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LiveTV's In-Flight Satellite TV to Debut Over Canada on WestJet; Wholly Owned Subsidiary of JetBlue Airways Enters into Agreement with Canadian Low-Fare Carrier
NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--July 8, 2003--LiveTV, LLC, a wholly-owned subsidiary of JetBlue Airways Corporation, (NASDAQ: JBLU), today announced that it has entered into an agreement with WestJet (WJA.TO) to provide in-flight satellite television on the Canadian low-fare carrier's fleet.
This is the first time in-flight satellite TV has ever been available in Canada, following JetBlue's U.S. debut of the system in 2000.
Under the terms of the purchase and long-term services agreement, LiveTV will install and maintain their satellite receiving and distribution system equipment, enabling WestJet to receive Bell ExpressVu satellite programming at every seatback on its Boeing 737-700 aircraft. WestJet will purchase the seat equipment and monitors while the satellite receiving equipment and maintenance will be provided by LiveTV. This order is to equip 40 firm Boeing 737-700 aircraft with the option to install the system on future aircraft deliveries, as requested. Installation of the equipment on WestJet's existing fleet is scheduled to begin in the fourth quarter of 2003 and will be completed by the first quarter of 2004. The obligations of the parties under the agreement are subject to the satisfaction of specified conditions and, accordingly, there can be no assurance that the transaction will be completed. Additional terms of the agreement were not disclosed.
LiveTV and WestJet have also entered into a non-binding letter of intent with Bell ExpressVu under which Bell ExpressVu will provide satellite programming for which WestJet will pay a service fee.
"We're delighted to add WestJet to LiveTV's growing customer base," said Glenn Latta, vice president of LiveTV. "Our service will offer WestJet's guests in Canada the opportunity to experience a choice of real-time in-flight programming supported by advanced technology and proven reliability. We're proud to be the supplier of choice when low-cost airlines choose in-flight entertainment."
Clive Beddoe, WestJet's President and CEO, commented today: "We're excited to be able to bring Bell ExpressVu satellite programming to our guests. This entertainment system will serve to increase the comfort level of our guests as we continue to grow the airline, and in turn the length of our flights. Whether they're flying for business or pleasure, the entertainment package we have to offer will have something to suit everyone. In true WestJet fashion, we continue to offer innovative new products to our guests."
About LiveTV
LiveTV is an innovative provider of in-flight entertainment products and services such as DIRECTV (TM), Bell ExpressVu, XM Satellite Radio, wireless aircraft data link services, cabin surveillance systems and Internet services for commercial aircraft. The airline industry's only true real-time, at-home entertainment experience in the air, Live TV's satellite TV system includes individual seatback monitors, armrest mounted channel, brightness, and volume controls that allow passengers to select from 24 channels programming. LiveTV is a wholly owned subsidiary of JetBlue Airways Corporation (NASDAQ JBLU). For more information, visit LiveTV on the World Wide Web at www.livetvifs.com.
MPEG Industry Forum to Promote All Emerging MPEG Standards
SAN RAMON, Calif. & GENEVA--(BUSINESS WIRE)--July 8, 2003--
MPEG-4 Industry Forum (M4IF) Expands Scope to Include MPEG-7 and MPEG-21 and Changes Its Name to MPEG Industry Forum (MPEGIF)
At its Annual Meeting in Montreal on 27 June, the MPEG-4 Industry Forum (M4IF), an industry-based MPEG standards advocacy group, unanimously approved expanding its scope to include the promotion of the MPEG-7 and MPEG-21 standards. Starting on July 1st, the first day of the Forum's new membership year, M4IF's official name is "MPEG Industry Forum" (MPEGIF). The Forum will continue the M4IF name, website and logo for its MPEG-4 activities. MPEG-7 and MPEG-21 community members helped prepare the necessary changes to MPEGIF's Statutes.
MPEGIF's goal has been updated to read: "To further the adoption of MPEG Standards, by establishing them as well accepted and widely used standards among creators of content, developers, manufacturers, providers of services, and end users."
Building on M4IF's success as a focal point for MPEG-4 developments and information, the decision to expand its scope came from the membership's desire for a single, strong organization to educate industry on the benefits and synergies of the MPEG standards. MPEG-7 and MPEG-21 are complementary to MPEG-4 and MPEG-2, not their successors.
MPEGIF decided to maintain the same $3,000 USD annual fee ($300 USD for not-for-profits) for all of its members, regardless of their area of interest, and now accepts membership applications from companies and organizations working on MPEG-7 and MPEG-21.
MPEGIF will expand its current marketing efforts to reflect its new scope. MPEG-4 will remain the primary focus of most members, and the Forum will continue to market the M4IF brand name and the MP4 logo. MPEGIF is building MPEG-7 and MPEG-21 web presence modelled after the popular www.m4if.org website.
The 4th "Workshop and Exhibition on MPEG-4" (WEMP) is scheduled for Spring 2004 in Europe, under the working title "Workshop and Exhibition on Emerging MPEG Technologies." Like MPEGIF, its expanded focus will cover the emerging MPEG-7 and MPEG-21 standards, as well as the new Advanced Video Coding standard (AVC, also known as H.264 and MPEG-4 AVC).
"I am excited that, with our expansion, we have fulfilled the wish expressed by our membership and industry over a year ago," said MPEGIF President Rob Koenen. "Our constituency strongly believes in the MPEG standards which, together with other open international standards, provide highly valued interoperability to end-users and industry."
About MPEGIF
MPEGIF represents almost 100 companies from diverse industries evenly distributed across North America, Europe and Asia, addressing MPEG adoption issues that go beyond the charter of ISO/IEC MPEG. Activities of the forum include marketing, a comprehensive MPEG-4 interoperability program (including AVC), logo certification, presence at trade shows, several working groups and an annual conference. For more information visit: http://www.mpegif.org.
About MPEG-4
MPEG-4 is the interactive coding standard for all digital multimedia platforms. Developed by the "Moving Picture Experts Group" that designed MPEG-2 (the digital television standard), MPEG-1 and MP3. Object-based and extending beyond video and audio, MPEG-4 supports rich, interactive, standards-based multimedia from low bandwidths to transparent quality.
About MPEG-7
MPEG-7 is a recently finalized MPEG standard for description of multimedia content. It will be used for indexing, cataloging, advanced search tools, program selection, smart reasoning about content and more. The standard comprises syntax and semantics of multimedia descriptors and descriptor schemes. MPEG-7 is an important standard because it allows the management, search and retrieval of ever-growing amounts of content locally stored, on-line and in broadcasts.
About MPEG-21
MPEG-21 is an emerging MPEG standard describing how different elements to build an infrastructure for the delivery and consumption of multimedia content -- existing or under development -- work together. MPEG-21 addresses management of and access to content.
MPEG-21 includes a universal declaration of multimedia content, tools facilitating the dynamic adaptation of content to the delivery network and to consumption devices and conditions, and various tools for making Digital Rights Management more interoperable.
ZVUE! Personal Video Player
HandHeld Entertainment Fills Gap in the Portable Entertainment Market With Its ZVUE! Personal Video Player
Portable High-Quality, Full-Color Personal Video Player Is the
First Available at a Consumer-Friendly Retail Price of $99
SAN FRANCISCO, July 8 /PRNewswire/ -- HandHeld Entertainment today announced its ZVUE! personal video player (PVP) -- the first full-color portable digital audio/video player priced at under $100.
Previously code-named "Mockingbird," the ZVUE! will be available at major retailers nationwide in October 2003.
The ZVUE! PVP is designed for and supports content targeted at the "tween" (youth ages 8 to 12), teenage (youth ages 13-19) and early twenty-something (ages 20 to 25) markets. The customer-friendly design of the ZVUE! is similar in size, look and feel to personal digital assistant devices (PDAs) and has an
ultra-bright 2.5-inch (diagonal) full-color screen.
"The portable electronic entertainment market has been waiting a long time for a $99 high-quality personal video player like the ZVUE!," said Nathan Schulhof, president and chief executive officer of HandHeld Entertainment and the credited inventor of the MP3 player. "The market for personal audio devices has been solidified as go-anywhere cassette, CD and MP3 players have demonstrated broad consumer appeal over time. Since portable DVD players have ranged in price from $250 to more than $1,000, until now there has never been a quality portable PVP affordable enough to appeal to the masses -- until the ZVUE!."
Initial licensed content for use with the ZVUE! PVP will include some of the most recognizable branded entertainment names in the world. Various titles will include animated and live-action programs, chart-topping music videos, sports action videos and content from all areas of the entertainment industry.
Content will be available on postage stamp-sized Secure
Digital/MultiMediaCards (SD/MMCs) -- which are becoming the de facto storage media for handheld consumer electronic devices -- and will be priced starting at $7.99. The HandHeld SD/MMCs will be available in sizes ranging from 8 Megabyte (MB) to 256MB capacities and will offer high-quality video playback on ZVUE! PVPs from eight minutes to more than one-and-a-half hours of
uninterrupted full-motion video.
Each ZVUE! PVP will have one SD/MMC slot, a high-performance media-enabled processor, a USB2.0/1.1 (Universal Serial Bus) port, and the ability to play MP3 files. In an effort to keep retail costs down, the ZVUE! will not include internal speakers, but each ZVUE! PVP will include a speaker jack and a pair of ear buds that will produce one of the highest fidelity sounds in a personal entertainment device today. HandHeld has also developed its own compression- decompression algorithm, known as the HHE Codec, to handle real-time video decompression on the ZVUE! processor. ZVUE! PVPs will operate efficiently on four AA batteries to provide approximately eight to 10 hours of
viewing/listening time.
"The ZVUE! PVP has a lot of great features, but what will really 'seal the deal' for buyers will be its full-color screen," Schulhof said. "No other company will ship a full-color personal video player with a screen as large as the ZVUE! for under $100 this Christmas season. And that is why we believe the
ZVUE! will be the perfect gift for active tweens, teenagers and twenty- somethings this holiday season."
Companies interested in discussing relationships with HandHeld
Entertainment should contact the company at its headquarters in San Francisco, California at 415-495-6470 or at the company's Web site at http://www.hheld.com .
Initial evaluation units of the ZVUE! personal video player will begin to be available to accredited journalists beginning in late summer 2003. Interested journalists should contact HandHeld Entertainment's public relations agency, Politis Communications, at 801-523-3730 or at info@politis.com. Digital images of the ZVUE! PVP are available for download at http://hheld.com/news_01.htm or from Politis Communications.
About HandHeld Entertainment
HandHeld Entertainment was formally incorporated in February 2003 to fill the gap in the portable electronic entertainment industry for affordable handheld personal video players (PVPs). Led by an experienced team of seasoned professionals, HandHeld Electronics is also on track to become the foremost provider of personal video media content and the hardware necessary to view
such content.
OT: Technology Leader PoGo! Products Commences Trading under Symbol 'NWGD'
BREA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--July 8, 2003--PoGo! Products, Inc. (OTC BB: NWGD), a leader in portable digital audio (MP3) technology and the developer and manufacturer of cutting edge personal electronic products for consumers and businesses, announced that following the completion of a reverse merger transaction, the Company's shares will commence trading today on the Over-the-Counter Bulletin Board market under the symbol NWGD. The Company plans to apply for a new symbol in the near future.
PoGo! Products, Inc. facilitated its entry to the public marketplace through a reverse merger with Northwest Gold, Inc. (OTC BB: NWGD), a majority-owned subsidiary of U.S. Energy Corp. (NASDAQ: USEG). As a result, the total number of issued and outstanding shares of PoGo! Products, Inc., is 19,809,794, with U.S. Energy holding a 35.2% stake in PoGo! As part of the transaction, on or before July 17, 2003, U.S. Energy Corp. will cancel 3,809,794 of its shares in Pogo! Products, Inc., thereby reducing the total number of issued and outstanding shares to 16 million with U.S. Energy Corp. then retaining 20% ownership in the shares of the Company.
"PoGo! is an established trendsetter in consumer electronics and prides itself as an innovator of advanced technology that can result in the next great product for the digital audio and digital video markets," stated Company President Jim LaVoie.
