Gefen Introduces USB Support For Upcoming PVRs

January 18th, 2007 Davis

I was watching GeekBrief TV last night and saw that admidst the hubbub of all the CES news last week, I missed an announcement by Gefen that they’ve decided to throw their own hat into the DVR ring and will be releasing two new PVRs next month that should make it easier for consumers to archive and move their content around the digital home. On both their standard definition PVR and their high definition box, they plan on building support for a feature that allows you to export your shows via a USB connection to external hard drives and other portable devices.

At CES, their high definition demo box was still missing USB support, so details are still a bit sketchy, but Gefen told Everything USB that “it is highly likely that it will be implemented before shipping.” No word on pricing, but the boxes should ship sometime in February.

This is very cool functionality for Gefen to introduce, but it’s not likely to be very popular with the MPAA. If it was up to the studios fat cats, you would be required to pay them money for every device that you want to watch content on, so it’s possible that Gefen may have just painted a big sue me sign on their backs, but others have been pushing this envelope for years and so far, have managed to stay out of court.

While technically, it’s not the same functionality, TiVo has been offering TiVo To Go on their series 2 DVR for a couple of years now, but they haven’t been allowed to offer it on their high definition series 3 or HD DirecTiVo boxes. From the very beginning, Microsoft’s media center has always allowed you to transfer content directly to your home network, including both standard definition and OTA high definition content, but once the cablecard Vista machines are released, Microsoft will be forced to disable content portability features, in order to placate the goons at CableLabs, who have somehow managed to put themselves into the position of being able to dictate what features consumers can and cannot have on their home theater systems.

Because Gefen would also need to go through the CableLab certification process, it’s hard for me to imagine that this new PVR will offer cablecard support, but even without access to the HDTV content from the cable channels, the USB export functionality is still pretty sweet. Given the amount of hard drive space that HDTV content takes up, you would need a couple of external drives, but you could easily rotate hard drives on and off the unit and could start creating an impressive digital library of archived HDTV content to watch later on.

As this technology continues to develop, it will be interesting to see how the content owners react and what moral and legal issues are raised by this sort of support. When I first got my TiVo series 3, I signed up for HBO for about 2 weeks before cancelling and yet months later, I’m still watching high definition HBO movies that I recorded onto my 750 GB internal Weaknees drive. Is this the equivalent of ripping mp3’s from an all you can eat monthly music package like Napster or Yahoo! music or ethically is there something different about taking advantage of HBO in this way, because I haven’t stripped out any DRM? To be honest, I’m not sure what the moral high ground is in this situation, but as technology continues to advance, issues like these will eventually need to be addressed, especially given how paranoid the MPAA seems to get about high definition content.

Posted in TV, Movies, Technology, HDTV DVDs, VOD, Disclosure - I own stock in co. mentioned, Microsoft, DRM, TiVo | 2 Comments »

Frank Sinatra

January 16th, 2007 Davis

Posted in VOD | No Comments »

DVDPlay Puts Exclamation Point On Growth Of DVD Kiosk Market

January 16th, 2007 Davis

If it wasn’t already clear that 2006 was a record year for the DVD kiosk industry, DVDPlay has added their own exclamation point to the success of the industry by releasing an update on their own DVD kiosk program.

During 2006, DVDPlay continued to demonstrate phenomenal growth for their brand and now has over 1,000 DVDPlay branded locations, on top of another 1,000 non-branded locations that consumers can rent from. The company also announced that in 2007, they are planning to continue their aggressive rollout of kiosks by adding another 2,000 locations to their program.

Considering that just a year ago, DVDPlay was announcing that they had rented their 4 millionth DVD over the life of their business, it pretty amazing to see them add another 2 million DVD rentals, just over 2006 alone.

With demand from consumers and retailers clearly continuing to increase, DVDPlay is starting to gain serious traction in the market for DVD rentals. In addition to hitting these growth milestones, the company also announced that their rollout into Arizona is almost complete and they now have kiosks located in 90% of all Arizona Safeway stores.

The official word from Safeway is that it’s still too early to gauge the success of these rollouts, but from their comments, it’s clear that even if the machines were running at breakeven, there is still a huge benefit for them to give up 5.5 square feet of their store, in order to be able to offer DVD rentals to their customers.

