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The lateset public radio program to be podcast is Moira Gunn's Tech Nation. The impressive ITConversations effort is doing it. The first one features an interview with novelist (Neuromancer) William Gibson. Link: ITConversations.
An Apple iPod or other digital music players can hold anything up to 10,000 songs, which is a lot of space to fill. ¶ But more and more iPod owners are filling that space with audio content created by an unpredictable assortment of producers. ... Link: BBC News.
The average Internet user in the United States spends three hours a day online, with much of that time devoted to work and more than half of it to communications, according to a survey conducted by a group of political scientists. ¶ The survey found that use of the Internet has displaced television watching and a range of other activities. Internet users watch television for one hour and 42 minutes a day, compared with the national average of two hours, said Norman H. Nie, director of the Stanford Institute for the Quantitative Study of Society, a research group that has been exploring the social consequences of the Internet. ¶ "People don't understand that time is hydraulic," he said, meaning that time spent on the Internet is time taken away from other activities. ...¶... Data collection was performed by Knowledge Networks, a survey research firm based in Menlo Park, Calif. The researchers plan to release the study on Monday on their Web site ... Link: The New York Times.
Thanks to Stephen Hill for tips on the following two articles. --Dennis
2004 Year in Review: Online Content Services. DRM-powered online content services in 2004 focused primarily on music, as they did the previous year. Events during this past year in the online music market followed two trends: consolidation among me-too download services, which is not proceeding as quickly as we predicted in our 2003 year-end review, and the coming rapprochement between DRM and P2P file sharing, which did happen as we predicted. ... Link: DRM Watch.
2004 Year in Review: DRM Technologies. 2004 was a year of both solidification of DRM for consumer media and introduction of alternative technologies. It was also the first full year for Enterprise DRM as a market on its own. In our year-end review for 2003, we made a number of predictions for 2004 and beyond; let's see how well we did. ... Link: DRM Watch.
David Pogue: "What if I told you about a new product that could improve your TV picture, eliminate one of your remote controls, simplify your home-theater setup and save you money every month? ¶ And then what if I told you that your local distributor wished, in its heart of hearts, that nobody even knew about it? ¶ The brilliant invention really exists. It's the CableCard, a small metal card ... that slides into a slot on the back of many new high-definition TV sets from nearly every manufacturer. The CableCard's simple mission is to eliminate your cable box. The card stores all the account information that used to be monitored by the box, like descramblers for your movie channels - a bit of circuitry miniaturization that's about 15 years overdue. ..." Link: The New York Times.
Consultant Terry Heaton writes: "2005 will be the most important and difficult year in the history of local broadcasting, and by year's end, the landscape could well be littered with the corpses of those who hung on too long. The industry faces significant fiscal challenges and accelerating changes in viewer preferences and behaviors, things it is ill-prepared to handle, much less turn into profit. Absent some economic miracle or very smart and quick action, it will be a year of deep darkness and trouble for broadcasting and the people who work in it. ...¶... Of all the challenges facing broadcasters, none is greater than ignorance born of denial. Locked into old formulas and business models, the industry hasn't paid enough attention to teaching and training itself and its employees about what's been happening in the media world around them. The challenges faced by media companies — especially broadcasters — have been bubbling and brewing for years, but few have had the courage to act on them. ..." Link: Donata Communications.
The grassroots movement to post "vlogs" makes amazing viewing, and the growing audience may give them an increasing impact. ¶ Following in the footsteps of text blogs, video blogs are starting to take off on the Internet. This new form of grassroots digital media is being shepherded along by groups of film makers and video buffs who started pooling publishing tips and linking to each other in earnest this year. ¶ The results are astonishing, downright funny, and sometimes puzzling. However you describe it, the new video blogs, or what some call vlogs, are compelling in the creativity they're unleashing and the changes they could bring to the media status quo (see Online Video: The Sequel). ... Link: BusinessWeek.
