship by directly investing in DataPlay - again such confidence was shown in the new format, that these financing rounds became oversubscribed.
"The partnership relationships were built purely on the technology that companies could bring to the project - that was the all-important thing - we were not looking for partners that had money," stresses Davies. "With our background in the industry, we knew who were the best companies to deliver what we were looking for. Also we needed companies who were willing to invest their own resources, we would not be funding any of their development work."
Partnerships grew rapidly as the new format captured the industry's imagination, and DataPlay itself also showed signs of exponential growth: by the end of 1999 there were 20 engineers working at the Boulder, Colorado facility, by mid 2000 this had risen to 70, and today that figure exceeds 180. Total current investment in DataPlay stands at about $70 million, but this is expected to more than double in the next financing round. Davies estimates that this figure would have at least tripled if development had gone ahead without partners.
Picking partners
One of DataPlay's first technology partners was the Italian based company STMicroelectronics (STMicro). As one of the largest manufacturers of LSI chips in the world, the company has a strong position in controller chips for harddisk drives.
As many of the engineers at DataPlay had backgrounds in the hard drive industry and had also dealt directly with the company in the past, it became an obvious candidate as a partner. In addition STMicro had a division local to DataPlay's Boulder headquarters, and was developing a DVD controller chip which could be modified to work with the new DataPlay format.
"STMicro is a typical partner in that they had a technology that already existed that was applicable to what we were doing," says Davies. "We then conceived of how we could modify it to be useful for our application and work with them in detail in a partnership arrangement. They would produce the chip and we'd do the testing, evaluation and some of the design work."
Davies adds that there is no standard pattern to how partner relationships work. A lot, he says, depends on the degree of co-evolvement of the technology. "If we're doing something that closely evolves an existing technology, for example in the case of ST Micro producing custom ASICs, we're working hand-in-hand almost from the conception onwards, because their contribution is so intimately involved in the whole. In the case of other companies like DCA , which make the mastering formatter, we decide what the format is, give that information to them and they go ahead and do their own thing.
"If we are conceiving something, we like two things to be in place: the first is a non disclosure agreement that covers confidentiality, the other is that we have filed patent applications on our portion of what was done. We don't necessarily try to prototype before that occurs, it's more a case of co-evolvement. The end product is then co-owned and we give the partner the right to sell it because we want to facilitate the industry development - we obviously want to make it as available as possible."
3/12/02 --STMicroelectronics To Embed IBM's Via Voice Speech Technology in Processor Platforms for the Automotive and Mobile Internet \
Geneva, March 13, 2002. STMicroelectronics (NYSE: STM) today announced the signing of a memorandum of understanding with IBM Voice Systems concerning voice interface technology for mobile Internet terminals and Telematics solutions. According to the memorandum of understanding, ST plans to license IBM's Embedded ViaVoice speech technology and embed the software in new processor platforms targeting Telematics and mobile Internet solutions. The two companies plan to close an agreement that would govern how the parties work together on the development and marketing of the new speech-enabled products. ST plans to initially use Embedded ViaVoice software in the new STA2000 series of ARM9-based mobile multimedia processor platforms. These system-on-chip solutions are aimed primarily at Internet-enabled mobile terminals, including next generation smart phones and Personal Digital Assistants. There are also plans to port the Embedded ViaVoice technology to mobile multimedia platforms addressing automotive and audio applications. "The emergence of Internet-enabled mobile terminals is one of the key forces that will drive growth in the hi-tech industry over the next few years," said Aldo Romano, General Manager of ST's Telecommunication and Peripherals/Automotive Groups. "Cost effective and reliable voice technology will accelerate the introduction of these terminals by making them much easier to use, improving the human-machine interface with natural spoken commands." IBM's Embedded ViaVoice family of products includes solutions for every aspect of a voice-enabled Internet. IBM ViaVoice's distributed voice technology includes embedded software for Internet appliances and server software for service providers. The Embedded ViaVoice software to be licensed by ST includes robust voice recognition plus text-to-speech conversion. The IBM Embedded ViaVoice Standard Multiplatform Edition performs speaker independent voice command and control with an active 500-word vocabulary using just 50MIPS. However, applications can use multiple 500-word vocabularies making the number of words or phrases limited only by the amount of memory in a device. IBM's Embedded Text-To-Speech vocabulary is unlimited. "Voice technology is rapidly increasing its presence in business and consumer products," said Ozzie Osborne General Manager, IBM Voice Systems. "We are pleased to be working with ST. IBM's Embedded ViaVoice software can provide a full range of applications -- from Internet appliances to cars to consumer electronics and telecommunications. Demand is increasing dramatically as businesses realize the value that voice technology adds." STMicroelectronics's STA2000 series of mobile multimedia platforms integrate on a single system-on-chip a powerful ARM 9 core plus all of the peripherals and embedded software required for mobile Internet applications such as Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) and Internet appliances. Thanks to a very broad range of hardware and software IP, ST can tailor the basic chip design to suit the needs of OEMS, adding new capabilities or optimizing power consumption.
DataPlay micro-optical engines give single fixed-function devices such as cell phones or digital cameras the capacity to become music players or PDAs by taking advantage of DataPlay’s ability to store hundreds of high resolution images as well as pre-recorded or user-recorded music, digital maps, downloaded attachments, contact lists or other valuable content. Music players will be able to turn into portable video or game players, and new classes of convergent devices will have greater play length, higher resolution, enhanced quality, or more intense and feature rich gaming than what is possible in today's low capacity and limited function devices.
El G- QDX is a standard spec requirement for all Dataplay devices as required by Dataplay.
reminder--Voice recognition is a must-have item on next-generation portables
Richard Nass, Editor-in-Chief
There are different ways to implement voice recognition, either in hardware, in software, or with a combination. Choosing the right method depends on the application.
Voice recognition offers the ideal input solution for a small form-factor device—if it works properly. Unfortunately, that's not always the case. For lots of reasons, voice recognition hasn't panned out to be an end-all for input. In some cases, it adds to the cost of the system. In other cases, it changes the form factor to be something that's not as user-friendly as it could be. And in other cases, it just flat out doesn't work.
There are different types of voice-recognition solutions available. Some are software only (running on the host CPU), while others contain their own specialized hardware. For the software-only versions, some recent developments make those more attractive, for two reasons. One is that the CPUs in general have more horsepower to handle the application software, and second, some of the microprocessors are putting in special hooks to handle the recognition.
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One example of the processor that had voice recognition in mind during the design process comes from Analog Devices. The company's Frio DSP was co-developed with Intel.
"Historically, we've seen 16-bit CPUs used in speech-recognition systems," says Ken Weurin, a DSP product manager at Analog Devices. "Our offering is better for a number of reasons, including a significant increase in performance, and the hardware hooks for OS support."
The Frio DSP core could be used in either speaker-dependent or -independent voice-recognition systems, with continuous- or isolated-word engines. This provides the maximum flexibility for designers (Fig. 1).
"On the performance side, there's twice the amount of computational resources on the Frio core as was included in our previous architecture," continues Weurin. "So we have the ability to more efficiently compute fast FIR FFT convolutional calculations, which are at the heart of speech-recognition algorithms."
Having a high-end CPU allows designers to move to more phonetic or phoneme syllable-based recognition models. This should provide a boost to the accuracy of the recognition.
Equally important on the hardware side is the ability to remove the microcontroller that resides alongside the DSP in most systems. Often, an 8-bit microcontroller is used to handle some of the general housekeeping and I/O functions for which the DSP isn't well suited. Higher end DSPs, like the Frio or the 55X family from Texas Instruments, have enough computational power to eliminate that component. Some features that make this possible include memory protection, MMUs, and support for user and supervisor modes.
The benefit of using a single processor (and just one programming model) is that the development doesn't require two sets of development tools. It also doesn't require the designer to have the knowledge of two different instruction sets.
IBM, one of the leaders in voice-recognition technology, developed a product that runs on a host processor. The software-only solution, called ViaVoice, requires just 5 MIPS from the processor, although if more computer performance is available, it can take advantage of that as well.
"One of our big markets is the telematics (automobile) area," says Ken Houy, a marketing manager for client systems at IBM. "From a voice perspective, it's a hot market because of government regulations and for ease of use. Voice will be a key interface for getting to any of the devices that are running in your car, whether it's a phone; the automobile monitoring and calling back to a service vendor; or being able to interface with your PDA sitting in your briefcase, maybe through a Bluetooth connection."
The folks at IBM claim that their software can be ported to any available mainstream microprocessor or operating system. This lets them "voice-enable" just about any type of portable system, which includes a long list of future Internet-enabled products, such as smart phones and cell phones with browsing capabilities.
One of the features of the ViaVoice solution is that it offers distributed technology, meaning that the processing requirements can be split between the client (portable) device and the server end. For example, some of the recognition can occur directly in the phone, like address or number look-up, or simple dial functions. At the server end, more sophisticated features can be implemented, like dictation or database features.
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Another key feature of distributed technology is that if a phone connection is lost, the recognition can continue to occur within the client. When the connection is reestablished, the process can continue almost seamlessly. If it were a server-only solution, the user would have to start the process over from the beginning.
In the telematics area, Motorola is expected to release its iRadio Internet radio solution by the end of the year. The company claims that this is a complete system, including such features as phone, Internet access, directory dialer, and address book (Fig. 2). It handles the voice recognition using IBM's ViaVoice product, which adds the ability to send and receive e-mail by having it read to the user. Sony and JVC will follow shortly with similar products.
Accuracy counts
Accuracy has always been the sticking point for voice recognition, at least from the user's perspective. If the device can't accurately understand the message the user is trying to convey, the application becomes useless. In most cases, the portable system won't be used for dictation, simply because the processing power isn't available. The voice-recognition features offered on a portable device are more likely to be along the lines of command recognition, where a finite list of commands are used. Recognizing on the order of 20 words isn't difficult for the system to handle.
Used in systems where performance is limited is a tree model, where trigger words access other vocabularies. For example, a phone can offer 10 finite commands, things like dial, look-up, hang up, etc. If the look-up command is entered, this would trigger a secondary vocabulary that contains all the numbers stored in the directory to be accessed. Or if the command was "manual dial," the ten digits on the keypad become the active words. This process allows the use of relatively large vocabularies, but with a minimal use of processor power.
There are some vendors that offer hardware solutions as well, such as Sensory. The company can embed a low-power processor into a portable device that removes the recognition burden from the host (Fig. 3). If the processing power is available, Sensory can bundle a software-only platform.
"Our software-only solution subscribes to the theory that as MIPS and memory get cheaper, software-only makes more sense in embedded systems," says Todd Mozer, president and CEO of Sensory.
This is particularly true when you can maintain a small footprint for the software.
Hardware vs. software
When deciding how to partition between what's handled in hardware and what's done in software, know that it's very application dependent. For example, today's cell phones contain relatively powerful DSPs, as well as a microcontroller, a codec, and a relatively large amount of memory. This application is one that makes sense for a software-only solution, for two reasons—adding extra silicon increases both cost and size.
Using dedicated hardware could probably reduce the overall power consumption in the system, because it eliminates having to crank up the powerful DSP every time a word needs to be recognized. But the current crop of DSPs does a fairly good job of employing only the cycles that are needed. And the added cost versus the incremental savings in battery life probably wouldn't merit going with the hardware solution.
"We're excited about some of the new processors that are coming out, from Analog Devices, Intel, and TI, with their OMAP (Open Multimedia Applications Platform) architecture. All the major players are getting to lower power levels and giving us plenty of MIPS to work with," says Mozer.
The current generation of database products works in a speaker-dependent environment. This means that the user would repeat a word, such as a name to be entered into an address book, once or twice. This scenario works well in a small database, say with up to 30 entries.
With large systems, into the hundreds or thousands of listings, you wouldn't want to have to repeat each entry. In those situations, a phonemic-based recognizer is used, where individual sounds are recognized, then put together to form words. That's obviously a much more compute-intensive application, usually reserved for a desktop- or server-based architecture. Eventually, such an architecture will find its way into the portable domain.
