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LAS VEGAS - Owners of more than 800 local TV stations where ad revenue is plunging steadily said they’ve formed a group that’s testing three standards for sending local digital TV signals to cell phones, laptops and other mobile devices.

The Open Mobile Video Coalition said at the National Association of Broadcasters meeting in Las Vegas that it will push for an open standard by next year that would allow members to bypass cell phone companies and tap into what they think will be a $2 billion market for mobile advertising.

The station owners say transmitting directly to mobile devices would give them a third means of delivering local programming — and capturing revenue — along with broadcasting to TVs and streaming it on station-owned Web sites.

“You now have three legs of a stool, whereas, before, you just had one,” said Jim Conschafter, senior vice president of broadcast for Media General Inc., which owns 23 network-affiliated stations reaching 9.5 percent of U.S. households.

Ad revenue at the top 100 U.S. stations was down 17 percent in the fourth quarter of 2007, while syndicated TV and networks saw revenue rise, according to the Television Bureau of Advertising.

Local station owners are competing fiercely for viewers against an increasing number of cable channels and video Web sites.

The coalition is testing three technical standards and hopes to submit recommendations to the nonprofit, standard-setting Advanced Television Systems Committee next month. The ATSC requested proposals for a mobile TV standard.

The coalition hopes to have a single standard approved by the time all analog television signals in the U.S. are converted to digital next February.

The coalition said the cost of upgrading each TV station so it can broadcast to mobile devices would be a relatively low $100,000, or less, while chip set upgrades or add-ons to cell phones, PDAs, laptops or other devices are estimated to cost less than $10.

“We’ve already got towers out there, broadcasting TV stations since 1948,” said Sterling Davis, vice president of engineering for Cox Broadcasting and chair of the coalition’s technical group.

The three standards the coalition is considering are: the MPH (Mobile-Pedestrian-Handheld) system developed by LG Electronics and Harris Corp.; the A-VSB system by Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. and Rohde & Schwarz; and a third system developed by Thomson and Micronas.

Most cell phones are sold by carriers that also offer TV services, and it’s unclear if those providers would allow competing content to reach their devices.

One of those services was developed by MediaFLO USA, a unit of Qualcomm Inc., and was deployed in 58 markets last year by Verizon Wireless.

MediaFLO doesn’t consider the coalition competition — even if it offers mobile TV services for free — because that would boost overall viewership and that in turn could increase paying subscribers too.

“We benefit when mobile TV succeeds,” said Omar Javaid, vice president of business development for MediaFLO. Javaid said MediaFLO would be open to adding the new coalition’s communication standard to its chip.

The coalition’s open approach has the backing of major networks such as NBC and Fox, which have members on the executive committee.

“The time to market is low, the investment required to get into the game is low, and the cost to get new content is very low,” said John Eck, president of the NBC TV Network. “It gives people the opportunity to get good high-quality content and good local information.”

NBC Universal, a unit of General Electric Co., already contributes content such as NBC News shows to the MediaFLO-based service, for which Verizon charges $15 to $25 a month.

Brandon Burgess, chairman of the coalition, said the cheaper infrastructure changes needed by local TV stations will allow for cheaper viewing.

“What MediaFLO is struggling with is their prices are too high and their marketing is too low,” Burgess said. “The broadcasters should learn from that and try to come into the market on a cheaper basis, maybe free.”

The group could also promote their version cost-effectively, he said. “The one thing broadcasters have is air time,” Burgess said.

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On the Net:

Open Mobile Video Coalition, http://www.openmobilevideo.com

MediaFLO, http://www.mediaflousa.com

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands - The television age appears to be fading for Philips, the Dutch company that carries a global reputation for its home electronics: Philips’ first-quarter profit fell 75 percent.

Sagging TV sales, especially in the United States, dragged down first-quarter profits, as Royal Philips Electronics NV reported net income of $347 million, nearly 20 percent lower than the $433 million analysts had forecast.

Net profit was $1.386 billion in the same period last year — a quarter boosted by receiving $1.161 billion for part of its stake in Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd.

