TiVo and DirecTV: Back Together Again

When News Corporation took operational control of DirecTV a few years ago, it began an agonizing split between DirecTV and TiVo, its supplier of DVR technology. Prior to the split, DirecTV was by far TiVo's biggest market. After News Corp. took over, it demanded a much bigger split of subscription revenues, which TiVo wouldn't agree to. News Corp. called on NDS, a corporate subsidiary, to port DVR software that had already been developed for BSkyB and other services to the DirecTV platform, cutting out TiVo. Last March, DirecTV announced that subscribers wanting HD DVR service had to switch to NDS's set-top box, a decision that's been roundly criticized by many DirecTV users.

However, within days of DirecTV's announcement, John Malone's Liberty Media acquired News Corporation's controlling interest in DirecTV. Liberty Media almost immediately began talks with TiVo to reestablish the relationship between the two companies, and today, both companies announced that TiVo will develop a DirecTV-compatible HD DVR for delivery in the second half of 2009.

The loss of DirecTV as a major customer made TiVo a much stronger company: It completed a distribution deal with Comcast that's in the process of rollout, and it shifted a good deal of its revenues from selling boxes and subscriptions to selling viewing and marketing information to advertisers. Winning DirecTV back can only help the company's bottom line.

Obligatory Google Chrome Post

Yes, I've installed Google Chrome, and no, it's not an Internet Explorer killer, at least not yet. My browser of choice is Firefox 3, and I see nothing in Chrome at this point that will get me to switch. The biggest advanage that I see so far is that Chrome seems to be considerably faster in loading pages than either IE or Firefox. Chrome uses the same WebKit rendering engine that Safari uses, and Safari has been roundly praised for its speed, so it's no surprise that Chrome is fast. Google benchmarks show that Chrome's V8 JavaScript compiler is much faster than the interpreters in IE, Firefox and Opera, but the forthcoming Firefox 3.1 will have its own JavaScript compiler, so Chrome's performance advantage may be short-lived.

It's going to take a long time for Chrome to get the same kind of third-party developer support that Firefox already has, but I don't think that's Google's objective: I think that they're targeting users who want simple, fast browsing, and couldn't care less whether the browser supports add-ons. Click one button and it's installed. Every visitor to Google Search is a potential user. That's got to scare Microsoft, even if Chrome is less sophisticated in many ways than IE.

I've visited some sites that don't recognize the Chrome user agent, and thus either limit access or won't give access to Chrome users at all. Therefore, the onus is now on Google to get site developers to support Chrome. That's not going to be easy, because other than the Google name, I haven't seen anything compelling enough to get most people to switch from their existing browser to Chrome.

Comcast limits bandwidth

Comcast announced today that starting October 1st, it will limit bandwidth usage for its high-speed Internet customers to 250GB/month. The first time that a subscriber exceeds the limit, they'll get a warning; if they do it again within six months, their high-speed Internet service could be turned off for a year. That's right, a year.

It's no surprise that Comcast is implementing bandwidth caps. The company was penalized by the FCC for interfering with BitTorrent traffic, so it's looking for alternative ways of limiting its network load. However, its decision raises two issues: First, is 250GB/month an appropriate limit, and second, how will consumers measure their bandwidth use to make sure that they don't use more than the maximum?

Comcast's press release gives examples of what can fit into 250GB: 50 million emails or 124 standard-definition movies. The problem, of course, is that people don't use their Internet connections for only one purpose, such as email--they use them for many different things. Someone who uses an online backup and restore service for their hard disk could use up most of their monthly limit in one session. If you use Vonage, Skype or some other VoIP service, that's going to count against your monthly limit. (One assumes that you'll be able to use Comcast's own VoIP service as much as you want, however.) And, if you've got something like a Slingbox or AppleTV, you could use as much as 15MB per minute of video. So, 250GB could get used up very quickly.

That brings us to the second issue: Comcast is providing no way whatsoever for subscribers to see how much bandwidth they've used. They recommend that customers install bandwidth monitoring software on their computers. That's all well and good for PC applications, but it won't track usage by a TiVo, Squeezebox, Slingbox, Vonage VoIP adapter, or similar devices. Mobile phone companies can tell subscribers their phone usage down to the second--why can't Comcast provide a webpage that tracks subscribers' bandwidth usage? After all, they have to be measuring it in order to enforce their 250GB limit.

Perhaps Comcast thinks that so many people will complain about this limit that they'll get the FCC to agree to content-based throttling. I think that it's more likely that the reverse will happen--Comcast will tick so many people off that the FCC will once again intervene and force the company to adopt a much higher limit. When subscribers who are using their Internet connections for perfectly legitimate purposes start to see their service cut off, the feces will hit the fan.

It does everything except wash your dishes

According to Gizmodo, Blaupunkt just introduced a new PND (Personal Navigation Device, or in-car GPS) for the European market, the Travel Pilot N700. This device has an amazing array of capabilities, centered around a camera built into the device that displays the road ahead. The N700 overlays driving instructions on the display, so you actually see them on the road's surface. It also reads traffic signs and overlays that information onto the display (the design of traffic signs is much more uniform in Europe than it is in the U.S., which makes recognition of European signs easier; this is one reason why this model is Europe-only for now.) It's also got voice recognition, live traffic information, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth connectivity for hands-free calling and even a built-in DVB receiver for watching television when the car is stopped. The N700 will sell for around $740. Considering that built-in navigation systems typically cost $1,500 to $2,000, Blaupunkt's new model has to be considered a bargain. Here's a video of the unit in action.

Are DVD "special features" doomed?

Once upon a time, there were VHS videocassettes, which could hold a movie, a few trailers, and nothing else. When DVDs hit the market in 1997, they could hold not only a movie and trailers, but subtitles in multiple languages, multiple soundtracks and menus for navigation. However, DVDs were initially much more expensive than videocassettes, and their usability features weren't always enough to justify the price difference. So, home video distributors hit on a strategy of adding value with commentaries and "the making of" documentaries. Before long, they learned that they could release the same movie title two or three times, each time adding more special features. A small but determined group of fans would buy every version, just to be sure that they got all the special features.

