2014 - First Year of the 4K TV Era

2014 is the first year of the 4K era, according to this 35-page report.

Four things have happened that make 2014 the first year that 4K will be broadly available:

1. new technologies
2. affordable 4K TV sets
3. increasing amount of 4K content
4. content distribution 

Unlike 3D, prospective and paying consumers are genuinely appreciating the superior quality and enhanced viewing experience that 4K has to offer.

This report examines a range of trends in 4K including 4K TV sets, content availability, technological developments and the impact on the broadband and pay TV industry.

Some extracts are available to download here
 
  "2014 - First Year of the 4K Era” contains re-edited articles about 4K that have been curated and sorted by topic from the last few months’ issues of The Online Reporter. The report shows how much momentum 4K has gathered and makes clear that we have entered the 4K Ultra High Definition era.

Presented in easy-to-navigate sections, this report studies aspects that make 2014 the year 4K will be widely available and accepted:

• Technologies that enable the widespread availability of 4K that have been developed. This includes:
• HEVC (H.265) compression/decompression that enables 4K to be broadcast and streamed using a reasonable amount of bandwidth. HEVC is not necessary for 4K but it makes distribution easier.
• Upscaling, which takes 1080p HD and makes it look like 4K. In side by side tests, consumers could rarely tell the difference.
• Affordable 4K TV sets that retailing for under $1,000 will be available this year from the US TV bestseller Vizio, plus Polaroid, TCL and Seiki. Others are expected to be launched during the year.
• 4K Content from all the studios, plus other content creators that are already shooting in 4K.
• Distribution of 4K video will be available from OTT services Netflix, Amazon and YouTube, plus pay TV services DirecTV, Comcast, studios such as Sony Pictures, and others. Some Comcast subscribers have been given access to 4K experimental feeds from this year’s Sochi Winter Olympics.
• 4K-enabled consumer electronics and software, such as 4K cameras, computer monitors and video editing software. GoPro has released 4K-capable cameras for consumers to use to record their personal video, which is priced around $500.

4K is not a parlor trick as some have called 3D. Just as they did with 1080p HD, viewers instantly see how much better 4K is — it is instantly and noticeable better. Not only are the resolution and colors better but it creates an experience of being there, which is why “immersive” is the word most frequently used to describe it.

Who should read "2014 - First Year of the 4K Era"? We have written this report for Pay-TV companies including Cable, Satellite and Telcos, Movie and TV Studios, TV networks, TV and Device Manufacturers, Makers of Set-Top Boxes, Home Networking Gear, Chipset Makers and the Infrastructure that delivers video to the home, Local TV Stations, Financial Analysts and Industry Consultants.

The pricing for the "2014 - First Year of the 4K Era" report is as follows: Number of readers Single reader license                   $495 License for 2-3 readers               $790 License for 4-5 readers               $1,085 License for 6-10 readers             $1,720 License for 11-25 readers            $2,350 For 26 or more readers, please call for quotation

To order, please complete this order form and return to paperboy@riderresearch.com

We will send you a copy (as an Acrobat file) upon receipt.

For more information, please contact Simon Thompson at simon@riderresearch.com 

or call (225) 769-7130  or  +44 (0)1280 820560


Table of Contents for the "2014 Is the First Year of the 4K Era" Report

INTRODUCTION 4K Is Not the Only UltraHD Standard

CONTENT FOR THE 4K SCREEN OTT Services Will Be First to Offer 4K Content Sony’s Services Offer a ‘Gold Standard’ in 4K Picture Broadcast Sports May Be Slower to Join the 4K Revolution 8K Is Already on the Horizon

4K & UHD TV SETS
There’s More to ‘UHD’ than Just Pixels

Pricing Wars Are Already Brutal 4K TV Set Makers Get Aggressive about Prices during Holiday Promotions TV Makers Announce 4K Sets at CES

