Tag: Europe

Article

BMW Intelligent Personal Assistant may be the cold, distant German Siri of our dreams | CNet

From the horse’s mouth

BMW Group

Video – Click or tap to play

My Comments

I have been pushing for the idea of European firms answering what Silicon Valley offers but applying European values to these offerings. Here, it’s like the rise of Airbus and Arianespace from France answering the USA’s leadership in the aerospace industry.

I was calling this out because the European Commission were always worried about the way the popular Silicon-Valley-based online services, especially Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple were doing to European personal and business values like democracy, competitive markets, user privacy and transparency. Their typical answer was to either pass more regulations or litigating against them in the European court system. But they could easily encourage European companies to offer online services that underscore the European mindset through, for example, business-development assistance. 

It is something that is slowly happening with the rise of Spotify, the leading world-wide jukebox, rising from Sweden. There is also a persistent effort within France to answer YouTube with a peer-to-peer video-streaming service.

Now BMW have stepped up to the plate by working on a voice-driven assistant which will initially be focused towards the automotive space. But they intend to take it beyond the vehicle and have it as a European competitor to Alexa, Siri, Google Assistant or Cortana.

But I would say that even if they don’t get it beyond the car dashboard, they could establish it as a white-label platform for other European tech firms to build upon. This could lead to the creation of smart-speaker products from the likes of Bang & Olufsen or TechniSat that don’t necessarily have to run a Silicon-Valley voice-driven assistant platform. Or Bosch or Electrolux could work on a “smart-home” control setup with a voice-driven assistant that is developed in Europe.

Articles – French language / Langue Française

Nouveau monde. Un YouTube “libre” à la française | France TV

From the horse’s mouth

Framatube.org

My Comments

I have previously raised the issue of people and companies based in Europe building online services that compete with what Silicon Valley offers but respect European values. This has been more so in respect to the European Commission taking legal action against the Silicon Valley IT titans like Google and Facebook due to issues like user privacy and respect for European values.

Subsequently, in answer to Google denying Amazon access to YouTube for their Echo Show product, I wrote an article about YouTube needing to face competition when it comes to online video services.

Here, I was calling out issues like individuals and small businesses needing affordable options for sharing their video content while they maintain effective control over it. It also includes issues like monetisation options for video content providers along with proper fair dealing for content creators and rightsholders when it comes to using copyrighted works in the content creators’ videos. The latter issue focuses on users using a relatively small part of a copyrighted work like a phrase from a song or a few seconds of vision from a film or TV show in an incidental manner.

In the same context, I was calling out the availability of native-client apps for various IT platforms, whether as a separately-installed app for a regular-computer or mobile operating system or as something baked in to firmware for a device like a set-top box or smart speaker. This is so you aren’t always heading down an inefficient path of using a browser to view videos or find that you can’t use the platform’s or device’s assets for this task.

The French have taken off with this goal with Framasoft, a French open-source software developer, working towards a peer-to-peer approach.

The “PeerTube” approach is based on free open-source software and implements a “federation” model. This is where a host could store video uploaded to it directly but also share video uploaded to other hosts. This can please media companies, the education sector, Webhosts and other companies who have multiple servers or data centers in differing geographical locations and make sure these hosts serve viewers closer to them.

It is being driven by the “WebTorrent” concept of integrating BitTorrent peer-to-peer file-sharing technology to video streaming in an effort to reduce latency. Again, it is implementing free open-source technology to achieve the same goal.

At the moment, the “PeerTube” effort is at an alpha stage but there is a goal to have it to beta by March 2018. Framasoft are raising money to get this idea off the ground and have raised EUR€16,032 at the time of writing. There is also the issue of creating a Web-based portal to show what’s available along with providing source code to make native clients for a PeerTube content delivery network.

Personally, I would see the “PeerTube” concept working tightly with Webhosts, content delivery networks and the like to make audio and video distribution affordable for the small-timer. There will also be their idea of data centers including edge computing being used as a way to expedite reliable access to “catch-up TV” and similar video content pools.

What needs to happen once PeerTube is proven is that it needs to be sold as a viable alternative for YouTube when it comes to offering user-generated video content.

