Media Reports
The Mad, Mad Rush to Innovate
By Barry Fox
Too many companies are now launching new products for the sake of launching something new; too many of the new products have been designed without asking consumers what they want; and the marriage of consumer electronics and computer technology has kissed goodbye to old-fashioned “switch on and enjoy.”
Arcam’s Geoff Meads talks about a new disease, called “upgrade-itis”: “People in the computer world upgrade even when they have never had any problems and the upgrade isn’t adding any features,” he says. “Whatever happened to the old-fashioned principle of not fixing unless broken?”
The HDMI/HDCP system used to protect high-quality digital audio and video was designed by the computer industry and was launched before a testing system had been out in place. Is it any wonder some stuff won’t connect?
The mishmash of standards for portable audio is shaking down into a straight fight between unprotected MP3, Apple’s AAC with FairPlay Digital Rights Management, and Microsoft’s Windows Media Audio with Windows DRM. Sony has finally had to admit defeat and drop the ATRAC compression system with unfriendly MagicGate DRM and adopt WMA. This means the end of Sony’s Connect online music store. Nokia has now climbed into bed with Microsoft, for a new online store to rival Apple’s iTunes.
But there is now an even worse mishmash of standards for portable video, with so many flavors of MPEG compression and different soundtrack formats that you never know for sure whether a recording will play pictures with sound until you have tried.
Every year now, for the last three years, Philips has announced the launch of Windows Media Center PCs, which will finally make computers easy to use for home entertainment. Last year we were promised a Media Center with Blu-ray drive, but it never reached the shops.
Rudy Provoost, Philips’s Head of Consumer Electronics, has been promoting the banner Sense and Simplicity and sensibly saw there is no way to reconcile consumer friendship with upgrade-itis and the need to protect computers against viruses.
“We did not push that (Blu-ray Media Center) button,” he told me. “We have been working with the Dixons Group for three or four years now—we’d rather work with companies who know that game.”
So Philips Media Center PCs are available only through Dixons’ computer stores, and all customer queries and complaints are handled by Dixons.
Adds Provoost: “There are too many fairs and shows. You can’t dictate innovation by fairs.”
The mad rush to innovate often leaves marketing people all at sea with the technology they are marketing. At a press conference at the start of IFA, the European equivalent of CES, the Blu-ray Group talked up a storm about superior picture and sound quality. Then, through what they later admitted was a series of “screw-ups,” they screened demo clips in Standard Definition.
During a press conference to promote the rival HD-DVD, Jordi Ribas of Microsoft enthused over the interactive software, iHD, which Microsoft developed for HD-DVD. “We at Microsoft may not know everything, but we do know how to write software,” he boasted.
To say that to an audience of journalists who spend so much of their lives cursing Windows PCs is to invite challenging questions.
Perhaps that is why the HD-DVD Group closed its IFA press conference without a Question and Answer session.
Both sides in the blue format war are now busy accusing each other of selling players that will soon be obsolete.
The HD-DVD standard mandates the Internet connection and permanent memory storage needed for interactivity. “Sadly it’s not the case for BD,” sneered Ken Graffeo of Universal, who often acts as gung-ho spokesman for the HD Group. “It will only be true if you buy the next generation of players with BD Java software—and there’s still no sign of it—BD Java is still not implemented in BD players—perhaps not until 2008.”
That’s not fair, say the Blu-ray guys. HD-DVD’s iHD from Microsoft is a frozen system that won’t be upgradeable when unexpected new features are invented. Blu-ray interactivity is based on Java, which is a programming platform and infinitely upgradeable. People will only find out the limitations of HD-DVD’s iHD later.
I’d say it’s more likely both systems will be dead before the talk of interactivity is proven right or wrong.
My personal hope is that that there will soon be a backlash against the “computerization” of hi-fi and video. The next sales boast could well be “no need for an Internet connection” and “no connection with Microsoft.”
WHITE SPACES COALITION
A major row is brewing over the so-called “white spaces”—empty channels left in the public airwaves to stop one station interfering with another. Digital broadcasts are much less susceptible to adjacent channel interference than analog broadcasts, so as broadcasting goes digital there is an opportunity to use some of the guard spaces for non-broadcast applications, such as wireless broadband.
The White Spaces Coalition (which includes Intel, Microsoft, Google, and Philips) has been lobbying for permission to use the gaps for unlicensed portable devices. The US is now committed to shutting down analog TV by February 17, 2009, three years earlier than the UK. So the US will be a world testbed.
The National Association of Broadcasters and Association for Maximum Service TV have been fighting the White Space idea; so have companies such as Shure, which make radio microphones used in concert halls, recording studios, and theaters. They argue that the White Spaces should be used only by large companies that can be held accountable if they cause interference to existing broadcast stations or microphones. Hitachi, LG, Panasonic, Samsung, and the American Federation of Musicians have all objected to unlicensed use.
“The idea that big manufacturers can dump millions of new gadgets onto the same frequencies without causing interference is not supported by engineering reality,” says Shure’s Mark Brunner.
Anyone who lives on the South Coast of England will understand the problem; in warm weather signals leak in from France and effectively switch off some of the UK’s digital channels.
The fix proposed is that every unlicensed device will have a built-in radio scanner that continually looks for licensed users and avoids those channels. The threshold set is -114dBm, although critics argue that the scanner should be able to detect and avoid signals which are weaker, below -116dBm.
