LAS VEGAS — If there was one overarching theme from the Consumer Electronics Show here last week, it was that absolutely every device in our lives is becoming a computer connected to the Internet.
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Isaac Brekken/Associated Press
“TV is interactive TV these days. You will use the same TV and the same remote control, but have completely different functionality,” said Jong Woo Park, President of Samsung’s digital media business.
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Times Topics: Consumer Electronics Show (CES)
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“You ought to expect that to be more and more unified – three screens: TV, phone, PC – one cloud-based experience,” said Steve Ballmer, chief executive of Microsoft.
The sleek little Palm Pre phone promises to make it easy to call your friends by looking up their numbers on Facebook.
A new version of the Ford F150 pickup truck will let contractors check service manuals by browsing the Web from an in-dash computer.
New televisions from LG, Samsung and others will let viewers watch movies from Netflix and other Internet sites.
In two years, 90 percent of all Sony products will connect to the Internet, Howard Stringer, the chief executive of Sony, predicted.
These developments can be seen as more of the electronics industry’s constant quest for something new to tantalize gadget lovers.
But there is a darker side, too, for the companies that make the devices. If the most exciting thing about your phone or truck or TV is the Web sites you go to and the software applications you download, then the device itself is less important.
That is what happened to the computer industry, with its relentless price pressure and indistinguishable products. It is hardly an attractive business model, even for consumer electronics companies already accustomed to low profit margins.
“We are commoditizing new technology,” said William Wang, the chief executive of Vizio, which has become the country’s third-largest seller of televisions after Samsung and Sony. Now that flat-screen high-definition televisions have become commonplace, he said, “the technology shifts are not that dramatic.”
Other, more established brands beg to differ, of course. Their screens are thinner and their pictures are brighter, they advertise. So consumers will inevitably be drawn to them, they argue. And they are working on what they hope will be another technology on view at the show, one that makes mere high-definition sets seem passé: Three-dimensional televisions.
But the more established brands know the battleground is shifting. Increasingly what will differentiate one TV from another is the software it runs and the Internet services it connects to.
Even Nokia, which sells more cellphones than its three nearest competitors, says that much of its future success will come from selling services, ranging from music to maps, that operate on the phones.
Another approach is to try to embed computer chips with Internet connections, all of which keep getting cheaper and smaller, into ever more unusual devices. Sony introduced an Internet-connected alarm clock that will wake you up with your favorite music videos and traffic forecasts for your commute.
Asustek, the giant Taiwanese electronics company, has developed a touch-screen computer that hangs on a wall. It also has built a PC into a keyboard that lets users surf the Net on their TVs . In the future, according to Jonney Shih, the chairman of Asustek, everything in your house, even your bedroom mirror, will be a computer display.
So even as electronics makers struggle with the extremely sluggish economy and the relentless competition, they can look forward to finding ever more shapes and sizes in which to embed their gadgets.
Here are some edited excerpts from interviews with top executives who attended the electronics show. More of these interviews, along with other articles about the electronics show, can be found at nytimes.com/ personaltech.
Services via Devices
“For a long time, our business was defined as cellphones. Hardware is not enough. We need to have a wider array of services and content. This is a major change for us.”
Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, chief executive of Nokia
“In the next five years, we are not only going to provide hardware, but content through our devices, in an easy, more convenient way. TV is no longer just TV. TV is interactive TV these days. You will use the same TV and the same remote control, but have completely different functionality.”
Jong Woo Park, the president of Samsung’s digital media business
“You ought to expect that to be more and more unified — three screens: TV, phone, PC — one cloud-based experience. Live, essentially projecting through consistently, and appropriately, to the three screens.”
Steve Ballmer, chief executive of Microsoft
The Evolving Television
“Think of Internet on the TV like the Web browser. One view is that the Web, a browser like Firefox, Chrome or I.E., will be right on the television in the next couple years. Another view is, no, a PC-based Web is just too complex. The second one is the phase that we’re in now.”