Chief Financial Officer Pierre-Jean Sivignon said there was stiff competition in the TV market.

“The U.S. remains the black spot, but when we look at the quarter it was tough all across,” he said in a conference call.

Philips last week announced that it would license Funai Electric Co. Ltd. of Japan to market the Philips and Magnavox brands in the U.S. and Canada for five years.

Philips is taking a charge of $198 million to cover the cost of the transfer and other steps to make its global supply base more efficient and focus its TV business on the strongest markets, especially in Europe and some developing countries.

But in Europe, where the Philips brand is much stronger than in North America, the company also lost money on TV sales and is unlikely to show a profit for the rest of the year, Sivignon said.

Sivignon said Philips had no immediate plan to license its brands in Europe but was keeping its options open. For the time being, it is focusing on cost efficiencies for TVs — a product it has been developing since 1925.

This quarter included a gain of $131 million for the partial sale of LG Display, Philips said.

Shares fell 3 percent to close at $36.78.

Chief Executive Gerard Kleisterlee said the company’s performance was strong in other sectors.

“Unfortunately our results are clouded, more than we like, by the adverse situation in our TV business” and lower revenue from license agreements, Kleisterlee said.

Revenue growth came from the company’s ultrasound and other imaging equipment and was helped by the acquisition of Respironics Inc., which makes products to help people with sleep disorders.

Comparable sales for the medical division grew 5 percent over the same quarter in 2007, and equipment orders were up by 9 percent, the company reported.

Lighting grew by 3 percent in comparable sales, it said. Philips is the world’s largest maker of light bulbs, and energy-saving devices now make up about half its portfolio of lighting products.

Analyst Jurgen Smits van Oyen of Petercam said the quarterly results were unimpressive, but no cause for excessive concern. Consumer products were disappointing, but that was balanced by “positive surprises” in health care.

“On balance, we believe the company has released a fairly decent set of results given the economic circumstances,” he said.

CEO Kleisterlee said he was confident about Philips’ progress in 2008 and that it was on target to meet its 2010 goals to increase earnings per share before interest, taxes and amortization to 10 percent or more.

ATLANTA - Delta Air Lines has reached an agreement with Northwest Airlines to take over Northwest and create the world’s biggest carrier. The boards of both companies gave the deal the go-ahead Monday. Delta said the combined airline will have an enterprise value of $17.7 billion. It will be based in Atlanta, and Delta CEO Richard Anderson will head the combined company.

Under the terms of the transaction, Northwest shareholders will receive 1.25 Delta shares for each Northwest share they own. The exchange ratio represents a premium to Northwest shareholders of 16.8 percent based on Monday’s closing stock prices.

The announcement comes a year after the two carriers emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Both carriers are losing money again but are in much better shape than the four much-smaller airlines that have filed for bankruptcy or gone out of business in recent weeks.

The deal will need antitrust approval, and integrating the work forces of fully unionized Northwest and Delta, where pilots are currently the only major unionized work group, will be tricky.

The joining of Atlanta-based Delta and Eagan, Minn.-based Northwest, if approved by regulators, will result in combined annual revenue of $31.7 billion, vaulting it ahead of Fort Worth, Texas-based AMR Corp.’s American Airlines for the top spot in the U.S.

It would be the biggest carrier in the world in terms of traffic, before any further domestic capacity cuts and any divestitures that might be required by antitrust regulators.

The agreement comes after several months of merger discussions between Delta and Northwest and at one time between Delta and Chicago-based UAL Corp.’s United Airlines. Analysts believe a Delta-Northwest combination will stand up better to regulatory scrutiny because the two carriers have less overlap, even though a Delta-United combination could create more scale and have greater synergies.

Years of mounting losses forced Delta and Northwest to file for bankruptcy protection in New York on Sept. 14, 2005. Both emerged from bankruptcy as leaner carriers last spring, after shedding billions in costs during their reorganizations.

