Playing catch-up

March 16, 2012
For an informed view on connected entertainment in the UK & Ireland, visit Cue Entertainment 

It has taken a while to convince the Hollywood studios that online delivery of video to the consumer is secure. For most of this century they dismissed as impossible the idea that entertainment content could pass through the public pipe of the open internet and arrive in homes intact and not stolen. Now, content from the cloud sits alongside once-dominant Blu-ray and DVD media as companies such as Lovefilm and Netflix lead the swing to digital delivery.

Discs are far from dead, of course, as Netflix Founder and CEO Reed Hastings discovered when he tried to rebrand the DVD rental arm of the US business. He almost doubled the charges for the 14 million subscribers that chose both streaming and disc delivery and lost more than three-quarters of a million customers in the process.

Rent or buy, each delivery platform has its advantages and while “permanence” is the USP of packaged media, “convenience” is the label most often attached to content delivered over the internet.

Director-General Mark Thompson BBC says that users streamed programmes 2 billion times over the BBC iPlayer last year, a number that is “growing like Topsy” following the agreement with Sky and as the number of connected devices increases. Speaking to the Royal Television Society on Mar.14, he described the iPlayer as the most successful and most intensively used catch-up service in the world.

Nevertheless, much of the BBC’s output is never seen or heard of again after the seven-day window, the Director-General said: “We want to change that, and have started to talk to our partners, including the independent sector and PACT, about a proposal we will submit formally to the BBC Trust later this year. For reasons that escape me, we call it Project Barcelona.”

What makes this worthy of note is that it proposes a download-to-own digital copy service, with a “relatively modest” charge payable for unlimited future access. Thompson said, “It’s the exact analogy of going into a High Street shop to buy a DVD or, before that, a VHS cassette. For decades, the British public have understood the distinction between watching ‘Dad’s Army’ on BBC One and then going out to buy a permanent copy of it. Barcelona is the digital equivalent of doing the second.”

The BBC aims ultimately to let the audience have access to all of its programmes on this basis and, over time, to load more and more of our archive into the window, he said: “If Barcelona gains the support of the UK’s producers and, of course, the approval of the BBC Trust, it potentially adds an important new source of revenue for producers and rights holders. It could also mark an important step in broadcast’s journey from a transitory medium into a growing body of outstanding and valuable content that is always available and persists forever.”

Project Barcelona might be a logical response to the era of UltraViolet, Blinkbox and iTunes but it raises questions about existing channels up to and including retail sales of previously transmitted titles from “Fawlty Towers” to Downton Abbey”. As described, it sounds like a plan to cut out the middleman and retail BBC content direct to the public. Thompson’s successor should expect a rough ride.

The distribution and marketing of video home entertainment, however, is not only about selling content to the consumer. Ready to Air, a UK firm that specialises in B2B content delivery, brings immediate and secure access to buyers, reviewers and distributors of packaged TV content. It allows pre-authorised users to watch future releases on almost any Mac or PC prior to replication of DVD or Blu-ray discs. Devised in conjunction with Channel 4, it eliminates the need for dozens of expensive check-discs to be produced ahead of release dates. It also allows content owners to see exactly who watches previews and for how long.

4DVD Marketing & Sales Manager Karla Berry says that production deadlines mean that often there is little time between receipt of the masters and manufacture of the DVDs. “If buyers are unsure about the number of units they might sell, they can simply log-on to Ready to Air and have a look at the title. It gives them far more confidence in what they are buying instead of basing their decision on the distributor’s view that ‘It’s fantastic!’ with a preview copy turning up in the post days later. If buyers wonder whether to take a title and want to see a clip, they can be viewing it within 10 minutes and make an immediate decision.”

Berry says that Ready to Air generates retailer feedback as well, which does not always happen with DVD mailings: “With margins squeezed, buyers are under pressure to make the right decisions, on the right product. Ready to Air provides the information needed to make that decision. Giving access to key retail buyers means that they can preview a title before it reaches the stores.”

Ready to Air Director John Harrington says that security technology is in place to ensure that content is not captured or stolen. “Not so long ago, if you said ‘internet’ to studio bosses they didn’t want anything to do with it but that is gradually changing. Turner, for example, is incredibly security-conscious. Last year we delivered ‘Falling Skies’ for them, which was on our system even before the US transmission date.”

Berry says that whoever signs up provides an email and a contact address. They go to the site to sign up content owners still have to approve them. Even if they find the web address, they can’t just sign up and gain access to content. Each one of the rights holders has to approve them. So far, 16 organisations provide access in the UK, with others in Europe, Asia and Latin America.

Harrington says, “We have not had any reported incidents of anybody abusing the system. You have to strike a balance for site users and we think we have been successful with that. People trust the measures we have in place.”

Although Harrington is cagey about the extent of content protection, one very visible deterrent is embedded in every frame of video: the registered email address of the user: “People using our site are professionals and if we find them doing something they shouldn’t, we take them off the system. If you are a TV reviewer, that is pretty much the end of your career at that point, so it is self-policing.”

As confidence in the system has grown, so has the number of clients. Momentum, Fox, Warner and ITV have signed up, as have content owners such as Aardman. With growth in the user base for content preview comes a new streaming video service: live on-line press conferences, targeted at the video home entertainment industry but available to all.

