HD DVD Takes a Nose Dive

By now you’ve read about Warner Bros. Entertainment announcement to drop HD DVD and focus on Blu-ray, a Sony Corp. backed technology vs. rival Toshiba.  Warner was the last major studio to put out movies in both formats and after May they will exclusively release on Blu-ray. 

The announcement by Warner rattled the industry nerves to the point that the N.A. HD DVD Promotional Group (which included Intel and Microsoft) canceled a major media event.  Who would blame them?   It’s not the kind of exciting news for what’s to come in 2008! 

I predicted Sony would not allow the “Betamax” struggle to repeat and that Blu-ray would prevail (HERE).  No need to bore you with the technology advantages of each format.  Ironically HD DVD has better interactivity today than Blu-ray, but that will evolve with BD Live.  I also observed evidence of a move of desperation during the holiday season when Toshiba HD DVD players flooded the market at $179.99.  Then Sony countered and jumped on the price discounting wagon with their BDP-S300 (entry level player) at Costco for $278.99 after a $100 rebate.  A $100 premium and never mind it didn’t support 7.1 audio. 

So what will Microsoft do now?  Speaking to Reuters, Albert Penello, group marketing manager for Xbox hardware, said in response to a question about Microsoft possibly supporting a Blu-ray accessory if HD DVD failed that they would consider it.  According to Engadget during holiday ’07 consumers purchased 92K HD DVD players for the xBox 360.   I believe Microsoft really wants the market to shift to digital download (aligns with xBox 360 content download service and their xBox 360 IPTV directions) and the format war was likely viewed as a gift which stalled adoption, create consumer confusion while digital download services improve. 

What is really important to most consumers is that the Warner announcement translates to the release of more movies which we want to watch (rent/buy) in stunning hi-def.  Now that the format battle is over I can plan on the Blu-ray release of Lord of the Rings (LOTR).  New Line (parent Time-Warner) will make this happen in ’08. 

And if all this wasn’t enough good news for the week, Sony demoed at CES the “next generation” of portable cinema viewing.  Samples of Blu-ray movies were successfully copied from a PlayStation 3 Blu-ray drive to a PlayStation Portable’s memory stick, as part of Sony’s new web-oriented service/approach to interactivity and play anywhere portability known as BD Live.  Other abilities include ring tone downloading and other media content to a BD Live media player.  One issue is that current Blu-ray players in the market (including the PS3) do not support BD-Live, but Sony confirmed the PS3 firmware update will be rolling out as early as this month to incorporate BD-Live playback into the system.

Now if Universal and Paramount can see that it makes sense (or is that $cents) to move to Blu-ray we’d be all set for a great hi-def year!

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Give A Computer A Cookie

Like the famous book “Give A Mouse A Cookie…” by Laura Joffe Numeroff and Illustrator Felicia Bond, “cookies” are often used by advertisers and Web analytic firms on most all web sites.   They place “tracking cookies” on your computer.  And like the book, the mouse will “ask for a glass of milk…” you can sure bet those web advertisers and analytic firms will be asking you for something. 

In most cases they don’t even let you know that they’ve ask!  Let me explain.  On the web, a “cookie” is a small text file that contains a string of alphanumeric characters. The tracking cookies tell companies what you are doing online, even though they don’t typically record your name or other personably identifiable information. The cookies are used by companies to try and match ads to a user’s interests or in the above mouse example they will “ask for a glass of milk”. 

There are two types of cookies used on most websites: a persistent cookie and a session cookie. A persistent cookie gets entered by your Web browser into the “Cookies” folder on your computer and remains in this “Cookies” folder after you close your browser. Persistent cookies may be used by your browser on subsequent visits to the site. A session cookie is held temporarily in your computer’s memory and disappears after you close your browser or shut off your computer. There are websites that use Web beacons (also called “clear GIFs” or “pixel tags”) in conjunction with cookies. Web beacons are small strings of code that are placed in a Web page. For example, if you arrive at website by clicking on a banner ad for a product or service, a session cookie may be used. This cookie will contain an identification number for the ad that you clicked on, or will contain an identification number for the site that you were visiting when you clicked on the banner ad. 

Most web sites tell you nothing upfront about tracking cookies, or how to get rid of these tracking cookies assuming that you want too.  Cookies are used all over the Web, but in most cases, their presence is only disclosed deep inside privacy policies.  When was the last time you read a privacy policy? 