“Safeway spokeswoman Nikki Daly said its too early to determine how popular the kiosks are with customers. “This is just another way for us to offer convenience to our customers,” she said. Daly said the company phased out video departments in many of its stores because they were too much of a drain on staff and consumed too much space.”

With more and more retailers taking a closer look at offering DVD rentals to their customers, DVDPlay sits in an attractive position to capitalize on this trend. If they do end up tripling the number of kiosk locations by the end of this year, it won’t take long before these developments start having a real economic impact on traditional video stores. While the selection on a kiosk can’t replicate what’s available at a local video store today, the convenience of kiosk rentals and the ability for the industry to deploy machines quickly and cost effectively, could put enormous pressure on an industry that is clearly very much in flux.

So far, grocery stores have been the most likely locations to adopt the DVD kiosk, but the more popular this technology becomes, the greater the potential that this market has to grow . With coffee houses, fast food restaurants, gas stations and quick serve convenience stores still without a DVD rental option, the growth potential of this market is really quite extraordinary. With many retailers only putting their toe in the water during 2006, I expect that we will see significant demand for DVD kiosks increase in 2007.

2006 may have turned out to be a record year for the DVD kiosk industry, but with with all three of the major kiosk players planning aggresive growth in 2007, I have even higher expectations for what we’ll see by the end of this year.

Posted in Movies, DVDs, Kiosks | 1 Comment »

Zoom Kiosks Hacked - Hackers Can’t Resist Free iPods

January 16th, 2007 Davis

One of the major advantages to using kiosks at a retail store is the reduction in shrinkage that retailers see, once they introduce kiosks at the retail level. Because customers have to actually pay for a product before they can get their hands on it, vending can save retailers significant amounts of money by reducing the amount of theft from shoplifters and unscrupulous employees. Like anything though, if you give someone enough incentive, people will always figure out a way to get around theft deterrent systems.

When I was a kid, people took the time to figure out a way to short circuit Coke machines into giving away free sodas, by spitting water into the slot for dollar bills. Considering that Zoom systems is catering to a much higher end of the retail market with their iPod and cell phone kiosks, it shouldn’t be much of a surprise that hackers have already figured out a way to get around the theft protections built into the Zoom vending machines.

Because Zoom is using internet explorer to run their kiosk software, hackers have figured out that it’s relatively easy to bypass their security protections by accessing the file explorer window and then tricking the machine into thinking that you’ve already paid.

Since most of the Zoom’s kiosks are either inside of a Macy’s location or in an airport, this limits the effectiveness of this hack because there are still security guards that can watch out for this, but this hack could still undermine the usefulness of kiosk technology, if you have to have physical security monitoring the machines. While I’d be surprised to find out that Zoom hasn’t already responded to this threat by making it more difficult to gain access to the file explorer window, this hack still highlights an important issue for kiosk manufactuers to consider when designing their vending solutions.

By removing an actual human from the transaction process vending can save time and money for many businesses, but without the right theft controls, it can also expose retailers to even higher levels of theft. Even with this exploit, I would still be willing to bet that retailers see significant less shrinkage with Zoom kiosks than without them, but for a technology that depends upon removing humans from the transaction process, these sorts of exploits are a significant threat to the kiosk industry. If retailers can’t feel comfortable in having an unmonitored vending machine selling their inventory, it will greatly diminish the appeal and convenience that vending can have as a retail solution.

Posted in Technology, Kiosks | 8 Comments »

Forget Total Access Netflix Launches Instant Access

January 16th, 2007 Davis

It’s taken years to develop, but Netflix has finally launched their video on demand service. I’ve been waiting for this service ever since Netflix first hinted that they would offer a VOD service through a partnership with TiVo. When it turned out that Hollywood wouldn’t license films to Netflix as part of a TiVoFlix program, the partnership evaporated and Netflix was forced to put their VOD plans on pause. Now after years of working on a VOD solution, Netflix is finally ready to take their VOD service prime time.

The program is being offered as an added bonus to Netflix subscribers, instead of making it a pay per view alternative to their current program. For every dollar that you spend each month on your Netflix service, you will be credited with an hour worth of VOD content. Since I’m on the $17.99 plan, this means that I should be able to watch about 18 hours of VOD content each month, on top of the 12 movies that I rent through the mail each month.

