Wednesday, April 24, 2002
BT no-frills ADSL pricing announced
BT have today said it will sell its direct or no-frills ADSL service for as little as 27 ukp from autumn this year.
Sony murmur about broadband PlayStation
Just in case we were thinking of buying an Xbox for its broadband capabilities, Sony are reminding us that they are planning a late August launch of their online network and the availability of its competitively priced ~$40 network adaptor.
RealNetworks release v9
RealNetworks have updated their video CODEC to version 9. Significantly they are giving the option to play back on a TV screen and a computer monitor. They are also claiming 30% better compression and smoother playback at 56k. I would assume that the smoother play is due to being able to get more data to the viewer - it the 30% better compression.
Tuesday, April 23, 2002
Hawaii to be the first US 3G service
A Maui, Hawaii, USA company is planning to launch the first 3G service in the US. Maui Sky Fibre will offer the $30/month data-only service to the 91k population on the 750 sq. miles island via a PDA -sized modem.
The sales on the Microsoft Xbox have been lower than expected, so they have now downwardly adjusted the sales targets from 4.5m to 6m to 3.5m to 4m). Where they are different from the game console makers is in the fact broadband and a hard drive are included with the unit, giving them a natural advantage in broadband, multi-user games.
Sunday, April 21, 2002
Microsoft to freeze their video format
Microsoft is planning to freeze the format of their Video files in an attempt give them a chance of becoming as the de facto standard, an approach that has previously been successful for them with the Audio format.
CinemaNow's content to be available to Duke uni students
An interesting trial is going to be starting soon, making CinemaNow's content available to students at Duke university using their broadband network. I hope/assume the US universities have better bandwidth available to them than their UK cousins, which are normally really slow.
Thursday, April 18, 2002
SonicBlue to combine PVR and DVD
The constantly innovative SonicBlue have been talking about combining PVR and DVD players in the same unit for only about an extra $75 on top of one of the individual box price by xmas 2003. Their CTO also predicted that in two years they will have one terabyte of storage in their PVR - giving around 3,000 of programming.
Xbox price drop in the UK
I was briefly at a MS PocketPC social event in London last night and MS had taken the opportunity of making a large numbers of Xboxes available (around 30-40). It's no shock that the attendees were keen to play, they must be the perfect market, but they were incredibly popular. So why isn't Xbox selling in the numbers anticipated - the price maybe?Microsoft UK have announced they're taking 1/3 off the price of an Xbox from 26th April, dropping the price to £199. The PR quote is that they are "determined to not make price an issue" - translation - people think it's too expensive and the GameCube is going to be coming out at the beginning of May in the low hundreds. The current three-way battle should be interesting to watch over the coming months.
VOD being sold as anti-piracy tool
A piece about how the VOD providers are marketing their products to studios as a way of protecting their content, by making it harder to copy that DVD and as a way for the studios to stop being dictated to by Blockbusters.
RealOne accounts for 49% of their revenue
Real's RealOne monthly subscription service for audio and video content now has 600k paying members with consumer content now accounts for 49% of their total revenues.
Oftel head commits to broadband
In a speech given by David Edmunds (Head of UK regulator Oftel) yesterday he outlined Oftel's commitment of broadband through a strategy of
keeping the Public's aware of broadband, maintaining competition, controlling anti-competitive practises and regulatory guidance on widely available access.
Will current HDTV's work in the future?
There have been rumours buzzing around about the possibility of many of the $5-10k HDTV set that have been sold in the US won't be able to display HDTV by the time it's actually publicly launched. A news item appears to confirm the rumour. Discussions between the Hollywood studios and equipment manufacturers has lead to the creation of the High Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI). HDMI will be the interface between the receiving set top box and the screen/monitor, enabling the content to remain encrypted up to the point it is displayed. By unscrambling at the point it is actually viewed, the studios hope to reduce unauthorised copying of films.
Wednesday, April 17, 2002
First year of Emmy for Interactive TV
This year will be the first time there will be an Emmy for Interactive TV. The scope is broad, covering on TV-screen graphics as well as related Web sites and is being seen as a first step in full recognition. Interestingly it will be given during the engineering awards presentation and will be a plaque, not a statuette. The article also refers to the 1950s TV show "Winky Dink and You" as being the first interactive TV show.
Former Scottish Telecom CEO makes DSL move
The former CEO of Scottish Telecom has arranged funding for a new DSL supply company in the UK. He asserts that accessUK has sufficient funding to convert and run over 1,000 exchanges and will be initially targeting business customers. The UK will then have three companies capable of doing this country-wide, the others being Bulldog Communications and BT.
