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Live Traffic Information on GPS Devices in Canada

December 9, 2009 in Applications, Consumer devices, Infrastructures, Mobility, public broadcasting by Administrator | No comments

In my recent reflexions about the new potential for hybrid radio based on FM I identified RDS-TMC as an incentive to maintain and even expand the FM (RDS) infrastructure in Canada. While speaking about that at a meeting last week I learned that Corus Entertainment was deploying RDS-TMC traffic for Garmin devices in major cities in Canada. I’m not sure how long it has been there but I think it is quite new. And now that I’m aware of that, I see traffic enabled Garmin devices advertised everywhere… and prices are very reasonable.

So last week I ordered a Garmin model 265WT from Tigerdirect.ca (170$). The “T” at the end of the model number indicates that the FM RDS-TMC is included in the box. With such package, traffic information seems to be included for free for the whole life of the device. I’m not quite clear about that but for some reasons, Garmin also sells lifetime traffic information for 50$ on their website. Maybe some devices have to be activated before traffic information works?

Anyways. I received the device yesterday and was eager to try it. That’s what I did on my way home last night. It was very simple to install. In fact, nothing special has to be done. The lighter power cord must be plugged into the device and the car (the FM RDS receiver is part of that cord) and that’s it. When I launched the device, it took just a few seconds before I could see a little “traffic icon” on the maps.

Pressing on that icon revealed two types of traffic information. I took a picture (shown below) of the traffic situation last night at around 7pm in Ottawa. As we can see, there was heavy traffic on the main highway in Ottawa… and that was no surprise to me… it was perfect timing for my experiment: hockey night! And every time its the same thing: the highway gets jammed at the “Scotiabank Place”. So that’s the red segment on the map here.

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The other traffic display shows a list of the various problem zones. This is shown on the second photo I took:

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So very positive experience for me. I’m impressed. It works well and is very easy to use. The next step will be to see how real-time navigation and re-routing works considering the traffic. In the meantime, I guess canadians will want a new Garmin for Christmas because they certainly understand that traffic is a major enhancement on a GPS device.

If you wonder where exactly the service is available, have a look at this page on the Navteq website. A quick scan over the list shows following regions: Hamilton-Burlington, Montreal-Laval, Oshawa-Whitby-Clarington, Ottawa-Gatineau, St. Catharines-Niagara Falls-Welland, Toronto-Mississauga and Vancouver-Surrey-Burnaby.

! UPDATE, WARNING: I was told that the service has not been officially launched yet. I guess that this means it may be unstable or could even be stopped anytime. Please consider this if you think of buying yourself a new Garmin for Christmas.

My eComm 2009 Talk Now Available on Video

December 2, 2009 in Applications, Consumer devices, Mobility by Administrator | No comments

I’m happy that my eComm talk finally got published online, 8 months after the conference. Events sponsors got published much earlier but hey, that’s fair for a professionally produced clip. I must admit that the AV infrastructure and the team at the event were excellent.

My talk was titled: “Mobile Digital Broadcasting: An Infrastructure for One-to-Many Converged Services”. We took this opportunity to officially release our Openmokast open source software framework. I was happy that my live demo worked as expected!



We had prepared a clip just in case the “demo effect” would hit on me on stage. Luckily this was not the case but the clip (which is more detailed than the live demo) can still be seen on our crcmmb Youtube Channel or here below:




And here are the slides I used for this presentation:

eComm Presentation

View more documents from Francois Lefebvre.

eComm was also for me a great occasion to meet with David Burges who presented his OpenBTS project live using the USRP as well. His demo looked incredibly like mine except he demonstrated live cell phone communications going through his GSM open source base station. There are lots of commonalities between our projects but essentially, both are about democratizing communications technologies to catalyze innovation.

Livio NPR Radio

November 26, 2009 in Consumer devices, Industry, Networked media, Services, public broadcasting by Administrator | 1 comment

The NPR Radio by Livio_ NPR Shop.pngLivio announces its NPR branded Internet Radio Appliance. This device will offer a specialized menu to easily access NPR’s 800 radio stations. Of course, all other Internet radio stations can be accessed as well.

Are such “specialized” devices the future? We’ve seen the WikiReader recently which only does one thing: portable unconnected access to Wikipedia.

I don’t know but it makes great sense to me. I would love to see a CBC / Radio-Canada device like this. CBC/RC have great Internet offerings but they tend to “capture” the audience into their branded web portals. Because of this, many CBC/RC Internet radio streams are not accessible through Internet appliances other than full fledged PC’s. A branded device seems to be a good compromise to escape the PC prison.

Another very promising effect of this device is that it will help fund NPR’s programming since they will collect a portion of the proceeds. What an original way to fund public broadcasters!

