Really Rocket Science

Very interesting twist to the upcoming spectrum auctions. Breaking story via Multichannel News:

DirecTV and EchoStar Communications formed an alliance with Google, Intel, Yahoo and Skype in support of a national licensing plan for a pending federal spectrum auction expected to take in at least $10 billion, according to draft of the plan obtained by Multichannel News Tuesday. The formation of the alliance doesn’t mean that the companies are going to bid together in the auction, which, by law, has to begin by Jan. 28, 2008. Instead, each alliance member has an interest in seeing that the Federal Communications Commission permits bidders to aggregate enough licenses to cover substantially all of the United States. The 60 megahertz of spectrum up for auction is returning to the FCC as a result of TV broadcasters’ transition to digital-only transmission. Broadcasters won’t require the same amount of bandwidth in total because digital signals are spectrally more efficient than analog airwaves.

Every full-power TV station is required to terminate analog TV service no later than Feb. 17, 2009. The analog cutoff would also allow public-safety entities to obtain 24 MHz of former analog-TV spectrum.

 

Sirius CEO Karmazin went up The Hill last week where he used the argument that satellite radio competes with not only over-the-air AM/FM radio, but also Internet radio and iPods. Well, it looks like the Internet radio folks are bracing for a fight. Check this from Wired:

Royalty Hike Panics Webcasters

Internet radio companies big and small are revving up for a fight with the Copyright Royalty Board that could lead to the halls of Congress and — some fear — the end of streaming music stations in the United States.

The panicked preparation follows last Friday’s buzz-killing bombshell: As 50 million or so online radio listeners geared up for their weekends, the board released new royalty rates representing a potential tenfold increase webcasters would have to pay out.

In the old, percentage-based fee system, webcasters paid SoundExchange — the Recording Industry Association of America-associated organization that pushed the Copyright Royalty Board to adopt the new rates — between 6 percent and 12 percent of their revenue, depending on audience reach. The new system charges all webcasters a flat fee per song per listener; for instance, in 2007, streaming companies would owe $0.0011 per song per listener (rates change based on year).

That amount may not sound like much, but it adds up quickly. Consider, for instance, AOL Music, with its average of 210,694 listeners for November 2006. According to calculations made by the Radio and Internet Newsletter, or RAIN, AOL retroactively owes about $1.65 million in sound-recording royalties for that month alone (and that doesn’t include songwriting royalties). By the end of this year, according to RAIN, the company could owe roughly $20 million — unless the rates are overturned by the board or by Congress, which is still a possibility.

Larger services that offer thousands of channels, such as the free Pandora, are also facing a huge spike in royalty costs. Kurt Hanson, publisher of RAIN and CEO of AccuRadio, went so far as to speculate that Pandora, which is based in the United States, could "disappear" as a result of the new rates. Overseas competitors like Last.fm, which is based in London and removed from the board’s restrictions, could easily claim Pandora’s market share. If Pandora has to pay the annual $500 minimum for each channel, Hanson said, its sound-recording royalty bill for 2006 alone would be capped at about $2 billion (based on the service’s 300 million registered users, each of whom gets to create up to 100 unique channels).

"The rates are disastrous," says Joe Kennedy, CEO of Pandora. "I’m not aware of any internet radio service that believes it can sustain a business at the rates set by this decision."

The situation for smaller webcasters isn’t any better. And for the likes of Bill Goldsmith, who runs Radio Paradise, it’s far worse: "This royalty structure would wipe out an entire class of business, small independent webcasters such as myself and my wife. Our obligation under this rate structure would be equal to over 125 percent of our total income."

The smallest webcasters, who use services such as Live365 for their shows, will likely vanish as well unless the rates are overturned. RAIN pegs Live365’s royalty obligation for 2006 at approximately $4.2 million — and that’s not counting the minimum $500 it could owe annually for thousands of its channels. Again, that’s in addition to other royalty fees. (The site, like most others, already pays songwriter royalties to performing rights organizations BMI, ASCAP and SESAC.)

Live365 did not respond to e-mail and phone queries from Wired News in time for publication, and Yahoo declined to comment. SoundExchange also failed to respond.

Hanson, who testified at the hearings on behalf of small webcasters, said he doesn’t "think the people actually running the record labels want to see internet radio shut down," but that SoundExchange’s lawyers had planned "an aggressive, win-all-you-can battle in Washington. I think they were more successful than they expected to be."

Pandora’s Joe Kennedy believes the board’s decision will not stand — it’s simply too extreme. He wrote to Wired News, "The only reason the (online streaming) services are not shutting down today is the belief that rationality will ultimately prevail here, either through appeal or congressional intervention." (A third option, according to Hanson, is that SoundExchange could choose to continue licensing music as a share of revenue, as it did before the Copyright Royalty Board decision.)

