Cell phones with build in cameras are replacing cheap pocket size digital cameras and video cameras. Best cell phone cameras can be better in many ways than cheap pocket digital cameras from few years back. And most people do not want to carry separate devices for each function (at least without a very good reason), when a smart phone can handle calls, Internet, photos and video shooting.
CES 2013 fair had more pocket advanced size cameras on display than DSLRs, but the trend on then was that business was going down due cellular phone cameras getting better. So camera manufacturers are integrating more cellular phone like features to their cameras (like Android OS with wireless connectivity to photo sharing sites) and concentrate on building good superzoom and DSLR type cameras. You need to have something clearly different than what cell phone can offer: huge zoom, good performance in low light or works also in harsh environment. Wireless connection is getting more and more common, either built-in or using memory card with WiFi.
As Sales Slip, TV Makers Strain for the Next Sensation because hardware companies want to make their products stand out in a sea of black rectangles that can show the content user want to watch. And one that is particularly acute for television makers. The hardware is becoming kind of boring and exciting things are happening in software. TV manufacturers continue to push the idea of “smart” sets by adding apps and other interactive elements.
Connected TV technologies get more widely used and the content earlier viewable only on TV can be now seen on many other screens. Your smartphone is the screen in your pocket. Your computer is the screen on your desk. Your tablet is a screen for the couch. Almost every major electronic device you own is a black rectangle that is brought to life by software and content.
In the last two years, television makers have tried a push with 3-D sets. But now It’s official: 3D is dead. The tech industry’s annual hot air balloon show is gone. On the one hand, 3D has become ubiquitous enough in televisions that people are unwittingly buying it when opting for a high-end new HDTV to fill their living room.
Post HDTV resolution era seems to be coming to TVs as well in form of 4K / UltraHD. This year, television makers like Samsung, Sony, LG and Panasonic are trying to grab attention by supersizing their television screens and quadrupling the level of detail in their images. They are promoting what they call Ultra High-Definition televisions, which have four times as many pixels as their high-definition predecessors, and can cost as much as a car. It’s a bit of a marketing push. It seems that all LCD makers are looking to move their business models on from cheap mass production to higher-margin, premium offerings. They try to innovate and secure their future viability by selling fewer, but more profitable displays.
4K at CES 2013: the dream gets real article tells that the 4K bandwagon is fully loaded and ready to get rolling. The US TV maker isn’t alone in stepping up to the higher resolution in its new flagship models. Sony, Panasonic and Sharp, Japan’s traditional big-screen TV leaders, are all attending this year’s CES with proper retail products. Manufacturers Need You to Buy an Ultra-High-Def 4K TV. Save Your Money because just as HDTV was slow to take off, the 4K start will be slow. It’s more than the price that’s keeping these things from hitting critical mass. 4K is only for ultra-premium markets this year.
4K resolution TV has one big problem: The entire ecosystem isn’t ready for 4K. The Trouble With 4K TV article tellst that though 4K resolutions represent the next step in high-definition video, standards for the format have yet to emerge and no one’s really figured out how to distribute video, with its massive file footprint, efficiently and cost effectively. Getting 4K content to consumers is hard.
Even though 4K resolution is widely use in digital cinematography, but there is no suitable consumer disk format that supports it and the bandwidth need to stream 4K content would be huge. Given that uncompressed 4K footage has a bit-rate of about 600MB/s. Broadcom chip ushers in H.265 and UltraHD video tells that H.265 video standard, aka HEVC or MPEG-5, squeezes more pixels over a network connection to support new high-resolution 4K TVs.
You should also note that the new higher resolution is pretty pointless for a small TV (where the TV mass market is now). Ultra HD would make a difference only on screens that were at least 80 inches, measured diagonally. For smaller screens, the extra pixels would not be visible to a person with 20/20 vision viewing from a normal viewing distance. Ultra HD TVs can also be a flop. But let’s see what happens in the world where nowadays tiny smart phone screens can have full HDTV resolution.
