Platinax Internet News

Internet and business news for the UK online

September 14, 2005

According to a report, IPTV: Broadband meets broadcast by London-based Lovelace Consulting, TV will become more like the web as IPTV (Internet Protocol Television) is introduced within the next ten years. The report says that IPTV, the delivery of digital television and other audio and video services over broadband data networks using the same basic protocols that support the internet, will "transform television". Traditional scheduled broadcast channels will be replaced by a choice of "millions of programmes" available on-demand or for download.

Dr William Cooper, co-author of the report, believes that the disruptive power of the internet will be used to change the form and function of television. Mr Cooper said: "Broadband television will ultimately adopt the attributes of the web, providing access to an almost limitless selection of programmes."

Graham Lovelace, the co-author of the report said: "In this new and massively fragmented environment, control will flow from the supplier to the consumer, as viewers construct their personalised schedules from a vast array of international providers, and watch programmes whenever and wherever they want."

A report published in August by analysts at Informa Telecoms & Media suggested that the global IPTV market would be worth $10bn by 2010. It said there are currently around 2.5m IPTV subscribers, but this figure is expected to grow tenfold to 25m by 2010.

Posted at 08:44 PM
Discuss this in the Platinax Internet community forums

August 04, 2005

The British Internet Broadcasting Company (BiBC) is launching a video download service in the UK called Boxoffice365.com, which allows customers to buy and download live comedy and music from the Boxoffice365 website. The service does not include feature films, because film producers have been reticent to allow film downloads due to concerns about piracy.

BiBC's founder, Paul Hague, said that when film producers saw the new service, they might be more willing to become involved. He hopes to have some films for download by the end of the year.

According to analysts, the lack of movies could be a major drawback for Boxoffice. "Content is absolutely key," said Jupiter Research analyst Mark Mulligan. "It doesn't seem to have that much secured at the moment."

Mr Hagues hopes his service will emulate the success of Apple's iTunes music store, which provided record labels with a legitimate way to sell tracks online.

However, in addition to piracy concerns, film and TV studios would not wish to undermine DVD sales of blockbuster movies. An additional problem is the industry’s complex method of selling film rights to subscription satellite channels, airlines and TV networks.

According to analysts, there is little incentive for Hollywood to offer movies for download.

Mr Mulligan said: "Watching movies on your laptop is an inferior experience to watching them on your TV or in a movie theatre”. He said this was one reason why the movie industry is less willing to go digital than the music industry.

Posted at 07:09 PM
Discuss this in the Platinax Internet community forums

May 19, 2005

European Culture ministers met at the Cannes film festival on Tuesday and promised to explore issues regarding the online distribution of movies. The summit also included representatives from the film industry, Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and telecoms agencies.

Possible policies for film distribution online were discussed, which would enable film-makers to target new audiences and boost sales.

European Union media commissioner, Viviane Reding, said that the opportunities for people to enjoy films online were likely to increase greatly over the next few years, and that there were great opportunities to exploit new markets, increase revenue for film-makers and expand the choice available to the general public.

Earlier this month, Tesco revealed its plan to launch a film downloading service, to expand on its success in the online music sector. However, it said that the UK's Broadband capacity was not yet adequate to handle movie downloads. In March, website Wippit said it was planning to launch the UK's first site offering films to download in summer 2005.

The possibility of online piracy resulting in a serious loss of revenue was discussed, and a European leadership summit was formed to examine the problem. Culture ministers thought that the market could be flooded with unauthorised file-sharing of films, as has occurred with music, and that action to tackle piracy was a high priority.

Posted at 11:01 PM
Discuss this in the Platinax Internet community forums

March 17, 2005

NTL is now extending trials of ADSL2+ to on-demand streaming of high-definition TV (HDTV).

ADSL2+ offers superior connectivity to the internet, with speeds of 18 megabits per second being tested. Currently, the highest broadband speeds in the UK are up to 8 megabits per second, although most homes are only connected to broadband via 1 megabit connections.

New developments in ADSL (Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line) technology are required for the next stage in digital broadcasting over the internet.

Although BT is also about to trial ADSL2+ technology, NTL has an advantage in that 95% of it's nearly 8 million subscribers are within 1 km of an access point.

This is important because the longer the signal has to travel, the more the signal deteriorates. BT can only compare with 5% of its users within a similar distance.

British Telecom is under pressure from other telecom operators in the UK, such as Wannadoo and UK Online, who are pushing for super-fast broadband speeds to match countries such as France.

Posted at 03:53 PM
Discuss this in the Platinax Internet community forums

February 01, 2005

US phone company SBC Communications has agreed buy out of telecoms giant AT&T, using $15 billion in stock options and a $1 billion sweetener to AT&T shareholders.

The deal has yet to face approval by AT&T shareholders, and regulating bodies could take 12-18 months to approve the deal, presuming there are no immediate objections.

Both companies together suggested that working together they could make efficiency savings of around $2 billion a year from 2008, due to combined infrastructure.

Why this important: Finance market news aside, it's worth noting that this effectively means that SBC and AT&T will be able to provide an extensive and well established ISP network across the US.

The reason why that is big news is that as I covered in November last year in Internet TV & search, SBC already have major working relationships with Yahoo! and Microsoft for the provision of major next generation internet services.

For one, SBC will be using Microsoft technology to deliver internet broadcasting - and Yahoo! has contracted them to provide various Yahoo! services to mobile and broadband customers.

The future infrastructure of internet TV is being duly consolidated.

Posted at 11:07 AM
Discuss this in the Platinax Internet community forums

January 30, 2005

Verizon Communications have joined the growing list of ISPs who will be using Microsoft software to support the ever building foundations for internet broadcasting.

