Technology360

R.I.P., HD DVD

Back in the early 80s, I bought a Betamax VCR and replaced that with another Betamax VCR before that format bit the dust and VHS won.  I can really pick 'em.  Just over a year ago, I bought a Toshiba HD DVD when Costco dropped the price to $300.  It's now a pretty good upscaling DVD player, but you can buy them for under $100.

Cliff Edwards writes:

... while Toshiba lies vanquished, the Blu-ray camp now faces a slew of technical, business, and marketing challenges in driving consumer adoption of their victorious standard. To an extent, those issues have been just as much to blame as the format war for slowing the adoption of the high-definition successor to the standard DVD format. "Now that the format war is over, it's just dawning on everybody that our work is just beginning," says Andy Parsons, chairman of the Blu-ray Disc Association, and a senior vice-president at Pioneer. ...

Link:  BusinessWeek.  --Dennis

Boy Scouts, Meals on Wheels to help with DTV transition information?

John Eggerton reports:

How far has the federal campaign for the digital-TV transition gone? The National Telecommunications and Information Administration considered deploying the Boy Scouts of America to help inform over-the-air analog TV viewers that they could lose their TV picture at 12:01 a.m. Feb. 18, 2009, just one year from today, unless they get a converter box, a new TV, or are already hooked up to cable or satellite.  ¶  Converter-box retailers held talks with Boy Scout organizations about coming up with a DTV-transition merit badge for helping some older ladies and gentlemen cross the digital divide, although the plan may be scrapped over concerns about sending scouts into strangers' homes. Meanwhile, the Federal Communications Commission is talking to the Meals on Wheels Association of America about delivering DTV education along with food. ...

Link:  Broadcasting & Cable.  Help that elderly person cross the street and give him a $40 coupon, too.  --Dennis

Slacker's portable device is shipping

Slacker, an online music service that learns from user responses, is now shipping its portable listening device (think of it as a radio), according to Joanna Stern in Laptop magazine.  Her article carries an interview with Slacker's marketing VP that's worth reading, especially for what's coming next.  Slacker's approach is compelling because it combines personalization with portability in one device, and can update without a USB tether.  --Dennis

Key To Recession Survival: Master Consumer Media Habits

Diane Mermigas writes:

... According to the North American Technologies [Technographics®] Benchmark Survey published by Forrester Research, all adult consumers still devote more than twice as many hours in a typical week watching television as using the Internet.  Gen Yers 18-27 are moving toward parody [parity] in spending as many hours online as watching TV.  But they also spend nearly as much time watching DVDs–a hybrid activity on TVs, PCs and video-game consoles.  It suggests what other surveys also reflect: Young consumers move fluidly from one media-related activity to another (whether interactive or passive) because a screen is a screen is a screen.  ¶  However, as interactivity becomes more pervasive and all of television goes digital in a year, more Boomer consumers will follow suit.  So the increasing interactive attention and spending of consumers ages 42 to 62 is key.  These 78 million Boomers (the single largest demographic segment) already make a healthy showing in an array of interactive activities–from managing and printing personal photos to conducting finance and security checks.  The focus should be on how to increase maturing consumers’ routine use of interactive devises for potentially profitable social networking–e-commerce, entertainment and communications –not a comparison to younger early adopter habits. ...

Link:  MediaPost.  Link and corrections added.  --Dennis

Sony PlayStation Getting Internet Radio

Internet radio continues to grow much faster than did FM (or maybe even AM -- I'm old, but not that old).  Here's another development.  Dave Zatz reports:

Sony has announced that Japanese PSP owners will be getting an update (3.80) next week that includes Internet radio streaming. Interestingly, the screenshot (below) says “Powered by SHOUTcast”… which is produced by an AOL subsidiary. The software also includes enhanced RSS support for OPML and images. I assume these features will make it to the US in the near future, though we obviously won’t be receiving (or utilizing) the ability to schedule video recordings via digital tuner. ...

Link:  Zatz Not Funny!.  Thanks to Mark Ramsey for the tip.  --Dennis

Farewell to the Great CRT

Television engineering legend Charlie Rhodes has a wonderful history of television displays in an article of this name in TV Technology.  Thanks to Cliff Benham for the tip.  --Dennis

Why Low Def Is the New HD

Daniel Eran Dilger takes a while to get to his point (though along the way you get a very good education about consumer video), but that point is a very interesting one about the video marketplace today.  He writes:

... Apple happens to be positioned to ride the sweet spot of LD/SD content right now, and has the infrastructure and hardware to deliver HD content using the same iTunes ecosystem with Apple TV in the future. Apple has bet on the mainstream 720p HD format as the best balance between high quality content and downloadable file sizes.  ¶  That will enable the company to transition to offering HD programming from iTunes as consumer’s bandwidth availability increases and the demand for HD expands. Until that happens on a large scale, Apple will continues to sell the most content because it has targeted what consumers want–convenient downloads–not what other vendors are all trying to sell: high end, high priced HD. ...

... Estimates suggest that by the end of the year, there will be an installed base of about a million standalone HD-DVD and Blu-Ray disc players, besides the 7-8 million PlayStation 3 consoles that can also play Blu-Ray discs. That makes less than ten million HD players in total, compared to around 40 million video playing iPods, and hundreds of millions of iTunes installations capable of playing back iTunes content directly from a computer or through an Apple TV. ...