The launching of Netflix’s VOD service is an excellent bonus to a service that I already love. There are definetely times when I’m surfing the net and want to be able to watch a quick TV show or movie, but the content simply isn’t available unless you are willing to steal it. Instead of pricing the service at a $7 - $15 download fee, Netflix has instead added this as a free service for their members. By pricing the service as part of a rental package instead of download to own, it will make it easier to convince customers to try the service and will eliminate messy restrictions like being forced to watch a movie within 24 hours of clicking on it.

Not everything about the new service is fantastic though. Netflix’s use of streaming technology will help to eliminate the long download times that plauged Amazon’s Unbox launch, but it also means that consumers will have to watch their films directly from their computer screens. This is OK for TV shows, but pretty terrible if you plan to sit through a 2 hour film. It also means that you can’t just download a film to a laptop and watch it later on a plane. Without continuous internet connectivity, you won’t be able to watch your film.

If you happen to have a media center hooked up to your TV, then this may end up being the most attractive VOD option on the market, but for the rest of the world, it will be all but impossible to watch these films on your home theater system. At the very least, it would have been nice to see Netflix support a .wmv download so you could stream the films onto your Xbox 360 or for them to allow you to burn the films to a DVD, so that you could watch the films in your home.

Netflix’s new VOD service also suffers from the same content restrictions that have prevented all of the digital downloading solutions from taking off. It’s clear that there are plenty of companies who’d like to provide digitial downloads, but Hollywood isn’t anywhere close to opening up their archives for downloads. While Netflix is launching the VOD service with 1,000 movies and TV shows for consumers to select from, this is still a pretty weak selection compared to the 70,000 DVDs that they offer through the mail. It’s hard to fault Netflix for Hollywood’s unwillingness to offer digital content to consumers, considering that San Francisco based Greencine has been offering over 10,000 films on demand for several years now, it makes you wonder why Netflix didn’t release this feature earlier, if they were just waiting for 1,000 films to become available. Considering that Netflix delayed this project until the studios felt more comfortable, I would have liked to have seen more then just 1,000 films made available, even if most of these films were independent films.

I also think that choosing to rollout the service over a six month period may also be a mistake by the company. On one hand, I can understand why Netflix wants to roll out the service instead of creating a massive traffic jam by making it available to everyone at once, but on the other hand, as a consumer who would definetely make use of this feature, it’s a little frustrating to know that I may have to wait until the end of June to access this functionality, especially when I know that other Netflix users will be able to use VOD right away. Because Netflix doesn’t provide a way for me to put myself on a priority list for downloading or any assurances that if a new customer signs up for the program, that they’ll immedietely have access to this service, it will limit it’s use as a marketing tool for the near future. By taking 6 months to rollout the service, Netflix could split their customers into a group of have and have nots when it comes to downloading. If you happen to be in an early group, this isn’t all that much of a concern, but if you really want VOD capabilities, but are forced to wait until June to get access to it, I can’t help but feel that this could create some disatisfaction amoung members, especially those who already feel like they’ve been waiting years to see this service launched.

The final question mark that I see for Netflix’s new VOD service will be the quality of the streaming movie. In their press release, Netflix doesn’t indicate what resolutions will be supported, but given that these films aren’t designed to be displayed on the big screen TV, it wouldn’t surprise me if the streaming is being done at a lower encoding rate, then the quality we get from the DVDs by mail. While initially, Netflix may be able to offer a lower resolution files without customers being able to tell the difference, once consumers figure out how to get these films off their computers and onto the TV, this will become a bigger issue for how popular the VOD feature will turn out to be.

While the new service is undeniably cool, after waiting so long for movie downloads, I can’t help but feel a little disappointed that Netflix didn’t offer something a bit more progressive. I love that they priced the service as part of a rental instead of making customer buy digital copies of films, but I still wish that the service offered more choices and was immedietely available to all subscribers. With Blockbuster’s total access program beginning to gain traction in the market, digital downloading can be a great way for Netflix to differentiate their program, but until it’s available to all subscribers and until we see more then just 1,000 movies available, and until we see an easy way to get these films to the TV, it will certainly limit it’s appeal.

