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All About Digital DownloadAn eye on the digital download trends and technologies in Hong Kong September 25 Formation of the Hong Kong Digital Content AllianceToday I joined the Inauguration Ceremony of the Hong Kong Digital Content Alliance (HKDCA). HKDCA is joined by 9 associations from content industry, Cyberport and iProA. It provides a good opportunity for content providers, IT industry to sit together and discuss solutions on the proper use of digital content in Hong Kong. The alliance also launched 2 programmes - Content+ and Matching grant for DRM applications, with the aim to education bloggers on proper use of digital content and encourage development of innovative DRM applications respectively. Details of the alliance and the matching grant is available on www.iresource.hk As a blogger, I believe this is a corner stone for the industry to serious look at issues surrounding usage of digital content in the Internet and their associated issues. Now I link to the logo of HKDCA in by blog, I also not sure whether it is legal or not. But without a logo or graphic for this post it is really not interesting. This is a classic example which I hope the alliance can help to bring some answers to the public in HK. August 29 My Download Experience with Xbox 360 LiveRecently I moved my Xbox 360 from the bedroom to the living room, which encouraged me to connect the console to the broadband network. The wireless broadband connector is just a piece of hardware too expensive for me to buy. I spend half a day to work on the configuration and tested the following features. Windows Media Connect – through this I am able to get my MCE interface to display on Xbox, with the feature to view recorded TV programmes of MCE through the Xbox interface. This is truly an amazing experience for me. Recorded TV can be viewed smoothly without any problem, although the navigation through Xbox controller is a big sluggish which is understandable. The DVD playback feature is displayed from the MCE shell ( Xbox can support direct playback for DVD so there is no need to stream this from MCE to Xbox ) Xbox live gold membership – Anyone sign up to Xbox live is entitled to a free upgrade for 1 month to gold membership, allowing you to download game demos and game previews. I downloaded the Deadrising demo which is highly praised by different gaming magazines. The 1G demo took me around an hour or two to download. Not a bad experience. Bonus features download – When you accomplish certain levels for some Xbox games, you can use those bonus points to download extra features for the game you play. I used this to download and unlock new cars for my RidgeRacer 6. The definition files for those cars are small but the interface does not allow me to select multiple items in one shot. I’m a bit surprised for the lack of this feature until I later found out the download queue can only queue up to 5 items. Restartable download – Downloads can be paused and resumed. However, for slow downloads I occasionally got a lot of state for the download and the Xbox hangs, with red light flashing on the panel. The only way to solve this is to shutdown and restart Xbox, but all download status and temporary files will be gone. Normally, if your wireless controller gets out of battery power you can change the battery and reconnect automatically to resume your game. However, for file downloads I find that this is not usually the case. Download provider – Demo games are refreshed on a regular basis, usually you will find new game demos for download when you come back in 1 or 2 days. I tried the “Test drive unlimited” demo but it took me 3 days without a successful download. I wonder if there is a single server located somewhere in Redmond Microsoft and why the speed is so slow. ( I'm using a 6Mbps connection ). Later, I read a post about Akamai sues Limelight Networks and it said Xbox live is a customer of Limelight Networks. Limelight networks is specialized in online video distribution. Anyway, I will continue to try the download with a wired controller during non-peak hours. Xbox live Arcade – My biggest disappointment is Xbox live arcade, most of the games are old rebranded versions from the 80's and 90's. I wonder if someone is interested to play this on their high definition display. (I tried Pac-Man and immediately deleted it from my harddisk afterwards). I’m sure there are some better games out there. Recently I find “Age of Empires” available free of charge on “Windows Live Market Place”. Xbox live Arcade should provide something similar to match user expectation. Now my consideration is whether to keep my gold account at the end of the one month trial period. I'm not interested in online play with strangers, but my opinion is that the game demo preview feature really gets it right. August 11 Watermarking and Filtering in Digital Music DistributionAn increasing number of Peer-to-peer network has been adding some sort of metering or usage control on their network to conform with court order. Including iMesh, Snocap, Ezpeer and Napster. Some of the P2P use DRM for file control while others choose acoustic fingerprinting. Acoustic fingerprinting seems to catch the attention from an increasing number of P2P providers in the last 6 months. This technology provides a difficult to hack and user friendly solution to the customer. The difficultly lies in the fact that content has to be locked and tracked on machines that is intended to play the music. Imagine a file obtained from a P2P network with acoustic fingerprinting is moved to an offline machine to play, without proper control on the offline machine there is no way to check the fingerprint or perform metering of the file. However, not much information is available on how this scenario is addressed from the information I read. http://www.drmwatch.com/drmtech/article.php/3595441
July 18 Download movie and burn to DVDFrom Sonic Website --
"Sonic has developed and licensed to Movielink a new module for AuthorScript — called AuthorScript® DVD on Demand™ — that includes a DRM gateway for secure export of content from approved download systems, precision video codecs that simultaneously convert Internet-delivered video into MPEG-2 video for DVD during the download process, automated DVD formatting tools for converting video into interactive DVDs, and an Extensible Media Protection Architecture (XMPA) that allows a wide variety of studio-approved copy protection mechanisms to be applied to DVDs as they are being burned."