Link:  RoughlyDrafted Magazine.  Highly recommended article.  Thanks to Craig Birkmaier for the tip.  --Dennis

The Google Set-Top Box

Erick Schonfeld writes:

Deep in the Googleplex there is an engineering team thinking about how to extend Google’s reach into your TV. Its work goes way beyond the Google TV ads currently being tested by EchoStar (and targeted with help from Nielsen).  It even goes way beyond the development of a Google set-top box, which has been hinted at in the past.  In fact, Google may very well want to do to the set-top box what it is trying to do to the mobile phone with its Android operating system—create an open-source hardware platform and attract developers to build applications on top of it. At least that is the unconfirmed rumor I’ve heard from two knowledgeable industry sources. ...

Link:  TechCrunch.  --Dennis

TiVo turnaround?

Things seem to be turning around for TiVo.  I have used both a Series 2 TiVo and a DirecTV TiVo though recently replaced the Series 2 TiVo with one of the newer DirecTV proprietary ones when I upgraded DirecTV to its HD service.  The latter is not nearly as easy to use as the TiVo models, so I've been rooting for them. 

The news recently has been pretty good for them.   Broadcasting & Cable reports that its 3rd quarter losses are narrowing and that NBC Universal has signed up for TiVo's StopWatch ratings service.  Ars Technica is reporting more, where Eric Bangeman writes:

It has been a good week for TiVo. The company won a major victory from the US Patent and Trademark Office when a key patent was upheld, signed a deal to bring the TiVo experience to the PC desktop starting some time next year, and announced better-than-expected quarterly earnings. The DVR maker has revealed more details about its future plans, including pricing for TiVo-flavored Comcast service and a two-way cable DVR. ...

Link:  Ars Technica.

Bangeman also reports that TiVo has also made a deal with Nero:

TiVo is poised to break out from the confines of the set-top box and into the PC. The DVR maker and Nero, creators of the popular CD- and DVD-burning software, are partnering to bring TiVo to upcoming versions of Nero. The newly announced agreement means that TiVo's much-loved interface and ease of use will be available to owners of any PC with a TV tuner card or USB dongle. ...

Link:  Ars Technica. 

Updated 2 December 2007:
Andrea Seabrook has a good interview on this with Wired editor Nancy Miller on National Public Radio.  --Dennis

Replacing atoms with bits

In his 1995 book, Being Digital, Nicholas Negroponte (who is now trying to bring affordable computing to the third world) framed the change then ahead as replacing atoms (e.g., books) with bits (digital information).  There have been a number of digital readers introduced, the latest being Amazon's Kindle.  I read a fair amount of things on my HP PDA.  Amazon's  is coupled with an enormous number of digitized books and other reading matter.  Available readers haven't done well in the consumer marketplace, but the relatively small first run of Kindles sold out quickly.  Steven Levy wrote a lengthy and laudatory article on it for Newsweek:

... Books have been very good to Jeff Bezos. When he sought to make his mark in the nascent days of the Web, he chose to open an online store for books, a decision that led to billionaire status for him, dotcom glory for his company and countless hours wasted by authors checking their Amazon sales ratings. But as much as Bezos loves books professionally and personally—he's a big reader, and his wife is a novelist—he also understands that the surge of technology will engulf all media. "Books are the last bastion of analog," he says, in a conference room overlooking the Seattle skyline. We're in the former VA hospital that is the physical headquarters for the world's largest virtual store. "Music and video have been digital for a long time, and short-form reading has been digitized, beginning with the early Web. But long-form reading really hasn't." Yet. This week Bezos is releasing the Amazon Kindle, an electronic device that he hopes will leapfrog over previous attempts at e-readers and become the turning point in a transformation toward Book 2.0. That's shorthand for a revolution (already in progress) that will change the way readers read, writers write and publishers publish. The Kindle represents a milestone in a time of transition, when a challenged publishing industry is competing with television, Guitar Hero and time burned on the BlackBerry; literary critics are bemoaning a possible demise of print culture, and Norman Mailer's recent death underlined the dearth of novelists who cast giant shadows. On the other hand, there are vibrant pockets of book lovers on the Internet who are waiting for a chance to refurbish the dusty halls of literacy. ...

Link:  Newsweek.  Thanks to Karen Olstad for the link.

Wall Street Journal technology guru Walt Mossberg is less positive.  He has been testing the Kindle, and writes:

.... I’ve been testing the Kindle for about a week, and I love the shopping and downloading experience. But the Kindle device itself is just mediocre. While it has good readability, battery life and storage capacity, both its hardware design and its software user interface are marred by annoying flaws. It is bigger and clunkier to use than the Sony Reader, whose second version has just come out at $300. ...

Link:  All Things Digital. 

Jeff Jarvis has some interesting comments about the economic model in play here.  Link:  BuzzMachine. 

Updated 2 December 2007:
Be sure to check out David Weinberger's thoughtful essay, The future of book nostalgia.  Link:  JOHO.  --Dennis

Is Terrestrial Radio Destined to Die?

... asks Celeste Headlee for National Public Radio's Day to Day program.  Here's the set-up:

The Federal Communications Commission is expected to decide next week whether satellite radio companies Sirius and X-M can merge. Satellite radio has roughly 20 million listeners, but new technologies are posing a challenge to market shares.  ¶  Celeste Headlee reports on the development of portable Internet radio. Then NPR's Alex Cohen gets a primer from Wilson Rothman, an editor at Gizmodo.com on the difference between leading radio technologies and Madeleine Brand talks with Mark Ramsey, president of Mercury Radio Research, about why the emergence of new technologies won't spell the end for terrestrial radio.