Keep in mind that 4K is not any absolute highest resolution expected in few years. 8k resolution TVs are coming. Sharp showed a 8K resolution TV with 7680 x 4320 resolution at CES2013. For more details on it read Sharp 8K Super Hi-Vision LCD, 4K TV and Freestyle wireless LCD HDTV hands-on article.
Another development than pushing up the resolution to make high end display products is OLED technology. OLED is another new technology to make expensive products. The much buzzed-about device features next-generation, high-quality OLED screens. OLED stands for organic light-emitting diode, and they offer a bevy of benefits: more energy efficient, cleaner image, wide viewing angle and devices can be made thinner. You can also make TV screen curved in shape. In a race between television titans, LG has beat Samsung in becoming the first manufacturer to introduce a 55-inch OLED television to market: the largest OLED TV panel to date.. OLED products are very expensive (LG TV $10,300 in US dollars). OLED display can also have 4K resolution, so you can combine two expensive technologies to one product. Market analysts say that they believe the technology will not become more affordable until 2015.
The Verge Awards: the best of CES 2013 article lists for example product like Samsung 4K “easel TV”, Sony 4K OLED TV, Teenage Engineering OD-11 Cloud Speaker and Oculus Rift virtual reality gaming.
All your audio, video kit is about to become OBSOLETE article tells that although much of the audio and video technology packed into CES 2013′s 1.9 million square feet of exhibition space is indeed impressive, one panelist at an emerging-technology conference session channeled a little 1974 BTO, essentially telling his audience that “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.” Deep-geek soothsayer predicts smart audio, Ultra HD eyewear, much more in coming years. Audio is going to become adaptive, changing its wave forms to fit each user’s personal aural perceptions. Active noise reduction is finding its way into cars. HD audio will be coming to mobile phones. MEMS-based microphones and speakers are also on the runway. Consumer-level video will see in the future much higher resolution devices with much higher frame rates.
903 Comments
Tomi Engdahl says:
Displayport To HDMI Cable
http://www.displayporttohdmicable.org/
The term HDMI cable indicates the traditional 19pin High Definition Media Interface used as one of the common video socket types that is used in the Video, Audio and Ethernet.
On the other hand a Display Port shortly called as DP, is a 20pin High quality Video without Audio and Ethernet. The uniqueness of this type is currently royalty free.
Display Port Vs HDMI connectors
It is difficult to have comparison of these two popular hardware connectors. Both have unique advantages to claim from each point of view. One needs to accept this statement while the Display Port has a slight edge over the other in the aspect of free license fee. This simply means the developers and the PC manufacturers around the world can make their products at a cost effective prices than using the products with HDMI connectors which attract license fees.
Unique Features Of Display Ports Over The HDMI Cable
a) The Display Port is smaller in size than the HDMI port and is more flexible and easy to plug in as it does not have screws to hold the cable like the HDMI ones.
b) The Newer port seems to be handier while connecting the laptops to monitors. Also an easy connection is possible to the latest HD televisions.
Undoubtedly the Display Ports will be used in all the future equipments and are considered to be a perfect replacement for the older versions apart from carrying the cost advantage.
Tomi Engdahl says:
News needs to go Netflix
http://markhamnolan.com/2013/09/the-news-desperately-needs-to-go-netflix/
The way we buy news is a ridiculous bundling mess. The news needs to go Netflix.
I don’t buy weekday newspapers now, that change happened years ago, because no one newspaper is going to have all the news I want to read. Simple fact. Buying one paper means a lot of redundancy
Let’s look at Netflix. It hosts hundreds of shows and films, which would effectively be competing inefficiently for attention, were they shown across numerous disaggregated channels in fixed time slots on traditional TV. Hugely inefficient for the provider, who are taking an educated guess at when best to hit the audience, and do it in one shot. It’s worse for the audience, who have to bind themselves to time-slots if they want to see their favourite content as it gets released.
