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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!

   

Ads worth more on the net than on TV

June 30, 2009 in Applications, Industry, Networked media, Services by Administrator | No comments

PC world reports that for the first time, advertising during a specific “TV” show will cost more on the net than on traditional TV channel:

If a company wants to run ads alongside an episode of The Simpsons on Hulu or TV.com it will cost the advertiser about $60 per thousand viewers, according to Bloomberg. On prime-time TV that same ad will cost somewhere between $20 and $40 per thousand viewers.

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?

RDS Enabled Handhelds

April 24, 2009 in Applications, Infrastructures, Mobility, Services by Administrator | 1 comment

The current financial context is not optimal for deploying new broadcast networks. Some will tend to think twice on how to maximize the use of the current infrastructure.

Isn’t that the case with FM radio? Will it truly benefit from going digital?

One of the compromise I find attractive is starting to emerge: enabling mobile phone handsets to receive FM AND RDS. Such an effort led by GSS and Silicon Laboratiroes is reported here at RadioWorld.

GSS believes that cell phones that can receive FM without cumbersome headphone antennas will not only be more popular with consumers but can then put RDS capabilities into the hands of many more consumers, which in turn will better support the penetration of emergency alerting systems like its Alert FM.

iPlayer Reach

February 2, 2009 in Infrastructures, Networked media, Services, public broadcasting by Administrator | No comments

Some important numbers about the use of iPlayer can be seen here in this TIMESONLINE story:

Before that, they appear on iPlayer, the free service which notched up 41m programme requests in December and 271m during the whole of 2008.

Coopers

December 9, 2008 in Applications, Infrastructures, Services by Administrator | No comments

COOPERS is an EU funded project that was created to develop innovative telematics applications. TPEG is used to transmit traffic information via DAB:

The goal of the project is the enhancement of road safety by direct and up to date traffic information communication between infrastructure and motorised vehicles on a motorway section. COOPERS started in February 2006 with the duration of 48 months and a total Budget of more than 16.800.000 €.

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Video at VON 2007

March 21, 2007 in Industry, Networked media, Services, User Generated Media by Administrator | 1 comment

I spent the last three days at the new video track of the VON conference which has been dealing with Voice On the Net for the last ten years. As we know, video on the net is currently gaining ground on a daily basis with Youtube, Google Video, video blogging and many other passionate artists, producers and and so on. That’s the reason why video was inserted in the VON program this year and I realize that video on the net will probably face regulatory issues that VOIP had to go through in the recent years: intellectual property, copyright protection and network neutrality just to name a few. In fact, Jeff Pulver is being proactive on that issue by launching the Video On the Net Alliance to advocate for this emerging Internet video industry.

Voice over IP is disruptive. The flexibility provided by VOIP is an important factor for its success, but its impact is also quite important in that it opened the telecommunication playing field to new players that can operate outside the grasp of the incumbent telecommunication industry. Jeff Pulver officially stated that VOIP, an industry he triggered, is now well established. “We are now the incumbents who can be disrupted”.

In that respect, video on the net will allow the same type of disruption. Broadcasters and broadcast regulation can (and will) be circumvented by people and organizations who see the Net as an effective distribution platform.

Does Skype ring a bell? Well, they could potentially be #1 in both spaces. But that’s the topic of my next post.

Tags: video+on+the+net, VON2007,

TV-Like Content from The Net

September 7, 2006 in Networked media, Services by Administrator | No comments

Watching TV-like content through the net is certainly gaining ground these days. Jeff Pulver and his team just published a great list of “cahnnels” only available from the net.

Link

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Broadcasting the Blogosphere: 30 million voices for the price of one!

March 13, 2006 in Applications, Services, public broadcasting by Administrator | 2 comments

What is the size of the whole blogosphere? What capacity would be required to transmit it over a broadcast channel? Let’s see…
 
Blogging is still exploding. In his “state of the blogosphere” speech last week at ETECH, David Sifry, CEO of the blog indexing web service Technorati, presented the latest statistics:
  • 30.000.000 blogs worldwide
  • 100.000 new blogs are created daily
  • the blogosphere is 60 times larger than 3 years ago
  • there are 1.5 million legitimate posts(by humans for humans) per day

Let’s assume that each post contains 500 characters, no pictures, and that they are posted regularly over time. This would produce a constant bandwidth of:

500ch * 1byte/ch *1.5 million = 750 Mbytes / day

or

70 kbps !

What? The most massive conversation of the world requires only 70 kbps? That’s less than a single digital broadcasting audio channel! That’s 30 million voices for the price of one! Let’s turn the numbers around once again: with 70 kbps we could have each and every Canadian (30 million, all ages!) broadcast one 500 characters message to all other Canadians every 20 days?!?