And you can listen to the audio at this NPR link (0:12:24).  The interview with Ramsey is particularly good.  Thanks to Roger Johnson for the heads up.  --Dennis

FCC’s 13th Annual Video Competition Report

The FCC is out with its annual report on video competition (news release with thanks to Bert Manfredi on the OpenDTV list).  I'll link to the full report when it's posted.  --Dennis

Here are specific findings from the news release:

• The number of TV households and the number of MVPD subscribers increased since the FCC released its last report. As of June 2006, there were 110.2 million TV households, compared to 109.6 million in June 2005. Of that number, approximately 95.8 million TV households subscribe to an MVPD service, versus 94.2 million as of June 2005.
• Section 612(g) of the Act states that: (1) “at such time as cable systems with 36 or more activated channels are available to 70 percent of households within the United States” and (2) “are subscribed to by 70 percent of the households to which such systems are available, the Commission may promulgate any additional rules necessary to provide diversity of information sources.” According to Warren Communications News, a source on which we have traditionally relied, 71.4 percent of households passed by cable systems offering 36 or more channels subscribe to these systems. However, other data sources do not demonstrate that the second prong has been met. As a result, we conclude that the only way to accurately measure the 70/70 test is to collect data directly from the cable industry.  Therefore, the Commission requires each cable operator to submit the following information for 2006 within 60 days under penalty of perjury: 1) the total number of homes the cable operator currently passes; 2) the total number of homes the cable operator currently passes with 36 or more activated channels; 3) the total number of subscribers; and 4) the total number of subscribers with 36 or more activated channels.
• Cable continues to serve the largest percentage of MVPD subscribers. The Report finds that as of June 2006, approximately 68.2 percent of MVPD subscribers received video programming from a franchised cable operator.
• DBS subscribers comprise the second largest group of MVPD households, representing 29 percent of total MVPD subscribers as of June 2006. DBS operators continue to add local-into-local broadcast television service. In approximately 175 of the 210 television markets, at least one DBS provider offers the signals of local broadcast stations.
• The number of MVPD subscribers choosing all other delivery technologies represented 2.6 percent of all subscribers in June 2006.
• The Nielsen Company estimated that, as of January 2007, 15.5 million households, or about 14 percent of all television households rely on over-the air television broadcasts for video programming.  In addition, many households that subscribe to an MVPD also rely on over-the-air signals to receive broadcast programming on some of their television sets.
• From June 30, 2005 to June 30, 2006, the number of commercial and noncommercial television stations rose from 1,747 to 1,753. As of January 2007, approximately 1,600 stations nationwide were on the air with DTV operations, including all 119 stations affiliated with the top-four network affiliates in the top 30 television markets.
• Incumbent local exchange carriers also are providing video service. At the end of 2006, Verizon reported that it offered video programming via FiOS TV to more than 2.4 million households in 200 cities in 10 states and served 207,000 subscribers. At the end of 2006, AT&T served approximately 11 cities through U-verse TV. In addition, Qwest has taken steps to provide IPTV service in its service area.
• As of June 2006, Broadband Service Providers (“BSPs”) served approximately 1.4 million subscribers, representing 1.5 percent of all MVPD households.
• Electric and gas utilities also provide MVPD and other services on a limited basis. The American Public Power Association, which represents more than 20,000 not-for-profit community and state-owned electric utilities, reports that the average subscriber penetration rate for its members offering video service was 50 percent of the homes passed by utility video services, and that 40 percent of these subscribers purchase a combination of video and high-speed Internet access service.
• The number of subscribers to private cable operator systems, also known as satellite master antenna systems, has declined to 900,000 subscribers as of 2006, a decrease of ten percent from last year’s one million subscribers.
• The number of wireless cable subscribers has declined steadily from a peak of 1.2 million in 1996 to approximately 100,000 as of June 2006, unchanged from a year earlier.
• In recent years, major commercial mobile radio service and other wireless providers have begun offering services that allow subscribers to access video programming through handheld devices, such as mobile telephones.
• The amount of web-based video provided over the Internet continues to increase significantly each year. In July 2006, 107 million Americans, three out of every five Internet users, viewed video  online. In July 2006, about 60 percent of U.S. Internet users downloaded videos. More than 7 billion videos were downloaded that month.
• Between July 2005 and June 2006, a total of 28 MVPD transactions were announced. Together these transactions were valued at approximately $5.3 billion and affected approximately 1.8 million subscribers.
• In 2006 we identified 565 satellite-delivered national programming networks, an increase of 34 networks over the 2005 total of 531 networks. Of the 565 networks, 84 (14.9 percent) were vertically integrated, or affiliated, with at least one cable operator. Five of the top seven cable operators own, in whole or in part, all of the networks that are affiliated with any cable operator.
• In 2006, we identified 101 regional networks, an increase of six over those identified in 2005. These networks provide programming of local or regional interest and are distributed to subscribers of one or more MVPDs in an area. Of these, 57 networks, or 56.4 percent, were vertically integrated with at least one multi-system cable operator (“MSO”). There are 43 regional sports networks, representing 42.6 percent of all regional networks, as compared to the 37 we reported last year. Of the 43 regional sports networks, 19, or 44.2 percent, are vertically integrated with a cable MSO.
• The sale of DTV consumer electronics continues to accelerate. The Consumer Electronics Association (“CEA”) estimates that, in 2006, digital televisions (“DTVs”) will have outsold analog televisions by 66 percent.
• The development and deployment of CableCARDs continued in 2006. CableCARDs permit the reception of secured digital cable services without the addition of a set-top box. As of December 22, 2006, more than 216,000 CableCARDs had been deployed by cable operators, up from 90,000 the previous year.
• The Report also surveyed developments in foreign markets. MVPDs in a number of countries provide programming on an a la carte basis or in mixed bundles, themed tiers, and subscriber-selected tiers. For example, in Hong Kong, consumers receive a free basic package and also can subscribe to more programming for an additional charge per channel. In Canada, the largest cable operators offer a la carte services. In the United Kingdom, consumers may select additional programming services they want, either on a subscription or pay-as-you-go basis, without first purchasing a monthly basic-tier package. In India, as of January 1, 2007, consumers in certain cities can subscribe to programming on a per channel basis.