The Federal Communications Commission, roughly equivalent to the UK’s Ofcom, recently became involved and held tests of White Space devices submitted by Philips and Microsoft. The Philips device successfully detected and avoided signals at -114dBm, but not at -116dBm.
In a humiliating test result, the Microsoft device failed to detect and avoid even the stronger signals. Microsoft then claimed that the device it had submitted was faulty because a key component was “broken.” The computer giant cried foul, saying the FCC should have tested another device it supplied.
David Donovan, President of the Association for Maximum TV, calls Microsoft’s excuse a “dog ate my homework” ploy. “The device utterly fails and Microsoft says “oops it was broken.” Imagine the disaster if millions of these devices enter the market and they start to break.”
Hitachi, LG, Panasonic, and Samsung are now telling the FCC that the White Spaces should only be used by fixed equipment, which has been licensed for operation at a specific location where its power and frequency have been checked against broadcast and microphone frequency allocations. They argue that by submitting a “broken” device for such important official tests, Microsoft has proved how risky it is to let unlicensed devices operate in the licensed broadcast bands.
NOISE-PRODUCING PATENTS
Recently filed patents reveal Matsushita/Panasonic’s plans to improve speakers.
International filing WO/2006/104103 claims that putting some porous carbon particles in a small speaker cabinet absorbs air under pressure and so allows the diaphragm to move more freely when there is heavy bass content. Particles of around 0.1mm diameter assist up to 200Hz.
US filing 2006/0062421 suggests dividing a polypropylene speaker cone into adjacent zones that each looks like a duck’s webbed foot. The zones are thicker at the outside than the inside, ranging from 0.25mm at the rim to 0.15mm near the center. This, says Panasonic, “suppresses divided resonance.”
In a similar vein, US filing 2005/0213785 describes a thin film piezo tweeter with the cone divided into several circular zones of different size. The smaller zones handle the higher frequencies, in overlapping steps from 5kHz to 100kHz. Dividing the frequency load gives the tweeter smoother response—in theory, at least.
Expiration of the Sony/Philips patents on CD has left all companies (including Philips and Sony) free to tinker with the standard system. Recently filed patents show just how far they want to go, even though the tinkering may make some discs incompatible with some players.
Warner Bros. admits in new patent filing (US 2006/0227696) that enterprising shoplifters are now defeating conventional anti-theft packaging by slicing open the boxes and shaking discs free. So Warner plans a disc with two lead-in areas instead of one. The first lead-in contains data which stops a player reading the second, conventional lead-in. The disc surface above the first lead-in area is coated with a chemical that is normally transparent but turns opaque when irradiated with a source of finely tuned light or radio frequency.
So the disc can only be played if the checkout teller has flashed it to disable the first lead-in. (Ref).
Meanwhile, Sony has a plan to bury Radio Frequency Identity chips in the body of a pressed disc (US 2007/0183271). The chip works like a non-contact travel card, such as London’s Oyster card, which is waved over a ticket barrier.
The Sony CD will “talk” to a CD player, which has an RF aerial inside the disc tray. The chip can store copy-protection codes, a playlist, or running score for a game. Another aerial, on the outside of the player, “talks” to a non-contact card. If the card contains decryption key codes, the disc will only play if the codes on the disc match the codes on the card. So unauthorized copy discs, without a chip and matching codes, will not play. (Ref).
Macrovision has for several years driven the idea of multi-sessioning a CD to obstruct copying while—they hope—not obstructing normal audio play by an audio player.
Multi-sessioning began life as a way to add data to a partly-written write once disc, and dates back to Philips patents filed in 1991. (Ref).
The idea of using this for copy protection dates back to British and Israeli filings from 2001. The disc is made with a first, audio, session and a second, data, session. The audio session is hidden from a data reader or copier by including control data in the data session which incorrectly identifies the audio files as data files. The lead-out from each session has pointers back to the body of that session. (Ref).
Macrovision’s latest idea is to omit these backward-directing pointers, and use only Table of Content and lead-in pointers; and the pointers wrongly describe audio content as data—US 2007/0136515. (Ref).
“Where the multiple session disc has a restricted number of sessions, for example, two only, the change of format is not apparent to a user,” claims Macrovision. “Control data recorded in the second and subsequent sessions which relates to the first session has been removed, corrupted, rendered incorrect and/or inaccurate or otherwise interfered with—if there appears to be an inaccuracy in the data, an audio player will generally continue to play.”
Turn the words “generally continue to play” around and you get fair warning that some players will not continue to play. Owners may then think their player has gone faulty, or needs a lens clean; if they take the disc back to the shop where they bought it, or have to pay to mail it back to an online store, there is a good chance the store player will behave differently and “continue to play.”
Macrovision was once anxious to show off its disc-player compatibility checking facility, where banks of players tested whether copy-protected discs played. But over recent years Macrovision has lost interest in talking to the press. Perhaps the company does not want to publicize the fact that there are just too many different types of CD, DVD, PC, and now blue laser drives in the world for compatibility checking to be reliable. Perhaps, also, a percentage of customer returns is now regarded as an unfortunate, but inevitable side effect of copy-protection.
Which is fine unless you are the one with one of the players that do not play. M3
Barry Fox reports on the audio industry as columnist for the British publication Hi-Fi News. His commentary appears in every issue of Multi Media Manufacturer.