Additional information from WSJ reported the burned DVD even can't be duplicated with this technology. It will be good if there's a chance to try this but movielink is not accessible from HK.
July 01 Remember to Secure your wireless access pointJust back from a networking hours session organized by HKCS with a special topic on the HK court case on music upload by 7 individuals. The 4 ISPs are ordered by the court to provide information on subscribers on P2P download activites. After the section, I have 2 questions in my mind. 1) P2P users will potentially get segments of a file from multiple locations. According to the speaker, a file will be construsted from File A (with copyright), File B (with no copyright) and File C (with copyright). So it is difficult to say whether the user who got the resulting file is getting a legal source. So the action is illegal. At the same time the user is also distributing this file to the others, so the activity is illegal as well. My question is not on the user who got the resulting file. Under the law, is it legal for a user who bought a song legitimately to share this with others? If not, from the very beginning the whole action is illegal. 2) The second case is even more controversal. Suppose a user X use his computer with wireless capability at home. He opened the wireless access control panel and find the following. There are a number of insecure wireless access point detected. It is not uncommon in Hong Kong to get several access point detected with the increasing strength of wireless access point and the crowded living environment. User X intentionally connected to one of the insecure access point, open the P2P software for illegal upload and download. The unlucky guy who own the insecure access point is being contacted some days later and charged for the illegal file sharing activity. Because there is evidence during a particular day and time his assigned IP address recorded illegal file sharing activities. The unlucky guy later defended he never perform any illegal fle sharing activity and there is no evidence of any download songs/movies or file sharing applications on his computer. This is supported by computer forensic experts who perform a thorough investigation on his computer. I'm not a legal expert on this matter. I can only advise the followings:
June 20 P2P network and DRMI am new to P2P networks. may be I am just being too old to catch the wave of P2P. Having involved in a number of discussions with experts in this subject area, I realize the need to increase my knowledge in this area.
While doing my research I come across a beginners guide to P2P. Nothing caught my attention except the conlusion part, which have generated a number of response on this subject.
"After all, P2P has been proven to be a scalable, robust way to distribute a huge variety of content among millions and millions of users. What's needed (and coming...someday) is a way to protect all forms of digital content from uncontrolled copying and distribution, while allowing legitimate purchasers of that content to use it on the wide range of playback devices that continue to pour out from the design labs. When fair and easy-to-use DRM finally arrives, then P2P will step out of the shadows and into its proper place as the distribution system of choice for all forms of digital content."
I have mixed opinion on this subject. I believe P2P users and legal dowload users are 2 distinct group of people at least for today. The question is will easy-to-use DRM make it's way into the P2P market? To me this seems more of an user education process than a technology issue.
May 31 PSP onlineFrom a customer's perspective, they do not care about whether video/audio are downloaded or streamed to the PC or portable devices. All they care about is speed and instant access. Only when they need to copy or transfer the content they will start figuring out whether the content is stored on the device or not.
I find that are an incresing number of services providing instant access and streaming video for users. Famous examples are those using flash based video preview such as Youtube and Google video. You won't expect to download to watch the 1 minute video, even if you do it is downloaded automatically in the background. This model is very suitable for short clips/fim preview and fun videos.
Sony PSP online has launched in HK at March this year. Though I'm a Sony product registered user I missed the email notification about this serivce, until I visited Sony showroom in May. I used 2 days to get the NUD (Network Utility Disc) which is needed to connect to the wireless service. The setup experience is smooth for me, partly because I already get my wireless setup already on my PSP for firmware upgrade. Frankly speaking, it is quite troublesome for users to connect their PSP to a wireless access point and Sony included a 2 page setup guide just for this.
I have been playing around with the service for half a month now, Sony do put a lot of efforts in keeping the content new for regular users. Including new content from IFVA, worldcup and comic. The 500kbps MPEG-4 content playback smoothly and quality is better than my expectation on this little screen.
Sony is trying to encourage sign up of the new services by giving away cups/bags for PSP etc. When will they start charging for this service? Will this evolve and combine with PSP station serivce?