Best Buy stalls on converter box coupons

Steven Sande reports that Best Buy may not be ready to accept the $40 government coupons for DTV converter boxes until April 1st:

... The cutover to digital TV, with its myriad details, is difficult enough to explain to consumers. For months, Congress has been urging broadcasters to promote the change to DTV early and often. But if viewers cannot use their coupons at what is, for many households, the default store for electronics purchases, it undercuts the coupon program’s credibility.  ¶  The retailer told Congress this week that its computers and cash registers will not be ready to handle the government coupons on January 1. The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) released the government’s rules for the coupon program in March, so it’s not as if Best Buy hasn’t had enough time to prepare for the necessary changes to its systems. ...

And that the NTIA has known this all along:

... The Bush administration may have even signaled to retailers that if they weren’t ready in time, no big deal. Indeed, earlier this year the Commerce Department suggested as much, in the discussion section of its converter box coupon rules:

The [Digital TV] Act requires NTIA to accept requests for coupons between January 1, 2008 and March 31, 2009, and thus, it proposed that retailers be ready to redeem coupons starting January 1, 2008, consistent with the statutory guidance. NTIA expects widespread retailer POS system modifications to occur in the first quarter of 2008.

In other words, the news that stores may not be ready until April 1 is not really news to NTIA.

Link:  Digital TV Facts: The Latest.

This comes as it's announced that NTIA head John Kneuer is stepping down "to pursue new opportunities."  Link:  AP.  For those caught in television's coming Katrina, we can paraphrase our president: "You've done a heckuva job, Johnnie."  --Dennis

HD DVD players hit $99

Most pundits (e.g., Phillip Swann) have been saying that Blu-ray will beat out HD DVD in the high definition disc format wars, but don't count the latter out just yet.  Matthew Moskovciak from CNET reports that Wal-Mart and Best Buy are offering the Toshiba HD-A2 for sale at $99 while quantities last, one-fourth the cost of the cheapest Blu-ray player.  To sweeten this sweet deal, Toshiba is offering five free movies.  I bought the HD DVD format when it reached $300 at Costco a few months ago -- but then I owned two Betamax VCRs by the time I realized that VHS was going to win.  Link:  CNET.  --Dennis

Wired tests four HD Radio models

The October issue of Wired tests four HD Radio models, the Cambridge SoundWorks 820HD (8 of 10 dots), the Polk Audio Designs HDX3 (7 dots), the Sangean HDR-1 (6 dots), and the Radiosophy HD100 (4 dots).  Note that the tests seem to have been for usability and sound only, not how well the radios actually pick up the HD Radio signal and, with HD Radio, that's important.  The inexpensive Radiosophy unit and the two I mention below all test well in that area.  Link:  Wired.

Note that there are many other HD Radio models on the market.  For example, at the lower price range there is the Boston Acoustics Receptor Radio HD that I have on my desk at the office and the Accurian Tabletop HD Radio sold by RadioShack.  --Dennis

Digital broadcasting set to transform communication landscape by 2015

  In the U.S., virtually all writing about the digital broadcasting transition is framed in marketplace terms.  Often, this commentary has a pessimistic spin as did an article in the Charlotte Observer from the NAB Radio Show that I posted on Thursday, Bad times ahead for terrestrial radio.  However, in Europe and some other parts of the world, the benefits of the transition are seen in more social democratic terms, as in this press release from the International Telecommunications Union in Geneva:

A treaty agreement was signed today at the conclusion of ITU’s Regional Radiocommunication Conference (RRC-06) in Geneva, heralding the development of ‘all-digital’ terrestrial broadcast services for sound and television. The digitalization of broadcasting in Europe, Africa, Middle East and the Islamic Republic of Iran by 2015 represents a major landmark towards establishing a more equitable, just and people-centred Information Society. The digital switchover will leapfrog existing technologies to connect the unconnected in underserved and remote communities and close the digital divide. ...

Link:  ITU.  Thanks to David Liroff for the link.  --Dennis

NTIA Approves First Coupon Converter Boxes

Doug Lung reports:

Digital Stream has obtained the first NTIA approval for an ATSC digital-to-analog set-top converter box. The converter will be available at major retailers starting in January 2008. NTIA found the two Digital Stream converters, D2A1D10 and D2A1D20, met all of its requirements, are RoHS-compliant and exceed Energy Star requirements. The suggested retail price for the converters was estimated to be $69.99. ...

Link:  TVTechnology.  Thanks to John Shutt on the OpenDTV list for this tip.  There are no pictures or specs available on the Digital Stream web site other than the press release linked above.