HEVC AND OTHER 4K TECHNOLOGIES Cablecos, Satcos and Broadcasters Deliver 4K (and 8K) Consumers Need Faster Broadband to Stream 4K Digital Television Group, Dolby Want Improvements to 4K Specification Security for 4K to Be Toughest Hurdle for OTT Delivery Nagra Shows Off 4K-Centric User Interface at CES 8K and the Future

4K-ENABLED CONSUMER ELECTRONIC EQUIPMENT NanoTech Showcases $299 4K OTT Player at CES Other CE Makers that have Announced 4K Devices

4K FORECASTS & STATISTICS Forecast for the Future of 4K Looks Bright Analysts: 4K is Here to Stay

CONCLUSION 4K Ecosystem Will Be in Place in 5 Years and Will Be Mainstream in 10-15 Years

"Requiem for the Television" Report - How Tablets, OTT and Faster Broadband are Making Today's TV Unrecognizable

The newly published “Requiem for the Television: Tablets, OTT, Faster Broadband to make Today's TV Unrecognizable” report is an observation and forecast of the TV manufacturing market between 2014 and 2019.

It gauges the level of market decline and points to those will lead it, whilst exploring the existing clues – rising tablet sales, expanding OTT services and faster broadband speeds. The work also puts down some rough numbers to plot the order of magnitude of industry changes.

The report acts as a guide to those TV market players who may be intent on beefing up on marketing expense when in fact it should be R&D that needs the budget. Its aim is to divert readers from continual investment in past successes, when it is in fact future technologies that urgently beckon.

The findings in “Requiem for the Television” are structured around some “soft forecast” targets for the next five years. These include:

2013   US Pay TV operators introduce headless gateway spec for tablet TV

2013   US broadcasters agree to give spectrum to cellular

2014   Demand for larger and larger TV sets in the US

2014   TV shipments fall under 200m a year

2015   Tablet shipments overtake PC sales including laptops

2015   Telco Vectoring makes 4K OTT viable

2016   120 million WiFi Homespots promote OTT video delivery

2016   Tablet piracy rampant, new cpu based DRMs introduced

2017   eMBMS video delivery commonplace

2017   First run Movies go OTT

2018   TV shipments to 170 m

2018   Smart TV saturation, prices fall

2019   75% of TV viewed on tablets, PCs or phones

2019   Top end super tablets down to $250

Produced by Rethink Research in association with Rider Research, this 40 page report also considers the last major change in TV manufacturing. This was the rapid displacement of cathode ray tubes by flat screens from 2000 until today, also coinciding with the arrival of HD. Now we have to look forward to the disruption created by the arrival of 4K, and the market effect of HEVC, as well as the emergence of OTT and TV Everywhere services from Pay TV operators aware of new broadband capabilities.

“Requiem for the Television” also brings conclusions about the demise of over-the-air broadcasting and the rise of social networks, as well as the emergence of new UIs.

------------------------------------------

As studies of previous events in technology-driven industries have shown, major contractions appear usually at a time when disruptive innovations occur. A trigger of disruptive innovation is when something comes along that is half as good, but costs a tenth of the price. The tablet is just such a case in point. Today, we are increasingly witnessing tablets being used for television viewing.

At these points in technology history, there are structural changes in the sector eco-system and new market leaders emerge. The old rules no longer apply and some leaders fall by the wayside. Famous brand names disappear or at least go into reverse, while new names flourish.

The report shows that the old methods, of plotting existing dots to LCD TV manufacturer supplier data and extending the lines, no longer work. It describes the future market shape and points to those who will lead it.

The forecasts, observations and ideas in “Requiem for the Television” are essential reading for anyone that wants to know the future of the TV market in the next five to six years and who want to position themselves with the right product lines and the right investments.

------------------------------------------

We have written this report for Consumer Electronics manufacturers, Pay TV Operators, Broadcasters, all types of Network Operators, Telcos, Cablecos, Satellite and IPTV operators, and equipment and Software Suppliers to these companies, including Encoder Manufacturers, DRM specialists, Handset Makers and Chip Designers. The report is targeted at management levels for business case analysis and forecasting.