NTL debt default is larger than Enron
UK cable company NTL have defaulted on their debt, making it the World's largest default, even larger than Enron.
Fortunately for 3.5m NTL UK customers, control of the UK company will pass to the bondholders rather than just shutting down. Less fortunate are the shareholder - the shares, have lost more than 99 percent of their value in the past year, yesterday closed at 9.4 cents.
Ireland aims for widespread broadband by 2005
Ireland is hoping to have widespread broadband by 2005 and supply as many public services over these as possible.
Film world tries to fashion digital future
There has been a lot of worried people in the film world since Napster became mainstream. They're paranoid about people stealing movies, in the same way that they were with VHS, but as history has shown, VHS was a boon for them, not a threat but that doesn't stop them discussing how to control consumers seeing their content. Through their strong links with government they are trying to fashion the future in their image. I can half understand why they take this approach, it being better for them to be in an all powerful position, but this is not only controlling how content is copied but how and when it can be used. I’m sure most consumers feel they should pay for content and not be free to give it away to everyone at no cost. I hope the consumers will start to see the content owners ultra aggressive attitude and start to view them in their true light. After all we’re buying the product, why shouldn't we use it in the way we feel?
Tuesday, April 16, 2002
Freeserve announce ADSL pricing
UK-based ISP Freeserve has today announced the heavily reduced price of £84.99 for installation and modem of its ADSL offering.
Cheaper BT satellite service launched
BT have announced another satellite-delivered high speed Internet service, this time at a significantly cheaper price, because the service is delivery only with requests being made via a normal phone line. End user monthly costs are estimated as £20-30 but installation is £400.
Monday, April 15, 2002
Broadbus RAM approach to VOD
Broadbus's approach to serving video content on-demand is to place content in huge RAM caches which they claim enables them to services many more connections while providing better quality, faster starting delivery. Having looked though the site, their logic appears sound but I haven't heard or see it in action so cannot vouch for practise of the idea.
MS homeworkers ADSL deal with BT
BT has signed a deal with Microsoft UK enabling 1,500 of their workers to access MS network from home via a secure ADSL connection. From experience I know this is something that has a strong appeal to large companies as it give them the potential to significantly reduced their overheads.
Sky to launch broadband access service
A teaser story stating that BSkyB will be launching broadband Internet access via a phone line. No details in the story, but I assume it will be marketing tie-up with BT offering Sky viewers ADSL.
Thursday, April 11, 2002
UK take of ADSL going well
It's encouraging to hear that BT are currently dealing with over 10,000 wholesale orders a week for ADSL. They are also broadband-enabling 100 more exchanges and beefing up the capacity of the 1,000+ current broadband-enabled exchanges. A strange turnaround from their comments and action of six months ago where they were actually blaming the consumer for the failure of broadband take up in the UK.Another surprise announcement from BT was their intention to launch Direct DSL. A service that will be a slightly cheaper service connecting users directly to the Internet, rather than through an ISP, an idea borrowed from Spanish operator, Telefonica. This is going to be very unpopular with UK ISP's and it will be interesting to see if OFTEL blocks it.
MPEG-4 to become the digital video standard?
The digital video distribution market has been crying out for a single format to encode into. When companies want to distribute video on the Internet, they have to be encoded in Real, Microsoft, QuickTime and even DivX to ensure everyone can watch them. This can be a barrier as it puts up the cost substantially, especially if the video pieces are surrounded by Rich Media.
There have been clear moves towards making MPEG-4 the format of preference for video compression in particular by the Internet Streaming Media Alliance. There was a significant rumour at NAB this week that MovieLink, the online film distribution vehicle for Sony Pictures, Paramount, MGM, Warner Bros. and Universal would be using MPEG-4 to distribute its content. MPEG-4 has the advantages of not being owned by a single company so should be compatible across different players and importantly, across platforms (PC, STB, handheld).
On2 have submitted an objection to the US Justice Department claiming MPEGLA, which represent the rights holders of MPEG, are acting outside its current MPEG-2 remit. There is a lot of momentum behind MPEG-4, so it will be an interesting few months.
Wednesday, April 10, 2002
BT announce wireless broadband
BT are planning to launch a broadband wireless access service around the UK, with 400 locations available by June 2003 and an additional 4,000 two years later.
Monday, April 08, 2002
BT see broadband the key to their future
Apparently the BT group see broadband access as they key to its future. They plan to have five million UK customers by 2006. A figure that, out of context, sounds impressive, but when compared to the six and a half million that Korea currently has, less so.