Today, we've become accustomed to getting a commentary and some documentaries on every DVD. In fact, many people won't buy a DVD if it doesn't have a sufficient number of special features; they'll either rent it or watch it on a Pay-per-View service. I used to be one of those people, but I recently took a look at a wall full of DVDs and realized that 1) I had never watched them more than once, and 2) I rarely watched any of the documentaries or listened to the commentaries.

And so we come to Blu-Ray and digital downloads. Early Blu-Ray discs had far fewer special features than their DVD counterparts, although that gap is narrowing every day. Digital downloads generally don't have special features (except for subtitles in some cases). Is the presence or absence of special features going to drive user acceptance, as it did with DVD?

I don't think so. While Blu-Ray has been far from a big success, it's clear that consumers are buying it for image quality, not special features. Digital downloads are being rented and bought for convenience; the absence of special features is actually a benefit, because it keeps file sizes smaller and shortens download times.

The implication of all this is that commentaries and documentaries are on their way out. As a former DVD producer, I can tell you that special features cost a lot of money. As they're increasingly seen as "nice-to-haves" rather than "must-haves," producers will cut back. By and large, I don't think that viewers will miss them.

Good News, Bad News

The good news is that you get to meet Jamie Lee Curtis! The bad news is that you have to talk to her about your irregularity.

Apples and Oranges, Comcast-Style

Okay, I admit it--I've been watching the Olympics on NBC in a Comcast market. Comcast is running a game-show style ad that purports to show that Comcast has more HD than DirecTV all the time, at any time. The problem is that Comcast is comparing apples and oranges: DirectTV has far more HD channels than Comcast does, but Comcast has several hundred hours of HD content in its Video-on-Demand systems. Thus, at any one time, you can watch approximately 100 hours of live HD content on DirecTV, or perhaps half that much on Comcast, with several hundred additional hours of recorded VOD content available. Further, a lot of Comcast's HD content is in the form of pay-per-view movies. So, who really has the most HD? If you're counting channels, DirecTV wins hands-down. If you're counting the number of hours of HD content available at any one time, Comcast wins. Personally, I'd be a lot happier if both companies spent less money tossing grenades at each other and more money improving their customer service.

Apple: Human, After All

Ever since the launch of the 3G iPhone, Apple has been showered with decidedly mixed news. One the one hand, iPhone sales took off much faster than sales of the original iPhone, but who can forget the lines, delays and frustration of buyers when Apple's iTunes-based authorization system failed? In the U.S., the 3G iPhone is still subject to inventory shortages and a long purchase and approval process.

Now, 3G iPhone users from around the world are complaining of poor 3G reception and speeds little better than the EDGE 2G service of the original iPhone. In the U.S., AT&T and Apple maintained a stony silence about the problems, but in other countries, service providers laid the problem at the feet of Apple. An industry analyst conjectured that the Infineon chipset that Apple used for the 3G iPhone was to blame, a Swedish engineering magazine confirmed the problem (though not necessarily the source), and a Business Week article appears to substantiate that conclusion.  While Richard Windsor, the Nomura Securities analyst who wrote the original report, believes that the problem is in hardware, the BusinessWeek article indicates that the parties involved think that the problem can be fixed in firmware. None of this matters to customers, who just want a phone that works as advertised.

The iTunes Application Store has been a grand success, generating a million dollars in sales a day for Apple and still growing. On the other hand, developers are complaining about Apple's slow (and seemingly capricious) approval process for adding their software to the Store--an approval process that nonetheless let through a program called "I Am Rich," which cost $999 and did nothing except flash a red icon on the iPhone's screen. According to reports, eight people actually bought the package before Apple took it down.

mobileMe, Apple's replacement for .mac, was launched well before it was ready, which caused millions of .mac users who were forced to switch over to mobileMe to lose access to their email and be unable to synchronize their devices for long stretches of time. The problems caused The Wall Street Journal's Walt Mossberg, who's usually an Apple champion, to warn users to stay away from mobileMe until the service matures.

Let's not forget AppleTV, which even in its second version has failed to gain market traction. Roku's Netflix Player sold out quickly, and the company has had a hard time catching up with demand, but AppleTVs gather dust on store shelves around the U.S.

These glitches indicate that there are some serious problems in Apple's product review and release process, as well as its online infrastructure. How Apple responds to these problems, and how long they persist, will indicate whether or not the company has gotten too big for its own good. In any event, Apple is human, after all.

Should You Get a DTV Converter Anyway?

It's impossible to watch television in the U.S. lately without seeing ads reminding viewers that analog transmissions will end on February 17, 2009 (except for low-power stations.) Like most viewers, I've ignored these messages, because I'm a cable subscriber, and over-the-air service is lousy in my area. However, there's potentially a good reason to get a coupon and buy a converter, if you have one or more sets with analog tuners: Over-the-air broadcasters will be able to multicast--send multiple subchannels of programming within a single digital channel. In my market, there are three stations that are already multicasting, and I receive their multicast channels on Comcast cable. However, there is no FCC rule that requires cable or satellite operators to multicast every channel put on the air by broadcasters.

In my market (San Francisco/San Jose), the subchannels of commercial broadcasters are being used for weather services and news rebroadcasts--nothing astounding. Nevertheless, broadcasters are being offered a plethora of programming to fill these new subchannels, and some of it might be interesting. In any event, if you've got some analog sets and you're not planning to toss them out anytime soon, you might consider getting some of them digital converter coupons, and then purchasing a converter box.