Posted in VOD, Movies, DVDs, Disclosure - I own stock in co. mentioned, TiVo, Netflix | 1 Comment »

Davis Freeberg’s Site Of The Week

January 12th, 2007 Davis

ANDREW -This is the worst fake ID I’ve ever seen…
Brian laughs.
ANDREW - Do you realize you made yourself sixty eight?
BRIAN - Oh, I know…I know, I goofed it…
ANDREW - What do you need a fake ID for?
BRIAN - (like it’s obvious) So I can vote!
from The Breakfast Club

After a week of voting the polls have finally closed and the Internet Movie Script Database won the honor of being this year’s first site of the week. It’s hard to imagine that this site is operating in full compliance of copyright law, but it’s still a great resource for discovering hard to find quotes. It features scripts for a large number of popular movies that have come out over the years. Some of the scripts only contain a few scenes and some of them are early rough drafts that were later changed, but if you are looking for that killer quote from a film and can’t seem to find it, IMSDB is the place to look.

While surfing the site I noticed that I seemed to gravitate more towards films that were recognizable and that I had already seen. I got more enjoyment from reliving classic moments in film history than from reading through scripts that I had never seen on the big screen. The site’s use of aggressive pop up ads was a bit of a turn off for me, but the overall quality of the content made up for this intrusion.

If you would like to nominate a site for consideration as the site of the week, you can email your suggestions to Davis AT DavisFreeberg Dot Com, in the meantime here are the nominations for next week’s site of the week.

Rude People

Clumsy Crooks

Jump The Shark

Posted in Site Of The Week | No Comments »

That’s Just What You Are

January 12th, 2007 Davis

Posted in VOD | No Comments »

Lycos Sues TiVo, Netflix & Blockbuster Over Personalized Search

January 12th, 2007 Davis

The Mercury News is reporting that on January 3rd, Lycos filed a patent lawsuit against TiVo, Netflix and Blockbuster over their use of recommendation technology. The article doesn’t give the exact patents that are alleged to be violated, but a quick scan of Lycos’ patent filings shows patents 6775664 and 6308175 as the most likely canidates.

Patent 6775664 was originally filed on Oct. 22, 2001 and describes a search method that uses a user feedback system to provide “collaborative feedback data for integration with content profile data in the operation of the collaborative/content-based filter.”

Patent 6308175 was filed on Nov. 19th, 1998 and according to the patent, it covers technology whose “filter system compares received informons to the individual user’s query profile data, combined with collaborative data, and ranks, in order of value, informons found to be relevant. The system maintains the ranked informons in a stored list from which the individual user can select any listed informon for consideration.”

Whether Lycos is trolling for patent royalties or whether they feel that they have a legitmate claim on their hands is really irrelevant. The last thing that Blockbuster, Netflix or TiVo needed was another patent lawsuit. TiVo is currently embroiled in a high profile lawsuit against Echostar and faces a countersuit that has yet to go to trial. Meanwhile, Netflix has sued Blockbuster over violations to their patent on online renting and in turn Blockbuster has countersued claiming anti-trust violations on Netflix’s part. Interestingly enough, Blockbuster recently filed two patent applications themselves, that seem to cover their business model for the total access program.

Why Lycos waited this long before trying to enforce their patent remains unclear, but they are seeking an injunction to force all three companies from being able to offer suggestions to their customers.

Suggestive search is a key technology for all three companies. In the case of TiVo, it’s a unique feature that other DVR providers can’t offer, but in the case of Blockbuster and Netflix, their use of suggestions can save them millions of dollars by recommending movies that utilize low cost archive content over the top new releases. If Lycos is able to convince a jury that they own the rights to this technology, it will have a chilling effect on the technology industry. Many web 2.0 companies use suggestive search to improve their user’s experience and if Lycos establishes patent protection for this popular consumer feature, it will make it even more difficult for consumers to be able to find personalized content that is of interest to them. Whether Blockbuster, Netflix and TiVo chooses to fight this battle on behalf of the rest of the tech industry, or whether they roll over and settle the lawsuit remains to be seen, but at such a crucial stage in their history, dealing with another patent lawsuit will be a costly distraction and should cost them plenty of time and money.