The pricing for the “Requiem for the Television: Tablets, OTT, Faster Broadband to make Today's TV Unrecognizable” report is as follows:

Number of readers 

Single reader license                   $895

License for 2-3 readers               $1,390

License for 4-5 readers               $1,565

License for 6-10 readers              $2,400

License for 11-25 readers            $3,750

---------------------------------

Free extracts from the report are available here.

If you would like to order the report, please download the orderform here.

 

Table of Contents for 

The “Requiem for the Television: Tablets, OTT, Faster Broadband to make Today's TV Unrecognizable”

The Rethink Difference—and Method     4

TV Device Markets—The new Normal     6

The Collapse of the TV Industry—Timeline       8

Executive Summary                    11

The end of the line for LCD TVs   15

Samsung driving OLED       15

Why OLED?              16

OLED great match for “full HD”   18

LCD decline gathers pace            21

The major disruption of Chromecast               24

The minor disruption of Smart TVs        25

Plasma’s decline and fall 27

Composite panels will take over from monolithic screens    28

What about 3D?       29

3D revolution will only come with holographic          30

Viewing switches to tablets         33

Tablets swing to OLED       35

All screens will converge anyway          36

The WiFi dimension          39

What next after OLED?      41

Second screen can prop big telly sales   43

Conclusion              45

How to fix the boot problem for an old Acer Aspire running Windows XP - AS1_BIOS_3309.zip

For anyone with an old Acer Aspire running Windows XP. There are still  loads of references and help pages on the web but they all point to the  official Acer support page which looks like it has now been closed down.

These are some notes I copied when I first had the problem a few years ago and would like to share them with any fellow sufferer now:

------------------------------------------------------------­------
Download & Extract AS1_BIOS_3309.zip (used to be from : http://support.acer.com/... now from by Box.com account

1)  Rename the Bios name from 3309.fd to zg5ia32.fd.
2)  Copy zg5ia32.fd and Flashit.exe to a USB flash drive.

Start the restoration process

A. Plug the AC Adapter into the unit.
B. Insert the USB flash drive into a USB port.
C. Press and Hold down the Fn and the Esc keys together.
D. Keep these keys held down and press power.
E. When the unit's power light comes on release the Fn and Esc keys.
F. After the keys have been released the power light will start to blink.
G. Let the unit run and after approximately 1-7 minutes, the unit should reboot.
H. Video should now be restored
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hope this helps and good luck.

Fredio Streams ‘Free TV’ to Your Smart TV

From The Online Reporter   

-Content From PBS, ABC, Lifetime Bravo and Others,
-Will Be Offered on LG Smart TVs
-Not Another YouTube  

Fredio, the smart TV app that aggregates TV video available online and serves it to the living room with an easy IR-remote friendly interface, makes it easy for consumers to find browser-based Web content without a keyboard or a browser.  

Fredio’s tag line is “Free TV for your smart TV,” and the company Web site says it “helps smart TVs to finally deliver on their promise by streaming tens of thousands of hours of premium videos from broadcast TV websites.”  

“Fredio is a specialized video search engine for connected TVs,” Bill Loesch, founder and CEO, told The Online Reporter. “It’s actually not unlike things available on a PC already, such as Sidereel, Flickr, TV.com – that crawl the Web for professional content that’s available on broadcaster sites.”  

The app isn’t out of the gate yet, but Loesch said he’d be announcing smart TV partners in a number of weeks, with LG up first. The app will also be available on Blu-ray players.  

Fredio aggregates content from a number of broadcasters and networks, such as PBS, ABC, Lifetime, TLC, Bravo and USA. When users select a “channel,” the app takes them directly to the Web site’s video. Loesch said Fredio has indexed around 6,000 hours of content from 15 different network sites.  

Fredio has indexed 6,000 hours of content so far.