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A Seismic Change

Whether we like it or not, the U.S. is going through the biggest period of change--economically, socially and technologically--since the end of the Second World War. At the end of WWII, hundreds of thousands of servicemen returned from overseas, got married and started families. These families needed homes, cars, appliances, furniture, and so on, bringing the true end of the Great Depression and the launch of the greatest economic growth ever seen. Demand for housing led to the birth and growth of the suburbs, and the Interstate Highway system, originally launched by President Eisenhower, enabled Americans to move into every nook and cranny of the country by car.

I just watched a story on a local television newscast, discussing the potential "slummification" of suburbs around Sacramento, CA, as residents abandon them to be closer to their jobs and public transit. The story quoted one forecast of more than 22 million excess homes in suburbia nationwide by 2025. These "McMansions" are generally woefully energy inefficient and well away from major public transit corridors, so their owners get hit by energy costs when they're at home, as well as when they're driving to and from work. The pendulum is swinging back to high-density, in-city housing.

I've often believed that we would eventually rue the day that we gutted our passenger rail and street car systems, and that day has come. Now, cities around the country are trying to build or extend their public transportation systems, at enormous cost.

This radical relocation of people is just one element of the change. Automobile preferences have changed almost overnight from trucks and SUVs to high-mileage passenger cars. Some SUVs coming off of three-year leases can't be sold, for almost any price. The future of the American car companies lies in their European and Asian operations; the salvation of GM is likely to say Opel, Vauxhall, Holden or GM Shanghai somewhere on it.

These are only a taste of the changes underway. The U.S. that we're becoming will increasingly look like a 21st Century version of the country in the early 20th century.

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A Huge Win for Cablevision (and for consumers)

Earlier today, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second District reversed a previous ruling that Cablevision's network PVR service infringed the rights of content owners. In 2006, Cablevision announced its network PVR service, called RS-DVR, which was based on technology from Arroyo Video Solutions, a company that was subsequently acquired by Cisco. The big advantage of a centralized PVR system is that conventional set-top boxes can provide video recording capabilities; in-home PVRs, with their cost and complexity, aren't needed. Network PVRs are the standard in China, India and other countries where subscriber income precludes the cost of in-home PVRs.

Almost immediately after Cablevision's announcement, a flock of content companies, including CBS, Viacom, News Corp., Time Warner, Disney and NBC Universal, filed suit to stop deployment of RS-DVR. In the initial court case, the media companies prevailed and won an injunction that precluded Cablevision from offering RS-DVR. Today's decision by a three-judge panel overturned the lower court's ruling and lifted the injunction. These articles provide more details about the ruling itself.

This is not the last word in the case, of course. The media companies can request that the entire U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second District rehear the case. No matter how that turns out, the losing side can appeal the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, which can (but isn't obligated to) hear the appeal. However, we're a giant step closer to legal network PVR service in the United States, which will likely mean lower costs for consumers.

Sirius and XM Merger Approved, Finally

According to the Washington Post and other sources, by a 3-2 vote at the FCC, the Sirius-XM satellite radio merger has finally been approved. There were a few additional conditions agreed to by the two companies, including a "slap on the wrist" $19.7 million fine primarily attributable to XM, because some of the FM transmitters built into XM receivers were too powerful and interfered with conventional broadcasts. Also, some of their terrestrial repeaters used to provide better coverage in urban areas were both located in the wrong places and were too powerful, and thus they also interfered with conventional broadcasts.

Another condition was that both companies agreed to expedite the development of receivers that will work with both Sirius and XM, a promise that the two companies actually made prior to the launch of either company's satellite radio service, but that has never been carried out. The companies also agreed to freeze prices for three years (which they had, again, previously agreed to,) and to offer subscribers the option of picking and choosing channels from the two company's services (a la carte pricing), a capability that won't be available until dual Sirius-XM receivers hit the market.

In short, it looks as though the two companies made minimal concessions. Given that the U.S. Justice Department previously approved the merger even without these concessions, it's extremely unlikely that any other legal obstacles are likely to arise. Given currernt economic conditions, however, it's essential for the merged company to start cutting costs immediately, so I wouldn't be at all surprised if the merged company starts to drop duplicate staff and put much the same programming on both services as soon as possible. (Howard Stern on both Sirius and XM, perhaps?)

Are we not annoying? We are TiVo!

A couple of days ago, TiVo and Amazon.com announced that TiVo users will be able to purchase physical products from Amazon.com that they see on television. Let's say that Jay Leno is pushing a nose hair shaver on The Tonight Show; lucky TiVo users will be able to pause the show and buy the shaver, using only their remote control.

I don't know if one of those obnoxious icons, like the ones that TiVo uses to try to get users to record a particular show, will flash on the screen ("Click Here to Buy that Nose Hair Shaver"). Frankly, I'm already getting sick of TiVo interupting my late-night television viewing so that it can change the channel to record content that I have absolutely no interest in. They're selling my viewing information, my eyeballs, and now they're trying to sell me merchandise from Amazon.com.

It's getting to the point where the basic utility of the TiVo service, time-shifting, is becoming outweighed by the annoyance of putting up with a salesperson sitting in my living room, 24 hours a day. If the company offered some kind of trade-off--accept the plugs and ads, or sign up for Amazon Prime, and the basic TiVo service is free--I could justify what's going on, but they're doing nothing except making the service less, rather than more, valuable.

Therefore, I've decided to relegate my TiVo to the dustbin. I've enjoyed it, but I won't go back until they tip the value scale back in favor of subscribers rather than advertisers and merchants.

Big News: tvstrategies

For the last 18 months, I've been working with Steve Hawley at Multimedia Research Group (MRG). Steve is one of the world's leading experts on IPTV, and we teamed on a number of projects for MRG's clients. As you may know, I left MRG in June, but Steve and I have been looking for a way to continue working together. As of today, we've found it.

This morning, Steve and I announced tvstrategies, a market analysis firm focusing on IPTV. (You can find our press release here.) We're going to be launching with two series of reports: The first is called RadarScreen(TM) Reports, and they compare products and services head-to-head in seven key IPTV categories. The second series is Best Practices Reports, and they're case studies from IPTV Service Providers on how to increase revenues, improve efficiency and decrease costs.