Low-power controller
On the hardware side, Sensory offers a 2-MIPS processor that today resides in a voice-activated television remote control. For such a simple application, the designers were able to eliminate the microcontroller that had been present on previous-generation products, instead choosing to employ the Sensory part to handle the RF programming and other functionality in the remote.
"In general, our strategy is that we don't want to sell DSPs because we think there's a lot of good DSPs already on the market," offers Mozer. "So we partner with those vendors. When we do provide hardware, it contains some special-purpose features. For example, our current generation has a small digital filter that does the feature extraction for our neural-network algorithms."
The company's next-generation part will add special-purpose hardware to perform single-cycle multiply-accumulates.
As for which CPU is the most appropriate to run the voice-recognition algorithms, that depends on the intended application. In some cases, a DSP makes the most sense, where some signal processing may need to be performed at the front end of the speech-recognition algorithm. While in others, such as where some searching routines need to be performed, a RISC-based processor, such as an ARM device, makes more sense.
"One of the keys to reducing power on the portable system is to limit the bus activity," says Jordan Chen, the chief technical officer at Voice Signal Technologies. "DSPs tend to be very power efficient when crunching, particularly if the data fits into the DSP's on-chip memory. But the larger algorithms require you to bring the data in and out of the chip, using more power."
In a platform that contains both a DSP and a RISC processor, it's important to ensure that the signal processing can run independently on the DSP, so there's not a lot of bus activity consuming power.
Note that the most power-hungry application on a cell phone is the radio. So any speech recognition that can occur independently of the radio will substantially reduce power. That's why the partitioning discussed earlier becomes very important.
It's important that system developers receive the tools needed to build an intelligent user interface (UI) from the speech-recognition vendor. In most cases, it's the system vendor that provides that UI.
But if the speech technology is packaged in such a way that it provides little or no flexibility, it reduces the amount of creativity that can go into the UI. Hence, the speech-recognition engine must provide and make accessible to the application developer all the available information.
Another vendor of software-only solutions is Advanced Recognition Technologies (ART), who recently unveiled its smARTspeak NG product, voice-recognition software that combines dialing and control functions for speaker-independent or -dependent systems in cellular handsets. The software can run on an ARM 7 CPU. Features include name dialing, continuous digit dialing, menu navigation, and device control.
Infineon, Motorola, Agere Form DSP Company
By Suzanne Deffree, Electronic News Online -- Electronic News, 6/18/2002
Infineon Technologies AG, Motorola Inc. and Agere Systems Inc. today announced they have joined forces to establish StarCore LLC, a new company focused on developing and marketing DSPs for communications and consumer products through an open license model.
With plans to provide for an industry standard, StarCore will combine resources from Agere's and Motorola's StarCore joint design center, a 1998 venture to produce DSP cores that would be developed into chips, and Infineon's Carmel DSP core design and licensing business. Each company will license StarCore cores for new chip designs and shares in the company will be split equally among the three. The companies declined to provide financial details about the venture.
Thomas Lantzsch, CEO of StarCore LLC and formerly Motorola’s VP and director of IP value creation in its Semiconductor Products Sector, said he believes tthe DSP and IP industries are fragmented. "We aim to create an industry standard and bring order to the DSP industry. Through open licensing, we will license DSP to anyone," he said.
"If you look at the embedded DSP world, the largest company was TI who has 14 percent. After that there are hundreds of smaller companies," said Ray Burgess, director of strategy for Motorola SPS, adding that the commitment by larger companies hasn’t been there in the past and has left smaller-company attempts unsuccessful. "We’ve got three top companies already committed [to an open license model]. That fear of committing to an architecture that won’t be there is gone."
Lead customers will be Infineon, Motorola and Agere, who together represent about 30 percent of the $8 billion DSP product market. Because of their past involvement in the StarCore center, both Motorola and Agere already have incorporated StarCore technology into some products. With the open licensing model in place, the trio is basing returns on new users, applications and software providers, future market share and through association with the possible new industry standard. "We’ve all committed to the open licensing. … However, let me be clear, this is an investment in our companies," Burgess said.
According to some, it’s an investment that will pay off. Will Strauss, an analyst with market research company Forward Concepts, expects the embedded DSP industry to grow 15 percent this year, compared to 5 percent to 8 percent growth in the overall chip market, and notes that embedded DSP has only fallen once in its history. "DSP, in my opinion, is really the technology driver for the semiconductor industry," Strauss said.
StarCore is expected to begin operations late this summer, subject to regulatory approvals and other customary closing conditions. Based in Austin with a subsidiary office in Tel Aviv, Israel, StarCore initially will employ 100 people, some of which will come from within the three companies and the existing StarCore center. But, Burgess says, because of the general tech environment and overlapping positions between the Atlanta center and new Austin and Tel Aviv, "It’s unlikely that the Atlanta center will continue."
Infineon, particularly, has been hit hard by the economic downturn. While it still holds its place as the world’s fourth-largest memory chipmaker, it has made moves to expand its presence into the wireless communications chip arena. Infineon’s involvement in StarCore follows its bid to acquire Ericsson Microelectronics, announced last week, and Infineon’s unveiling of its BlueMoon universal Bluetooth single-chip product.
Because Infineon will be adopting Motorola’s proven core and lowering expenses, Strauss feels that a partnership will help Infineon out of its slump. Also, the brands among the three established players will instill a sense of comfort for the tech community, presenting reasonable competition to TI.
"This represents a kind of sea change," Strauss said. "Before this the core was only available to Motorola and Agere, and now it will be licensed to the world. I think it’s going to cause a lot of people to rethink the way they get DSP products."
Time for legislation to stop digital piracy
By Howard L. Berman
Special to ZDNet
July 11, 2002, 4:30 AM PT
COMMENTARY--Songwriters are the creators of the music we know and love. They pour their hearts and souls into their songs, knowing that often the voices and instruments of others end up better known to the listener. They write because they love music.
And some also dare to dream that their work will pay their bills.
A few particularly gifted, diligent--and more than a little lucky--ones achieve this dream. For those few, one of the ways they get paid for their work is through the "mechanical" statutory license, which requires that those who make a physical or electronic copy of a copyrighted musical composition pay the songwriter 8 cents.
Each illegal peer-to-peer (P2P) download of a song robs the songwriters of the 8 cents they are due under the mechanical license. That may not seem like much, but when you multiply 8 cents by the reported 1.1 billion downloads on one P2P system in one month, it calculates out to $88,000,000 dollars...a month. Divide even 1/10th of that money among the 5,000 members of the Songwriters Guild of America, and you begin to see that P2P piracy robs songwriters on a massive scale.
Of course, songwriters aren't the only folks that P2P piracy robs.
P2P piracy robs all the creators--the recording artists, the photographers, the film producers, the software developers, as well as the authors, journalists and needlepoint artists--whose copyrighted works are increasingly downloaded over P2P systems without their authorization or compensation. P2P piracy robs all the businesses that invest in creation of copyrighted works and the carpenters, sound engineers, administrative assistants, programmers, seamstresses, copy editors and session musicians they employ. Lastly, P2P piracy robs the down loaders themselves and their fellow consumers, who will see the quality and diversity of future creations decrease as piracy increases. In short, P2P piracy has a myriad of victims.
There is no excuse or justification for P2P piracy. Of course consumers would like free music at the click of a mouse. They would also like gasoline for less than $1 dollar a gallon. But we don't confiscate people's property and pass it out because people want it for free.
P2P piracy is clearly illegal. It is not simply copyright infringement, it is infringement on a massive, breathtaking scale. There is simply no concept of fair use that encompasses the distribution of countless copies of a copyrighted work to millions of people.
P2P piracy does not promote legitimate sales, it replaces them. How do I know? I have some common sense, a grasp of fundamental economics, and a college-age daughter with lots of friends. Frankly, it is galling that creators must even respond to such laughable sophistry.
Creators must have the choice about how to promote their work. This is not the right of an infringe. If there is promotional value in P2P distribution, creators have every incentive to use it--but they also have the right to refuse to use it.
Something must be done about P2P piracy, but what? I don't place much faith in those who, wishing to profit from it, say nothing can be done. There are solutions, and Congress has a constitutional obligation to create or facilitate them.
Part of the solution involves freeing copyright owners to use technology to combat this piracy. There is nothing revolutionary about property owners using self-help--technological or otherwise--to secure or repossess their property. Satellite companies periodically use electronic countermeasures to stop the theft of their signals and programming. Car dealers repossess cars when the payments go unpaid. Software companies employ a variety of technologies to make software nonfunctional if license terms are violated. Our society normally views such actions as just desserts for scofflaws rather than warfare on consumers.
Currently, copyright owners are unable to use some useful technological tools to deal with P2P piracy because they face potential, if unintended, liability under a variety of state and federal laws.
I plan to introduce legislation that would give copyright owners a limited "safe harbor" from such potential liability. Under my bill, copyright owners would be freed to use technology to impair P2P piracy, but only on networks that are decentralized, and thus not readily subject to suit for copyright infringement.
Copyright owners could technologically impair the distribution of copyrighted works, but could not actually hack into a P2P user's computer or otherwise remove files therein. If copyright owners abuse the authority provided in the bill, an aggrieved P2P user would have remedies for such abusive behavior.
I expect that such legislation, if appropriately limited, will gather substantial support in the Congress. The only folks I expect to defend P2P piracy are those who profit from it.
Howard L. Berman represents California's 26th Congressional District.
Study: As more use broadband, digital divide widens
By Sam Diaz
Mercury News
John Hong has been high-speed surfing the Web for more than three years, first as a subscriber of ISDN services and now as a subscriber of DSL.
Back then, Hong, a San Jose computer programmer, was among an elite group that wasn't dialing into the Web over 56k speeds. Today, he's just another face in the broadband crowd.
A report issued this week by the Pew Research Center in Washington, D.C., found that 21 percent of all Internet users in the United States today have a home-based broadband connection, a jump from 6 percent who were surfing at high speeds in early 2000.
The report, dubbed ``The Broadband Difference,'' found that the high rate of adoption is allowing more Americans to take advantage of all the Internet has to offer -- from e-mail and online banking to video streaming and interactive gaming.
But broadband adoption also is widening the digital divide among computer users based on economics, gender and educational levels. Broadband users, the report found, mostly are early adopters who have upgraded their dial-up connections.
``Typical of early Internet adopters, broadband users are wealthier, better educated and more likely to be men than dial-up users,'' the report read.
And that leads to better Internet experiences -- and opportunities -- for the broadband user.
While both broadband and dial-up users are using e-mail, instant messaging and visiting chat rooms at comparable rates, surfers with broadband connections are downloading music and video clips, performing online financial transactions and creating Web sites of their own far more often than their dial-up counterparts.
``Pick any Internet activity and a broadband user is more likely to do it on a given day than a dial-up user,'' the report read. ``A broadband connection increases the likelihood that a high-speed user will download files or music, create content, or share files online three to five times, compared with dial-up users. Broadband users are similarly much more likely than dial-up users to conduct transactions online. This probably reflects the higher incomes of broadband users.''
Hong, the San Jose programmer, said he can't imagine going back to the slow speeds of a dial-up connection.
``It would be really frustrating because there are so many graphics now'' on Web pages, he said. ``With DSL, those pages come up right away. People are too busy these days to have to wait.''
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EarthLink hopes to boost broadband demand with digital music service
By Dawn C. Chmielewski
Mercury News
Internet providers have finally recognized the true lesson of Napster: that online music will drive broadband adoption faster than you can say, ``Stop, thief!''
The nation's second-largest Internet provider, EarthLink, launched a digital music service this week, following the lead of its giant competitor, America Online, and smaller providers such as Speakeasy.net. And Microsoft plans to offer subscription services through its ISP sometime later this year.