PoGo! is already a recognized leader in the fast-paced MP3 player arena with its line of Rip-Flash Recordable Digital Audio Players and the Flipster Personal Multimedia Player. PoGo! also recently introduced Radio YourWay(TM), its latest innovative product, the first portable, solid-state AM/FM radio recorder. Radio YourWay enables users to record any radio broadcast such as news, sports, or music and play those recordings back at a more convenient time. "PoGo! has built an established technology platform, which enables the Company to continue its quest for new must-have next-generation devices for key consumer markets," Mr. LaVoie said.
PoGo! was founded in August 2001 and in its first abbreviated year of operations ended Dec. 31, 2001, had sales of $27,000, which increased to $1.6 million in 2002, its first full year of operation. "We expect to maintain a strong growth trend as we proceed with the development of next-generation digital audio and video technology products specially tailored to fit the demands of the consumer market," Mr. LaVoie said. "Being a public company will give investors an opportunity to participate in the anticipated growth of the Company."
About PoGo! Products, Inc.
PoGo! Products, Inc. (www.pogoproducts.com) is the developer and marketer of innovative, industry-first personal technology products, led by industry veterans who are proven leaders in the consumer electronic space. Corporate headquarters for PoGo! Products and home base for sales and customer service is located in Brea, Calif., with all manufacturing of product done in Asia with engineering teams in both locations.
OT: ESS Technology Becomes DivXNetworks, Inc. First Certified DVD Chip Partner
Vibratto(TM) Products Offer Full DivX(R) Certified Video Functionality for DVD Players
FREMONT, Calif., July 8 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- ESS Technology
(Nasdaq: ESST) a leading provider of silicon solutions for digital imaging, video and audio consumer electronics, today announced that DivXNetworks, Inc., the company that created the revolutionary, patent-pending, DivX(R) video compression technology, has certified ESS's Vibratto family of DVD decoder
chips, making ESS the first official DivX Certified(TM) Partner to pass the stringent certification requirements needed to gain DivX Home Theater Certification status.
ESS Technology has developed the Vibratto line of high quality, single chip and chipset solutions that allow manufacturers to satisfy growing consumer demand for cutting-edge multimedia technology. DivX certified reference platforms based on ESS's Vibratto family of DVD chipset solutions are the latest additions to the rich feature-set already available on the
Vibratto-based DVD reference platforms. DivX video, which offers DVD-quality video at seven to 10 times greater compression rates than MPEG-2, is the world's most popular MPEG-4 compatible video compression technology, with over 85 million users worldwide. A wide range of DivX Certified consumer electronics devices, from portable video players to DVD players and set-top boxes, are scheduled to be introduced in the second half of 2003.
"We are excited to have qualified as the first to bring to market DivX Certified DVD chips that enable the next generation of multimedia DVD players," said Patrick Ang, executive vice president and chief operating officer of ESS Technology. "With its excellent visual quality and unsurpassed compression ratios, decoding of DivX video technology is an invaluable added feature to our leading Vibratto family of video decoders. As consumer broadband penetration grows rapidly worldwide, we believe DivX will soon be adopted as the de facto standard for multimedia over broadband, since it dramatically reduces download times compared to the popular MPEG-2 standards, while still retaining near-DVD video and audio quality. We anticipate that rapid market acceptance of the DivX standard will lead to full volume production in the very near future."
"Consumers have the right to expect a consistently high level of
performance when they purchase a DVD player, and we created the DivX Certification program as a guarantee of quality and compatibility for our users around the world," said Jordan Greenhall, co-founder and chief executive officer of DivXNetworks. "As the first DivX Certified DVD chip products on the market, the ESS Vibratto family will allow OEMs to create devices that offer the highest level of visual quality for all versions of DivX content, including DivX 3.11. DivX users everywhere have been clamoring for these devices, and we expect the first ESS-powered DivX Certified DVD player to hit the market very soon. Taking together all the DivX certified DVD units on the market, including those made with ESS's Vibratto products, we expect that several million DivX certified units will ship by the end of 2003."
DivX Certification includes a full DivX software development kit to help third parties make their existing solutions compatible with DivX technology, or to help them create new solutions from scratch. The DivX Certified Partner Program was created to enable the development of official DivX-enabled consumer electronics products to meet the global demand for high-quality DivX convergence devices. For more information on DivX certification process, visit http://www.divx.com/certified.
About ESS Technology
ESS Technology, Inc., is a leading supplier of high-performance
feature-rich chips for the rapidly expanding DVD, digital imaging and digital entertainment markets. The company is also a leading provider of solutions for applications in the growing consumer entertainment market. ESS provides advanced products that enable the emergence of digital home systems that
deliver and manage entertainment and information in the home.
ESS, headquartered in Fremont, California, has R&D, sales, and technical support offices worldwide. ESS Technology's common stock is traded on the Nasdaq National Market under the symbol ESST. ESS Technology's web site address is: http://www.esstech
Dell plays up audio, photo bundles
Dell Computer is offering new music, printing and photography bundles designed to help consumers get more out of their PCs.
http://www.dell.com/us/en/dhs/topics/nntopic_000_bts_music.htm
Dell Computer is offering new music, printing and photography bundles designed to help consumers get more out of their PCs.
The new products, which combine Dell gear with third-party technology, became available last week on PCs sold on the company's Home and Home Office Web site. The bundles will offer consumers a simple way to jump into a new hobby in digital photography or digital audio by providing all-in-one, basic gear to get started, the Round Rock, Texas, PC manufacturer said.
"Some customers may need a little more assistance and also may not want to be faced by a long list of options," said Brooks Gray, an analyst with Technology Business Research. "This is a means of simplifying the sales process."
The Dell music bundle, for instance, "is set up so that when (customers) get it, they have the items that they need, including an MP3 player, good headphones, and a 50 pack of CDs," said Mark Oldani, director of marketing for Dell's U.S. consumer group. The music bundle costs $243 before a $50 rebate, according to Dell's Web site.
Dell, traditionally known for selling hardware such as its Dimension desktop and Inspiron notebook PCs, has recently expanded into other consumer markets, including printers, PDAs (personal digital assistants) and wireless home-networking gear. Many analysts expect the company to eventually come out with additional Dell-branded products, including MP3 players and digital cameras.
However, "I'd not say we're looking at entering tons of new categories in short order," Oldani said.
Other new product bundles available on Dell's Web site include:
• The digital photography bundle, which costs $375 before a $50 rebate, has a Dell A940 inkjet printer, along with a cable to connect it with a PC, ink cartridges, a 3.2-megapixel Canon A300 digital camera, and 50 sheets of paper.
• The Dell printer bundle offers the Dell A940 printer with a cable, ink, 50 sheets of paper, and an uninterruptible power supply for $260 before a $50 rebate.
• The Axim PDA bundle, which costs $281 before a $50 rebate, includes an Axim X5 model with a leather case, a cable for synchronizing data and recharging batteries, and a package of screen protectors.
Dell, meanwhile, continues to emphasize that its top priority is the business market. Company executives outlined their strategy at a meeting with analysts earlier this year. The company's primary product area includes business gear such as servers and storage. Printers, PDAs and similar products represent a smaller opportunity to grow its business, the executives said.
SigmaTel files $75 IPO million deal
Chip maker taps Merrill, JP Morgan as underwriters
By Steve Gelsi, CBS.MarketWatch.com
Last Update: 1:22 PM ET July 7, 2003
NEW YORK (CBS.MW) -- Semiconductor maker SigmaTel has filed to raise up to $75 million in an initial public offering on the heels of a 147 percent increase in first-quarter revenue.
The firm, based in Austin, Texas, rode a surge in portable audio products and posted revenue of $13 million in the first quarter, up from $5.2 million a year earlier. Operating profit was $100,000 in the first quarter, compared with a loss of $2.8 million a year earlier.
SigmaTel rang up a first-quarter net loss of $615,000, compared with a net loss of $3.4 million in the year-ago period.
SigmaTel makes semiconductors for MP3 players and digital set top boxes. It was founded in 1993, and employs about 100 people.
"The increase in revenues from our portable audio systems on a chip was due to the growth of the emerging portable compressed audio player market and our favorable competitive position within that market," the company said in its IPO filing.
The company plans to trade on the Nasdaq under the ticker "SGTL."
Merrill Lynch and JP Morgan are underwriting the deal, along with CIBC World Markets and Needham & Co.
Creative Technology owns a 31 percent share of the company. Battery Ventures owns about 25 percent and a fund directed by Invesco Private Capital owns about 11 percent.
Ronald P. Edgerton became chairman and chief executive officer in March 2001. He was formerly general manager of Kodak's digital medical imaging business unit, and CFO of Cyrix Corp., which went public under his leadership.
In the portable compressed audio player market, the company competes with Cirrus Logic (CRUS: news, chart, profile), Micronas, Philips Semiconductor (PHG: news, chart, profile), Samsung, and Texas Instruments (TXN: news, chart, profile).
In the audio codec market, it competes with AKM, Analog Devices (ADI: news, chart, profile), C-Media, Cirrus Logic, and Realtek. And within the USB peripherals market, SigmaTel competes with KC Technologies and others.
Steve Gelsi is a reporter for CBS.MarketWatch.com in New York
Tech Talk Intimidates
Jargon, complex products deter buyers, AMD study finds.
Laura Blackwell, PCWorld.com
Monday, July 07, 2003
Not using your Bluetooth-equipped handheld to schedule your TiVo? Think MP3 is a rock band? Consumers don't invest in products they don't understand--and many potential buyers find the vocabulary of PC technology bewildering, according to a new study.
If people think technology is too complex, they simply won't buy it, according to the Technology Terminology and Complexity Study released by chip maker AMD's Global Consumer Advisory Board. The survey polled 1535 respondents, 58 percent of them from the United States.
Intimidated Buyers
Concern about setup time for new PCs and tech gadgets is a major theme. Nearly half of those polled (46 percent) "don't want to buy anything that is complicated to set up," and 62 percent "wish to have things work and not spend time setting up."
Many of the respondents reported delaying their tech purchases due to the products' perceived complexity. Of this group, 44 percent strongly agree that computers are confusing to use. Thirty-nine percent of the timid buyers have the same impression about consumer electronics.
GCAB's survey differentiated the most-knowledgeable consumers from the technology novices through a vocabulary test. Most respondents defined 7 or more of the 11 terms correctly, and were deemed tech-savvy.
But even those savvy shoppers are shying away from digital cameras, PCs, and personal digital assistants; they rated items in those three categories as the most complicated tech products.
Thirty-six percent of the technologically knowledgeable buyers say they will delay purchasing a PC because of the product's complexity. Among the "least knowledgeable" according to the poll, 54 percent say they're too bewildered to buy a PC.
Roughly half of all respondents--at any degree of technological sophistication--feel the same way about buying a digital camera, the study shows. Of them, 50 percent of the knowledgeable buyers and 47 percent of the novices let their fears delay their digital camera purchases. Also, 40 percent of the tech-savvy buyers and 51 percent of the less-knowledgeable shoppers are intimidated about PDA purchases.
In contrast, just 6 percent of respondents overall say they find telephones or microwave ovens daunting.
Talking Tech
But as prospective buyers understand technical terms better, they adopt high-tech products more quickly, the study also finds.
Technology companies spend more than $10 billion a year on advertising in the United States, notes Patrick Moorhead, AMD's vice president of consumer advocacy and GCAB chair.
"We really have to question how much of that is coming through," Moorhead says.
Only 3 percent of the respondents aced the survey's multiple-choice tech vocabulary test. Test-takers struggled with terms like "DPI," "megapixel," "megahertz," and even "Web browser." Moorhead quips, "We're asking Webster's to remove 'megahertz' from the dictionary."
Although respondents named the digital camera the most complicated tech device, they may have undersold their knowledge; "megapixel" scored in the top half for recognizability. The PDA and the home PC, tied for second in terms of perceived complexity, have clearer associations with the least-known tech terms.
Fewer than half of the respondents could identify "WAP" as "a global standard for developing applications over wireless communications networks" or "Bluetooth" as "a way to connect products to one another without using wires." Only 62 percent of respondents identified "MP3" as audio compression technology, 65 percent identified "DPI" as "a measure of resolution of printers, scanners and monitors," and 65 percent defined "megahertz" as a unit of measurement "used to compare the clock speeds of microprocessors."
