Multimedia Monitor, March 1996

IN THE SPOTLIGHT

With well over 1,000 companies manning booths in the Milia 96 exhibit hall, it would be an impossible task to list every participant and every product on display there. Instead, we offer the highlights from what has evolved over the years into one of the top multimedia trade shows in existence. Special thanks to Monitor correspondent Michael Bush for his input on this feature (Reed Midem, 179 avenue Victor Hugo, 75116 Paris, France, +33-1 44 34 45 12, fax +33-1 44 34 44 00).

@rom europe - a collaborative group of European multimedia publishers - was officially launched at Milia 96. The idea for the network was formed in early 1995 and includes Munich-based Systhema Verlag GmbH, London-based Macmillan Interactive Publishing, DeAgostini Multimedia of Italy, and Planeta of Spain.

The goal of @rom europe is to build a strong, united network of European publishers to address such issues as weak distribution channels; confusion at the retail level and limited CD-ROM shelf space; and consumer dissatisfaction with low-quality titles and lack of technical support. The @rom europe alliance initially will focus on improving consumer reference, language-learning, children's entertainment, and travel titles (Systhema, Thomas Minkus, +89 32 47 3115; Macmillan, Sara Lloyd, +44 171 881 8000).

Apple Computer Europe and Disney Interactive Europe announced a marketing agreement whereby Disney Interactive CD-ROM titles will be bundled with Apple's Performa line of computers - "localized" for distribution in seven European countries: the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, the Benelux region, Sweden, and Spain. Available in stores in spring 1996, the new "Apple Disney Collection" will include such titles as Disney's Animated Story Book: The Lion King and the Aladdin Activity Center CD-ROMs.

In other news, Apple Europe has signed a deal with Aventure du Bout du Monde (ABM) to help develop ABM's French and English language Web site, which will provide worldwide travel and tourism information (Apple Europe, 12 avenue d'Oceanie - Z.A. de Courtaboeuf, 91956 Les Ulis Cedex, France, +33-1 69 86 33 94; Disney Europe, 50, avenue Montaigne, 75378 Paris Cedex 08, France, +33-1 53 75 56 25).

Arts Video Infographiques demonstrated its Movideo 1.0, a software program that allows non-technical users to generate their own "hypervideo applications" - multimedia presentations that can link photos, sound, or any Windows-based program to any subject which appears in a given video sequence. Movideo 1.0 supports BMP, DIB, PCS, GIF, TIFF, and WMF image files; WAV and MIDI sound files; and MPG, DAT, and AVS video files.

Movideo 1.0 requires a 386 or higher processor, 8 MB RAM, 2 MB free hard disk space, SVGA card with at least 256 colors, sound card, CD-ROM drive, MPEG card, Microsoft MS-DOS, and Microsoft Windows 3.1 or higher. It is priced at approximately $620 for the standard version (supporting only QuickTime, AVI, and MJPEG) or $860 for the Movideo Pro version (7, boulevard de la Paix, 78300 Poissy, France, +33 1 39 79 41 60, fax +33 1 39 79 05 25).

Attivit� Culturaili a Tecnologie Avanzate (ACTA) showed its complete catalog of CD-ROM titles and previewed its new releases for 1996, which include three multimedia art discs: Masterpieces of the Great European Collections, a two-disc set exploring European art history through the works of Europe's 12 main museums; The Art of Boticelli, a "virtual immersion" in the art of one of the great figures of the Renaissance; and The Louvre, a digital tour of the great museum that includes 440 high-resolution images of artworks.

ACTA also will release this year Classical Mythology, an exploration of Greek myths organized around the four essential elements of earth, air, fire, and water; The Geniuses of the Century, a series of CD-ROM titles that examines the lives of outstanding historical, artistic, and intellectual figures of a given century (currently, the 16th, 18th, and 19th Centuries); and four new titles in the Great Journeys series of travel titles (62, Via Chiantigiana, 50011 Antella, Firenze, Italy, +39-55 644629, fax +39-55 644478).

Bopp Media released three new city guides in its Bopp Guide European City Guides on CD-ROM - Amsterdam, Paris, and Berlin. Each Bopp Guide offers in-depth information for the particular city, organized in eight categories: Sights, Culture, Night Life, Hotels, Eating and Drinking, Shipping, Leisure, and Important Information.