It's part of an industry-wide attempt to move beyond the bland, low-profit business of connectivity to the more lucrative realm of digital entertainment -- in hopes of eventually competing with cable for a greater share of home spending.
``It comes back to the old axiom: People pay for entertainment,'' said P.J. McNealy, research director of GartnerG2, a research firm in San Jose. ``That goes back to even the days of depression, when the movie industry thrived. Theaters boomed.''
So far, though, the promise of online subscription services has remained unrealized. The new pay music services, launched since December, have failed to attract large numbers of subscribers.
But Internet providers nonetheless see major potential upside in digital music distribution, both as a fresh source of revenue and as the glue to hold subscribers and keep them from abandoning the service.
Consider EarthLink's strategy. It is offering its 4.9 million subscribers a wealth of free services, such as music videos, customizable Internet radio stations and a jukebox -- in hopes of whetting their appetite for speedier access and premium music services.
Consumers who get hooked on Internet radio can pay an additional $4.95 a month for a commercial-free, CD-quality radio service. Collectors who want to build a collection of favorite songs can pay an additional $9.95 to $19.75 a month for the right to download up to 100 songs from a catalog of about 75,000 works.
EarthLink didn't create the services itself. It partnered with MusicMatch in San Diego (to provide the jukebox and RadioMX radio programming) and FullAudio in Chicago (for the subscription music service).
EarthLink is betting some subscribers will cough up $41.95 a month for high-speed Internet service that will deliver flicker-free music videos and speedier downloads.
``EarthLink really wants to move beyond connectivity to the Internet. We really want to provide the best Internet experience for our subscribers,'' said Mark Griffith, EarthLink's senior brand manager. ``When you look at digital music, we really believe that is the killer app.''
AOL may offer proof of the allure of digital music.
It has developed exclusive programming for its 3 million high-speed subscribers -- from special events such as record label legend Clive Davis' Grammy Party to the debut of a film short by Bono, lead singer of U2. It produces music video channels devoted to big name pop acts, such as Red Hot Chili Peppers or Sheryl Crow, which would be excruciating to watch via dial-up phone connection.
The payoff of such exclusive programming is evident in the numbers -- music is the leading application among AOL Broadband subscribers.
``It's quite clear that the thing that's driving our broadband adoption is music,'' said Kevin Conroy, head of AOL Music.
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Larry Magid: You have options for listening to Internet music
By Larry Magid
Special to the Mercury News
If your kids are like mine, they spend a lot of time downloading and listening to music from various Internet sites.
For the sake of this column let's assume -- for the moment at least -- that what they are doing is both legal and ethical, which is quite possible (though not always likely) thanks to download sites operated or sanctioned by record labels or unsigned artists. And even if your kids don't download music, you or they might listen to streaming music or news on such sites as siriusradio.com, broadcast.com, real.com, windowsmedia.com or quicktime.com.
Wherever you get your music, there are five basic ways to listen to Internet audio. You can listen though your PC or Mac speakers; copy it to a CD and listen on a standard CD player; listen on a specialized MP3 player; copy it to a mini-disc or cassette tape; or connect to a home, car or portable stereo system.
Listening to music through computer speakers can be fine if you have a good sound card and a decent set of external speakers, especially one with an amplified computer speaker system with a sub-woofer. The obvious downside, however, is that you have to be in the same room as your computer.
Another option is to connect your computer to your home stereo system. There are numerous ways to accomplish this ranging from a $2.99 cable from Radio Shack to solutions that cost well over $1,000. I'll skip the high-priced options and focus instead on what most of us can afford.
The cheap solutions, for many families, are more than adequate. If you have a desktop computer and a good speaker system, it's not necessary to spend more money unless your goal is to listen in a different room, in which case you'll need a long cable or a wireless link. Fortunately, both wired and wireless products are available at very reasonable prices.
If your home stereo system or ``boom box'' has standard (RCA) input jacks, you can connect it to your computer sound card by getting a $2.99 cable with a mini-plug on one end for your computer sound card and two RCA jacks on the other end for your stereo. This solution works reasonably well if the stereo is within a few feet of the computer. The sound quality will depend, in part, on the quality of the computer's sound card -- some are better than others at reproducing lows and highs and avoiding distortion.
A more high-tech solution is the Hi-Fi Link from Xitel (www.xitel.com). This $49.99 intelligent cable plugs into the USB port of a computer or a Mac. The software to support the device is built into Windows 98SE and Mac OS 9.04 or higher so there's no need to fiddle around with CDs or installation programs. The other end of the shielded cable -- which is 30 feet long -- plugs into the RCA inputs on your home stereo or boombox. One possible advantage of this device is that it completely bypasses your computer's sound card so the quality of the sound is consistent, regardless of what type of computer gear you have.
The company's Web site has some impressive technical specifications and claims. All I know is that music coming from my laptop sounded really good when I played it back on my home stereo system. It also sounded good when I used the $2.99 Radio Shack cable. But, when listening critically at high volume, the Hi-Fi link was louder, had less distortion and did a somewhat better job on the bass and treble. The biggest advantage of the Hi-Fi link is the long cable that allowed me to position the computer across the room from the stereo system.
Sometimes, however, even a 30-foot cable isn't long enough. If the computer is in the den and the stereo system is in the living room or a bedroom, you either need to wire the house or install a wireless link. You can pay hundreds or more for a wireless audio system, but I recently stumbled upon a low-cost product that is reasonably good. The $49.99 KS-110 from Kima Wireless (www.kimawireless.com) comes in two parts. The base unit plugs into the audio out port of your computer sound card to transmit signals up to 1,000 feet to the receiving unit that sits near your radio or home stereo system. The nice thing about the receiving unit is that you don't even have to plug it in to your home stereo. It's wireless, too, sending signals to your FM radio at either 88.1 or 88.3. The receiving unit has RCA plugs that you can use to connect directly instead of going through the FM tuner.
In my tests, the sound quality of the Kima device was mixed. I plugged the transmitter into my desktop computer and put the receiving unit in my living room -- about two rooms away. When I listened via the FM radio I heard a bit of distortion, but the sound quality improved when I used RCA cables to connect the receiver directly to my stereo, continuing to use the wireless link between the transmitter and the receiver. Still, the sound quality was not as good as the Xitel Hi-Fi link or the cheap Radio Shack cable, but the convenience factor was a big plus. The device comes with an AC adapter but you also can use it with batteries, making it possible to broadcast music to a battery-operated FM radio in the back yard.
Like all devices that use radio waves, your experience could be better or worse than mine. The signal quality could be affected by wireless phones, microwave ovens, home construction and other forms of interference.
None of these low cost solutions lets you control your computer remotely, but they all enhance your computer's ability to play music.
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Mike Langberg: Going mobile with movies
By Mike Langberg
Mercury News
I'm about to embark on every parent's worst travel nightmare: back-to-back cross-country flights with my lovable but very active 2-year-old daughter Sara.
In my younger days, I always glared at harried parents who couldn't stop their toddlers from kicking the seat in front of them, screaming whenever their favorite toy fell out of reach and crying non-stop through several states. I have now met the enemy, and he is me.
I do have a secret weapon, however: Sara will be watching a selection of her favorite DVDs on my laptop. I'll have about two hours of guaranteed distraction -- the limit of the laptop's battery -- on each flight.
Thank goodness we've entered the era of mobile movies.
DVD, first introduced five years ago, has been sold to consumers largely on the strength of stellar picture and sound quality for home television viewing.
But these shiny 5-inch discs also make it possible to view video on the move, in much the same way cassette tapes and compact discs made it possible to hear pre-recorded music anywhere.
Portable DVD players are an emerging product category tapping into the mobility trend. These small battery-powered devices, about the size of a paperback book with a flip-up color LCD screen, were very expensive until recently and only sold in small quantities.
Prices are now coming down, with an ever-growing selection of models under $500 and some as low as $200, sparking a predictable boom in sales.
But portable DVD players aren't the only way to see movies on the road; options include laptop computers and in-car entertainment systems.
If you haven't yet switched from VHS to DVD, don't waste any more time.
After a slow start, the major Hollywood studios are putting all their new releases on DVD at the same time as VHS; with rare exceptions, DVD movies never cost more than $20. Circuit City, the nation's second-largest electronics retailer, said in June it has begun phasing out sales of movies on VHS in favor of DVD. Meanwhile, video stores are stocking more and more DVDs for rent.
Home DVD players have gone through a remarkable price plunge. Major electronics manufacturers such as Panasonic, Sony and Toshiba offer fully featured models for under $200, while ``no-name'' importers are selling DVD players for well under $100.
So how do you travel with your DVD collection? There are four options:
• Portable DVD players. Portable players are hot. The market research firm NPDTechworld in Port Washington, N.Y., estimates 190,000 portable DVD players were sold in the United States last year, more than double the 80,000 sold in 2000. Sales in the first five months of 2002 were up 33 percent.
At the low end, portables come with 5-inch diagonal screens, while top-of-the-line models at $800 to $1,000 offer 8- to 10-inch screens. Advertised battery life runs from two to four hours before a recharging session is required.
I borrowed two low-end models to see for myself: The Apex Digital PD-100 (www.apexdigitalinc.com), which has a 5.8-inch screen and sells for about $399, and the Audiovox DV1680 (www.audiovox.com), which has a 6.8-inch screen and sells for about $599.
With two DVD new releases rented from Blockbuster -- ``A Beautiful Mind'' and ``Gosford Park'' -- I tested the players at the kitchen table, in bed at night with headphones as my wife slept next to me, in the back yard on a sunny day and in the waiting room of a car repair shop while my vehicle got a smog check.
The viewing experience, frankly, wasn't optimal on such small screens. But I could easily follow the action and the screens were bright enough to view in every situation except outdoors in full sunlight.
I can't recommend the Apex unit, however, because it doesn't have a full set of controls built into the player itself. To start a movie, you need to use the credit-card-sized remote control -- an awkward process when you're hunched in an airline seat or propped up in the bed. The Audiovox unit also comes with a credit-card-sized remote, but you can navigate through on-screen DVD menus using a tiny joystick built into the player.
I also discovered that portable DVD players are delicate creatures. The first unit Apex sent me didn't work properly; movies kept inexplicably stopping and some movies wouldn't play at all. The company then sent me a replacement unit that worked well. The Audiovox unit also had trouble playing some DVDs; I didn't have time to request a replacement.
• Laptop computers. Just about all laptops on the market today, even the least expensive sub-$1,000 models, come with a DVD-ROM drive that will play DVD movies.
The next time you're on a long plane ride -- hopefully not sitting next to a restless tot -- stroll down the aisle and look at the screens of laptops propped on tray tables. You'll see a few hard-core executives working on spreadsheets and PowerPoint presentations, but you'll also see a lot of people watching movies.
Indeed, there's no reason to put a DVD-ROM drive in a laptop other than movies, because the software industry has largely abandoned earlier plans to offer its products on DVD.
Laptops have one big advantage over portable DVD players: screen size. Even the least expensive laptops offer 14-inch screens, with battery life typically in the range of two hours. Size is also the one big disadvantage; laptops are bigger and heavier than portable DVD players.
• In-car entertainment systems. Some parents are willing to pay anything for peace and quiet in the back seat during long rides. In-car entertainment systems are for them.
You can now get LCD screens that flip down from a module in the vehicle's ceiling, pop out of a slot in the dashboard or nestle in the back of front-seat headrests. The DVD player can be positioned in the dashboard, the ceiling, under the front seats or in the trunk. Costs vary widely, beginning at about $400 to $500 when including all the required parts and installation.
The big advantage is that an entire back seat full of children can watch a movie on an in-car system; it's hard for more than one person to see the screen of a portable DVD player or laptop. The big disadvantage is that your investment is stuck in the car, so you'll need to buy more gadgetry for movie viewing in airplanes or motel rooms.
• Transportable players. The newest idea in mobile DVD are transportable players that don't have a screen or battery power, but are light enough and small enough to take on the road and plug into a TV set at your destination.