Reed Hastings, chief executive of Netflix
“Three-D television. That’s really a major, major revolution coming into consumer electronics. That’s one area where we are placing our bets”.
Woo Hyun Paik, chief technical officer and a president of LG Electronics
“Over five years, the big concept that changes for a consumer is, ‘Gosh, do I have to track whether I have my content on my PC, on my phone, on my TV and how do I move it around?’ ”
Robbie Bach, president of Microsoft’s entertainment and devices business
New Computer Shapes
“A fraction of what we sell, a much bigger percentage of it, will be lower-priced client form factor. It may have all the functionality of a PC, but maybe it’s smaller. Maybe it is just an LCD display with PC functionality in the back, that is sitting on a desk or hanging on a wall.”
Dirk Meyer, the chief executive of Advanced Micro Devices
“To make the whole digital home possible, in the eventual state, every wall becomes a display. The mirror should become a screen. You already watch the mirror.”
Jonney Shih, the chairman of Asustek
Coping With Recession
“Customers are spending less, but they are still buying. They are putting off vacations, so they can buy TVs and stay at home. Last year, customers bought $900 and $1,000 laptops. This year they are buying $500, $600, $700 laptops. They are not buying cars, so they’ve got to buy something.”
Gilbert Fiorentino, chief Executive of the Technology Products Group at Systemax, parent company of CompUSA and TigerDirect.
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To Connect to the Internet, Just Turn on Your TV
Google Ends Google Video Uploads, Shutters Notebook, Catalog Search, Dodgeball & Jaiku
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Google Ends Google Video Uploads, Shutters Notebook, Catalog Search, Dodgeball & Jaiku
PARK CITY, Utah–As Hollywood stars drew crowds to the screening rooms here at the Sundance Film Festival, several Web media pioneers–celebrities in their own right– also got the spotlight Saturday at a panel focused on the future of entertainment in the Digital Age.
Moderated by All Things D’s Kara Swisher in her fourth such Sundance engagement, the panelists were Netflix founder and CEO Reed Hastings, YouTube CEO and co-founder Chad Hurley; and Jason Kilar, CEO of Hulu, which is NBC Universal and News Corp.’s joint online video venture.
Each had a somewhat different take on how they imagine consumers in the upcoming decade will view their entertainment. But their overriding themes were one and the same: users will be in control.
Gone are the days of some TV programmer deciding what time slot consumers will view a particular show. Same goes for theater owners dictating show times. As they are already doing, consumers will seek out their own content and will play or stream it when they want it, where they want it, and on the device or their choosing. As Hastings put it, it’s an “on-demand revolution.”
YouTube founder and CEO Chad Hurley.
(Credit: Michelle Meyers/CNET News)
“The linear broadcast model of today is going to disappear” relatively quickly, said Hurley, who later noted that distribution on mobile devices is the fastest-growing part of YouTube’s business.
In full embrace of the “consumers chose” mantra, Hulu actually lets users chose the advertisements they want to watch.
The key, however, will be helping consumers “discover” content, the panelists said–”discovery” being an industry buzzword of late for both video and music aggregators and sellers.
Hastings pointed out that most Sundance films, for example “are not going to be loved by 2 million Americans,” or enough to justify national distribution. So for filmmakers who are now able to distribute their work cheaply via the Web, it will be about targeting the right audience communities.
Of course, that’s where social networking will continue to be important, they agreed, whether it’s done through major social-networking sites like Facebook or MySpace; through social-networking functionality built into sites like Hulu, Netflix, and YouTube; or something in between (i.e. Friend Connect or Facebook Connect).
Netflix CEO and founder Reed Hastings.
(Credit: Michelle Meyers/CNET News)
“We will never be as good as the world at surfacing content for the individual,” Kilar said, alluding to social networking as a tool for recommending videos. However, he added, Hulu isn’t “aspiring to be a social utility.”