Also see Steven Sande's, Radio Shack to stock DTV converter boxes.  Link: Digital TV Facts.  Remember, folks, that these subsidized boxes are designed to make your existing analog television work with the new digital standard.  They are not designed to permit you to view HD programming in high definition on your new HD monitor.

And also see Steven's NTIA announces DTV transition initiatives, where he writes:

... That ... would seem to suggest that Best Buy will participate in the government’s DTV converter box coupon program. I hope Geek Squad will offer installation help to consumers who need it—hands-on, in-home help remains a crucial missing piece of DTV transition efforts to date.  ¶ People can debate whether the government and the television industry are doing enough to accomplish a seamless DTV cutover, but the partnerships already developing are cause for optimism. ...

Link: Digital TV Facts.  --Dennis

How TiVo Can Get Its Groove Back

Janko Roettgers has some interesting ideas on how TiVo can innovate:  open up the box, become the ultimate programming guide, get on the social Web, and unbundle cable.  Link:  NewTeeVee.  --Dennis

The iPod touch: great ID meets the robber baron tradition

No doubt about it, Apple's iPhone and iPod touch continue that company's record of high class industrial design.  But if Steve Jobs's taste and focus make for great-looking consumer products, his tightly-integrated hardware/DRM/software business model is more a throwback to the great (and sometimes unfairly labeled) "robber baron" industrialists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.  Ironically, this business style is about as far from the culture of the Web as any company active in this space today.  I hope Apple's design sense goes on forever, but the days for its business model are numbered.

The touch takes the iPhone, removes the mediocre camera and mediocre 2G GSM radio, and substitutes a Wi-Fi radio, and the maximum memory is a small 16 GB (though that is double the iPhone's).  My son, writing from Rotterdam, had the following reaction to the touch:

... This ipod, the full touchscreen ipod, I've been waiting for so long, it's incredible, exactly what we all wanted - except - 8gb/16gb?  This is next to nothing!  My ipod, the grandpa of ipods from a whole 4 years ago, is a 15gb.  ...

Most importantly to folks in my business, it continues the crippled version of the Safari browser.  Like a TV cable box with parental controls, it lets you access only media on the web that "Dad" Jobs wants you to access -- in this case, the iTunes Store of course, YouTube and one of the newest media companies, Starbucks (see Gerd Leonhard's reaction to the Starbucks announcement).  Only this isn't to keep you from naughty lyrics, it's to ensure you don't use any media that doesn't give Apple a cut.

The paucity of memory on the touch is puzzling, especially when Apple simultaneously released the iPod Classic with 160 GB of storage.  Why limit what you can store on the only device they have that permits paid downloads from iTunes?

On the subject of the Classic's large storage, read Bob Lefsetz's progressive vision of what Apple should do with this storage:

... It’s like we’re living in the twilight zone. The labels are stuck in the nineties and the public is in the twenty first century. Who even HAS 4,000 albums?  ¶  A lot of people. Oh, not as CDs. But as MP3s, stolen from the Net, their friends, their family.  ¶  People WANT music. The labels just can’t figure out how to sell it to them.  ¶  Took them over three years to even deliver it easily online at a reasonable price (2003’s iTunes Store). But, they still haven’t given people what they want. How about a 160 gig iPod PRELOADED with the greatest hits of the sixties? Or the history of dance music? Don’t bother to steal the music, you can get it, for an extra fifty bucks. ...

Link:  Lefsetz Letter.  Right on.  In the end, preloading will win out over even the iTunes Store -- because folks will realize that its superior pricing rationality and security will kill off virtually all piracy.  If the 2007 iPod Classic holds 40,000 songs.  With Moore's Law progression, we'll have a 1 TB iPod in five years.  Will be a nice retirement gift.  Hint, hint.

--Dennis

P.S.:  The picture above (taken at about the same age as Steve Jobs is now) is of "robber baron" James J. Hill, "The Empire Builder," whose railroad's advertising in Scandinavia and then its tracks were largely responsible for getting my grandparents and thousands of others to Minnesota in the 1880s.

Vnunet: Digital Radio iPods expected on Wednesday

Iain Thomson writes:

... a reliable industry insider has told vnunet.com that the announcement will include plans to bring digital radio to the iPod along with an option to buy music using the device.  ¶  The source said that the new iPods will be able to receive digital radio, and will include a 'buy-now' function to allow the user to download and buy tracks as they are being played. ...

Link:  vnunet.com.

However, Nick DePlume cautions:

... While it is possible the new iPod will be the first to pack some sort of wireless capability, suggestions of digital radio playback should be taken with a grain of salt. ...

Link:  Think Secret.

Thanks to John Paczkowski for both these links from, And Lo, Jobs Appeared and Said 'No, This Is the Best iPod Ever,' and It Was, and There Was Much Rejoicing.  Link:  Digital Daily. 

Count me as one of the skeptics, though I'd be happy to be wrong on this one because of the lift it would give HD Radio -- if, indeed, that's what they mean by "digital radio."  However, it's my understanding that the existing chipsets for HD Radio receivers are quite power hungry -- hence the general lack of HDR portable models in the CE marketplace today.  So making that work in an iPod form factor seems like a real stretch to me unless there has been a breakthrough in power requirements for the HDR receiver chipsets. 

On the other hand, maybe what is meant is a WiFi digital radio with some sort of streaming addressability similar to the Torian Wireless Infusion that I own.  That just might fit into that form factor.  We'll see tomorrow, I guess.