Sony has just shipped the transportable Psyc DVP-PQ1 JCD/DVD player for $149 (www.sony.com/psyc). The wedge-shaped player can be thrown in a knapsack and carried to a friend's house or a motel room, making it possible to view your DVD collection on someone else's TV set.
Because manufacturing costs for a DVD drive aren't much higher than a CD drive, it's possible CD/DVD portables will become common and could eventually sell for well under $100.
The big advantage to transportables, beyond price, will be their small size. The big disadvantage is obvious: The lack of a built-in screen greatly limits where you can watch movies. One footnote: Many older TVs don't have the video input plug required for connecting a DVD player. To make the connection, you'll need to spend about $25 for a little gadget called an RF modulator.
What if you're still clinging to VHS, with a library of treasured videotapes at home? There are a few choices, including automotive versions of videocassette recorders that can be attached to in-car systems.
There are also portable battery-powered ``video in a bag'' VCRs with flip-up LCD screens from Audiovox and others, selling for $200 to $400. The only advantage to video-in-a-bag is that you can watch videotapes on the road. The disadvantage is extra size and weight that makes these devices a hefty traveling companion.
Which way should you go?
I regard a $1,000 laptop as a much better value than a $500 portable DVD player. If nothing else, you can play Solitaire and Minesweeper on a laptop when you've finished watching your movie. However, as prices come down and LCD screens get bigger, portable DVD players will get more attractive -- I'd be tempted to buy one when I can get a 7-inch screen for under $300.
In-car systems are a good choice for families who spent a lot of time behind the wheel. Just make sure you get the full price -- including installation and all required parts -- before signing on the bottom line.
If you want a portable LCD player right now, be sure to shop around. Prices vary widely from one store to the next; in early July, I found one big electronics chain selling the Audiovox DV1680 for $599 while another big chain just a few miles away was asking only $479.
07/09/2002 - Microsoft gets into media player groove
By Byron Acohido, USA TODAY
SEATTLE — As computer users download more music and videos from the Internet, companies are jostling to provide the software they need to listen and watch.
Microsoft, the No. 1 software maker, expects to vanquish RealNetworks in media players — the browser-like tool used to manipulate Web-delivered audio and video digital files — just as it steamrolled Netscape Communications in the browser wars.
But RealNetworks is proving more resilient than Netscape. And Apple Computer is moving to widen its small slice of the media player market.
To claim victory, Microsoft must win the allegiance of media companies — to supply music and videos — and telecoms to distribute the content.
But the media giants and big telecoms aren't particularly eager to concede Microsoft another monopoly just yet, analysts say. RealNetworks and Apple recognize this and are pursuing strategies they claim share the wealth more so than Microsoft's plan.
"All the major players are trying to figure out how the puzzle pieces fit together and decide who is going to really wield the power in the digital media world a decade from now," says Steve Vonder Haar, analyst at Interactive Media Strategies.
Corralling the players
Nonetheless, Microsoft is going hard after what it believes will be the sweet spot by distributing its Windows Media Player free and enticing consumer electronics makers to embed the Windows Media format in about 120 models of CD players, car stereos and portable music devices.
The software giant wants to get consumers in the habit of using the Windows Media format to download music and copy CDs onto their PC hard drives, then rip copies to play on Windows Media-equipped devices.
With device makers and consumers in its camp, the thinking goes, Microsoft would have an easier time selling expensive server software to media companies to prepare content in the Windows Media format. "If we provide the underlying technology that creates opportunities for content owners and great experiences for consumers, that's really a compelling proposition," says Jonathan Usher, director of Microsoft's Windows digital media division.
In a measure of its aggressiveness, Microsoft in December even began promoting its next-generation media player format, code-named Corona, though it won't be ready until late this year. Corona's cachet: It is supposed to make video streaming much easier.
"The problem with Corona is it's an unproven, unreleased technology," says Michael Gartenberg, analyst at Jupiter Research. "Microsoft is a master at promoting products that don't exist."
Winning confidence
For now, though, Microsoft's strategy has soft spots, including:
Security. Media executives shiver at Microsoft servers beset by viruses and Microsoft browser and e-mail services roamed by hackers.
Microsoft says its Digital Rights Management tool, which tracks and restricts use of digital content, will only get stronger. But "nobody trusts Microsoft yet," says Richard Doherty, director of The Envisioneering Group. "The feeling among the studios we talk to is, 'If they can't protect their own systems, how can they protect our movies?' "
Servers. While it's relatively easy to embed Windows Media playback capability in consumer electronic appliances, formatting content for Internet delivery is another matter. Media companies aren't inclined to replace widely used Linux and Unix servers with Windows servers just to use the Windows Media format, says Matt Rosoff, analyst at research firm Directions On Microsoft. RealNetworks' format, by contrast, works on all types of servers.
Yet this is where Microsoft expects to cash in. "They want to make it possible to do almost anything you can imagine with the Windows Media format, so that everybody adheres to it and they'll sell more Windows servers," Rosoff says. "It's all about selling more Windows servers."
Real battles back
RealNetworks, meanwhile, is putting up a staunch defense of a market it pioneered. Its cable TV-like RealOne subscription service has 600,000 subscribers who pay $9.95 to $19.95 a month for access to Web-delivered music, radio and video content.
Landing Major League Baseball as an exclusive content provider was a coup. Subscribers can listen to the live radio broadcast of a game. Or, they can watch game videos condensed to 20 minutes by showing just hits, runs and outs.
RealNetworks has also begun hosting fee-based sites for others, such as SoapCity, a subscription site catering to soap opera fans.
As long as RealNetworks continues to show content providers ways to generate revenue by delivering content over the Internet, it is going to be tough to push aside, says Steve Banfield, RealNetworks' vice president of strategic relations. "If you create something that's compelling, people are willing to ... pay," he says.
Apple hopes to jack up use of its QuickTime player by embracing and promoting a standard called MPEG-4. It wants to see MPEG-4 become the defacto streaming format, much like MPEG-2 has become the format universally used by the DVD industry.
Jul 10, 2002 Matsushita, Nokia call on phone software
Nokia said on Wednesday Japanese rival Matsushita will buy its software for smartphones that send e-mails, pictures and play games, boosting the world's largest handset maker's position in software.
The deal is another victory for Nokia as it moves beyond handset manufacture into software design. In May it signed up Germany's Siemens to buy its mobile software. It also deals a blow to Microsoft's ambitions to crack the software market for mobile phones. Nokia gave no financial details of the agreement. --Reuters
======================
Matsushita to License Nokia Phone Software
Wed Jul 10, 4:07 AM ET
By Paul de Bendern
HELSINKI (Reuters) - Nokia ( news - web sites) said on Wednesday Japanese rival Matsushita will buy its software for smartphones that send e-mails, pictures and play games, boosting the world's largest handset maker's position in software.
The deal is another victory for Nokia as it moves beyond handset manufacture into software design. In May it signed up Germany's Siemens to buy its mobile software.
It also deals a blow to Microsoft's ambitions to crack the software market for mobile phones.
Nokia gave no financial details of the agreement.
Nokia saw its shares fall two percent to 14.58 euros in early trade, tracking weaker European markets.
Handsets makers are increasingly cooperating or buying each other's technology to cut costs and boost profits in an industry which is experiencing its second year of declining sales.
The wireless industry is moving from second generation voice networks to third generation data networks, and this requires heavy investments, which smaller manufacturers cannot afford.
Matsushita Communication Industrial (MCI), owner of the Panasonic brand, will use Nokia's Series 60 Platform software in its multimedia phones, running on the Symbian operating system.
"We expect to contribute significantly to the expansion of global mobile services market through the use of the Series 60 software platform in our Panasonic mobile phones," Matsushita Chief Technical Officer Osamu Waki said in a statement.
SYMBIAN DE FACTO STANDARD
Symbian OS is the basic operating system that is becoming the de facto standard for the world's leading mobile phone makers after struggling to gain ground last year. Nokia's software adds to Symbian's in that it offers the software applications that are visible to consumers, like e-mail, games and messaging programs.
Nokia and Matushita both have stakes in British mobile phone software maker Symbian. U.S. Microsoft has a competing system, which offers both the operating system and a set of software applications, but has not found a major phone maker to use it.
Nokia has been campaigning hard to establish itself as not only the leading provider of mobile phones, but also of software that runs on phones and which other phone makers can license.
Nokia says it is pushing for an open standard to ensure handsets work seamlessly with each other, but some analysts question Nokia's motives, saying it wants to dominate the wireless world.
During my extensive investigation into the realm of evolving flash storage solutions, it became apparent very early on that M-Systems is playing a major role in the advanced digital set-top box market. Companies such as Motorola, Microsoft's WebTV, Scientific Atlanta, Sony, NetGem and many others have all selected M-Systems' flash disk data storage products for use with their advanced set-top box designs.
Remember; Set-Top Boxes?
Asia to be the largest interactive TV market
By Bloomberg, Singapore.CNET.com
Monday, April 16 2001 1:07:43 PM
HONG KONG--Asia will be the largest interactive television market in the world within four years, the South China Morning Post said, citing OpenTV Corp, the largest maker of software for digital televisions.
OpenTV Asia-Pacific Managing Director Jeffrey Brown said growth was limited in Europe, where two-thirds of the 40 million set-top boxes had been sold, as well as in North America, Latin America and Australia.
Brown said Asia has the biggest growth potential because of its large population and burgeoning subscription numbers for pay television.
Interactive television enables users to shop, bank and receive interactive advertising through an attachment to a conventional television.
LGJ 6/25/2002 SET-TOP BOX INTEGRATION for OpenTV
http://www.opentv.com/solutions/professional-services/integration.html
OpenTV provides a variety of services designed to help manufacturers of set-top boxes and chip-set vendors. We can quickly incorporate the interactive capabilities of OpenTV into your new or existing set-top boxes for cable, satellite, terrestrial or telco networks.
OpenTV draws upon our experience from deploying more than over 25 million set-top boxes and working with over 30 set-top box manufacturers and nine chip-set vendors around the world. We're able to work with operators, as well as chip set, conditional access and RTOS vendors, to quickly integrate the OpenTV middleware, dramatically shortening product time to market.
OpenTV has partnered with some of the most influential names in the set-top box and chip-set industry, including Sony, Panasonic, Pace and Motorola. View our complete list of OpenTV Partners.
Our development offices have fully equipped labs and experienced local teams of engineers and project managers for multi-partner global projects. This allows us to provide regional support in the United States, Europe and Asia/Pacific.
Our Set-Top Box Integration group provides services in the following areas:
System architecture consulting
End-to-end project definition and planning
Chip-set driver development and integration
Embedded application development
Network-specific customizations
Set-top box validation
World Theatre, Inc. is working in partnership with leading interactive television technology and middleware providers to deliver iTV cross-platform compatibility for its transactional entertainment platform. World Theatre’s platform will support a wide range of digital television interactive capabilities enabling consumers to purchase and experience music in a whole new way. In addition, the platform integrates into existing cable and satellite broadcasting architectures, and delivers an unprecedented combination of entertainment and shopping convenience to consumers.
World Theatre, Inc. is a privately held corporation founded in 1999 to create technology-based solutions that speed the transition between the promotion and purchase of consumer products. World Theatre’s iTV platform simultaneously supports a wide range of digital set-top box interactive capabilities, easily integrates into cable and satellite broadcasting architectures, and delivers an unprecedented combination of entertainment and shopping convenience to consumers. The company is readying the launch of an interactive music network for introduction in 2002. The new network will enhance the music experience by allowing consumers to instantaneously get information about their favorite artists and digitally download full albums directly to their homes. The company is headquartered in Raleigh, NC with offices in New York.
Set Tops Prep for Music on Demand
by Christopher Jones
3:00 a.m. April 25, 2000 PDT
With the major record labels taking their first serious plunge online this year, a growing group of Web, cable, and satellite broadcasters are eagerly preparing to launch the next wave of the business: on-demand music services.