Hastings hopes the digital realm can get to a place where customers can better weed through the content that’s out there. For example, right now, about two out of every three shows or films you see are just “eh,” Hastings said, and one out of every three is “wow!”
“If we can collectively shift it to two out of three is “wow,” he said, consumers will have a better experience and will likely take in more content.
Looking deeper into their crystal balls, the panelists envision continued improvements for users, with expanded broadband and Wi-Fi offerings, new business models that fairly compensate content makers, and distribution experiments that might one day lead to films going out on the Web and DVD at the same time as they make their theater premieres.
All of the above, however, will require companies to continually concentrate on the user experience, they agreed.
The days of living room entertainment are not likely to go away, they also agreed, with Kilar citing a statistic that more content is viewed in the living now than last year. “I don’t see that going away soon.” It will just be viewed in different ways, he said, perhaps via a large Internet-connected monitor.
Hulu CEO Jason Kilar.
(Credit: Michelle Meyers/CNET News)
In closing, Swisher asked the panelists to reflect on their favorite gadgets and a device they’d like for the future.
Kilar, who said his favorite gadget is a Flip Mino, hopes someone will manufacture an “open” plasma TV that doesn’t come with the standard “walled garden.”
Hastings, whose favorite gadget is an Xbox on which he plays video games and watches movies with this son, hopes to one day see an iPhone “with good reception.”
Hurley, for his part, loves the Wii and his iPhone, and looks forward to seeing a large iPod that would be a sort of big-screen media player.
Originally posted here:
At Sundance, Web pioneers see ?on-demand revolution?
In 2002, there was no Facebook, no Youtube, CMSs were used by precious few and no laptops shipped with built-in cams,
… today professionals in Seattle listen to pitches or manage projects via internet video collaboration suites like IWM , millions of regular people are video-bloggin, video chatting, the porn industry is apparently making a killing from allowing joe and jane to broadcast directly from their bedroom, Obama´s inauguration is going to be broadcast on CNN / Live.
In the space of 6 years, though has social networking & communication have moved to the internet digital distribution of music and art still controlled by the old guard; we are forced to buy music, movies and art the same way we did 25 years ago – the artist, movie or show is promoted on late night TV, and then plays at a theater near you or is available for digital download from iTunes or other DRM protected sources,
nowhere is the artist, musician or moviemaker allowed to publish directly to all devices, either the device maker is blocked by the OS maker or the music distributor throws a spanner in the works …
its a soup of stupid capitalists, greedy lawyers, ignorant buyers, frustrated artists – for me the bottomline is – art, music, movies must go from the creator to the consumer directly, why do artists and musicians and moviemakers need a bunch of MBAs parasting on them ? they dont – sure the record company puts up the capital to produce an album but its the listeners who pay the artists and the record company back, or have they forgotten that the business of selling creativity is ALL about the creator and the buyers, and NOT about the middle man.
i foresee artists bypassing record companies altogether, i foresee tour operators, booking agents, caterers 8 the works ) ignoring these fools in suits,
release your music directly onto the internet as FLAC, APE, MP4, WMA, see here, outsource the art work in contests across the world, or do away with them altogether, allow devices to discover and recommend downloads,
follow the lead of these guys and dont just play to 150 K fans play to 2 million via live internet broadcast, –
artists, musicians, movie makers the world is your oyster, why are you still tied to the aprin strings of the old world ?
come join us at MINIFAME !
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the next 5 years ?
LOS ANGELES–The differences between Vista and Windows 7 are subtle–sometimes so subtle that they can go unnoticed.
This point was exacerbated by the fact that the build that developers were given a chance to take home last week doesn’t have the new taskbar that represents the most visual difference between Windows 7 and today’s Vista desktop.
Microsoft went to the trouble of shifting all the computer kiosks at the Professional Developers Conference over to Windows 7 on Tuesday. But because the version lacked some of the key visual features, some attendees didn’t even notice they were running the newer Windows.
