Virgin Media offloads ADSL users to TalkTalk

We'll be seeing a few more of these, then

Virgin Media has sold its remaining 97,700 ADSL customers to TalkTalk, a deal that could see the London-based telco become the third-largest broadband provider in the country.

Announcing the news in its second quarter financial statement, TalkTalk hailed the move as a "good strategic acquisition" that would be used to boost take-up of its broadband, TV and fibre services.

The statement said: "These are DSL customers outside Virgin Media's cable footprint but are substantially on-net for our own unbundled network, and represent a good strategic acquisition that will accelerate the growth of our broadband, TV and fibre bases.The National base stood at 97,700 at the end of September 2014. We expect that a substantial proportion of these customers will be migrated onto our network through 2015."

A report by ThinkBroadband.com notes that Virgin Media, currently the third-largest broadband provider in the UK, reported 4.4m customers in its second quarter financial statement, versus TalkTalk's 4.2m. While the new additions alone wouldn't be enough to see TalkTalk plug the gap, a strong marketing push and succesful fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) deployment in York in 2015 could see the company leapfrog Virgin, according to the report.

TalkTalk appointed Fujitsu infrastructure contractor for its FTTP joint venture in York, which will supply 1Gb services to consumers and businesses, a move that it said could potentially extend a pure fibre network to 10m households.

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4K Blu-ray discs arriving in 2015 to fight streaming media

Blu-ray Disc Association

Much of the world is shifting to streaming video delivered over the Internet, but don't count out optical discs just yet.

The Blu-ray Disc Association is most of the way done defining a version of its optical disc technology that can handle high-resolution 4K imagery, the group said Friday at the IFA electronics trade show here. It will start licensing the technology in the spring or summer of 2015, and the first 4K Blu-ray players should arrive by the holiday-shopping season of that year, said Victor Matsuda, chairman of the Blu-ray Disc Association global promotions committee.

Using physical media instead of relying on fallible and often limited Internet connections means Blu-ray discs can provide the best possible image quality, he said. But there's more to 4K Blu-ray than just four times the number of pixels as in today's prevailing 1080p video, he added.

The new specification also will improve color gamut dramatically and offer a higher dynamic range so details in shadows and highlights are visible. The new format also will be able to show 4K video at 60 frames per second, he said.

"The packaged media and that enclosed, stable environment -- that's part of being the best of the best," Matsuda said.

It's not clear exactly now much of the market wants the best of the best, though: people have flocked to streaming services despite difficulties with bandwidth and image quality. With services from Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, Google, and others, people can watch the video they want immediately rather than having leave the house to get a disc. And subscription services offer access to a library of titles so people can watch as much as they want -- and try new TV shows or movies without having to decide whether it's worth the per-show price tag.

Streaming media is also becoming more convenient with players from Apple, Roku, Amazon, and Google. As of the second quarter of 2014, 17 percent of Internet-connected households have streaming-media players, NPD Group said.

But Matsuda believes a lot of the world will continue to use optical discs. Blu-ray is a force to be reckoned with. In the US, 72 million households -- about 62 percent -- had a Blu-ray player of some sort in 2014, according to the Digital Entertainment Group. Many people move to new technology slowly, and outside the US, there's another lag of six to 12 months.

Format changes that offer better quality are often a pain for consumers -- especially those who pick the wrong one, as was the case when the Betamax videotape format famously lost out to VHS, or when HD DVD lost out to Blu-ray. Consumers don't have to worry so much about formats with streaming media.

The new format works on existing Blu-ray discs with 50GB capacity, said Ron Martin, vice president of Panasonic's Hollywood lab and a member of the Blu-ray Association's task for for next-generation Blu-ray development. It stores data in a different way, though, moving from the H.264/AVC (Advanced Video Coding) compression technology to the newer H.265/HEVC (High Efficiency Video Coding) successor. HEVC takes more processing to use when encoding videos but compresses them more compactly -- or alternatively viewed, lets more pixels be sent across a given amount of data-transfer capacity.

