Barry Fox gets wind of a new music and movie download service from Tesco. Will we see the supermarket take on Apple at its own game?

IS THERE no stopping Tesco? The company will soon launch a “digital locker” system that could change the face of music and movie sales.

The mess of incompatible digital download systems created by the record companies and movie studios gave Apple the chance to dominate the world with iTunes. Even Sony’s new Walkman range now promote iTunes.

Tesco, the largest British retailer, and third in the world after Wal-Mart and Carrefour, is one of very few companies with the clout to challenge Apple.

The new ‘locker’ system will ensure that when Tesco customers buy music or movies, they can be played on whatever hardware the customer owns. The system will be under the control of Tesco’s Clubcard customer loyalty scheme.

The news slipped out at the Futuresource Entertainment Summit in London when scheduled speaker Rob Salter, Tesco’s entertainment category director, had to drop out and sent the message that Richard Bron, chief executive of Blueprint Digital, would take his place because “Richard is working closely with Tesco and knows as much as I do – or more – about what we are doing.”

Richard Bron is the son of well-known British music and recording industry figure Gerry Bron. Like his father, he shoots from the hip and probably said more than Mr Salter would have said himself.

“We call our average customer Janet,” Richard Bron confided to the audience. “She just knows how to press Open, Close and Play. People regularly buy a digital camera and then a month later when the memory is full, they bring it back and ask us to develop the film.”

The content owners are confusing the market-place with recordable discs. There are different systems and no consistency. It’s crazy. You buy for one digital device and it won’t work on another.

“People are competing to sell titles that won’t work on other devices. But customers won’t get fooled again. They now want to buy the title, not the format,” said Mr Bron.

“The Tesco Clubcard scheme is the biggest in the world. We hold a massive amount of data on what our customers do and like.

“We already have a transactional relationship with our customers and reward schemes. We will use this relationship for digital sales, but start with the sale of a disc, because discs are what customers really understand. The sale of the disc then brings online content and rewards with it.”

Here’s how it will work. When the customer buys a CD, DVD or Blu-ray disc to take home, the purchase is logged at the checkout and tied to the customer’s card account. Tesco then automatically makes a digital copy of the content available online for the customer to access, any time later, with a connected TV, computer, phone, PDA or portable player. The customer does not have to take any action – it’s just like copying a disc to a computer.

“There clearly has to be control,” says Mr Bron. “For instance, access by six users and 12 devices, for download or streaming. And this can be done with the Clubcard. It’s a very complex issue, but you can expect to see this start in October. Customers will be able to buy titles from Tesco digitally. Then over the following months, other retailers will start to work together."

3D on Freeview and Freesat for the Olympics? My bet is yes. Arqiva, the company that now runs the UK’s TV and radio transmission networks, has been secretly experimenting with “service compatible” terrestrial 3D broadcasting.

Instead of using two channels to simulcast 2D and 3D versions of the same programmes, as done by Sky, Arqiva wants to transmit a single terrestrial 2D channel that can be received by existing 2D equipment, plus a reduced bandwidth channel that lets a new receiver construct a 3D signal for a 3D TV.

Mike Brooks, head of technical development at Arqiva, calls it “2D plus Something”.

“We have been experimenting with a ‘difference’ signal as the ‘something’,” he said at a briefing session at the Crystal Palace site of the main London TV and radio transmitters. “This is the difference between the left and right images. Existing 2D sets just receive the 2D signal; 3D receivers sets use the 2D signal as the left image and use the difference signal to construct the right image.

“The latest chipsets needed to receive the new DVB T2/MPEG-4 HD broadcasts would only need a firmware upgrade to do this. The STMicro T2 chip already has five processors in it. So the cost of adding 3D is small. And you don’t do anything to upset the 99.9 per cent of viewers with 2D sets.”
“We have done bench demos in our lab and office. We have not yet transmitted signals. That is the next thing. We are talking with Ofcom.”

Technically, it would be easy for Freesat to find the small amount of extra bit-space needed for “2D plus Difference”. I can’t believe that Freeview and Freesat will let the Olympics pass without 3D cover.

Barry Fox