Anuj Agrawal

HD Movies At Home Shortly After Theatre Release?: Make It Happen FCC!

An interesting battle is going on in the movie industry.  The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) has recently filed a petition to have the FCC waive its restriction on using selectable output control (SOC).  SOC is used to restrict which output is used to transmit content out of a device. 

The MPAA is advocating for the FCC to remove its waiver of these restrictions in order for theatrical movie releases to be distributed in high-definition to homes prior to their availability on DVD, which is generally 120 days after theatrical release. By removing the waiver, the MPAA can be assured that digital outputs utilizing copy protection would be used to transfer this content to displays, ensuring that illegal copies are not created and distributed before official DVDs hit the market. The MPAA is saying that removing this waiver would only affect content that is distributed prior to DVD release.  After that, there would be no restrictions, similar to what happens now.  Thus, there is little change in what the customer experiences, except that now consumers get to watch new releases at home much earlier than before.

The Top 5 Most Influential Products of the Last Decade

I went to Best Buy last weekend even though I didn't need to get anything specific (do you really need a reason to go and play with gadgets?).  Even though I was disappointed that there doesn't seem to be a gadget these days calling my name to "BUY ME" (hopefully this will change as holiday season rolls around), I left with a real appreciation of where the digital media industry has come. 

As I thought about how I took the current products on the market for granted (HDTVs, snazzy cell phones, and digital cameras), it made me appreciate how far technology has come in the past decade.  The last decade has seen some amazing breakthroughs in consumer products that have changed the landscape of the industry and what users have come to expect in their products.  Here is my list of the top 5 products and services of the last decade  that have had a lasting impact on the market:

TiVo (March 1999)    

Our short little friend has had quite an impact on how we watch TV.  Now, our entire TV experience is effectively an On-Demand experience, letting us watch "time-shifted" content whenever it's convenient.  Of course, the impact its had on the ad industry is well-documented.  It still remains to be seen how the advertisers will deal with this.  I've started to notice ads created with the characters from the show I'm watching, making me think my show is resuming.  Sneaky, but ultimately, they'll need something better than this to get me to see ads again.   

Napster (June 1999)

They may not have been the first peer-to-peer network, but Napster is the brand name that everyone remembers that really turned the music industry upside down.  The music industry is still trying to figure out how to grow profits in a world of highly available pirated music.  Even though the original version of Napster is long gone, many others such as BitTorrent have taken its place. A recent report from Sandvine just came out showing that 44% of North American traffic is peer-to-peer file sharing.   It's safe to say the original Napster has left its mark on the content acquisition world.

Dolby Volume, Where Are You?

I can't wait for products to come out with the new Dolby Volume technology.  My wife and I were able to take in a few movies on the tube over the weekend, and our remote control was getting quite a workout.   When our receiver switches sources from content played with Pro Logic to content played with Dolby Digital, there is a dramatic shift in the volume level.  I know I am not alone on this.  The problem of course spans to almost any consumer electronic device given the various ways different audio sources are encoded, but it all comes down to consumer experience.   No doubt it can be improved.

Enter Dolby Volume, a new technology coming soon from Dolby that should help address the problem.  The basic premise is that the technology measures and analyzes how humans perceive sound and is able to regulate a volume level across all types and sources of audio. So when you go from watching a DVD in 5.1 to a TV program in stereo to a movie in ProLogic, the sound level and quality will remain consistent.  Another cool component of the technology is that it will allow you to customize the range of low to high sounds that are heard.  Thus, if you are watching a program late at night, you can customize the experience to keep the voices clear, while the intermittent music is toned down. 

Is Internet TV On TVs Starting to See the Light?

These days, you can't open a digital media newsletter without reading about a newly launched Internet site trying to figure out how to finally take serious timeshare away from the TV. Usually these are me-too type sites but having finally spent some time on Hulu (the JV between News Corp and NBC Universal), I can finally see the "convergence" (sorry, I am tired of the word too, but it fits so well) of Internet and TV. Anyone who has gone to Hulu will be pulled in by the vast amount of TV and movie content in a very user friendly design that makes it very difficult to pull yourself away from the site. This is what a true On-Demand service needs to look like on the TV set.

The Comcast On-Demand service I have is adequate, but with so many categories and different types of content, a user can tend to get lost looking for content. Also, the depth of the content offering is pretty thin, at least when it comes to network TV programming. Now there is no doubt that this is not purely Comcast's fault since it takes two to tango and it's up to the networks to distribute their programming. But if broadcast networks are driving the Hulu model, we should be able to get the same level of content on our cable systems. Surely cable companies must be recognizing that a good chunk of their ad and subscription businesses are in jeopardy as more people view Internet content vs. the broadcast programming they are distributing.