The new 4K Blu-ray drive players will be able to extract data from discs at a rate of 50 or 60 megabits per second, and perhaps up to 100Mbps, Martin said. "That's roughly double the current Blu-ray," he said. Doubled data-transfer rates plus doubled compression efficiency means the new technology will be able to handle the quadrupled pixels required moving from 1,920x1,080 pixels to 3,820x2,160 pixels.

The new technology also will get updated digital rights management (DRM) technology for preventing unauthorized copying, Matsuda said.

Although 4K Blu-ray doesn't require larger disc capacity, they would benefit from it -- and that's something else the association is working on. "The roadmap says we have the capability to do that -- to increment to 66GB or maybe 100GB. those things are under study," Martin said.

For each frame of 4K Blu-ray video, the association expects significant image-quality improvements. Many experts are skeptical that people watching TV at ordinary TV viewing distances have sharp enough vision to tell the difference between today's 1080p HD video and 4K video -- also called Ultra HD or UHD. Matsuda, though, believes he can based on side-by-side comparisons, and certainly the TV industry is gradually moving that direction.

Matsuda and Martin expect other improvements than in spatial resolution, though.

First is better dynamic range. The 4K format will increase the bit depth for each pixel from 8 to 10, meaning that a greater range between bright and dark can be recorded for video that's been produced to take advantage of that.

Currently, "with fireworks or flashbulbs or looking at the sun, you get the level of brightness as with anything else white in the scene," Martin said. "Now we have 100 percent more signal range to capture those highlights to make a visible difference."

Second is a broader range of colors. A new color-recording technology called BT.2020 allows a wider gamut, Martin said.

"The existing 709 color encoding system shows 30-35 percent of the visual color spectrum," Martin said. BT.2020 can "render about 70-80 percent. As TVs migrate you'll be able to detect those colors," he said. Blu-ray players will be able to detect BT.2020 support and use the better color gamut if it's available, but today's TVs don't yet have the feature, he said.

The Blu-ray contingent has one more advantage on its side, too: Hollywood. Consumers who've bought copies of the same movie in VHS, DVD, and Blu-ray aren't necessarily going to buy another version in Blu-ray 4K, and movie studios aren't necessarily going to go to the trouble of remastering existing movies to take full advantage of the new format. But for new movies, already often produced in 4K versions, the decision to support the format is a lot easier.

The Blu-ray Disc Association counts big studios as board members, including Disney, Warner, Fox, and Sony -- which makes both Blu-ray players and runs its Sony Entertainment studio. Also members of the association are Lionsgate, Universal, and Paramount.

"At one level or another all Hollywood is on board," Matsuda said.

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Sling Media Slingbox M1

Pros Affordable. Smooth, sharp picture. Easy to set up. Integrated Wi-Fi.

Cons Mobile apps cost extra. Slingbox and connected HDTV can only watch one channel at a time between them. Lacks HDMI connectivity. Bottom Line If you want to watch live TV on your mobile devices, the Slingbox M1 is the most affordable place-shifting device yet, even if you need to pay extra for the apps.

By Will Greenwald Watching live television on your mobile devices should be a no-brainer feature by now, but it's still a limited and often complicated endeavor. You can stream live over-the-air TV with a tuner/DVR like the Tablo, or you can rely on the place-shifting services offered by various cable and satellite companies—which are often hamstrung by individual networks' content restrictions, with the exception of Dish Network and its Editors' Choice-winning Hopper with Sling).

Another option is to use a physical place-shifting device like Sling Media's Slingbox (which uses the same technology that powers the aforementioned Hopper with Sling). The Slingbox was one of the first place-shifting television devices, and its most recent iteration, the Slingbox M1, is the best so far. At $149.99 it's the least expensive Slingbox yet, and the addition of Wi-Fi makes it incredibly flexible to configure. It's a solid upgrade across the board from its predecessor, the Slingbox 350, and earns our Editors' Choice. Just keep in mind you'll still have to pay an extra $15 for each mobile app.