   

FLOSS Media Centers

July 7, 2009 in Consumer devices, Networked media by Administrator | No comments

Media centers could become the main interfaces to media content in home networks . The Telematics Freedom Foundation recently released a short report on Free Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) options here. The report compares features of projects like XBMC, MythTV, freevo, Moovida (Elisa) and so on.

FemtoDAB

June 24, 2009 in Applications, Consumer devices, Infrastructures, Services by Administrator | 4 comments

According to this article, Vodafone will be next week the first mobile network operator to launch a femtocell product in Europe:

“Looking like a home router, femtocells give 3G coverage indoors, and use home broadband to connect calls across the Internet to the mobile network.”

“… will be available on different price plans… Essentially, the femto is free to anyone on a £30 contract, and £5 otherwise – including dongle customers”

Femtocells are in fact compact devices (similar to Wi-Fi routers) that act as very low power cell phone base stations that can be installed in end-users premises. Typical cell phones can connect to them instead of the remote “high-power” towers operated by mobile network operators. Femtocells carry the usual communication services through standard Internet connections in homes and offices.

Key benefits to operators (O) and users (U):

  • Better in-building coverage (O, U)
  • Overall network infrastructure can eventually be operated at lower power levels (O)
  • Off-loading cellular networks (O)
  • MNOs can still charge service costs while using end-users resources (Internet) (O)
  • Use the mobile device at home at lower rates (U)
  • Does not need regular phone service at home anymore (O, U)

Could this femtocell approach be exploited in the context of digital broadcasting as well? At CRC, we have developed a compact software transmitter for DAB. This platform could be further integrated as a low-cost personal DAB transmitter or FemtoDAB cell!

Such a FemtoDAB approach could offer interesting benefits:

  • Better in-building coverage (O, U)
  • Overall network infrastructure can eventually be operated at lower power levels (O)
  • Outdoor, indoor roaming with the same device (broadcast enabled handhelds) (U)
  • Transmission of additional Internet radio content in the femtoDAB cell (U)

One of the challenges will be to make FemtoDAB more attractive than the Wi-Fi options.

Do you see any use cases for FemtoDAB?

In-car Wi-Fi Internet Radio

June 24, 2009 in Consumer devices, Infrastructures, Mobility, Networked media by Administrator | 1 comment

As Internet radio appliances are becoming available, there is still the issue that they can’t be used in your car.

This could change thanks to so-called “in-car WiFi routers” which are designed to provide Internet access through 3G mobile telephony networks.

AutoNet Mobile offers such device and service combination:

we create a Wi-Fi hot spot that allows everyone in the car to connect multiple devices to the internet, in and around the car! it’s the next step in in-car entertainment and productvity. we make internet in your car easier than ever because we provide both the in-car router and the monthly service. our affordable monthly service plans start at only $29 per month.

This still represent an expensive proposition for radio though. One hour daily consumption of good quality Internet radio content could easily reach the 29$ 1Gb limit.

App Stores Everywhere but in Broadcast Handsets

February 18, 2009 in Applications, Consumer devices, Mobility by Administrator | No comments

Application Stores are the big thing at the Mobile World Congress this week. Few stories here and here and here. While Apple’s AppStore and Google’s Android marketplace have been known for some time now, we hear that Nokia, Microsoft and RIM have similar plans.

As we mention in our recent EBU paper, new functionality in handsets will be done in software. This is quite new in the mobile world but we are definitely used to this principle with our personal computers. We buy software for them. That’s what makes them extremely flexible, evolutive and thus useful. This paradigm emerges on mobile phone platforms now because they are evolving as generic and powerful computing platforms too.

This trend was identified early on by Apple (as usual) who created the AppStore as part of the iPhone ecosystem. The AppStore creates a marketplace for developers and end-users. Developers offer their new creations through the system, typically for a small fee, while end-users shop for applications through iTunes. The whole process of purchasing, installing and removing applications has been streamlined to provide a “frictionless” end-user experience, apart from the few dollars that one has to leave on the table!

I believe that the key benefit from these new marketplaces for applications is innovation. A democratized marketplace for innovation.

Before, application innovation was limited to MNOs and key partners of the mobility value chain. Now, anybody can create new applications. New applications will come from the masses, like Google, Wikipedia, Flickr, Youtube came from new players and non-incumbents.

Also, with more open marketplaces comes increased competition. That is good for consumers. End-users are only one click away from competing applications.

And what if the competing application is free? Such platforms will make “free” and “pay for” applications equally accessible. Could this lead to the erosion of the software market? Many think so. In order to sell their apps, developers will have no other choice but to offer leading edge products with truly exclusive features.