As you can tell, we're focusing on Service Providers, which is quite a bit different than what Steve and I did at MRG, where our primary focus was on hardware and software vendors. We believe that the focus in the IPTV industry is shifting from Operators making their initial product acquisition decisions, to Operators working to maximize the revenues and profitability of their IPTV services. Our RadarScreen and Best Practices Reports will focus on helping Service Providers do what we consider their Big Three: Increase Revenues, Decrease Costs and Improve Efficiency.

I'll have a lot more to say about tvstrategies in the next days and weeks.

More Satellite Silliness

According to this article from Radio Ink, Ed Markey, Chairman of the House Telecommunications Subcommittee, wants the FCC to force Sirius and XM to freeze their rates for six years as a condition of their merger. National Public Radio has also chimed in--they want the firms to set aside 25% of their spectrum for noncommercial, emergency and minority-controlled programming. Both Markey and NPR want the combined companies to add HD Radio capability to their satellite receivers, an idea that was first proposed last year by iBiquity, the company that developed and licenses HD Radio.

Let's go down the list: Freeze their rates for six years. How can anyone agree to freeze their prices for six years? (Sirius and XM have already agreed to freeze their prices for three years.) If prices get too high, consumers will drop the service and the company will have to respond. Let the market decide.

Next, NPR's 25% programming set-aside (this from a network that claims to serve the entire population but that broadcasts, to my knowledge, exactly one weekly Hispanic-related and one daily African-American-related program.) If a music channel is commercial-free, as many already are on XM and Sirius, does that count? If that's the case, they may already be at the 25% mark. And, I guarantee you that XM already programs at least ten times as much minority-oriented programming a day as NPR, if not far more than that.

Finally, let's touch on the requirement to add HD Radio to satellite receivers. As I've written about previously, that's like requiring Comcast to put DirecTV receivers into their set-top boxes, or vice-versa. Now, however, we learn that it's iBiquity that originally floated the proposal. Of course iBiquity wants HD Radio in every satellite receiver: They'd get licensing fees for every satellite receiver sold, sell more equipment to broadcasters and, in turn, spur more sales of conventional HD Radio receivers, which means even more licensing revenue for iBiquity.

It's broadcasters who have the burden of making HD Radio successful, by giving consumers a reason to buy a receiver and by convincing automobile manufacturers to include HD Radio receivers in their cars, just as Sirius and XM did years ago. Making Sirius and XM subsidize HD Radio is ridiculous.

Here's what I really think is happening: Broadcasters are putting pressure on legislators to float all kinds of different restrictions on the Sirius-XM merger, which will delay the decision. Assuming that a deal is struck and the merger goes through, the civil lawsuits will begin in order to keep the companies from unifying their operations. The hope is that, eventually, either Sirius or XM will wave a white flag, the merger will be dropped, and one or both companies will go under. Consumers will lose an incredibly valuable choice (regardless of whether it's one or two companies).

Laughing on the Outside, Crying on the Inside

This isn't a financial blog, but it's no secret that both the NYSE and NASDAQ markets are in bear territory, banks are failing, tens if not hundreds of thousands of people are losing their homes, unemployment is up, and the economy is a mess. So when I turned on CNBC this afternoon, why did I see a bunch of nimrods at both markets smiling and clapping, when they both closed down yet again? Can't they put the "clap & smile" at the market close on hold for a while? It makes it look like Nero is in charge of our financial markets.

Measuring Traffic

I'm experimenting with multiple ways of measuring this blog's traffic (although that could be compared to hooking an EKG up to a dead body.) I've used Google Analytics for some time, as well as FeedBurner's stats. They're both Google services, but they measure different things: Google Analytics measures traffic to the site, while FeedBurner measures subscribers to my RSS feeds. Both are important in figuring out who's using the site and what articles get the most interest.

I've recently added IZEARanks.com and Quantcast. Both services gather usage statistics directly from the sites themselves, rather than from a sampling of Internet users. I've placed a bit of JavaScript into the right-hand column of my site for each service (if you're reading this as a webpage, just scroll down and you'll see them.) IZEARanks focuses exclusively on blogs, while Quantcast covers websites, blogs and other services.

IZEARanks.com currently offers three metrics: RealRank, Page Views and Unique Visitors. According to IZEARanks.com, RealRank is calculated by comparing all blogs in their system 70% on daily unique visitors, 20% by daily active inbound links and 10% by daily page views. Quantcast tracks number of monthly unique visitors and frequency of visits, but it also attempts to identify the demographics of visitors. Quantcast also has an interesting media planner feature that enables advertising media buyers to select sites based on their demographics, reach and other characteristics, and to compare sites on those same elements.

For now IZEARanks.com seems to be better for "bragging rights" for blogs, while Quantcast is setting itself up to be a real challenger to Nielsen//NetRatings and comScore. Bloggers don't have to pay a dime to use any of these services, so it's worth experimenting with them to find out which ones get you the best information and sales tools.

Evernote: My New Cool Tool

For years, when I've found an article on the web that I wanted to keep, I've printed the page. That wastes paper, and I usually end up throwing out the stacks of printouts. Recently, I've adopted Evernote, which allows me to save the articles both on- and offline. It supports Windows and Mac, most browsers, as well as Windows Mobile smartphones and now, iPhones as well. I was a very early beta user and ended up uninstalling the software because of problems it caused with my PC, but the glitches have mostly been worked out and it's now available to everyone in open beta.

If you run the desktop version, you can store documents locally; otherwise, your documents will be kept on their remote server. (You can also sync local and remote documents so that all your devices have access to your complete library.) You can organize documents into multiple notebooks, or repositories. Documents are searchable, tags can be added, links remain live, and you can always get back to the original webpage, even if you only clipped a portion of it.

