Category Archives: multimedia

amazon, apple, multimedia

Amazon MP3 store is much cheaper than Apple iTunes

2 Comments

The Amazon MP3 store has arrived in the UK, and I’ve noticed that it is much cheaper than Apple iTunes for many items, particularly when buying complete albums. Here’s an example: Day & Age by Killers. £7.99 on iTunes:

and £3.00 on Amazon:

That’s 62% cheaper. Amazon also sells the CD for £8.98. Since you get more for your money with a CD (no lossy compression, physical backup and sleeve notes, transferable rights) that strikes me as about right.

The MP3 format is also more convenient than iTunes AAC, since it is supported by more devices.

I’m intrigued though. Why is Amazon so much cheaper? A last-ditch effort by the industry to create serious competition for Apple?

Technorati tags: , , ,
adobe, internet, multimedia, software

BBC iPlayer AIR app brings downloads to Mac and Linux

I’ve successfully installed the new BBC iPlayer AIR application on Windows, Mac and Linux – and I’m mostly impressed so far. The main snag is that you have to click the Labs tester button on a separate page before the  download works – but this isn’t mentioned on the download page. Another usability issue is that when you start up the app it invites you start downloading; you click the link, and the iPlayer web site opens in your default browser with no advice on what to do next. You have to find a programme which includes a download to computer link – most of them do not. I found a Roy Orbison documentary that worked (no, that’s not Roy Orbison in the pic, but another singer).

This was a better experience than early days with the old download iPlayer, though on Linux (Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex) I found that I needed to fiddle with the settings and allocate some disk space specifically before it would accept downloads.

An interesting aspect of the new iPlayer is that it replaces a peer-to-peer download system with a direct download. I discussed the implications of this at some length with both Anthony Rose at the BBC, and with a couple of ISPs, when I was researching an interview for the Guardian. In the end there wasn’t enough space to include much of this technical detail, though I’m hoping to post some of it in the near future.

A quick summary: the ISPs are not in favour of peer-to-peer because it is less efficient. Typically, all the retries cause approximately double the amount of data to be transferred (according to my source). That said, they don’t like the BBCs move towards Level 3 rather than Akamai, because it works out more expensive for them. ISPs could install their own box to stream the BBCs content, saving them operational money, but these apparently are expensive to buy and install; I was told that the iPlayer’s traffic does not yet justify it, but if it grows to say twice what it is now, it will become economic.

The biggest cost though is the last step, from the ISP to the user. This is where the cable companies (mostly Virgin Media) have a big advantage, since the cable goes to your doorstep, and is designed to accommodate digital broardcasts. ISPs that have taken advantage of local loop unbundling are also relatively well placed. Those that pay BT wholesale for the traffic are the most vulnerable.

The other important point is that there is always something you can do to manage increased traffic – though not necessarily quickly. If everyone in the UK suddenly tries to watch HD video at the same time, the system will seize up, but that won’t happen. What will happen is that increasing numbers of people will find that their cheap transfer-limited packages are no longer sufficient and they will need to upgrade.

Technorati tags: , , , , , ,
adobe, multimedia, software development, web authoring

Adobe’s disappointing results, headcount reduction plans

3 Comments

Adobe has announced earnings slightly below its estimates. More worrying is its report of “weaker-than-expected demand for its new Creative Suite 4 family of products” and “steps to reduce its headcount by approximately 600 full-time positions globally”.

Is Adobe getting it wrong, or is this the effect of a weak global economy? I’d guess the latter; it may even be a good result in context. Adobe is dominating web video; Flash usage is still growing; there’s nothing out that that can compete with Photoshop; and there is a lot of interest in its Flex/Flash/AIR programming story. CS4 is a remarkable release; you can argue about some of the details (why is Soundbooth included instead of the superior Audition?) or grumble about the price (especially outside the USA), but there is a lot more right than wrong.

Even so, Adobe has a weakness in its business model. It makes its money on tools and server-side products, while giving away the runtimes like Flash player and Adobe reader. Could Adobe get into a Sun-like funk where everyone uses its technology, but the company itself gets relatively modest benefit? It is possible. You can do a lot with Flash and PDF without paying anything to Adobe. This is good for users, since even with high adoption of the runtimes, Adobe cannot sit back and watch the money roll in. It has to maintain the quality of its design and authoring tools, and it has to charge real money for them, because they are the heart of its business.

According to this document (PDF) Adobe’s business breaks down like this:

Revenue by segment ($millions) FY2008 YTD August 2008 – representing 3 quarters

  • Creative Solutions $1564.3
  • Business Productivity Solutions $786
  • Mobile and Device solutions $64.9
  • Other $249.4

I’m guessing a little; but I imagine that Creative Solutions is mostly Creative Suite, though it also includes Flash Media Server; and Business Productivity mostly Acrobat (authoring and server). Note that LiveCycle Data Services ES, which connects Flex to enterprise application servers, is part of Business Productivity, though Flex Builder is classified as Other. It seems that CS + Acrobat is where Adobe makes most of its money.

adobe, flash, internet, java, multimedia, Sun, web authoring

Sun’s JavaFX is launched: another go at applets

2 Comments

Sun has launched JavaFX.

