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To cite this article: Joachim Rawolle & Thomas Hess (2000) New digital media and devices: An analysis for the media
industry, International Journal on Media Management, 2:2, 89-99, DOI: 10.1080/14241270009389926
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2.1 .Transport Media
New Digital Media and Devices
All kinds of public networks are usu-
An Analysis for the Media Industry
ally based on a backbone-infrastruc-
ture and different access technologies
("last mile"). For the media industry, es-
pecially the Internet and TV-cable are
Joachim Rawolle andThomas Hess, University of Gttingen, Germany relevant wired networks, because both
can be used for the distribution of digi-
tal contents. The Internet offers a
I. Introduction proven technology for duplex commu-
nications (although with low band-
Customers and media companies are The main goal of this paper is to width at the moment), whereas TV-
confronted with technology-driven in- analyse this area of interest in a system- cable is capable of broadband transmis-
novations in the area of transport me- atic way. Section 2 starts with a short sion via Digital Video Broadcasting
dia as well as new devices. Typical char- overview of major technological trends (DVB) but lacks an integrated feedback
acteristics of these technologies are (for details, see Rawolle and Hess 2000). channel and is therefore best suited for
digital storage and transmission of con- Section 3 works out attributes of digi- broadcast-oriented distribution. How-
tent from a technical perspective and tal contents that can be used to evalu- ever, new Internet access technologies
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a higher degree of interactivity from ate the given technologies. Based on like ADSL, powerline or wireless local
the users' perspective (see Schreiber these findings, different combinations loop will increase bandwidth for
1997,19). of target device and transport media Internet users in the future. As well,
are assessed. Additionally, section 4 the integration of feedback capabilities
For the media industry the question provides a deeper discussion of two in TV-networks is being worked on.
arises, how these new technologies can major upcoming concepts, eBooks and
be exploited. The traditional emphasis mobile commerce. As a second example of online media,
of the media business has been the cre- wireless networks allow the trans-
ation, bundling and distribution of in- 2. New Media and Devices mission of contents without having a
formation and entertainment (see at a Glance physical link. Traditionally, the media
Schumann and Hess 2000,1). Recently, industry have used terrestrial broad-
new content-oriented products have Based on a simplified version of the cast or satellites, which are both con-
emerged by serving existing contents general communication model (see strained to simplex transmission from
to new target devices, (re-)using device- Shannon and Weaver 1949), we distin- sender to receiver. In contrast, mobile
specific variants of existing contents or guish between transport media and communication technologies like the
by creating original contents for exclu- end devices. Further, end devices are Global System for Mobile Communica-
sive usage on a determined target de- subdivided into stationary and mobile tion (GSM) support two-way transmis-
vice. In the future, new services based devices. Transport media technologies sion of data and can be used for
on applications, communication or belong to one of two categories: online Internet access via Wireless Applica-
transactions become possible, which (i.e. network-based) and offline (i.e. por- tion Protocol (WAP), but provide sig-
fundamentally amplify the scope of table storage) media (see fig. 1). nificantly lower bandwidth at present.
activities for the media industry. This is likely to change within the next
few years, when new technologies like
the General Radio Packet Service
I Figure /: Transport media and reproduction devices
(GPRS) or the Universal Mobile Tele-
communication System (UMTS) will
improve bandwidth dramatically.