Less than a third of all respondents understood "Digital Video Recorder" or "DVR" as "a box that records and plays television programs," making it the least-recognized term among all surveyed.
"There are many great information sources that can help people sort through this quagmire," Moorhead says. However, he places the burden not on the buyer but on the seller. "The industry needs to use terms that connote the benefits the products provide."
Analog Devices announced today the availability of its new Blackfin(R) Car Telematics Platform
NORWOOD, Mass.--July 7, 2003-- Comprehensive platform enables cost reductions of at least 50% over current implementations; Java programmability simplifies portability across multiple vehicle models
Analog Devices, Inc. (NYSE: ADI), a leader in semiconductors for signal processing applications, announced today the availability of its new Blackfin(R) Car Telematics Platform, a comprehensive and open solution based on the company's Blackfin Processor which enables cost reductions of at least 50 percent over current telematics system implementations by providing a single-chip, software programmable platform that can function as navigation, communication and entertainment system. In addition, ADI's Blackfin Car Telematics Platform includes Java(TM) support, thereby providing added benefits such as ease of programmability as well as interoperability and compatibility across multiple vehicle models. Car telematics systems combine global positioning satellite (GPS) tracking and wireless-based services with voice activated control. ADI's Blackfin Car Telematics Platform enables motorists to perform a variety of functions such as receiving communications for automatic roadside assistance as well as remote diagnostics, downloading digital audio files and obtaining 'smart' transportation information.
"Car telematics systems transform the automobile into a mobile platform that provides communications, safety, computing and multimedia entertainment functions," said Brian McAloon, group vice president, DSP and System Products, Analog Devices, Inc. "Leveraging our leading signal processing expertise, Analog Devices' new Car Telematics Platform is based on our flagship Blackfin Processor, which was uniquely designed with each of these applications in mind. This combination allows us to deliver a telematics solution which can provide a significant reduction in system cost, enabling telematics to become more mainstream."
According to Allied Business Intelligence(1), the aggregate global market for telematics is expected to grow to over $12.3 billion by 2007 from $2.2 billion for 2001, and another report cites that nearly 80 percent of new vehicles will feature telematics by 2006(2). Today, telematics systems are only available to a subset of luxury-car buyers as an optional purchase. One of the factors that has prohibited the availability of car telematics to the broad automotive market has been the associated high cost of deployment. These types of systems need multiple processing elements, both for control processing and for signal processing to handle many complex, real-time tasks simultaneously. ADI's Blackfin Car Telematics Platform is based on the company's Blackfin Processor, which combines best-in-class digital signal processing performance with microcontroller functionality onto a single core. It has sufficient computational power to incorporate the half-dozen functions typically found in a telematics system onto one device. This significantly reduces the system deployment costs compared with alternative solutions, which use separate hardware modules for each individual telematics function.
The functions implemented on ADI's Blackfin Car Telematics Platform include GPS, dead reckoning, handsfree operation, noise reduction and echo cancellation, speech recognition for voice-activated control of the phone or other vehicle systems, text-to-speech to announce driving directions or SMS/email messages, Bluetooth connection to mobile phones, AM/FM decoding and car audio play/record of MP3 and Windows(R) Media Audio (WMA) content. In addition, ADI's Blackfin Car Telematics Platform has an embedded real-time operating system (RTOS) that allows these multiple functions to run concurrently while sharing the system resources among them. Furthermore, since ADI's Blackfin Car Telematics Platform is a programmable solution, it allows for utmost flexibility and new software applications and/or updates to be installed without the need to change the hardware.
Analog Devices' new Blackfin Car Telematics Platform also supports Java technology, provided by Kada Systems of Burlington, Mass. Kada's Java 2 Micro Edition (J2ME(TM)) enables a wide variety of telematics applications as well as scalability and portability across multiple vehicle models. In addition, the Java technology found in the Blackfin Car Telematics Platform enables full support of services to the target, adds graphics support for menu systems and allows native Blackfin Processor applications to be efficiently executed within the Java environment.
Pricing and Availability
Analog Devices' Blackfin Car Telematics Platform is offered as a hardware reference design, includes all third-party software and will be available in Q3 '03. It includes the Blackfin Processor along with software for MP3 and CD block decoding, AM/FM decoding, GPS, dead reckoning, acoustic echo cancellation, noise reduction, speech recognition, text-to-speech and Bluetooth stacks and is priced at under $20 in 100,000 unit quantities. For more information, please visit: http://www.analog.com/blackfin_telematics
Heah I had that back on the 26th LOL
Posted by: Tenderloin
In reply to: No one in particular Date:6/26/2003 11:14:30 AM
Post #of 40443
First Full-Color Portable High-Quality Digital Video Player to Market at Under $100
Father of MP3 Player Nathan M. Schulhof Named President and Chief Executive Officer of HandHeld Entertainment
Schulhof Joins Executive Team Comprised of Several Industry Leaders in Effort to Bring First Full-Color Portable High-Quality Digital Video Player to Market at Under $100
SAN FRANCISCO, June 26 /PRNewswire/ -- HandHeld Entertainment today announced it has hired Nathan M. Schulhof as president and chief executive officer. Schulhof is credited as the inventor of the MP3 player and holds several U.S. patents.
"Nathan Schulhof is uniquely qualified to lead HandHeld Entertainment to the forefront of the portable electronic entertainment industry," said Geoffrey Mulligan, 22-year veteran of the software entertainment industry and chairman of the board of HandHeld Entertainment. "He is a technology visionary and has demonstrated time and again that he knows what it takes to
make a business truly profitable. Under his leadership, HandHeld
Entertainment is now positioned to become not just a successful company but also an industry leader."
Schulhof's credentials include more than 35 years as a serial
entrepreneur. Prior to joining HandHeld Entertainment, he headed numerous technology and consulting businesses. As co-founder of Information Highway Media Corp. in the early 1990s (later renamed Audio Highway and then audiohighway.com), Schulhof lead the organization in introducing the Listen Up
Player at the January 1997 Consumer Electronics Show, where it won an Innovations award and later garnered the People's Choice award from the Upside Magazine/David Coursey Internet Showcase conference in 1998. He also took audiohighway.com public on the Nasdaq Stock Market in 1998.
Additionally, Schulhof co-founded TestDrive Co., a pioneer in the
distribution of encrypted software on CD-ROMs, a company that was acquired 14 months after its creation by R.R. Donnelley & Sons Co., and he served as CEO of Silicon Valley Systems, as well as Jasmine Systems. He also ran an air charter service in the 1970s. More recently, he was a founding partner of GoldPine Partners, a consulting and investment firm that focuses on providing technology and biotechnology companies with services in conducting mergers and acquisitions, forming strategic partnerships and more.
"HandHeld Entertainment will ship this Christmas season something the consumer electronics market that has never been seen before -- a high-quality portable video player priced at under $100, a price that will make it affordable to nearly everyone," Schulhof said. "I am very pleased to be involved with this company, and I believe very strongly that what we have here will open a new chapter in the history of portable electronic entertainment."
Schulhof is joined at HandHeld by Carl Page as chief technical officer, Eric Hamilton as principal scientist and Garrett Cecchini as executive vice president and general counsel.
Prior to co-founding HandHeld Entertainment, Page was a co-founder of eGroups (later acquired by Yahoo! as Yahoo! Groups) and was one of the founding shareholders of Google. Hamilton is generally credited with being one of the top compression scientists in the world, having chaired the International JPEG Committee for three years. Prior to co-founding HandHeld Entertainment, Cecchini was a founding shareholder in three successful tech start-ups, as well as a practicing lawyer for 23 years.
"Not only has the development team done an incredible job of creating very powerful technologies that I believe will help HandHeld dominate the personal video player marketplace, but the team that's been assembled is amazing," Schulhof said. "I'm talking about expertise that ranges from one of the co-founding shareholders of Google to the former chairman of the International JPEG Committee and beyond. And in each instance, these market leaders personally invested in the company, which made it even easier for me to accept this position."
About HandHeld Entertainment
HandHeld Entertainment was formally created in February 2003 in order to fill the gap in the portable electronic entertainment industry left open by the absence of affordable full-color handheld digital audio/video players.
Lead by an experienced team of seasoned professionals, HandHeld Electronics is on track to become the foremost provider of digital audio/video media content and the hardware necessary to view it.
In addition, EASTECH made an investment in HandHeld Entertainment’s Series B round of funding.
Hollywood Heist
Will tinseltown let techies steal the show?
Premiere day was fast approaching for The Hulk. The film's budget had already climbed to more than $150 million, including an extra $20 million for George Lucas' special effects company to give the giant green hero an extra dose of ferocity. Even the red-carpet ceremony was in flux, with a last-minute move at the insistence of director Ang Lee from historic Grauman's Chinese Theater to the Universal Amphitheater, where the sound was sharper. But that 11th-hour nitpicking was nothing compared with an earlier uproar at Universal Pictures: Two weeks before Hulk's June 20 release, pirated versions of the blockbuster (BBI ) hopeful were already circulating on the Internet after a New Jersey man got his hands on an early copy and surreptitiously posted it on the Net. Worse yet, the film was getting nasty reviews from disappointed sci-fi buffs.
For Hollywood moguls, that script is more terrifying than anything they could ever put on the big screen. More and more, the first showings of the latest Julia or Mel flicks aren't in just the local cineplex. They're on KaZaA, Morpheus, or iMesh, Internet sites known mostly for music file-sharing but now snapping up pirated movies with remarkable ease. Within a few days of Keanu Reeves battling his first black-suited bad guy in theaters in The Matrix Reloaded, an estimated 200,000 folks had already taken in the action, according to an online rating agency, downloading the long-awaited sequel in their dens and dorms. New episodes of HBO's hit Six Feet Under are on the Net, too, and you needn't be a computer whiz to find them.
It's all too reminiscent of the monster that ate the music business. For a town that loves a good sequel, that's one repeat performance Hollywood isn't keen to produce. Only five years ago, music sales were booming. Today, the industry is nearly paralyzed by piracy. Illegal downloads and file-sharing were partly responsible for last year's loss of an estimated $2.6 billion in worldwide music revenues, about 8%, says PriceWaterhouseCoopers. The speed at which music was brought to its knees makes Hollywood execs tremble. "We may not be the smartest guys around," says Peter Chernin, president of News Corp. "But we'd have to be brain-dead to ignore what it did to those guys."
Can Hollywood avoid getting Napsterized? Right now, the pirates are only nibbling at the $65 billion-a-year film and TV business. Downloading a movie is still a clunky affair that can take a few hours, and only 27% of the country's 66 million online homes have the superfast broadband connections to do it.
Most of the piracy so far is through good old-fashioned counterfeiting. The ripping and burning of movies to DVDs is growing into a global underground industry that last year cost film studios an estimated $3 billion in lost DVD sales. It's prodding the guys in Guccis into action: Security folks outfitted with night goggles routinely patrol press screenings, searching for illicit camcorders. Former FBI agents are leading raids of illegal DVD copying plants in Thailand and Malaysia. Industry lawyers are flooding court dockets with lawsuits against all manner of thieves (page 82).
But the digital threat is looming as ominously as the thick flock of crows gathered on the jungle gym in Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds. Technology is coming on quickly that will make the prospect of copying movies and TV shows much more tantalizing -- and far easier. Already, some 600,000 copies of films a day are being downloaded illegally, according to industry estimates, which could cost Hollywood hundreds of millions of dollars in lost video sales. A new crop of gizmos, from digital televisions to personal video recorders (PVRs), will soon make duplicating anything on the tube -- from Fox (FOX ) Broadcasting Co.'s 24 to the latest Jennifer Lopez flick -- a couch potato's dream. And within three years, half the online population will have broadband, making it easier to pass programs captured in digital form around on the Net.