Not long ago many local radio broadcasters were excited by the prospect of reaching larger audiences via the Internet. ... Blinded by the excitement of the new medium, broadcasters had to quickly face the music of reality. Ironically enough, reaching a larger audience actually worked against them. Worldwide royalty charges were applied to online audiences, an economic burden local broadcasters couldn't bare. They also realized over the long-term they wouldn't deliver the local audiences advertisers desired. Soon may were pulling their broadcasts off the Internet. ¶ Decisionmark's Air-to-Web Broadcast Replication technology may provide a solution to get more local broadcasters back on the Web. ...¶... The technology is basically derived from the Geneva technologies ... a solution for the Satellite Home Viewer Act issue with DBS carriers. What that technology does is regulates the delivery of broadcast signals to a household based on signal prediction. Using that technology, we applied it to the Internet. Whereby radio and TV, based on a viewer's location, could be validated and then serve them with those signals that they would otherwise receive with an antenna.... Link: TVSpy. Thanks to David Liroff for the tip. --Dennis
Mark Schubin's memo for this week can be found at digitaltelevision.com. --Dennis
Continue reading "Twang's Tuesday Tribune (Mark's Monday Memo), 12/28/2004" »
... The money [Suzanne] Vega received was royalties earned from satellite and Internet radio, a growing source of income that many artists and record labels are just beginning to notice. ¶ The amount paid by SoundExchange...is a fraction of what is made in royalties by composers and publishers from traditional radio, but it has grown significantly in recent years with the rise and expansion of the satellite radio services XM and Sirius. ¶ The main difference with the new royalties, though, is that they are paid not to composers and publishers but to the performers - the singers and musicians in a song - and the copyright holder of the recording, which in most cases is a record label. ... Link: The New York Times. Thanks to Gens Johnson for the tip. --Dennis
Hoping to ease the transition from DVD to Blu-ray Disc, JVC has developed a Blu-ray/ DVD Combo ROM Disc, containing two DVD layers and one BD layer. ¶ Earlier this month, Toshiba and Memory-Tech developed a dual-layer DVD/HD DVD disk able to store both DVD and HD DVD content. JVC expects the Blu-ray/DVD disc to likewise enable customers to view both standard and high-definition video content. The company intends to propose the disc to the Blu-ray Disc Association next spring, with production to begin when BD-ROM players emerge in early 2006. ... Link: EE Times.
... Surveys from the Pew Internet and American Life Project find that 69 percent of broadband users go online on a typical day, compared with 51 percent for dial-up. Broadband users who went online averaged 107 minutes surfing the Web, checking e-mail and otherwise engaged, 21 minutes longer than dial-up users. ¶ Taking advantage of their always-on connection, they practice "infosnacking." ¶ "People are more able and willing to just walk up to the Internet to get a quick snippet of what they need, send a quick e-mail, read a quick news article, check a sports score," said Jim Bankoff, executive vice president for programming at America Online Inc. ... Link: AP via Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
In what has become a depressingly common ritual, three major Hollywood studios — Viacom Inc.'s Paramount, General Electric Co.'s Universal and Time Warner Inc.'s Warner Bros. — recently committed themselves to issuing movies for home viewing in a new high-definition video format known as HD-DVD. ¶ What's depressing about that? ¶ Namely that three other studios (Walt Disney Co., Columbia/Tri-Star and Metro-Goldwyn Mayer Inc.) have thrown in their lot with a different format known as Blu-Ray. ... Link: Los Angeles Times. Free registration required. --Dennis
Given current growth rates worldwide broadband subscribers will exceed 150 million before the end of 2004. ¶ Point Topic's latest analysis of the World broadband market indicates broadband subscriptions rose to 136.4m by 30 September 2004. This marks a 53% increase from 89m lines in the same quarter last year - an absolute increase of 47m lines. ... Link: Point Topic. Free registration required. --Dennis
Americans are more likely to get their news from local TV and newspapers than national sources, according to a Gallup Poll released today. But of all sources, only news on the Internet is gaining in popularity. ¶ The poll found that 51% say they get news from local TV every day, with 44% saying they get it from local newspapers. Lagging are cable news channels, at 39%, and network newscasts, at 36%. ...¶... But every source has fallen somewhat since 2002, with only news on the Internet gaining, from 15% going there every day two years ago to 20% doing so today. ¶ Some sources dropped heavily: National newspapers are off 4%, from 11% to 7%; NPR is off 5%; local TV news is down 6%; network news down 7%; and PBS news plunged 8%. ... Link: Editor & Publisher. Emphasis added. --Dennis
The BBC says it plans to provide an electronic programme guide that will become the equivalent of a ‘video Google’. ...¶... In an interview in the Guardian newspaper, Ashley Highfield said there was an opportunity to develop a ‘video Google’. “We should be in a prime position to create the best next-generation search navigation tool in the world,” he said. ... Link: BBC plans video Google.
