The new Secure Content Storage Association (SCSA) already has its first project underway.
Fox, Warner Bros., SanDisk and Western Digital are coming together for “Project Phenix,” that “will enable consumers to buy, store and playback HD Versions of movies and TV shows at home or on-the-go, easily and seamlessly,” the press release states.
The project is compatible with UltraViolet and the alliance will approve various TVs, tablets and display devices, “so that users will be able to download cloud-based media to compliant WD and SanDisk storage,” reports Engadget.
The project aligns with the SCSA’s goal to secure high-definition content, which comes into competition with popular Internet options like Netflix.
“We’ll see the technology available to license later in the year, which promises to render content ten times faster than streaming media on “over the top Internet” (translation: streaming services),” the article states.
Exceeding expectations, Sony has already sold 1.2 million PlayStation Vitas worldwide and more than 2 million games for the device.
The new Vita launched last week in the U.S. and Europe after its December debut in Japan.
Analysts expect millions more will be sold as the device is launched in other parts of the world. One analyst from Wedbush Morgan Securities estimates 4.3 million Vitas to be sold this year.
Even with competition from advancing smartphones, the handheld gaming console has made an impressive start in the gaming market.
“It’s archrival, the Nintendo 3DS, sold about 400,000 units during its launch week in Japan, though it has since gone on to sell millions more,” notes AllThingsD.
Less than a million of Logitech’s Revue boxes and Sony’s Google TV devices are activated, and more than half of those are Logitech’s set-top boxes.
Google TV includes pre-installed apps like the TV and Movies app, crucial to the Google TV experience. “The active install base for this app, according to Google’s Android Market, currently is 500,000 to 1 million. The same is true for all the other apps that come pre-installed with Google TV, which suggests that the number of Google TV devices that are currently being used by consumers is less than 1 million,” GigaOM reports.
“It’s worth pointing out that the number of active devices doesn’t necessarily translate to sales numbers. People could have bought Google TV devices and never turned them on. Devices that haven’t received the Google TV 2.0 update, which was rolled out last fall, also aren’t part of any Android Market data,” the article states.
In comparison, Apple has sold 4.2 million Apple TV units and Roku has sold 2.5 million boxes.
With the anticipated tens of billions of devices connected to the Internet by 2020, some security firms at the Mobile World Congress are concerned the new Internet of Things will face data security issues with the current network security designs for humans, not machines.
“Put another way, could a not-so-smart client on a machine-to-machine (M2M) network become a future target of malicious Internet activity?”
“The nature of malicious attacks will not be made harder or easier by the infusion of M2M,” ReadWriteWeb reports based on an interview with Adaptive Mobile’s Cathal McDaid.”While consumers may drive newer and more sophisticated communications protocols for their mobile devices, M2M communications may not require an upgrade of format for the foreseeable future — certainly not, by McDaid’s estimate, within the next 20 years. So during that time frame, the same protocol will need to be supported as the foundation for secure communications between machines.”
“The fact is, as you make more ‘doorways’ into the Internet, the challenges of controlling access will become ever more acute,” Alex Brisbourne of KORE Wireless tells ReadWriteWeb. “Machine devices will add significantly to the ‘access doorways’ — just as increasing delivery of smartphones, etc., will do.”
Brisbourne goes on to explain that smartphones are in general open in terms of Internet access, enabling virus, malware and security attacks. Oppositely, machine to machine or M2M will likely be very closed.
MTV unveiled its social TV app called “Under The Thumb” for Europe — with no immediate plans for U.S. expansion — that “will let users watch MTV content on mobile devices, share it on the go with others, and then watch those on-demand programs simultaneously with those friends,” TechCrunch reports.
MTV is working to make the mobile and computer experience seamless as well as integrating Facebook.
“The main part of the service ‘Tiny Thumb’ which offers celebrity news and MTV highlights, as a limited selection of episodes to watch, will be free to use. ‘Super Thumb’ unlocks further shows, seasons and content to subscribers on a monthly basis for €2.99, and those who pay up €29.99 annually will have access to everything — that content is only available to those users who take contracts with MTV Mobile, the company’s mobile service,” TechCrunch writes.