Posted in Technology, Search, Disclosure - I own stock in co. mentioned, TiVo, Netflix | 2 Comments »

If You Could Save Yourself You Could Save Us All

January 10th, 2007 Davis

Posted in VOD | No Comments »

Coming Soon To A Living Room Near You . . . Reloaded

January 10th, 2007 Davis

DVRs With Seagate Drives Inside Hosted on Zooomr Photo by Thomas Hawk

With CES now well under way, there continues to be a steady stream of product announcements still coming out of Las Vegas. With so many new gadgets, it’s difficult to gauge how popular these devices will really be, but clearly we are seeing a great deal of interest in bringing the capabilities of the internet to the TV.

Open TV shows off High Definition IPTV - Open TV is probably better known as a satellite and cable middleware provider, but don’t count them out of being part of the future of IPTV. With the telephone companies continuing to invest aggressively in this technology, Open TV has positioned themselves as a legitimate solution for the next generation of TV. Through a collaboration with Silicon & Software Systems Ltd., Open TV was able to demonstrate their middleware running IPTV using an Amino A13x set top box. Between Open TV’s innovative advertising solutions and the power of IPTV, Open TV has positioned themselves well to capitalize on the trend away from broadcast and towards interactive TV.

NDS and VBox Team Up To Bring HDTV To The PC - VBox unveiled a partnership with NDS and released their Cat’s Eye PC-TV receiver at this year’s CES. The receiver allows consumers to be able to directly receive and record premium HDTV content on their home PCs. There is no mention of cable card support or price, so it will be interesting to see how legitimate of an option that this may end up being, but for those who want the advantages of a DVR, but don’t want to give up the platform of a PC, the VBox may be a solution for watching and recording HDTV.

Neuros Demos Open Source DVR - With so much potential functionality, the Neuros OSD is the swiss army knife of the DVR industry. Sick and tired of DRM and proprietary DVR schemes, last year, Neuros turned to the open source community for help creating a Linux based DVR. In only 14 hours, they sold 100 units of an early stage alpha product to a group largely composed of software developers who have been building it out from there. With upcoming support being built for Skype, placeshifting and portable media storage, the Neuros OSD will be one sick machine when it is launched at $250 per unit, later this year. While it’s likely that it’s open source nature will prevent HDTV from ever being an option, given it’s hackable Linux core and the hardcore developer following, I expect that we’ll see the Neuros OSD push the envelope of DVR innovation for years to come.

Apple Unveils iDongle Changes Name To Apple Dongle - This one isn’t technically CES related, but Steve Jobs donned his black turtle neck and set his reality distortion field to overkill once again, for this year’s MacWorld. While most are buzzing about the iPhone, even some of Apple’s biggest fans are questioning the strategy behind Apple TV. Consumers have clearly indicated that they want to see an Apple PVR, but for reasons I’ll never understand, Jobs has continued to ignore their pleas. Instead of giving his customers an Apple based PVR that could serve as a legitimate entertainment hub, instead Apple pre-announced for a second time, a glorified video iPod that connects directly to the TV. Beginning in February, Appleheaded fanboys everywhere will now be able to pay $300 for a device that won’t stream DivX, can’t play your personal DVDs and won’t work with other paid VOD services, all for the luxury of being able to play overpriced iTunes content, from a skimpy catalog of 250 movies, at less then DVD quality resolution.

Broadcom Announces Upcoming DivX Supported HDTV DVR - Broadcom announced that they’ve teamed up with Coship Electronics to provide a DivX supported HDTV DVR for the Chinese set top box market in 2007. While no launch date was given for the BCM7452, the set top box will include upscalling technology to display standard definition content on an HD display, six video digital/analog converters, support for high fidelity audio as well as dual USB2.0 and HDMI support. With the digital revolution clearly happening at an even faster pace outside of the US, China represents a very lucrative market for DivX to tap into. With the Chinese government having taken a laissez faire attitude towards media piracy, DivX is in a strong position to drive healthy consumer demand for set top boxes that support their codec.

Posted in Technology, DivX, Movies, TV, VOD, DRM | 1 Comment »