That’s impressive. Does that make sense? I think I would agree to trade a local FM station in my area for this new “Whole Blogosphere Channel”. Would you?

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Financing vlogs

February 23, 2006 in Services by Administrator | No comments

Rocketboom is certainly one of the most popular video blogs (vlog) right now. Because of this, the producers (a small team of 2 I think…) were able to sell five 15 seconds ads for $40.000… all that through EBay (search for item number 5661816188 on EBay to see the details). Will this be a new trend in advertising? Rocketboom is seen by over 100.000 people daily.
 
2006_02_rocketboom_logo.jpg
 
I got aware of that yesterday (2 weeks late!) while testing the Democracy player with recent Rocketboom shows.

Superbowl Commercials

February 6, 2006 in Applications, Services by Administrator | No comments

Watch the full 20 minutes of Super Bowl commercials back-to-back on Google video or download them as video podcasts here.
 
This is intersting in particular for those of us who only see a local remix and never get to see them live!

Super Bowl viewers ratings: 1 billion ? Urban myth?

February 5, 2006 in Industry, Services by Administrator | 2 comments

I’m just scratching the surface of this subject but 5 minutes ago I heard, on CBC news (canadian public broadcaster), that the Super Bowl attracted 1 billion viewers… I haven’t found the answer yet but as I said in my previous post, wikipedia (whoever that is!) suggests that this is probalby an urban myth:
 
There is a popular urban myth regarding the Super Bowl — that the game is watched in 234 countries by 1 billion people, a fact unlikely to be true considering the time of the event, and the lack of popularity American Football has outside of the United States. In actual fact, Super Bowl XXXIX in 2005 was watched by 93 million viewers in total, of which 98 percent were in North America. Approximately half of the remaining 2 million worldwide viewers watched from the United Kingdom.
 
Just to have a better idea, I found the ratings of other big broadcast events:

My guts feelings tell me that soccer is the real global sport. How could american football be so popular all around the globe?

Anyone has the answer?

Super Bowl and Broadcasting

February 5, 2006 in Applications, Services, public broadcasting by Administrator | 1 comment

The 40th Super Bowl is currently live on TV. Either through cable, satellite, IPTV or off air, it requires a capacity that we can’t have off the Net today. With its extremely high Nielsen ratings, it shows the best features of broadcasting: Live, high capacity bitstream, one-to-many-many-many. The broadcast infrastructure is at its best here. It’s currently the only channel that supports the dissimination of the head of the longtail live, in HD, to the largest audience of the year.
 
2006_02_05_SuperBowlXL.png
 
By the way, wikipedia provides a good description of the event. There could be as much as 100 millions viewers this year, mostly in the U.S. (1 billion is an urban legend) . As a comparison, there were 3.8 billion viewers of the 2000 olympic games in Sydney.
 
Well, now I have to leave you. Mick Jagger is singing his “I can’t get no satisfaction”. I’ll be one of 100 millions with you…

Blast Podcast

January 25, 2006 in Applications, Industry, Services by Administrator | No comments

Blast Podcast is a web service that matches advertisers and podcasters by inserting relevant ads. They now offer video ads insertion.
 
Fruitcast seems to have a similar product.
 
This matching of products with cunsumers and content is the traditional function of broadcasters. Maybe it’s the only function that’s left for them in the future although these guys here already grab a piece of the market.

A new mobile TV alliance

January 23, 2006 in Applications, Industry, Mobility, Services by Administrator | No comments

Nokia announced the following today:
 

… Other firms in the alliance include Intel Corp., Motorola, Texas Instruments and Modeo, owned by Crown Castle International Corp., it said in a statement. The tie-up, called the Mobile DTV Alliance, aims to encourage open standards for TV broadcasts to mobiles, focusing on the North American market.

DVB-H (Digital Video Broadcasting – Handheld) technology bypasses mobile networks and broadcasts directly to handsets from TV masts, allowing millions of phone users to access the service at the same time.

2006_01_23_nokia.jpg
 
This seems to build a united DVB-H front against Qualcomm’s MediaFLO in the US.
 

A NYT story about Internet media

January 16, 2006 in Industry, Infrastructures, Services by Administrator | No comments

A short review at the NYT about the new Internet content dissemination models:
 
“At one level it’s clear that the dam has broken,” said Paul Otellini, chief executive of Intel. “There’s an inevitable move to use the Internet as a distribution medium, and that’s not going to stop.”