The living room is center stage for all this new digital entertainment. But will it be a war zone or a thriving marketplace shared by the creators of content and the makers of the cool machines that deliver it? That's the urgent question facing studio execs. It's not that they can't envision a rosy scenario for convergence, where there's money to be made at every turn -- from movies on demand to Sex and the City fans streaming their favorite episodes on the PC to teens watching videos on handhelds. "We would certainly like to be able to make our content [increasingly] available in a digital world," Comcast (CMCSK ) Corp. CEO Brian L. Roberts told the National Cable & Telecommunications Assn. convention in early June. "But we need to feel secure that we're going to get paid for [it]."
The next few months will be crucial for the Hollywood gang, who are currently wrangling with cable operators, consumer-electronics makers, and the technology industry over protecting their digital gold. Each group has its own philosophies about how much protection -- mandated and voluntary -- the content needs. Historically, working hand in hand with disparate interests has been anathema to the moguls, a single-minded, ego-driven bunch for whom compromise doesn't come easily.
But for everyone's convergence dreams to come true, that must change. The studios are already taking tentative steps toward recalibrating their lucrative business model, which now guarantees earnings on every movie for months after release, as films cascade through theaters, video stores, and cable TV. They are testing new ways to serve up Hollywood fare faster and cheaper, with an eye to deterring Net pirates. And they are also inching toward key agreements with gadget makers over just how much copy protection will be built into new generations of TVs and cable boxes.
Looking ahead, retooling for the Net is the most important gambit, if potentially the most perilous. Execs are clearly energized by the early success of Apple Computer Inc.'s iTunes Music Store, which offers a road map for selling their wares online. At 99 cents apiece, more than 5 million songs have been sold in two months -- in part because iTunes offers flexibility, allowing users to make copies they can move to other computers. The moguls see iTunes as proof positive that consumers are willing to accept limits on copying if the price is right. "[Apple CEO] Steve Jobs has liberated us," Sony Corp. of America CEO Howard Stringer told a group of media executives on June 25. "We will all be doing something similar."
Many studios are already laying the foundation for digital delivery. In fact, Hollywood is proving quicker in proposing an alternative to file-sharing than music ever was. That's critical because absent that innovative spirit, things could get grim. Consider projections made by research company Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. now reaching moguls' desks. Analysts there estimated what the blow to earnings would be at the big entertainment companies if in one year they suffered the same level of declines from piracy and file-sharing as the music industry. The results: At heavily movie- and TV-dependent Vivendi Universal Entertainment, operating earnings would fall 43%. Disney's would drop 17%; Viacom's and AOL Time Warner's, 4% to 6%.
The impact of new technology will hit hardest over the next three to seven years, the report predicts, giving the media folks little time to adjust. "The message here is that the studios have to move faster," says Thomas R. Wolzien, one of the Bernstein report's authors. "They can't be like the music industry, deer-in-the-headlights for the past five years."
Hollywood still harbors some of music's protectionist urges, though. It is battering downloaders with lawsuits and pushing broad-brush copy-protection laws in many states -- all of which could backfire with Internet-savvy consumers. Then again, grudging adaptation to technological change is nothing new in the media business. Back in the 1950s, studio kingpins like Jack Warner refused to license films to TV, fearing a blow to the box office. But eventually studios embraced TV and subsequent technologies, from videocassettes to DVDs, and made bundles of money in the process. Today Hollywood takes in more cash from DVDs and home videos than it does from theaters, while the No. 1 video chain, Blockbuster Entertainment, is owned by Paramount parent Viacom Inc. This time around, though, there will be some bloody battles and financial setbacks as the new and even more disruptive technologies take hold. Still, Hollywood leaders seem ready to roll up their sleeves. "We not only need to work together within industries but across industries [for a solution] that touches not just the content creators but the software industry and the consumer-electronics industry," AOL Time Warner Inc. CEO Richard D. Parsons told the cable powwow. "Let's all work together to come up with ways of protecting this goose that's laying the golden eggs."
Hollywood surely has been spinning gold lately. This year will see $11.4 billion in DVD sales, up 34% from 2002 and twice as much as in 2001. The industry thrives on a "windowed" distribution system, which maximizes revenue by stoking demand. Movies don't come out on DVD until five or six months after hitting theaters; premium cable gets them five or six months after that. Today, DVDs and videos supply about 50% of a film's revenues. But as more folks can click, copy, and transmit, they'll likely seek out new flicks on the Net rather than wait for local video stores to stock them.
Changing the model will be tough, as each sector clings to its piece of the status quo. "As much as they are loath to admit it publicly, the studios cannot afford to circumvent us," John Antioco, CEO of Blockbuster Inc., said in a recent speech. "They have too much to lose." Theater owners, too, are threatening revolt. When Fox recently announced plans to release DVDs of From Justin to Kelly, about the American Idol stars, just six weeks after its premiere, theaters refused to show the film. Their beef? That Fox was enticing folks to bypass theaters and go straight for the rental.
Yet even as the financial bennies of the old system still flow, Hollywood's moguls are learning some lessons from the record companies. The labels squandered the rollout of their own online services like MusicNet and pressplay by not having licensing agreements for all songs from all labels and by forcing a subscription model. By the time the Big Five music empires ironed out deals, pirated music had crushed them.
By contrast, Hollywood has already made inroads with pricing, variety, and copy protection. Five Hollywood studios began offering movies through Movielink last November. And CinemaNow, operated by the independent film studio Lion's Gate Entertainment (LGF ), began selling films on the Web in early 2001 and recently has begun offering higher-visibility films from MGM, Warner Bros., and Fox. CinemaNow allows some limited downloading of movies and gives consumers up to 48 hours to watch each flick before the file expires. The service says it has 25,000 customers who pay $9.95 a month -- although many of them may have signed up to get adult films. Sony Pictures Entertainment, through its Web site SoapCity, offers Net downloads of The Young and the Restless and As the World Turns, two long-running soap operas it produces. They're available the day of airing for $1.95 a show or for a $9.95 monthly sub. Down the road, Sony hopes to deliver programming to its Vaio computer and handheld Clie.
Come this October, Walt Disney (DIS ) Co. launches tests of its MovieBeam (DIS ) service, which will deliver up to 100 movies a month to folks in Salt Lake City, using bits of the unused digital spectrum from its ABC affiliate in that city to send flicks directly to a Disney set-top box. "If we don't offer consumers our products in a timely manner," Chairman Michael D. Eisner said when he announced MovieBeam in April, "the pirates will."
Still, the movie sites have a ways to go to win a mass market. Movielink does not include films from Disney or Fox. CinemaNow boasts nearly 1,000 movies but has only about 100 of Hollywood's recent hits. You can get the second Harry Potter or Barbershop, but you can't get the wildly popular The Matrix. The sites may also want to put more emphasis on their per-flick payment system instead of subscription models, which online users don't like much. Another obstacle: Superstar directors like Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, who don't trust current protections, are refusing to license their films to any Internet service.
Of course, the quality of online viewing is still iffy. Unlike songs, which can be captured quickly and stored on portable players, downloading movies is glacial. And not everyone wants to watch them on a computer screen. Some execs figure that the less-than-desirable quality of pirated movies may buy them some time.
As the industry maps its Net strategy, it's also trying to shore up another vulnerable front: digital TV. This is a potentially huge source of digital leakage and widespread copying right smack in the heart of the living room. Studios were jolted awake in 2001 when tiny SONICblue (SBLUQ ) offered up ReplayTV Inc., a PVR that not only recorded shows but also allowed consumers to share them over the Net and even zap commercials. The studios faced down the threat by suing the company, whose owners deny liability; the suit is still pending. ReplayTV's new owners, who are not party to any suit, have agreed to pull back on ad-skipping features in new machines due out in August, but they'll still have a fast-forward button.
Although PVRs have been slow to take off, the number sold annually could quadruple to 1.3 million by 2005, according to the Consumer Electronics Assn. Nearly 1 million of satellite operator EchoStar Communications (DISH ) Corp.'s 8.5 million subscribers have PVRs with a 30-second skip button. TiVo has fast-forwarding. With enough scale, such machines could set off a virtual A-bomb on broadcast and cable networks' traditional advertising model, which brings in an estimated $30 billion a year. Indeed, ad viewing will drop by 19% by 2007, figures Forrester Research (FORR ) Inc. "It is the perfect storm of hardware devices getting cheaper and more powerful and broadband arriving big-time," says Eric Garland, CEO of BigChampagne LLC, which collects data on movie downloading.
Yet even as it grapples with PVRs, Hollywood is making progress with makers of digital-TV sets. The studios and consumer-electronics companies are circling in on agreement over new standards. New rules before the Federal Communications Commission would make it impossible to record broadcast TV shows, now delivered digitally, and ship them out onto the Internet. This would lessen the vulnerability of digital-TV shows sent over the air to the 20 million or so U.S. homes, about 18% of TV households, that don't have cable or satellite. Protection would come in a so-called broadcast flag, software in programming that tells TVs and recording devices whether the content can be sent over the Net.
An accord has also formed over what's known as the "plug-and-play" proposal, submitted to the FCC for review last December. This would build safeguards into set-top boxes, TVs, and PVRs that handle digital shows sent to the 80% of U.S. households receiving cable and satellite service. Consumers would be able to make as many copies as they like of broadcast shows like CBS (VIA ) CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, only one copy of a cable show like HBO's Curb Your Enthusiasm, but no copies of pay-per-view offerings. Viewers can burn that single copy on a DVD, but if they try to make a second, the first goes blank.
But a contentious Hollywood wants more and may hold up a pact on plug-and-play to get it. It is demanding safeguards for the hundreds of millions of analog TVs in existence. And the studios' preference for regulation rather than a private-sector accord on the broadcast flag worries some tech companies. Fighting for market share in a harshly competitive market, the purveyors of PCs and other devices want as few restrictions as possible to entice buyers of their gadgets. By trying to lock in too many controls before cutting a deal, techies argue, Hollywood is alienating customers and slowing the growth of a huge new digital audience. "You need to do a number of things concurrently," says Andrew Moss, director of technical policy at Microsoft Corp.'s Windows division. "It's not a matter of stomping out all the piracy first and then enabling new distribution mechanisms later."
Indeed, Microsoft itself is maneuvering for a role as power broker on the digital entertainment scene, now that it has settled its browser battle with Internet rival AOL Time Warner. As part of its late May deal, Microsoft may license its copyright-protection software to Warner Bros. for its TV shows and movies. The software giant, along with Intel, is also developing Trusted Computing, copying controls built into the next generation of computers. Microsoft's push into digital-rights management shows how crucial technology is becoming in the battle to turn Hollywood's digits into dollars on the Net.
What if the pirates continue to run amok? More rigorous regimes for ensuring payment for copying would probably emerge. Among them might be compulsory licensing, in which a Net service provider or a file-sharing service would track downloads and charge a fee at the end of the month. Prices could be set by industry groups or even the government, and the studios would get some slice of the revenue. Hollywood doesn't like this much, because it loses pricing control, but some tech groups back the idea. Another concept: a tax on blank DVDs, PCs, or PVRs. This would essentially be a piracy tax creating a huge pool of money earmarked for the studios. The tech companies see this as an unnecessarily blunt instrument that treats all users as pirates-in-waiting.
Media moguls are realizing that what they really need to do is turn pirates into paying customers. That's why, for so many in the industry, Apple's iTunes has become a demarcation between eras. And this from execs who were recently fuming about Jobs's "Rip. Mix. Burn" marketing blitz, which seemed to them to promote piracy. Now Hollywood recognizes his genius stroke: When it comes to entertainment, you have to give the people what they want.
By Ronald Grover & Heather Green
With Tom Lowry in New York, Catherine Yang in Washington, and Cliff Edwards in San Mateo, Calif.
Ot: SigmaTel IPO
Company makes computer chips for audio devices such as MP3 players
By Robert Elder Jr.
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Thursday, July 3, 2003
Chip company SigmaTel Inc. has filed for an initial public offering of stock, the first Austin company to jump into the IPO waters since October 2000.
SigmaTel, a leader in computer chips for MP3 players and other audio processing chips, hopes to raise up to $75 million in the offering, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing Thursday.
Initial public offerings for stock used to be a fairly regular event in Austin, but no company based here has launched one since biotechnology concern Introgen Inc. in October 2000.