A recently announced deal between OpenTV and World Theatre could become one of the more compelling examples of how an interactive digital music service becomes a mainstream hit, offering high-quality music, sampling and the convenience that couch potatoes demand.
The two companies are setting up a system to transmit digital copies of music directly to satellite TV subscribers, who will be able to sample and buy hundreds of albums worth of music made available every day. The service, expected to launch late this year, will allow viewers to purchase individual songs and full-length CDs on a digital set-top box, which will also act as a storage device. [http://www.world-theatre.com/partners.asp]
"This is not like an Internet play where I have a new album and a million people come to my site and melt it because I can't serve all of them," said Kelly Sparks, World Theatre's CEO. "This is a single transmission of a single promotion, and I push the whole album, promotional materials, a video, other clips, the lyrics and land it in everyone's set-top box, and it's ready for them to preview, sample, and buy the next day in millions of homes."
Sparks said WTI has been negotiating with the major record labels, but no deals have been signed yet.
Once the business models are established, there is a real opportunity for set-top boxes to become the end-all, be-all entertainment device in the home.
The boxes are already hooked up to broadband connections -- either satellite or cable modem -- and can stream or download fat multimedia files with ease. And unlike PCs, set-tops are designed to easily attach to home stereos and TVs, where people are already accustomed to signing up for subscription and on-demand services.
OpenTV develops the operating system that runs in set-top boxes. The company has about 6 million digital set-top boxes in use around the world, and licenses its operating system to more than 20 digital set-top box manufacturers.
The second-generation set tops are designed to store content and connect with home stereos, PCs, and other devices. The boxes are equipped with hard drives, more powerful processors, support for 3-D graphics, and a triple-tuner architecture that will allow simultaneous video, data, and voice applications.
With so much concern over the security in digital distribution, some in the industry said it could take time for the majors to warm up to satellite delivery.
"In terms of digital distribution, we're trying to educate ourselves about that whole frontier," said Jed Simon, vice president of new media at Dreamworks Records, a label that has about 80 artists who are distributed by Universal Records.
"Really, we're much more focused on digital distribution over IP…we're looking to the big six (record companies) to let them forge the road" for new distribution methods, he said.
Sparks said WTI is collaborating with OpenTV on the application that runs on the set-top box, and also will handle the content and transaction side of the business.
The service can transmit 25 to 100 encrypted CDs per hour to its channel, Sparks said, with data moving at 21 to 23 megabits per second.
"We know what the set-top boxes are set up to look for. So we'll be pushing all that stuff through the channel, 24 hours a day, filling up all these set tops with music people like," Sparks said. "Since we're a TV channel, it's gonna be there in front of them and there is no downloading time."
Subscribers also will be able to sample songs from each album, and then decide whether or not to purchase them. Once purchased, the music could be sent to a PC, CD burner, or stored on the hard drive and played through a home stereo.
One of the biggest questions with these type of services, though, is how to divvy up money between all the players –- content owners, satellite broadcasters, software developers, and companies that broker the deals.
"The backend payment pieces is between us and the record companies. As far as dealing with the satellite companies, there will be different arrangements with each one," Sparks said.
There are a couple of factors that the majors will look for in distribution deals, Simon said.
"They need to ensure that they can control the content. Security is more important than it's ever been," he said. "They will also want to preserve their portion of the overall pie. I don't think they'll allow a third-party satellite company like OpenTV to come in and take a disproportionate share of the revenue stream.
Historically, retailers have taken about 20 percent of the gross, and Simon said the major labels will want to increase their share, not dilute it.
Traditional cable companies also are getting involved in on-demand music, but Sparks expects the satellite providers to take the early lead in offering interactive services.
"If you take a look at the hard-drive-based versions of set-top boxes, and the ability to do interactive applications on those, satellite seems to be in the forefront right now in terms of timing. We're trying to do something this fall and want to work with providers who are ready to go now," Sparks said.
Digital Device Independence: The Power of Where
We generally think of media portability in the context of travel with pocket-sized devices, but in the software community portability has a different meaning: the ability to run an application on avariety of computing architectures. Although the advantages of physical portability are clear, there are also important benefits associated with cross-platform application portability. Here we explain how the digital media customer will increasingly enjoy both aspects of media content portability:
Portable digital storage will greatly simplify and standardize customer management of media
content.
By applying cheap and plentiful computer power, media content can be easily and rapidly transferred across multiple media formats with perfect accuracy. This means digital music received
from the Internet, a satellite or a set-top cable box could be downloaded to an automobile audio system or to a hand-held media player quickly and efficiently. Similarly, a customer would be able to purchase digital media at a store or kiosk and transfer the content to a hand-held device, which then can be used to move the content to a home or automobile media system. Although some media providers may try to hinder the portability of digital content, these efforts are likely to be overwhelmed by competitive forces and customer ingenuity.
Metadata standards for digital media exchange will foster cross-platform compatibility by enabling intelligent recognition and playback of a variety of digital media formats. For example, music players and book readers will be able to recognize a variety of protected digital recording formats automatically and play them interchangeably without requiring cumbersome setup or
authentication steps. Ideally, once a customer has acquired a media product, all devices on which he or she chooses to use the product should recognize the format and any restrictions pertaining to its usage.
The standardization of media metadata (data describing the content) is a key prerequisite for such cross-platform portability. Broadband wireless Internet connections will allow any digital media content to be received by portable devices for immediate use or storage. The expected expansion of wireless portability options will ultimately affect all forms of digital media: text, music, video, and rich interactive media. The timing of the change will depend largely on the byte-size arithmetic of the relevant content items.
Personal media networks, based on digital home media libraries and wireless IP transmission will extend the boundaries of the home entertainment center to encompass almost all locations of a
media customer. Indeed, it will be possible for an appropriately equipped individual to originate multiple channels of personalized programming from a home media server and to receive that programming in the backyard, while jogging, in an automobile, or on an airplane.
Multi-mode portable media players will become the preferred devices for portable media usage. These devices will result from design utility advantages and the ever-increasing function density attainable in the hand-held device form factor. To date, only digital music players have demonstrated the liberating potential of portable digital media usage, but energetic efforts are under way to perfect portable text readers, and it is only a matter of time before video and rich media playback become economically feasible in small portable packages.
Although some observers are predicting that a plethora of single-purpose, personal digital media players will become available, this scenario is likely to be a transitional phenomenon, because
media customers would not find it convenient to carry and use multiple devices. Just as universal remote controls became popular to provide relief from remote clutter, universal portable media players will be developed to address the problem of player clutter.
High-resolution portable viewing devices will enhance the capabilities of portable media players by supplying the long-elusive high-quality portable display component. As these displays enable stereoscopic viewing, portable devices will be able to surpass home media centers in offering immersive media entertainment. The availability of high-performance portable displays will further accelerate the trend toward multi-mode personal media devices, since such displays would be equally suitable for text, video, and information media viewing.
Portability, both in terms of personal mobility and platform independence, will be a key factor in empowering the digital media customer. Once customers have experienced the convenience of consuming media across a wide range of portable devices, they will demand this capability as a norm of media delivery.
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised: Personal Digital Media
Technology and the Rise of Customer Power
White Paper
April 15, 2000
Abstract
This paper reviews developments in customer-accessible digital media technologies and
argues the case for a shift of power from media providers to media customers. The
analysis is based on the expected continuing exponential increase of information and
control options available to users of digital media. Emerging personal digital media
technologies will give customers increasing control of media usage. The growing
power of customers over media usage will have significant implications for media
business strategy, organization, and marketing. Business development based on passive
media consumer models may result in costly failures and sharp losses of market share
for organizations that underestimate the capabilities and requirements of digitally
empowered customers.
Introduction
Progress in digital technologies is evident in the flood of impressive new personal electronic
products and services pouring from the high-tech sector. This paper examines the nature and
implications of the rapidly increasing power that personal digital technology puts in the hands of
the information media user. The discussion begins with a review of change drivers, proceeds
through an examination of four dimensions of customer empowerment, and concludes with a
discussion of business implications for media organizations. The paper is oriented toward
television and other rich-media content formats, but the thesis is applicable to all forms of digital
media, including music, publishing, and specialized entertainment and information services.
From Consumer to Customer – the evolution of the digital media user
In the world of communications media, the end-users of newspapers, magazines, books, radio,
movies, and television are not generally referred to as customers. Conventional terminology
includes “readers,” “subscribers,” “listeners,” “viewers,” and the ubiquitous “consumer.” These
terms came into use to describe a mass audience of passive media users with limited choices. In
this paper, we introduce the media customer nomenclature to designate a more powerful and active
buyer of media products and services, a demanding customer empowered by a growing array of
personal digital technologies.
The table below contrasts the characteristics of the traditional media consumer and the emerging
digital media customer.
Analog Media
Consumer Characteristics
Digital Media
Customer Characteristics
Limited product choices Many product choices
Limited market knowledge Extensive market knowledge
High brand loyalty Limited brand loyalty
Low-feedback relationship High-feedback relationship
Stable buying behavior Volatile buying behavior
Low service expectations High service expectations
Comparison of Digital and Analog media user characteristics
We shall show that the growing power of digital media customers will be manifested in four
dimensions of capability:
1. Content selection: the power of what
2. Time shifting: the power of when
3. Location independence: the power of where
4. Content manipulation: the power of how
In order to better understand these new dimensions of customer capability, we must first review the
basic causes of the empowerment process.
Prime movers: The M laws and Double-Soft Technology
The laws of Moore and Metcalfe1 describe, respectively, the exponential increases of
microprocessor and networking power that have driven the information technology explosion since
the invention of the integrated circuit. Although the physical manifestations of these laws are
everywhere around us in the form of laptops, cell phones, and dot-com’s, the deeper implications
for the media industries are only beginning to be understood. The key to unlocking the profound
truths of the digital revolution in media is to understand both the quantitative changes of
exponential technology advance and the qualitative changes associated with them. To the familiar
mantra of smaller, faster, cheaper, we must add new terms, such as open, interoperable, and
conversational.
Central to our thesis of customer empowerment is the concept of a “double-soft” digital product.
Media products have always been “soft” in the sense that a concert broadcast or news story is not a
tangible physical item. But traditional (analog) soft content has always been locked within
relatively unalterable “hard” distribution mechanisms (e.g., a television receiver or a printed book).
In the digital era, not only does media content become software, but, increasingly, it is delivered
and used by software-intensive methods. Because software is potentially user-accessible and
alterable, and because restriction of its accessibility is generally counter-productive, there will be a
steady shift of control from the providers of media products to the customers.
The parallel advances of increasing computing power and software-intensive product evolution will
drive the growth of media customer power. Because of the M laws, media customers will have
increasingly capable devices for controlling digital media delivery. Because of the double-soft
phenomenon, customers will attain greatly increased power over delivered media content, the
power to transform, integrate, and modify content in ways beyond the control of the providers.
Let us now turn to the four capability areas of the digitally empowered media customer: power
over what, when, where, and how media are used.
Digital Content Selection: The Power of What
In the early days of electronic media, program content was so scarce that selection was a minor
concern. Today, with an abundance of cable channels, DBS satellite services, video-on-demand,
and nascent Internet broadcasting, media customers face many more choices and are beginning to
use simple selection tools, such as on-screen programming guides. By the end of the decade,
broadband Internet media offerings will make available an immense array of digital media content
choices. Faced with this vast archive of content, media customers will require assistance in the
form of sophisticated databases and selection software. The evolution of content selection power
will result from advances in several areas of media technology:
Online broadcast programming guides have been developed to help users manage satellite and
cable viewing. These guides have basic searching and sorting facilities and Equivalent facilities
exist on the Internet, and it can be assumed that these guides will become increasingly
comprehensive and feature-rich to support advance planning of viewing.
