Hollywood studios Warner Bros, Sony Pictures and Fox are getting behind the UK launch of a new service that aims to revolutionise consumption of films and TV shows, while also reducing piracy.

Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem’s (DECE) UltraViolet (UV), which is already available in the US, enables consumers to “buy once, play anywhere”, meaning they purchase a title once and can play it in on as many as 12 different devices.

The system, which is backed by 75 companies including Tesco, Samsung, Nokia, Sky and LoveFilm, works by consumers receiving a code when they buy a DVD or Blu-ray disc enabling them to download or stream a digital version.

They can also create a virtual locker of films and TV shows for access from the cloud on a wide variety of devices, including PC, Mac, Android and iOS. Up to five people can be added to each user’s account.

“If consumers buy a movie or TV show they should be able to use it in any way they want,” said Mark Teitell, the general manager of DECE.

“This allows consumers to buy enduring rights to a piece of content, like an internet-based version of a proof of purchase, that they can then watch pretty much anywhere they want.”

Warner Bros will offer the first UV-enabled title in the UK, with the launch of Final Destination 5 on DVD, Blu-Ray & Triple Play on December 26.

In October, the studio released the first ever UV titles, Horrible Bosses and Green Lantern, in the US.

Following the release of Final Destination 5, Warner Bros intends to use UV for all its forthcoming home entertainment releases in the UK, including Happy Feet Two, Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows and The Dark Knight Rises.

Warner Bros’ UK managing director television and digital distribution Chris Law said: “By making Final Destination 5 and all future WB theatrical new release titles UV enabled, we are offering consumers a simple and more compelling way to purchase, manage, access and share their movie collections digitally.

“This is just the first step, I’m confident we’ll be seeing more and more compatible content and services launching in the coming months.”

UltraViolet is intended to work alongside rather than compete with existing video on-demand offerings such as LoveFilm and the Tesco-owned Blinkbox.

Global consumer spending on online video is set to hit US$3.5bn in 2011, despite a slowdown in revenue growth in video rentals and downloads, according to Strategy Analytics’ latest OTT video forecast.

Ed Barton, director of digital media at the research house, said the market for subscription video-on-demand (SVoD) services, popularised by the likes of Netflix and Hulu Plus, has a “lot of room for growth.” He added that next year will be important in how these markets shake out in the UK and Western Europe.

SVoD revenue on a global basis to 2016 will expand by a compound annual growth rate of over 30%, “which is pretty strong,” Barton told C21. This compares with a predicted annual growth rate for digital online retail over the same period of just over 10%, online rental being slightly stronger at about 15%.

This article continues at C21Media http://www.c21media.net/archives/73902

Apple has rolled out its iTunes music and movie store in Brazil for the first time and is bringing it to 15 other Latin American countries including Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Peru and Venezuela.

The store in Brazil will offer thousands of movies from studios including 20th Century Fox, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, Universal Pictures, The Walt Disney Studios and Warner Bros, along with a music catalogue of over 20 million songs.

The Latin American roll-out follows Netflix’s expansion into the region earlier this year with its subscription film rental service. Though Apple’s app store is already available in 123 countries, this will be the first time it will offer film rentals or downloads in these Lat Am countries.

The news comes as another Apple product, Apple TV, quietly expands. Often described by the firm itself as no more than a “hobby,” the service has emerged as the leading player in the connected TV player market and will account for 32% of internet-connected set-top boxes this year, according to Strategy Analytics.

This article continues at C21Media http://www.c21media.net/archives/74036

Having attained customer permission for targeted advertising on the television, thanks to an opt-out provided in letters earlier this year, UK satellite operator BSkyB hopes to introduce targeted advertising for live linear TV shows around the spring of 2013. At that point, it will be possible to segment audiences and deliver a different advertisement to different homes, like in the classic example where a family receives an ad for a Ford Mondeo saloon car while a young couple see an advertisement for a smaller Ford Fiesta hatchback.

During the Future TV Advertising Forum in December, Jeremy Tester, Director of Brand Strategy and Communications at Sky Media, the sales arm of BSkyB, outlined the company’s advanced advertising strategy. This is likely to include an expansion of its SkyView consumer panel, which currently covers over 30,000 BSkyB subscriber homes and collects data about set-top box usage and combines this with brand purchasing data from many of the same homes.

“Why not go to 500,000 or one million or 5 million homes.” Tester said. “What if we had our customers’ permission to look at all their viewing on all their set-top boxes? If you have the right STB and have the ability to analyse that data then why not do that? Then you get a really great picture of our universe and that is the path we are on and we are starting to see the systems that will deliver that data to us and give us a second-by-second understanding of what set-top boxes and other devices in the home have been used for in the last 24 hours, and build that into a data source covering millions of homes.”