But Microsoft felt that keeping the user interface features out of the developer build was critical to keeping the features a surprise at the conference. The company’s earlier M1, M2, and M3 builds all leaked out, said Chaitanya Sareen, a program manager in the Windows unit.
As the conference was winding down on Thursday, Sareen and another program manager–Rebecca Deutsch–offered an in-depth look at the changes Microsoft made to the desktop as well as the rationale for them. To get the best understanding of the changes, check out the two embedded videos (apologies for the lack of tripod).
The new taskbar is, in many ways, more akin to Mac OS X’s dock than it is to what most Windows users have seen at the bottom of their screens for years.
With Vista and all its recent predecessors, there are a host of different icons at the bottom of the screen, with one group representing favorite items, another representing open program windows and a third representing notifications and items that launch at start-up.
Window 7 aims to do away with most of that redundancy in favor of one collection of large icons that live at the bottom of the screen. The icons represent applications chosen by the user and live there whether an application is running or not.
The large icons serve several purposes. The icon can, of course, be used simply to switch to or launch an application. It is also home to what is known as a “jumplist,” sort of like a mini start menu for each program that can contain a series of actions, a link to recent documents, or even a series of controls that let a user take an action without switching to the program itself.
“This is the one button to rule them all,” Sareen said. A left click opens the windows while a right click or the swipe of a finger on a touch-sensitive machine brings up the jumplist.
When a program is open, the icon also allows a user to preview that application’s open windows. Clicking on a thumbnail naturally brings that window to the front. Hovering over the preview, though, temporarily previews that window as if it were in front, but doesn’t actually complete the change–a feature Microsoft is calling “Aero Peek.”
The idea came as the company tried to solve a riddle: what was the perfect size for a thumbnail window? For things like graphical Web pages or a pair of photos, a small representation might do the trick. But when one is trying to, say, flip between two similar Word documents or e-mails, it gets harder.
“The perfect size of the thumbnail is the actual size of the window,” Sareen said. And that’s how Aero Peek was born.
The goal with that feature and others, Sareen said, is to find ways to remove some of the things that make computing harder, what he calls “paper cuts.” They aren’t bugs, so much as things that are needlessly complicated or nonintuitive.
“We kind of went on a war against paper cuts,” he said.
The company is also trying to reduce all of those annoying notifications that pop up along the right hand side of the computer. Developers can still write code that makes them appear, Deutsch said, but with each one that pops up, users have the option of disabling all such warnings from that program. The idea is to use social engineering to convince developers to bother the user far less often.
Click here for more news on Windows 7.
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Inside Windows 7?s new desktop
During the boom years, technology advances were generally viewed in terms of how they allowed us to do new things.
Check out this new gadget – it lets you play a video game while skiing! It lets you update your Facebook page while scubadiving! It lets you Twitter while visiting the john! Awesome!
But there’s another side to technology that maybe hasn’t got enough play, but is likely to as the economy gets worse.
New technology also lets you do all the same things you always did, only cheaper.
And it’s not just a matter of comparison Web sites like billshrink.com that help you cut costs.
TV Web sites like Hulu.com will let many people save money by canceling some of their cable TV package. High-speed wireless Internet, from 3G to new WiMax, should let them save on home Internet connections. (Xohm, the new WiMax service, is priced well below cable- though at this point it has only been launched in Baltimore and rollout to other cities is taking time.)
Voice over Internet lets you dump your landline, and maybe even cut back on your cellphone. Google Talk lets you make video phone calls to family, friends or colleagues around the world for free.
From The Wallet, the Journal’s blog about personal finance news and investing trends:
New electronic book readers can give you access to discounted books and magazines. Amazon’s Kindle is only the best known. Several can be used to “borrow” electronic books, complete free, from the public library.
At first blush, the individual savings seem too small to bother with.
They’re not.
Ask yourself if it’s worth changing cable or home Internet providers, say, or cellphone providers, in order to save just $10 a month.
