If the rumors about Apple’s upcoming “iPad” are true, prepare for the next revolution after the iPhone. Jeremy Horwitz says the iPad could have a 10.7″ screen with an iPhone 3G-like design, runs iPhone OS, will come in two flavors with and without 3G, 720p resolution and with all media, gaming, eBook and web functionality of the iPhone.

As the rumor goes, Apple would announce it in January 2010 and ship in May-June.

Why would the iPad be revolutionary?

Ever heard about Multiscreen? So far the media industry talked about Multiscreen referring to “the Three Screens”: TV, PC and Mobile. Even Nielsen, the reference company for audience measurements, publishes its quarterly ” Three Screens Report”, tracking media consumption on TV, PC and Mobile. The latest report coincidentally highlights the increase in ¨multitasking¨, that is, web browsing while watching TV (57% of consumers does it at least once a month).

An iPad would be a device ideal for “multitasking”, where the multiscreen concept shifts to multiple screens at the same time, enriching how media in consumed. Expect some apps to turn the iPad into a Multimedia Remote Control, where you can navigate through the Program Guide (EPG) and choose what to see. Zapping could be done on the iPad, previewing the channels without annoying all the family changing channels on the main TV. Broadcast of live Sports events are also ideal to have the iPad as a secondary screen to access stats, classification, players profile, replays  or multiple view angles, with simple finger controls. Not too mention interactive TV applications, with much richer interaction on a tablet than on any current form of remote controls.

The iPad is also an ideal portable screen for video, for web browsing, for home automation remote control and as the eBook reader that Amazon must be scared about.

More on the iPad:
Rebooting the Book (One Apple iPad Tablet at a Time) – O’Reilly Radar
IPad Rumors Abound! Apple To Announce On January 19! Device Shipping In May! – TechCrunch
The coming tablet wars – TechCrunch

Internet and the Digital Revolution has transformed Media… and this is just starting. If not convinced, see the clip above.

I came back from Taipei, and instead of an Asus Eee Box I dreamt about, I got a much cheaper box with much better specs: the Acer Aspire Revo. For around  180 Euro this is what I got:

• Intel Atom 230 1.6GHz
• 2GB DDR2 RAM
• 250 GB HDD
• nVidia ION Integrated with HDMI
• Wifi b/g/draft-N
• 6 USB ports, 1 eSATA, 1 SD-HC card reader, 1 Gigabit Ethernet port
• Wireless Keyboard and Mouse
• Linux RevoBoot

A pretty good price for what is inside this box. The Linux RevoBoot is not a serious distro. It is just provided to be easily replaced by whatever OS you plan to install.

I did install a Windows 7 RC on the HDD, and an XMBC Live on a SD-HC card. By pressing F12 at start up, you can choose which OS to boot from. Connected to a 50″ LCD screen through HDMI at 1080p, it looks pretty cool as a STB.

In order to enjoy HD video payed from this box, it is important to know that the Media Player software needs to be capable to use the hardware video acceleration, that is, able to off-load video decoding tasks to the nVidia ION GPU. The Intel Atom 230 processor by itself will not be able to decode HD smoothly without losing frames.

As of today that means that:

- On Windows, the media player must support DVXA (DirectX Video Acceleration):
Windows Media Player supports DVXA ONLY for Windows Media Video. A popular player like VLC, does NOT support DVXA. Boxee for Windows does not support DVXA either. I did installed Media Player Classic – Home Cinema, which supports video acceleration for h264, the codec normally used in Matroska popular HD video downloads.

- On Linux, the media player must support VDPAU (Video Decode and Presentation API for UNIX), which is the case for MPlayer ot MythTV, and specially by the XBMC Media Center and Boxee, the favorites media centers of the Linux crowd.

Unfortunately Flash does NOT support HW acceleration, and that means that most online video does NOT play totally smooth on the Revo.  Adobe and nVidia are said to be working on it.