Some of the more reputable web sites want you to know how to get rid of these tracking cookies or opt out of the cookies set by any ad-placement or analytic contractor they might use and will provide the information.  For example, here is a link to a page where you can opt out of the cookies set by an ad-placement or analytics contractor of Omniture. 

 I’d prefer a totally opt-in system, but, as far as I know, the ad industry doesn’t have a practical one yet and not enough consumers have complained about tracking cookies to make an impact for the industry to change. If you want to clean out all tracking cookies from all your Web sites the following links take you where you can download three programs that can help clean out tracking cookies: 

• http://www.lavasoftusa.com/products/ad-aware_se_personal.php
• http://www.spybot.info/en/download/index.html
• http://www.webroot.com/consumer/products/spysweeper/

 I’ve used some of these applications and been satisfied with the results, but give them a try and let me know your results. You can also change the preferences or settings in your Web browser to control cookies. In some cases, you can choose to accept cookies from the primary site, but block them from third parties. In others, you can block cookies from specific advertisers, or clear out all cookies. 

Not all cookies are tracking cookies. Like a lot of Web sites, they may place cookies on your computer, in addition to any placed by advertisers. But they aren’t “tracking cookies.” They merely do things like save your registration information, if you choose to register. They do not tell the companies what you do or where you go online. 

I’ll take warm milk with my cookies, thank you.

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Intel Launches Cool Software

There was joke floating around a few years ago about “What’s the difference between Intel, Inc. and Jurassic Park?”  As the joke goes one is a high tech dinosaur park and the other is a movie! 

Well, these days Intel is firing on all cylinders and the latest activity from the semiconductor company is not typical…they launched a new Web 2.0-inspired Web site to engage with the community and solicit feedback from the public on software companies and technologies.  Huh?!

CoolSW is a web site or forum where people — from software developers, gamers and tech enthusiasts — can submit and vote for their favorite software company or products. The site taps into the collective intelligence of the community and, much like the popular site Digg.com, uses user ratings to assign levels of importance or relevance to each company or product. Aside from the entertainment value, the data will provide a growing list of software companies with which Intel or others could potentially engage.  

In addition, CoolSW provides a forum where Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) can raise awareness for their product and/or services. It may well even provide smaller companies an opportunity to share their solution with potential investors or partners.

Very cool!

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Social Visualization

I ran across a cool website mention in the local paper today and decided to give it a look. I’m a visual person and making things visual always gets my attention. IBM’s Visual Communication Lab enables anyone to upload all kinds of data and turn them into graphs, maps, tag clouds and other visuals.

For example, want to convert the rhetoric over Iraq into something you can see or visualize? A user did just that by taking the text of the British House of Commons debate on the Iraq war and then converted the text into a tag cloud that displays heavily used words in larger type and little used words in little type.

See the IBM site here or click on the image:






Enjoy those visuals…

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Tell Me What You Want

I recently sat in on panel discussions and audience interactions at ETECH. At each session we were met by enthusiastic people/companies that have a genuine concern about understanding what customers want.

In a world where the noise of the social crowd is amped up exponentially with endless streams of chatter…what I took away was confirming some of the reading I have been doing lately (Check out Scott McKain’s “What Customers Really Want”):

We need to focus on creating customer experience, not customer service; personal focus, not product focus; reciprocal loyalty, not endless prospecting; and innovation rather than status quo.

Then I came across this new start-up website Oddpodz. It’s basically a website where creative, independent thinkers unite and share information.

I’m not sure how these type start-ups are changing the way we communicate or manage intellectual property?

Let me know what you think.

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EMI Music DRM-Free – Who cares?

Apple will sale EMI music without anti-piracy (DRM – digital rights management) technology — Steve Jobs proclaimed in February that music companies should sell their music DRM-free. Evangelizing that DRM-free music would create a truly interoperable music marketplace.

About a month later (4/2/07), in agreement with music label EMI, Apple is making EMI songs available without DRM through its iTunes music store. The music will be higher quality (encoded at 256kbps AAC), and tracks will cost $1.29, or 30 cents more than the standard 99 cents.

This means you can take those songs (EMIs entire catalog (DRM free) – globally in May) and put them on any device you want too. I think this helps address how I only want to buy a song or album ONCE and be able to play it in my car CD, my iPod, computer, on my PS3 or my TV. I don’t want to buy it 10 times from 10 different sources to play it on 10 different electronic components.