Read the article just cited, 'We have the best brand in the world,' in the Guardian (free registration required). --Dennis
... Orb Networks...has developed a service that allows any Internet-connected device -- a laptop, a handheld computer or a cell phone -- to tap into the digital files stored on your home computer. For the TV-tuner crowd, that means being able to watch your lineup of television shows in real time -- even if you're connected to the Web from another time zone or another country. ... Link: MercuryNews.com.
... The number of people and business connected to broadband jumped by 38% in a year, said the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC). ¶ In a report, it said there were more than 32 million broadband connections by the end of June 2004. ... Link: BBC News.
Broadband Use Rises In U.S.; DSL Outpaces Cable ... Although DSL outpaced cable connections, the latter number was substantially higher as of June 30, reaching 18.6 million lines versus 11.4 million for DSL, the Federal Communications Commission reported this week. ¶ DSL connections increased by 20 percent in the first half of the year from the 9.5 million lines reported as of Dec. 31, 2003. The number of cable-modem connections, on the other hand, rose 13 percent from the 16.4 million lines reported at the end of the previous six months. ... Link: TechWeb via Yahoo! News.
... Using Mediaport's MusicATM kiosks found on select university campuses and retail locations, consumers can burn their own full-length CDs or create consumer-selected compilations from WMG's rich catalog. Additionally, consumers can download digital tracks securely from Mediaport's e-Music store and transfer them to their WMA portable players. ... Link: Kiosk Marketplace Research.
... the nondescript cable box is the object of a lot of frenzied lobbying over at the Federal Communication Commission these days, with consequences for your pocketbook and how you watch television. ¶ As with their service, cable companies have a monopoly on these "set-top" boxes, which haven't changed much over the past 15 years. If you want digital service or premium channels such as HBO, you need the box, and you use the one provided by your cable company. ¶ About 10 years ago, people on Capitol Hill and elsewhere began to wonder if that was such a good idea. In addition to concerns that the cable people had another cozy source of protected revenue, they didn't like that you couldn't take the box with you if you moved. ¶ So Congress, and then the FCC, embarked on plans to create competition for set-top boxes that deliver digital programs. ... Link: The FCC Frenzy Over Controlling Your Cable Box (washingtonpost.com).
I posted "Cablevision may abandon satellite TV plan" this morning. Om Malik's weblog has an interesting follow-up. His Wall Street Journal link requires a paid subscription. --Dennis. Malik writes, "... Following up on that news, I have learnt from those familiar with the whole situation, that Cablevision and Echostar are in advanced talks and the price tag for the deal is in the $250 million region. I tried calling Cablevision, Voom and Echostar, and obviously have not heard back from them. I spun the wheels most of the day trying to nail down more details … oh well. Just spoke to the Echostar spokesperson and he offered the boiler plate - we don’t comment on rumor and speculation, and this certainly has both. I think Voom is one of those ill-fated experiments, that came to market 24-months too soon. ... Link: Om Malik on Broadband.
Cablevision Systems Corp., a Long Island-based cable TV provider, said Tuesday it is suspending plans for a spinoff of its money-losing satellite broadcasting business and will consider other alternatives for the unit. ¶ The high-definition satellite venture, which is marketed under the brand name VOOM, has had a tough start since being launched more than a year ago and has been a source of major concern among Cablevision's investors. ... Link: AP via Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
The Poynter Institute has posted an interesting history of new media journalism and the Internet from 1969-2004. Great reference. --Dennis Link: Poynter Online.
As broadband Internet access spreads, newspaper Web sites, bored with just words, are adding video clips and even, at a trendsetting Delaware paper, TV-style newscasts. ... Link: Editor & Publisher.