The market downturn that started in March 2000 depressed investors' enthusiam for IPOs. In the second quarter of this year, for instance, only 5 U.S. companies conducted initial stock offerings to the public.
SigmaTel, under Chief Executive Officer Ron Edgerton, has been a turnaround story over the past two years as it replaced top executives and focused on the consumer audio market for devices such as MP3 players. The company was founded in 1993.
Apple's latest iPods may be too slick
(carried by MANY newspaper nationwide)
Thursday, July 3, 2003
Product Review
By Matthew Fordahl / AP Technology Writer
True to Apple Computer's reputation, the latest generation of iPod music players is slicker, slimmer and more stylish than its predecessors, without any sacrifice in sound quality.
But the latest reflection of Apple style does come at a price -- shorter battery life, overly sensitive buttons and a new FireWire cable. Those three elements ultimately make the latest models just a bit less convenient.
That said, the iPod remains by far the best, most portable and durable jukebox for both Macintosh and Windows-based computers.
The new iPods weigh about 5.6 ounces, or less than two compact discs, and are roughly the dimensions of a cassette tape. The new models sport rounded edges as well as the iPod's trademark white front and a silver backing that is impossible to keep unmarred.
They're available in three sizes, ranging from 10 gigabytes (roughly 2,500 songs) for $299 to 30 gigabytes (roughly 7,500 songs) for $499. I tested the 15-gigabyte model ($399). Sound expensive? Remember, the first-generation iPod had a 5-gigabyte drive and sold for $399.
Setup was easy. In fact, there was no setup beyond plugging the gadget into my Mac.
It was instantly recognized by the companion iTunes software. My 1,700-item music library, which includes brief pop tunes as well as hour-long symphonies, transferred to the iPod's disk drive in about 15 minutes.
(Windows users with newer computers can use either FireWire or an optional USB 2.0 cable, along with MusicMatch software that comes with the package.)
The new iPods' biggest change is their look.
The first iPods had a scroll wheel for making menu selections and choosing songs. In the second generation, the wheel shape remains -- but to scroll you slide your finger over it. There are no moving parts.
And now, the buttons that formerly surrounded the scroll wheel have been moved to a spot between it and the screen. Like the wheel, they're now touch-sensitive.
In fact, they're overly sensitive. I often found myself skipping ahead by two or three tracks when I only wanted one. It might just take getting used to, though it would be nice if I could change the sensitivity via software.
Apple admits that the new iPods have shorter battery lives -- a requirement of their smaller size. In previous models, Apple promised 11 hours, but I managed to squeeze out 13. In the new units, Apple claims eight hours, but I got only 7" before the gadget died.
Apple makes it somewhat easier -- and more attractive -- to plug the iPod into the computer. The 15- and 30-gigabyte models include a dock, which resembles a Palm handheld computer's cradle. You can also connect speakers or a stereo system to the dock.
Even the cable that connects to the dock (or directly to the iPod) has undergone a redesign, probably because of the players' smaller sizes. Unfortunately, it's no longer compatible with other FireWire devices, including Apple's new iSight video conferencing camera.
The internal software got an upgrade, so users can create playlists directly on the iPod without having to trudge over to the computer. A couple of games have been added, and the main menu's listings can now be customized.
Thanks to built-in flash memory, iPods have 25 seconds of buffering for skip protection. I didn't notice any skipping while running on a treadmill or driving over bumpy country roads. In fact, it didn't miss a beat when I nearly slammed into an SUV.
Tech Diversions for the road
http://www.bayarea.com/mld/mercurynews/business/6225803.htm
Bands tell Apple 'no singles'
Thursday - July 03, 2003
By Macworld staff
The Red Hot Chili Peppers and MP3 grumblers Metallica are among a group of bands that are reportedly refusing to allow individual sales of their album tracks on Apple’s iTunes online store. The issue is said to be a creative rather than a financial issue. The bands are upset that the distribution of their music lets people cherry-pick good tracks and leave the B-side quality ones behind.
Mark Reiter of Q Prime Management said, "Our artists would rather not contribute to the demise of the Album format". His artists include Metallica, Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Green Day, and Linkin Park.
Apple had no immediate comment on the issue. But this isn’t the first time the delivery system of music has affected the content. Before CDs were introduced albums were typically less than 45 minutes long; now albums tend to fill all available space on a CD, albeit with remixes and bonus tracks.
OT: Gateway article Future branded products
http://news.com.com/2008-1082-1022440.html
Scandinavian Airlines and Connexion by Boeing(SM) Sign Definitive Service Agreement
Leading European Carrier to Help Pioneer Wireless Connectivity in the Cabin
STOCKHOLM, July 2 /PRNewswire/ -- Scandinavian Airlines System (SAS) and Connexion by Boeing, a business unit of Boeing , today announced the signing of a definitive service agreement for equipping the European air carrier's long-haul aircraft with the broadband mobile information service.
Based on the terms of the agreement, 11 SAS long-haul aircraft will be equipped with leading-edge wireless technology that will allow airline passengers to access the Connexion by Boeing service. An undisclosed number of options for expansion of the service onto additional SAS aircraft also are part of the agreement. Service installations will commence in early 2004, while aircraft model types and flight routes will be determined in the months ahead. Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed.
Connexion by Boeing President Scott Carson commended SAS for its leadership in helping to usher in the age of in-flight wireless broadband access in Scandinavia and throughout Europe.
"The future for wireless connectivity in the cabin is now, and SAS has demonstrated its leadership by embracing the technology and the added value that real-time connectivity can bring to its passengers," said Carson. "This agreement is a significant step in the history of aviation, one which helps to further densify the North Atlantic corridor and clearly marks a major transition from complex, hard-wired cabin configurations to the simplicity of wireless networks. The result will be long-term value for airlines and their passengers."
"The Nordic region is one of the world's most IT-dense areas and the ability to communicate easily from the air was high on our passengers' list of priorities," says Jens Willumsen, who is responsible for Market & Product Management at Scandinavian Airlines. "This is why we have been working for a long time to achieve a complete solution that meets our customers' demands. We have long understood the benefits of wireless technology and since it is now making progress, it was an even more natural choice. Scandinavian Airlines was also first in the world to introduce wireless access to its lounges in 1999."
Once an airliner is equipped with the Connexion by Boeing service, SAS passengers will have the ability to use wireless-enabled laptops or personal electronic devices (PEDs) for real-time, high-speed access to the full richness of the Internet including two-way e-mail, virtual private network access and streaming audio and video content, by accessing an open wireless local area network onboard. The evolution of Wi-Fi technology into commercial airliners is expected to help simplify cabin distribution, reduce costs, and eliminate wires associated with traditional hard-wired connections. SAS also is expected to benefit from increased operational efficiencies through weight and power reductions, and reduced aircraft down time for system installation.
Connexion by Boeing continues to gain momentum in the marketplace as it prepares for the introduction of commercial service in early 2004. The Boeing team continues to work the global regulatory process, complete and certify the next-generation antenna and define the satellite and ground-based networks that will help broaden the availability of broadband connectivity in flight.
About Connexion by Boeing
Connexion by Boeing is the mobile information services provider bringing high-speed Internet, data and entertainment connectivity to mobile travelers. The service is currently available today to operators of private and executive aircraft in the U.S. The Boeing business unit recently announced a definitive service agreement with Lufthansa to equip its fleet of long-haul aircraft with the service beginning in early 2004. In addition to a successful service demonstration with British Airways and the service agreement with SAS, Japan Airlines also has announced its intent to install the Connexion by Boeing service on its long-range aircraft. For additional information, visit the Connexion by Boeing web site at http://www.boeing.com/connexion .
SanDisk rides high on popularity of flash memory
DIGITAL-CAMERA BOOM HELPS COMPANY THRIVE
By Jon Fortt
Mercury News
Eli Harari hears the whispers that say the days are numbered for his gadget-memory empire. But he seems more immune to hype than the typical Silicon Valley chief executive. He is not a marketer, he's a physicist.
SanDisk, the Sunnyvale company Harari founded 15 years ago, is doing quite well. Sales were $541 million in 2002, up 48 percent from the year before -- and 2003 is looking even better. The stock price has nearly quadrupled from a year ago. SanDisk makes flash memory -- little chips the size of matchbooks and postage stamps that provide data storage for mobile electronics.
``They decided to hang their hat on the memory-card business before it took off,'' said Jim Handy, director of non-volatile memory services for Semico, a research firm. ``These guys are only in the position that they're in because they have done a lot of research and development.''
Though this tech environment is wary of so-called sure bets, SanDisk seems to be the sure bet almost everyone likes. Harari founded the company based on his patented ideas on how removable flash memory could provide reliable storage, and the company has powered itself on engineering smarts ever since, breaking new ground in flash-memory research and selling patent licenses to competitors. Harari said SanDisk's license revenue is now larger than its research budget -- which means that SanDisk's competitors are paying for its product development.
Many of the digital gadgets on the market today use the removable flash technology that SanDisk pioneered, including high-tech music players, cell phones and digital cameras. This year, SanDisk signed a pact with Sony to be the only outside manufacturer of Sony's Memory Stick Pro flash format.
``SanDisk has the technology that Sony doesn't have,'' said Yumi Fraley, U.S. marketing manager for MemoryStick. ``It's going to speed up our trying to standardize the memory-stick format and expand the market.'' Consumer-electronics manufacturers who want to build Sony's Memory Stick format into their products can now deal with SanDisk, rather than risk sharing too much information with Sony.
Digital-camera boom
Skyrocketing sales of digital cameras mean big business for SanDisk -- the cameras need flash memory. Industry estimates for digital camera sales this year have shot up from $35 billion to $50 billion. Consumers like them because they're convenient and don't need film.
Critics can find chinks in SanDisk's armor. The company is a one-trick pony -- it does nothing but flash memory -- and these days flash has a lot of critics. Some engineers say flash memory is not fast enough to handle futuristic tasks like streaming video into a cell phone. Others point out that small hard drives from companies such as Toshiba, Hitachi and Cornice threaten to take the place of flash memory in MP3 players and high-end digital cameras.
There is real-world evidence that flash doesn't own the portable-storage world. Apple Computer's iPod, the coolest music gadget of the moment, uses a small hard drive instead of flash to hold from 15 gigabytes to 30 gigabytes of music. Apple marketing chief Phil Schiller told the Mercury News the company has no plans to use flash memory in music players because the price and size of hard drives keeps dropping.
Harari does not claim that flash memory is invincible. He says it is just the best technology available. He said SanDisk is on the lookout for the mind-blowing technology that will one day beat flash at the portable electronics game, so that the company can buy it and build the future. But nothing so far has impressed him -- and that tells him flash is secure for four or five more years.
``We are not wedded to flash,'' Harari said. ``But we do not see a technology that can replace it from a cost perspective. So long as flash can move at the rate that it is now, it does not have a competitor that can displace it.''
Harari is not worried that Apple's product plans do not include flash memory. He said that in a few months, economics will tempt Apple to reconsider. ``The disk-drive iPod-like device is going to have a difficult time competing with flash,'' Harari said. ``Within two years, you will be able to buy a 512-megabyte flash device for less than $100.''
Flash costs less
And there, he said, is the advantage of flash. His customers argue with him over whether they will buy flash chips for $6 or $6.50, he said, and even the cheapest hard-drive technologies start at nearly 10 times that. The capacity of SanDisk's flash memory chips steadily expands with Moore's Law, which says that every year or so you'll get twice the storage for your money.
Other companies are still hard at work to unseat flash. One of the latest efforts, Magnetic Random Access Memory, combines characteristics of a memory chip and a hard drive. In MRAM, the chip creates tiny magnetic fields that the computer reads as a ``1'' or a ``0.'' Proponents say that this type of storage could be faster than flash, and possibly smaller. IBM and Infineon Technologies are working together on an MRAM chip, but so far the capacity of prototypes is just 128K.
``I have been around the industry long enough that I have a very jaded view of new technology and its ability to displace plain old silicon,'' said Handy at Semico. ``So many companies have tried mixing materials with silicon and they have not been able to get anywhere with it.''
IDC analyst David Reinsel agreed, saying that hard drives would continue to do well in devices where either size and mobility were less important, or tasks like high-quality video playback were central.