The basic version of Evernote is free (that's what I'm using), but if you find yourself using it much more heavily than I do, you can upgrade to a paid subscription with more storage space. It's worth a try.

Obligatory iPhone 3G Post

If you were standing in line outside an Apple store this morning to get your iPhone 3G, once you got inside, you couldn't get your phone activated...AARGH! Things got so bad that Apple employees started unbricking phones so that customers could at least leave the store and activate at home using iTunes. Apple pointed its finger at AT&T's activation servers, while AT&T pointed back at Apple's iTunes servers. According to this real-time blog from CNET, it's pretty clear that the problem was with Apple--AT&T's problem wasn't with activation, it was with running out of phones.

On the other hand, if you wanted to upgrade your first-generation iPhone or iPod Touch with 2.0 firmware, according to yet another CNET article, you often ended up with a bricked phone. Blammo!!!

For all of you who had the patience to wait a while to buy an iPhone 3G, or who simply couldn't care less, have a nice day.

Apparently, I'm a Spammer...

Ever since I started this blog a few years ago, I've been asked to complete a CAPTCHA (that distorted graphic you sometimes see that's supposed to differentiate between a computer and a real person) when creating new posts. I didn't think anything of it until the most recent revisions in Blogger's draft.blogger.com site, which consistently hides the Captcha word verification box and buttons and makes it impossible for me to post entries (I've tried both Firefox 3 and IE 7, with no success.) So, I switched back to the old-style Blogger, and then clicked on the little "Why do I have this?" link, which explained that Google's massive computer arrays think that this is a spam blog. (I suppose that whether or not my writing constitutes spam is in the eyes of the beholder, but in this case, the beholder is a server with a dual-core processor.) They think that my blog is spam, but it's perfectly good to sell AdWords on. Hmm...

On July 3rd, I asked Google to review my blog and turn off word verification. They apparently forgot to look at it, because I just had to ask again. I'm getting close to moving the blog to my own website--no great loss of traffic for Google, of course, but a good example of how relying on algorithms rather than human reviews and common sense can sometimes result in unintended consequences.

CNN Can't Count

I just tried to play a video on the CNN website, and got this message:

This CNN.com feature is optimized for Adobe Flash Player version 8 or higher.

You are currently using Flash Player 10

Hmm, 10 is higher than 8, isn't it?

Camcorder News from Kodak and Red

I've got news about two camcorders, one low-end model that will act like it's more expensive, and one "expensive" model that will act like it's much more expensive. The first is the new Kodak Zi6, a pocket camcorder priced at $179.95 that will compete with Pure Digital's Flip Ultra and Mino. What makes things interesting is that, unlike the Pure and similar Creative Labs pocket camcorders, the Zi6 records in HD (720/30p), and according to Benny Goldman of Gizmodo, the video looks great on a 40" flat-panel TV. The Zi6 won't be quite as convenient as the Pure Digital models--it has no built-in software, and it comes with no memory (SD and SDHC memory cards with up to 32GB of flash memory will be supported)--but it can support both the low-end YouTube shooters and people who might have considered an entry-level HD camcorder from Sony, Panasonic or Canon. And, of course, it's got the Kodak name. According to Kodak, the Zi6 will ship in September.

The other camcorder is Red's Scarlet. Jim Jannard, the founder of Red, just posted a new rendering of the Scarlet on its Scarletuser.com website. As you may recall, the Scarlet will be a fixed-lens camcorder with 3K resolution (digital cinema-quality) that will sell for under $3,000. According to Jon Sagud of Red, writing in the same thread as Jim Jannard, the Product Requirements Document (PRD) is just being completed. In most cases, Engineering departments wait for a completed PRD before they start designing the final product, but the broad outline of the Scarlet's functionality has been known for some time. In any case, we're still at least nine months away from Red shipping the Scarlet.

The Scarlet can't help but have a big impact on camcorder sales in the $5,000 to $10,000 range. If you've got to have a camcorder in that price range right now, by all means go ahead and buy one. However, if you're looking at a fixed-lens Panasonic or Sony model in that price range and you've got some time, wait at least for IBC in Amsterdam this September to see what Red shows. If the Scarlet they've got there is still a non-functional milled aluminum model like the one they showed at NAB in April, you've got at least another six months, and perhaps as much as a year, to wait for the final product.

Rendering and Compression Power From GPUs

There's an excellent article over at ExtremeTech on the future of using the GPU on graphics cards for applications other than just displaying graphics on a display. They discuss Nvidia's CUDA language and ATI's similar, but somewhat more closed, equivalent. GPUs have tremendous parallel processing power; for example, ATI's new RV770 GPU has 800 stream processors.

The ExtremeTech article talks about how GPUs can now, and increasingly will be used in the future, for video encoding, decoding and transcoding, as well as rendering and effects in Photoshop. I believe that there's a tremendous opportunity for speeding up video editing and effects (especially rendering) in programs such as Premiere Pro, After Effects and Final Cut Pro. One big issue, of course, is that Nvidia and ATI are going off in their own directions, but as the article states, there are two standardization efforts--OpenCL, which is backed by Apple and a bunch of other companies, and DirectX from Microsoft--both of which are supported by Nvidia and ATI. Of the two, it looks like OpenCL may well be the more generalized platform for parallel application development, but we need to wait and see what DirectX 11 will be able to do.

The key here is that it will eventually no longer be necessary to throw out an entire workstation in order to get better video editing and effects performance--you'll simply be able to swap out a video card (or two or three or four). Apple is going to support OpenCL directly in its forthcoming Snow Leopard version of OS X; it's too early to tell what Microsoft will do with Windows 7, but there will undoubtedly be GPU application support, even if it comes from third parties.

Loony Advice from Our Legislators

I rarely cover satellite radio, but I've been following the Sirius/XM merger and the related governmental sideshow. I've been an XM subscriber for a long time, and I'm frankly disappointed by the merger; nevertheless, it's clear to me that XM and Sirius are probably never going to get to critical mass separately. The U.S. Justice Department has approved the merger, and the Federal Communications Commission has yet to rule, but FCC Chairman Kevin Martin has said that he's ready to approve the merger with some restrictions on the new company.

