Buried in a Christmas announcement at Sony was a snippet that it was going to buy back the Cell Broadband Engine manufacturing plant from Toshiba control. Initially both Toshiba and Sony built their own plants to make the Cell, the parallel processing chip that drives both the PlayStation 3 and various Toshiba TV sets, but Sony wished to get out of the business and took its Nagasaki Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation off its balance sheet by shifting partial ownership to Toshiba. It has said now that it will be buying it back and that the paperwork should be done by March and the transfer of the facilities themselves a year later in March 2012. The plant also makes the RSX graphics engine and some SoCs for both companies.
Progress in ATSC M/H, the US mobile broadcast TV standard in the US, is measured in inches not miles right now, but each piece of news takes us closer to genuine demand for broadcast TV on mobile devices. Thomson Broadcast had already installed a digital exciter, program encoder, multiplexer, and ESG server for WGCL-TV, the local CBS affiliate in Atlanta, but has now upgraded the software to make it fully standards compliant. Another US broadcaster can be viewed on ATSC M/H devices, ready for the world and in particular cellular operators, begin offering them in bulk.
US cable supplier Arris has unearthed what might be a goldmine, finding the trick to bond 16 cable channels together and delivering some 800 Mbps using its Cable Modem Termination System along with an SK Broadband 16×4 modem from SK Broadband of Korea. The performance was only certified in laboratory conditions but if it proves to be repeatable and stable, it will add another strong to the bow of cable companies who want to compete at the lower end of fiber to the premises and Passive Optical Networks (PON) systems.
Opera put out an announcement this week that it had been chosen as the browser of choice for Sony LCD TVs and Blu-ray players. It put out a similar release in 2007, so as far as we can remember, so it is already the browser of choice in the Bravia TV range. This version of Opera enables the delivery of web applications, widgets, full web browsing and emerging standards such as HTML5, HbbTV and OIPF.
Already there is some research, from In-Stat, telling us what people are using Tablets for, and surprise, surprise it is email, personal information management and multimedia consumption. The reports says that although Tablets have been around for over ten years, the Apple iPad has woken everyone up to what they can do. The most interesting thing is that what it doesn’t do is compete with the Amazon Kindle as an ebook reader, which we think you will find was more or less what we said at launch. People use their tablet on average 9 hours a week and just 40% of non-tablet owners say they will buy an iPad. In-Stat puts shipments at 58 million units by 2014, whereas our own report (email [email protected] for details) put that number as high as 93 million. Given that Apple has just shipped 7.3 million devices in one quarter, and four quarters at that rate is 30 million this year, we think the In-Stat numbers are WAY underdone.
So buy our report.
The Washington Post says that the US Justice Department is considering blocking Google’s planned $700 million purchase of ITA Software, because it would give the web giant too much control over flight purchases (which is what the system does) and put airlines and travel distributors at its mercy. It’s a shame that the Justice Department didn’t step in when the airlines put up their own reservations monopoly in the first place. The deal was announced in July and should close shortly and rumors of a block have been on the go since it was first mentioned.
Researcher NPD this week says that kiosks are winning the war for DVDs and Blu-ray rental and have just overtaken retail rentals in the US market. No wonder the studios are trying hard to disadvantage Redbox, the leading kiosk vendor by giving it later release dates, because it’s getting almost as powerful as Netflix. NPD’s VideoWatch service says that Netflix and other subscription services comprised 41% of video rentals in the third quarter, followed by kiosk rentals at 31%, and in-store rentals at 27%. Kiosks had a 10% gain against the previous year’s third quarter, while in-store rental declined by 13 points.
At CES VoD specialist SeaChange International said that Technicolor will put its VividLogic tru2way software stack in its next generation digital set tops which will be built around the Intel CE media processors. These are aimed at US cable operators who want to roll out tru2way interactivity.
CSG Systems International said this week that it has extended its contract for customer care and billing, and print and mail services with Dish Network which will now last until 2017. Dish will migrate to CSG’s Advanced Convergent Platform, which it claims is the most deployed customer care and billing system in the US cable and satellite market.
PCCW, the Hong Kong based Telco which was one of the pioneers of IPTV, has added a new pay per view movie service ‘now Video Express’. Seems odd that it never did it before, but from memory the PCCW service had issues with Hollywood over DRM, which must now be solved. Movies from Paramount, Twentieth Century Fox and Warner Brothers are on now the list including HD titles, in the same release window as DVD releases.
TV apps were always going to be slower than iPhone Apps, so the fact that Samsung has now had 2 million App downloads in under a year has to be viewed as the first landmark of its type, which other TV platforms will have to beat. The company said it took 268 days to download one million apps and just 53 days for the second million. The store currently has 380 apps, most of them free including apps from YouTube, Hulu Plus, ESPN Next Level, AccuWeather, Google Maps and Texas Holdem.
Apple did not disappoint with its latest results, with revenues up to $26.7 billion and net income at $6 billion. The revenue jump was $10 billion all the way from $15.7 billion and the income from $3.4 billion a year ago. Apple shipped 4.1 million Macs, a massive 16.2 million iPhones, up 86% and 19.5 million iPods (down slightly in number, but up in revenue). It also sold 7.33 million iPads during the quarter. That performance is without Verizon’s help, which will be selling iPhone’s this quarter and iPads later. Apple is now projecting revenue of $22 billion for the next quarter. See separate item in this issue on Steve Jobs and his health issues.
A lot of fuss is being made about TiVo’s new TiVo Premiere App for the Apple iPad. It offers a view of the TV guide, lets you schedule and manage recordings, picks up TiVo recommendations, and dive into an actor’s entire resume without interrupting your program. It also lets you browse your recorded shows and of course acts as a remote control for the TiVo. It has Facebook and Twitter apps to make it easy to share what you are watching. It’s free on iTunes.
MIPS Technologies reports that Realtek Semiconductor has licensed the MIPS32 processor cores for next generation SoC’s aimed at broadband, networking, digital home and other multimedia applications. Realtek will be working with MIPS to ensure integration of software stacks including Android, Linux, Adobe Flash Player, codecs and web browsers. The license agreement includes MIPS32 cores which include multi-threaded and superscalar processors. Realtek is one of Taiwan’s leading fabless semiconductor companies and a long term MIPS licensee. MIPS unveiled its new SmartCE (connected entertainment) platform at CES integrated with Android, Adobe Flash, Skype, and Home Jinni ConnecTV.
After years of more or less unsuccessful local radio stations, the UK is now pushing the idea of localized TV stations, but instead of doing the obvious thing and sitting them on the internet, to work with the soon to arrive YouView online set top system, the UK Culture Secretary is holding a beauty contest (read auction) for companies to broadcast the TV channels. The details are not out yet, but he says that ‘ten to twelve’ major cities will have their own TV service and bids must be in by March 1st. Not only is the TV content for these going to be dreary, but the finance just isn’t going to work.
Two traditional enemies Orange (France Telecom) and Canal+ (satellite TV and content) have agreed on a joint venture to run the Orange cinema series and the TV channel TPS Star in France, says IPTV news. The company will be 50-50 owned and Canal+ will contribute production skills and Orange technological expertise to develop interactive services. This will create a virtual French monopoly in movie channels and although it is going to be available to any other TV operator, it could easily attract the eye of regulators depending on its pricing. Orange has other themed Movie channels, which will remain separate.