“We’re trying to index professionally produced content, we’re not trying to be another YouTube, the world doesn’t need that,” he said. “We’re constantly indexing these sites; we expect the list to keep expanding.”  

The content is a mix of full episodes that have previously aired on TV, clips of shows and Web-only content, both scripted and non-scripted. “We’re not making any differentiation between Web-only content and broadcast,” Loesch said, but he added that the app will increasingly include content that’s Web only, as more and more online video being made is premium. 

TV Screen Is Just a Viewing Device

We asked Loesch when and why consumers would want to watch a broadcaster’s online content on their TVs when they could just as easily watch the linear channel. He answered that the TV screen is really just a viewing platform.  

Loesch said the online content is very popular. “There’s a huge amount of traffic going to these sites, from PCs and tablets,” he said. Loesch estimated there were 125 million unique visitors to the top 60 broadcasters’ Web sites every month. “There’s a lot of traffic going to these sites to watch the video.”  

While most, if not all, of that traffic is on tablets and PCs, Loesch said consumers will want to access that content on the bigger viewing device as well. “If they’re going there to watch it on the PCs, why wouldn’t they watch it on their connected TV,” he said. “Internet connected TVs are effectively like iPads and PCs now. They have a browser. Technically, there’s really no difference,” except in screen size.  

Fredio is merely connecting the user to...

For the complete article go to www.onlinereporter.com

To see 3 free editions of The Online Reporter, the weekly source for competitive intelligence about digital content, online entertainment services, mobile media and wireless networks, visit http://onlinereporter.com/trial-subscription/

Bridging the Fiber-Coax Gap in MDUs

From The Online Reporter   

- One Ethernet Network from Central Office to Residence
- Great Appeal Where There Are Lots of MDUs, Like China  

Qualcomm Atheros (QCA) is one of a number of companies that are working under the oversight of the IEEE to develop a technology called 802.3bn, also called EPoC for EPON-over-Coax. It melds fiber and EoC into one logical network by, in effect, making coax emulate fiber. In that way, one network scheme will be used from the cableco’s central office to the residence, not two as is currently required. An IEEE task force has been set up to develop the technology standard.  

EPoC will provide speeds of at least 1 Gbps, but most importantly operate as one and the same network over both fiber and coax, the wireline architecture that is becoming the norm in China. QCA’s Alex Liu, who has been a participant in the task force, expects the standard to be completed before the end of 2014, which in real terms may mean 2015 and deployments in 2016.  
EPoC will do very well, he said, outside the States but, he predicted, will not replace the installed base of DOCSIS in the US because EPoC will be used where there are many MDUs such as in Asia. 

The IEEE approved 802.3bn’s PAR last August so its development is underway. Broadcom’s Mark Laubach is acting chair of the 802.3bn task force. The technology has attracted wide attention. 

Representatives from these companies attended the December 18, 2012 meeting:
Arris (equipment)
Aurora Networks (equipment)
Brighthouse Networks (cableco)
Broadcom (chipmaker)
Comcast (cableco)
Cox (cableco)
Excentis (testing and consulting)
Intel (chipmaker)
Qualcomm (chipmaker)
Rogers Cable (cableco)
ST Micro (chipmaker)
Titan Photonics (equipment)  

Please note the number of cablecos (4), chip and box makers (7) and especially the absence of telcos.  
Other 802.3bn task force participants are supporters are:
Alcatel-Lucent
Aurora Networks
Cogeco Cable
CableLabs
Dell
Fiberhome Telecommunication
Won Technologies
Harmonic
HP
High Speed Design
Huawei
Neophotonics
PMC-Sierra
Sumitomo Electric Industries
Technical Working Committee of China Radio &  TV Association (SARFT)
Wuhan Yangtze Optical Technologies
ZTE  


According to the task force, the development of 802.3bn is based on these factors: 

 - The success of DOCSIS in providing for the growing demand for faster broadband speeds and the need to look beyond that so cablecos can “future-proof” their existing coaxial infrastructure to provide even greater speeds.  