Today, three U.S. Senators (Claire McCaskill (D-MO), Ben Cardin (D-MD) and John "Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory" Kerry (D-MA)) asked Martin to impose two restrictions on the merger: First, the merged company would have to allocate no less than 20%, and preferably 50%, of its channels for leasing to minority and noncommercial information programmers. Second, satellite receivers would have to include electronics for receiving terrestrial HD Radio signals.

There's no question that the merger will create a monopoly in satellite radio, but the vast majority of consumers in the U.S. get their audio entertainment from terrestrial radio, CDs and digital media players such as iPods, not satellite radio. The Justice Department decided that the relevant market for determining whether or not a monopoly exists is audio entertainment, not satellite radio. Requiring the merged company to make as much as 50% of its channels available for leasing would effectively destroy its ability to reach profitability in any reasonable time. As for making the merged company's receivers also receive HD Radio, that would be like demanding that Comcast modify its set-top boxes so that they could also be used by DirecTV, or vice versa. It's up to terrestrial broadcasters, and not Sirius and XM, to make HD Radio successful.

As I said, I'm not a fan of the Sirius/XM merger; I think that it will reduce competition and consumer choice. Nevertheless, the remedy suggested by Senators Cardin, Kerry and McCaskill doesn't address these issues at all; it simply cripples the competitiveness of satellite radio versus terrestrial broadcasters.

Losing a Legend

By now, you undoubtedly know that George Carlin died last Sunday. So what is some technology wonk doing writing about him? About ten years ago, after I left Netscape, I ran an Internet radio website called Comedyaudio.com. It was the first 24-hour Internet comedy radio station. For a while, we ran commentaries from Merle Kessler (Ian Shoales) and Kelly Carlin-McCall, George Carlin's daughter. I never had the opportunity to meet George, but I spent some time with Kelly and some of her relatives. She told me stories about growing up with George and Brenda (George's first wife and Kelly's mother), most of which were hilarious.

Brenda died of cancer in 1997, a day before George's 60th birthday. The loss struck both George and Kelly incredibly hard; this was a very close-knit family that had gone through things that most people couldn't even dream of. It seemed to me that George's comedy and commentary turned darker after Brenda's death, but it was something that he never talked about on stage.

I wish Kelly and Sally Wade, Kelly's stepmother and George's surviving second wife, my deepest condolences. I know that George loved his family very deeply, and there will be no way to replace him. The world has lost a genius, both a comedy legend and, in his later years, a social commentator of the first order.

Comedy seems to have lost its ability to comment on deeper social issues. When comedians like Carlin, Richard Pryor and Lenny Bruce used offensive language, they used it to make important points, not just to shock or titillate. Jon Stewart and the Daily Show team take on politics, but it's inconceivable to me that they'd talk about religion like George Carlin did. Bill Maher is closer, but even he doesn't have Carlin's intensity or, in Carlin's later years, willingness to tear down his audience in order to make an important point.

I can't help but compare the coverage given to the recent deaths of Jim McKay, Tim Russert, and now, George Carlin. I was deeply disappointed by the paucity of coverage of McKay's death; the network that did the best job wasn't ABC, where McKay spent almost his entire career, but CBS, whose news and sports divisions are run by Sean McManus, McKay's son. Carlin has gotten a few minutes on the news here and there. Russert, on the other hand, got wall-to-wall coverage on all the 24-hour newschannels, including six straight hours on MSNBC and a half-hour of prime time on NBC. With all due respect, McKay and Carlin deserved better.

A Lesson from Tim Russert's Death

The sudden death of NBC's Tim Russert last Friday has been covered extensively, but the details of what could have caused his heart attack are starting to emerge. According to the New York Times, Russert had a history of coronary artery disease, high blood pressure and an enlarged heart (cardiomyopathy). In particular, cardiomyopathy and coronary artery disease are linked to sudden cardiac death syndrome, where death occurs within minutes of the first symptoms of heart attack.

There's a question as to whether or not an Automated External Defibrillator (AED) was present in NBC's newsroom. According to Russert's cardiologist, in an interview on CNN, there was an AED present, but it wasn't used; according to other reports, there wasn't an AED available, and CPR was administered by an intern. In either case, by the time paramedics arrived and defibrillated Russert, it was too late. One of the big advantages of AEDs is that they sense the presence or absence of a heartbeat and only shock the heart if a shock is needed, so there would have been no risk to Russert in using it.

In any event, there's an enormous lesson in this tragic event: An AED should be in every television station and in every electronic newsgathering truck, and all full-time station employees should be trained on how to use them. AEDs can be purchased for as little as $1,000; they're cheap insurance. I'd like to see either the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) or the Radio and Television News Directors' Association (RTNDA) get behind an effort to distribute AEDs in Russert's name. If even one life is saved with an AED, the effort will be worth it.

Here Comes Everybody

According to this article from OneTRAK, Verizon has begun construction (overbuilding) that will enable the company to introduce its FiOS service into two Texas cities (Frisco and Allen) already served by AT&T's U-Verse service. This announcement could also have implications for the five other states (Florida, California, Indiana, Washington and Oregon) that Verizon shares with either AT&T or Qwest.

Historically, overbuilding phone systems simply wasn't done; each city had one and only one telephone franchise. However, now that local franchising is no longer an issue, the decision about whether or not to overbuild is driven by economic and technical issues. It's a lot less expensive to overbuild when you already have a telephone network built in an adjoining city, and that's what's enabling Verizon's encroachment into AT&T territory in Texas. (Why is Verizon in these states, you ask? The company was formed by the merger of Bell Atlantic and GTE, and it's some of the old GTE systems that are in play for expansion.)

