All Things Digital

The U.S. Justice Department has managed the impossible. It’s brought Howard Stern and Oprah Winfrey together under a single aegis.

This morning the DOJ approved the merger of satellite radio companies Sirius Satellite Radio (SIRI) (home to Stern) and XM Satellite Radio (XMSR) (home to Winfrey), a move that will create a satellite radio company with about 14 million subscribers.

In a statement, the DOJ said it found no reason to think that combining the only two satellite radio players in the market would create a pay-radio monopoly. “After a careful and thorough review of the proposed transaction, the division concluded that the evidence does not demonstrate that the proposed merger of XM and Sirius is likely to substantially lessen competition, and that the transaction therefore is not likely to harm consumers,” the DOJ explained.

“The Division reached this conclusion because the evidence did not show that the merger would enable the parties to profitably increase prices to satellite radio customers for several reasons, including: a lack of competition between the parties in important segments even without the merger; the competitive alternative services available to consumers; technological change that is expected to make those alternatives increasingly attractive over time; and efficiencies likely to flow from the transaction that could benefit consumers,” said the DOJ.

“Comcast 3.0.” That was the subject of Comcast CEO Brian Roberts keynote address at the Consumer Electronics Show today. And what is “Comcast 3.0?” Well, like Web 2.0 and 3.0, it’s a marketing term–in Comcast’s case, one for its transformation from “broadband” provider to a “wideband” provider.

In 2008, said Roberts, Comcast will begin upgrading its network to offer significantly faster download speeds. “Wideband takes four channels and bonds them together and will enable speeds to go up from 12 to 16 megabits a second to over 100 megabits a second,” he explained. The technology will be rolled out to “millions” by the end of this year, with more to come–”if it’s as popular as we expect,” he added.

And it undoubtedly will be. At speeds like that, Roberts noted, you could download an HD copy of “Batman Begins” in about four minutes. “Superfast movie downloads are only the beginning,” Roberts said. “This will open a whole new world of Web-based innovation.”

A few other points worth noting:

• Roberts also announced “Project Infinity,” an effort to exponentially expand its video-on-demand programming. “Comcast will put 1,000 HD choices in every Comcast HD home by the end of the year,” Roberts said. “What satellite says they’ll offer pales in comparison.”

• Comcast is now the country’s fourth largest residential phone provider.
• Finally, he pitched Fancast.com, a new online-entertainment portal that gathers film, TV and videos scattered across the Internet in one place. “It’s the content-hungry consumer’s dream,” Roberts said. “With user-generated content, there’s the possibility of millions of choices. You’ll never want to get off the couch.”

With little more than a year to go before television in the states goes all-digital, the federal government is doing its best to make the transition easier for couch potatoes dreading the looming obsolescence of their rabbit-eared sets.

Yesterday, the Commerce Department began accepting applications for $40 coupons to defray the cost of a basic digital-to-analog converter box (expected to sell for between $50 and $70) that will allow older TVs to receive digital broadcast signals. “There is a big change in television coming on Feb. 18, 2009, and people who have old televisions who receive free over-the-air broadcasting, which means they are not hooked up to cable or satellite or another pay-TV service, have to make a decision,” Meredith Atwell Baker, deputy assistant secretary of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, told Broadcast Newsroom. “They have three choices. They can buy a new TV that’s digital, they can subscribe to cable or satellite or another service, or they can buy a converter box. Otherwise, their television won’t work.”

The coupons are available on a first-come, first-served basis at www.ntia.doc.gov/dtvcoupon/index.html. And there are about 33 million of them available. Great news for the estimated 26 million households in the United States that have yet to make the jump to digital TV.

When Steve Jobs described the iPhone at D5 as “the best iPod we’ve ever made,” he set the bar high for future iterations of the iconic device.

Now, in the run-up to tomorrow’s invitation-only Apple event, the question is: will Apple meet it? And with what? The answer, if the latest rumors prove true, depends on your feelings about digital radio. Because according to “a reliable industry insider,” the touchscreen iPod that Apple is expected to uncrate tomorrow will support digital radio. “The source said that the new iPods will be able to receive digital radio, and will include a ‘buy-now’ function to allow the user to download and buy tracks as they are being played,” Vnunet reports. “This facility will be limited to tracks sold from the iTunes store, but Apple hopes to dramatically increase the number of tracks available via the service.”

An interesting rumor, and one we’ve heard before. Back in 2004 word on the street had it that Apple had cut a deal with Sirius to offer an iPod with a built-in satellite radio receiver. But it hadn’t. And according to Sirius CEO Mel Karmazin, it probably never would, because the feeling at Apple was that “they don’t need to put a satellite radio in their box.”

Has Apple reconsidered its position in the ensuing years? It’s certainly possible. Remember Jobs once said “people don’t want to watch video on their iPod” too.