Despite no announcement regarding a U.S. launch: “But of course the U.S. is aware and is following what we are doing. All the content is cleared and we have buy-in from at the Viacom level but no short term plans to launch it there,” said Michel Dupont, SVP of MTV in Europe.
According to inside sources, Apple will announce its Apple TV with the new iPad next week at the company’s scheduled event in San Francisco.
“We initially reported that Apple would be releasing two major new products in early March, and then believed the product would be a new Apple TV due to mounting code-based evidence for such a product with simultaneous supply constraints,” comments 9to5 Mac. “Now, sources have outright said Apple is launching this J33 (the new Apple TV’s codename) alongside the new iPad.”
“The new Apple TV is rumored to include a faster processor, possibly a variation of the dual-core A5 chip,” adds the post. “The dual-core A5 chip has been said to be required for the Apple TV to finally stream 1080p quality video, but Apple is also working on an ‘A5X’ chip that is dual-core, which also includes an improved graphics engine. Those two components of the chip would likely deliver the smooth video playback that Apple would include in such a product.”
It is rumored the Apple TV will also include Bluetooth 4.0 remote control, Siri support and host a new 1080P movie service from the iTunes Store.
Additionally, Apple will be revealing three new iPad variants, not one (if the sources are correct).
HBO Co-President Eric Kessler reports that 75 percent of all viewing on HBO GO is dedicated to original programming with movies only accounting for 20 percent, and sports programming taking up the last 5 percent.
This announcement aligns with a trend that rival Netflix has been seeing where the majority of the viewing on its streaming service involves TV content, not movies.
Of the movies viewers watch on HBO GO, 80 percent were new releases. Here, HBO has the advantage over Netlfix, which has a very limited selection of new films.
“Netflix still has a large lead in the device world, however, which is something that HBO is trying to change,” GigaOM reports. “HBO GO recently became available on Roku streaming players and Samsung TVs, and Kessler announced that the service would launch on the Xbox 360 on April 1 — which coincides with the season opener of HBO’s ‘Game of Thrones.'”
A press invitation from Apple announces an iPad-related event in San Francisco on March 7. In true Apple fashion, the invite doesn’t explicitly state the reveal of an iPad 3 but shows an iPad with the words, “we have something you really have to see. And touch.”
“Apple has not officially confirmed any details about its next iPad. However, people familiar with the product have said that the third-generation iPad would include an improved display and a faster processor, and essentially be the same shape and size as the iPad 2,” reports The New York Times.
Other sources report that the new iPad will be compatible with the 4G LTE networks of AT&T and Verizon.
In an earnings call, CEO Tim Cook says he expect the tablet market to eclipse the PC market, saying “we’re going to continue to innovate like crazy in this area, and continue to compete with anyone that is currently shipping tablets, or that might enter in the future.”
The loss of its Starz contract may not actually hurt Netflix as much as originally thought. Now, more that half of all Netflix viewing is dedicated to TV, not films, presenting an opportunity for the company to compensate for the loss of movies.
“Analysts say the prioritizing of television partly explains why the company has been able to retain about 21.7 million streaming subscribers in the United States — totaling one in four households that have broadband — despite complaints about an inadequate feature film selection. It’s a transition that Netflix has made rather successfully in the last six to 12 months,” reports The New York Times.
The new-release movies from Starz only account for 2 percent of all Netflix viewing, a fairly big drop from 8 percent a year ago.
Even so, people remain critical of Netflix’s selection of films available to stream. An analyst firm Piper Jaffray reported only four of the 2011 top-50 grossing films were available on the site, and one of them — “Gnomeo and Juliet” — will be removed Wednesday.
Netflix continues to offer popular newer films through its DVD service but is placing more focus on TV with original content and expanding with older, cheaper TV content offerings.
“Are the carriers throttling because of wild and crazy unlimited users hogging enormous bandwidth, or are the carriers throttling as essentially a tactic to get grandfathered unlimited users to hurry up and switch to tiered data plans?” asks monitoring firm Validas in a report concerning data throttling.