Update 5 September 2007:
OK, it's tomorrow now and, indeed, it was a WiFi radio.  It will permit users to log into iTunes directly and buy music.  And its storage is strangely tiny -- only one-tenth the size of the new iPod Classic.  See Natali T. Del Conte's, Apple Announces iPod touch with Wi-Fi.  Link:  PC Magazine. --Dennis

Big Love

Let's face it, I'm unfaithful -- to my technology, that is.  I have two cell phones and normally whenever my contract is up I'll go out and buy the latest one. 

My work cell phone is an Audiovox PPC-6700 from Sprint.  This is a Swiss army knife of a phone -- or to be more accurate, it's a Microsoft Mobile PDA that lets you make phone calls and take pictures.  It has a great web browser, its synchronization with Outlook is terrific, and as an email machine it's decent keyboard makes it above average.  When I'm traveling, I use it as a radio to listen to the two radio services that I manage back home.  Sprint's great EV-DO Rev. 3 network makes that a pleasure.  The camera is pretty lame and doesn't really work with scanR, which I use as a substitute fax machine and to make documents from various presentation slides I see -- so I have to carry a small real camera for that.  Most everything is a two-handed operation requiring that darn little stylus to do stuff.  They're easy to uses and Sprint stores don't stock them so you're forced to order replacements online.  Like me, it could stand to lose some bulk.

My personal phone is a T-Mobile BlackBerry 8700g, by far the best-designed phone-and-email-handheld I've ever used -- and that's a lot of them.  What I mean is, for telephone and email functionality, it's terrific.  But it doesn't have a camera, it can't play media, it runs on the not-so-speedy EDGE network, and its web browser is only adequate.  Except for the Pearl, no one has ever accused a BlackBerry of being good-looking.  I've had five email accounts, including my work account, merrily pushing mail to me since I got it about 16 months ago, but only this week did I get my IT guy to make it work with the Exchange server at the university where I work.  He wishes he'd never seen it.  But this, too, works great, and now all my Outlook stuff is syncing with it.  It's sort of like one of those second weddings that some couples do as a recommitment.

But that renewed relationship with my BlackBerry comes at a time when I'm thinking, wow, I've only got eight months to go on this contract.  What else is out there?  There is the iPhone, of course, but my reading and talking to a few users has led me to believe that it's fabulous industrial design but its only fair in the functionality department.  Beautiful, but not real bright.  I need bright.

The phone that threatens my BlackBerry fidelity the most is the Nokia N95, which just came out with a U.S. version that solves most of the minuses noted about the original European version.  No U.S. carrier is offering it, so you currently have to buy it unlocked and pay full price.  The new one has shed her shutter skirt to make room for a larger battery.  She has more memory and operates on the AT&T 3G network, so she's much speedier than the iPhone operating on the old slow network.  She has a 5-megapixel camera -- so you don't have to carry a "real" one -- and she seems to do everything as well as both my current phones do.  Oh, and she has VOIP software, WiFi and a built-in GPS.

Om Malik has a review of the U.S. version at GigaOM.  Symbian-guru.com has pictures.  More info at PC World and PC Magazine.  Be still, my heart.   --Dennis

In-Stat: U.S. households with little or no interest in HDTV on the rise

Broadcast Engineering reports:

The percentage of U.S. households that said they were interested in HDTVs fell this year compared to those who expressed an interest last year, and the number or those reporting to have little or no interest has grown, according to a series of studies from market research firm In-Stat.  ¶  At the same time, worldwide interest in HDTV among consumers is rising, with particularly strong interest in France and South Korea, the research firm said. The reports also showed that consumers are choosing LCD TVs over their plasma display equivalents in good number, which will be responsible for LCD televisions claiming 75 percent of the market by 2011 and the plasma market share dwindling to below 15 percent. ...

--Dennis

DVR viewership eating away at DVD watching

Eric Bangeman writes:

... Another group may be moving the DVR further up on its list of disliked technologies in the wake of Ofcom's fourth annual report on the state of the UK's communications market. In the survey, 31 percent of DVR owners said that they are watching fewer DVDs.  ¶  There are a couple of factors working in favor of the drop in DVD viewership. First, some DVR owners are using the devices to build up their movie libraries. Did you miss it in the theaters and forget to rent it when the DVD was released? No problem—wait until it's on HBO and record it to watch at your leisure.  ¶  DVRs also give owners more TV options. Why run down to the local video store if you have several hours of your favorite TV shows awaiting your viewing pleasure? Watching all of that recorded TV eats away at the time available for watching DVDs. ...

Link:  Ars Technica.  --Dennis

IBM to administer DTV converter program ...

... for the NTIA.  Link:  Broadcast Engineering.  --Dennis

Blu-ray outpaces HD DVD in U.S.

Reuters is reporting that Blu-ray HD discs outsold HD DVD discs in the U.S. by two-to-one in the first half of 2007.  I, of course, bought an HD DVD player when it dropped below $300 at Costco (context: I bought two Beta VCRs before I bought my first VHS one).  Blockbuster announced it's going to stock Blu-ray, but on the other hand Wal-Mart announced it's building a zillion HD DVD players in Asia for the holidays.  So maybe the jury is still out.

Two observations about HD DVDs:  The discs seem to be more sensitive to scratches than standard DVDs.  One we received from Netflix was unplayable for more than about 15 minutes at a time, then one had to start over and hope it skipped the scratch the next time.  Also, while the video quality is great, it's not hugely better on my 50-inch monitor than video from an upscaling standard DVD player.  Those now sell for under $100 and do a great job.  --Dennis

Link:  c|net News.com.

