Technology360

What Makes Satellite Radio So Great Anyway?

... What satellite radio does that makes its programming so much better is offering niche programming channels that allow for the best of a certain genre or subgenre. For decades, traditional radio research said that listeners wanted “variety.” However, a famous oldies format program director, Steve Rivers, has proven on many major market Infinity radio stations that the best ratings for an oldies format come from playing a very limited playlist. By Rivers’ standards, that list can be as selective as 300 or fewer songs. Ironically, it is satellite radio that is best suited to exploit Rivers’ example. A dedicated reggae station on XM can play Bob Marley every hour and be more successful than a more varied competitor. A vocals and standards station on Sirius can play Frank Sinatra every 30 minutes and never get a complaint. The reason for this is the diversity of the nature of the channels on satellite vs. radio. Yet on those channels, satellite radio (in many cases) keeps the playlists tight, thus making the stations sound better. ... Link: Audio Video Revolution.

File-Sharing Tool Grows

BitTorrent, the current hot program for sharing files on the Internet, combines the computing power of several file sharers to ease the transfer of large files -- such as movies. Is it the next phase in the arms race between the entertainment industry and file sharers, or the future of legal distribution? Hear Joel Rose of member station WHYY.  Link: NPR All Things Considered.

Is 'Fair Use' in Peril?

The far-reaching Intellectual Property Protection Act would deny consumers many of the freedoms they take for granted. ¶ Do you like fast-forwarding through commercials on a television program you’ve recorded? How much do you like it? Enough to go to jail if you’re caught doing it? If a new copyright and intellectual property omnibus bill sitting on Congress’s desk passes, that may be the choice you'll face. ¶ How can this be possible? Because language that makes fast-forwarding through commercials illegal—no doubt inserted at the behest of lobbyists for the advertising industry—was inserted into a bill that would allow people to fast forward past objectionable sections of a recorded movie (and I bet you already thought that was OK). And that’s but one, albeit scary, scenario that may come to pass if the Intellectual Property Protection Act is enacted into law. Deliberations on this legislation will be one of the tasks for the lame-duck Congress that commenced this week. ... Link: Technology Review.

Got Digital?

... Mayfield [Venture Capital] recently put $4.5 million into AudioFeast, which is using the cash infusion to market its subscription service to the world. The two-year-old startup offers 400 commercial-free radio programs ranging from music to NPR, the Wall Street Journal, and sports-talk radio for $6 to $8 per month. You download the programs you want and then either listen to them on your computer or sync them to your AudioFeast-compatible MP3 player. It's like satellite radio, without the satellites. ... Link: Business 2.0.

TV's Spectrum Showdown

This article presents one view of the transition situation.  There are others.  However, it's a useful recounting of the current policy environment. --Dennis | In a deal originally made in 1996, broadcasters may soon be forced to return airwaves now used to transmit analog signals.  ¶  For nearly a decade, the nation's 1,700 TV stations have been promising to broadcast crystal-clear digital signals to viewers across the country. But somehow, rushing toward that end never seemed to be entirely in their best interest.  ¶  Those promises go back to a deal broadcasters made with the federal government under the 1996 Telecommunications Act and a follow-up congressional bill a year later. Broadcasters received free electronic airwaves -- which are technically owned by the public and controlled by the federal government -- for digital transmissions. In return, they had to give back the airwaves they now use for their old analog broadcasts, which had been doled out over several decades. But they didn't have to return it until 85% of U.S. households receive digital signals or the year 2006, whichever came later. ... BusinessWeek

BusinessWeek Online: Technology Special Report

BusinessWeek has a special five-article report on digital television. Four are consumer electronics related. I'll post separately on the spectrum article. --Dennis Link: BusinessWeek Online: Technology Special Report.

Jake Shapiro on Public Radio Exchange

Jake Shapiro of Public Radio Exchange is giving a lunchtime talk at the [Harvard] Berkman Center about how PRX is making it easier for creators of radio programming to get their stuff found and picked up by non-commercial radio stations. ¶ PRX sits between stations and producers. It's "a web-based service for digital distribution, peer review, and licensing of radio content." You upload content, and others can peer-review it. Then stations can download it and use it. Creators get royalties. PRX is a fair and transparent broker between producers and multiple stations. Jake says the market is ready for it because there's a desire for new voices, because people are concerned about commercial consolidation, and because we're getting used to new distribution paths. ... Link: Joho the Blog (David Weinberger).

New ADSL standards enable broadband television

New standards for digital telephone lines will offer dramatically increased bandwidth that makes broadband television a reality. ...¶... The transition from ADSL to ADSL2 and ADSL2+ will increase the data rates and extend the reach of broadband services over telephone lines. ... Link: informitv.

Current VOD services are rudimentary says report

Video-on-demand services are currently being held up by thin content, concludes ABI Research in a new report. ...¶... Cable operators, he suggests, should take the video-on-demand model to the next level of customisation in order to reap its full benefits and should aggressively start looking to content aggregators to provide a wider array of choices to their customers. ... Link: informitv.

How-To: BroadCatching using RSS BitTorrent to automatically download TV shows

... For this week’s How-To we’re going to show you how you can use RSS and BitTorrent to find and download your favorite shows, automatically, using free software. ... Link: Engadget.

About this, Matt Haughey of PVRblog writes:  "I've often heard this can replace a PVR completely, but if anyone's ever looked around for missed shows online, you can probably agree the quality usually isn't too high and you'll likely have trouble finding what you need unless it's somewhat popular. Still, it's an interesting direction and a few years from now the home recording fans of TV may just fill out the remainder of the TV lineup (and in HDTV no less). I know the networks and movie studios are freaking out over this, so it'll be interesting to see what they do in response to kill this technology."