The Times: Tech column - Home media centres/Patent wars
By David Rowan
Last week, Microsoft slipped out an announcement that might just change the face of home entertainment. Next winter, computers will go on sale loaded with a new version of Windows XP software that will transform them into nothing less than digital entertainment centres.
For years we have heard breathless predictions of the all-in-one "media hub" dominating the living room, but if Microsoft gets it right, the new XP Media Centre will make it a reality: a single box that lets you surf the web, listen to music, watch DVDs, organise photos and watch and record television programmes. And, unlike a conventional PC, this one comes with a remotecontrol unit that lets you flick from your sofa between a Windows interface and a standard TV picture. If his Xbox games console let Bill Gates slip into our leisure time, the Media Centre marks his attempt to own it outright.
Microsoft is not the only company betting on our appetite for "converged" home entertainment. Last January, the big hit at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas was a sleek black box known as the Moxi Media Centre. Billed as "the future of home entertainment", the unit combines a digital satellite TV receiver, a tapeless video recorder, a DVD player, a stereo and a fast cable modem. "It takes all your digital media, no matter where it comes from, and brings it not only to your PC but also your TV and audio system," the blurb explained. "You don't need a CD player any more, or a DVD player."
But the big question is whether we actually want all our home entertainment supplied through a central box. These companies, remember, need to keep inventing new consumer needs in a stagnating tech market. And not all analysts are convinced that a single home-media centre is the answer.
At the Henley Centre, Andrew Curry, a media specialist, recalls a decade of predictions about tomorrow's "networked home", based on a central machine. "Yet the fastest-selling consumer box today is the DVD player, which performs one function and is cheap and comprehensible," he says.
Last year, the Henley Centre asked 4,000 people about how they consume media. "Our research suggests that they make their decisions separately and are not interested in these integrated consumer boxes," Curry says. "They might decide to listen to music, and go to one part of the house to fulfil that need. The TV gravitates to the 'warm' rooms - the front room, living room and master bedroom - while the internet tends to go in the spare bedroom and other 'cold' areas. Products that have tried to bring the net together with the TV have failed dismally, from Microsoft's WebTV to OnDigital's On-Net box. For each task, people have a different space in their heads."
Roger Silverstone, professor of media and communications at the LSE, is equally dubious. "The history of consumer electronics is littered with 'convergent' ideas that have simply fallen over," he says.
Once we have learnt to use a device in a certain way - a television, say - we resist innovations that alter that relationship. "You are locked into certain habits - we call it your 'technological concrete'. Besides, households are conservative. The politics of the family, relationships between gender, control of the space - all of these things affect powerfully how individual pieces of media will be used. The household's first desire is to ensure that anything new that comes in does not alter the structure."
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Remember BT's claim to own the patent to hypertext linking? Now an obscure Texan company has launched an equally unfathomable claim to royalties on the transmission of compressed digital images. Forgent Networks is claiming fees whenever a JPEG image is sent electronically, based on a 1986 US patent claim filed by a company that it acquired five years ago. It has even, apparently, persuaded Sony to pay $15 million, and now claims to be in discussions with makers of "digital still cameras, printers, scanners and other products".
Before it "discovered" the value of its patent, nobody had heard of Forgent Networks - it makes videoconferencing software - but now a global movement is growing to challenge its assault on what is a dominant standard.
(The Times, July 24 2002)
Last week, Microsoft slipped out an announcement that might just change the face of home entertainment. Next winter, computers will go on sale loaded with a new version of Windows XP software that will transform them into nothing less than digital entertainment centres.
For years we have heard breathless predictions of the all-in-one "media hub" dominating the living room, but if Microsoft gets it right, the new XP Media Centre will make it a reality: a single box that lets you surf the web, listen to music, watch DVDs, organise photos and watch and record television programmes. And, unlike a conventional PC, this one comes with a remotecontrol unit that lets you flick from your sofa between a Windows interface and a standard TV picture. If his Xbox games console let Bill Gates slip into our leisure time, the Media Centre marks his attempt to own it outright.
Microsoft is not the only company betting on our appetite for "converged" home entertainment. Last January, the big hit at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas was a sleek black box known as the Moxi Media Centre. Billed as "the future of home entertainment", the unit combines a digital satellite TV receiver, a tapeless video recorder, a DVD player, a stereo and a fast cable modem. "It takes all your digital media, no matter where it comes from, and brings it not only to your PC but also your TV and audio system," the blurb explained. "You don't need a CD player any more, or a DVD player."
But the big question is whether we actually want all our home entertainment supplied through a central box. These companies, remember, need to keep inventing new consumer needs in a stagnating tech market. And not all analysts are convinced that a single home-media centre is the answer.
At the Henley Centre, Andrew Curry, a media specialist, recalls a decade of predictions about tomorrow's "networked home", based on a central machine. "Yet the fastest-selling consumer box today is the DVD player, which performs one function and is cheap and comprehensible," he says.
Last year, the Henley Centre asked 4,000 people about how they consume media. "Our research suggests that they make their decisions separately and are not interested in these integrated consumer boxes," Curry says. "They might decide to listen to music, and go to one part of the house to fulfil that need. The TV gravitates to the 'warm' rooms - the front room, living room and master bedroom - while the internet tends to go in the spare bedroom and other 'cold' areas. Products that have tried to bring the net together with the TV have failed dismally, from Microsoft's WebTV to OnDigital's On-Net box. For each task, people have a different space in their heads."
Roger Silverstone, professor of media and communications at the LSE, is equally dubious. "The history of consumer electronics is littered with 'convergent' ideas that have simply fallen over," he says.
Once we have learnt to use a device in a certain way - a television, say - we resist innovations that alter that relationship. "You are locked into certain habits - we call it your 'technological concrete'. Besides, households are conservative. The politics of the family, relationships between gender, control of the space - all of these things affect powerfully how individual pieces of media will be used. The household's first desire is to ensure that anything new that comes in does not alter the structure."
++++
Remember BT's claim to own the patent to hypertext linking? Now an obscure Texan company has launched an equally unfathomable claim to royalties on the transmission of compressed digital images. Forgent Networks is claiming fees whenever a JPEG image is sent electronically, based on a 1986 US patent claim filed by a company that it acquired five years ago. It has even, apparently, persuaded Sony to pay $15 million, and now claims to be in discussions with makers of "digital still cameras, printers, scanners and other products".
Before it "discovered" the value of its patent, nobody had heard of Forgent Networks - it makes videoconferencing software - but now a global movement is growing to challenge its assault on what is a dominant standard.
(The Times, July 24 2002)
posted by David Rowan at Wednesday, July 24, 2002
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