Motorola iRadio

January 16, 2006 in Mobility, Services by Administrator | 1 comment

This Reuters.com story tells us a little bit about the new iRadio service by Motorola. After looking at the iRadio website , I would summarize the whole story with this:
 
iRadio = podcasting by Motorola
 
Althoug the name is not ideal (somewhat confusing because it is absolutely not radio) I prefer it to Podcasting. Podcasting is a direct reference to the iPod and I find it sad that we’re stuck with a product-based terminology for such an important innovation. Nevertheless, the iPod, in conjunction with iTunes, is probably the best platform for podcasting.
 
After launching the Rokr cellular phone last September with Apple, Motorola introduces the new Rokr E2 that will receive iRadio services.
 
2006_01_16_motorola-rokr_e2.gif
Here is a factsheet of the RoKr E2
 

Mobile TV at CES 2006

January 10, 2006 in Infrastructures, Mobility, Services by Administrator | No comments

Mobile TV made the news last week at CES 2006 with announcments and product demonstrations. From now on, one of the two major ventures will be called Modeo (formerly known as Crown Castle Mobile Media) while the other one has been known under the name of  MediaFLO (Qualcomm) for a while now.
 
Both services will be very similar with, of course, some variations. This paper  at C|Net provides a very good comparative overview of the two technologies.
 
This Nokia device was presented running a Modeo demo last week. Here is another device by Motorola .

European “MI FRIENDS” DMB Project

December 19, 2005 in Applications, Services by Administrator | No comments

This looks like another huge project under the Celtic Eureka umbrella. MI FRIENDS will be a two years project for the 75 official participants.
 
The project aimes at a new architecture of inter-working media services based on infrastructures of broadcasting and telecommunications for the media needs of a mobile information society. 
The project goal is to develop and test new mobile media technologies from an economic point of view paying particular regard to social and cultural aspects with media consumer in its centre.  
 
This looks quite interesting since it will give particular attention to DMB technologies as well as to social and cultural aspects.
 

CBC 2.0

December 18, 2005 in Services, public broadcasting by Administrator | No comments

A good post on “dose” where CBC’s vision of the future is questioned. That’s all Broadcasting 2.0.
Producing & disseminating audio is so cheap and easy now, and so much wonderful audio will be produced in the coming years — by smart public broadcasters, and also by joes and janes at home — all of it accessible on net. Why listen to CBC if they insist of becoming AOL audio, and do not understand what’s happening on the web? Why support an institution that does not reflect anything i believe in? (freedom, the responsibilities of a public broadcaster, diversity, non-commercialness etc).
 
In a comment, Tod Maffin provides some answers.
 

Podcasting Survey at CBC

December 14, 2005 in Media formats, Services, public broadcasting by Administrator | No comments

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation,  as well as its french counterpart SRC, has a limited but good podcast offering.  CBC currently conducts a survey to better understand their listeners’ needs. Would I be paying for the podcast shows?
 
Before podcasting, my favorite radio show was “unavailable” to me. In fact, it airs daily from 9 to 11 AM while… guess what? …I’m at work. Podcasting is not just a nice to have alternative. It’s the only way I can access this great content (for which I paid for… some fractions of seconds of it at least!).
 
So before I have to pay for this, I would probably suggest to take down most of the costly FM transmitter networks and replace them by some inexpensive P2P seeding servers.
 

Jack FM radio format

December 12, 2005 in Services by Administrator | No comments

Chris Anderson has a post on his Long Tail blog about a new radio format that could at best extend radio’s life:
I’ve been following the rise of Jack FM a lot lately… It’s alleged to be the fastest growing new broadcast format in radio today (I think that honor might actually go to latin radio, but it’s certainly one of the most popular), based on the idea of pulling the songs played from a much longer playlist and having no DJs.
 
The Jack FM format is based on 1000 titles playlists instead of the very commonl 100 or even 40 hits playlists.
 

Will subscription media kill broadcacast?

November 16, 2005 in Media formats, Services by Administrator | No comments

An interesting debate initiated by Tom Coates about streaming vs time-shifted media:
 
…Because it’s not streaming that’s most affected by a combination of on demand and ‘deliver it to me’ subscribable podcast-like functionality. The main potential victim here is broadcast itself. Those of us who have Tivos or PVR functionality are already used to the idea that we don’t have to sit in front of the television when something’s being broadcast to watch our shows. And as a consequence, I very infrequently do.
 
Of course, time-shifting works fine as long as there is no need for live broadcasts. However, there will always be a need for live stuff like: sports events, breaking news, interactive-participatory shows, the President’s address to the nation, emergency warnings,…