All in all, a good box to attach to your LCD TV and control with the wireless keyboard and mouse from the sofa. Great performance as a Media Center for your media library, but with shortcomings to enjoy online video on your TV.

This is the main drawback of boxes like the Revo and the Eee Box with an Atom processor that has trouble playing Flash video encoded in h264. A Mac Mini, woudl not have that problem, but it would cost 3 times the price.

Another thing to note is the poor Wireless-N performance of the Revo. If you do not have Ethernet wiring to your living room, you’d better budget for HomePlug adapters instead of a Wireless-N router upgrade.

I will be in Taiwan in a few days, and I do not plan to leave without one of these boxes. I already posted about it. The newest Asus Eee Box is a great product. Small-form that can be (VESA) mounted on the back of the TV, quiet, low power, Wifi-n for true multimedia without wires, HDMI and SPDIF output…  and it is much more affordable than a Mac Mini.

I have not found any cons yet. And what’s more, see the video clip for the Eee Stick, the killer accesory to control the Eee Box from the sofa.

Install the Boxee version for Windows XP, or simply “tune-in” into http://www.youtube.com/xl for your Online Video experience on the TV.

Google has announced the acquisition of On2, the company that owns some of the video compression codecs widely used in online video, but that were recently losing ground in favor of h.264.

Why is Google spending $106 million in purchasing the owner of  decaying codecs?

1) Google has high hopes for HTML5, a standard set to handle video natively (i.e. there will a a <video> tag, as there is a <img> tag for pictures now, and no plugin will be required for the browser to play a video, unlike the plugins required now for flash, Windows Media or Real Audio). If Google open-sources the coming VP8 codec from On2, and forces it into  HTML5,  it would seriously hit Adobe Flash and Microsoft Silverlight proprietary strategies in favor of an open HTML5. Google can put a lot of pressure by incorporating VP8 into Chrome and migrating YouTube to support it.

2) Owning a video codec technology, as online video becomes King in the Web. Although h.264 is an open standard licensed by MPEGLA, Microsoft owns their own propriety Windows Media codecs. Imaging Windows introducing ad insertion, or search within videos, or interactive video objects within the video coding technology ahead of others. What would be the effect to Google’s search and advertising “bread and butter” in a video-centric Web? Can you imagine Google paying licenses to archrival Microsoft?

3) Is $106m too much? Google might be making the simple maths? What would be the impact on their market cap, if Microsoft releases a video codec with ad/search features? What would be the impact on Microsoft stock if Google is able to master the video codec technology and do that first? Note that just the announcement of this acquisition make Adobe shares drop 3.5%!!

It is not the saving in licenses or bandwith what drives this acquisition. This is about strategy, defending from Microsoft, and taking control of its own future. Google will not make direct revenue from this $106m acquisition, but if it succeeds in getting VP8 widely adopted into HTML5, they are going to be better positioned that anyone to defend their Advertising and Search business in video too.

Online 3D video, interactive objects within video, search within video contents. All that will come and Google wants to be the one to bring it and not depend on standard bodies, or worse,  its major competitor.

Coverage of this news by other blogs:

TechCrunch, Google Acquires Video Compression Technology Company On2 For $106 Million

GigaOM, Google: You Buy Some, You Sell Some

NewTeevee, Watch Out, Flash; Google Buys On2

StreamingMedia.com, Google’s Acquisition Of On2 Not A Big Deal, Here’s Why

It is more than one motnh ago that I was in CommunicAsia  for a Mobile TV panel. Here are the main points we discussed about how to make the business case for Mobile TV work.