 
Sun’s Eric Klein, VP of Java Marketing, explains JavaFX

What is it? Sun says:

JavaFX is a rich client platform for building cross-device applications and content. Designed to enable easy creation and deployment of rich internet applications (RIAs) with immersive media and content, the JavaFX platform ensures that RIAs look and behave consistently across diverse form factors and devices.

What is it really? A new script language called JavaFX; a compiler that turns JavaFX script into Java bytecode; a runtime that includes new media codecs; converters that turn SVG, PhotoShop or Illustrator graphics into JavaFX format. JavaFX also requires the JRE (Java Runtime Environment). Currently only Windows and Mac OS X are supported; Linux and Solaris support “will be provided in a future release”; mobile is also on the way, promised for Spring 2009.

A variety of video and audio codecs are supported, but unfortunately these vary by platform. For example, WMV plays only on Windows; H.264 runs on Mac but on Windows only “as an update”, whatever that means. However, there is a specific “cross-platform” codec, which is VP6 from On2. Snag: you need On2’s commercial software to convert to the required .FXM format.

What’s good about JavaFX? Sun claims broadest market reach; but this is nonsense – I presume it is counting every device with a smidgen of Java installed. There are some advantages though. JavaFX can run Java code, and there’s plenty of that out there. The Java VM is mature and fast. A neat feature is that you can run JavaFX applications outside the browser by dragging them onto the desktop. Even in the browser, Java FX are not confined to the browser window, but can create graphics that appear anywhere on the screen. Java SE 6 update 10 or higher is required for these features, which depend on an out of process Java applet plugin in this update.

What’s bad about JavaFX? There are several reasons why Sun will find this a hard sell:

  • Large download size. Flash and Silverlight are self-contained browser plug-ins; Silverlight is larger than Flash, but still under 5MB. I’m not sure exactly what size JavaFX is on a machine without Java. I tried visiting javafx.com on a new XP install, and was directed to the main Java download site which recommended a JRE of about 7MB; I suspect it might do further incremental downloads after that, since the full JRE is more like 15MB. Once the JRE is in, you still need to install the JavaFX runtime, though is done automatically and I imagine that in time JavaFX will just be part of the JRE. Right now, the process is less smooth than for Flash or Silverlight.
  • Lack of design tools. Adobe has its fantastic Creative Suite, most of which now seems to target Flash. Microsoft has Expression. Sun is offering converters for Photoshop and Illustrator or SVG. These applications know nothing about JavaFX, and there is no visual editor in NetBeans 6.5.
  • A new language. Although JavaFX script does not look particularly difficult to learn, it is friction for developers wanting to give it a try.
  • Signs of haste. I’m seeing this now. When I saw the JavaFX announcement, I went to the site and successfully installed the runtime and played the introductory video, which itself uses JavaFX. Soon after, presumably as word spread, the launch site became unusable for me. Videos do not play; samples do not download. The spin will be that this shows the high level of interest; but vendors like Sun are meant to understand about scalability.

     
    JavaFX.com showing signs of stress on launch day

  • Late to the party. Adobe is well entrenched with Flash. If Microsoft is late with Silverlight, Sun is very late with JavaFX.
  • Limited features. I’m just back from Adobe MAX, learning about features like Pixel Bender in Flash Player 10, and its new text rendering engine, and new audio API. The JavaFX API looks limited by comparison. There is no 3D support yet.
  • Lack of compelling reasons for adoption. You can run Java code; but then again, Java applets and desktop Java clients have been around for many years. I can see the value in both Flash and Silverlight, but what is the must-have feature of JavaFX?
  • Platform variation. It bothers me that JavaFX supports different codecs on different platforms. What happened to write once – run everywhere?

What else? It’s early days. I’d like to hear from Designers whether JavaFX does what they need. JavaFX will improve, and it does have obvious value for Java developers who want to code rich internet applications. Sun’s commitment to open source may make JavaFX interesting to those who find Flash and Silverlight too tightly locked to single vendors.

Some details above are drawn from the JavaFX FAQ.

microsoft, multimedia, vista, windows, windows 7

Windows 7 media: AAC yes, FLAC no

4 Comments

Microsoft’s Larry Osterman is here at PDC 2008 and I took the opportunity to ask a couple of questions about media in Windows 7. Windows Media Player is getting built-in support for AAC (as used in iTunes – but not when DRM-protected) and H.264 – but not ALAC (Apple lossless) or FLAC (open-source lossless). What about DRM in Windows 7, any change to the Protected Media Path? No, he told me; adding how frustrated he was by the common supposition that DRM somehow slows everything down in Vista. His line is that Microsoft supports DRM content, but does not in any way impose it.

adobe, bbc, microsoft, multimedia, silverlight

BBC adopting Adobe AIR for platform-neutral iPlayer downloads

1 Comment

Just noticed that the BBC is adopting Adobe AIR to create a platform-neutral download client for iPlayer. Erik Huggers says:

Today, we are announcing that in partnership with Adobe we are building a platform-neutral download client.