o Transport media
(Transmitter Offline media (i.e. portable storage me-
and Channel)
dia) like Compact Discs (CDs) or Digital
Versatile Discs (DVD) can be used to dis-
tribute digital contents through tradi-
Online Offline Stationary Mobile
Media Media Devices Devices tional retailers. DVDs offer up to 27
times more capacity than ordinary CDs
and are therefore capable of storing
JMM-Vol. 2 - N o . 11-2000 89
I Figure 2: Relevant categories of media/device combinations Technological Trend
End Device
nobile Mobile
Information Device (not relevant)
3rd Generation
PC-based
stationary
Transport Media
Narrowband Broadband
Online Media Offline Media
movies or large quantities of music in storage capabilities, less interactivity, Next to multipurpose devices there are
conjunction with powerful compres- higher quality for replaying video and highly specialised appliances like
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sion mechanisms. audio contents) the main distinction eBooks for reading (see section 4.1.),
between PCs and TV sets is user mp3-player for music, and a set of re-
2.2. End Devices behaviour. Whereas PCs are typically cently announced Internet-Appliances
used for information-based purposes that focus on Web-access and mobile
As mentioned above, end devices can (retrieval and processing) in an inter- phones for speech-oriented interper-
be divided into stationary and mobile active way, the TV is usually utilised in sonal communication. Mobile phones
devices. Desktop personal computers a more passive and also entertainment- are increasingly used for Internet ac-
(Desktop PCs) and television sets (TV oriented manner (see Bldorn et al. cess via WAP (see section 4.2.). There-
sets) can be considered the most impor- 2000, 173). At present, consumers fore, the media industry has shown
tant examples of stationary devices. spend a greater share of their daily considerable interest in mobile phones
Since the discussion of the potential media budget on watching TV than as a new target device recently. Follow-
convergence (see for example Stipp using the PC-based Internet (see ARD ing the announcements of the relevant
1999; Bienert 1999) of TV and PC in one 1999, 68-85). manufacturers, mobile phones and
enclosing type of device has not been PDAs will probably merge into one de-
settled yet, this paper will, based on the
Particularly because of the technologi- vice (see Luxa 1999,173). Some of these
status quo, cover both types of appli- cal progress in the reduction of elec- products might even support mp3 for
ances. tronic components, mobile devices audio replay.
have been made possible over the last
Desktop PCs have been developed from century. These can be divided into mul- 2.3. Bundling of Transport
data-centric terminals to universal tipurpose and special purpose devices. Media and Devices
communication devices with sophisti- Multipurpose equipment like note-
cated multimedia and interaction ca- books or subnotebooks have similar re- From the technologies described above,
pabilities over the last decade. Because production and processing capabilities numerous combinations of transport
of the wide spread implementation of like desktop PCs. They can be con- media and end device may be con-
Internet-technology and drives for dif- nected to the Internet via ordinary tele- structed. In order to reduce this com-
ferent storage media, the PC has be- phone modem or other access tech- plexity, this paper will abstract from
come a very interesting target device nologies. Personal digital assistants available products and constitutes a
for the media industry. (PDAs) are considerably less powerful number of generalised media/device
than notebooks. In contrast to (sub- packages. To achieve this, a nine-field
Another approach is digital TV. At )notebooks they are typically used un- matrix is established that opposes de-
present, users of digital TV need der mobile circumstances. Many of the vices and transport media (seefig.2).
supplementary Set-Top-Boxes that pre- available PDAs will be capable of access- Devices are divided into mobile and sta-
pare digital contents for ordinary tele- ing the Internet by mobile communi- tionary (TV-based vs. PC-based) appli-
vision sets. Besides technical differ- cation technologies within the next ances as mentioned above. With regard
ences (less information processing and few years. to transport media, we differ between
and input facilities. This is mainly support being connected with DVD- primarily supports unicast transmis-
due to constraints in size and bat- drives. DVDs offer significant advan- sions with decent feedback channel
tery lifetime (see WAP Forum 1998,9). tages over analogue video-tapes and mechanisms (IPMI1997,3), whereas the
(2) Mobile Information Devices 3rd are therefore expected to replace the main focus of the digital TV-infrastruc-
Generation (MID 3G): Technological latter within the next few years (see ture is broadcasting with limited feed-
advances are expected to lead to sub- Sedman 1998, 58). back abilities (but considerable higher
stantial improvements in both mo- bandwidth). However, both technolo-
bile transmission technology and 3. Evaluation of New Media gies are being worked on to support
end device capabilities. The result- and Devices unicast and broadcast transfer mode as
ing infrastructure and services are well as adequate feedback channels in
called 3rd Generation applications. In order to evaluate the new media the future.