Chris Anderson, Wired editor-in-chief and author of "The Long Tail" (my candidate for most important essay of 2004) has now started a weblog, www.thelongtail.com, and has a book deal with Hyperion. There's also an updated version of TLT online (pdf). --Dennis
Mark Schubin's memo for this week can be found at digitaltelevision.com --Dennis
... The podcast version of ''Morning Stories," five-minute human-interest segments, has posted numbers that people in the radio business would envy. ¶ In the past two months, the audience for the podcast segments of the show has grown 12,000-fold, from a grand total of five downloads for the entire month of September to 60,000 in November, according to producer Tony Kahn. ¶ As a public station that doesn't have ads to skip, WGBH has nothing to lose by making broadcasts available for free. Bob Lyons, director of radio and new media initiatives for WGBH, said that technologically, ''it's trivial" to reformat a broadcast for podcast downloads. ¶ Lyons said WGBH has been impressed by the rapidly growing demand for ''Morning Stories" podcasts but will move slowly on adding more programs. ''We could pretty much just shovel everything in there, but I think that would be foolish," Lyons said. ''We need to focus on stuff that is suitable for this particular delivery pipe," in particular broadcasts that have a long shelf life and will be appealing to people days or weeks after they've gone out over the airwaves. ... Link: Boston.com. General interest article on podcasting features WGBH's Morning Stories. --Dennis
BitTorrent "hubs" that publish lists of movies, TV shows and other free downloads suddenly went dark this weekend, in a major victory for Hollywood that highlights vulnerabilities in technology behind the world's busiest peer-to-peer network. ¶ Last week, the Motion Picture Association of America launched a series of worldwide legal actions, aimed at people who ran the infrastructure for BitTorrent networks being used to distribute movies and other copyrighted materials without permission. ¶ The MPAA's actions have put pressure on a short list of large Web sites that had served as hubs for the BitTorrent community and that had operated for months or even years. Many of those sites have now vanished almost overnight, including the SuprNova.org site that was by far the most popular gathering point for the community, serving more than a million people a day, according to one academic study. ... Link: CNET News.com.
Testing and initial deployment of Digital Multimedia Broadcasting (DMB) are proving successful in Korea, and the service appears to be on its way to large-scale acceptance, according to In-Stat/MDR. The high-tech market research firm expects the Korean DMB market to surpass $800 million in annual revenue by 2010. ...¶... In-Stat/MDR has also found that: DMB is well suited for mobile multimedia, holding significant advantages over satellite broadcasting and wireless LAN, in terms of mobility, and is more price-competitive for consumers than Video-on-Demand (VOD) services delivered over the 3G network. ... Link: In-Stat/MDR.
Be sure to see Bob Miller's comments below. --Dennis
PC Magazine has a full review of the Delphi MyFi XM2Go satellite radio receiver. --Dennis. Link: PC Magazine.
Sprint on Monday plans to launch a new service for streaming music over the airwaves to cell phones, powered by a company that provides digital music to cable and satellite TV subscribers. ¶ Under the terms of the deal, Music Choice is providing a range of six streaming music channels organized by genre, as well as some music videos and artist interviews for Sprint subscribers who pay about $6 a month. ...¶... The deal is part of a broader drive by mobile phone companies and record labels to turn the humble mobile phone into a kind of iPod on steroids. This trend is particularly strong in Europe and Asia, where mobile phone operators have more advanced data networks and are eager to recoup the tens of billions of dollars they spent for rights to their mobile spectrum. ... Link: CNET News.com.
Local television broadcaster WRAL is taking to the airwaves in a different way. ¶ The CBS affiliate has partnered with Sprint PCS and Monday will begin a service that sends news, weather and traffic information to mobile phones. It's more advanced than the wireless applications usually available from local media. ¶ With the service, Sprint PCS customers can get live pictures of traffic on major roadways. They can see local Doppler images in motion to track inclement weather or view the five-day forecast. Text news stories will have pictures. ... Link: newsobserver.com. WRAL in Raleigh was also the first television station in the U.S. to broadcast in the new digital transmission standard. --Dennis
Phillip Swann, president of TVPredictions.com, is making 40 predictions for new TV technology in 2005. A new prediction will be published every weekday at TV Predictions for the rest of 2004, except for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Below is a list of his predictions to date, with links to the forecasts. ... Link: TVPredictions.com.
... As regular readers of Digital Lifestyles will know, we are big believers in what we see as the effective rebirth of radio - the delivery of audio pieces over the Internet for playback on people's portable music players. Over the last few months this hard-to-encapsulate idea has happily gained the moniker, 'Podcasting', but don't be fooled by the iPod reference, this is for all music players. ¶ Strictly speaking Podcasting is slightly more than just the Internet delivery of the material, it's also about automating the process. By using an application like the open source, iPodder, listeners simply select the Podcasters their interested hearing from and the content is automatically gathered for them. This apparent magic is achieved by combining a couple of already existing technologies, RSS and FTP. RSS (Really Simple Syndication) has until now mostly be used to gather news updates but hidden in its specification is the ability to point to enclosures, in this case MP3 audio files. FTP (File Transfer Protocol) is then used to download the sound files to computer. All of this happens without the listens involvement. ... Link: Digital-Lifestyles.info.