While in bankruptcy, Delta fended off a hostile takeover bid by Tempe, Ariz.-based US Airways Group Inc.

Delta said its plan to remain on its own would create more value than US Airways’ $9.8 billion bid, which Delta argued would not pass regulatory hurdles. The value argument never materialized, as Delta’s post-emergence market capitalization started out $1 billion less than US Airways’ bid and less than the $9.4 billion to $12 billion Delta projected. Its market value has fallen precipitously in the months since amid airline industry woes, including high fuel prices and a general inability to gain traction raising ticket prices.

Many analysts predicted an eventual Delta-Northwest merger after Anderson, a former Northwest CEO, was named last August to be the chief executive officer of Delta.

Anderson, who was Northwest’s CEO from 2001 to 2004, immediately sought to quiet those suggestions, telling Delta’s pilots union chairman the morning his appointment was announced that he believed in Delta’s standalone plan and that “he was not coming in as CEO to facilitate a merger with Northwest.”

But eight months later, that’s what Anderson is doing, and many analysts believe he didn’t have a choice amid plummeting airline market values and soaring fuel prices.

Wall Street and some airline executives have pushed for consolidation for years, arguing that too many seats are chasing too few passengers. The resulting discounting has made it hard for airlines to cover their expenses.

However, Northwest and Delta overlap relatively little in the U.S. — which could actually help them gain antitrust approval. Delta’s routes are strongest in the eastern U.S. and to Latin America and Europe. Northwest would complement that with its near-lock in the Midwest along with flights to its Tokyo hub and other points in Asia.

Northwest’s Asian routes have been one of its main appeals to other carriers. It and United are the only two U.S. carriers with the rights to pick up new passengers in Japan and fly them farther into Asia. Delta and Northwest also complement each other internationally because they are both part of a marketing alliance that includes Air France-KLM.

U.S. airlines get the majority of their revenue from domestic service, though that trend has shifted in recent years as more carriers, particularly Delta and Northwest, have sought to increase international service.

Google engineers have adapted a software programme to help track child sex predators and search for patterns in images of abuse on the web.

Google created the technology for the National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC).

It was originally developed to block copyrighted videos on the company’s YouTube division.

The programme uses pattern recognition to enable analysts to sort and identify files containing child sex abuse.

Google says its aim in teaming up with the centre’s Technology Coalition Against Child Pornography is to develop solutions that would make it harder for people to use the web to exploit children or traffic in child pornography.

“You always hope that your work will eventually be used to do some good in the world, and this was an amazing chance to make that hope real,” said Google research scientist Shumeet Baluja.

Overwhelming task

Mr Baluja, who was also the technical leader of the project, said that as more and more predators use the web to ensnare children, “analysts were getting overwhelmed by all of the data they had to sift through”.

Since 2002 the NCMEC has pored over 13 million child sex abuse images and videos in an effort to help police identify and rescue children from harm.

In the last year they have looked at five million pictures.

Google says the new tools will enable the centre’s analysts to search their systems more quickly and easily as they try to sort and identify files that contain images of child sex abuse victims.

“The programme uses pattern recognition and will work even if the pattern has been modified,” explained technology analyst Larry Magid.

“So if police can identify a pattern such as a calendar on the wall or a t-shirt logo, they have a much better chance of finding the exploited child and catching the suspect.”

Hi-tech solutions

The technology is an outgrowth of the anti-piracy software Google developed to helps its YouTube division ferret out videos of suspected of being posted without the agreement of copyright holders.

“Criminals are using cutting edge technology to commit their crimes of child sexual exploitation, and in fighting to solve those crimes and keep children safe, we must do the same,” said NCMEC President and CEO Ernie Allen.

Google engineers and scientists were able to work on the project on what the company calls “20% time”, which allows all employees to dedicate that amount of time to projects they initiate.

Some of those projects benefit stockholders or end users, but in this case the benefit could be to thousands of children.

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Dell founder Michael Dell says the computer maker must target China and India

Michael Dell has said his firm can regain its spot as the world’s number one PC maker by switching its focus to consumers and the developing world.

