Dick Tracy's Wristwatch Phone Arrives

Personal Video Recorders Coming To TV

Magellan Debuts Ad-Driven Phone Service Technology

Video "E-Mail" Satellite Network - AnyTimeTV

Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. [SK:64050] has announced development of a futuristic telephone that can be worn on the wrist like a watch. The new phone mirrors one developed by NTT Mobile Communications Network Inc. (NTT DoCoMo) and used during the Nagano winter Olympic Games but Samsung has gone one-better, announcing commercial availability.

Unlike the NTT phone, which was developed for the PHS (personal handyphone system) and has never left prototype status, the new Samsung phone is designed for use with CDMA (code division multiple access) based cellular networks and will be available later in April.

Samsung developed the phone in response to an increasingly saturated cellular phone market, where manufacturers battle for customers with telephone handsets that offer almost identical features. The wristwatch phone, on the other hand, is unlike any other handset available and, according to the company, is also the smallest and lightest wireless terminal ever produced. It weighs, with the battery, 50 grams.

Users will find the miniaturized telephone offers less battery life than full-size models with larger batteries. A maximum of 90 minutes of continuous call time and 60 hours of standby time are available. It also features functions now standard on most cellular telephones, including voice activated dialing, phone directory, ear microphone and vibration alert.

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According to a new Forrester Research Inc. report, a new device called the personal video recorder (PVR) is poised to revolutionize both the TV industry in general, and specifically how networks target audiences and sell advertising.

Historically, the networks have simply offered "a stable lineup of programming" in order to get viewers to watch, thus directly attracting advertising revenues.

But the PVR will change that over the next 10 years, says Forrester, which identifies such a device as having an "intelligent interface" and an internal hard drive that can digitally record TV programming "in anticipation of viewer demand."

PVRs will reportedly have the capability to fast-forward and reverse instantly, pause live broadcasts, and create viewer profiles. The viewer will also be able to bring up a menu of recorded programs that the PVR has recorded based on their predetermined preferences.

The report makes the bold prediction that, because of the rise of such PVR devices, TV ad viewing will be cut nearly in half by the end of the next decade, declining slowly at first at around 8 percent over the next five years, but then picking up as PVRs, complete with ad-skipping features, become available.

As a result of the deteriorating ad revenues, there will be a move towards pay TV as broadcast, cable, and satellite networks rush to replace it.

And by 2001, sub-$500 PVRs will be available with huge hard drives that can store more than 24 hours of video.

Despite PVRs increasing demand for cable and satellite service, concludes the report, such audiences will be "fragmented into smaller interest groups as consumers increasingly watch what they want rather than what's on."

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Magellan Debuts Ad-Driven Phone Service Technology

You've probably heard of trials of "free" ad-driven phone call services over the last six months, taking place around the world. Now you can expect these services to start booming, as Magellan has taken the wraps off a "shrink wrapped" switch/server system that allows carriers to, quite literally, plug in and switch on the facility.

Ad-driven phone services are quite simple for consumer. In return for listening to ads on the phone, usually at the start and at selected periods during the call, callers get to make standard long distance calls for free.

Magellan's BannerPhone technology is billed as the first system, however, that allows carriers to offer the service from scratch, giving them the option of offering discounted calls, rather than totally free ones, if they wish.

The BannerPhone service is available as an enhanced option for Magellan's M4000 programmable switching system. The option is billed as letting carriers reward their customers with discounted or free long distance calls if they listen to one or more advertisements or respond to a short market research survey before making the calls.

Jeff Paine, the firm's vice president of marketing, said that ads can be of general interest or narrowly targeted to prospects, who can use a voice menu to select increasingly specific categories of interest.

"In an industry where a few pennies can mean the difference between gaining and losing customers, a carrier gains its competitive edge by reducing calling rates," he said.

Using voice advertising and market research income to subsidize lower calling rates will bring in more customers. "We're borrowing a concept from the Internet, where for years users have been able to get free e-mail if they accept banner ads across the top of their screens," Paine added.

He also noted that the revenue potential of such an advertising-based model is much greater than that associated with commodity long distance sales.

A telecommunications carrier deploying BannerPhone can allow callers to access the system via a prepaid phone card account, to register via the Internet, or simply to call into the system from their home or business, according to Magellan.

Once they access the service, keying in their ID and PIN, callers are sent to the BannerPhone "ad wheel," which plays one or more voice ads or asks a few short questions. After callers listen to the ad or answer the questions, they can then make their calls.

Each wheel, the firm says, has 10 slots for different ads or surveys, with each slot holding up to four ads or questions. Each time a registered caller reaches a particular advertiser's wheel, he are sent to a new ad that he has not heard before.The switch technology is scaleable, meaning that the company can provide the carrier with up to 10,000 ad wheels to be assigned to accounts.

Paine noted that the "free calls for ads" concept has already been tried on a direct-to-the-consumer basis. It has not, he said, previously been attempted on a scale that could handle huge call volumes or create major new national, regional and local revenue opportunities for carriers.

Magellan's Web site is at http://www.magellan.com.

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With the increase in multimedia and video files being sent over the Internet, transfer times for large files can often approach unusable levels. Now Miralite Communications' AnyTimeTV subsidiary has introduced a satellite-based distribution service that is designed for the fast and easy sending of video over small or large distances, without the slowdowns often associated with the Internet, or the expense of using private networks.

AnytimeTV is targeting a variety of industries with the new services for firms that use video or large graphics files, such as post-production houses, advertisers, corporate trainers, distance educators, government agencies and military networks.

Standard MPEG-2 (Motion Picture Experts Group type 2) digital satellite technology is used, which compresses the file to a manageable level for sending using Internet protocols.

A small one-meter dish is used to send the files to the end user. The dish is connected to a Digital Media Recorder, described as a set-top box which uses a standard Microsoft Windows 98 operating system, and is then connected to a regular TV set. Such a device can store up to 20 hours of video on a hard drive. A Web browser-like interface is used to navigate and view video or any other type of files. The encoding system is provided by AnyTimeTV proprietary software which creates MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 video files and "delivers them to the AnyTimeTV uplink gateway."

Tracey Archer, spokesperson for AnytimeTV, when asked about where the gateways to the service are, replied that there are "various uplinks, and the gateway is whatever is most convenient for our AnytimeTV clients. It doesn't matter where that is because it is all part of the service."

She said that, currently, the company is concentrating on making the service nationwide, although it can be global if a project needed it.

"All a client needs to have an uplink is, at the very least, a T1 line. Then we send it out to however many sites they want."

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