BBC boasts huge take-up of radio downloads. BBC Radio today [12/17/04] announced that a trial of an MP3 downloading service, which saw 70,000 downloads of Radio 4's In Our Time programme in NOvember, had been a massive success. Link: MediaWeek. Thanks to Mark Fuerst & Ben McConnell for the tip. --Dennis
Mark Cuban: "Hollywood is afraid of people in theaters with camcorders. They want to pass laws so that bad, bad people like Kramer and Jerry Seinfeld cant grow cottage industries selling us wobbly movies with the sound of breathing on the soundtrack, pressed on DVDs and sold for 5 or 10 dollars on street corners. ¶ I look at this tiny, tiny industry and ask why would people buy these DVDs ? ¶ I dont think its the pricepoint of studio released DVDs. The street versions are cheaper, but usually by only 5 or 10 dollars. IMHO, the reason people buy the DVDs on the street is that they are available. If you cant make it to the theater to see a movie all your friends are talking about, why not buy it downtown on the way home from work ? ¶ The same applies to downloading. ..." Link: Blog Maverick.
In most countries, the music industry is taking song-swappers to court. But the sheer demand for downloading is forcing record labels, and now movie companies, to work with online retailers to offer legitimate alternatives. ¶ While illegally sharing copyrighted music on peer-to-peer (P2P) networks is still popular, these new sites are attracting buyers who want a safer, legal way to download songs for less than a pound or a dollar. ¶ With the advent of faster broadband speeds, the illegal swappers are not just after music. ... Link: BBC News.
I helped organize and participated in an excellent meeting in Chicago Dec. 13-14 to discuss a "public service publisher," loosely modeled ("more than a metaphor, less than a blueprint") on one conducted this fall by the UK's Office of Communication. I've linked to its "Hypothetical tender document for a Public Service Publisher" before, but discovered tonight that it was moved upon completion of the consultation. I'll probably write more about the Chicago meeting in this space at a later date. --Dennis
Analysis [by Johan Pouwelse]. Even though many P2P file-sharing systems have been proposed and implemented, only very few have stood the test of intensive daily use by a very large user community. The BitTorrent file-sharing system is one of these systems. Measurements on Internet backbones indicate that BitTorrent has evolved into one of the most popular networks [8]. In fact, BitTorrent traffic made up 53 per cent of all P2P traffic in June 2004 [12]. As BitTorrent is only a file-download protocol, it relies on other (global) components, such as websites, for finding files. The most popular website for this purpose is suprnova.org. ... Link: The Register. Lots of interesting detail here. This author's work was the subject of another post this week in the Search|Recommendation area. --Dennis
Earlier this week, this weblog ran posts about the Blinkx and Yahoo announcements mentioned below. Here's a long and useful analysis of this important area from The Industry Standard and following that is another from informitv. --Dennis.
Internet search providers are reacting to users' rising interest in finding video content on the Web, while acknowledging that there are steep challenges that need to be overcome. This week, Yahoo Inc. and Blinkx both launched video search services, while earlier this month America Online Inc. (AOL) revamped its Singingfish multimedia search engine to make it more attractive and easier for users. ¶ Video content demand and availability have both grown as a direct result of the rise of broadband Internet connections. "More than half of consumers watching videos online have broadband. Broadband adoption is reaching critical mass in the U.S.," said Joe Wilcox, a Jupiter Research analyst. ¶ As a result, users are turning more and more to search engines to look for video content, and finding that general Web search services just don't deliver good enough results. ... ¶ This dissatisfaction with general Web search engines is probably one big reason why AOL's multimedia search site Singingfish saw its site's usage explode from several thousand queries per day in 2003 to over 700,000 queries per day currently, even when the site wasn't designed to attract mass market users. Unlike the Yahoo site, which focuses strictly on video, Singingfish also indexes audio files [Note: Blinkx indexes both as well. --Dennis]. ... Link: The Industry Standard.