Is this the next big step forward for music interoperability, a significant development for the industry or a move by EMI to garner headlines? Maybe it’s all three, but at the joint press announcement EMI stated they were confident this will grow their sales and put a stake in the groud stating that 1/4 of all sales would be digital by 2010.

Hard to predict music sales let alone the digital elements, but I like the interoperability and hope other label’s follow.

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Sat-Rad Mergers

I’ve subscribed to XM Satellite Radio since April 2006. Previously, I was a subscriber of Sirius Satellite Radio for about two years. I remember the hype leading up to the Howard Stern launch. I’m a fan of the Satellite radio, and like XM better.

Now comes the proposed merger with rival Sirius Satellite Radio.

February 19, 2007

To: SIRIUS Subscribers

Today is a very exciting day for SIRIUS customers. As you may have heard, SIRIUS Satellite Radio and XM Satellite Radio are merging to form the nation’s premier audio entertainment provider.

This combination of our two offerings will benefit you – our loyal listeners. As a single company, we’ll provide superior programming to you every day with the best of both SIRIUS and XM. Currently, XM and SIRIUS broadcast a wide range of commercial-free music channels, exclusive sports coverage, news, talk, and entertainment programming. Howard Stern. Oprah and Friends. The NFL. MLB. NBA. ESPN. CNBC. Fox News. Additionally, the combined company will be able to improve existing services such as real-time traffic information and rear-seat video as well as introduce new ones.

After shareholder and regulatory approvals, we anticipate that the combination will be finalized by the end of 2007. Until then, both companies will continue to operate independently. We will continue to provide you with the uninterrupted service – as well as the outstanding customer support – that you have come to expect and enjoy from SIRIUS. We do not anticipate any changes in your service during the merger process, however, please call our customer care team on 1- 888-539-7474 should you have any questions.

We look forward to the many benefits this combination will offer and continuing to make your listening experience an enjoyable one – offering more of the Very Best Radio on Radio.

Stay tuned,

Mel Karmazin, CEO

The business reasons as to why these two companies might want to merge are: Cost savings, efficiencies of scale, debt repayment, more muscle with music companies, sharing the cost of rolling out new technologies, etc., but I don’t see why its good for me?

Personally, I care about music (with out advertisements), catching CNN on the commute and an occasional sporting event. That’s why I subscribe to XM.

Being a previous subscriber of Sirius it has a lot that I don’t want: Howard Stern, Martha Stewart, and Tony Hawk’s Bucka-Bucka-Hucka-Jam-Bamma Xtreme Show. I’m certainly not interested in subscriber fee increases to get Stern!

I’m concerned that, as an XM subscriber, I’ll lose channels that I like and get channels I don’t. The satellite spectrum is limited and they won’t suddenly put up 300 channels.

I think that until the proposed merger can promise something more (new gadgets, more functionality), rather than something less (discontinued channels), we subscribers should be very, very skeptical.

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7 Predictions for ’07

 

Looking in the mirror at just what objects did appear closer as the year comes to a close, I suspect a key question on your mind is: What is Mac’s prognostication of digital home and general usage trends next year…?

1. Music is THE Application for Mobile Phones

CD-quality music is going to be on more than half the entry-level cell phones used around the world by year-end. Music will be THE application on cell phones measured by consumer use and revenue-generated by handset makers and wireless service providers. Apple proved people will pay for good-sounding music, including hundreds of their favorite songs, easily accessed by simply pressing a button. And these music cell phones will store hundreds and late in the year thousands of songs, which is plenty for the average music fan.

But what about video or Mobile TV adoption? Mobile TV will continue to develop, but will be challenged to win market acceptance because of the small size of cell phone screens. Battery limitations and the small screens make long-term, non-stop viewing unappealing, not a good user experience. The most likely mobile TV applications will be people checking sports scores and updates; cartoons, videos, standup comedy etc., and/or general news. All these will need to fit in about a 3-to-15 minute time frame, according to most industry experts. Many people won’t watch TV on a cell phone for much longer than that, except for some special, out-of-the-mainstream reasons. Mobile TV’s early adopters are expected to be mass transit commuters, primarily Asian and European adults. Look for those countries to be early adopters.