Better Than High Definition

Kate Greene writes:

High-definition displays are increasingly popular. More and more people are experiencing high-definition movies and television in breathtaking color and detail. But another technology, called high-dynamic range (HDR), is on the heels of high definition, and some experts think that it could be a quick successor. Whereas high-definition displays pump out more pixels, HDR displays provide more contrast. In other words, on an HDR display, the brightest whites are hundreds of thousands of times brighter than the darkest blacks; the contrast is key to making images on such a display appear more realistic. "A regular image just looks like a depiction of a scene," says Roland Fleming, a research scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, in Tübingin, Germany. "But high-dynamic range looks like looking through a window." ...

Link:  MIT Technology Review.

Hype cycle for consumer technologies

Gartner has published its 2007 hype cycle chart for a large number of consumer technologies.   Click on image for larger version.  Note the relative positions of digital terrestrial radio (HD Radio) on the far left and digital terrestrial television (DTV) on the far right.  Via Bobbie Johnson at The Guardian Technology blog.  --Dennis

TV train wreck ahead [Gee, do you think?]

Jim Puzzanghera writes:

Millions of TV sets that rely on antennas may go dark in a little more than 18 months, and the government needs to do much more to help people who own them see the light, senators said Thursday.  ¶  "I think there's high potential for a train wreck here," Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) told Federal Communications Commission and Commerce Department officials during a hearing on the transition to digital-only signals. ...

... Democrats appear poised to push for more money and public service announcements to prepare TV owners. U.S. officials have budgeted $5 million to tell people about the switch and coupons that will cover most of the cost of a no-frills converter box. The coupons will be available Jan. 1 on a first-come, first-served basis. ...

Link: Los  Angeles Times.  Thanks to Katy June-Friesen at Current. 

See also Steven Sande's Let's avoid that digital TV 'train wreck':

The shutdown of analog television broadcasts in 2009 offers “high potential for a train wreck,” according to Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.). Is the digital TV transition a disaster in the making?  ¶   It’s still too early to tell. Alarm bells were rung at today’s Senate Commerce Committee hearing, where an AARP official raised the prospect of senior citizens losing their television service and taking it out on Congress. That’s exactly what would happen, too, if we switched over tomorrow. Surveys continue to show low levels of awareness about what will happen on February 17, 2009, when over-the-air broadcasters will complete the change to digital TV. Personally, I’m not despairing—not yet. ...

Link:  Digital TV Facts.  --Dennis

No Moto in DTV converter box market

Steven Sande writes:

As momentum builds for the digital TV transition, Motorola has been notably absent from the DTV converter box party. ...

Link:  Digital TV Facts.  --Dennis

iSuppli survey: consumers want an Internet-connected TV

Steve O'Hear writes:

According to a survey carried out by iSuppli, nearly two-thirds of U.S. consumers want their televisions to link to the Internet. This, it’s suggested, could path the way for an explosion in sales of network-enabled consumer electronics devices in the next few years. ...

Link:  last100.  --Dennis

Microsoft's Internet TV strategy

Mack D. Male  has a two part article exploring Microsoft's Internet TV strategy.  Link to part 1:  last100.  Link to part 2: last100.  --Dennis

New Media News Digest, 6/19-7/12/2007

Here is Sondra Russell's latest New Media News Digest.  She works for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and writes the following News Digest on an almost weekly basis.  Used here with permission.  Her email address is srussell [at] cpb [dot] org.  --Dennis

SONDRA’S SUMMARY

> The top story this time is that the MacArthur foundation is exploring virtual worlds.  Why is this story top news for public broadcasters?  Because the MacArthur foundation is a major supporter of public broadcasting, and the foundation’s interest in Second Life might inspire a forward-thinking station to try something in the virtual world space as well.

> The key theme this time is that internet radio is really getting the squeeze.  The U.S. Court of Appeals has declined to delay the increase in royalties that will likely kill off many small streaming radio sites – the ruling is due to kick in on Sunday.  SoundExchange offered a cap on some annual payments for large webcasters, but only through 2008.  In related news, Lala.com has stopped its Beta version of a free music streaming service, despite a promise to pay royalties to participating record companies.

> The think piece this time is that it’s time for some “summer reading”

.  As things slow down at the office this month and next, I invite you to spend a little time exploring sites that are getting lots of media attention but that aren’t necessarily on your list of frequently visited.  Two good sources: the 50 best web sites according to Time Magazine, and the Compete Attention 200.  The former is an annual collection of outstanding sites in five different categories, ranging from Arts & Leisure to Web Services.  The latter is a list of the top 200 sites that U. S. users are paying the most attention to this month.  In the “no surprises here” category, they both feature a lot of social networking sites.

New Media News Digest, June 19th – July 12th, 2007

INTERNET

Foundation With Real Money Ventures Into Virtual World
From the NYT: "For the first time, one of the nation’s largest foundations [The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation] is venturing into virtual worlds to play host to activities and discussions and explore the role that philanthropy might play.”

The Compete Attention 200 for June 2007: Where DO we spend our time online?
From Compete, a ranking of the sites getting the largest share of attention among US Internet users: "The web continues to socialize: media and networking sites gain attention across the board."

50 Best Web Sites According to Time Magazine

This special feature categorizes interesting sites into “Arts & Leisure”, “Audio & Video”, “News & Information”, “Social Networks”, and “Web Services”. 