Says Harrington: “Newsmakers and journalists no longer need to be in the same room or even on the same continent. The service not only saves costs but also helps to eradicate carbon emissions.” 

Everything new is new again

March 9, 2012
For an informed view on connected entertainment in the UK & Ireland, visit Cue Entertainment 

It’s not certain precisely who observed that you cannot fool all of the people all of the time but in the fast-paced world of technological magic, innovators are bound to try.

Contrary to popular mythology, Charles Holland Duell, the US Patent and Trademark Commissioner in 1899, did not say “everything that can be invented has been invented” although it is a point of view that has permeated human thinking throughout history. Each new device is the ultimate iteration; the must-have version that surpasses all that went before. Until the next release, that is.

The future is rarely what we expect but every product has its cycle, measured in months or years, and what begins as magic becomes commonplace and goes on to be irrelevant.

In spite of occasional detours into steam or electric-powered vehicles, personal transportation powered by the internal combustion engine remains the prime mover for most people. Although the 21st century box is very different and all parts are more reliable, when confronted by a modern car a 19th century automobilist could quickly jump in and drive away. The differences between the various marques have long ceased to be more than cosmetic.

Many 20th century movie watchers imagined the future of motoring to be a combination of Marvell Comics and Star Trek: filled with finned rocket cars and flip-to-talk communicators. For a while, the “T-Bird” philosophy of engineering fulfilled the dreams of every boy racer, but first European and then Japanese manufacturers showed the way forward with cars that were both functional and reliable. Today, the business of pushing a vehicle along the highway is secondary in public perception to the comfort and entertainment of its occupants.

Ford steered away from this week’s traditional Geneva motor show and chose instead to stage the European launch of its B-MAX small family car at February’s Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona. It sports a “SYNC voice-activated in-car mobile connectivity system” that Ford of Europe CEO Stephen Odell will rely on to sell 3.5 million SYNC-equipped cars by 2015.

“It will be among the most technologically advanced small cars you can buy, at any price,” says Odell.

Underneath the hood, Ford’s AppLink voice control allows hands-free use of smartphone apps on the move, while SYNC links Bluetooth devices and provides iPod and USB connectivity. In the event of an accident, the system will call for emergency assistance automatically, using the driver’s mobile phone to make the connection. No subscription is required: SYNC comes with the car and it is in use already in 4 million vehicles in the US.

In a keynote address to the MWC, Ford Motor Company Executive Chairman Bill Ford, the founder’s great grandson said “Telecommunication companies should work with the automotive industry to provide an enhanced communications environment for drivers and passengers on the move.” He predicted that the next five years would see connected cars linked to the cloud and vehicles that “talk” to each other to make driving safer and report delays and diversions as they happen.

Other manufacturers such as BMW and Nissan have jumped on board the connected bandwagon. BMW ConnectedDrive and Infotainment VP Michael Würtenberger said the firm’s ConnectedDrive service is available in nine countries now and will be available in 38 countries around the world by 2015.

A study conducted by the mobile industry association GSMA and Machina Research predicts that connected cars will be a $600 billion (£380 billion) business by 2020. Pay-as-you-drive insurance (telematics) will account for a further $225 billion (£140 billion) and other usage models add $245 billion (£155 billion) to the market value. Up to 90% of vehicles on the road are expected to have some form of in-car connectivity by the end of the decade, including entertainment, navigation, and stolen vehicle recovery and insurance telematics.

A reliable and permanent in-car link to the cloud would bring opportunities and challenges for the entertainment industry. As this century moves into its teens, motorists on the move will want access to the content they watch and listen to at home without the need for physical media. On-board storage proposals to date suggest that cars parked outside the house will preload news and topical content over wifi or Bluetooth, then access and play digital content on demand during the journey.

In a connected future, streaming video enters the scene and the “embedded” mobile hardware in a connected car becomes just another device on the owner’s UltraViolet roster. It is all part of M2M (machine-to-machine) technology: a world in which the devices that we use will talk to each other without conscious input from the user.

According to the Mobile Data Traffic Forecast prepared by network technology company Cisco, by the end of this year the number of mobile connected devices will exceed the population of the earth. Come 2016, there will be more than 10 billion mobile devices, M2M included, which equates to 1.4 devices per person. On a replacement basis alone, that number will continue to increase thereafter. The data demand for M2M devices will rise more than seven-fold by 2016 from a very low starting point in 2010. It will still be less than 2% of total mobile internet traffic.

Video exceeded all other traffic for the first time in 2011 and it now accounts for 52% of all mobile internet data. That figure will rise to more than 70% by 2016. Looked at in a different way, the Cisco forecast predicts a 25-fold increase in video traffic between 2011 and 2016.

Every day sees the announcement of a new mobile gadget and we have come to expect that Apple alone will introduce ever-more amazing iPhones and iPads each year. As the latest announcements have shown, the innovation phase is all but over and we are in an era of refinement, one that the automobile industry has been in for many years.

The television set in the corner of the room is at a plateau too, as flat screens reach their practical limit of flatness and thinness. In the UK, we spend around five hours every day gazing in its direction, consuming a non-stop flow of broadcast data that reaches every corner of these islands without the need for copper or fibre pipes. Each day, viewers burn their way through the equivalent of around 11.25GB of data “watching telly,” which adds up to well over 300GB per month.