Design
The Slingbox M1 measures 1.7 by 7 by 4.3 inches (HWD) and weighs 13.9 ounces, making it the smallest Slingbox device so far. It eschews the blocky, textured design of the Slingbox 350 in favor of a more curved, glossy, Dish Networks-like look. It's a slightly rounded trapezoid with a glossy black front panel that holds power, network, and status indicator lights. The side panels are a smooth matte black, and the top panel is textured and vented, bearing the Slingbox logo. The back of the M1 holds component video inputs and outputs, an Ethernet port, a 3.5mm IR blaster port, the power port, a WPS button, and a pinhole Reset button.

Like most previous Slingboxes, the M1 requires a component video connection to get a picture. This isn't as advanced as HDMI and requires five jacks (often bundled into one or two cables) rather than one, but still supports 1080p video. HDMI signals are almost always encrypted through HDCP, preventing the picture from being split or shared. Component video is an analog connection, and doesn't have such a limitation. As long as your cable or satellite box has a component video output, this shouldn't be a problem and it won't even be noticeable after you first set it up. If you want an HDMI connection, you'll need to get the more expensive Slingbox 500 (now renamed as the SlingTV), which can handle HDMI and offers an on-screen menu system that will receive expanded content in August. It's twice the price of the M1, though.

Besides the lower price, the biggest change to the M1 over the Slingbox 350 is the addition of Wi-Fi, a feature the Slingbox 500 and SlingTV shares. It can connect to your home network with its dual-band Wi-Fi radio if an Ethernet cable is too inconvenient (which it easily can be, if your router isn't near your cable or satellite box). A wired connection will still provide the most consistent, high-quality stream, but the Wi-Fi option greatly expands the M1's flexibility of placement and setup.

Simple Set Up, Watching Live TV
Configuring Wi-Fi is almost as easy as just plugging the M1 into your router. You can directly connect by pressing the WPS button, or use the iOS, Android, PC, or Mac versions of SlingPlayer to input your network information. After that, all you need to do is register a free Slingbox account and you can access the Slingbox M1 through any Internet connection.

If you want to watch streamed live television on your PC or Mac, you're covered by the Slingbox M1 straight out of the box with the free SlingPlayer Desktop software. If you want to watch it on your mobile device, you'll need to spend a bit more. The iOS and Android versions of SlingPlayer are $14.99 each, which seems a bit high to add functionality that should come with the device itself. On the other hand, even the total cost of the M1 and the app is less than the Slingbox 350 on its own, and that required the paid app as well. Still, if you want to watch your cable or satellite service on your smartphone or tablet, mentally prepare yourself for at least a $165 purchase rather than just the $150 on the M1's price tag.

After a very fast setup, the M1 worked flawlessly. It streamed high-definition video over the Internet through Wi-Fi, letting me pick it up on both SlingPlayer on an iPad Air and SlingPlayer Desktop on my PC. Both programs offered a full program grid and emulated remote control commands to the connected Dish Network Hopper, thanks to the included infrared remote. The remote commands lagged a few seconds, and it often took another few seconds for the stream to catch up to any changes in quality settings, but that's normal for all place-shifting hardware.

I flipped between Good Eats on the Food Network, Aladdin and the Death Lamp on SyFy, and Star Trek: The Next Generation on BBC America, all of which came through in HD. The Slingbox M1 sends IR commands to the connected cable or satellite box as if they were remote commands, so whatever you watch over the Slingbox will be what's on the connected HDTV. If you just want to access your live television when you're away, this isn't a problem, but don't expect to be able to watch something different from whatever your family is tuned to while they're on the couch. Like with other Slingboxes, this can potentially make fighting over who has the remote an international incident.

Conclusion
The Slingbox M1 is the least expensive and most flexible Slingbox yet. It doesn't bother with an on-screen menu or any sort of HDTV content portal like the Slingbox 500 (now the SlingTV), but at $150 it doesn't need to. Even with the extra investment for the mobile SlingPlayer software, it's a bargain for getting your cable or satellite service anywhere you go without additional subscriptions or fees. The lower price and addition of Wi-Fi earn it our Editors' Choice.

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