This article continues on V-Net

http://www.v-net.tv/bskyb-preparing-for-linear-targeting-in-spring-2013/

For the techies amongst us, a step down memory lane…

The BBC Micro – the machine which, along with the Sinclair ZX Spectrum, epitomised the British home computer boom of the early 1980s – was launched 30 years ago.

Unveiled on 1 December 1981 as the Model A and Model B, the BBC Micro would go on to sell over 1.5 million units before the last of the line was discontinued in 1994.

The BBC Micro was designed and manufactured by Acorn, a Cambridge-based computer company founded by Chris Curry and Herman Hauser on 5 December 1978 as Cambridge Processor Unit (CPU).

Curry had quit working for Clive Sinclair’s Science of Cambridge (SoC), where he had developed the MK14 microcomputer kit. Sinclair was less enthusiastic about the project than Curry, who came to believed that the only way to take the product to the next stage – to build and sell a computer for home use – was to do so outside of SoC.

Hauser, a physics researcher at Cambridge University, agreed. He was aware of the many young, talented computer scientists and engineers working at the university and was able to help CPU quickly tap into this resource.

CPU first developed a controller for Ace Coin Equipment’s one-armed bandits, funding the work on the Acorn Microcomputer – later called the Acorn System 1 – which was launched in March 1979.

During the following months, Sinclair began work on the ZX80. Unlike the motherboard-and-not-much-else MK14 and System 1, the ZX80, although sold primarily as a kit the user would assemble, was designed as a cased product with the potential to appeal to a much broader audience than electronics hobbyists.

That move, in turn, may well have inspired Curry to drive the development of the next Acorn machine, the Atom. Seeing the possibilities, Curry and Hauser recast CPU as Acorn. And, a year later, in March 1980, the Atom was launched as the first Acorn Computers machine, combining a case with an integrated keyboard – with moving keys, unlike the ZX80’s flat ones – and what was essentially a System 3 motherboard within.

And with the Atom’s launch, Acorn’s development team began work on its successor, codenamed Proton, a machine they hoped would be a more serious machine than the one-up-on-Sinclair Atom.

Meanwhile, the state broadcaster was taking an interest in the world of microcomputers…

This article continues on reghardware

http://www.reghardware.com/2011/11/30/bbc_micro_model_b_30th_anniversary/

Netflix will stream “well over a billion hours” of video this quarter, the company’s CEO Reed Hastings revealed during the UBS Global Media conference Tuesday. Hastings admitted the company had some trouble holding on to its subscribers in recent months, but he said streaming usage has nonetheless been growing. “Streaming has been a rocket ship,” said Hastings.

Asked about his competitors, Hastings dismissed possible threats from Hulu Plus, Amazon Prime and some of the new offerings that are rumored to launch soon, like the Verizon streaming service that made headlines today. Instead, he admitted: “The competitor we fear the most is HBO Go.”

Hastings said only HBO and Netflix have the stomach to spend one to two billion dollars a year on content, adding: “They are becoming more Netflix-like and we are becoming more HBO-like.”

He also called HBO Go “really quite impressive” and said he fully expects the pay TV network to eventually rebrand its online service to be simply called HBO, making it the core of its offering. “When you use it on a Roku, it’s so much better than the MVPD system,” he said in reference to HBO’s linear and traditional VOD offerings through cable set-top boxes.

From http://gigaom.com

Netflix’s background in DVDs-by-mail means it is often seen as mainly a movies service. However, the balance has tipped more towards TV shows in its streaming operation.

“50% and sometimes 60% of viewing is TV episodes now,” said Netflix’s chief content officer Ted Sarandos, during a joint keynote at the MIPCOM conference in Cannes with Miramax CEO Mike Lang.

This is the key factor behind Netflix’s high-profile deal to stream episodes of Mad Men, and also its decision to ink an exclusive deal for David Fincher’s new remake of BBC drama House of Cards.

“That can be mis-perceived as Netflix giving up on movies, which it’s not. It’s just consumers saying what they want,” said Sarandos during his keynote. He also announced a new exclusive deal for a TV series called Lilyhammer, starring actor/musician Steven Van Zandt.

Sarandos said that Netflix intends to use its recommendation algorithms to seed the show with users who are most likely to enjoy it. “We really think we can use these same algorithms to launch a show very rapidly, and put it in the hands of the people who’ll love it the most,” he said, citing the previous example of Starz’ Spartacus show being promoted to Netflix users who had enjoyed the film 300.