Only webcasters that were involved in the original Copyright Royalty Board decision-making process (Yahoo, AOL, Live365 and a few smaller webcasters including Radioio, Ultimate80s and Accuradio) will be able to file an appeal, and they have 15 days to do so.

The House Commerce Committee’s telecommunications subcommittee is holding a hearing on March 7 to hear testimony on the current and future radio industry. Witnesses will include Mel Karmazin from Sirius, Peter Smith from broadcaster Greater Media and Bob Kimball from RealNetworks.

If the new rates stick, online music fans may come to expect far less innovation, variety and quality when it comes to internet radio. Some industry experts fear that even more users could be driven to illicit services that pay no royalties or those that operate from other countries.

To the left: An image of a February 25 eclipse taken from NASA’s STEREO-B satellite.

Back in October, we wrote about the successful launch of of NASA’s STEREO mission. (Click here for video of the Delta II launch.)

The STEREO (Solar TErrestrial RElations Observatory) Mission uses stereoscopic 3D vision to construct a complete picture of the sun and the nature of solar flares. Among the uses of such knowledge: protecting future astronauts from the dangerous effects of solar flares and providing better space forecasting.

The Washington Post now gives us an update on STEREO’s progress: 

The effort to improve space weather capabilities took a major step forward last week with the transmission of never-before-seen images of a solar eruption traveling the 93 million miles from the sun to Earth.

Sent back by the twin satellites of NASA’s newly launched Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO), the video is part of an ambitious new effort to learn more about massive electromagnetic storms on the sun, and the dynamics and characteristics of their eruptions. The sun is a huge furnace of nuclear fusion, in constant turmoil with flares, eruptions, convections and the release of lower-energy solar winds.

The "fronts" produced by coronal mass ejections, as the biggest eruptions are called, are the prime movers of space weather in Earth’s neighborhood, and understanding them better is essential to space weather forecasting.

"With STEREO, we can track the front from the sun all the way to Earth and forecast its arrival within a couple hours," said Russell Howard, principal investigator for STEREO’s most cutting-edge instrument, which will allow researchers to observe the movements of solar eruptions in three dimensions. "The new views from STEREO are like having a curtain lift from our eyes — they are extraordinarily instructive."

They are also pretty amazing, as this video animation taken from STEREO images shows. 

The Washington Post continues: 

STEREO cost NASA and its European partners about $600 million to build and is expected to operate for at least two years. It has already detected somewhat surprising characteristics of the solar eruptions. Researchers have, for instance, located "hot spots" within a solar eruption as it speeds from the sun, and they have seen loops and arcs formed from the hot plasma. They have also begun to measure the velocity of the eruptions, which gradually slow as they collide with other solar matter moving far more slowly in the solar winds.

Like most researchers, STEREO team members say they are looking for solar surprises as much as confirmation of existing hypotheses. The detailed study of space weather is in its infancy, they said, and the opportunity for discovery is vast.

We’ll keep you updated on STEREO’s discoveries as they are reported; in the interem, be sure to check out the STEREO mission homepage for the latest developments. 

While the technology has been talked about for years, many experts are positioning 2007 as the year that digital movies and satellite distribution of box-office blockbusters take flight. Working in conjunction with Warner Bros. Entertainment and Universal Pictures, Digital Cinema Implementation Partners (made up of big name theater companies AMC, Cinemark and Regal) is working to "use satellite and broadband delivery systems to beam digital films directly to theaters, rather than have them copied onto hard drives and delivered by hand, as they usually are now."

While the theater chains and studios are looking at the technology as a great way to decrease the likelihood of piracy (the theory being that encrypted satellite transmissions would mean fewer hands are on the prints), it could also mean improved access to popular films and big screen showings of smaller films that struggle for an audience large enough to usually get them. As the AP article about the technology notes that satelite distribution,

"would give U.S. theater operators the flexibility to put a popular movie on an extra screen as quickly as the demand arises… At the same time, theater operators could stop showing a surprisingly unpopular film and even book an art-house film with a small but devoted audience for a day or two."

While Variety and Hollywood are explicitly concerned with the digital cinema’s implications for the US market, the Hindustan Times points out that the technology may be even more welcome throughout the developing world where, although movie theaters are plentiful (with over 12,500 movie houses throughout India alone), the relatively small number of "prints" (sometimes only 500) available of any given film arbitrarily limits distribution.

Real rockets scientists are obsessed with launches. There’s something about cylindrical metal objects flying through the sky that captures our imagination.

Beer captures our imagination, too, which is why today’s DIY Friday combines two great obsessions into one lazy invention: the Robotic Beer Launching Refridgerator!

