Technology360

Think The Web Is Killing TV? Think Again

... says Eric Savitz of a recent report from Bernstein Research:

... They note that Nielsen Media Research found in a recent study that the average U.S. household watched a whopping 57 hours and 37 minutes of television a week in 2006 - an average 8 hours, 14 minutes a day - up 20 minutes a week from 2005. The average household now has 104.2 channels to choose from, up from 96.4 in 2005; the average household spends at least 10 minutes a week watching 15.7 channels, up from 15.4 channels in 2005. ...

Link:  Barron's.

Arbitron: 88 Mil. Watch TV Out of Home Daily

Away from home listening has always been a big deal for radio, of course, but I had no idea of how important away from home viewing is.  John Consoli writes:

Thirty-five percent of television viewers spend some portion of their week watching television at a location other than their own home, according to a new study by Arbitron Inc. And TV viewers who watch TV away from home are less likely to tune away from commercials than when viewing from home.  ¶  The Arbitron Away-From-Home Television Viewing Study, conducted in late 2006, also found that 64 percent of viewers ages 12 to 17 and 49 percent of viewers 18-24 watch TV away from home at least once a week. Only 23 percent of those aged 55-plus watch TV away from home at least once a week. ...

Link:  Mediaweek.  --Dennis

Inside the 700 MHz spectrum land grab

Drew Clark writes:

... The next big spectrum land grab is over 700 Megahertz (MHz.) It’s the promised land of “beachfront property” that broadcasters are set to vacate on February 19, 2009, when the transition to digital television is supposed to be complete. Lots of folks are jockeying now to lock up these airwaves. ...

Link:  GigaOM.  Good overview of what's happening to vacated analog television spectrum.  --Dennis

"Sharing" the future of radio

Mark Ramsey has a very perceptive short post on how younger people are using music:

... [Young people] think in terms of the playlist, the "stations" that are created by them and their friends - some of whom are the taste-makers in their crowd.  ¶  Those playlists are shared in the same way a radio station shares its playlist. Most of the online radio resources have the ability to share any playlist you create. And it's hardly uncommon for kids to share the contents of their iPods with their friends.  ¶  Music radio used to be about listening. In the future it will increasingly be about sharing. ...

Link:  Hear2.0.  --Dennis

Introducing the Future of Mobile TV

LG Electronics, which makes what may be the only ATSC DTV decoder chips that really work, and Harris Corp., the broadcast equipment manufacturer (transmitters, etc.), have "unveiled new, inexpensive technology that allows stations to zip local news and other video content to phones, portable video players, and in-car entertainment systems within a 45-mile radius."

Olga Kharif continues:

... Now, the Korean technology could bypass that approach, cutting out the wireless carriers. "We don't need carrier partners," says Jay Adrick, vice-president at Harris' broadcast communications division. Besides the LG and Harris announcement, Samsung unveiled a similar technology earlier this year. TV broadcasters like the idea that they will be able to keep control of their programming and advertising—rather than becoming beholden to wireless operators. Burgess says that members of the coalition, if it is formed, will decide on one technology standard, most likely LG's or Samsung's. They will also determine whether to offer mobile TV for free, or to charge a small fee for the service.  ¶  The potential alliance creates all sorts of problems for rivals. XM and Sirius have been working for years on ways to deliver video to cars. Sirius is expected to finally make video available in some 2008 model cars later this year. (To make matters worse, the LG technology will allow TV stations to transmit radio signals—so XM and Sirius may see more competition in their core radio business.) ...

Link:  BusinessWeek.

In LG, Harris Corp. Debut New Local TV Mobile Broadcast Technology, Mark Hefflinger reports, "... A spokesman for Harris told Reuters it would cost stations about $100,000 to $500,000 to upgrade their existing broadcast transmitters for the system, depending on market size and number of channels offered. ..."  Link: DigitalMediaWire.

Here is the press release from Harris Corp.

Lots of other stories on this development.  Here's the Google search. 

Now we know why LG built a 6th generation ATSC chip when the  5th generation one works pretty well in fixed locations.  --Dennis 

TiVo adds sharing of Internet video

Thomas Claburn writes:

... Earlier this month, TiVo partnered with Amazon to offer subscribers access to movies downloaded through Amazon's Unbox service.  ¶  And this week, TiVo announced a new way for subscribers to share personal videos using One True Media's online video post-production service.  ¶  The arrangement allows One True Media users to create a personal TiVo channel that will show the videos they've uploaded, edited, and scored online. They can then invite TiVo owners to subscribe to that channel, at no charge, using TiVo's Season Pass feature. The content creator's videos will then be available in the subscriber's Now Playing list, alongside professionally produced shows that have been saved for ad-skipping or viewing at a more convenient time. ...