Miramax is one of Netflix’s key partners, with Lang having joined as CEO in December 2010 with the ambition of striking a series of digital distribution deals. He previously worked as executive vice president of business development and strategy at Fox Entertainment, where he was closely involved in the acquisition of Myspace and the creation of online TV service Hulu.

This story continues on the guardian website http://tinyurl.com/3hhksyh

Amazon unveiled its Kindle Fire tablet on Wednesday, announcing what is expected to be the first widely adopted tablet based on Android. The Kindle Fire not only marks the first real competition to Apple’s iPad, but could also position Amazon’s Prime Instant Videos as a real threat to Netflix.

Priced at just $199, the new 7-inch Kindle Fire will likely sell millions of units as soon as they it’s available, which would be unprecedented demand for an Android-based tablet. But just as importantly, each new tablet comes with a 30-day free subscription to Amazon Prime, which means millions of new users will immediately have access to the company’s Prime Instant Videos service.

While it’s unclear how many of those users will choose to subscribe to the $79 a year Amazon Prime service after the free trial ends — or how many Kindle Fire customers are already subscribers — the packaging of a free video service on the tablet has the potential to be a game changer in the streaming video world. Until now, even those who subscribe to Amazon Prime might not be aware that in addition to free shipping they also get free access to more than 11,000 movies and TV titles. But making Amazon Prime Instant Videos available in the palm of their hands (and free! for a limited time) could convert a number of users over to the service, which is looking like the first real threat to Netflix.

That threat couldn’t come at a worse time for Netflix, which is still dealing with the hangover of a poorly communicated price change and the re-branding of its DVD business Netflix’s DVD service is now called Qwikster, and its operations will be run separately — a change that has baffled investors and has many subscribers looking for alternatives.  Amazon Prime Instant Videos could be one alternative they latch on to.

This story continues on the gigaom site http://gigaom.com/video/kindle-fire-amazon-video/

NDS provided the ‘blow you away’ demonstration for IBC2011 with its Surfaces concept, which takes the best of the big screen and companion screen experiences and throws them onto a single wall-sized display (or multiple walls) to create a feast of visual and interactive entertainment that still manages to maintain the lean-back characteristics of TV.

Surfaces is designed to exploit revolutionary advances in video display technology. NDS believes that wall-sized video displays, including video-capable ‘wallpaper’, will be available at reasonable prices within five years and has decided that there is no longer any reason to limit the TV experience to a 50 inch rectangular box. Surfaces will give platform operators the display real-estate to provide more immersive TV experiences when we want to fully relax, or a combination of entertainment, diaries, information, social media and connected home applications in a television-centric user interface at other times in the day.

In the demonstration, we were greeted by an ‘ambient’ display on the wall-sized screen showing large framed photos of family members and Facebook ‘speech bubbles’ with our latest social interactions. The first person to come down to breakfast is Mum, and as she is alone she selects ‘Mum’ on the controlling tablet and the display reorganises itself so that the equivalent of the BBC Radio 2 website appears in the centre of the wall, with music and details about the current show and the music playlist. To the right is a clock, the latest weather and diary items for the day. To the left are newspaper headlines that can be pursued for more information via the tablet.

Mum decides that she wants to watch the breakfast TV news so the screen reorganises itself so that the news bulletin appears in a 50 inch widescreen format at the centre-top of the wall. Radio 2 moves to the left and is muted as the audio switches to TV. But the radio playlist is displayed so Mum can switch back to a song she likes at any moment. Under the news are headline links, which can be clicked via the companion to learn more about the news stories. After the national news comes the regional news and the headline links change to local stories.

Then we return to the TV in the evening for some family entertainment. We choose the family profile on the tablet and The X Factor appears as an 80 inch widescreen TV display. Down the left-hand side are Twitter feeds relating to the show and below this is a live voting app where you can see viewer predictions about how each judge will vote, and you can cast your own vote via the tablet. The app is updated live so that as each judge makes their decision, a red cross or a green tick appears next to their photo.

For the purposes of the demo, NDS provides an ‘Immersive’ bar on the tablet that you manually adjust depending on how immersive you want your TV experience to be. At this point, we are watching X Factor at about half way on the immersive gauge, so we still have the social interaction on the left and on the right there are promotions for Amazon where you can buy the song that is being sung currently on the show. By sliding the immersive scale higher, these interactive and social elements disappear from the screen and the video content alone fills the entire wall. For good measure, the lights also dim to create a cinema ambience.

This article continues on Video Net http://tinyurl.com/5vaw5h3