``Flash is a pretty safe bet,'' Reinsel said. ``It's only going to be the really high-capacity applications that are going to be a secure area for hard drives.''
Anyone mention music site is being closed? eom
Made Music Industry News Network
http://www.mi2n.com/press.php3?press_nb=53891
How Apple Spells Future: i-P-O-D
JULY 2, 2003
BYTE OF THE APPLE
By Charles Haddad
How Apple Spells Future: i-P-O-D
The slender digital-music player will drive tomorrow's growth. Just watch when the Windows version comes out
I don't care how fast the new Power Mac G5 is -- or isn't (if you believe the critics). Apple's future doesn't ride on the speed of its Macs. In fact, Apple's future doesn't ride with Macs at all anymore. No, I haven't been off in the desert downing peyote (although I did retreat from the weekly fray of writing this column for the past six months). What I saw from my sideline perch is that the Mac's day has come and gone.
Oh calm down. I'm not saying the Mac isn't a great computer and won't keep improving, if only incrementally. But it'll no longer set the computing world on fire. Nor will the Mac ever represent more than 3% to 5% of all PC sales. And it certainly won't drive growth for Apple.
What I am saying is that Apple is at one of the most important turning points in its history. It stands at the threshold of crossing over from cult favorite to household name, especially if that household has a teenager.
BACON SAVER. Apple is making this crossing on the slender back of its little iPod. This portable digital-music player is at the cusp of doing for music what the original Apple did for computing in the late 1970s: setting the standard as the mass market for these players starts taking off.
The iPod has certainly saved Apple's bacon this year. While Mac sales have remained flat, the music player's have soared. Jobs & Co. sold 110,000 of its sleekly remodeled iPod in the first week after its January introduction. And it remains hot, with Apple's store in Manhattan's SOHO district, for instance, selling a reported 100 iPods a day. Last year the iPod already represented 51% of the digital-player market, according to International Data Corp.
You ain't seen nothing yet. So far, Apple has largely sold iPods to Mac users, who represent a tiny portion of the market. Now, it's preparing to release, probably by yearend, a Windows version of both the iPod and its iTunes software for managing digital music.
THE RIGHT TIME. Skeptics might scoff. After all, Apple has tried repeatedly to reach a wider audience, first with the Newton handheld and then with the Pippin game console, both of which bombed in the early 1990s. And, of course, there was Apple's half-hearted attempt to make the iPod Windows-compatible, licensing MusicMatch software to download songs. But users condemned MusicMatch as poorly designed and hard to use.
This time is different, I'm convinced. In producing a Windows version of iTunes, Apple is ensuring that iPods will work as well with PCs as with Macs. That means Windows iPods will be able to tap into Apple's wildly successful online music site (see BW Online, 5/21/03, "Will This Be the Summer of Mac?").
This winning combination will make the iPod Apple's first successful product not tethered to the Mac, and it comes at just the right moment, not light years ahead of demand as was the Newton. Nor like the Pippin, arriving long after Nintendo and Sega had locked up the market for game consoles.
TIRED DEBATE. The idea of downloading music and playing it on portable devices is now well established, especially with young people. In introducing the easiest-to-use and most stylish player, Apple is asserting itself as a best of breed. The iPod is platform-indifferent, usable by anyone, making the Mac vs. PC debate dated and irrelevant.
The payoff will be big -- but not where you might think. While Apple's potential market for its online music store will grow seven-fold with the addition of Windows users, margins are too low with content and software to add much to the bottom line, says Charles R. Wolf, a computer analyst at Needham & Co.
As it always has, Apple will make its killing in the hardware. Wolf estimates that, even without the addition of Window users, iPod sales will swell to 975,000 units this year, giving Apple 54% of the market. And, when the Windows version is available, sales will jump even higher to 1.25 million, or equivalent to the sales of some Macs. With that kind of growth Macs will become a nice little side business -- perhaps even a giveaway someday to lure eager iPod buyers.
Let's face it. The Wintel duopoly has won the battle for PCs, but they can have it, since PCs have by and large become standardized, safe and boring. Not so with portable digital-music players. With the iPod, Apple has truly designed a thrilling new computer with wide appeal. Mac fans, behold the future.
BMG has licensed a new copy protection to protect their music CD's.
2003-07-01 23:15:28 News.com
This time they think they found a way to let someone copy the CD three times, and then someone wouldn't be able to copy it anymore. At least not with the build in software on the CD.
The software lets listeners transfer music from a CD to a computer, but prevents them from then distributing that music to file-sharing services. It also allows music companies to include on the disc extras such as artist information, song lyrics, bonus tracks, video clips and special offers.
Songs on a MediaMax CD-3 can be uploaded only three times, and software built into the disc prevents listeners from copying or sharing the music.
The whole article doesn't explain how the copy protection actually works, but as far as I can tell the protection is actually in the software. So if you have a good CD player that can ignore the data-track you should be able to play it with any cd-player software.
As long as someone can play their CD on a normal CD-player though then you can always use the oldest trick in the world: play it on your stereo, put the output into the input of your computer and record everything that is played on the input line of your computer. There you have a great copy (depending on the quality of your stereo and the quality of your sound card) on your computer to play around with.
You can read the whole article here.
It might make someone wonder though, if there eventually will be a record company providing MP3's on the music CD themselves as a CD-Extra feature, People will be able to copy it to their own computer and play it without having their CD in the CD player. It might actually get people to buy more CD's, people wouldn't have to convert it to an MP3 themselves or download the whole album online to be able to play it on their own computer, It would signify that that record company acknowledges that they can't win the fight with copy protections and instead of fighting with all their might, decided to give more features and service to their real customers and hopefully make them happier.
Personally I highly doubt that providing the MP3's to the buyers of the CD would hurt sales, it might actually increase sales. What do you think?
Possibly bulk of revenue to follow?
"design and development project"
"over $1.2 million in orders and development"
Long term
"provide our customer with a product that could benefit millions of users,"
Ibises International Installs First ``Sky Media Center'' for Lion Airlines
BREA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--July 1, 2003--
Sky Media provides in-flight high speed Internet, video, games, and live TV for the airline industry
Ibises obtained FAA STC certification for aircraft SkyMediaCenter
AMC-3000D system
Angela Holman, President and CEO of Ibises International, Inc. (OTC:IBSN) announced today that Ibises has completed the first installation and ground testing of its SkyMediaCenter AMC-3000D in-flight entertainment system.
The system was installed on a narrow body MD82 aircraft belonging to Indonesia based Lion Airlines. This is the first of seven aircraft to be fitted with the Ibises SkyMediaCenter AMC-3000D system.
In conjunction with the installation of the SkyMediaCenter AMC-3000D on the MD82, Ibises obtained FAA STC certification for that type aircraft. This successful installation and certification of the first SkyMediaCenter AMC-3000D will complete the contract obligation for the first system sold to Lion Airlines and will result in an immediate final payment for that system. The remaining 6 aircraft will be installed, as the aircraft are available. Lion Airlines has advised Ibises that it is considering installation of ten more systems, which have a contract value of approximately $2 million USD.
Ibises International also announced in April two contracts for a total of 10 aircraft valued at $3.5 million. One airline will install in-seat 8.4" LCDs to provide video on demand, audio on demand, games, moving map, shopping (optional), and built-in laptop computer at each first and business class seat. The other will be a simpler system composed of retractable 6.8" LCDs to provide distributed video system for a narrow body aircraft.
Ibises International, Inc. is a supplier of a proprietary in-flight media and security system. The SMC-3000 system provides a cost-effective way for airlines to provide in-flight video, games, Internet access and live TV. The SMC-3000 also provides security features for the passenger cabin via online cameras.
Neuros Digital Audio Computer Announces Availability of Positron for Linux Platform Support and Ogg Vorbis Playback
CHICAGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 30, 2003--
First Digital Audio Device Manufacturer to Collaborate with the Open Source Community; Offers Unlimited Possibilities for True Third-Party Application Integration
Digital Innovations, maker of the revolutionary Neuros(TM) Digital Audio Computer, today announced the availability of Positron, an open source synchronization application that allows consumers to transfer digital audio files from a Linux workstation to the Neuros device. Positron represents the first deliverable from Digital Innovations' ongoing joint project with Xiph.org, founders of the Ogg Vorbis file format. Next month the two companies will unveil the second phase of the venture, offering integrated support for Ogg Vorbis playback on the Neuros. Digital Innovations is the first digital audio device manufacturer to offer these valuable capabilities with direct support from the open source community.
"Adding support for Linux, Ogg Vorbis, and other operating systems and file formats to MP3 players is expected to extend the lifecycle of the MP3 player market as it begins to mature, said Susan Kevorkian, senior analyst at IDC. "This is an important way for manufacturers to appeal to previously untapped segments of the user base."
In providing support for the Linux platform, the Neuros offers a number of clear advantages over other digital audio players that lack such utility. Open source developers have the flexibility to create unlimited third-party applications that other users can use, free of licensing restrictions. Several developers have already begun to build applications that expand Neuros' capabilities beyond its original MP3 file playback functionality. One such application will offer voicemail retrieval capability, while another is designed to randomly select tracks for download from the user's digital music collection based on pre-selected preferences.
Today's announcement further empowers consumers to enjoy their music as they wish. The Ogg Vorbis format's superior sound quality and increased storage capacity gives users the opportunity to collect more music on their device and enhance their listening experience.
"From its initial stages, the digital audio phenomenon was largely a product of creative, independent developers with a vision for technology and devices that speak directly to consumers and their music. We're harnessing that same spirit to further broaden the appeal and function of Neuros," said Joe Born, Chairman and Chief Technology Officer of Digital Innovations. "The initial reaction we've received from the open source community has been overwhelmingly positive, and certainly suggests a considerable demand for Linux and Ogg Vorbis support - we're thrilled to be the first vendor to work with Xiph to integrate it into our device."
"The relationship we've formed with Digital Innovations is quite unique, as it represents the industry's first partnership between a device manufacturer and an open source development group with a common goal," said Jack Moffitt, CEO of Xiph.org. "In developing a direct link from Neuros to the Linux platform, we're giving developers their first opportunity to create interactive applications for a ground-breaking digital audio device. The possibilities are truly endless."
The Neuros Digital Audio Computer couples compact design and device usability with new levels of digital music personalization and compatibility to deliver an unprecedented music experience. The device includes several unique features including MyFi, which provides wireless playback capability through any FM radio, and HiSi, an automatic song identification system.
Current Neuros users can download the Positron application directly from www.neurosaudio.com. Ogg Vorbis playback capability, currently available in beta from the Website and scheduled for final release next month, will be accessible via a software update during the Neuros synchronization process. Both are offered free of charge. For more information about Digital Innovations' work with the open source community, please visit http://open.neurosaudio.com. Neuros can be purchased online directly from the company's Website and from J&R Music & Computer World at www.jr.com, and will be available at select retail outlets including CompUSA beginning in September 2003 .
About Xiph.org
The Xiph.org Foundation is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to designing, implementing, and promoting royalty-free, open standards for Internet multimedia. The first of these standards is the Ogg Vorbis audio codec, providing a royalty-free and superior alternative to MP3. For more information visit http://www.xiph.org.
About Digital Innovations
Digital Innovations, established in 1995, is committed to providing breakthrough, easy-to-use products to enhance consumer use and enjoyment of technology. More than two million of the award-winning SkipDoctor line of CD, DVD and game disc scratch repair devices have been sold worldwide. For additional information on Digital Innovations and an interactive demonstration of the Neuros Digital Audio Computer, please visit www.neurosaudio.com.
We used the IBM Travelstar (now Hitachi) 2.5 HDD in the TREO, the O-1000 uses a 2.5 HDD from Toshiba...........
Archos AV340
JUNE 30, 2003
TECHNOLOGY & YOU
A VCR No Bigger Than a Paperback
The Archos AV340, while flawed, is the first of what promises to be a nifty new generation of entertainment devices
As I settled in for the tedium of a transcontinental flight recently, I knew the onboard movie wasn't going to offer any relief: I had seen it on an earlier trip, and it was lousy. But I was prepared. I had a new Archos AV340 Video Recorder, a unit a bit smaller than a typical paperback book. While the AV340 is not the video player of my dreams, having Orson Welles's Touch of Evil and George Cukor's Born Yesterday to while away the time certainly beat the alternatives.