John W. Cornwell, a student at Duke University, invented this contraption — which we are certain history will rank alongside the printing press and the remote control for its impact in changing our lives for the better. He writes: 

Have you ever gotten up off the couch to get a beer for the umpteenth time and thought, "What if instead of ME going to get the BEER, the BEER came to ME???" Well, that was how I first conceived of the beer launching fridge. About 3 months and several hundred dollars later I have a fully automated, remote controlled, catapulting, man-pit approved, beer launching mini-fridge. It holds 10 beers in its magazine with 14 more in reserve to store a full case. It is controlled by a keyless entry system. Pressing unlock will start the catapult rotating and when it is aiming at your target, pressing unlock again will stop it. Then the lock button can be pressed to launch a beer in the selected direction….

To everybody who is asking about price, the BLF took me at least a hundred hours to build, as well as several hundred dollars worth of parts. I would put the price at about $2500 to build ONE.

The photos posted on Cornwell’s website reveal pure engineering genius, though for a while we puzzled why the the "magazine" only holds 10 cans of beer when they are sold in 12 packs.

The answer, of course, is that you and your buddy drink one while you load the fridge with beer.

The latest image from Cassini of Saturn’s rings is a sight to behold:

More images here. 

Very cute, little "Wee TV" via Reuters: 

Verizon Wireless kicks off mobile phone TV

By Sinead Carew

NEW YORK, March 1 (Reuters) – Verizon Wireless, the second-biggest U.S. mobile phone provider, said it launched the country’s first commercial mobile television service in 20 states with full-length programs and picture quality similar to regular TV.

The venture of Verizon Communications Inc. <VZ.N> and Vodafone Group Plc <VOD.L> said on Thursday it is charging $15 a month for the service, which was developed by Qualcomm Inc. <QCOM.O> unit MediaFlo and includes eight channels broadcasting full-length TV shows to phones 24 hours a day.

Verizon Wireless and its rivals have been pushing services such as video and music to boost revenue as the price falls for traditional mobile phone calls.

But mobile video services have been slow to take off due to high prices and poor quality compared with television at home.

The picture quality of the new service will be on a par with home TV and roughly twice as clear as Verizon Wireless’s existing Vcast video service, spokesman Jeffrey Nelson said.

Mobile video services, first launched in the U.S. in 2004, have only about 7 million customers out of about 232 million mobile subscriptions, according to Ovum analyst Roger Entner, who said that higher-quality pictures could change that.

"I think the impact in the beginning will be modest," since Verizon is rolling out the service gradually, said Entner. But he estimated that MediaFlo users could increase to 20 million to 30 million people within about seven years.

CINGULAR TO FOLLOW

AT&T Inc.’s <T.N> Cingular Wireless, the biggest U.S. mobile service in terms of subscribers, has said it plans to launch MediaFlo to its customers later in the year.

The first phone to support MediaFlo, the U620 from Samsung Electronics Co. <005930.KS>, is being sold for $199, or $149.99 for customers who sign a two-year contract. Verizon plans to add an LG Electronics Inc. <066570.KS> phone in weeks.

Subscribers who also sign up for mobile Internet access, for $5 a month, and Verizon’s existing Vcast service, which lets users download short video clips for $15 a month, can add MediaFlo for $25 a month, or $10 less than if they were to buy the three separately.

Entner said adding eight channels for another $5 could be attractive for existing Vcast and Web subscribers.

The MediaFlo service became available on Thursday in cities such as Chicago; New Orleans; Portland, Oregon; Seattle; Las Vegas; Tucson, Arizona; Kansas City; Dallas-Forth Worth; and Salt Lake City.

Available channels include a live feed from MTV and programming from CBS Corp. <CBSa.N>, NBC, ESPN, Fox, Nickelodeon and Comedy Central. Some programs are shown at the same time as regular TV, while others are rescheduled to match the heaviest mobile phone television viewing times, Nelson said.

Viacom Inc. <VIAb.N> owns MTV, Comedy Central and Nickelodeon. General Electric Co. <GE.N> controls NBC. Walt Disney Co. <DIS.N> owns ESPN.

Wireless chipmaker Qualcomm plans to build a nationwide network for delivering television to mobile phones to kick-start the market. In that way, established operators such as Verizon can offer additional media services to customers without clogging up their own networks.

Modeo, a unit of Crown Castle International Corp. <CCI.N>, is also building a network dedicated to mobile television, but it has yet to name any customers for its service, currently in trial in New York.

UPDATE 1-Verizon Wireless kicks off mobile phone TV
Thu Mar 1, 2007 6:32 PM ET

(Recasts lead, paragraph two)

By Sinead Carew

NEW YORK, March 1 (Reuters) – Verizon Wireless, the second-biggest U.S. mobile phone provider, said it launched the country’s first commercial mobile television service in 20 states with full-length programs and picture quality similar to regular TV.