Article

SES teams up with rival Hispasat to launch SAT>IP industry alliance | VideoNet TV

My Comments

Previously, SES Astra have launched a standard for broadcast-LAN transmission of satellite-TV signals around a home or similar computer network. This standard, known as SAT>IP or can be known as SAT-IP, is based on UPnP technology but with the ability to transmit broadcast selection and satellite selection information to the server devices.

This was initially setup for the SES Astra satellite infrastructure that was common in Europe but SES have partnered with Hispasat who are a Spanish TV satellite operator competing with them to push SAT>IP across the whole of the European TV satellite space.

This is because an increasing number of companies are manufacturing equipment designed for this infrastructure, including Panasonic who are fielding a range of Smart TVs with client functionality. For that matter, some of their “lounge-room” TVs are offering the server functionality so they can work with the existing satellite-TV infrastructure yet pass this on to SAT>IP clients.

SES are also stepping back from promoting this standard and are putting the mantle of promotion on to the supporters and adopters who are developing the equipment. This is to encourage an operator-neutral attitude towards implementing the broadcast-LAN technology for satellite TV.

It is also worth noting that a network can have multiple SAT>IP servers on it which can also cater to multiple-dish setups where there is a goal to receive content from multiple satellite platforms, something that may be of importance in Germany especially. Who knows what this could lead to with a level playing field offered by SAT>IP.

Article (French language / Langue Française)

RKube : le cloud français | Ere Numerique

From the horse’s mouth

RKube

Product Page

My Comments

The increased discontent in Europe about the NSA  spying on European citizens’ Internet activity has seen less trust in Internet services that are either hosted on American soil or chartered in the USA. This has also been augmented by recent activities where the German government “battened down the hatches” and even gave a CIA station chief located there the “royal order of the boot”.

As well, the French and Swiss worked on their own volume-wide disk encryption software such as VeraCrypt.

Similarly, the European Union recently won a European court case to assure EU citizens the “right to be forgotten” by major US-based search engines while an Austrian-based class action was launched against Facebook on privacy grounds.

Now the French have launched their own “cloud-driven” online storage as a competitor to the US-based online storage services like Dropbox, Box.com, OneDrive and Google Drive. Here, this operator have their servers on French soil and are totally subject to the rule of law in France. They also focus their offers around user privacy according to European norms. They even have the ability for you to create your own security key and implement secure anonymous file transfers.

Like most of the online storage services, they offer client-side software for Windows, Macintosh OS X, iOS and Android while offering a simplified Web user experience for those of us who come in from Web browsers.

RKube will offer users a free 5Gb account or access to up to 500Gb for up to €49.90 / month.

But I also wonder who else in Continental Europe will run with online file storage or similar services in response to the loss of faith in American services by Europeans. It also extends to other services like search engines or social networks. Similarly, it could be interesting to know whether people who live outside Europe but are concerned about the privacy or confidentiality of their data could end up purchasing space on these services rather than the American services.

Article

Hanakai Studio’s Prodigy uses NFC to marry the real with the digital | Polygon

Premier contact avec Prodigy, le jeu vidéo français à figurines qui voit grand | 01Net (France – French language / Langue Française)

From the horse’s mouth

Hanakai Studios

Video

Click to play

My Comments

France is advancing forward with a new video-game concept which utilises NFC technology.

The game which is called Prodigy is a role-playing game which integrates the traditional “Dungeons And Dragons” metaphors with the video and computer aspect using NFC-equipped figurines and cards. These are played on a special LED-equipped NFC-reader mat that is connected to a regular computer which runs the game.

But what do I see of this? I see this as a way where a studio outside the USA or Japan are innovating when it comes to computer gaming by offering a new concept and play methodology rather than modelling on what these “game hubs” have already been offering. Similarly, it is capitalising on the “Dungeons And Dragons” that is associated with most role-playing games

Like a lot of these projects, it will be funded by a crowdfunding campaign in the form of Kickstarter. I do see some great things coming from Europe with mobile casual games successes from Irelend (King.com  – Candy Crush Saga) and Finland (Rovio – Angry Birds franchise) and could see the powers that be in the European Union headquarters in Brussels promote European-produced games, especially from those countries where titles are just consumed in their domestic markets..