What does this mean for broadcasting? At the moment not so much I guess. The perspective is attractive though. What if moving from DAB to DAB+ could simply be achieved through a new software app. A broadcaster would announce the move and asks its listeners to go buy the 2$ piece of software on the app store. In exchange, end users get more channels. Click, pay, download, … voila! What if all new broadcast applications could be offered this way? EPG, Slideshow, TPEG traffic overlay for google maps,… and so on. In fact, we don’t know what the mobile broadcast applications of the future will be. But we know it will be in software. We just need broadcast receivers in those handsets.

Canada to Go All GSM

October 15, 2008 in Consumer devices, Industry, Infrastructures, Mobility by Administrator | No comments

Bell and Telus, the two wireless operators in Canada that are based on Qualcomm’s CDMA technology, announced last week their plans to deploy GSM technology jointly. CBC reports:

“BCE unit Bell and Telus both announced Friday they would be making a significant investment in upgrading their networks, adding high speed packet access, or HSPA, cellular technology to their third-generation networks.”

This could have an impact on the mobile broadcasting technology that will be deployed in Canada. The natural link between CDMA and MediaFLO is quite strong since both technologies belong to Qualcomm. Could this mean less chances for MediaFLO to establish in Canada?

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Mobile Multimedia: A Complex Ecosystem

September 21, 2007 in Consumer devices, Industry, Legislation by Administrator | No comments

Skip Pizzi writes a very interesting piece on the mobile multimedia landscape. He argues that the recent collapse of two major efforts to provide mobile TV (BT-Movio and Modeo) shows the complexity of this new ecosystem.

This is quite different from the traditional world of wireless delivery, where there were really only two businesses involved: 1) broadcasters, who created, distributed and delivered content through the air to consumers, and 2) manufacturers, who built receivers that consumers simply bought, turned on and tuned to broadcast channels to receive content.

Today the chain includes content providers, their hosting services, distribution networks (the Internet backbone), last-mile connectivity (wireless service providers) and compatible devices.

He also points to the fact that telecom carriers have the control over the technologies and functionalities that are enabled on the cell phones. For example, I didn’t know that FM receivers are embedded in many cell phone platforms in the US market today. However, that functionality is simple not enabled!

I believe that technologies should serve our needs and provide a better quality of life (QoL !). An ecosystem that locks down functionality that is there and deployed must be, in fact, VERY complex!

Tags: mobile+multimedia, broadacsting+phones

Godzilla PVR

January 20, 2006 in Applications, Consumer devices by Administrator | No comments

The geeks at Snapstream have build another Monster PVR:
 
This system is an ultra high end HTPC showcasing Beyond TV 4 and capable of recording 11 shows, 4 high definition and 7 standard definition, at once. With Beyond TV 4’s HDTV support and with its unlimited tuners, you can create your own monster system.
 

Slingbox

December 22, 2005 in Applications, Consumer devices, Infrastructures by Administrator | 1 comment

The slingbox is certainly a Broadcasting 2.0 device. It sits on top of your home TV and streams the remotely selected channel to you, anywhere you are in the world, through the Internet.
 

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Jeff Pulver relates his very positive experience with this device.

I recall that around year 2000 we have seen many such disruptive devices that were to change the broadcast experience forever (Kerbango was one of the most expected ones). Then the bubble…. Today, iPods and Co. show that we’re back on track.

Link (via pulverblog)

Qualcomm IP

December 20, 2005 in Consumer devices, Industry by Administrator | No comments

And as I was browsing through The Register, I found this story about the big picture of IP ownership in the mobile wireless world. It looks like patents are moving from one hand to the other in a perpetual fight.
 

A very compact DMB receiver

December 20, 2005 in Consumer devices by Administrator | No comments

Samsung has just announced its new tiny DMB phone model number SCH-B360 / SPH-B3600 / SPH-B3650.

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Everyday we’re getting closer to mobile TV applications. It’s still not clear to me how important our needs for real-time video streams on-the-move are. But TV was never mobile. It’s certainly worth a try.
 

Open cell phones

November 21, 2005 in Consumer devices by Administrator | No comments

This article presents the efforts of new hacker communities trying to implement open mobile platforms. As it is for digital broadcasting “terminals”, cell phones tend to be closed platforms for which current “incumbents” have the exclusive power to innovate. In this article however, they claim that only open platforms will pave the way to future applications. We’ve seen that model work pretty well for the Internet, haven’t we? Could this also apply to mobile networks? And digital mobile networks such as DVB-H, DMB or MediaFLO?
 
BTW Surj Patel (the guy interviewed) is also the conference chair of the very promising O’reilly ETEL event next january.
 
 

Hilton Line-In Clock

November 9, 2005 in Consumer devices by Administrator | No comments

 
Recently I spent some days at Hilton hotel. I was gladly surprised to discover that the typical clock radio was equipped with an external line-in jack for my iPod. In an open media world, the line-in jack is a de-facto standard. Will we have similar open interfaces for our portable HDTV devices in hotel rooms? And how about a standards-based physical interface for car radios?
 
 
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