2. Apple iTunes Remains Dominate

Apple will see their iPod market share erode in ’07 from increased competition thanks to Microsoft (Zune), the increased availability of independent video subscriptions (studio’s, broadcasters, news organizations etc.,), and the MTV URGE marketing juggernaut of VH1, MTV and CMT.

The “Leopard” version of the OS will extend Apple MSS to 8% and the FrontRow: media access embedded in the OS along with iTV is what the digital home needs in an interface device. The OS and device will be hugely successful with Apple retail stores able to promoting a compelling value proposition for consuming video content on your schedule…on any device… any time and keep those “buying eye-balls” on iTunes.

The increase in content sources and video quality of the iPod will drive demand for portable video players and subsequently on demand video content. The standard drive size for an iPod will be 100GB by year end. Flash models will ship with 8GB standard and upper end units with 15GB.

The Apple iPhone (Cell phone) will have few new features, but will become big sellers. It won’t be introduced at MacWorld rather it will be mid-year.

3. IPTV Over-Hyped and HDTV Prices Drop as Demand Increases.

The first sub-$500 27-inch LCD HDTV will hit the market. The dramatic price drops are causing consumers to not only upgrade living room sets, but buy additional units for different rooms in the house.

IPTV adoption and speculation will continue to be rampant and over-hyped. Industry pundits will continue to state that it’s right around the corner and that the deals are ramping the industry. New mega-revenue streams don’t exist. There are opportunities for the industry, including programming for non-traditional platforms, but 2007 will not be the year for broad adoption.

4. Blu-Ray and HD-DVD Sales Stall

With no HD-DVD standard concluded, format wars will continue to confuse the consumer and retail is unable to position the differences. Touted as the second coming of the DVD, it’s starting to look a lot like the second coming of the Laserdisc. The inclusion of 1080p support in Playstation 3 (PS3) won’t matter to consumers because there is very little content available and it’s at a premium price.

Speaking of Sony — they will stumble over backwards compatibility with PS2 games and lack of an interactive strategy. Gamers will become further addicted to Xbox 360 combined with Xbox Live, where points and ratings offer a direct comparison of skills against other Xbox Live members, which leaves PlayStation 3 out in the cold. For the console market, 2006 will be game over at Sony.

5. Generation C (Content) Mind Share

In three years, people born between 1980 and 2000, will outnumber Baby Boomers and Gen-Xers. They will be a consumer sector of tremendous importance to the media & entertainment industry. Not only are they big, but they will be fragmented and difficult to reach. The increasing number of media channels – instant messaging, email, social networks, iPods, mobile phones, Tivo, P2P networks, handhelds, video games, etc., – through which this group communicates and consumes media & entertainment, makes them a very elusive target for us to market to them. The characteristics of this generation – one embracing a pervasively digital world – and the implications for media, entertainment, and advertising is going to drive everyone nutty.

Social networking services will morph into something even less useful, like social shopper with coupons and we’ll see sites provide buying recommendations triggered by your profile data.

6. Microsoft Success

Late-February they issue a Press Release proclaiming that “Windows Vista is the best selling operating system ever.” Consumers will love the Vista Media Center Edition with Xbox 360 connectivity in large scale. Adoption rates of Vista with XP customers will be very slow due to computational and memory requirements.

Frustrated with Apple’s market power, the music industry will move aggressively closer to Microsoft. It won’t matter, as the Zune will be deemed the most underwhelming product Microsoft has ever made. And afraid of Microsoft’s market power, the movie industry will try to cozy up to Washington.

Groove collaboration software will ship in the Office suite for the first time. It won’t matter as more significant desktop apps will move to an Ajax/server-based design like Zoho.

7. MPAA Supports Consumer Content Value Chain (When Pigs Fly!)

We buy a title, not a particular file for a title (so, we buy video once, for all devices)

“Stop, pause, resume, buy, rent, etc.” all work across platforms, devices, and service providers/retailers

Content transcoding is a job for the professionals and the serious hobbyists and the MPEG, H.264, video compression codec’s…whatever, is banned from everyday consumer vernacular

We need to know as much about DRM as we need to know about locks in our bank safety deposit vault

Content (purchased and our own creations) are as safe as credit cards (Meaning we should be angry when someone rips the content that we had to pay for)

I left off the ever important legal prediction…there will be a felony conviction in the U.S. for a crime committed entirely in a virtual world and for the Wiki people, the word “mashup” will be the most overused word in 2007!

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