Each disc includes 20 minutes of video and 30 minutes of audio, photos, slide shows, and a multimedia data base to help the user compile a custom travel agenda. In addition, the Bopp Guide programs include access to Bopp's Internet site, and the Berlin title features Datex-J, the German online service that allows users to reserve and book hotels and to reserve train and airline seats (Haaksbergweg 75, 1101 BR Amsterdam, The Netherlands, +31/20 430 0813, fax +31/20 430 0833).

Burda Medien GmbH introduced Health Online Service (HOS), a hardware and software package described as "a full Web-based service for doctors, using Internet-based technology to provide access into a virtual private network." The service (http://www.hos.de) offers information on medical products, conferences, summaries of medical news, publications, medical data bases, and discussion forums. Altogether, some 30 internationally recognized data bases are available online through the service.

Partners in the project include: Digital Equipment Corporation, to provide its client-secure "tunnelling" technology to provide a secure link between doctors' PCs and the HOS firewall; Hewlett Packard, to supply, install, and maintain PCs in doctors' premises; and Netscape Communications Corporation, to provide the latest version of the Netscape Navigator Web browser software.

HOS is available free of charge to German doctors through a wide range of advertising sponsors. Following a beta test at Milia, HOS will expand throughout the German medical profession and then will be made available to doctors in other European countries, the United States, and the rest of the world by the end of 1996 (Heath Online Service GmbH and Company KG, Arabellastr. 17, D-81925 M�nchen, +4989/9250-2040, fax +4989/9250-2266).

Epic Multimedia Group Limited showcased The Philips Yearbook 1995 CD-ROM, a title produced for Philips Media. The Philips Yearbook 1995 is an interactive look at the major events occurring in the UK and abroad during 1995. The stories on this disc are divided into nine categories (Business, People, Crime, War & Peace, Sport, Arts & Culture, Politics, Disasters, and Miscellaneous). News within each category is divided into home (UK) and abroad. The stories are presented as a slide show with narration (Epic, 52 Old Steine, Brighton, BN1 1NH United Kingdom, +44-1273-728686, fax +44-1273-821567).

GEO Interactive Media Group introduced Emblaze, a software package that offers Internet users real-time, full-motion online animation, displayed at a rate of 12 to 24 frames-per-second at a 1 to 1.5 Kbs line quality, in 256 colors - all while browsing through the World Wide Web with a standard 14.4 Kbps modem.

The Emblaze Internet capability requires no FTP operation - that is, no pre-loading of the animation files onto the user's hard drive. For example, users may watch a full cartoon-type episode playing off a remote server in real-time. Users may download a free Emblaze player from GEO's Web site (http://www.geo.co.il) (1 Corazin St. Givataim, 53583 Israel, +972-3-5733288, fax +972-3-5733290).

IBM Corporation showcased a number of new consumer titles at Milia, including The Adventure of Muzzy, a four-disc series of language learning CD-ROMs for children; KidRiffs, which allows children to learn about and compose their own music within their own personal recording studio; and Peter and the Wolf, a game-based learning disc that explores Sergi Prokofiev's classic orchestra piece (Second Floor, 1500 Riveredge Parkway, Atlanta GA 30328, 770/644-4881).

News Multimedia Ltd. launched at Milia 96, demonstrating its first CD-ROM titles: Makers of the Twentieth Century, a cutting edge look at the movers and shakers of this Century; and The Times Perspectives, a series of titles using news reports and photographs from the archives of the London Times. The first four titles in the series are Planet Earth, Women's Rights - the Story So Far, World War One, and World War Two.

A subsidiary of News International, the European arm of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, News Multimedia also previewed its forthcoming game title, Enigma, an historical immersion set in Bletchley Park, the hub of Britain's wartime code-breaking center. News Multimedia plans to support the launch of its debut titles with a broad marketing and PR campaign (PO Box 495, Virginia Street, London E1 9XY England, +44 171 782 3982, fax +44 171 782 3987).

Philips Media made several hardware and software announcements at Milia. The company plans to release approximately 30 international titles on both CD-i and CD-ROM platforms, to be produced by its four Los Angeles-based label groups: Games, Family & Home Entertainment, Multimedia Music, and Video CD. Among the titles to be released this year are: a CD-i version of Myst and Atlantis, the company's first real-time 3D CD-i game.

