Wednesday, May 28, 2003
Lufthansa provide broadband on-board
Lufthansa are going to be providing broadband Internet access on-board their planes from 2004. Service will either be via Ethernet or WiFi and will be around $35 for a 7-8 hours flight.As an indication of how long this type of deal takes to come to fruition, I first mentioned this Lufthansa deal in December 2001.
Friday, May 23, 2003
Retailing wireless is currently impractical
With WiFi still being a current buzz, here's a sobering thought. A Sony SVP (Senior Vice President) told me recently that they understood that 60% of all wireless equipment that was bought at retail for home usage was returned. The reason is that it's just too complicated install, even for people with technical skills.Now that's not an economical business for anyone -- not the equipment producers or the retailers -- and not only that but it creating a set of disenchanted easily adopters, who are the very people you need to be evangelising.
Until the use of equipment is as easy as using an FM radio -- place it down, turn it on and listen -- this stuff isn't going to be mass market.
Thursday, May 22, 2003
Oftel - 2 million UK broadband users
Oftel, the UK telecom regulator has announced the UK now has two million broadband subscribers, which is encouraging. Sadly they're currently including connections as slow as 128k in their calculation -- not commonly thought of as broadband. At least the numbers are moving in the right direction and the take-up is accelerating.
Broadband Entertainment News - now back online
Apologies for the recent lack of access to Broadband Entertainment News this week. Register.com failed to inform us that our domain, simonperry.com, was due for renewal. Placed in a position of possibility losing the domain, we were forced to pay them $235 to get the domain back, although they were the ones who had passed it for deletion. It not a very reasonable business practise and we would suggest avoiding them at all costs.
Friday, May 16, 2003
AOL chatting on PS2
AOL and Sony have got together to make content and Instant Messenging available on broadband-enabled Playstation 2's. Suits both parties I would have through, a good boost in publicity for Sony and a catch move by AOL against Microsoft. The "AIM Talk" voice-enabled Instant Messenger service is a trump of Xbox Live's in-game talking.
Thursday, May 15, 2003
2m and counting for Apple iTunes Music Store
When will this stop? Apple have passed two million track sales in 16 days of service. This time they've provided more detail about the sales -- half of the purchases have been as complete albums.
Tuesday, May 13, 2003
TiVo gets busy again
The first product to come out from the TiVo/Toshiba deal, the Toshiba SD-H400, has been announced which combines a PVR and DVD player.They have also used this opportunity to announce their TiVo Basic service. This free, non-subscription service is a cut-down version of the normal TiVo service, that only looks forward three days rather the normal fourteen days and cuts out features such as the ability to auto-record a TV show based on it's actors or director. TiVo's monthly subscription has often been held up as a reason that the public has been hesitant about jumping on to PVR's.
Monday, May 12, 2003
Telewest launch 2Mb service for £50/month
UK Cable provider Telewest launched a 2Mb Internet service today, in addition to their current blueyonder 1/2Mb and 1Mb services. The pricing is very competitive at £50.This comes on the back of the recent news that the UK now has one million broadband cable customers.
Xbox Live US service pricing announced
There's been a lot of speculation over the price that Microsoft will charge for the Xbox Live service after it's all inclusive trial price comes to an end. They've now announced it at just short of $50/year or just short of $6/month. Whether the offering is strong enough to demand that kind of money isn't obvious, but what is clear is that it will face stiff competition from the Sony's zero cost service.
Thursday, May 08, 2003
Niveus Media ONEbox announced
VIA and Niveus have announced a digital lifestyle product, the Niveus Media ONEbox. The 1GHz machine runs Windows XP and is based on VIA mainboard and chippery, providing the functionality you would have imagined,Niveus Media have developed their own software, ONEbox Media Center, to control all functions and have integrated the TitanTV's Electronic Program Guide (EPG), which will mean it will only cover US TV programming.
- Connects to your TV and HiFi
- PVR functions - record and playback TV
- Play DVD's
- Play/rip CD's & MP3's
- Display digital photo's
- Pull content from other machines on your network
- Interfaces for Ethernet, Firewire, USB, serial and parallel ports
- Controllable via a remote control
It has a reasonable, non-PC looking case but doesn't appear to have native support for WiFi and, as its single PCI slot is taken up with an ATI All-In-Wonder VE TV tuner card, it doesn't look can unless it's via USB. The expected price is $999 US and they plan to ship it in June 2003.
There is a growing number of these lounge-ready Media Hub/Digital Lifestyles devices appearing, which is further testament to realisation of media/computer convergence.
Monday, May 05, 2003
1 Million tunes sold at Apple online Music Store
I got to use the Apple Music Store and iTunes 4 on Friday last week and was hugely impressed. Clearly I'm not the only one who's keen on it as Apple has officially announced that they've sold more than one million songs in the first week. Along with this they've had 110,000 new iPod's ordered and retailed 20k in the first weekend.A huge success by any judgement.
Thursday, May 01, 2003
Gymnasts twist to fit a story
The BBC News site has a story about how UK Gymnasts are becoming broadband connected to help their training. This has to be the strangest piece I've seen on the subject so far.