Web page of STARsight online programming guide service
Personalization of content preferences is feasible in a limited way in current online program guide
facilities. Viewers can select categories of programming to filter out content that is not of interest.
Future content selection software will be highly personalized – reflecting subtle preferences and
referencing extensive data on past viewing patterns. The selection information generated by an
online program guide will be downloadable to control “smart” home media equipment, which will
record selected material under software control.
Custom programming services will, for a fee, utilize elaborate databases and personalization
software to generate suggested programming for customers unwilling to configure their own
programming selection tools. These services will grow to encompass an enormous array of global
broadcast programming. Rationalization of content databases, indexing, and selection tools will
follow as customers seek easy-to-use content selection tools. Intelligent agent technology will be
applied to content selection and will ultimately be capable of pre-screening candidate content to
verify suitability to the tastes of a specific customer. Programming services will price their
offerings according to the sophistication of the selection agent services.
Automatic suppression of undesired content will enable viewers of digital broadcasts to establish
filtering mechanisms that block or suppress undesired items in the broadcast stream. This
capability will have ominous implications for the commercially sponsored broadcasting model.
Because all digital content items will be explicitly identified via metadata in the broadcast stream,
they will be easy targets for identification and manipulation by appropriate software in the
receiver.
Suppression of commercials may take the simple form of automatic switching to alternate desired
content for the duration of the commercial break. A more sophisticated approach toward
commercial suppression would utilize automatic buffering, editing, and playback of the program
material so as to permit uninterrupted near-real-time viewing. (The only inconvenience of this
scheme to the viewer would be a program start delay time equal to the length of the suppressed
material.) Although broadcasters may bring pressure to bear on makers of specialized commercialsuppression
devices, it is unlikely that they will be able to prevent the widespread adoption of this
technology when it becomes a software application that can run on general-purpose personal
computers.
Word-of-net identification of desirable content will supplement the capabilities of the commercial
programming services. Because the Internet is an extremely efficient propagator of distributed
information, successful products of small-scale media ventures will benefit from spontaneous
Word-of-Net (WoN) recommendations for unconventional programming. Numerous spontaneous
and independent quality content identification mechanisms will act as a corrective force
maintaining the reliability of commercial programming services and preventing improper influence
by major content producers. The cumulative effect of these advances will be to give the future
media customer unprecedented power to select content, and this shift of power will undermine
conventional media business strategies based on limited customer choices.
Digital Time Shifting: The Power of When
With the invention of the VCR, television viewers acquired a significant degree of control over the
timing of their usage of broadcast media. The following developments will greatly amplify the
digital media customer’s capability to control the time at which content is used.
Personal Video Recorders (PVRs) are the digital descendants of the VHS recorder, but they are
significantly more powerful. By using computer disk drives to store content, PVRs allow rapid
access to any segment of the recorded material. PVRs also allow for the application of computing
power to the management of recorded content, specifically the suppression of commercial
messages. Although PVRs have aroused considerable interest as a new type of entertainment
device, there is nothing to preclude the incorporation of PVR functionality in any sufficiently
powerful personal computer. Because of the continuing exponential increase in PC processor
power and disk storage, it is reasonable to expect that, within five years, many PC’s and set-top
boxes will have PVR features. The implication of this development is that PVRs will increasingly
operate under the control of sophisticated software, which will further magnify their impact on
media usage.
Asynchrononous content usage will result from the widespread deployment of PVRs and related
home media storage libraries. This means that most television viewers will break away from fixed
viewing times for standard programming, and the general pattern of TV usage will switch to
programming on-demand. Only the most urgent news and event-oriented content are likely to be
assured of real-time viewing. Broadcasters will be able to exploit this development by making
better use of late-night schedule time, but they will find it increasingly difficult to command very
high advertising rates for prime time programming slots. Indeed, in view of the PVRs commercialsuppression
features, the entire advertising-sponsored broadcast model may eventually become
threatened.
Recording Service Providers (RSP’s) will “outsource” PVR functionality for customers unwilling
to deal with the complexity of PVR configuration and management. As broadband Internet access
allows high-quality video to be streamed into the home from large media servers, it will be feasible
for a service organization to record, edit, and replay digital content as directed by a customer. For
example, such a service could record the episodes of a three-part mini-series, edit out all
commercials and interstitial programming, then stream or download the assembled program to the
customer.
Note that the advanced time-shifting technologies described above are not speculative flights of
digital fancy – they are all within the current state of the art, and they will inevitably become
widely accessible to digital media customers. In the digital future, there are no “ifs” about the
power of when.
Digital Device Independence: The Power of Where
We generally think of media portability in the context of travel with pocket-sized devices, but in the
software community portability has a different meaning: the ability to run an application on a
variety of computing architectures. Although the advantages of physical portability are clear, there
are also important benefits associated with cross-platform application portability. Here we explain
how the digital media customer will increasingly enjoy both aspects of media content portability:
Portable digital storage will greatly simplify and standardize customer management of media
content. By applying cheap and plentiful computer power, media content can be easily and rapidly
transferred across multiple media formats with perfect accuracy. This means digital music received
from the Internet, a satellite or a set-top cable box could be downloaded to an automobile audio
system or to a hand-held media player quickly and efficiently. Similarly, a customer would be able
to purchase digital media at a store or kiosk and transfer the content to a hand-held device, which
then can be used to move the content to a home or automobile media system. Although some media
providers may try to hinder the portability of digital content, these efforts are likely to be
overwhelmed by competitive forces and customer ingenuity.
Metadata standards for digital media exchange will foster cross-platform compatibility by enabling
“intelligent” recognition and playback of a variety of digital media formats. For example, music
players and book readers will be able to recognize a variety of protected digital recording formats
automatically and play them interchangeably without requiring cumbersome setup or
authentication steps. Ideally, once a customer has acquired a media product, all devices on which
he or she chooses to use the product should recognize the format and any restrictions pertaining to
its usage. The standardization of media metadata (data describing the content) is a key prerequisite
for such cross-platform portability.
Broadband wireless Internet connections will allow any digital media content to be received by
portable devices for immediate use or storage. The expected expansion of wireless portability
options will ultimately affect all forms of digital media: text, music, video, and rich interactive
media. The timing of the change will depend largely on the byte-size arithmetic of the relevant
content items.
Personal media networks, based on digital home media libraries and wireless IP transmission will
extend the boundaries of the home “entertainment center” to encompass almost all locations of a
media customer. Indeed, it will be possible for an appropriately equipped individual to originate
multiple channels of personalized programming from a home media server and to receive that
programming in the backyard, while jogging, in an automobile, or on an airplane.
Multi-mode portable media players will become the preferred devices for portable media usage.
These devices will result from design utility advantages and the ever-increasing function density
attainable in the hand-held device form factor. To date, only digital music players have
demonstrated the liberating potential of portable digital media usage, but energetic efforts are under
way to perfect portable text readers, and it is only a matter of time before video and rich media
playback become economically feasible in small portable packages.
Although some observers are predicting that a plethora of single-purpose, personal digital media
players will become available, this scenario is likely to be a transitional phenomenon, because
media customers would not find it convenient to carry and use multiple devices. Just as universal
remote controls became popular to provide relief from “remote clutter,” universal portable media
players will be developed to address the problem of “player clutter.”
High-resolution portable viewing devices will enhance the capabilities of portable media players by
supplying the long-elusive high-quality portable display component. As these displays enable
stereoscopic viewing, portable devices will be able to surpass home media centers in offering
immersive media entertainment. The availability of high-performance portable displays will further
accelerate the trend toward multi-mode personal media devices, since such displays would be
equally suitable for text, video, and information media viewing.
I-glasses Portable Computer Display Device
Portability, both in terms of personal mobility and platform independence, will be a key factor in
empowering the digital media customer. Once customers have experienced the convenience of
consuming media across a wide range of portable devices, they will demand this capability as a
norm of media delivery.
Digital Content Manipulation: The Power of How
Thus far, we have discussed changes in customer capabilities that arise from the use of digital
products and services that may be considered extensions or enhancements of conventional
consumer products. A PVR may be viewed as a more powerful version of a VCR, and an
intelligent interactive programming guide may be considered a more sophisticated version of
current on-screen guides. When we examine the customer power dimension of “how,” we enter
new territory, for the fruits of the digital revolution will bring customers remarkable new facilities
for the manipulation of content.
Media content manipulation capabilities span a range of complexity, beginning with the simple
function of copying (or transcoding) across formats and ending with the transformative editing and
modification of an item to support the creation of new content. The common link among these uses
of content is that the customer alters the digital item that he has obtained from the media provider.
Such alteration may take the form of a representational change that leaves the logical content
intact, or it may be a content transformation that leaves the original item almost unrecognizable.
The following developments will enable digital media customers to achieve unprecedented control
over digital media materials.
Circumvention of content locking mechanisms is often associated with software piracy and illegal
use of digital property, but it is also a prerequisite for creative manipulation of existing content. In
the past, media producers have had effective methods for locking content in tamper-resistant
formats, immune to the assaults of all but the most capable attackers. Moreover, until recently, the
cost of the tools required to unlock and manipulate protected digital media was prohibitive.
However, the balance of digital power is shifting rapidly, and individuals using widely available
software tools have already shown their ability to defeat existing industry locking schemes.
A notable example of the vulnerability of content locking was the recent compromise of the DVD
encryption algorithm by a young Norwegian computer hacker. The results of this feat were rapidly
circulated world-wide, and software (DeCSS) is now available on the Internet that will permit
anyone with a PC to unlock, copy, and manipulate DVD content. Even if the DVD encryption
method is subsequently strengthened to become theoretically unbreakable, the nature of digital
playback equipment is such that the decoded version of the DVD must be available when it reaches
the display screen and audio playback circuitry. As soon as the digital content stream is “in the
clear,” it can be captured. Thus, the very nature of digital technology provides enormous
advantages for those wishing to unlock “secure” content.
Availability of media transcoding, reformatting, and basic editing tools will expand steadily. Such
tools are required to modify digital media content for simple re-purposing and convenience uses.
For example, someone who wishes to Email a still frame or short scene from a digital movie must
have tools that can locate the desired item, extract the item, and store the extracted item in a format
suitable for the purpose of making an Email attachment. Several such software tools are currently
available at low cost for Windows and Mac PC users, and the availability and power of basic
digital media manipulation tools will increase as more computers have the capacity to handle rich
media.
Apple Final Cut Pro video editing software
Advanced editing and production capabilities will evolve rapidly and give individuals the
equivalent of a full suite of professional media management tools. Already, extremely powerful PC
video editing software is available at the $1,000 price point. Because this software runs on
standard consumer-grade PC’s, and because it is certain to decline in price, widespread access to
professional-level editing tools is a foregone conclusion. The inexpensive availability of high-end
editing facilities, coupled with the steadily declining cost of originating video content, will put a
complete suite of professional digital production resources within the reach of school children by
the end of this decade.
Commoditization of media manipulation facilities by PC operating system vendors will follow the
piecemeal availability of these tools as freeware, shareware, and commercial products. Microsoft,
for example, has a long history of annexing popular application functions into its Windows
operating system. Currently the Windows Media player has the capability to display several PC
video formats; it is likely that in the next few years it will evolve into a “media manager” utility,
with rudimentary editing capabilities, as growing PC power supports this function and demand for
it increases.
Content appropriation and “sampling” are important new manifestations of popular culture than
will cause many individuals to exploit the increasing technical accessibility of digital media.
Simply put, millions of young denizens of the Internet take pleasure in their ability to appropriate
commercial media materials and weave them into their own creations. This freedom to exercise
creative control over content, what one scholar has called “semiotic democracy,”2 will be a
permanent feature of the future marketplace for digital media. While legal prohibitions may deter
content appropriation when corporate entities are involved, there will be no practical means of
outlawing the private manipulation of proprietary digital content by individuals.
The Open-Source movement will have far-reaching effects on the usage of media content, as Open-
Source programmers and tools target the increasingly software-intensive world of digital media.