Then consider the tablet. The “resolutionary new iPad” Apple calls its version, which has a three megapixel HD Retina display that offers 2048×1536 HD video in a 9.5 x 7.3 inch frame. It is so sharp that you need a magnifying glass to appreciate it. So it will not come as a surprise if proud owners spend more time watching video on their new tablet than they did on the previous version: perhaps even in HD if they can afford the data charges.

The Cisco report reveals that users spend a relatively meagre amount of time watching video on a tablet. In 2010, tablet users consumed an average of 405 Mbytes of online data each month. Not all of that was video, of course, but assuming a generous connection speed of 500 kilobits per second when watching video, that equates to a total running time of just under two minutes. Last year, the duration of video viewing rose to two and a quarter minutes per month and by 2016 Cisco predicts that per-device usage of data by tablet owners will increase to 4.2 Mbytes, almost 10 minutes of video per month at low quality standard definition.

Averages conceal the exceptions although Cisco reports that 1% of all mobile users consumed more than 5 GB per month last year. Just 3% used more than 3 GB per month, which is less than 1% of the equivalent data consumed when watching digital TV. Streaming online video to a tablet, although interesting, is the pastime of a very few mobile subscribers.

Laptop users are far more profligate in their use of the cloud. They are forecast to notch up more than 15 minutes of streaming video per month by 2016 but at least they have the option that they may insert a DVD and take their video entertainment with them, without any further charges.

In the third of his three laws, Arthur C Clarke said, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,” and for some years the products that emanate from the Apple fun factory have proved him right. The decision to call the new iPad just that, and not “version 3” or the “iPad S” is probably a wise limitation of expectations. The screen is certainly near photographic in quality but it comes at a price. Most other improvements are just that, especially as European owners cannot (yet) benefit from the LTE connectivity.

Steve Jobs probably did not say, “You can fool all of the people all of the time.” But he could have.

Smartphones get smarter

March 2, 2012
For an informed view on connected entertainment in the UK & Ireland, visit Cue Entertainment 

Mobile data hogs assembled at Mobile World Congress 2012 in Barcelona to claim bragging rights and the outcome could be a three-tier approach to charges on mobile devices.

The 67,000 people who took a winter break in Barcelona last month were not bankers who sought refuge from the world economic downturn but top-level delegates to the MWC 2012. From the crowds on the show floor – 11% up on last year – you would never know there was a financial crisis were it not for the threatened transport strike in the city and the students who protested in the Plaça Espanya.

But it was a great place to try to get a handle on the current state of play for mobile devices.

As Over The Top (OTT) video delivery gains a hold, the attempt by mobile phone operators to control the delivery of entertainment to their previously tethered devices has waned. Only Sony makes a show of entertainment content delivery, with its Xperia range. Newly separated from a 10-year equal partnership with Ericsson, Sony offers what it describes as the “ultimate HD smartphone”, with an 8-megapixel camera, a 4-inch HD display that plugs into a full-size TV screen when needed, and access to the Sony Entertainment Network (SEN).

As with many other Sony-branded products, Xperia users may subscribe to the Music Unlimited cloud services, which delivers “millions of music tracks” to a wide range of Sony devices for a fixed monthly charge. Plus the cost of data usage, of course… They also can access Video Unlimited, which offers “Hollywood’s latest hit movies, select classics and TV shows from every major network”, including Disney’s “Cars 2” and Universal’s “Bridesmaids”.

The Xperia is PlayStation certified with games playable on the move or on any HD screen with an HDMI connector.

As with many of the devices on display in Barcelona, Sony smartphones use the Android operating system. In an hour-long Google presentation, Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt said he looked forward to the time when there will be an Android in every pocket. Since they already sell at the rate of 850,000 a day, that moment cannot be too far off.

Thus far, 300 million Android devices have been activated but there are more to come. Schmidt said, “There are one billion smartphone users in the world already. Mobiles will change lives but the digital revolution has not arrived just yet. Only one third of the world’s population of seven billion have access to the internet so for every one person that is connected, two are not.”

For almost 30 minutes, Schmidt faced the international audience alone in an unscripted Q&A session. He defended Google’s position on privacy and said, “Forty countries engage in censorship today, up from just four a decade ago.” On legal advice, he declined to comment on the US embargo on high-tech products, such as Google Chrome, shipped to Iran. “There is no bandwidth in prison!” he said.

MWC exhibitor Bytemobile specialises in optimised mobile networks for video traffic. In the “Mobile Analytics Report for February 2012”, it states that 47% of the total data traffic generated by iPhones and iPads comes from Media Player and the average YouTube session consumes 40Mbytes of data in 8.5 minutes. This compares with the 120kbytes required to access Facebook for the same time.

The company reports that video is now the leading driver of data use, which on some mobile networks accounts for up to 70% of all traffic. This compares with Q1 last year when the average video volume on mobile networks was just 10%. A typical iPad user generates a demand for three times the data volume of a comparable iPhone subscriber.

Bytemobile research shows that smartphone and tablet users migrate to higher quality videos as screens increase in size and resolution. In January 2011, almost 40% of mobile videos by volume were 240-line streams. That has fallen now to just over 20%. At the middle of the scale, 480-line video delivery increased from around 20% to more than 40% in January this year. For the first time, users began to request 720-line near-HD video in 2012 with Android device owners most likely to access these data-intensive streams.