“We’re growing faster than our industry,” he told BBC News, “so if you keep on doing that for long enough time, you’ll certainly get there.”

Mr Dell returned as chief executive in 2007 after the company he founded as a college student was overtaken by HP.

He said his turnaround strategy for the firm was already bearing fruit.

He said sales were up 19% at the end of the year, having started the year falling at a rate of 11%.

In an interview in Venice, where he was explaining his new strategy to European customers, Mr Dell conceded that the company had missed out on the boom in supplying computers to home users - who make up just 15% of its revenues - because it was focused on supplying businesses.

“We were not really participating in some of the fastest growing areas of the industry, so we’ve reoriented the company to go after that.”

Dell built its reputation and profits on just-in-time production of computers ordered direct by customers rather than sold through stores.

Now that model is being adjusted, he said.

“Let’s say you wanted to buy a Dell computer in a store nine months ago - you’d have searched a long time and not found one. Now we have over 10,000 stores that sell our products.”

Mr Dell said that the slowdown in the US economy was having some impact, with buyers in the financial sector delaying some purchases. But he said that most of the customers Dell wanted to target did not live in the United States.

“We have to create the products and services that will appeal to first-time users in India, the Middle East and China.”

But Michael Dell was dismissive when asked whether he planned something similar to the so-called $100 laptop, which the One Laptop Per Child Project is aiming at developing countries.

“It’s a product that was talked about first four years ago but so far nobody has deliver a $100 laptop. We’re a bit more on the practical end of things, delivering things that people can use, products that are priced right and priced to sell and really be functional.”

Mr Dell rejected the idea that design was not important to his company, though he accepted that it had not been a top priority when all the focus was on business customers.

“As we’ve gone to the consumer we’ve been paying quite a bit more attention to design, fashion, colours, textures and materials.”

A decade ago, Steve Jobs of Apple criticised Dell for making what he described as “beige boxes”.

But Michael Dell said of his current range of computers: “We actually make them in any colour - whatever colour you like.”

Move over Mac. You've been cloned, or at least a company called Psystar says you have. Psystar claims to be “reinventing the wheel” with what it calls an OpenMac — for $399.

“Mac enthusiasts have been experimenting with running the new Apple operating systems on commodity PC hardware ever since the Intel-based Apple computers were introduced in early 2006,” the company's Web site said. “Psystar has assembled a system that is completely operational with Leopard [Mac OS X 10.5] called OpenMac.”

Psystar tapped into efforts known as the OSx86 Project. The project's goals of running OS X on a PC have been realized. Even the latest releases of OS X can now run on PC hardware, Psystar said, but compatibility can be an issue. OpenMac seeks to solve that issue. Psystar calls it OpenMac to “reflect the opening of what has previously been a hardware monopoly.”

OpenMac vs the Mac Mini

Apple could not immediately be reached for comment, and the Psystar site went down Monday in the wake of overwhelming traffic loads. But cached pages reveal the particulars of the OpenMac, which is built from standard PC parts, according to the company. Mac OS X compatibility is reportedly achieved through an EFI emulator.

The OpenMac offers a 2.2-GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor with 2GB of DDR2 667 memory and integrated Intel GMA 950 graphics. It also boasts a 20x DVD+/-R drive, four USB ports and a 250GB, 7200-RPM drive.

The closest machine Apple offers is the Mac mini, but the specs are not the same. The mini sports a 1.83-GHz or 2.0-GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor with an integrated Intel GMA 950 graphics processor. It offers 1GB of DDR2 667, though it can support 2GB.

The mini sells for $599. Of course, Apple's machine comes with iLife, Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac Test Drive, a 30-day trial of iWork and Front Row, as well as other standard applications. The clone doesn't offer those extras.

Licensing an Issue

Richard Shim, an analyst at IDC, was surprised to see a clone on the market. So far as he knows, Psystar did not get licensing rights from Apple and, unless something drastically has changed at Apple headquarters, he doesn't expect Apple to grant them.