The open-source movement’s original focus was operating systems software and Internet utilities,
but it has begun to enter the domain of digital media, notably in the DeCSS affair. In only a few
months, Open-Source hackers discovered the decryption keys for DVD media and spread the code
required to unlock DVD media throughout the world. The propagation of the DeCSS code, in
defiance of a court injunction, extended to the printing of the code on t-shirts.
DeCSS t-shirt
In summary, customer control over what, where, when, and how digital media are used will
increase dramatically. No amount of defensive engineering or legal action can un-invent the content
access and manipulation technologies becoming available to media customers. This technology
genie cannot be put back into the lamp, and the digital media customer will be granted far more
than three wishes.
Business Implications of Digital Customer Empowerment
Having described the main dimensions of digital media customer empowerment, let us now
consider the implications for the media industries. We shall discuss the likely business impacts in
the areas of marketing, product development, and organization.
Customer Relationship and Marketing Implications
Reliance on the passive media consumer model will produce declining returns. So deeply
entrenched is the notion of the passive consumer in the old media world that it has led many media
organizations to postulate the existence of large numbers of interactive media consumers who will
remain essentially passive in their media usage. It is a serious mistake to view the Internet as a
broadcast medium; those who do so will see their profits dwindle as their audiences shrink to the
disadvantaged minorities incapable of interactive media usage.
Media Businesses will become responsive to individual customer preferences. This will occur
because of the competitive necessity of heeding the digital customer and because of the feasibility
of obtaining precise information about customer behavior. For example, digital television
broadcasting permits the explicit encoding of program identification information in the broadcast
signal. With a straightforward Internet software interface, the collection of precise DTV viewer
activity information becomes feasible. Electronic commerce applications handling books and music
can already automatically (with customer consent) generate detailed media sales summaries for
individuals. The movement from approximation to precision in measuring and serving customers
will proceed inexorably, driven by technological advances and competitive pressures.
Avoidance of conflict with customers will become a business imperative as media organizations
learn that it is easier to start a fight with digital customers than to win one. Because networked
digital customers will have powerful counter-measures available, such as boycotts and negative
word-of-net, media producing organizations will seek to avoid customer conflict whenever
possible. A further disincentive to customer conflict will be likelihood that activist members of the
open-source community will supply software tools supporting the interests of media customers.
Media Product Development Implications
Open, interoperable, customer-friendly product will be the norm. With customers ever more
capable of controlling their usage of media content, they will increasingly reject closed, proprietary
offerings encumbered by locks, blocks, mode limits, or other forms of access restrictions. The
recent failure of DIVX, a cumbersome scheme for low-cost, limited-play of DVD movies, was an
example of what lies in store if media producers persist in developing offerings that are too
restrictive.3
We can state as a general law of digital media that product value to the customer will be a
compound function of content appeal and product utility. Thus, there will be an inverse
relationship between control and competitiveness in the digital media content marketplace: The
more closed the content delivery platform, the lower the customer access utility, and the less
competitive value in the media product.
Digital Product Value = (Content Appeal) * (Access Utility)
The significance of this relationship for product planning is that increasing restrictions on customer
access utility will undermine the competitive position of attractive digital media content.
Conversely, increasing the access utility of mediocre content will increase its overall product value.
In the world of the digital media customer, content will be king only when on the throne of access
utility.
Rapid delivery of fresh product will displace access restrictions as the preserver of product
value. Faced with the diminishing practicability and effectiveness of traditional product access
controls, media producing organizations will come to rely on continuous enhancement and
“freshening” of product to avoid revenue losses from unauthorized digital copying. Without the
burden of physical media inventory, continuous enhancement of digital products will be
economically feasible for producers. Moreover, customers are likely to increase their media
spending by purchasing multiple variants of favorite items.
Customer-controlled product development will become widespread. With customers able to
communicate directly and indirectly (through programming services) with content creators, there
will be much less need for content producers to guess the direction of content preferences. In some
cases, customers may participate in planning of new content offerings or generate materials that
serve as the basis of commercial products. The ultimate form of customer-directed development
will be customer-originated programming. The steady advance of personal media technology will
bring the cost of originating high-quality media within the grasp of millions of individuals, some of
whom will have substantial talents. As the pool of customer/producers grows, business
mechanisms for acquiring customer-originated content will evolve
.
Business Structure Implications
Traditional media organizations will be imperiled by cultural obsolescence. The cultural
baggage of old-media organizations will be their greatest handicap in serving the digital customer.
The necessary transitions from secrecy to openness; from content control to content sharing; and
from mass marketing to precision targeting will go against the cultural grain of many established
media organizations. The culture of communicate-and-collaborate will supplant that of commandand-
control, and multiple centers of influence will replace concentrated power over content.
Organizations that manage this cultural transition effectively will survive to serve the digital media
customer.
Fluid, collaborative, virtual organizational models will emerge. As customers become more
demanding and as digital production and telecommunications facilities grow more powerful, new
operational models will be adopted by media producing organizations. These models will favor
flexibility over rigid hierarchy and rapid product cycles over slow, mega-project development. The
project-oriented structure of film production will extend to many other sectors of media, with
virtual organization teams assembled and redeployed across the boundaries of multiple formal
organizations. These new organizational models will be optimized for speed and precision in
bringing digital media products to market.
Clearinghouses, consortia, and other cooperative industry structures will function as efficient
intermediaries in the exchange of digital media products and services. The evolution of
standardized media business metadata and interoperable business processes will promote this
development. Some areas in which such shared infrastructure facilities may develop are:
1. Rights and royalty accounting services
2. Digital materials interchange management
3. Digital product distribution
4. Customer activity databases
New business revenue models will proliferate and evolve. The speed, flexibility and precision of
digital product development and delivery will allow for new methods of generating revenue.
Examples of new digital media revenue channels are:
1. Custom programming and recording services
2. Mini-subscriptions to selected programming
3. Tiered pricing for variable commercial content
4. Premiums for embedded links in media content
5. Merchandise sale revenue splits tied to advertising in digital content
6. Pay-what-you wish or media shareware
7. Micro-commerce in rights to underutilized content
8. Private sponsorship of productions for recognition status
9. Variable pricing tied to product demand and format quality
Although we cannot say exactly what forms future digital media producing organizations will take,
we believe that those forms will be heavily influenced by the increasing power of the media
customer over all segments of the media production value chain.
Conclusions
The following points present our key conclusions:
1. Rapid progress in customer access to digital technologies will give customers
unprecedented control of what, when, where, and how media are consumed. The main
factor controlling the rapidity of this change will be the rate at which individuals can
assimilate the technology, not the rate of fundamental technological advance, which will be
exponential.
2. Current business planning in the media industries underestimates the consequences of
customer access to personal digital media technologies. Some media products currently in
development will be obsolete at launch because they do not fit the needs and preferences of
technology-empowered customers. The music recording industry has already been
unpleasantly surprised by the effects of digital technology in the hands of customers, but all
media sectors are at risk.
3. Customers equipped with interactive digital technologies will demand media services and
products exhibiting a high degree of openness, interoperability, and user-control. If existing
media providers fail to meet these requirements, they will create competitive opportunities
for others to better serve the digital media customer. Continuation of conventional closeddesign,
proprietary media product development will result in increasing risks of product
failure.
4. Old-media organizations will be vulnerable to new-media competitors who better
understand the needs and capabilities of digitally empowered customers. Although the oldmedia
organizations are preoccupied with technological obsolescence, it is cultural
obsolescence that poses the greatest danger to them. Some old-media franchises will suffer
the fate of the Cunard Steamship Line and the Penn Central Railroad if they fail to adapt to
change.
5. Media organizations will evolve to become fluid, content/customer/collaboration systems in
response to the needs of the digital media customer. The fusion of content development and
customer relationship management will create a rich and dynamic new model for
entertainment and information media, a model that will efficiently and profitably serve
billions of digitally empowered customers.
When Gil Scott-Heron wrote the song4 from which the title of this paper is taken, he was
contemplating a political revolution with cultural implications. Today, media organizations are in
the midst of a technology revolution that will profoundly affect their business cultures. The digital
revolution will not be televised, because a conversation cannot be dictated, and because a clenched
fist cannot grasp what is offered to an open hand. The great challenge facing the media community
will be to engage powerful and independent customers in ways that realize the commercial and
cultural potentialities of the digital age.
http://www.kpmgconsulting.com/industries/communications_and_content/pdfs/digital_media_technology.pd...
Some Dataplay information:
Just got off of the phone with John at Dataplay.
My questions:
1) Do you have to flip over a 500MB disc.
answer: Yes to access each 250MB side
2) Do you think that a user will find that inconvenient?
answer: There has been no negative feedback during
the Beta testing.
3) I understand that you can fit about a 2hr movie on
a 500MB Disc?
answer: The only video we have seen is 3 music videos
that were about 15 minutes total. Also there was 7 songs
on the same disc.
4) When will Dataplay devices be available?
answer: IRiver's device is available as we speak.
5) When will the Dataplay Classic device be available?
answer: Circuit City is going to what until pre-recorded
music is available. Music will be available the 3rd or
4th week of August.
All pre-recorded music will be sold on 250MB disc only so
there will be no need to flip the disc over.
Also it will depend on the CODEC's compression to determine the amount of video you can get on a Dataplay
disc.
http://boardsqa.ragingbull.lycos.com/mboard/boards.cgi?board=EDIG&read=1006247
Jul 9, 2002 Vivendi rescued by last-minute loans
Media giant Vivendi Universal won some breathing space in its efforts to avert a cash crisis by agreeing to a $992 million loan with banks, sources close to the deal said Tuesday. Vivendi, home to Hollywood's Universal Studios and a global music empire, is also hammering out another loan of around $2.48 billion to fend off a cash crisis as it grapples with huge debts piled up by ousted Chief Executive Jean-Marie Messier.
The sources said BNP Paribas, Societe Generale, Deutsche Bank, Credit Lyonnais, Citigroup and CSFB had agreed the initial $992 million credit line with Vivendi on Monday night. The $992 million loan "will address the most immediate liquidity concerns. The final amount will be finalized once they have a better idea of management's strategic plans," one source close to talks said. --Reuters
reminder==
most of EDIG'S work with set-top boxes involves the software and the interface that will enable users to quickly download content to portable devices.
====Digital Music for the Living Room
by Christopher Jones
3:00 a.m. March 30, 2000 PST
Nearly 100 years after the phonograph ushered in the notion of consumers playing popular music on demand, the set-top box is now poised to turn digital music into a mainstream phenomenon.
With approximately 15 million set-tops already installed in U.S. homes, enhanced cable and satellite boxes could very well become the dominant platform for digital music services. By integrating the Internet with televisions and stereos -- and delivering all types of movies and music to consumers on demand -- the set-top box could be the next killer application for broadband.
Through services like DirecTV, consumers are already ordering movies and live events on demand, and downloadable music will be a natural progression for these services.
But the billion dollar question is when.
"My belief is that it [digital music delivery to the home] won't exist this year at all, but ultimately it will be huge," said Dave Del Beccaro, CEO of Music Choice. The company's 10 million subscribers listen to an average of 18 hours of music per week via cable modem and satellite connections.
"Music is peculiar in the sense that we don't buy it the way we consume it," Del Beccaro said. "We're stuck in this old system where we hear it, and then have to go somewhere to buy it in a different form, and then put it in a device to listen to it.
"What will happen with downloads is that the package will conform with the more basic human desire: As you listen to it, you can buy it and play it back whenever you want it," Del Beccaro said.
Proponents say set-tops offer compelling advantages over PCs for delivering music to consumers. The boxes are already hooked up to broadband connections -- either satellite or cable modem -- and can stream or download fat multimedia files with ease. And unlike PCs, set-tops are designed to easily attach to home stereos and TVs, where people are already accustomed to signing up for subscription and on-demand services.