“A five-minute video in high-definition on one of the latest LTE devices could generate as much as 75MB of traffic – five times that of a 360-line video. A subscriber on a 5Gbyte monthly plan could be able to watch just 70 five-minutes videos, rather than 350,” the report says. The latest Apple iPhone supports 640-line resolution while more recent Samsung and HTC phones can display 720-line video.

Bytemobile proposes a shift from the current mobile service provider (MSP) model, which bills users solely on a price-per-megabyte basis, in favour of the tiered prices used by the airline industry. “Gold subscribers would access HD video at an unrestricted data rate under all network conditions, Silver subscribers would view SD video at up to 5Mbps and Bronze subscribers would be limited to mobile broadband access below 1Mbps,” Bytemobile suggests. Silver and Bronze accounts would have the option to pay to move up to HD on a per-hour or a per-video basis, or to access advertising-supported HD content at specific times and locations.

“Data optimization technology ensures that the operator can offer improved quality of service with minimal impact on network capacity and would reduce operating and capital costs. Only when operators can monetise and optimise the data traffic will they own the user experience,” the firm claims.

An approach of this kind might help to reduce “bill shock” – the unexpectedly high charges that Ofcom says mobile contract customers experience more often than broadband, fixed-line or mobile pre-pay customers. In its March 1 call for an action plan, the regulator says that 45% of UK adults had a smartphone by the end of 2011 with a consequent large increase in the use of mobile data. It found that unexpectedly high mobile bills are commonly the result of consumers downloading data.

“There is no clear relationship between time spent using the service and the cost incurred. It is harder to estimate the cost of downloading a video, which is charged per megabyte, than it is to estimate the cost of making a phone call, which is charged per minute. Charges for downloading data tend to be much higher once consumers exceed their allowance,” Ofcom says.

The watchdog repeated its call to MSPs to do more to develop and promote “opt-in” systems so that consumers may choose to set limits on their expenditure. In the action plan it suggests, however, that it might be more appropriate to move to an “opt-out” system of financial caps and alerts in which all accounts would have a monthly limit unless the consumer first opts out.

Nokia Siemens Networks, CEO Rajeev Suri spoke in Barcelona of what he called the “Gigabyte revolution” – trends in mobile devices that fuel the gigabyte revolution. He said, “We believe they will take us to one gigabyte per user per day by 2020, downloaded at speeds more than 10 times those we have now.”

The Nokia 808 PureView, announced at MWC 2012, is a step along that path. The smartphone features full HD 1080p recording and playback with a screen and an image sensor to match. While Sony promotes the 8-megapixel camera in its Xperia, the new Nokia has an astonishing 41-megapixel sensor coupled to a Carl Zeiss lens, which provides sharp and detailed images (pictured) and the ability to zoom, pan and crop photos after they have been taken, with no loss of quality.

The 808 PureView uses satellite surveillance technology to achieve astonishing results and is the first mobile device that genuinely replaces the traditional camera. It also includes Nokia Rich Recording for high quality audio recording and exclusive Dolby Headphone technology, which transforms stereo content into a personal surround-sound experience over any headphones.

The device has the ability to share images and video in compact file sizes for use in emails, messaging and social networks. Gold data account subscribers, however, will probably want to stream video from their 808 PureView at the maximum bit-rate.

Just because they can. 

In praise of digital pioneers

February 27, 2012
For an informed view on connected entertainment in the UK & Ireland, visit Cue Entertainment 

Most of the innovative heroes of digital technology are unsung. Their names are unknown or forgotten by the people who every day take their iPad, sound system or digital video playback for granted. Yet without the pioneering work of a few inspired individuals, very little of what we take for granted would be possible.

Every year since 1986, the International Film Festival in Berlin has presented the Berlinale Camera award to personalities or institutions that have made a unique contribution to the industry. This year, the judges awarded the silver and titanium trophy to Ray Dolby (pictured), founder of the eponymous company and the man who brought Dolby Digital surround sound to the cinema and the home.

Ray Dolby came to public prominence at the start of the 1970s when the Dolby “A” noise reduction used by recording studios was joined by the consumer version, Dolby “B”, which cut the hiss from pre-recorded music cassettes. Few fans of the Sony Walkman knew that Dolby took its name from its creator and was not a brand name dreamed up by a marketing department. What they did know was that the Compact Cassette technology, originally designed for dictation, now offered great music on the move.

The quiet American behind the technology was a Marshall Scholar, a beneficiary of the scheme that brings young Americans of high ability to study in the United Kingdom. He graduated in Physics at Pembroke College, Cambridge in 1961 and set up the Dolby Labs in London with $25,000 in 1965, partly financed by relatives and friends.

Since the October 1977 screening of the original “Star Wars” at the Dominion Theatre in London’s Tottenham Court Road, the Dolby name has been synonymous with multi-channel cinema sound. That morning preview of Dolby Stereo heralded a transformation of the audio installations in cinemas around the world. With surround sound now commonplace, it is hard to comprehend the difference between the optical sound tracks of the day and Dolby Digital but those lucky enough to have been in the audience for that first presentation will never forget it.

Since then, the “Double D” logo and the Dolby brand has become one of the best known in the world. The licensing model the company has in place, which last year generated 83% of all revenues, will ensure the company’s future. In 2011, six out of every 10 TVs shipped contained Dolby technology, as did 40% of global set-top box deliveries. Company research shows that in a retail environment, the Dolby logo on the box makes purchase of both hardware and software more likely and the name Dolby provides an assurance of quality and compatibility for content creation and distribution systems everywhere.