 - The continued demand for cablecos’ broadband capacity and increasing consumer consumption of broadband-based IP services for residential and, increasingly, business services.  

 - Worldwide interest and support from cablecos, system vendors, chipmakers and component manufacturers  
It said the goal of the project is to optimize the cost balance between the network infrastructure components and attached stations in the cable network. It wants the.... 



For the complete article go to www.onlinereporter.com

To see 3 free editions of The Online Reporter, the weekly source for competitive intelligence about digital content, online entertainment services, mobile media and wireless networks, visit http://onlinereporter.com/trial-subscription/

Qualcomm Atheros Charging Ahead Like a Bull in China

From The Online Reporter   


- 2/3rds of Provincial Cablecos Using Its EoC Technology
- China Developing a New C-HomePlug AV Standard

The Chinese government has set a goal to provide 30 Mbps to every residence.

Qualcomm Atheros (QCA) has continued to maintain its leading market share in providing technology for Building Area Networks (BAN) over rivals Broadcom and Entropic, according to Alex Liu, the company’s staff manager of product marketing. He said that of the 30 or so Chinese provincial cablecos that are currently deploying, about two-thirds have opted for QCA’s IEEE 1901 compliant HomePlug AV-based EoC version.
QCA’s EoC chips are in the gear that various Chinese equipment makers produce for the cable TV industry.
We last talked to Liu about the matter in December 2011, as reported in the article “Qualcomm Atheros Lands 10 Major Chinese Cablecos.”

The technology the three chipmakers are selling is called EoC for Ethernet-over-Coax, but each has a different implementation. QCA’s EoC technology is based on HomePlug, but calling it HomePlug incorrectly sounds as if the electrical power lines are involved, and they are not. It’s strictly coax from a fiber termination point in the basement of or just outside an MDU to a gateway or set-top box in the residence.

Liu also said QCA is working with others on a new industry next-generation standard called 802.3bn that will treat a combination fiber-coax network as a single network.

Taking a global view of coax as compared to twisted-pair copper telephone wires, Liu said that telcos’ copper wires connect between 1.2 and 1.3 billion residences to networks. Coax has only about half as many:
Coax is a more efficient conductor of data, Liu said. It has 1 Ghz of capacity of usable spectrum, whereas copper telephone wires have only 30 megahertz, a 30 times difference. The total global capacity of coax, even with only half as many homes as copper, is 15 times greater. In an ideal world, every residence would have a fiber connection, but that is unlikely to happen, he said, because of the large installed base of copper and coax plus the cost of building all-fiber networks. However, he said, whenever a new network is built, it should be built with fiber.

The end result, Liu said, is that coax is “a rich spectral resource” that is still “under-utilized.”

However, in the US over half the homes with broadband have coax-based DOCSIS. He said where there is a need for broadband speeds in excess of 10 Mbps, then coax or fiber are needed. (That’s because telcos have not yet begun deploying VDSL2 Vectoring with potential speeds of up to 100 Mbps.) Even so, coax still has lots of upside, he said, because DOCSIS currently uses less than 200 Mhz of coax’s 1 Ghz capacity.

According to Liu, EoC in general is a technology that is better suited to the network topology that exists in China — fiber to the multiple dwelling unit (MDU) and coax that runs from the fiber’s termination point in or immediately outside the MDU to each residence.

Liu said that QCA’s BAN technology is a low-cost and highly effective alternative to the DOCSIS technology that US and European cablecos use for broadband, he said.  

China Developing New C-Home Plug AV Standard

China is developing a new open standard called C-Home Plug AV (CHPAV) that is expected to be completed in a few months. QCA’s HomePlug AV-based EoC will, of course, comply. However, because it’s open, other companies could and no doubt will develop products that meet CHPAV requirements. Of course, QCA believes it’s in a strong position in the CHPAV market.