The AV340 is the first of what promises to be an interesting generation of portable entertainment devices. Made by Archos, a French producer of portable media players, the device can play music or display photos that have been loaded onto its hard drive. Sure, there are other products that handle those tasks better, notably Apple Computer (AAPL )'s iPod for music. But it's the ability to record and play video from just about any source that distinguishes this product.
Priced at $629, the AV340 features a bright, crisp, 3.8-in. diagonal screen. Use a book to prop it at a comfortable angle on a tray table, and it actually makes for better viewing than most airplane video systems. The 40-gigabyte hard drive (the 20-GB AV320 costs $60 less) can hold about 40 hours of video or thousands of songs and pictures in whatever combination you choose. In video mode, the battery lasts about 3.5 hours, enough for two feature films if they're on the short side. (A replaceable battery would be a welcome addition on long plane rides.)
Beyond battery life, the player has some major flaws. Poor design choices make it a lot harder to use than it should be. A bigger problem is that the lack of prerecorded digital content that can be downloaded directly to the player makes loading the video you want to see a considerable chore.
First, the design: The user interface has been a weak point of Archos' music players, and the AV340 improves the situation only a bit. The player is controlled by a mini-joystick, plus five buttons -- which are distinguished only by their shape -- down the right side of the unit. The top button turns the power on and selects menu choices. The second button turns it off or goes back to the previous screen. The function of the three remaining buttons depends on where you are in the menus, but it is hard to associate the vertical row of buttons with the horizontal row of labels across the bottom of the screen that list their functions. A bit of reengineering could vastly improve usability.
The content problem is much harder to fix. To get my movies into the player, I first recorded them off cable with a Replay TV digital video recorder. Then I transferred the recording by clipping an adapter to the AV340, hooking up the cables, and setting the Replay to play the movie while the Archos recorded it. A similar arrangement would work with a DVD player, a VCR, or some digital cable set-top boxes. In addition to being a great deal of bother, this method records only in real time: Transferring a two-hour movie takes two hours.
If you have videos on a PC or a Macintosh in the compressed DivX format, or digital video that you can convert to DivX, you can load them directly into the player using a USB cable. Archos supplies the software, but the conversion process is a bit cumbersome. The bigger problem, however, is that only a few obscure films are legitimately available in DivX. (There are plenty of pirated films on the Internet, but downloading them is simple thievery.) I believe you should be able to convert a film from a prerecorded DVD you own to a format you can watch on a portable player. But doing that by any means other than simply recording by plugging into a standard DVD player and showing the movie is both difficult and illegal.
Hollywood shouldn't have too much to fear from the AV340. Although you can use it as a player for a TV, the compressed movies look good on the small display but lose a lot of quality when shown on a bigger screen. And Archos says it is prepared to support digital-rights management systems, such as Windows Media, for the protection of legal downloads.
I hope that in the not-too-distant future you'll be able to take something like the AV340 to a kiosk in a mall or airport and quickly load it up with content you buy or rent. This will be a win both for content owners and for consumers. Until the content problem is solved, though, this promising class of products probably won't be much more than techie playthings.
By Stephen H. Wildstrom
24% No Big deal? Need any money? Glad to loan you some LOL
24% interest to directors?
Guido on the street corner would have given money at a lower rate. Directors shafting us. With "friends" like that who needs loan sharks.......LOL
Creative Technology has announced its newest version of portable MP3 players – the Creative Digital MP3 Player LX200 and LX100.
Creative Technology has announced its newest version of portable MP3 players – the Creative Digital MP3 Player LX200 and LX100. The LX200 comes with a built-in memory of 256MB and has an estimated street price of US$169 ($309). The LX100 is priced at US$119 ($239), and comes with a built-in memory of 128MB. Both models are slated for shipment this month in Asia through Creative's extensive retail network.
Creative Digital MP3 Player allows drag and drop of music and data files between PC and Creative Digital MP3 Player without the need of drivers and special software, and plays skip-free MP3 and WMA music anywhere. As a removable storage device, it is recognised just like a removable solid-state hard disk when connected to a USB port.
Weighing in at 51 grams and 17.5mm thin, Creative Digital MP3 Players also come with FM radio and FM/voice recording capabilities. They are powered by rechargeable built-in Li-Ion battery, which can keep the players going for up to 10 hours of playtime.
For more information about Creative Digital MP3 Player LX200 and Creative Digital MP3 Player LX100, visit http://www.asia.creative.com.
First Full-Color Portable High-Quality Digital Video Player to Market at Under $100
Father of MP3 Player Nathan M. Schulhof Named President and Chief Executive Officer of HandHeld Entertainment
Schulhof Joins Executive Team Comprised of Several Industry Leaders in Effort to Bring First Full-Color Portable High-Quality Digital Video Player to Market at Under $100
SAN FRANCISCO, June 26 /PRNewswire/ -- HandHeld Entertainment today announced it has hired Nathan M. Schulhof as president and chief executive officer. Schulhof is credited as the inventor of the MP3 player and holds several U.S. patents.
"Nathan Schulhof is uniquely qualified to lead HandHeld Entertainment to the forefront of the portable electronic entertainment industry," said Geoffrey Mulligan, 22-year veteran of the software entertainment industry and chairman of the board of HandHeld Entertainment. "He is a technology visionary and has demonstrated time and again that he knows what it takes to
make a business truly profitable. Under his leadership, HandHeld
Entertainment is now positioned to become not just a successful company but also an industry leader."
Schulhof's credentials include more than 35 years as a serial
entrepreneur. Prior to joining HandHeld Entertainment, he headed numerous technology and consulting businesses. As co-founder of Information Highway Media Corp. in the early 1990s (later renamed Audio Highway and then audiohighway.com), Schulhof lead the organization in introducing the Listen Up
Player at the January 1997 Consumer Electronics Show, where it won an Innovations award and later garnered the People's Choice award from the Upside Magazine/David Coursey Internet Showcase conference in 1998. He also took audiohighway.com public on the Nasdaq Stock Market in 1998.
Additionally, Schulhof co-founded TestDrive Co., a pioneer in the
distribution of encrypted software on CD-ROMs, a company that was acquired 14 months after its creation by R.R. Donnelley & Sons Co., and he served as CEO of Silicon Valley Systems, as well as Jasmine Systems. He also ran an air charter service in the 1970s. More recently, he was a founding partner of GoldPine Partners, a consulting and investment firm that focuses on providing technology and biotechnology companies with services in conducting mergers and acquisitions, forming strategic partnerships and more.
"HandHeld Entertainment will ship this Christmas season something the consumer electronics market that has never been seen before -- a high-quality portable video player priced at under $100, a price that will make it affordable to nearly everyone," Schulhof said. "I am very pleased to be involved with this company, and I believe very strongly that what we have here will open a new chapter in the history of portable electronic entertainment."
Schulhof is joined at HandHeld by Carl Page as chief technical officer, Eric Hamilton as principal scientist and Garrett Cecchini as executive vice president and general counsel.
Prior to co-founding HandHeld Entertainment, Page was a co-founder of eGroups (later acquired by Yahoo! as Yahoo! Groups) and was one of the founding shareholders of Google. Hamilton is generally credited with being one of the top compression scientists in the world, having chaired the International JPEG Committee for three years. Prior to co-founding HandHeld Entertainment, Cecchini was a founding shareholder in three successful tech start-ups, as well as a practicing lawyer for 23 years.
"Not only has the development team done an incredible job of creating very powerful technologies that I believe will help HandHeld dominate the personal video player marketplace, but the team that's been assembled is amazing," Schulhof said. "I'm talking about expertise that ranges from one of the co-founding shareholders of Google to the former chairman of the International JPEG Committee and beyond. And in each instance, these market leaders personally invested in the company, which made it even easier for me to accept this position."
About HandHeld Entertainment
HandHeld Entertainment was formally created in February 2003 in order to fill the gap in the portable electronic entertainment industry left open by the absence of affordable full-color handheld digital audio/video players.
Lead by an experienced team of seasoned professionals, HandHeld Electronics is on track to become the foremost provider of digital audio/video media content and the hardware necessary to view it.
Update for iPods apple.com hotnews(LOL)
iPod Software Update 2.0.1 for iPods with a dock connector provides better support for Asian languages, enhanced On-The-Go playlist, improved playback and other fixes. Windows users get USB 2.0 synchronization and better performance plus support for Audible.com and multiple iPods on one computer. [Jun 20]
http://www.apple.com/hotnews/
http://www.apple.com/ipod/download/
http://www.apple.com/ipod/download/ipodsoftwareupdate13.html
So Long, MP3; Hello, PVP
By Bill Howard
June 25, 2003
The MP3 player market is thoroughly fleshed out, even if many of the players are still somewhat clunky: Try to name all the insanely great players besides the iPod. It's time to declare victory for the iPod and move on to the next big thing in personal entertainment. That may well be the personal video player (PVP), which adds a color LCD to the hard drive MP3 player concept for video as well as audio playback. If you're in the market for a hard drive–based personal audio player, consider an audio/video player.
Several personal video players are reaching the market this year—nearly a dozen, if you broaden the definition to include Palm OS PDAs and Pocket PCs with color screens. The two most intriguing mainstream personal video players I've seen so far are the Archos Video AV 320 and the Thomson RD2780 RCA Lyra Audio/Video Jukebox. There's also the SmartDisk FlashTrax, which has fewer recording options than the others. And by year's end, you may see PVPs based on an Intel reference design using Microsoft Windows CE.
A typical PVP costs around $500 and has a 3- to 4-inch color display capable of 320-by-240 resolution, a 20GB to 40GB hard drive, the ability to record audio (MP3 and maybe WMA) and video (MPEG-4), and 4 hours of battery life. It also has a USB 2.0 interface and, when connected, appears to your PC or notebook as a hard drive, meaning you'll have an outside chance of bluffing your boss that this is the road-warrior backup hard drive you really need. (An on-the-ball boss will stamp the request "rejected" and point you instead in the direction of a 120GB Maxtor Personal Storage 3000LE USB 2.0 drive at half the price.)
A PVP may also have a CompactFlash slot (with adapters for Secure Digital and Memory Stick formats) to lure photographers on location or vacation who need to off-load photos from their memory cards. A PVP is a bit big to take jogging, but not impossible; it weighs just under a pound and fits in an overcoat pocket. You wouldn't want to clip it to a belt unless the belt normally can support a personal sidearm and a canteen.
How would you use it? Imagine watching your own videos for an entire Los Angeles–to–London flight, or keeping the backseat rats occupied on the Pittsburgh-to-Charleston vacation drive. The $500 price compares very favorably with that of a backseat DVD entertainment system, even if you were to add an outboard LCD screen for a second passenger.
With 20GB of storage space, you could load 10 movies, 20 "American Idol" episodes, 350 music CDs, or every still digital picture you have ever taken. Besides doing USB transfers of multimedia files from your PC, you can record video by connecting your television, DVD player, or VCR line-out jack to the PVP's line-in jack and record to MPEG-4—in real time, unfortunately. The copy protection on a DVD could possibly interfere with even an analog video signal, though in initial tests with the Archos unit, DVD videos recorded properly. And then there's the issue of fixed internal 4-hour batteries on 10-hour flights.
You'll see some differences among PVPs. The Archos model has an optional clip-on video camera module, and its encoders are available as external add-ons. The Thomson unit integrates the encoder and a CF slot. The SmartDisk product uses a PC for encoding.
You could consider the 4-ounce Panasonic SV-AV30 a PVP (it's also a still/video camera), with SD cards now at 1GB and expanding to 4GB next year. The same goes for PDAs with big memory cards.
Pure audio players are moving ahead as well. But I'm surprised that no company has yet challenged the iPod with a hard drive audio player that is small and stylish and undercuts Apple's price by 25 percent. Competitors are wedded to bricklike 2.5-inch drives and painfully inadequate interfaces. Duplicating the iPod isn't rocket science—no more than realizing that people want 99-cent, no-strings- attached downloads of online music, but only Apple offers those (available only through iTunes, at the iTunes Music Store, www.apple.com/music).,
It remains to be seen which product will become the iPod of personal video players. The first steps look promising to me.