However, considerable constraints technologies described above, we first
because of size and batteries will re- define a list of relevant technical and Next, we will consider device-specific
main in most products. non-technical requirements of digital requirements, which mainly affect
(3) Online Multimedia PC: One of the media-products. Based on this collec- reproduction, storage capabilities and
most popular platforms to access tion of requirements the different cat- input facilities. Displaying and syn-
the Internet are stationary desktop egories (MIDs, MID 3Gs, Online Multi- chronising different kinds of media
PCs coupled with ordinary modems media PCs etc.) will be appraised. types is a basic demand with regard to
or ISDN connections. Transmission reproduction. At this point, a distinc-
of data is clearly the bottleneck of S.I.Technical Requirements tion between static (time-invariant)
this configuration, because multi- and dynamic (time-variant) media
media capabilities of modern PCs Technical requirements either affect types has to be made (see Grauer and
are typically on a convenient level. the available transport media, the Merten 1996,9). On the one hand, typi-
(4) Broadband Multimedia PC: Just as addressed end device or both (see fig. cal examples of static media types are
mobile transmission, wired-based 1). Following this criteria, we will start text, graphics and pictures. On the
networks are very likely to offer by examining requirements relevant to other hand, video and audio belong to
broadband capacities in the near the transport media. Three important the category of dynamic media types.
go Not all kinds of devices support all
o future. Therefore, private as well as aspects dominate in this area: The ac-
corporate users will be able to access cess mechanism, the number of simul- media types. Especially MIDs do not
the Internet with substantially taneous recipients and the support of fully support video and audio contents,
higher bandwidth. An additional feedback channels in case of transmis- which is due to their limitations in dis-
technical option is to receive televi- sion media. With regard to access play size, missing speakers or weak in-
sion via TV-cable. mechanisms a distinction between
push and pull mechanisms has to be 1
Pull-services typically address only one end-user
made. Pull-oriented access is character- (the one who triggered the transmission).
Category 1) 2) 3) 4) 5) 6) 7)
Mobile Mobile Online Broadband Offline Online Offline
Requirement
Information Information Multimedia Multimedia Multimedia Digital TV Digital TV
Device Device 3G PC PC PC
access mechanism pull 0 + ++ ++ 0
push ++ ++ + + (not ++ (not
relevant) relevant)
simultaneous unicast ++ ++ ++ ++ 0
recipients broadcast -- 0 - 0 ++
feedback channel supported ++ ++ ++ ++ -
reproduction text - 0 + + + 0 0
pictures -- 0 ++ ++ ++ + +
audio -- 0 + ++ ++ ++ ++
video - 0 + ++ ++ ++
storage capabilities supported - 0 ++ ++ (not 0 (not
relevant) relevant)
input facilities keyboard 0 0 ++ ++ ++ 0 0
mouse, joystick -- -- ++ ++ ++ - -
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pen 0 0 - - - - -
volume of data low ++ ++ + + - ++ -
high -- - 0 + + ++ +
speed of low ++ ++ ++ ++ ++ ++ ++
distribution
high ++ ++ + + -- + --
purpose information ++ ++ ++ ++ ++ 0 0
entertainment - 0 + ++ ++ ++ ++
activity passive 0 + 0 + + ++ ++
active 0 + ++ ++ ++ 0 0
user attention low ++ ++ ++ ++ ++ ++ ++
high - - + + + 0 0
business model advertisements - 0 + + - ++ 0
recipient payment + + - 0 ++ + ++
commissions 0 + ++ ++ 0 --
Legend: ++ strong support weak support
To sum up, most of the traditional con- significant improvements in terms of today's perspective it seems likely that
tents produced by the media industry bandwidth and a functional conver- products of diverse manufacturers will
are not suited for mobile devices. There- gence between mobile phones and differ considerable in hardware (e.g. dis-
fore, it can be expected that for the pur- PDAs. The broad support of the WAP- play size). Consequently, the implemen-
pose of a device compliant selection and Standard enables contents to be distrib- tation of user interfaces might cause
configuration of contents predomi- uted in a unicast-oriented manner via problems greater than those in the area
nantly new, specific contents will have push or pull-access. Also, information of (incompatible) HTML-browsers.