• Free-to-Air channels are a must to drive adoption of Mobile TV into the mainstream, as Japan One Seg, Korea T-DMB and even the DVB-H Italian case show. More than 20 million Japanese watch TV on a phone. As of today, 85 % of the new handsets sold in Japan have a One Seg tuner. Even the iPhone has an One Seg tuner accesory (see picture)
• “Free” creates a large audience that can be monetized through subscriptions, advertisement and transactions (VOD, Catch-up TV, cross-selling). It is the economics of free, common in Internet and Software, applied to Mobile TV.
• There is a need for a next-gen Mobile TV that puts together Broadcast and Unicast technologies. Broadcast enables FTA channels at zero marginal cost (it is the same cost to serve one customer than one million) and it is efficient for premium mass audience channels like sports channels. Meantime, Unicast provides unlimited number of channels for premium, niche/long tail, VOD and catch-up TV that can be monetize as subscriptions or pay-per-download. The 3G network also enables interactive services, like EPGs, audience monitoring, interactive ads, or interactions with social network (see what my friend watch, or “watch and chat”), that give extra chance for monetization.
• Focus on high-end devices, like iPhone or ones with TV tuners. Early adopters of these devices are the same early adopters that will watch TV on a mobile. It is a waste to support a large number of mid-range or low-end devices. Mobile TV has not crossed the chasm yet.

Some other curious facts and learning from the Japanese One Seg: Mobile TV experience:

NHK Study: Where people watch mobile TV?
1) At home in a room wo TV 38%, 2) At work/school 26%, 3)While bathing 24% – On train goes in 7th place (17%) tied with at home in a room with a TV!
=>  There are more use cases than just watching TV on the train…

DIMSDRIVE research for Japan:
What people like about Mobile TV: 1) Anywhere, 2) free, 3) simple
What they do not like: 1) Battery, 2) don’t need to watch TV outside, 3) do not want to watch TV on a phone

It has been almost a month of holidays in Spain with my family. It has been the month where Google has announced its Chrome OS, attacking Microsoft where it really hurts, on its Windows licenses. Microsoft success with its new search engine, Bing, reinforced with the Yahoo deal, has finally triggered Google to strike with a move that could take Linux mainstream into the desktop at last, as we dreamed and begged before.

Although rather than desktop , we should say laptop… How much more life do you think desktops have before being totally displaced by laptops? True, that desktops might evolve into Media Centers or PC2TVs in the living-room, but today’s families start to have one laptop per family member rather than one desktop per family.

This summer break was the first time we were travelling with two laptops, one for me and one for my wife. And it is also the first time that mobile operators (Telefonica, Vodafone, Orange and Yoigo) all offered wireless broadband with a HSDPA USD-modem on a prepaid basis, targeting the large number of tourists that visit Spain in summer.

This was also the first holidays that I did not carry any book, I mean, any paper book. With the Kindle fully loaded with eBooks I also avoided the tough decisions of what book to take on the plane, or which one to the beach; I always had all of them with me.

I love the Kindle experience when reading books, but surprisingly I found the eBook readers for the iPhone (eReader or Stanza) very convenient when you are really on the go. In fact, I ended up taking only the iPhone to the beach and not the Kindle. Another great use case for the iPhone eBook readers is to read in bed when your wife is sleeping and you do not want to disturb her with the lamp lights on, or with the Kindle “next page” button clicks. The iPhone is totally silent to turn pages, and with the background color in the reader turned to black, the back-light will not bother your sleeping partner either.

This was also the summer of the 40th anniversary of the first man on the Moon, and I have really enjoyed the way Google celebrated it, making the Moon available on Google Earth. Absolutely stunning. If you have not tried yet, go for it and take your own tour to the Moon (see more on the clip below).

Apple tablet has been much anticipated and rumored, but Mike Arrington and TechCrunch are creating something quite cool! Read more.

An these kind of new devices will have some impact in the way web apps are developed, with emphasis in multitouch features.

As the graph via TechCrunch perfectly illustrates, WolframAlpha has not revolutionized Search… at all. It is a very nice concept, but far from delivering any real everyday value other than being somewhat useful to find numeric facts.

By comparison Bing has resulted in a good surprise to put pressure on Google monopoly in Search. No Search Revolution, but at least some good competition. That is excellent news for all of us.

An today’s news of Bing Travel launch look very promising.