Using Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR), we intend to make BBC iPlayer download functionality available on Mac, Linux and Windows for the first time later this year. Whatever platform you use, you’ll now be able to download TV programmes from the BBC to watch later.

This follows much criticism of the BBC for its original Windows-only iPlayer.

Looks like Adobe has the BBC in its grip, technology wise, having ousted Microsoft from iPlayer completely – though I believe it is still experimenting with Silverlight’s Deep Zoom.

Technorati tags: , , , ,
adobe, multimedia, windows

Adobe Media Player adding to Windows bloat

I allowed Adobe Media Player to auto-update yesterday, and noticed that it added itself to the list of applications that run automatically on startup (without asking, as I recall).

This is an AIR application and has a relatively large memory footprint even when inactive, according to Task Manager. It is also currently of little use as far as I can tell; Adobe no doubt plans for it to be the next iTunes, but right now there’s only a tiny selection of videos on offer, some of which report “not available in your territory” if you try to play them.

You can stop this software from impacting Windows performance by going to Options – Automatic notifications and unchecking Automatically launch on startup and Close Adobe Media Player to the taskbar.

The Windows utility msconfig is great for identifying startup applications and shows you where they can be disabled. Stripping these down to a minimum can have a marked affect on performance.

multimedia

Are you willing to buy your DVDs again?

4 Comments

That’s the question posed by the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) in its suit [PDF] against RealNetworks for RealDVD, software that lets you rip DVDs to a hard drive so you can play them back without using the actual disk.

We’ve already had this argument over music CDs, and it has been largely won by the consumer. Although it is a form of copying and probably illegal, the lawyers have not tried to prevent the likes of Apple and Microsoft from distributing software, such as iTunes and Windows Media Player, that makes it easy to copy CDs to a computer. Nor has anyone pursued individuals for doing so. The common sense argument is that it is merely fair use: you should not have to buy the music again because you are now playing it from a file on a computer rather than directly from a CD.

Consumers do not always play fair. eBay is strewn with ads for CD collections being sold off, because they have been ripped to a hard drive and are no longer required. Another problem is that the ripping software does not know whether the CD you are copying is yours or not. You might have borrowed it from a friend, in which case you have no right to keep a copy for your own use.

When it comes to DVDs, it is this last point that riles the MPAA:

Among other things, the RealDVD software enables users to engage in an illegal practice known as “rent,rip and return,” whereby a person rents a DVD from a legitimate business like Blockbuster or Netflix, uses the RealDVD software to make multiple permanent illegal copies of the movie, and returns the DVD, only to rent another popular title and make permanent copies of it, repeating the cycle of theft over and over again without ever making a purchase.

The difference between CDs and DVDs is that DVDs are encrypted. The encryption algorithm is now well-known, but nevertheless software that rips DVDs has to decrypt them first. This puts it in a different category from CD ripping software since CDs are unprotected; at least, that’s what the legal folk argue. RealDVD applies its own encryption as an anti-piracy measure, but that might not be a sufficient defence.

The counter-argument is that ripping a DVD is fair use. A ripped DVD occupies more space than a CD, but you can still get forty to sixty of them on a 250GB drive, and there are many advantages in convenience, portability and backup. If ripping a DVD is illegal, then the only legitimate way to enjoy this convenience is by re-buying the material, where available, from a download service.

This silly thing is, free software to rip DVDs is already easy to obtain. A Google search for “rip DVD DivX” reports 577,000 hits. As ever, I don’t trust Google’s arithmetic, but it is some indicator of the high level of interest in this procedure.

I expect the MPAA will find it hard to persuade the general public that ripping your own DVD for your own use is an unreasonable action.

drm, multimedia

slotMusic: you say hello, I say goodbye

2 Comments

A new format called slotMusic delivers music as DRM-free MP3 files on a microSD card, with a USB adaptor so you can plug it into any PC.

Hmm, not as convenient as downloads because you have to mess around with fiddly little cards.

If I want to buy music files on a physical medium I already can; on an established format called CD, that has DRM-free files without lossy compression.

So what is the advantage of these?

Technorati tags: , ,
internet, multimedia, sony

Streaming media to a PSP

Here’s a Playstation Portable streaming music from FLAC files on a Linux server.

What’s going on here? Well, this is the PSP’s Remote Play feature, which lets you view and control a PS3 remotely. As I mentioned before, the FLAC files get transcoded to PCM on the fly by Mediatomb, a free and open source DLNA server for Linux. The clever bit is that this works across the Internet as well as on a local network, allowing you to play your FLAC library from anywhere with a wi-fi connection.

There are a couple of snags. Although the sound is decent, I get occasional stutters which spoil the effect. It also strikes me as inefficient (which means not green), running both a Linux server and a PS3 at home just to play music on the move. So this isn’t all that practical; but I found it an interesting experiment.

I’m not sure why Sony hasn’t joined all the dots with the PSP. It has a great screen, good sound, and would make a delightful streaming media client if the software were better. As it is, the only supported way (that I know of) to stream media is via the RSS client, which is far from ideal, or with the Remote Play feature as above.

Technorati tags: , , , , , ,