“A Mac at $399 would likely do very well, but I think it's a space that Apple has consciously decided not to go into,” Shim said. “Apple tested the waters with the Mac mini and obviously the company hasn't dived further into that area.”

Apple has been bitten by cheap clones before. However, it hasn't changed the company's strategy, Shim said. It seems Apple is content with successfully deploying its strategy, he said, which is targeting products at specific markets at steady price points.

“This could be a good way to test the interest in a lower-priced Mac,” Shim said, “but they would would really need Apple to say this is a legit product and we're not going to sue the pants off of them.”

IBM demonstrated technology Monday that improves performance and reduces power consumption on chips used in devices from mobile phones to high-performance servers.

The technology, called high-k/metal gate, boosts performance by up to 30 percent and reduces power consumption by up to 50 percent on chips manufactured using the 32-nanometer process, IBM said. This compares to chips manufactured using the 45-nanometer process operating at the similar voltage, according to IBM's benchmarks.

For example, when a 45-nm process chip operating at 1.1 volts is scaled to the 32-nm process with high-k metal gate technology it will have a 24 percent increase in speed and a 40 percent reduction in power consumption, said Mukesh Khare, senior manager at IBM's microelectronics division. If the voltage is dropped to 0.95 volts, the chip has an 18 percent increase in speed and a 45 percent reduction in power consumption.

A nanometer equals about one billionth of a meter. In chip manufacturing, the figure refers to the smallest features etched on chip surfaces. The measurement was done on circuits and components generally used to benchmark the speed and performance of a chip, Khare said.

The company is shipping an evaluation kit that includes chip models and shows customers how to design chips using the high-k/metal gate technology, Khare said. High-k/metal gate technology uses material to reduce electricity leaks on chips. IBM said it may incorporate the technology when it starts volume production of chips using the 32-nm process. IBM has said it plans to start volume production of chips using the 32-nm process in late 2009.

For computing devices to deliver power savings and performance gains, chip manufacturers are consistently upgrading manufacturing technologies. Intel last year started incorporating high-k/metal gate technology when it began manufacturing chips using the 45-nm process. Intel's chip rival, Advanced Micro Devices, does not use high-k metal gate technology in chips.

Monday's announcement was one more step in IBM's efforts to advance semiconductor technology. The company last month announced an alliance with Hitachi to jointly research the miniaturization of chip circuitry from 32-nanometer and 22-nm semiconductor. It is also developing silicon nanophotonics technology, which could replace some of the wires on a chip with pulses of light on tiny optical fibers for quicker and more power-efficient data transfers between cores on a chip. It is also working with U.S. universities to develop carbon nanotubes, smaller transistors that could deliver better performance than current transistors.

IBM made Monday's announcement with its partners, Chartered Semiconductor, Freescale Semiconductor, Infineon Technologies, Samsung, STMicroelectronics and Toshiba. IBM has a manufacturing partnership with AMD, and although AMD wasn't part of the official announcement, it will have access to the new technology, Khare said.

San Francisco - IBM demonstrated technology on Monday that improves performance and reduces power consumption on chips used in devices from mobile phones to high-performance servers.

The technology, called high-k/metal gate, boosts performance by up to 30 percent and reduces power consumption by up to 50 percent on chips manufactured using the 32-nanometer process, IBM said. This compares to chips manufactured using the 45-nanometer process operating at the similar voltage, according to IBM's benchmarks.

For example, when a 45-nm process chip operating at 1.1 volts is scaled to the 32-nm process with high-k metal gate technology, it will have a 24 percent increase in speed and a 40 percent reduction in power consumption, said Mukesh Khare, senior manager at IBM's microelectronics division. If the voltage is dropped to 0.95 volt, the chip has an 18 percent increase in speed and a 45 percent reduction in power consumption.

A nanometer equals about one billionth of a meter. In chip manufacturing, the figure refers to the smallest features etched on chip surfaces. The measurement was done on circuits and components generally used to benchmark the speed and performance of a chip, Khare said.