The decline in income from packaged media – down by 7% in the fiscal year 2011 to 48% of total revenues – and the uncertain transition to digital delivery, however, is likely to mean that Dolby will struggle to return to its former dominant position. Increased competition in both sound and vision technology puts pressure on margins and although the company benefited initially from the revival of 3D in theatres, the domestic market looks set to adopt alternative technology.

At the 2011 AGM, Ray Dolby retired from the board of the company he founded and of which he, his family and affiliates maintain 90% control. He assumed the title of Founder and Director Emeritus and the right to attend board meetings but not to vote. By the time of his retirement, the man who never courted publicity had become a household name, except that is, for fans of heavy metal. As anyone who has seen Optimum Home Entertainment’s “This is Spinal Tap” will know, “You don’t do heavy metal in Dobly!” (sic)

If Ray Dolby is known around the world for his pioneering work in audio, the name Leonardo Chiariglione remains unfamiliar outside his profession. Yet he has been the driving force behind the Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) since its inception in Ottawa in 1988. His commitment to international standards for compressing and delivering digital video spans the past 25 years. He says, “People have the same eyes and ears everywhere in the world. They deserve to have uniform standards.”

Most people in the industry acknowledged him as the “father of MPEG” and he is committed to universal and open solutions. “A lot of companies try to make a living out of inventing a proprietary video compression. I am sympathetic, but I don’t believe they are working for the progress of mankind,” he says.

A native of Turin, Italy, Chiariglione also left his native land to study overseas, in his case at the University of Tokyo. Since then, his fluency in Japanese, English, Italian and several other European languages has enlivened many international committees and conferences. The industry has garlanded him and his team with awards for their work including two Emmys, most recently in 2009 at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas for the development of MPEG-4. Despite this recognition, this cultured student of classical Greek and Latin remains in the shadow of a four-letter acronym.

Although he is by no means impoverished, Chiariglione is not the majority shareholder in a company that generates almost $1 billion a year in revenue. His dedication to international standards has garnered neither fame nor fortune but it is certain that his name will be near the top of the list of pioneers when future historians deliver their verdict on the development of digital media.

This leaves us with William Bradford Shockley Jr. Despite his American parentage, Shockley was born in London 102 years ago, on Feb.13, 1910. It is unlikely that many people marked the anniversary of his birth or even know his name, but there is barely a person on the planet that has not benefited in some small way from his pioneering discoveries.

His parents took him back to California prior to World War I and he subsequently obtained his PhD from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and began work at Bell Labs, the cradle of many high-tech discoveries.

In 1956, together with John Bardeen and Walter Brattain, he won the Nobel Prize in Physics for his part in developing the silicon junction transistor, which is at the heart of almost every silicon chip today.

Under his own name, he founded Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory in 1955 but the team he brought together at 391 San Antonio Road in Mountain View went their own way in 1957. They went on to found Fairchild, Intel, AMD and a host of other Silicon Valley success stories in the years that followed. Despite the head start, his own company was not successful and he became a professor at Stanford University. His backer sold the business five years later and it closed in 1968.

By all accounts, Shockley was a difficult man to work for and his extreme views on eugenics do not make him a sympathetic historical figure, so the fact that his name is almost unknown today is not a great loss to the record, apart from one minor detail. A mini-supermarket now occupies the San Antonio Road site and on the sidewalk is a rickety sign. It reads, “Site of first silicon device and research manufacturing company in Silicon Valley. The research conducted here led to the development of Silicon Valley.”

There is no mention of Shockley or of the talented team that gathered there in the 1950s, however briefly. It is hardly a fitting memorial for the man who “brought the silicon to Silicon Valley.” 

Welcome to stream-land

February 20, 2012
For an informed view on connected entertainment in the UK & Ireland, visit Cue Entertainment 

The most recent data from communications regulator Ofcom says that British people watch an average of just over four hours of television every day. About 45 minutes of this is time-shifted; the rest is live TV.

Such mass consumption dwarfs the time devoted to packaged media although the 26 million UK households purchased 207 million Blu-ray and DVD discs in 2011, according to figures supplied to the BVA by IHS Screen Digest. They also rented several million more from Lovefilm, Blockbuster and others and probably watched quite a few illegal copies as well.

Even measured at its peak, however, the total length of time spent watching packaged media was insignificant when compared to the hours spent in front of the box. Today, the challenge comes not from TV but the other screens in the home: those connected to the internet.

Digital market research company ComScore has just released its report for December 2012. It shows that the UK has the highest engagement with the internet in Europe and each user spends an average of 35.6 hours a month online. Turkey was in second place with 33.7 hours and the Netherlands third with 32.2 hours a month.

To watch TV and browse the web are not mutually exclusive pastimes so for some of this time users will do both. The arrival of the “second screen” brings the TV and the internet together as never before so sports enthusiasts can check player statistics while they watch their team win or lose while film fans can check for prequels and sequels.

A close look at the comScore data shows that the audience measurement relates to those who go online from both home and work locations so that a total of 37.5 million “unique visitors” accessed the internet from the UK during December. There is a degree of double counting here as well since the same individual might follow a sports event at home and from the desk at work. The arrival of Netflix and increased competition from Lovefilm, however, can only increase the time that the British spend online as film content streams to the main screen in the home.