TELEVISION

The Next Net: NBBC Becomes National Bye-Bye Company
From Business 2.0: "The short-lived National Broadband Company (NBBC), NBC-Universal's attempt to create a TV syndication network for the Web is now being sucked into the NBC-Fox joint venture to create a YouTube competitor.  Thus NBBC joins the deadpool

Sony Airs Paired-down Versions of Classic Shows
from ClickZNews: "Sony Pictures Television is airing paired-down versions of its classic shows on MySpace. The name reflects the three- to five-minute length of each Web episode, which is edited down from half-hour and one-hour shows."

TiVo, Amazon to sell movies straight to TV sets
From Reuters: "TiVo Inc. on Tuesday said many of its customers can now order pay-per-view movies and television shows from Amazon.com's download service directly from their TV, without a personal computer."

RADIO

Judges clear way for higher Internet radio royalties
From the LA Times: "A federal appeals court panel has declined to delay a substantial increase in royalties that Internet radio stations owe for playing music, clearing the way for the hike to begin on Sunday."

SoundExchange offers compromise to large webcasters
SoundExchange, the group set up to collect royalties for performers and record companies, said it has reached out to the Digital Media Association (DiMA) and proposed a voluntary cap on the minimum fees for music played over the Web.

Lala's Free Streaming Goes Dark
At first, the new service was slow but workable, and I gave Wilco's new Sky Blue Sky a spin. Very slick. Then came the day the music died. Users notices the disappearance first."

Bob Cringely: When is a TV not a TV? -- also, Neokast

Says Cringely:

When it is an Apple TV - the High Definition DVD-killer ...

... Apple TV will be the spoiler of many a Blu-ray or HD DVD sale because Apple TV is cheaper and easier, has no expensive consumable media, and HD movies will probably cost a little less to buy through iTunes than at Target. ...

But most of this column is about Neokast, a very interesting video distribution technology based on multicasting with which he suggests Apple hook up.  Unlike broadcasting, where multicasting means sending multiple program channels over one broadcast RF channel, the term multicasting here is used in the Internet sense, where it refers to a technology that enable multiple users to access a program without the origination point having to simultaneous send out multiple copies of that program -- one to each user.

Link: PBS.org.  See also Bob's NeoKast QuicKast entered beta this morning.  Link:  Technology Evangelist.  And Paul Kapustka's Neokast, Emerging from the shell.  Link: NewTeeVee.  --Dennis

ATSC-enabled TV sets getting cheaper

I've been hearing reports of under-$200 television sets with built-in ATSC DTV tuners all spring and summer.  Circuit City now has one for under $90, a 13" Prima model.  Thanks to Ralph Hogan for the link.  --Dennis

TV advertising will grow, but who will eat the cake?

Senaka Balasuriya writes:

According to the USA Today, a recent report published by PWC is forecasting that traditional TV advertising sales will grow 4.5% a year to $46.3 billion in 2011. When you consider product placement revenue and fees that cable, satellite and phone services pay to carry a channel, network TV revenues could grow of 6.5% a year to $85.4 billion in 2011. ...

... So what’s going increase TV viewing? The Internet is becoming a bigger source of videos, but the following will increase TV viewership and even shift Internet Video viewing from the Computer to the TV screen.

1. HDTV – With the high resolution and quality of HDTV, users will not just watch more TV, but also will shift to using the HDTV for watching Internet Video as well. PWC predicts that nearly 59% of homes will have HDTVs in 2011, up from 12.7% at the end of 2006. HDTV uptake will be propped up by falling prices and the FCC mandate to transmit all TV programs in high-def by 2009.
2. DVR - DVR growth is expected to rise to 39% in 2011, up from 11.8% in 2006. With Slingbox and other DVRs, people have already started to record and watch TV, albeit with time-shifting or place-shifting (e.g. watch on mobile).
3. Integration of Internet and TV and the Separation of the Set top Box – With Joost and Apple TV coming to a TV near you, the Internet Videos will be conveniently available on the TV. ...

Link:  Technology Untangled.

New DTV signal strength predictor

I've checked this out only for my own home and haven't had time to check out the included maps (which require a BitTorrent client to download and Google Earth to use), but a new online DTV (also analog) signal strength predictor is available at TV Fool.  Having written and published prediction software based on the Longley-Rice method in the past and evaluating several others, I can testify that there is no perfect implementation of signal strength prediction, but this one looks like it does a much better job incorporating the effects of terrain than does the CEA's AntennaWeb offering.  I'm looking forward to checking it out more later this week.  I'm sure it will be a useful tool for our station technical staff in advising viewers about their DTV receive options.  You might point "advanced viewers" to it directly, but the site is not as consumer-oriented as is AntennaWeb.

Thanks to Dale Kelly on the OpenDTV list for the tip.  --Dennis

Internet Radio Races To Break Free of the PC

Yesterday, Sarah McBride had an important article on the front page of the Wall Street Journal about the several Internet radio providers working to untether the content they distribute from the PC.  She features Slacker prominently in the article, which I think is particularly compelling because it combines "music learning" techniques to customize your "station" with innovative yet relatively inexpensive delivery technologies (non-real-time satellite and WiFi).  I've posted here about Slacker (use the search box on the right) and the other companies mentioned, so none of this is new to a careful reader, but she puts this together in a way that makes it hard for us legacy broadcasters to ignore the import of this development.  Link:  Wall Street Journal (paid subscription required).  --Dennis