Many people couldn’t be bothered. It’s no surprise. Ten bucks doesn’t sound like much.
But one of the key themes of this column is that combining recurrent savings with compound interest has explosive power. It’s the atomic fission of finance.
Slashing just $10 from each month’s costs and investing it, instead, adds up to quite a bundle over the course of an adult lifetime. Someone who did that over fifty years would have an extra $54,000 when they retired. Not bad.
Until recently, few people thought like that.
Just ask the people around you how much their cellphone or their cable TV package costs them. Chances are they will just quote you the price per month as if it’s the total cost. “Oh, my cellphone’s only about $70,” they’ll say. Or: “We only spend $100 on cable.”
The true cost, year over year, is vastly greater.
It’s something worth thinking about in relation to the technological wizardry that permeates our culture. The real value of these whiz-bang innovations isn’t that anyone can live blog the presidential inauguration that everybody can see on their TV set anyway. Used wisely, these tools can put more money in your pocket.
Write to Brett Arends at brett.arends@wsj.com
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Cutting Monthly Bills? Turn to the Web
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UPDATE: Apple Mac Mini Based on Nvidia Ion
Windows 7’s “Action Center” alerts users if they don’t have antivirus software installed, pointing them to a Microsoft Web site with links to download various antivirus software products.
(Credit: CNET News)
Despite the fact that security programs are often some of the toughest code to make work with a new operating system, Windows 7 already has several companies ready with products aimed at keeping it safe from attackers.
By comparison, only one antivirus firm–McAfee–had its security software commercially ready by the time Microsoft launched Vista for businesses in November 2006.
That said, it stands to reason, given that Microsoft was making far more dramatic changes to the operating system’s underlying architecture in Vista than it is in Windows 7.
This time around, it is AVG, Kaspersky, and Symantec that have products that are being touted from Microsoft’s site. McAfee said it will have support by the time Windows 7 launches, while Trend Micro is working to have a compatible product in the next month or so.
“It is great to see that these partners were able to have their solutions working so early in our development process,” Microsoft’s Brandon LeBlanc said in a blog posting.
Dave Cole, a senior director of product management at Symantec, said his company decided to offer up a test version of its Norton 360 product for use with Windows 7, even though the company knows there are still a few things left to work out.
“We determined that we could run reasonably well under Windows 7,” Cole said. “There are bugs that we know about, but we’re comfortable enough with the effectiveness of the product that when they called us to participate we took them up on the offer.”
Having the support lined up is important to Microsoft, which built an “action center” into the operating system that warns users if it detects there is no antivirus software installed. The action center then points to a page on Microsoft’s Web site with links to Windows 7-compatible security software.
The page lists Kaspersky, AVG, and Norton, but adds that “Microsoft is actively working with additional security software independent software vendors (ISVs) so that security software solutions will be available for Windows 7 Beta and (the final release of) Windows 7.”
As far as Windows 7’s approach to security, it appears to draw heavily from the investments the company made with Windows Vista.
The most notable change is probably the fact that users now have the option to choose how often they are required to authorize changes to their system. One of the most frequent criticisms of Vista was the annoyance of the User Account Control dialog boxes that forced users to authenticate many types of changes to their systems.
Microsoft spent a fortune securing Vista, both in engineering new features as well as in testing. The software maker corralled a significant chunk of the world’s penetration testers to help poke at Vista ahead of its release.
The software maker plans some penetration testing for Windows 7, but declined to say how much or whether it would be comparable to its Vista effort.
CNET News’ Elinor Mills contributed to this report.
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Securing the Windows 7 beta
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UMG expands Web video profile with Kyte alliance
A CES attendee checks out LG Electronics’ 3D LCD TV.
(Credit: Marguerite Reardon/CNET News)
Three-dimensional TV is coming to a living room near you. But will the technology spur a consumer spending spree like digital and high-definition TV did before it? Or will 3D end up being the next big flop?