to be created. Hence, the provision of processing and reproduction capabili-
online-services for MIDs will entail tech- ties will be enhanced. Nevertheless, so- Online Multimedia PC
nical and organisational consequences phisticated technical input and output
for many media companies. facilities comparable to those of station- Typical characteristics of available
ary devices will not be widely imple- desktop-PCs are advanced reproduc-
Mobile Information Devices 3rd Genera- mented in mobile devices any time tion, storage and interaction capabili-
tion (MID 3G) soon. ties in relation to low bandwidth access
to the Internet. For this reason, the dis-
Following announcements of the A specific problem in content creation tribution of high volume and high
manufacturers, mobile devices of the will emerge from the multiple variants quality dynamic media (especially
next generation will be characterised by of possible mobile end devices. From video) is difficult. Static media types
94 J M M - V o l . 2 - N o . 11-2000
Offline Digital TV fig. 3. Also, the category of MID 3Gs has identified easily, at least for general in-
been added to demonstrate the prevail- tended purposes like consumption of
Video-DVDs can be seen as an alterna- ing technological trend. best seller novels. Additionally, con-
tive to conventional video tapes. Physi- tents cannot be rented using available
cal production and distribution gener- From this, two different strategies can eBooks because of technical issues.
ate costs and take time, so that DVDs be derived. On the one hand, there are Also, eBooks are not as robust as tradi-
are not suited for up-to-date, obsoles- specialised end devices mainly for the tional books and some products are
cent, changing or low volume contents. reproduction of digital contents not suited for outdoor usage (e.g. on
In view of business model, user pay- (eBooks) with limited support of addi- beaches).
ment is well established (purchase or tional functions and constrained
renting). In analogy to video tapes, ad- online capabilities. EBooks will be Yet, some niche applications profit
vertising will have a minor impor- discussed in section 4.1. On the other from eBooks. For example, technical
tance. At present, DVD-based transac- hand, most other mobile devices are manuals, lose-leaf collections, cata-
tions are not possible because of miss- being driven in the direction of multi- logues, time-table information or mas-
ing online-capabilities and therefore purpose devices with strong communi- sive textbooks benefit from memory
business models based on commissions cation capabilities. Target applications capacity, unproblematic updates, sup-
have no significance. of MID 3Gs are not only distribution of port of hyperlinks and search mecha-
contents, but a broad range of inter- nisms. As well, customers with weak
4.Two exemplary Concepts active services. In common, this kind eyes take advantage of variable type
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I Rgure 3:MID 3Gs and eBooks os target platforms of the media industry Technological Trend
Mobile Data .
Communication
high
WAP-compliant
Mobile Phones
MID
low
specialised universal Range of supported
Functionality
volume low + Possible, but laborious, because eBook has t o be connected to the Internet for each
package of content
high ++ Intended application area, memory capabilities depend on product and configuration
speed of low ++ Intended application area
distribution high + Slightly limited, because permanent online-access is not supported yet
purpose information ++ No obstacles observable
entertainment 0 Possible, but limited by traditional user behaviour
activity passive ++ No obstacles observable (apart from the user selecting the required contents)
active 0 Available products do not focus active user behaviour (limited support of user
interaction)
user attention low ++ No obstacles observable
high ++ Intended user behaviour, possibly limited by mobile usage
business model advertisements 0 Possible, but only little experience up t o now. In analogy to traditional books advertising
is probably of minor importance. However, advertising might be possible in electronic
newspapers based on eBooks.
recipient payment + Intended source of revenues. However, renting of digital contents is not supported yet
in available products.