On the professional side, Philips expects to see double-digit growth, according to John Hawkins (executive vice-president, Philips Media). Currently, Philips offers more than 800 professional educational and training titles. Large customers and products include: Sears, which purchased authoring and encoding equipment to produce its own CD-i software titles for in-house training; McDonnell Douglas, which is developing custom CD-i applications for its US operations; Chrysler Corporation, which purchased 4,800 CD-i players for salesperson training and product training at dealership level (Monitor 10/95 p3) and which replaced videotape with CD-i at 600 Canadian dealerships; and McDonalds Restaurants, which installed CD-i players in 1,500 US locations, where the players are being used to educate and entertain the restaurant chain's young customers.

On the hardware front, Philips introduced the CDI 370 portable player and the CDI 615 professional player. Further, Philips' partner Goldstar also is launching a new portable CD-i player. Goldstar said it plans to have a desktop model available in October.

In other news, Philips announced that its CD-Online Internet access service (Monitor 10/95 p13) will be available in the United States in 1996. The service, available by monthly subscription, will allow users to surf the Internet from their TV screens. The service will include CD-Online's continuously updated Home Pages and regular issues of the Internet on TV CD-based magazine.

DVD Note: At a Philips' press conference, Hawkins stated that "Digital Versatile Disc," the name previously announced for the DVD technology, had only been "stated as a joke" and was not being considered seriously for the product (Philips, PO Box 80035, 5600 MD Eindhoven, The Netherlands, +31-4-2734866, fax +31-40-2733512).

Simon & Schuster Interactive (SSI) presented a range of more than 90 multimedia CD-ROM titles from 12 publishing partners. New titles include: Star Trek Klingon and Star Trek Deep Space Nine: Harbinger, both published by SSI; Frommer's Interactive Travel Guides, published by Macmillan Digital USA; and 150 Years of America's Smithsonian, also published by Macmillan Digital.

Titles co-published by SSI and Byron Preiss Multimedia Company include: Ray Bradbury's Martian Chronicles, Philip Marlowe Private Eye Game, Tim McCarver's The Way Baseball Works, Scientific American Library: The Planets, and American Heritage: The Civil War (SSI, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York NY 10020, 212/698-7000, fax 212/698-7555).

The Software Publishers Association Europe (SPA Europe) announced at Milia the creation of a site on the World Wide Web. The Web site (http://www.spa-europe.org) offers users easy access to general information on SPA Europe; data on the software market in Europe and worldwide; description of actions being taken to combat software piracy; and a list of legal and marketing publications (57, rue Pierre Charron, 75008 Paris, France, +33-1 45 63 02 02, fax +33-1 45 63 02 31).

Systhema Verlag GmbH introduced Nautilus: 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, a CD-ROM-based computer game that allows a player to enter the world of Captain Nemo through a 3D immersion. The game features more than 20 different locations, 60 minutes of video, and a 30-minute sound track. Nautilus will be available for Windows and Macintosh upon its launch later in 1996 (Frankfurter Ring 224, 80807 M�nchen, +49-89-324730; fax +49-89-32473112).

Making its debut at Milia was The Digital Village Ltd. (TDV), a "multiple media publishing company that applies its own brands and characters and those of other joint venture licenses to three different media: Internet publishing; CD-ROM publishing; and broadcast television."

TDV - whose founders include author Douglas Adams, Wired magazine founding partner Ian Charles Stewart, and filmmaker Robbie Stamp - will form partnerships with technology companies, communications companies, and individual creative talents to form a "global network of creative companies linked by online and satellite communications technology, providing a spectrum of choice in entertainment, both for their local and for international markets."

TDV will "establish a major presence on the Internet." Among its first projects will be the launch of Douglas Adams' Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Internet, a "highly opinionated guide to what's out there" on the Web (6 Bayley Street, London WC1N 3HB England, +44 171 304 4104, fax +44 171 304 4105).

Through their Thomson Sun Interactive Alliance, Thomson Multimedia SA and Sun Microsystems Inc. announced that France Telecom has selected the OpenTV interactive television technology for its initial development and trail phases of new interactive services.

The Thomson Sun Interactive Alliance also announced the authorization of Hamburg-based Computer Projects Unlimited (CPU) as the first application development center in Germany for OpenTV. An Electronic Program Guide prototype application already has been developed by the Alliance and CPU. Meanwhile, Interactif Delta Production (IDP) of France has been authorized as another OpenTV application developer for the European Market (Thomson, 92050 Paris La Defense Cedex, France, +33 1-49 04 97 29, fax +33-1 49 04 96 93; Sun, 2550 Garcia Avenue, Mountain View CA 94043-1100, 415/960-1300, fax 415/856-2114).

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