With monthly “all you can eat” fixed price packages there is an incentive for those at home to trawl extensive back catalogues and enjoy films all day, leaving aside for the moment the potentially significant data charges.

Academic research commissioned by Lovefilm and published in early February says that film fans that watch two movies a week are “happier” than occasional viewers. For the “Movie Medicine” report, researchers from Goldsmiths College monitored the viewing habits of 1,000 adults over 12 months. They found that the measured rate of “happiness” increases for every 10 films watched and that viewing 100 films a year or more correlates to higher earnings and reduced anxiety.

Report author Dr. Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic said, “The research suggests that the act of watching film enables people to disconnect from everyday life, but also it opens up our imaginations to be better prepared to make real-life decisions. Your social brain studies the events on the screen and begins to relate to, and learn from, the characters and their experiences.”

Lovefilm has begun to lobby government ministers, including Secretary of State for Health Andrew Lansley, and major UK companies to argue that access to filmed entertainment has a positive impact on health, wellbeing and professional productivity.

The report includes a Top 10 of films most likely to boost “happiness”, with Disney’s “Finding Nemo” in first place, followed by SPHE’s “The Da Vinci Code” and “Casino Royale” from Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment. That perennial feel-good film from ITV Studios Home Entertainment, “The Shawshank Redemption” is at No. 5.

The ability to stream non-stop feature films on demand could affect the level of broadcast TV audiences more than packaged media sales. DVD titles at the far end of the “long tail” will no doubt continue to sell on impulse for £3 but as Lovefilm (“5000+ titles”) and Netflix (“thousands of titles”) offer instant high quality video, the incentive to leave home is reduced. How much additional “happiness” is induced if someone never goes out and instead spends time in front of a screen watching online video?

A comment on the Guardian website raises the question of just how bad streaming video has to be before the viewer is roused to comment. One infuriated contributor wrote that he had started to watch the Six Nations rugby on BBC Broadband: “What a mistake, their poor picture quality could win prizes. Most of the time is buffering.”

As the technical support team will have told him, his connection speed is outside the control of the BBC and he should contact his ISP to check his line before he blames the broadcaster. It does raise the issue, however, of why some streams will play perfectly at relatively low data rates and others fall over at the first sign of contention.

On a slow connection that plays UltraViolet and Blinkbox streams without buffering, the BBC iPlayer stream that he complained about was almost unwatchable. The match stuttered, stopped and restarted with the audio out of sync until just before full time, when the iPlayer displayed the message “Insufficient bandwidth to stream this programme.”

This was not the experience of every viewer, of course, but the fact that these problems were visible two days after the match and out of peak times shows that not all streams are equal. Compression is more of an art than a science even in these days of automated, multi stream video encoding. Access to the iPlayer is free (at least for those in the motherland) but paid-for streaming video that does not deliver leads inevitably to angry complaints and cancellation.

Netflix has had its fair share of criticism for not anticipating the problems that come with bandwidth caps. Even at £5.99 a month, customers will be unhappy if the quality of the video does not match their expectations. Simply to increase bandwidth does not solve all buffering and quality problems although it can help. That side of the equation is outside the control of the company that delivers the video, particularly in those deprived parts of the UK where 2Mbps is a luxury.

To increase the compression so that the file size for any given running time is smaller is one way to reduce the incidence of buffering. Unfortunately, the trend towards high definition (HD) video has led to bigger files and higher bit-rates. The industry is working towards a new standard, known as High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC), that will require higher-powered processors at both ends of the chain and it is expected to deliver files that are 20% smaller than today. That should arrive in 2013.

Netflix decided it could not wait that long. On Feb.1 a Silicon Valley start-up called EyeIO announced that it had found a way to halve video bit-rates and had already signed up its first customer. Netflix VP Product Development Greg Peters said, “Delivering a high quality video experience is top priority for Netflix and EyeIO technology is an important part of the technology that we use to improve video quality and overcome bandwidth challenges presented by the internet infrastructure.”

There have been many “breakthrough” product announcements concerning video compression over the past 20 years but few have shown the promise they claimed. One company managed to raise several million dollars, hold a massive launch party in Las Vegas and then vanish in a puff of smoke when it transpired it used Microsoft’s Windows Media Video for all its demonstrations.

This time, however, it seems that the achievement is real and Netflix is rumoured to be trialling the technology already. “EyeIO provides a straightforward solution for accommodating the rapidly growing demand for video delivery around the world, by alleviating the overwhelming bandwidth currently required to stream video,” said Co-founder and CEO Rodolfo Vargas. “eyeIO continues to challenge the commonly accepted limits of internet video delivery and enables everyone connected to the internet to enjoy high-quality video, no matter where they are.”

If his claim that EyeIO can compress high quality HD video to a 1.8 Mbps stream turns out to be true, householders in rural Britain will be very happy indeed. 

Blast from the past

February 12, 2012
For an informed view on connected entertainment in the UK & Ireland, visit Cue Entertainment 

Vinyl is back! Suddenly, it is fashionable to say that the LPs and 45s of yesteryear sound so much better than an MP3 and are even preferable to the clinical audio from a compact disc. The few remaining black disc replicators now work flat out on new content while enthusiasts seek “blasts from the past” on second-hand vinyl, in record exchange stores that are the custodians of our musical heritage.