Discuss this article in the forums.
Too Much Music?
By Mark Ireton, Cirrus Logic -- document.write(get_publication('Electronic News'));Electronic News, 6/24/2003
you ever try to memorize all the contents of an “Album” with 450 tracks? Did you ever press the next button 350 times because you listened to track 20, and then decided that you wanted to listen to track 370 next? Ouch!
A single CD can contain over 450 WMA tracks, for a hard drive player with a 20GB drive this increases to over 13,000 tracks! For MP3/WMA CD players to be successful it is vital that a music lover can conveniently locate the music that he wants.
Typical CD players have a simple segmented LCD display that shows only the current track number. In many 1st generation CD-MP3 players this display format was continued, leading to many disappointing 1st generation products. This is somewhat surprising given the almost ubiquitous use of character displays on solid state MP3 players, but was driven by both cost, and the desire to continue use of the same micro-controllers and user interface software from CD players.
Conveniently accessing the more than 450 tracks that can be stored on a single CD requires the use of a text based UI that can represent both the organization of the music and the specifics for each particular track. The simplistic 1st generation text based UIs replicate a PC centric directory/file representation of the music. This is usable, but is far from ideal. Use of a more powerful micro-controller for the MP3 player enables the comprehensive information stored in ID3 and other meta-data tags to be utilized to create an interface where the music lover can brows the available music by Artist, by Album, by Genre, by Composer, etc..
The display module is a critical component in the creation of an easy to use user interface. Displays on consumer music players are often viewed from a distance and readability is dictated by a number of factors. Your display module selection will depend on a matrix of requirements but the following characteristics must be considered.
First off, never forget “fashion”. This is a consumer product, and retail value is often determined as much by “coolness” as it is by player functionality. If you are making a portable music player, expect your customers to wear it. Display brightness and contrast determine the readability of the display from a distance and the viewing angle dictates the ease with which the display can be read from various points within a room. Just as important is the selection of either a color or a mono display as this has a direct impact on the design of the visual interface.
The implications of supporting hundreds, or thousands, of tracks on a portable music player extend well beyond the selection of an appropriate display.
Organizing the music data in real time to enable the music lover to browse the content without irritating delays requires the considerable processing power that can be provided by a 90+MHz 32-bit RISC microprocessor. Sophisticated firmware and large content database require access to extensive system memory that can be provided at low cost by the SDRAM that is included in an MP3-CD system to support Electronic Shock Protection (ESP).
The primary user interface requirement is “The UI should make selection of the music I want to hear, easy and quick.” A CD-MP3 player is an entertainment system. The UI should add to the entertainment experience, should make listening to the music more exciting – more interesting.
In the future, the UI must support three modes of listening: passive, active, and explorative. Passive listening is where the music lover is primarily doing something else, and the music is in the background. Passive listening is supported by selecting “categories” of music; an Artist, and Album, a Genre and enabling random, repeat, etc. playback.
During active listening, the music lover is actively browsing the music on the player and selecting tracks. A “playing now” playlist supports this activity. Selected tracks are appended to the playing-now playlist and the player navigate functions enable movement among the selected tracks.
“Explorative listening” is an entirely new mode of listening to music that has not been possible with past generations of music players. During explorative listening the music lover is accessing on-line information about the artist, album etc while listening to the music. As the music lover browses this information, the music system is recommending music tracks to listen to, and if selected appending them to the now playing playlist. Entertainment is key. Listening to music is entertainment, and explorative listening adds to that entertainment experience.
The “language” of a user interface evolves over time as successful paradigms become universally adopted. For compressed audio music players we are still fortunately far from this Nirvana. This creates an opportunity. Create a product and get the UI right and you have the potential for a market dominating music player.
Author Information
Based at Cirrus Logic's headquarters in Austin, Texas, Dr. Mark Ireton holds a Ph.D. in digital signal processing for speech compression and has been active in the field of compressed digital audio for over 17 years. Dr. Ireton can be reach at mark.ireton@cirrus.com
Digital music for adults
MP3s have appealed mostly to people with more time than money -- until now.
June 24, 2003: 10:32 AM EDT
By Pat Regnier, Money Magazine
NEW YORK (Money Magazine) - On a rainy afternoon in April, I dropped into the record store -- excuse me, CD store -- across the street from my office in Manhattan.
I didn't buy anything. I just wanted to remind myself one more time of what a CD store looks like, before they go the way of soda fountains and men's hat shops.
This fit of future-forward nostalgia was brought on by the launch that morning of Apple's new iTunes 4 with Music Store, an online service that lets you download songs for just 99 cents each and whole albums for $10.
Music Store will have a limited audience at first -- you need a Mac running the OS X system to use it -- but it's pretty clear now that the music industry is ready to give up on the CD.
Disembodied digital music has gone mainstream. For those of us old enough to still use terms like "record store" (I'm all of 31), this is going to take some getting used to.
No time for child's play
Up to now, the digital music boom has been driven largely by the tastes of teenagers. Most grown-ups just don't have the time to skulk around online looking for "free" pirated music files with software like Kazaa and LimeWire. (At least some of us still have scruples about stealing.)
What's more, we don't want to listen to our music only on PC speakers or Walkman-like portable MP3 players; many of us have invested over the years in decent stereo systems.
We've also put a lot of money into our CD collections, and I for one am reluctant to abandon my CDs for anything that doesn't sound as good, or close to it. But the dirty secret about MP3s, the most popular new format, is that they can sound terrible -- particularly if you listen to jazz or classical or, really, anything more musically sophisticated than Britney Spears.
Still, going virtual is worth it. Over the past couple of months, I've tried out more than a dozen new digital music devices. I'm convinced that this new technology is something adults can love.
Apple's deservedly popular iPod is just the beginning. With a new breed of surprisingly inexpensive stereo components called digital audio receivers, you can now access your entire music collection anywhere in your house.
You'll even find that you listen to music in new ways. Recently the Talking Heads' sublime "Heaven" popped up on my jukebox in random play mode; I'd owned the CD for years but hadn't played it much and never noticed this amazing song. That kind of discovery happens all the time now that my music collection has been liberated from shiny plastic disks.
Ready to join the revolution? Here's what you need to know.
How MP3s Work
Digital music is nothing new, of course; all that's on a CD is a bunch of ones and zeros. What made the MP3 format so revolutionary was size. A typical pop song on a CD adds up to 30 to 40 megabytes of data -- enough to fill about 50 of those old floppy disks we used to use -- whereas an MP3 of the same music can be squeezed down to less than 4MB. That compact size is what makes it so easy to swap music over the Internet, legally or otherwise.
But the MP3 format also makes it easier to manage and listen to the music you already own on CD. Just download one of the popular free jukebox programs available on the Internet, such as MusicMatch for PCs or iTunes 4 for Macs (www.apple.com/itunes for OS X users; everyone else should look for iTunes 2, at www .download.com). These programs can read almost any CD and convert it to an MP3 in under 10 minutes.
Once you've put the songs on your computer's hard drive -- a newish computer should have room for hundreds of CDs worth of MP3s -- the software will play back your music in any order you choose and let you construct playlists with a few mouse clicks. You can also use the programs to make CDs or transfer music to a portable player.
Avoiding "swirl"
No MP3 is exactly CD quality. To convert a CD to an MP3, the encoding software throws away sound data that the human ear supposedly can't hear. When this is done well, an audiophile might detect only the loss of ineffable qualities like "ambience" and "shimmer." Badly done MP3s, which make up much of what's on the pirate networks, sound muddy and thin. In some cases, you'll detect a soft but annoying sound I can only describe as swirly.
To create the best-sounding music files, shrink as little as possible. Most jukebox programs let you encode at a variety of bit rates -- the more bits, the better. I consider 128Kbps the bare minimum for music on MP3, and at 224Kbps my ears (admittedly damaged by my years playing bass in a high school garage band) can't tell the difference between an MP3 and a CD.
Trouble is, at 224Kbps my 3,000 or so MP3 files wouldn't all fit on my portable player, so I've compromised at 192Kbps. My suggestion: Spend a little time comparing different encoding rates with your own ears, using good headphones.
MP3s aren't forever
Both Apple and Microsoft already are pushing alternative encoding formats, which supposedly sound better than MP3s while taking up less memory. Microsoft's own WMA format already works with many MP3 players but not with the iPod.
Now, Apple's Music Store has complicated things further: Its 99 cent songs are in yet another format called AAC. So if Music Store takes off and sets the standard for online music, will MP3s become as obsolete as Betamax tapes?
Probably not. The latest iPods still play MP3s, after all, and there's no reason why any future devices couldn't work with all kinds of formats. Whether the current crop of non-iPod MP3 devices could ever be upgraded to read Music Store files is a murkier question because of Apple's copy-protection measures.
If you have a Mac and one of these other players and can't wait to try Music Store, there are some quick-and-dirty workarounds. I recently copied my Music Store purchases onto a CD and then encoded that CD into MP3. The results sounded fine. My guess is that soon either Apple will open Music Store to other players, or a competing service will pop up to serve the rest of us.
The giant digital jukebox
The most popular way to listen to MP3s is on portable players, and the iPod ($299 to $499) is still the best-designed product in this category, even forgetting Music Store. The new version weighs about six ounces and can store enough music to play without repeats for up to three weeks.
You can get players from companies like Creative and Archos for $100 to $200 less than the iPod with the same or greater disk space, but they'll be heavier in your hand and their on-screen interface for finding and playing songs won't be as elegant -- a problem when you've stored, say, a couple thousand songs.
Your portable player can also function as a stereo component. For less than $10, you can buy a cable from Radio Shack, with two stereo RCA plugs at one end and a headphone plug on the other, and run a player through any stereo with a spare input. The new iPods even feature a docking station with a proper "line out" plug to make this even easier.
I haven't found this solution satisfying. For a start, it looks messy to have all those extra wires hanging over the stereo rack. More practically, my not-especially-huge music collection would fill up two-thirds of the memory on even the most expensive iPod, leaving little room to add more over the years.
What I really want is a giant digital home jukebox. A few companies have tried selling stereo components or shelf systems with huge hard drives built in. Sounds like a great idea, but I tried several and found them either too expensive or too hard to use, and often both.
Bring on the DARs
Here's a better way: Instead of trying to get your stereo to act like a computer, connect your stereo system to the computer you already own. If you have a newer machine, you probably have 30 or 40 gigabytes to spare on your hard drive right now, and adding even more storage capacity to a PC is cheap.
This doesn't mean you have to sit at your computer to fire up the music. A digital audio receiver, or DAR, can sit right on your stereo shelf or in your bedroom or anywhere else you want to listen.
The devices, which can be packaged as components or all-in-one stereo systems, connect directly to your home network, usually through an Ethernet port. (Some also come Wi-Fi ready.) They don't store any music; instead, they go to the network to find and control the music on your computer's hard drive.
DARs turn your computer into an entertainment hub, and you can link several DARs around the house to the same computer
Connecting a DAR to a network can be tricky, but once I got it, most of these devices were as simple and intuitive to use as a CD player.
Among the well-known electronics brands, Onkyo and Philips offer stereo minisystems with built-in DARs for under $400. I also particularly liked Slim Device's $229 SLIMP3, a small device with an incredibly sharp and easy-to-read menu screen for displaying song, artist and album names.
But the DAR that's still miles ahead of the competition is the Turtle Beach AudioTron ($300 to $350), which looks like a high-end stereo component. The array of buttons is simple -- play, pause, fast-forward and so on. And like the engineers at Apple (and almost no one else), Turtle Beach knows that when you're scanning thousands of song titles, spinning a wheel is just better than pushing buttons.
The AudioTron can run on both PCs and Mac OS X, though the company doesn't provide Mac support. It can catalogue some 30,000 songs, and it plays MP3 and WMA files, as well as uncompressed, true-CD-quality files for listeners with delicate ears and big hard drives.
What more could a grown-up music fanatic ask for