“The company analyzed data from more than 55,000 cell phone bills, and concluded that customers on unlimited plans aren’t actually using any more data than everybody else,” reports TG Daily.
“When we look at the top five percent of data users, there is virtually no difference in data consumption between those on unlimited and those on tiered plans — and yet the unlimited consumers are the ones at risk of getting their service turned off,” says Validas.
AT&T is starting to limit speeds for users in the top five percent of data usage, but according to the report, throttling doesn’t significantly help network bandwidth issues.
Nokia plans to incorporate a 41-megapixel sensor into its smartphone to enable digital zooming.
The sensor allows 3-4X digital zooming of both still photos and video while maintaining image sharpness.
Nokia’s research team worked with a number of optical zooms and experimented with different sensors, which led to a revelation. “If a big enough sensor could be fitted into the phone, the camera could just zoom digitally and throw away the unneeded pixels,” reports AllThingsD, regarding the team’s approach.
“Nokia has done it with the 808 PureView — or Hyperion, as it was code-named during development.”
At full resolution, the smartphone’s camera reportedly rivals professional cameras. Unfortunately, the technology will first appear on Nokia’s Symbian phone which is not sold in the U.S.
Wal-Mart plans to help customers set up their UltraViolet accounts and register the DVDs they own for a small fee.
UltraViolet, which has been available for a year, currently has some one million users.
“The industry’s hope is that, with UltraViolet, it can encourage consumers to pay for content they might be tempted to download illegally from the Web,” reports the Wall Street Journal.
The service has been slow to get off the ground due to service glitches, a limited catalog of titles, the need for multiple accounts, and the lack of Disney titles and iTunes compatibility, indicates the article.
“The potential Wal-Mart deal is part of a broader effort by the industry to hold on to revenue it is losing to both illegal and legitimate competition, such as some online storage lockers that play fast and loose with copyright law,” adds WSJ. “At the same time, technology companies, including Google Inc. and Apple Inc., have moved into the market for streaming entertainment with their popular YouTube and iTunes services, taking a cut of the revenue from each movie or TV show streamed.”
Unlike movies, music, books, pictures and written materials — which are protected by copyrights — physical objects must be protected by patents.
As the patent process is difficult, complex and costly, many objects are not covered by patents. And those which are covered only get protection for 20 years.
3D printers will lead us to re-think the need to get permission to copy, improve or build with physical objects. Moreover, it may get us to reconsider how intellectual property rights in general should function in the digital world.
“It is impossible to predict all of the ways that widespread access to 3D printing could change our society,” comments Slate. “However, before it revolutionizes manufacturing, design, or anything else, 3D printing may first help us regain a much-needed perspective on the role intellectual property should have in the world.”
Dropbox released their Android app that enables users to wirelessly upload pictures to the cloud from their smartphones. CEO Drew Houston said he hopes third-party developers will expand upon the app to include photo editing or manipulation features.
Users get 500 megabytes of storage following their first upload and are allowed up to 3GB of free space. An iOS version will be released soon, according to Dropbox.
The company faces fierce competition in the cloud from Microsoft, Apple’s iCloud and Google’s Drive.
James Staten, an analyst at Forrester Research said the new app is intended to “secure and solidify their position as the best file-sharing service and trying not to go beyond that, which I think is a smart move.”
Apple just acquired Chomp, an app search and discovery platform. The company plans to streamline the discovery process of the App Store’s 500,000 apps (and counting).
“This is not a cheap ‘acqui-hire,’ Apple has bought the Chomp team and technology and plans to use both to completely revamp App Store search and recommendations,” TechCrunch reports. “And they clearly have the money to do it: Apple has nearly $100 billion in cash (and cash equivalents) in the bank now coming off their monster quarter.”
In two rounds of funding, Chomp had raised just over $2.5 million. The company of 20 or so employees powers all Verizon’s Android-based app searches, a deal that should stay intact, at least for the time being.
“My understanding is that such deals will remain intact for now but are likely to end once the Chomp team and product fully transitions over to Apple,” comments MG Siegler for TechCrunch. “The same is likely true for Chomp’s stand-alone products.”