The sound from a well-used second-hand vinyl album picked up at a car boot sale or purchased for pennies in a jumble sale might not be high fidelity, especially when the stylus hits a scratch and throws the needle to the next track. From these random acquisitions, however, a generation of record lovers has discovered music and artists that have shaped tastes and buying habits over the years. The trade in pre-owned media takes place outside the letter of the law but before the arrival of digital media it attracted very little attention unless it took place with criminal intent.

The issue of who owns second-hand content has come to a head with the arrival of ReDigi, a website from a company that describes itself as, “The online marketplace for pre-owned digital music.” Capitol Records in the US alleges that, “ReDigi is a clearing house for copyright infringement and a business model built on widespread, unauthorised copying of sound recordings.” The company seeks an injunction under US law that would mean ReDigi could not buy and sell iTunes tracks that originally were acquired legally through Apple. It also asked for punitive damages of $150,000 (£95,000) per traded track.

The problem for Capitol Records, and any other parties that attach themselves to this case, is a clause in the 1976 Copyright Act in the US that specifically allows the first purchaser to sell or give away a lawful copy without obtaining permission from the rights owner or further restriction. Thus, there is no contractual relationship between subsequent recipients and the original content seller. No such right exists in the UK although most consumers assume wrongly that they can dispose of entertainment content as they please whether or not money changes hands.

Any UK resident who gave a digital disc as a gift at Christmas might find it difficult to adhere to the precise letter of the law. If a CD or DVD is bought for someone else as a gift, it will be almost impossible to assign the agreement with the rights owner to the eventual recipient. The precise legal position of a relative or friend who receives a digital download or access to streaming content has yet to be determined. The “terms and conditions” might bind the original purchaser but it’s difficult to say if they could they extend to the parents or guardians of a child who received a copy of Universal’s “Despicable Me” .

The wording on the pack of a typical disc reads, “Unauthorised copying, lending, renting, exchanging, hiring, public performance or broadcast of this optical disc or any part thereof is strictly prohibited. Any such action establishes liability for a civil action and may give rise to criminal prosecution.”

Content from the cloud is subject to similarly onerous conditions: “You may not copy or display the Digital Content except as permitted and you may not sell, rent, lease or assign any rights to a third party.” To enforce such terms and conditions in a sharing world could prove very difficult at the least.

The challenge for the entertainment industry as a whole that is brought by the arrival of ReDigi is the potential to disrupt the consumers’ concept of what they can and can’t do with the products they think they own, specifically: “Can digital data be bought and sold like any physical commodity?” There must be an enforceable legal position on the ownership of digital files downloaded legally, whether paid for or free, if the industry is to convince consumers that content in the cloud can ever be an alternative to physical media.

ReDigi claims that it can verify any music file uploaded to its system to ensure that it was acquired legally from an eligible source before it is de-authorised on the source device and authorised on the buyer’s system. No data passes directly from buyer to seller. The firm substitutes a new version through its “Atomic Cloud transfer system.” Crucially, it also claims to pay royalties to the content creator for every transaction.

“For the first time in the second-hand music market, ReDigi supports artists directly,” the firm says on its website.

Unsurprisingly, Capitol Records does not see the upstart service in quite such a rosy light. The music label argued in a letter to the court, “ReDigi is a profiteer trying to earn money by processing sales of infringing copies of Capitol’s sound recordings. This case is clearly and specifically about ReDigi and its users copying files for the purposes of transfer and sale for profit to other users.”

Judge Richard Sullivan denied an application by Capitol for a preliminary injunction, which would have stopped ReDigi in its tracks, but the case will continue to court in due time. The outcome will set a precedent that will have implications far beyond a few three-minute audio tracks from iTunes and touch film and games content as well as application software.

Unlike pre-owned physical media, which suffers the degradation imposed by handling, sticky fingerprints and the heat of the sun, a digital file is identical every time. Google is aware of the implications of the case and tried to cuddle up to ReDigi in a legal move that sought to support their case. Capitol Records and the record industry countered that their action poses no threat to the concept of cloud computing, a relatively high-risk strategy that could come back to haunt them later in the case.

Although the court’s decision, when it comes, will apply in the US only, other jurisdictions will have to address the issues raised and content owners in the UK should start thinking about their position now. The ReDigi web site, if it continues, will prove yet another challenge to an embattled industry.

Improbably, vinyl has survived the onslaught of both compact disc and digital downloads. Whether the music industry is ready to cope with yet another upheaval is far from certain. Superficially at least, ReDigi looks to be a good idea, one that Capitol Records should probably have embraced at birth rather than try to strangle with a lengthy court case. 

Make way for the digital Olympics

February 3, 2012
For an informed view on connected entertainment in the UK & Ireland, visit Cue Entertainment 

When the Olympics comes to London later this summer, the BBC-TV will provide coverage of every sporting event – an estimated 2,500 hours of television intended for both home and international audiences.

The solutions that they and other international broadcasters devise will have a profound effect on the way we watch television, as they gamble on a technology that could mark the beginning of the end for conventional TV transmissions.

With so many simultaneous events there simply are not enough channels to air every sport and so the 2012 Games will be the vehicle for the most interactive, online, digital Olympics ever offered. If all goes according to plan, broadband streaming and catch-up services could attract a cumulative audience that is at least the equal of broadcast programmes.