Liu said that as planned, the fragmented Chinese cablecos are slowly consolidating and that their deployment of two-way networks is proceeding apace.
Liu expects that in 2013 competitors such as Broadcom will launch a major counter offensive, but that QCA will be able to fight off the effort because the rival CDOCSIS-based EoC overshoots the majority of the market need. Even if Broadcom strips out “bells and whistles,” he said, it will still be priced higher than QCA’s offering. It’ll have the same kinds of problems that Intel has making low-cost, low-power chips to compete against ARM. C-DOCSIS has as much or more capability than the EoC version of HomePlug, he said, but it is also priced accordingly.  

Looking Beyond China

QCA is already looking beyond China and has trials for STBs with.....


For the complete article go to www.onlinereporter.com

To see 3 free editions of The Online Reporter, the weekly source for competitive intelligence about digital content, online entertainment services, mobile media and wireless networks, visit http://onlinereporter.com/trial-subscription/

REDRAY 4K Player Challenges Blu-ray

From The Online Reporter   


- New Odemax Network Will Distribute 4K Direct to Homes & Theaters
- No Discs — Just Streaming
- Will Increase Demand for Faster Broadband

After studying the 4K matter before and during CES, it seemed to us that OTT services would stream 4K shows to homes before the pay TV services could pipe it over their networks and before the Blu-ray crowd could add it to their standard. Look at what has popped up! An OTT service called Odemax will in March start delivering 4K movies over the Internet to homes with a 4K player made by 4K camera maker RED.  

RED, the company whose cameras were used by Peter Jackson to film “The Hobbit”, will soon start shipping a “REDRAY Player” that plays 4K videos — both the UHD version and the digital cinema version — with the aim of becoming the Blu-ray of 4K. The 4K content comes from a built-in 1TB hard drive that receives it from a new 4K OTT streaming service called Odemax, by FTTP from a secure and licensed site, from an external hard drive or from a network attached storage (NAS) device via an Ethernet connector. 

RED says studios already have its RED cameras whose output can be put into 4K. The list of films that have been shot with RED’s cameras are at: http://www.red.com/shot-on-red/cinema  

RED was showing 4K content using the REDRAY player connected to an 84-inch Toshiba 4K TV set in the Toshiba booth at CES. In the middle of myriad booths with 4K TV sets at CES, the overwhelming question was “Where’s the 4K content?” RED said the REDRAY player answers that question and that it answers it now. (Lest we forget, Netflix was streaming UHD content to a Samsung TV at CES.)  

Alphabet & Numerical Soup

High Efficiency Video Coding: HEVC or 4k or H.265
The current compression technology: H.264

 Hello REDRAY! Bye Bye Blu-ray?  

REDRAY boxes will be available in March. See: http://www.red.com/store/products/redray-player  

Two Catches
 

There are two catches:
- The TV must be 4K-ready and they are still pricey.
- The REDRAY player sells for $1,450, which should however not be a burden for someone that has purchased a 4K TV set.  

 Wikipedia Comparison Chart of Resolutions 

The REDRAY player has six HDMI ports, one of which supports a 4K TV set. The box also supports 3D videos and 7.1 surround sound. The 1TB hard disk holds about 100 hours of 4K content. Streams from the Internet require a broadband connection that’s faster than 25 Mbps, which telcos with all-fiber broadband and most cablecos are already offering. Slower streams can be cached to the HD for later viewing.  

Multi-Source: Internal Hard Disk, External Drive, Internet via Ethernet or Wi-Fi  

There’s a conventional remote and a free app for iPads and iPhones. It uses REDCrypt digital media encryption and ODEMAX digital rights management. It plays the RED-owned .RED video files in 4K and .MP4 files in 1080p and 720p. It supports .RED for up to 7.1 channels and .MP4 for stereo.  

Sets up Odemax Distribution Network

 

RED offers a complete 4K ecosystem: cameras, Internet delivery and an in-home REDRAY player that can both store and receive 4K videos. 