By and large, AT&T has three video competitors in every market: The incumbent cable operator (Comcast, Time Warner, Cox, etc.), DirecTV and Dish/Echostar. The last thing they've expected is head-to-head competition with Verizon, but they're going to get it, and in their home state (Texas). Verizon apparently believes that in FiOS, it will have a superior product to U-Verse for the foreseeable future, thus justifying the capital investment necessary to compete on AT&Ts turf.

In the past, I've talked about how Verizon's big bet on fiber to the home is turning out be much more "future-proof" than AT&T's smaller bet on fiber to the node. That's great if you live in a Verizon territory, but meaningless if you're an AT&T customer...until now. Here's an example: I live in Campbell, California, just north of Los Gatos, a Verizon city. FiOS isn't in Los Gatos yet, but once it is, one could easily envision Verizon expanding from Los Gatos to Campbell and San Jose, and from there throughout the southern part of Silicon Valley. Other Verizon outposts in Northern California could also expand, until the entire San Francisco Bay Area, or at least the most profitable parts, are covered.

This possibility has to scare AT&T silly, since the company needs those same highly profitable customers in order to pay back its capital expenditure on U-Verse. Verizon's first moves in Texas likely presage a battle that will take years to play out, but it's entirely conceivable that Verizon could end up as the sole national wireline (or "fiberline") carrier in the U.S.

Snow Leopard: Apple's "Big Bang" for Next Year's Developers' Conference?

(Revised June 16, 2008) Yesterday, Apple announced its next version of OS X, but it did it so quietly that the announcement seemed more like compensation for a mistake (a premature press release from Apple Canada) than a planned event. The new version, named Snow Leopard, is intended to improve performance and stability rather than introduce lots of new features. However, a new feature appears to be "priming the pump" for some major new hardware announcements at Apple's 2009 Worldwide Developers' Conference next June.

It's called "Grand Central," and it appears to be a rewrite of those portions of OS X that aren't multiprocessor- (or multicore-) aware. The issue is that we've gone about as far as we can go with increasing clock speeds in order to get better performance, so the approach favored by Intel, AMD and just about everyone else is to add more cores to each processor. However, unless the software is designed to take advantage of multiple processors/cores, you don't get any performance advantage. Even in those cases where the software is fully multithreaded or multiprocessor-aware, the performance doesn't scale linearly as more processors are added; typically, the second processor or core only improves performance by 80%, and adding more processors results in even smaller incremental gains.

Apple claims that Grand Central will make all of OS X fully multiprocessor-aware (in essence, fully multithreaded,) and it will also make it significantly easier for application developers to write fully multithreaded software. Intel's Nehalem family of processors is scheduled to be released in Q4 2008, starting with four-core/eight-thread models for servers and high-end desktops. The performance kick from Nehalem over Intel's current Penryn generation of processors is expected to be big--approximately 20-30% overall, but closer to 70-80% for multithreaded applications.

I expect to see a dramatically refreshed, or possibly even completely redesigned Mac Pro at or prior to the Worldwide Developers' Conference next June, released concurrently with Snow Leopard. Apple should be able to stay with its existing two-processor/eight-core designs, but get big performance boosts at lower power consumption with Nehalem. At this point, unless you need to get a Mac Pro in the six months, you're probably wise to wait until next June for a Nehalem-based system. Snow Leopard will provide significant performance advantages even on current-generation systems, but it will need Nehalem in order to take full advantage of what it will be able to do

The Real News from Apple

Today's announcement of the iPhone 3G at Apple's Worldwide Developers' Conference has been rehashed and dissected by reporters and news anchors all day. However, the iPhone announcement itself was fairly anticlimactic; the new features had been well-covered in leaked reports prior to the announcement. (In fact, the lack of new features beyond 3G and GPS was somewhat surprising.) Even the dramatic price drop had been foreshadowed by widely-publicized reports.

I think that the real news wasn't the iPhone announcement, but what came before: A slew of application demos, plus the announcement of Apple's MobileMe service. Let's take the applications first: While they were being demonstrated, some of the live bloggers griped that they were tedious and just went on and on, but that was the point: In just a few months, Apple has built a bigger, more productive developer ecosystem than Symbian has been able to do in years, and no one else (including RIM, which just recently launched its own developers' program) is even in the same ballpark. Even Microsoft's smartphone platform can't deliver applications with the quality of experience of those designed for the iPhone.

Over and over again, the story was: "We've covered all the bases." Enterprise applications? Check. Exchange integration? Check. Desktop application support? Check. Location-based applications? Check. Games? Check. All of this was on top of the basic capabilities of the iPhone, now fortified with sufficient 3G speed to make heavily data- and media-centric applications work.

The other part of the story is MobileMe. At its heart, MobileMe is a centralized storage and synchronization application that allows iPhones, Macs and PCs to be synced to a single, central database that's managed by Apple. Now, all of the capabilities of MobileMe are available in some form from a variety of vendors, but they don't necessarily work very well. As a long-time ActiveSync user, I can tell you that getting my PC notebook to stay in sync with my old Windows Mobile PDA and current Windows Mobile Smartphone (let alone my MacBook) can be an exercise in frustration.

MobileMe is aimed at two targets: The large body of Windows Mobile users who are frustrated to death with ActiveSync, and everyone who has held off on buying an iPhone because it doesn't have the "it just works" syncing capabilities of RIM's Blackberry. It's far too early to tell just how well Apple has implemented MobileMe, and it may very have its own frustrations and limitations. However, it has the potential to be a very appealing alternative to Microsoft's and RIM's offerings.

The one big frustration that I have with the announcements is that the iPhone 3G still doesn't have video camera capabilities. A 3G iPhone with the video capabilities of, say, a Nokia N95, would be a multimedia killer product, and I'm still not giving up hope that Apple with do something in this space in the future.

We're Not Related

I was asked the other day if I'm related to Loren Feldman of 1938 Media...you know, the sock puppet guy. "Feldman" is the "Smith" of Judaism--there's a lot of us out there, and with the exception of our immediate families, it's highly unlikely that we're related to each other. So, unless he can trace his family back to southeastern Ohio, we're not related.