The venture of Verizon Communications Inc. <VZ.N> and Vodafone Group Plc <VOD.L> said on Thursday it is charging $15 a month for the service, which was developed by Qualcomm Inc. <QCOM.O> unit MediaFlo and includes eight channels broadcasting full-length TV shows to phones 24 hours a day.

Verizon Wireless and its rivals have been pushing services such as video and music to boost revenue as the price falls for traditional mobile phone calls.

But mobile video services have been slow to take off due to high prices and poor quality compared with television at home.

The picture quality of the new service will be on a par with home TV and roughly twice as clear as Verizon Wireless’s existing Vcast video service, spokesman Jeffrey Nelson said.

Mobile video services, first launched in the U.S. in 2004, have only about 7 million customers out of about 232 million mobile subscriptions, according to Ovum analyst Roger Entner, who said that higher-quality pictures could change that.

"I think the impact in the beginning will be modest," since Verizon is rolling out the service gradually, said Entner. But he estimated that MediaFlo users could increase to 20 million to 30 million people within about seven years.

CINGULAR TO FOLLOW

AT&T Inc.’s <T.N> Cingular Wireless, the biggest U.S. mobile service in terms of subscribers, has said it plans to launch MediaFlo to its customers later in the year.

The first phone to support MediaFlo, the U620 from Samsung Electronics Co. <005930.KS>, is being sold for $199, or $149.99 for customers who sign a two-year contract. Verizon plans to add an LG Electronics Inc. <066570.KS> phone in weeks.

Subscribers who also sign up for mobile Internet access, for $5 a month, and Verizon’s existing Vcast service, which lets users download short video clips for $15 a month, can add MediaFlo for $25 a month, or $10 less than if they were to buy the three separately.

Entner said adding eight channels for another $5 could be attractive for existing Vcast and Web subscribers.

The MediaFlo service became available on Thursday in cities such as Chicago; New Orleans; Portland, Oregon; Seattle; Las Vegas; Tucson, Arizona; Kansas City; Dallas-Forth Worth; and Salt Lake City.

Available channels include a live feed from MTV and programming from CBS Corp. <CBSa.N>, NBC, ESPN, Fox, Nickelodeon and Comedy Central. Some programs are shown at the same time as regular TV, while others are rescheduled to match the heaviest mobile phone television viewing times, Nelson said.

Viacom Inc. <VIAb.N> owns MTV, Comedy Central and Nickelodeon. General Electric Co. <GE.N> controls NBC. Walt Disney Co. <DIS.N> owns ESPN.

Wireless chipmaker Qualcomm plans to build a nationwide network for delivering television to mobile phones to kick-start the market. In that way, established operators such as Verizon can offer additional media services to customers without clogging up their own networks.

Modeo, a unit of Crown Castle International Corp. <CCI.N>, is also building a network dedicated to mobile television, but it has yet to name any customers for its service, currently in trial in New York.

Love this story about Kiwi ingenuity from the New Zealand Herald:

$10 wok keeps TV station on air

Why pay $20,000 for a commercial link to run your television station when a $10 kitchen wok from the Warehouse is just as effective?

This is exactly how North Otago’s newest television station 45 South is transmitting its signal from its studio to the top of Cape Wanbrow, in a bid to keep costs down.

45 South volunteer Ken Jones designed the wok transmitter in his spare time last year when he wanted to provide wireless broadband to his Ardgowan home.

"A group of us wanted to connect our computers to each other and then we worked out a way to get of getting the signal between two points," he said.

He discovered satellite dishes were between $100 to $400 retail and that smaller dishes, the same size as a wok, were $80.

Mr Jones thought he could do better.

Along with friend Murray Bobbette they worked out mathematical equations to prove the curved metal face of a wok would have the same effect as a small satellite dish.

"We have spent a lot of time getting it right — the first time we installed one we had it up a pole with the handle still on the end of the wok," he said.

"We had it connected to the woolshed and initially you couldn’t get a signal the width of the paddock and now it can reach up to 20km."

When the television station 45 South (UHF channel 41) started up in September last year, Mr Jones thought the same technique could be applied.

"The $20,000 for a commercial link was just money we didn’t have, so we bought several woks from The Warehouse instead which was convenient and cheap," he said.

Pre-recorded clips at the studio are fed through a computer and beamed to Cape Wanbrow where they are relayed off to television sets around North Otago.

The classic case of Kiwi ingenuity has made its way onto the internet and the technique has been posted by an American website, Mr Jones said.

"People wanted to know all the details about how to make their own, so it is now all publicly documented," he said.

One of the issues they had to deal with was making the pole that the wok sits on high enough to clear the Kingsgate Brydone Hotel.

Of course, this story found it’s way to Make a day after it was published.