Enormous as the BBC effort will be, many other satellite and terrestrial broadcasters also will be at the event with their own technical and production requirements. They too will confront the challenge to deliver comprehensive coverage to their domestic audiences at the times and places their nations demand.

Twenty of the 85 national media organisations represented by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) gather in Geneva today for a Creative Content Workshop, to share their ideas for interactive TV coverage of the Olympics (and incidentally, the Eurovision Song Contest). At the meeting, the German public broadcaster ARD and the IRT research institute were to offer three “white label” applications to members of the EBU, which they can customise to suit national needs.

Each member broadcaster will modify the generic Hybrid Broadcast Broadband TV (HbbTV) applications to provide a uniform branded framework for broadcast and catch-up TV, Video On Demand, interactive advertising, voting, games and social networking. Programme-related services, such as digital text and the Electronic Programme Guide (EPG), are also included as part of the package.

EBU Director General Ingrid Deltenre says, “Underlying this co-operation is the shared conviction that only high quality creative content can breathe life into the promise of hybrid technology – and only a flexible, cross-border approach will make it happen quickly.” The EBU claims that the Olympiad offers an opportunity to “fast-track” HbbTV, which the UK has passed over in favour of the much-delayed YouView project.

The EBU lays out some guiding principles for hybrid technology, which means the seamless combination of broadcast and broadband services. The first of these is the need to adopt common standards. In the long-ago days when broadcasting was confined to a country’s borders, different TV systems made little difference to the viewer. The three colour standards (PAL, NTSC and SECAM) caused a few headaches in the engineering departments but few consumers could spot the difference or even name the system they watched.

It was only when the video cassette arrived that format wars came to the living room as viewers realised you couldn’t fit a VHS into a Betamax slot no matter how hard you pushed. Since then, the concept of being “on the wrong side” in a format war has been better understood although it often has slowed the uptake of innovative new products. HbbTV is at the heart of the broadcasters’ “fight back” against the competing attractions of connected TVs from CE manufacturers and stand-alone boxes from Google TV, Apple TV and similar devices from Pay-TV services.

For EBU members, it fulfils their second principle: Broadcasters’ content should be displayed unaltered and accessed easily by all viewers. This is of particular concern with the advent of second screens and so-called “augmented TV”, which broadcasters fear could lead to the dilution of their control over quality and content.

When designing Blu-ray Disc pop-up menus, the on-screen text can be placed so it is matched to the entertainment content both in style and position but this is not possible with unrelated web overlays inserted randomly over broadcast content. Broadcasters believe this to be undesirable even if buying a pizza online takes priority over the results of the 100m Olympic final. An integrated HbbTV solution would give some control over the on-screen placement of such external content.

The threat of competing proprietary systems can also lead to added costs such as those incurred by making BBC iPlayer content available on multiple platforms some of which have very limited market share. Only an organisation such as the EBU can bring together the different hybrid systems to ensure that the same content does not have to be encoded multiple times. They seek to do this not with restricted competition but with a maximised number of common elements, as far as possible.

A further principle of HbbTV services is to provide a safe environment, particularly for younger viewers. Since the HbbTV services are broadcaster-managed, there is consistent parental control. The wilder excesses of the open internet have no place on the main screen in the family home and EBU members seek to ensure that the standards for interactive and online content are appropriate to the content being transmitted.

The final guiding principle embraces consistent and uniform rights management and data protection for content and consumer.

Broadcasters taking part in the Geneva workshop are bullish about the HbbTV services launched so far. A scant six months remain to get HbbTV right for London 2012 and if they do, the Olympics might bring hybrid services to more European households than ever before. Audiences in the UK no doubt will be the recipients of a superb service from the BBC but many viewers who watch terrestrial TV will be deprived of the bells and whistles that a truly hybrid system can bring.

The lamentable delay in the launch of YouView means that few, if any, integrated services will be available to the wider TV audience. Sky and Virgin Media subscribers, however, already receive many of the benefits.

February sees the introduction of a dedicated ITV Player section to Sky Anytime Plus to offer access to ITV content that includes popular programmes such as “Prime Suspect”, “Lewis” and “Cold Feet”. BBC iPlayer has long been a success with Virgin customers and from Easter 2012, Sky Anytime Plus will offer BBC iPlayer to more than 5 million Sky Plus HD homes at no extra charge, regardless of their broadband supplier. This is on top of the existing 1.2 million Sky broadband subscribers.

Following the announcement of a partnership with the “Zeebox social TV” second screen service, Sky in future will offer all its subscribers the integrated service for which EBU broadcasters strive. Sky Emerging Products Director Emma Lloyd quoted Ofcom figures to show that Britons watch TV, surf the net or use a mobile phone on an average of seven hours each day. She said, “This equates to a total of nine hours’ worth of media use per person because of concurrent use on different devices. Rather than risk compromising the quality of the main TV experience by making apps available through shared TV set, it makes sense to provide our customers will the flexibility to engage with our content on their own terms through personal second screens.”

The battle lines are drawn, and by the last day of London 2012 we will know which approach has the greatest viewer appeal. The hybrid approach of the EBU TV broadcasters takes ownership of web content tailored for TV and displays it on the main screen. The Sky/Zeebox partnership allows users to receive bespoke digital content on their hand-held devices tailored to enhance the programme they watch on TV. 

Place your bets!