Article – From the horse’s mouth

SiliconDust

HDHomeRun 4DC Product Page

My Comments

Those of us who are in Europe and who watch cable TV through an unencrypted DVB-C setup can benefit from a DLNA-capable broadcast-LAN tuner that works with these setups. The SiliconDust HDHomeRun 4DC implements 4 RF front-ends to allow tuning in to 4 cable multiplexes at once. But this may mean that more the four programmes from different cable channels can be seen at once.

Of course, it will present the channels as part of its role as a DLNA media server which means that Smart TVs, PS3s, XBox 360s and DLNA-capable Blu-Ray players like the Sony BDP-S390 can pick up these channels without a cable outlet near them. But of course, there is the ability to work with other TV-broadcast software that works with most broadcast-LAN tuners.

That fact that it supports unencrypted channels only would work OK with European cable-TV setups where the free-to-air channels and, in some cases, basic cable channels are delivered “in the clear” to customers in a manner where they don’t need to use a set-top box to receive these channels. It would also encompass those SMATV (satellite master antenna TV) setups in multiple-tenancy buildings where the satellite signals as well as over-the-air TV signals are redistributed in the building using DVB-C technologies.

At least I see the latest iteration of the HDHomeRun broadcast-LAN boxes with DLNA MediaServer and compatible with digital TV standards implemented in UK, Europe, Asia and Oceania being rolled out, this putting these standards on the DLNA Home Media Network.

Article

Sat-IP: Sat-TV im ganzen Haus – AUDIO VIDEO FOTO BILD (Germany – German language)

From the horse’s mouth

Sat-IP

Website

Previous coverage on HomeNetworking01.info

Broadcast-LAN devices–how relevant are they to the home network

My Comments

Just lately, I had published an article on this site about the concept of broadcast-LAN devices like the Devolo dLAN SAT and the HDHomeRun devices. These use at least one integrated broadcast tuner to stream broadcast signals received via a regular antenna (aerial), cable-TV setup or satellite dish around a small network using the protocols associated with these networks. The content is picked up from the network using software installed on regular or mobile computers to be displayed using their screens and speakers.

Now, SES, BSkyB and Craftwork who are heavyweights in Europe’s satellite-TV industry have set up a branded standards group called SAT-IP. This group determines standards for setting up satellite-based broadcast-LAN devices and promotes the concept of satellite-based broadcast-LAN systems. This is very relevant with the European market where satellite TV is considered a preferred medium for delivering supplementary TV content such as free-to-air from other European countries or pay-TV content from one’s own country or one of many neighbouring countries.

Here, they had worked out a data standard which is effectively based on the UPnP AV standards and is to co-operate with that standard but allow for satellite-TV tuning. They even wrote in support for DVB-T/T2 terrestrial-TV setups primarily to cater for the MATV systems implemented in multiple-tenancy setups where the goal is to run a single coaxial cable to each unit and have the satellite TV and regular TV through the one cable. The reason I supported this idea is to allow for a broadcast-LAN setup working to SAT-IP standards to cater to most broadcast environments where content distributed via the satellites is different to content distributed via the regular TV infrastructure.

But the main benefit is that there is a step to a level playing field for satellite-based broadcast-LAN applications thus providing for competition and innovation in this application no matter the deployment type. It has opened up broadcast-LAN implementations like a Power-Over-Ethernet-powered LNB with integrated server which bolts on to the satellite dish and yields the broadcast streams to the home network from that dish; as well as a Grundig broadcast-LAN tuner with four front-ends and full DLNA capability.

The SAT-IP concept, along with the US goal for using broadcast-LAN to democratise the provision of cable TV is underscoring the reality of using the home network to distribute TV content around the home, whether this network uses Ethernet, Wi-Fi wireless or HomePlug AV powerline or a mix of the technologies. Here, this means no more chipping at delicate walls to run satellite cable around the home and you can view Sky on your iPad or Sony VAIO Duo 11.