And in terms of security, set-tops will have smart card slots to protect customer account profiles and encryption functions for content, in addition to standard network security protocols. But broadcasters may have a hard time obtaining major-label music until after the full SDMI system is in place, which is expected to be completed later this year.
Motorola, which bought General Instrument last year and is the largest U.S. set-top manufacturer, is now shipping a second-generation version of its set-top box that can receive digital downloads, according to Denton Kanouff, vice president of marketing at Motorola's digital network division.
He said there are a couple of ways that downloading music to set-tops could happen. "There could be a hard drive in the set-top and you could download right there" said Kanouff, noting that the boxes also have cable modems, Ethernet ports, and a digital interface. "So you could have it plugged into your PC and download it to your MP3 player."
In addition to the connection options, Kanouff said the new generation of set-tops has more powerful processors, bigger hard drives, support for 3-D graphics, and a triple-tuner architecture that will allow simultaneous video, data, and voice applications.
Kanouff said several music companies with radio-type services to set-tops are preparing to sell downloadable music. For example, Music Choice, which licenses music from the Big Five record labels, is broadcasting using a combination of cable modem services such as Road Runner, satellite services like DirecTV, and Web technologies.
Los Angeles-based DMX Music broadcasts more than 100 different stations to AT&T digital cable subscribers. Christy Noel, vice president of music programming at DMX, said the company is moving toward more interactive services, but she doesn't expect these will be offered until 2001, when the advanced set-tops are installed in a majority of homes.
In addition to upgraded set-tops, a new wave of digital content devices will hit the market later this year, including units from Atlanta-based Zapmedia. The company's Zapstation, an all-in-one Internet and entertainment box, will begin trial use in April and will be available in retail outlets this summer, said Ken Lipscomb, the company's CEO.
"The push that MP3.com made has helped to move things along for everyone" Lipscomb said. "You'll be able to get any CD out there in its physical form, and in addition the electronic versions as well ... the consumer will be able to choose," he said.
At $299, the Zapstation boxes are something like a PC-set-top hybrid, with a CD/DVD player, file-management software, digital radio, and a 30 gigabyte hard drive.
Lipscomb said there are at least three major companies that are planning to brand Zapstation boxes for retail sales.
"We see companies that will look into this space, like Tivo and Replay, and maybe Sony, and some of the other consumer manufacturers," he said.
Another player in the band of set-tops is Liberate Technologies, which develops a software platform for integrating chipsets, network servers, and content.
Charlie Trischler, vice president of marketing at Liberate, said he's looking forward to downloadable music services where customers could sign up for subscriptions and "instead of paying 99 cents per track, you would pay 10 bucks a month, or whatever, and get access to all the MP3s you want to pull down. That fits more into the cable model of it being a subscription-based service," he added.
However, he said none of the content companies Liberate deals with have expressed interest in setting up this type of service just yet. Downloadable music services make "total sense, and from a business and technology perspective, both are doable today."
Whether companies like America Online and AtHome will get into the on-demand music business is unclear. A spokesperson for AtHome said she knew of no such plans, and AOL declined to comment. Lipscomb said he doesn't think the companies are well positioned right now to make the leap.
Del Beccaro said there are four basic requirements for on-demand set-top music system: a technology to deliver the music from a satellite or cable into the set-top; a simple consumer interface; the rights and security issues with the music; and negotiating with the system operator for the right to do two-way transactions.
On the last point, he said, "There's no more protected arena in the cable and satellite environment, let me just say that."
However, most of the installed set-tops -- about 14 million, Del Beccaro estimated -- could not be used to download music. However, the next generation of set-tops are capable of supporting this type of music service, and Del Beccaro said about 10 million of these advanced set-tops will ship this year.
Part of the problem with offering entertainment services via the set-top is that the user interface isn't quite ready for these prime-time applications.
"Frankly, the consumer interfaces that exist right now aren't really there," Del Beccaro said. "They look like file management systems, and they are not point-and-click. But by the beginning of next year, he believes the consumer interfaces will be simplified enough.
In addition to the hardware and software requirements, there are other obstacles for Web-based companies that want to get into the set-top game.
"The cable world is very unusual," Del Beccaro said. "Major contracts usually take literally a couple of years to negotiate. So you're dealing with people that are very protective of their territory.
"It's difficult to walk in as a fresh company and try to offer services with cable operators," he said. "People that already have an established relationship have a tremendous advantage."
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Pillow Fight in the Living Room
By Brad King and Elisa Batista
7:00 a.m. Jan. 9, 2002 PST
LAS VEGAS -- Battle lines have been drawn for control of your home entertainment system, with both Microsoft and RealNetworks pushing competing devices to manage movies, television and music.
The bitter rivals used the Consumer Electronics Show as a platform for introducing technology each hopes points the way to its domination of the home entertainment market.
For Microsoft, the future is a server that manages every electrical device.
RealNetworks blew off the PC-centered approach, striking a deal with a couple of digital video recording companies, Moxi and TiVo, that links the television and home stereo system through a set-top box.
The plans renew the debate over whether the personal computer or the television will be the centerpiece of your living room. While Microsoft's (MSFT) approach would amount to one-stop shopping to manage any appliance, analysts are skeptical that people will change their long-ingrained habits.
"There is a lot of talk about convergence, but there is not real convergence in the living room," said Josh Bernoff, principle analyst with Forrester. "There is the television experience that can be extended to music, and there is the PC experience."
"With Moxi, the cable operators will give people the option to purchase whatever they want -- HBO, Showtime or the RealOne service. Digital music didn't take off until MP3 players came out, because nobody wants to dance around a PC."
Despite that pervasive opinion, Microsoft continues to plow ahead with its plans to let people turn on their stereo, adjust the temperature of their house, flip through television channels or log on using the computer as a master remote control.
The centerpiece of this experiment is the Viewsonic AirPanel 150, also known as "Mira Microsoft." The adjustable laptop allows consumers to remove the monitor and use it like a four-pound Pocket PC, operating the display with a stylus.
The Mira can be wirelessly connected to any Microsoft device, including the Xbox or the home's centralized server. Mira is still under development, but company officials said the new device will be on the market by the end of the year.
"The Mira is similar to what the cordless phone did to the telephone. Your getting rid of wire that's tethered to the wall," Keith White, Microsoft's senior director of marketing.
With the PC market gone, RealNetworks is putting its faith in the set-top box, hoping consumers will be more comfortable using their television sets to control their digital entertainment.
Digital video recorders from TiVo (TIVO) and Moxi will use the RealOne audio and video player to manage entertainment files. Those let people download and store music files, burn CDs and stream Internet radio stations. Consumers will also have the option of purchasing content from MusicNet , one of the major label subscription services with the set-top boxes.
The RealNetworks (RNWK) system will be available in February on TiVo's Series 2 digital video recorder, which comes with 60 hours of video recording time and two USB expansion ports that connect to MP3 or CD players. The system costs between $300 and $400, depending on the size of the hard drive. Moxi's system is still in beta testing.
"People who are building this equipment are demanding high quality playback for audio and video playback," said Jay Jaisimha, RealNetworks' senior director of home application. "You can go get the same quality on a $200 device as you can on a $3,000 computer."
"We are going through the pre-Cambrian explosions, and there are going to be lots of extinctions," Jaisimha, said, "but the infrastructure is now there for wireless devices and the costs are starting to come down."
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DivX™ is a new format for digital video, much like MP3 is a format for digital music. DivX™ is the brand name of a patent-pending video compression technology created by DivXNetworks, Inc., (also known as Project Mayo).
The DivX™ codec (short for compression-decompression) is based on the MPEG-4 compression standard. This codec is so advanced that it can reduce an MPEG-2 video (the same format used for DVD or Pay-Per-View) to ten percent of its original size. Video on regular VHS tapes can be reduced to about one hundredth of their original size.
Before now, video's bulky file size has slowed the proliferation of Internet video distribution. Moreover, compressing video down to a size where it could be transferred over the Internet normally meant the end result looked like a pointillist painting done by Seurat's evil (and very untalented) twin brother. DivX compression technology solves these problems with unmatched compression ability and visual quality virtually indistinguishable from a DVD.
The result? You can download a full-length, full-motion, full-screen, DVD-quality feature film using a standard broadband connection in about the time it takes to have a pizza delivered.
In essence, DivX compression technology makes it possible for you to download and playback high quality digital movies on your PC and other devices. Compaq's PocketPC now supports DivX videos, and soon you'll be able to get DivX content on your television, via your set top box, game console, and other convergence devices.
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FROM HACKER TO HELPER
JAN. 18 / Like Richard Nixon in the Watergate trials of 1973, DivX was the unindicted co-conspirator hovering over last summer's DeCSS trial in New York.
Unrelated to the failed but similarly named pay-per-use DVD platform Circuit City tried to foist on the world (thus, the annoying emoticon included in the official spelling, which we will now ignore), DivX is a utility for compressing and decompressing video files to make them easier to transfer via the Internet.
The current generation of DivX can boil a 4 GB DVD file down to about 650 MB--small enough to fit on a conventional CD. That makes it possible to download a full-length movie in about 45 minutes, using a fast Internet connection, with quality that's a little better than VHS.
Although nobody connected with DivX was named as a defendant in the DeCSS case, the technology figured prominently in the vision of Internet movie mayhem painted by the MPAA at the trial. DeCSS provided the means for pirates to strip the encryption codes from DVDs, while DivX provided the means for transmitting "ripped" movie files across the Internet to all corners of the world.
Indeed, as became apparent at the trial, hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of DivX compressed movies already litter the Internet on obscure Web sites, including many ripped from DVDs.
In other words, in the eyes of the MPAA, DivX is unquestionably a tool of video pirates. But the studios may soon be confronting DivX far more directly than in the DeCSS case. And in the long run, DivX could prove to be the tougher opponent.
Like DeCSS, DivX has its roots in the hacker underground. Thanks to a group calling itself Project Mayo, however, DivX is about to go above ground as part of an "open source" development project that could lead to wide dissemination of the technology.
According to the hacker press, some 12 million copies of the current generation of DivX have already been downloaded, and it's the compression utility of choice.
By throwing open the core codes to any programmer who wants to work on them, Project Mayo hopes to quickly develop DivX Deux, which would produce files 40% smaller than current DivX files with images of near-DVD quality.
In essence, Project Mayo is hoping to initiate for DivX the sort of open development process that ultimately produced the MP3 format for compressing music files, thus doing for Internet video what MP3 did for music.
That's not something the studios are likely to greet as good news. While the original sponsors of the MP3 development effort intended it to be a legitimate utility to facilitate the commercial music download business, its open availability became the impetus for widespread, unauthorized file-sharing through services such as Napster.
A refined and freely available version of DivX could be all the incentive hackers need to find new ways of cracking DVDs and sharing them with their friends--all 4.5 billion of them.
Ironically, DivX is a distant cousin of MP3. Its basic source code is derived from an early version of MPEG4, a legitimate compression technology developed by Microsoft and others meant to replace the more limited MPEG2 technology now used on DVDs and many digital cable systems for compressing video signals.
While that ancestry could pose patent and copyright infringement risks for Project Mayo, the group, which is renaming itself DivX Network, says version Deux is based on new source code that does not rely on technology possibly owned by Microsoft and others.
DivX Network, in fact, is trying to line up $100 million in financing so that when a final version of DivX Deux is ready, it can license the technology to cable and satellite operators, set-top box manufacturers and download service providers for legitimate video-on-demand services.
That last category would include the studios themselves, which are looking to launch one or more movie download services on the Web as soon as this spring.
Persuading Hollywood to open its hearts and wallets to a technology whose roots are in the pirate underground, however, could prove daunting. Especially if, in the meantime, the development effort itself stimulates the creation of unauthorized services for trading movie files via the Internet.
Yet as the recent merger of America Online and Time Warner shows, the Internet has a way of creating strange bedfellows. And if DivX Deux becomes a widely accepted format for downloading movies, the studios could find themselves having to join what they can't beat.