Video search engines from Blinkx and Yahoo. Video search is the latest battleground on the web, as broadband brings more audiovisual media online, with significant implications for other interactive video services. ¶ The technologies that are now being demonstrated on the web could also become crucial to the navigation of content for video-on-demand and broadband television. ... Link: informativ.When I visited the MIT Media Lab in 1997, one of the projects I saw demonstrated was "electronic paper," now, as I understand it, a real product. While the following from Mobile PC is fantasy, it might be thought of as "informed fantasy." [As an aside, someone asked me recently why I generally don't post graphics to the weblog. It's bandwidth. Typepad is projecting this month's reader access bandwidth at 2¼ GB and I only get 3 GB with this account. With the few-month doubling rate this thing has, it will be there soon anyway, but even the top level account has a 5 GB limit. So this bit of fantasy is a holiday gift.] --Dennis
For our January issue, Mobile PC featured seven designers and their visions of the future of computing. ... Here is a scaled-down discussion of one of the products: MicroMedia Paper. For the rest of the feature, pick up a newsstand copy of Mobile PC. ... Executive Summary: Wafer-thin display and storage finally brings digital media to the familiar format of paper. ... Link: Mobile PC.
Yahoo plans to unveil a video search engine to the serve growing appetite for multimedia entertainment online, the company confirmed Wednesday [see below]. ¶ ...the Web portal has been developing a service that will let people search for video clips from across the Internet in much the way they do for Web pages and images. Late Wednesday, the company introduced a beta site for the product on its development page, at Next.yahoo.com. It will search for files in Windows Media, Apple's QuickTime and Real Media. ... Link: Business Standard. Thanks to James Steinbach for the tip.
You can access the beta search engine at video.search.yahoo.com and Yahoo's weblog description of it is here (interestingly also talking about their addition of video to RSS enclosures). Here's the MediaPost's version of the story and here it is in PC World. Also see this story on the Blinkx TV and radio search engine. Very cool. --Dennis
Forget Wife Swap, the next fad to hit TV, and the courts, could be swapping live video feeds. ¶ Want 24-hour Hasselhoff? You’re in luck. New German peer-to-peer software will let users upload and rebroadcast all the Baywatch they want. ¶ German software engineers...are promising to introduce software they call “Cybersky TV” this January. They claim Cybersky TV will use peer-to-peer technology to carry live television feeds. If the service gets enough users, its first broadcasts in February could revolutionize TV ‑ and guarantee a deluge of lawsuits. ...¶... Cybersky TV is similar to PC file-sharing networks such as BitTorrent, which relies on users to take the strain off the stream. Any Cybersky user can also become a broadcaster by using a standard PC TV Card ‑ which you can pick up at your local Circuit City ‑ or web cam to capture or create video content. ... Link: Red Herring.
With its somewhat bulky contours and shiny silver case, Delphi's MyFi portable satellite radio evokes an old transistor radio. And the selection of programming it offers -- a hundred-plus XM Radio channels, all but a few included in a $9.95 monthly fee -- might also remind you of that bygone era before radio stations gave themselves over to market-tested playlists. ¶ This seven-ounce, $350 device isn't much smaller than other XM receivers, and it's bigger than most digital-music players, but in its two core functions, it has no equal. It can both tune into XM's signal when it's available and can record up to five hours of radio, complete with title and artist information, for later playback. ... Link: washingtonpost.com.
The media is self-organizing. Not the old fogies, such as daily newspapers, magazines, and television networks, but the legions of self-publishers and producers on the web. ¶ In recent months, the rise of podcasting has sent a flare up over the trenches of old media, key figures have abandoned their posts in old media to set out into the new, and now Yahoo has announced a well-documented format for RSS media syndication that will support text, audio, and, now, video delivery. A new wiki-based news organization, WikiNews, will pioneer a form of news editing that, while it’s ripe with potential problems, is a provocative change from the passive consumption of news. ¶ There’s something new coming, called "citizen advertising," that combines passionate advocacy and unsolicited evangelism on behalf of products. ... Link: Red Herring Blog.
"If you're impressed by BitTorrent, you're going to be absolutely blown away by SwarmStream," promises Justin Chapweske, inventor of Swarmcast, the first swarming technology. It's a line he uses on his blob and in his presentation at JavaLobby. Here's how Chapweske explains it: "The technology improves swarming by ensuring that the bytes that the user wants next are scheduled to be received next. So if they're playing back a video file, the bytes from the front of the file will be received first. If the user (or application) skips forward to the middle of the file, the bytes at the middle of the file will be prioritized. Thus, unlike first generation swarming systems like Swarmcast or Bittorrent, you don't have to wait for the entire file to download to do something useful with it!." ... Link: PaidContent.org.