The Game Changer?

Yesterday, Netflix and Roku announced the Netflix Player. This device, priced at $99.99 and about the size of a paperback novel, can stream the portion of the Netflix catalog that's available for immediate download (approximately 10,000 out of 100,000 movies and television shows) to any television. The player has composite, component, S-Video and HDMI connections. It supports both SD and HD, although Netflix only offers SD streams at this time. It has both wired and wireless (802.11g) Ethernet connections.

The least expensive Netflix plan that provides unlimited downloads is $8.99/month, going to $15.99/month (the only difference between the plans is the number of physical DVDs that can be out at any one time--one for the $8.99 plan, three for the $15.99 plan.)

The reviews of the Roku Netflix Player so far have been positive; the biggest drawback is the relatively limited selection of movies available for instant streaming. However, this is an issue that I think will be resolved over time, as more studios see Netflix's service as a variation of VOD, at least for catalog material.

In the past, I've believed that the chances for third-party set-top boxes have been slim, but this Netflix/Roku box could be a game-changer. The price is so low that the player is almost a throwaway item; as one reviewer pointed out, if you watch 25 movies, the incremental cost of the box is only $4 per movie. The box already supports HD, when Netflix makes it available.

The Netflix/Roku player is a test case for whether or not a managed network is really needed for IPTV. The "standard definition" of IPTV includes a managed network with controlled Quality of Service and Quality of Experience. If Netflix and Roku can deliver acceptable performance "over the top", on the public Internet, it makes it hard to justify huge capital equipment expenditures in order to deliver IPTV over a closed network.

For example, in the U.K., BT is using VOD as its primary "value-add" for subscribers to its IPTV service, since the company relies on the over-the-air Freeview service for broadcast channels. Freeview, however, is launching its own over-the-top VOD service, similar to the Netflix/Roku service. If it works, where does that leave BT?

Maker Faire: A Bagel of a Show

I was excited about attending last weekend's Maker Faire...frankly, more excited before I got there than after I left. One review of the event that I read likened it to a science fair, and I think that's a good comparison. To me, it was very much like a county fair, and I don't like county fairs very much. To be sure, there was something for everyone, whether you like greeting cards, woodworking, electronics, knitting, software, flamethrowers, home-built aircraft or even those EepyBird guys with their Diet Coke and Mentos, but that was the problem. There was no "center". The only organizing theme was that everything there was homebuilt, but then how did that explain Disney's display of robotic toys that will be built by the millions in factories in China?

Apparently, I'm not the only one who felt this way. According to John Markoff of The New York Times, Tim O'Reilly, the founder of O'Reilly Media, the company that put the Maker Faire together, was having his own concerns about "cognitive dissonance": "When I saw Mr. O’Reilly he seemed to be in the process of trying to figure out what he had created and how it had gotten so far out of hand. 'The vibe is definitely ’something is going on here, but you can’t figure out what it is,’ he said."

I think that Maker Faire needs more focus. It goes beyond organizing the exhibits better so that related projects and vendors are together. It really means better curating the show, and making necessary decisions about what to include and not include (just as the editors of Make Magazine, from which Maker Faire sprang, have to make editorial decisions every day about what gets into print.)

A few kudos...

I've been "off the air" for a while, while I was finishing work on MRG's biannual IPTV Forecast and client presentation. They're finally done, so I can catch up with a few topics that I've wanted to write about.

When I was in London not long ago for IPTV World Forum, I found out the hard way that the charger for my new Remington cordless shaver was 120 volts only. Two days before my trip was over, my shaver ran out of power, and I had no way to recharge it and no place to get a replacement charger. I ended up having to buy a replacement shaver (the cheapest decent one I could find was another Remington.) While I was in London, I emailed Spectrum Brands, the company that owns Remington, and complained about getting a 120 volt-only charger on a product that was clearly designed for travel use.

I expected them to, at best, send me a dual-voltage replacement charger, but instead, they asked me to return the entire shaver, replaced it at no charge with a new cordless shaver with a dual-voltage charger, and compensated me for shipping the old shaver back to them. I'm still stuck with the cost of the cord shaver that I purchased in London, but I'm very happy with their response. (By the way, I originally purchased the cordless Remington for travel, since I use a (very expensive) Braun Pulsonic at home, nearly lost it in travel once and didn't want to risk losing it again. The Remington, which costs less than 1/3rd the price of the Braun, gives me every bit as good a shave.)

Also, I want to give a shout out to Nespresso. If you're not familiar with the name, it's a line of capsule-based coffeemakers and coffee sold by Nestle. They're very popular in Europe, where I and my fiancee (Caylia) first came across them. Caylia teaches music in the public schools in Marin County, CA, and she has to get up very early to get to class. As you might expect, she needs a lot of coffee to get going. The Nespresso machines are great, in that it only takes a minute or so to make a cup of coffee, they can make both espresso and coffee, and they're very easy to clean and maintain. Also, the capsules aren't cheap ($0.50 or so), but they're a small fraction of the cost of a cup of coffee at Starbucks. So, I bought her a Nespresso machine for the holidays.

Now, I haven't been a coffee drinker. Typically, I'd have a cup every week or so. However, when I tasted the coffee from her Nespresso machine (one of the best cups I'd ever had,) she went out to Macy's and bought me a matching machine. I now have a cup of coffee every day, and I'm hooked. (Caylia typically has three cups a day, but she's not jumpy at all. Really. You can trust me on that.)

One final endorsement, if you want to call it that: I've started using the Zemanta plug-in for Firefox to help me create my blog entries. As I've been writing, Zemanta has been identifying links and tags for terms that I've been using, such as IPTV and Nespresso. With a couple of clicks, Zemanta inserts some or all of the links and labels for me, automatically. If you have your own blog, give it a try.