commissions - User transactions are not supported yet
costs compared to traditional books. Still, the future of eBooks is difficult to tended memory. Other eBook manufac-
Particularly, expenses for paper, print- predict. Proprietary approaches from turers like Librius changed their strat-
services, stock and physical shipment Nuvomedia and Softbook have been egy and produce specialised, device-in-
cease to apply. Next to reductions in available in the U.S. since autumn 1998. dependent reading software for PDAs
price, two other consequences occur. However, both companies have failed to and Subnotebooks. Additionally, major
Firstly, publishers can efficiently offer establish eBooks as a mass medium and software companies like Adobe and
highly specialised contents for limited sold only a few thousand devices. Both Microsoft also work on similar techno-
CO
target groups because of decreasing Nuvomedia and Softbook have been ac- logical alternatives. CL
Internet (e.g. product configuration, vices are most promising for simple,
This paper has mainly focused on in- price comparisons, routing etc.) cannot standardised products that fit the
formation-oriented services so far (see be transferred to mobile devices easily, needs of customers in transit, for ex-
section 3.3). Supplementary, services because these applications typically use ample intermediation of lifts or book-
that support navigation and informa- applets or a sequence of forms for data ing services (hotels, tickets). However,
tion retrieval are possible. This kind of input. This kind of interaction is diffi- a reasonable alternative to mobile
service is commonly called "WAP-Por- cult to handle on mobile devices as we transaction-oriented services are call
synchronous This kind of service will be difficult to establish, because Mobile chat systems will be difficult to handle for cus-
ordinary mobile phone calis basically offer a convenient tomers, because real time communication are constrained
alternative. by small displays and inadequate input facilities.
asynchronous SMS and mailbox systems are already In use. In future, News groups can be accessed via mobile devices. N o
WAP-based E-Mails might supplement these services. serious obstacles apart from small displays and inadequate
input facilities.
tal" and helps users to find relevant in- have mentioned above. Therefore, only centres, especially if the customer uses
formation sources via catalogues or simple applications are likely to appeal a mobile phone to access these services.
search engines (see Hess and Herwig to the mass market. With regard to rev- Also, transactional offerings are typi-
1999, 551). In analogy to common enues, user-payment is possible for pre- cally new for media companies. There-
Internet-portals there will probably be mium services with significant user fore, adequate partnerships are impor-
general-interest portals as well as nu- value and unique selling point. Addi- tant for launching this kind of mobile
merous special-interest portals, both of tionally, business models based on com- service (for strategic alliances of media
which will provide a number of addi- missions are possible. In this case, the companies in the online-business in
tional services. Because it is difficult to application should prepare transac- general, see Lichtenberg 1999, 26).
enter Internet-addresses (URLs) via tions with business partners (for ex-
small phone keys or other, compara- ample, a hotel guide offered by a media Finally, communication-oriented ser-
tively inefficient input facilities, portals company may be linked to appropriate vices support communication amongst
are likely to become quite important for booking systems). users. Internet E-Mail, chats and news
The portability of contents from one (sub-)notebooks. Therefore, the greatest Heil, B. (1999) Online-Dienste, Portal-
class of devices (e.g. PCs) to another potential for success is to be seen in Sites und elektronische
(e.g. MIDs) is difficult due to signifi- niche products like technical manuals. Einkaufszentren, Wiesbaden.
cant technical differences. There-
Hess, T., Herwig, V. (1999) 'Portale im
fore, new devices and transport me- Also, provision of mobile commerce
Internet', Wirtschaftsinformatik 6:
dia must probably be supported services is difficult. Restrictions are
pp. 551-553.
with target media specific contents. mainly due to limitations with regard
Starting from conventional publish- to small displays and insufficient input
ing, technical innovations also en- facilities of mobile devices. This weak-
able new kinds of distribution (for nesses can not be compensated by con-
example video-on-demand) as well siderable transmission capabilities
as sources of income (for example that are expected within the next few
pay-per-view). years. Consequently, mainly low vol-
JMM-Vol. 2 - N o . 11-2000 99