One thing is clear, TV manufacturers need something new to get people buying TVs. Over the last couple of years, TV manufacturers have experienced a sales boom as consumers upgrade to digital TVs in anticipation of the government’s mandated switch to digital TV broadcasts in February 2009. Eager shoppers have also been upgrading to high-definition TVs as movie studios, cable and satellite operators, and TV broadcasters have begun offering more programming in HD.
But as the economy worsens, the forecast for the TV market is looking grim. The LCD TV market is only expected to grow about 17 percent in terms of units shipped in 2009, according to research firm DisplaySearch. This is down from growth of about 29 percent in 2008. Plasma TV growth is also expected to suffer with the market only expected to grow by about 5 percent in 2009 compared with a 24 percent rise in 2008, DisplaySearch said.
As a result, TV makers are looking for the next hot thing to attract new consumers. And some are hoping 3D TVs could be it.
At this year’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, four of the top selling TV manufacturers–Samsung Electronics, Sony, LG Electronics and Panasonic–showed off their latest versions of 3D TVs. Panasonic set up a mini-home theater where its 103-inch, plasma 3D screen showed clips from New Line Cinema’s Journey to the Center of the Earth and Walt Disney Pictures’ animated film Bolt. They also showed high-definition 3D footage from NBC’s broadcast of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing.
While some manufacturers, such as Mitsubishi, Phillips, Samsung, and Sharp, have already begun selling 3D-ready TVs, the top four manufacturers plan to have new, advanced 3D TVs on sale toward the end of 2009 and into 2010.
But the big question is whether consumers, particularly American consumers, will be willing to upgrade to a new TV just because it has 3D. Pricing for today’s 3D ready TVs is comparable to other flat-screen HDTVs. Samsung and Mitsubishi currently sell their 3D-ready TVs for between $1,000 and $2,800, depending on functionality. These prices are in line with average prices for HDTVs that don’t offer 3D readiness.
Keisuke Suetsugi, a manager for the audio visual center at Panasonic, believes that even the newer, more advanced 3D TVs will not cost much more than TVs without 3D. So for consumers already in the market for a TV, adding 3D readiness might not add much cost. But will 3D be enough to compel cutting-edge consumers to replace their 2- or 3-year-old TVs? That’s what TV manufactures are hoping.
Three-dimensional movies have been around since the 1950s. And for most of its lifespan the technology has been seen more as a gimmick than something that truly enhances the movie-going experience. But newer technology and advanced special effects are helping 3D movies break into the mainstream.
TV makers believe that much of the demand for 3D will come from Hollywood, which is pushing 3D in a big way. Last year, DreamWorks announced that all its films will be produced for 3D production beginning in 2009. The company has partnered with chipmaker Intel to build processors that will help make 3D in the home a reality.
NBA basketball fans watch a live 3D broadcast of Game 2 of the 2007 NBA finals.
(Credit: NBA)
Sports leagues have also been experimenting with 3D technology. Both the National Basketball Association and the National Football League have broadcast events and games in 3D to movie theaters.
From a technical standpoint, the technology is available and mature enough today to make 3D TVs available at a reasonable cost to consumers. But there are still a few drawbacks that could prevent 3D TV from becoming the next big thing in home entertainment.
For one, to get the really cool, immersive 3D experience without getting a massive head-ache, consumers will have to wear special glasses when they’re watching TV in 3D. The glasses are needed because 3D imaging requires sending a different image to each eye. And the glasses help merge the images in the mind and trick the brain into thinking that it’s seeing a single 3D image.
I checked out Panasonic’s home theater in 3D. I must admit, the experience was phenomenal. I felt like I was on the floor at the Olympics opening ceremonies in Beijing right alongside the hundreds of dancers and drummers. But without the glasses, the image looked fuzzy.
Panasonic’s Suetsugi admits that in a perfect world, consumers should be able to have the immersive 3D experience without wearing glasses. But he said that it will be at least 10 years before the technology is advanced enough to provide a similarly robust 3D experience without glasses.