RED Started by Making 4K Cameras for the Studios 

 

RED, in partnership with a new venture called Odemax that Jon Farhat manages, is setting up a 4K distribution system that challenges the studios’ traditional distribution networks by going direct to consumers and to theaters. It streams via the Net to REDRAY players in the home and to its CRIMSON Projection systems in theaters.  

See: http://odemax.com/information.html  

Odemax says it’s setting up a Web site for content owners and distributors that will allow them to upload, promote, control and discuss their 4K content. It said 4K content can be encoded with its free Redcine X Pro software with a $20 Redray encode plug-in for PCs and Macs. The encoded content can only be played on REDRAY players.  

Odemax provides trailer delivery — both online and theatrical — analytics and marketing tools. It gets a cut of the revenue.  

There’s an interview with RED co-founder Ted Schilowitz at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjrbowDN1HA  
An interview with Peter Jackson who directed “The Hobbit” is at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-VeXLZTm24  

Talking with RED’s Workforce Wizard

 

Stuart English, who is RED’s Workflow Wizard (employees at RED have thought-provoking titles) told The Online Reporter that there are primarily two 4K frame sizes:  

4K Formats	Resolution	Pixels
UHD for TV sets	3840 × 2160	8,294,400
Digital Cinema for theaters	4096 × 2160	8,847,360

RED’s cameras record in much higher resolution — in the 5K range — and the studios’ post production scales the frame size for the intended audience — TV sets, cinema or Blu-ray. The REDRAY box plays both 4K videos and also scales the resolution to the TV set to which it’s connected. 

The studio also encodes (compresses) the video into a DRM-protected .RED file, which Odemax streams to the REDRAY player, which decodes (decompresses) for playback on the TV set. The encoding/decoding is not done with an industry standard such as HEVC, but is instead RED’s proprietary compression technology. 

There is an ASIC chip in the REDPLAYER that decodes in real time. However, the encoding is done by the studio on Macs and PCs with a $20 add-on piece of hardware RED supplies. That file goes to Odemax for distributing.  
O
demax streams to the hard drive in the REDRAY player where it’s cached so that the viewer can start watching as soon as a sufficient amount has been received. For very slow broadband, it may need to receive most or even all of the video before it’s viewable.  

English points out that studios and TV networks have finished copies of the videos of show before they are made available for viewing.  

How else could Apple get to download episodes of “Downton Abbey” before they are shown the next night on TV. English said that studios and TV networks could pre-download shows to the REDRAY player before their initial viewing time. The DRM would have a clock that allowed them to be viewed only on or after their scheduled release date and time.  

Asked how RED happened to think of making a REDPLAYER for use in the home, English said the company wants to build a RED infrastructure and it saw a market. He listed the probable purchasers of the REDRAY player: businesses that want to communicate with employees and customers, education, medical, digital signage and, of course, consumers that want high-quality video entertainment in the home.
  
Asked about which films Odemax will have at launch in March, English did not provide any. He said it’s a “chicken and eggs” kind of thing. Word is only now getting to the studios about the newly launched REDPLAYER and Odemax OTT service. He expects that independent studios will be among the first to sign up because their path to market now is expensive and difficult. With Odemax, studios can with one click of a mouse make their content available to every home that has a REDRAY player.  

We asked whether RED would license its REDRAY technology to makers of other smart TV adapters like Roku or Apple. English would only say that RED wants to build a global RED infrastructure.  

We got the same answer when we asked if RED would license its technology to another OTT service such as Walmart’s Vudu or iTunes, both of which boast of their “superior” video and audio quality.  

Asked about the pricing of movies and TV shows on the REDRAY player, English said that’s something the studios will have to decide. It could be that some will want to sell shows at a premium over the Blu-ray pricing, say $50 and up, or whether they want to make the decision to purchase a no-brainer at something like $10.  
English said there is a very real ....

For the complete article go to www.onlinereporter.com

To see 3 free editions of The Online Reporter, the weekly source for competitive intelligence about digital content, online entertainment services, mobile media and wireless networks, visit http://onlinereporter.com/trial-subscription/