Other telecommunications companies have already been developing important close working relationships with Microsoft for the development and deployment of internet video broadcasting.

BellSouth has already been trialling Microsoft's software, and SBC Comminications recently signed a deal to rollout its U-Verse next-generation internet TV platform, as reported in Cnet's report at SBC goes public with 'U-verse' TV plan.

Posted at 01:58 PM
Discuss this in the Platinax Internet community forums

January 10, 2005

In Microsoft's Consumer Electronics Endgame, Russell Beattie claims that the battle for the digital concumer entertainment market has already been won, and that Microsoft have applied a far-sighted strategy that has effectively killed all other alternatives to Apple.

I can pretty much say that it's game over for a lot of Microsoft competitors, though they may not realize it yet. To me the decisive move was their MSN Video announcement which included deals with MTV as well as TiVo to make sure that TiVo To Go recordings play on Microsoft Mobile devices. That's when I saw the big picture: Microsoft's DRM strategy and Windows Media WMA codec are going to allow them to have a massive advantage in the consumer electronics market, which includes everything from MP3 players, to mobile phones to your set-top box, to a host of other converged devices.

Very soon anything you're able to record on your TiVo will be playable on your Windows Mobile device, the new MSN Video Downloads service (among others) will allow you to see television and movies, and the variety of integrated music stores will allow you to buy and play music. There's no competitor to this breadth of mobile media offerings right now or that I can see in the near future.

It doesn't matter that Microsoft doesn't lead in music downloads right now, though if you combined all the different WMA music stores, it might come close to Apple's iTunes. What's important is that Microsoft *owns* the alternative to Apple and is already branching out to areas like movies and home-recorded content. It's amazing to see history repeating itself, no? Apple lost the PC desktop because it refused to license its Graphical User Interface and now they're going to lose the Consumer Electronics market because they've failed to license their FairPlay DRM technology.

Posted at 02:03 PM
Discuss this in the Platinax Internet community forums

December 31, 2004

The convergence of PC and TV technology means that it is inevitable that one day the distinction between the two will be non-existent, with a combined device ni the home eventually functioning as both a TV and PC.

However, as the world of internet TV gathers attention and so long as the distinction exists, consumers currently need to find ways in which to send high quality digital media to their TVs - and the challenge is a surprising one.

In Playing Net movies on your TV, CNet writers Evan Hansen and Richard Shim cover the digital challenges facing this issue, and ultimately are left examining that last bridge before the PC and the TV truly converge as one device.

Posted at 12:24 PM
Discuss this in the Platinax Internet community forums

December 17, 2004

The foundations for widespread-consumer use internet TV move onwards with a couple of recent reports.

The first is blinkx Unveils Search Engine for TV, in which blinkx has developed a search feature for video media. According to the report:

blinkx captures and indexes the entire video stream directly from the television, consumers can get straight to the exact clip they want.

Consumers can now search and access news, movie trailers, popular multimedia segments and other video formats on demand.

Video Smart Folders (available at http://www.blinkx.tv ) enable users to create intelligent folders that continuously populate themselves with multi-media content, based on the parameters set by the user. The result is that users have on demand access to relevant content. Each Video Smart Folder contains content from multiple sources that is specifically relevant to each individual, and acts as a persistent query. If you want to be notified when a news flash becomes available on the latest developments ... you can customize a search that will automatically download high quality video to your computer.

Sounds interesting, yes?

Well, Yahoo! are not to be left behind. As Gary Price reports at SearchEngineWatch in Yahoo Launches Video Search Prototype, New Media RSS Format, he details how Yahoo! have been developing media search technology to form Yahoo! video search beta.

Gary Price also referrers to other key articles on internet TV and search, which are definitely worth referencing:
Searching Television via Closed-Captioning
Video Search: Google, Yahoo, and MSN
Search Meets TV
The Next Search Titan: Comcast?

Posted at 09:41 PM
Discuss this in the Platinax Internet community forums

December 10, 2004

Johnny Moore waxes lyrical about Adam Curry's move to Britain. With a quick line he lets loose a simple definition of "Podcast = online radio show in mp3 format".

I can only presume that I'm not the only person to see Podcasts herald the smllest glimpse of what is to come, in the form of personal broadcasting via internet TV...

Posted at 10:46 PM
Discuss this in the Platinax Internet community forums

November 30, 2004

Internet TV is a big topic at the moment - Microsoft hooked up with SBC to provide software for internet TV earlier this month - and then Yahoo! expanded their contract with SBC to provide internet TV itself.

According to the first article, Microsoft has blown around $20 billion on fruitless internet TV development. However, today's internet environment is entirely different - with broadband rampant across the internet user base, the approach of Internet 2 standards that will far exceed current DSL transfer, the odds are looking warm on general mainstream take-up of internet TV, namely because the technology and market conditions will finally allow it to become a feasible reality in the very near future.

However, what is truly fascinating, is that it's search technology that is apparently erally pushing the issue, with Google allegedly approaching a number of media outlets to use transscripts for TV search - apparently Google's first stage will be a media-only search engine, planned for release next year.

I've already allowed my mind to be blown away by the possibilities of this at the SEW forums - esepcially the idea of individuals cerating and airing their own internet channels. For example, how many developers have considered the implications of turning their mere websites into niche internet TV channels within 5-10 years?

For more information, SearchEngineWorld does a nice concise abstract of the progress in internet TV plus search here: Video Search: Google, Yahoo, and MSN, with further comments on Closed Captioning search, Blinkx, and Feedroom

Posted at 02:18 PM
Discuss this in the Platinax Internet community forums