“Glassless 3D would be ideal,” he said. “But it’s just not possible to do that now and get the same quality experience. You would need at least 50 times more pixels to get a display to provide the same 3D experience that we provide with our TV. We are still 10 years away from that kind of technology.”
Taesoo Park, a chief research engineer at LG, which makes 3D display monitors for advertising and digital signage, agrees. LG plans to start selling its 3D TVs, which require glasses, late in 2009 or in the beginning of 2010. Its glassless digital signs were also on display at CES.
“Glassless 3D is available today for digital signage and advertising,” Park explained. “But the technology is not ready for TVs, because it would hurt people’s eyes or give them a headache to look at today’s 3D displays for any length of time. It will be at least a decade before we can get the technology to make glassless TV a reality.”
That said, some manufacturers claim they have developed technology that doesn’t require glasses. Phillips uses a technology it calls WOWvx. 3M and Toshiba also showed off glassless 3D screens at CES. 3M has created a thin film technology that can be used to beam light selectively to the viewer’s right and left eyes.
But glasses aren’t the only thing that could hold back 3D adoption. Currently, there’s no standard way to get 3D footage from the movie studios or from a live broadcasts to the home. Companies, such as Panasonic, are already working on developing a standard. But industry watchers fear that competing standards could emerge and spur another “format” war like the one that pitted HD DVD and Blu-ray against each other.
Panasonic’s Suetsugi said he is hopeful that a common standard for 3D Blu-ray hardware, software, and TVs will emerge sometime this year, paving the way for 3D TV sales to pick up in 2010.
In addition to the standards issue, another hurdle for 3D TV has to do with the high production cost of shooting movies and events in 3D, as well as, the high cost of transporting the video across networks. Three-dimensional video requires multiple cameras for shooting. And it also requires multiple high-definition streams for transporting the video over carrier networks.
Regular standard definition television broadcasts consume more bandwidth capacity than other types of traffic like audio or text. High-definition video eats up even more. And it would likely take at least two full high-definition channels to broadcast live just one game in 3D.
This means that service providers, such as cable or satellite operators, would have to upgrade their infrastructure to handle the high bandwidth demands. Verizon, which is deploying fiber directly to consumers’ homes for its Fios service, is already in good shape. But others such as Comcast and Time Warner Cable, are already finding it difficult to carve out enough bandwidth for regular HD video as well as Internet video on their networks.
“Transporting live, high-definition 3D streams is very expensive,” said Steve Hellmuth, executive vice president of technology and operations for the NBA. “So there has to be sufficient demand and a pool of content before satellite and cable operators will devote resources to delivering it. I really think that Hollywood will initially drive adoption of 3D in the home.”
3D is coming to a living room near you
American Idol, one of the only television franchises that’s truly interactive with its audience, is getting a brand extension through of a deal with the teen social network service Habbo. The match makes a lot of sense if you look at the demographics of the two products: teens love American Idol, and Habbo is built for them. When I talked with FreemantleMedia Entreprises (which owns the American Idol franchise) SVP David Luner, it became clear that the demographic overlap was the driving factor in this deal.
“We were looking for a virtual world,” for American Idol, Luner told me. None of the full-motion, fluid worlds, like Second Life, were right for the franchise. Luner cited safety as the primary reason. Habbo has controls designed to make it a safe environment for teens. It’s also a “two-and-a-half-D” world, meaning the graphics and blocky, and the perspective never moves off the isometric. It certainly works as a framework for a social site, but it’s hard to ape dance moves in the system.
American Idol in Habbo also lacks snarky judges and singing, two of the franchise’s biggest features. It does, however, let users engage in some “mini contests,” as well as chat about the show. Users will also be able to buy virtual branded items that have appeared in the show, and they’ll be exposed to crossover advertising from the series.
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American Idol branding lands in Habbo
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Cisco Intensifies Wooing of Entertainment Firms