Related link from Sony
May 24 MP3 Music downloadYou own an iPod but there is no iTune services available. Sounds familar with you? Emusic find a good opportunity to offer unprotected MP3 songs for users to download, available on a subscription basis. This is a really attractive alternative if you like independent music and looking for a legal source to find them on the net.
I find an interesting article on the background and business model for emusic below.
May 17 Suvery released on Asia-Pacific Music MattersDon't have a chance to attend the AsiaMusicMatters event in HK as it is too expensive. Luckily, I got some information from a survey released during the event.
The survey asked 1,250 respondents in China, Korea, Hong Kong and Taiwan about their music habits, activities and attitudes.
85% of the Under 25s in China spend nothing on downloaded music
58% of Under 25 year olds listen to music from artists around the world. Within this, 44% like music from Korea which is the biggest among others.
Thirty seven per cent agree that they are 'more likely to buy a product which is endorsed by my favourite artist' - 49% of Under 25s agreed.
Korean songs - 대단해요
May 16 PlayStation Spot providing trial content to PSPPlayStation Spot has been launched in Japan for more than half a year, but recently it has introduced music/video download on PSP in Europe. Video/Audio will be downloaded to the internal memory of the PSP through ad-hoc wireless connections.
 Be careful if you navigate away from the media player page the downloaded content will be gone. This is a really a good vertical for advertising and promotion of new contents, especially for a majority of people in HK looking for free contents. BTW, anyone know the internal memory size for PSP? Related Links
May 10 Selling movies on BitTorrentBBC is reporting that "Warner Bros. is to sell movies over BitTorrent". From the user submitted comments I find 2 major issues.
1) Why Warner Bros price the internet download with DRM the same as a DVD? 2) Selling movie files over BitTorrent is just a marketing move
I would like to say something on point 1, I think both users and content providers should understand the limitation offered by today's technology. As some user points out, a machined loaded with DRM software and license is subject to crash. This applies the same to a DRM download file for mobile, if you change your phone in 6 months, all digital download you bought before can not be used anymore.
Offering download in clear is unrealistic, even a physical DVD has content protection technology (CSS) on it, although this can be easily broken. The major issue for the game is still "The cost for duplicating and distributing a copy". No matter where there's DRM or not, there is no way to remove the nearly zero cost in copying a digital file and distributing it from the internet. If I add just a little bit on this formula, say HKD$1 to copy and distribute a copy of the movie, the whole situation will be different. I guess only a few people will have the time to copy 10 disc and deliver it physically to their friends. This helps to stop illegal distribution.
To complete with illegal download and deal with DRM issues, I believe only a rental model will work. Pricing the movie download to an attractive price with limited viewing period (i.e a week). Even this can only be enjoyed on a single computer; it can perhaps get the biggest support from young movie lovers aged between18-27. This also removes the psychological bad feeling on the issue of ownership.
Related links http://slashdot.org/articles/06/05/09/1218209.shtml http://jacky.seezone.net/2006/04/21/1617/
May 03 The first comiczine available for free downloadYou may have downloaded electronic magainzes on computers products, digital games, gardening etc from Zinio before. Today, there is new kind of e-magazine launched in China by Vzoom. You can download the comiczine here.
The comiczine should stand for "Comic Magazine". I downloaded the first version of this magazine. Below are my first impressions.
This magazine do not use any technical protection to prevent illegal distribution. I assume this is again supported by an advertising model. April 28 A Study on Digital Rights Management for Digital Content Downloads in HKLast 2 weeks busy with finalizing a servery result on "A Study on Application and Standardization of Digital Rights Managemetn Technology for Digital Content Downloads in Hong Kong". This is a meaningful exercise to find out the general user behaviour on digital download with an emphasis on application of Digital Rights Management (DRM) technology. As there are already 7-8 digital download providers in HK it is useful to know user's opinion on technology limitations imposed by these services.
Before I work on this survey I can not find good reference on DRM usage acceptance data in HK. I hope this survey can be a reference for service provider to come up with better models for their digital offerings for the local market.
The preliminary survey result is now posted here.
Major Findings
More accurate results will be obtained if we increase the sample size with a new round of survey conducted in the coming few months. April 25 Moov.now.com.hkMoov.now.com.hk launched yesterday, providing MTV and music to subscribers with customizable playlist on the server. I thought this is another music download service provider in HK but the songs are not downloadable.