Link:  Digital TV DesignLine (from InformationWeek).  I was impressed with how many companies were offering Internet-to-TV solutions at CES this year.  --Dennis

What happened to Mark Schubin's Monday Memos?

Production engineer extraordinaire Mark Schubin's Monday Memos on digital television, a labor of love for him, an important source of information for his readers, and fodder for many a post on this blog, have been MIA since late last summer.  One of the many who has missed them asked about it on the OpenD TV list.  One of his principal gigs has been the Met Opera, and it's been feeding live performances to theaters around the country.  Here's his interesting response in its entirety.  --Dennis

[opendtv] Re: Whatever happened to...

• From: Mark Schubin <tvmark@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
• To: Open DTV Forum <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
• Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2007 11:19:31 -0400 (EDT)

The multiplication of media at the Metropolitan Opera happened.  If you're at 
the PBS Technology Conference next week, come to my Friday presentation, 
subtitled "My Life Since September."

In brief, we are transmitting live HD cinemacasts to sold-out movie theaters 
around the world.  How sold out?  The live transmission of "Barber of Seville" 
on March 24 ranked well within the top-20 in U.S. weekend grosses, despite the 
fact that it was shown only once.

Why is it taking so much of my time?  Here are a few highlights from "Barber" 
(just one of the series):
- 16 transponders on 13 satellites as well as three transoceanic fiber cables
- multiple motion-compensating HD frame-rate converters
- one-hour HD delays to compensate for the different starts of Summer Time in 
North America and Europe
- 14 HD cameras and 30 recorders
- five robotic mounts, including two extendable towers and a track, all of 
which had to be deployed in minutes
- a 600-foot live, backwards Steadicam move (ending at a live burro)
- shooting multicamera live in the control room itself (one intermission was 
shot live in five different venues)
- live subtitling in multiple languages
- stereo, 5.1, and LT/RT sound, discrete and encoded
- coordinating live commercial U.S. radio, non-commercial U.S. radio, global 
radio, and the HD cinemacasts, all of which sometimes share and sometimes use 
different production elements
- coordinating the parking of production vehicles on three Manhattan blocks 
with the fire department, the police, and local security

Wheeee!

But I'll try to get something out.

Sorry.

TTFN,
Mark

The CRB Rate Increases: Get Over It

Stephen Hill of Hearts of Space runs one of the very few enterprises within the larger public media sphere that makes a substantial part of its revenue from web services.  He also produced records for many years.  In a new essay on his weblog, he suggests that those of us who see the web as a growth area for content delivery should focus on building viable business models rather than obsessing about the recent Copyright Royalty Board rate decision.  He writes:

... My point is that if you have rational business model to start with, paying more — even multiples more — for your basic source material is not a major problem. After that, increased rates are likely to be reflected in higher end user prices. To me this is inevitable and desirable, since it means that significant new income streams will go to the musicians and small labels on whom Hearts of Space largely depends. By "significant" I mean capable of sustaining continued activity by those artists and labels. A SoundExchange check that won't buy a pizza dinner for two is not going to do it. ...

Link:  Spatial Relations.  Must reading for radio types. 

Update 17 Apr. 2007:
Please see the comments below -- Israel's first.  --Dennis

Radio Gets a Military Strategy Lesson

Dave Van Dyke writes:

... The [Pincer Movement] maneuver is mostly self-explanatory; the flanks of the opponent (traditional radio) are attacked simultaneously in a pinching motion after the opponent has advanced towards the center of an army (Satellite Radio) which is responding by moving its outside forces to the enemy's flanks in order to surround it. At the same time, a second layer of pincer attacks (on-demand audio such as iPods and the Internet in this example), so as to prevent any attempts to reinforce the target unit.  ¶  And like most armies caught in this pincer movement, radio never knew what hit them. They became distracted by the foe in front of them (satellite radio) and didn't see the second layer in the rear-view mirror. ...

Link:  Navigate the Future.

Learning Guitar for Free (for Now) on YouTube

Frank Langfitt had a great piece on NPR's All Things Considered yesterday about people who are teaching guitar over the Net, specifically, using YouTube.  Included in the story was this about the seemingly asinine copyright rules under which we live:

... But if learning pop songs for free online sounds too good to be true, it may be.  ¶  John Palfrey, executive director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School, says most of the songs Sandercoe and Taub teach are under copyright. He thinks it's only a matter of time before a licensing company orders YouTube to take them down.  ¶  "There's a very strong argument that the re-use of well-known chords in the sequence the instructor played them would be a violation of the copyright," Palfrey says. ...

Link:  NPR.  Be sure to listen to the audio version of this rather than just reading the transcript.  --Dennis