The company is shipping an evaluation kit that includes chip models and shows customers how to design chips using the high-k/metal gate technology, Khare said. High-k/metal gate technology uses material to reduce electricity leaks on chips. IBM said it may incorporate the technology when it starts volume production of chips using the 32-nm process. IBM has said it plans to start volume production of chips using the 32-nm process in late 2009.

For computing devices to deliver power savings and performance gains, chip manufacturers are consistently upgrading manufacturing technologies. Intel last year started incorporating high-k/metal gate technology when it began manufacturing chips using the 45-nm process. Intel's chip rival, Advanced Micro Devices, does not use high-k metal gate technology in chips.

Monday's announcement was one more step in IBM's efforts to advance semiconductor technology. The company last month announced an

San Francisco - The U.S. Federal Communications Commission needs to prohibit mobile phone carriers from blocking text messages from competitors, a group of advocacy groups said Monday.

Mobile carriers continue to block text messages sent by competitors and there's nothing stopping them from blocking political messages, said officials with Public Knowledge, Free Press, and other groups. The groups first raised concerns about text-message blocking last September, when Verizon Wireless blocked Naral Pro-Choice America from sending messages to people who opted into a text-message campaign.

Even though

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission needs to prohibit mobile phone carriers from blocking text messages from competitors, a group of advocacy groups said Monday.

Mobile carriers continue to block text messages sent by competitors and there's nothing stopping them from blocking political messages, said officials with Public Knowledge, Free Press and other groups. The groups first raised concerns about text-message blocking last September, when Verizon Wireless blocked Naral Pro-Choice America from sending messages to people who opted into a text-message campaign.

Even though Verizon Wireless quickly reversed its decision after media reports on its blocking of Naral's messages, the FCC needs to put rules in place, said Gigi Sohn, president of Public Knowledge. “If wireless carriers are allowed to decide who can speak to whom, it has huge implications for free speech, civic discourse, accessibility for the disabled… and for competition,” Sohn said.

Public Knowledge and other groups filed comments Monday in the FCC's inquiry into text-message blocking. Free Press, Public Knowledge and other groups filed a complaint with the FCC in December.

“There is a real and ongoing problem in the U.S. communications network today,” the groups said in their new filing. “Those who control the entry points into the communications system want to be able to control who can speak to the public and what can be spoken about through the rapidly growing medium of text messaging. Wireless carriers are currently openly engaging in discrimination against potential competitors, and claim the right to exercise editorial control over what their customers read and who they can communicate with.”

In addition to the free speech issues, people with hearing disabilities are increasingly turning to text-messaging to communicate using phones, added Karen Peltz Strauss, legal counsel for Communication Service for the Deaf. People who depend on text-messaging need FCC guarantees that text-messaging will not be interfered with, she said.

Verizon and other mobile carriers have argued that an FCC rule is not necessary and could hurt consumers. Mobile-phone users could be inundated with spam messages if carriers are not allowed to block some messages, several carriers have argued.

Public Knowledge and other groups calling for FCC action failed to “present any facts that could justify regulation,” Verizon Wireless said in March 14 comments to the FCC. Verizon Wireless has approved more than 3,200 requests for groups to send text messages, the company said.

But Verizon also screens advertisers and doesn't allow text campaigns for some products, the company said. If the FCC stops carriers from blocking some messages, “wireless operators would be prohibited from preventing ads promoting drugs, pornographic content, harassing messaging campaigns, or unsolicited messages, from barraging their customers,” Verizon said in its filing.

The carriers' concern about messaging spam is misguided, said Jed Alpert, CEO of Mobile Commons, a text-messaging marketing vendor. The petition before the FCC is asking the agency to prohibit mobile carriers from blocking messages that their customers have asked to receive, not unwanted spam messages, he said.

“Nothing that's being asked for here, in any way at all, increases the likelihood that anyone would get spam on their mobile phone,” Alpert said. “These are all [messaging] programs that require the user opt in, in some cases, multiple times.”