This is a good busines model to stretch the boundary of users's behavior, assuming end users would like to consume music on PC. It's is interesting to monitor the progress and adoption rate moving forward. April 21 A look at Sony's Portable TV service for PSPI mentioned the support of DRM on Sony PSP firmware 2.6 for video protection in previous postings. Finally I got more information on the application of DRM support for Sony PSP here. This site has a good writeup on the details of how DRM is used on PSP for rental of downloadable videos. It will be interested to know when Sony will launch similar service in HK. April 19 Downloading TV ad from the netYoutube has got much media attention these days and established itself as a portal for users to share and upload videos. I have visited this site for a few times to understand what users are interested to share on the web. Most of the uploaded contents are from oversea users but I'm interested to find content from HK. A simple search of the words "香港" and "Hong Kong" returned numerous pages of search results.
With a glance less than 50% of the content are user generated contents. For user generated contents I mean the content seems to be belonging to the original uploader. It is not surprising to find a lot of TV advertisment and funny video clips of famous artists. I like to watch TV ads and it is good if there is a place for me to download and watch this from the net. However, we should bear in mind these TV ads are not owned by the uploaders. Even if the advertisment agency are happy to find this circulating freely on the web, they haven't grant the right for others to share these videos.
For those in the advertising industry, Admango may be a good source of service to sample advertisments including video ad from TV. However, their target customers does not cover general users.
My question: Are those TV ad uploaders friend or foe for the advertisers? April 18 PostcastreadyCome across a new service called PodcastReady today. This service is still in beta stage. What differentiates it from the regular postcasting software client applications is the tight integrateion with hardware manufactures. PostcastReady partner with MP3 player manufactures to ship postcasting client software with the hardware device, or you can download install it by yourself. Looks like a promoising alternative to iTune as a podcasting client software. April 12 Your PVR on the webSeveral years ago, I discussed the idea of providing archive TV shows through the web with some content providers. At that time, harddisk PVR is not as common as today in HK. It is quite tedious to record a favorite TV show to your VHS recorder. Usually you will want to refer back to a particular programme you missed days ago, just because everyone is discussing about it. You want to get this, but you haven't set the program to record this. You can only ask your friends whether they have recorded the show by chance, you you simply miss it.
Today, a lot of people will go to find their missed show from P2P networks. Someone from somewhere over the world will record the show and upload it, you don't know why they do this. Why they are interested to provide this on a timely basis for others to download? By chance, you get the programme you want.
I understand it is difficult for a TV station to provide their shows on the Internet the day after broadcast. However, I am amazed some companies really put this idea into practice, despite all the issues of commericals arrangement and loss of potential revenue. ABC is going to offer recorded programmes at ABC.com by the end of this month. This idea is not new, BBC has been providing a similar service in a trial basis for nearly a year.
I am eager to subscribe to a service which provide recorded last 7 days show on the web. I guess you will like to watch missed TV programmes only if it was shown 1 to 2 days before, and this has the highest value to you. A good analogy for me is the intention to watch a DVD, I have a movie at home which I bought for several years but too lazy to watch. As time goes by, by intention to watch this DVD decrease accordingly.
Providing 7 days archive of favorite TV pogrammes for legal download should have a potential market in HK. The progammes does not need to be free and users should be willing to pay for a small premium for this service. April 11 線上精選 Online Spotlight 使用攻略 (Part 1)微軟的MCE在香港正式推出已差不多有半年的時間，在各報章雜誌也有很多相關的報導，不過大部份只着眼於硬件支持、錄影、聽音樂和觀賞相片等功能，絕少有介紹線上精選Online Spotlight的文章，就算有也只限於數句的描述；可能是去年十月二十七日新聞發佈會時，線上精選還未及推出。在發佈會上看見不少廠家連接到台灣的線上精選網頁作示範，頓時有些不太舒服的敢覺，難導香港沒有線上精選提供？答案是有的，只是俏俏地在十二月中時推出罷了。
現時香港的線上精選由四間合作伙伴提供，包括EOLASIA、iResource.hk 、Reuters 和 KMS Software。前兩者有音樂和影像供下載，現在先以iResource.hk 為例，介紹用MCE下載影像的流程。因MCE是以遙控器代替Mouse作主要的操控工具，供MCE使用的網站是要經特別設計，以提供簡單、易用的使用界面。如你無法找到以上提到的服務供應商，緊記把Windows的區域設定為香港。
以下是詳細的使用介紹：(由左至右)
遍幅所限，下次繼續介紹。 April 10 Thoughs on MP3 mobile downloadRead a MP3 download service offered by Club Nokia in HK. The service allow club members to download the whole track of MP3 music to mobile phones. The questions come to my mind is: Why offer only MP3 downloads?
I agree users can get a clear marketing message for MP3 downloads, users know they can easily enjoy the digital content, no content protection, no hidden problem on file transfer. However, this kind of content would likely be "second class content", or time limited content. With no protection, new songs offered by major labels will not likely to be available in MP3. May be we have to set our hope on the emerging OMA standard. |
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