Beyond BitTorrent - Swarming-Based Content Delivery: SwarmStreaming. ... Link: Robin Good. This article provides a very good overview of how it works. --Dennis
Blinkx has just launched their new multimedia search engine, called Blinkx TV, that lets Web surfers search for TV and radio clips from popular networks for on-demand content viewing or listening. Just enter a topic or term you're interested, like the “Scott Peterson Verdict” or the “Iraq War,” and you'll be blown away by the results Blink TV provides. All search results are sorted by relevance, include a text caption of the content (search terms highlighted in red), network logo to easily identify the source, and, get this, a mini looping thumbnail video clip, so you can preview what you'll be seeing. ... Link: eHomeUpgrade.
Blinkx has an interesting white paper (pdf) on its service. --Dennis
Bill Thompson: "I bought my son Max a 3G phone, ...¶... But then Max started playing, and I realised I was missing the point entirely. ¶ It is certainly not a great overall experience, but that is largely due to the poor menu system and the phone layout: the video content itself is compelling. ¶ The quality was at least as good as the video streaming from the BBC website, and the image is about the same size. ¶ Max was completely captivated, and I was intrigued to discover that I had nearly missed the next stage of the network revolution. ¶ It is easy to be dismissive of small screens, and indeed anyone of my generation, with failing eyesight and the view that 'there's never anything worth watching on TV', is hardly going to embrace these phones. ¶ But just as the World Wide Web was the "killer application" that drove internet adoption, music videos are going to drive 3G adoption. ... Link: BBC News.
According to a recent release by The Media Audit, though the younger age groups were the first to embrace the Internet, most of today's growth is being driven by the older age groups, starting at age 55. ¶ In the markets surveyed, representing a population of more than 130 million adults, 61.2 percent of all adults visit the Internet regularly. "That's up from 54.9 percent in 2000 and most of the new growth is coming from those over 55 years of age," says Bob Jordan, president of International Demographics, Inc. ... Link: Center for Media Research. Thanks to Mark Fuerst for the tip. --Dennis
Also relevant to this topic (and thanks to Stephen Hill for the tip) is Ken Dychtwald's web site, Age Wave. From its home page: In recent decades, dramatic advances in medicine, public health and lifestyle management have caused predictable and irreversible trends toward declining fertility and increasing longevity. These demographic changes are causing an "age wave" whose mass and force will transform every aspect of our personal, social, financial and political lives.
A rich set of papers for a January 2005 workshop called Beyond Personalization 2005: A Workshop on the Next Stage of Recommender Systems Research have been posted. Among them is "P2P-based PVR Recommendations using Friends, Taste Buddies and Superpeers" by a group of researchers from Delft University of Technology in The Netherlands. The authors are implementing their ideas on the MythTV open source PVR. Although PVR and peer-to-peer (e.g. BitTorrent) oriented, this paper has a lot of applicability to any rich media digital distribution system. Thanks to Clifford Lynch for the tip. --Dennis
ABSTRACT. In this paper we present a novel distributed recommendation method based on exchanging similar playlists among which takes into account the limited availability of peers, lack of trust in P2P networks, and dynamic identities of peers, etc. Our preliminary experiment shows that only exchanging a small portion of similar playlists from taste buddies could lead to an efficient way to calculate recommendations within a context of P2P networks.
Mark Schubin's memo for this week is available at digitaltelevision.com. --Dennis
Mark Schubin's memo for last week is available at digitaltelevision.com. --Dennis.¶
Time Warner is leading the charge among the largest cable TV multiple system operators (MSOs) to get subscribers to use DVRs -- their DVRs to be preceise. ¶ Lyra Research finds that DVR usage by cable subscribers among MSOs, from 10% of Comcast's subscribers to 21% of Time Warner's. There is also quite a bit of divergence between cable subscribers in terms of where they acquired their DVRs. For example, 16% of Time Warner subscribers have cable-supplied DVRs, compared to just 2% of Cox subscribers. Link: eMarketer. Click here for the Lyra press release. The eMarketer article also contains data from Forrester Research. --Dennis