Netflix lets the provider empower viewers to fill their available time in a way that suits them. Got five hours’ to spare? Binge away on one series, episode after episode (no week-long gaps). Want to watch your content in 15-minute snippets? That’s fine too, it’ll re-start where you left off. (Be honest, have you ever snuk a sneaky five minutes of Breaking Bad while on the loo?) Want to mix original movies with ShowTime series with AMC with some classics? Go for it. Kevin Spacey gets it. Allow the user take control.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Tracking Movement Optically And Cheaply
http://electronicdesign.com/blog/tracking-movement-optically-and-cheaply
Tomi Engdahl says:
Is It Time to Replace Your First HDTV?
http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/13/09/10/1818212/is-it-time-to-replace-your-first-hdtv-video
“Millions of Americans bought their first HDTVs between four and seven years ago, because that’s when prices for 40″ – 50″ sets started dropping below $700. Those sets are obviously between four and seven years old now.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
DesignWare HDMI TX and RX Controller and PHY IP
http://www.synopsys.com/IP/InterfaceIP/HDMI%20Solutions/Pages/default.aspx?elq_mid=4865&elq_cid=303473&elq=be1102211bb347b5bd685e887baca855
Synopsys’ DesignWare® IP for HDMI™ provides the necessary logic to implement and verify designs for various consumer electronic applications. The DesignWare HDMI Transmitter (TX) and Receiver (RX) IP solutions include a suite of configurable HDMI digital controllers, high-speed mixed-signal PHY IP, and associated software and drivers, providing a comprehensive solution from a single IP vendor.
Tomi Engdahl says:
1mm-thin, lightweight piezo film speaker targets thin TVs, tablets
http://www.edn.com/electronics-products/other/4420360/1mm-thin–lightweight-piezo-film-speaker-targets-thin-TVs–tablets
Kyocera has developed an ultra-thin, lightweight audio device, dubbed the Smart Sonic Sound, based on the company’s fine ceramic technology.
The 1mm-thin speaker uses a piezoelectric actuator combined with a special film to create a piezo film speaker, enabling the manufacture of very thin TVs, PCs and tablets with improved audio quality.
This piezo actuator audio technology is already in use, LG Electronics integrated it into its 55” curved-screen OLED TV.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Get rid of the cables to the TV production
Wireless television production sounds like a good idea until hear what kind of data transfer requirements of the current high-definition video. The BBC’s research department has now developed a technique that ensures Gbit wireless links television production.
Cablefree named technology allows for a variety of wireless technologies up to 1.5 Gbps wireless connections. The links are in full duplex-type, so the data is transmitted at the same rate in both directions simultaneously.
The BBC has tested the technique on the ground Stagebox IP-based system extension. The tests on the basis of technology to eliminate the worst barrier outside prduction of the way of a quick connection to the “mail to the last.” In practice, the camera outside broadcast truck.
In tests it was found that the level of public broadcasting TV signal wireless transmission is above all three techniques. Laser-based optical link is the best when the cameras line of sight in the car for about two kilometers away. If you go for longer distances, such as 15 km, with the best performing OFDM-based multiple channels connecting the MIMO solutions.
If the signal is to be moved over long distances, up to more than a hundred kilometers away, and the road is visible disturbs obstacles, the best thing is to use the mobile networks and the microwave link.
Source: http://www.etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=353:eroon-kaapeleista-tv-tuotannossa&catid=13:news&Itemid=101
Tomi Engdahl says:
MEMS gryroscope ICs enable shake-free images
http://www.edn.com/electronics-products/other/4420925/MEMS-gryroscope-ICs-enable-shake-free-images
Specifically optimized for OIS (optical image stabilization) in smart phones and digital still cameras, the two-axis L2G3IS and three-axis L3G3IS gyroscopes from STMicroelectronics measure angular acceleration with a full-scale range of ±65 dps/±130 dps and deliver the rate to the external world through an SPI digital interface.
By moving the lens in real time to compensate for physical movement of the camera, OIS can significantly improve the sharpness of an image, especially in low light when hand jitter during the long exposure time can blur images.
The MEMS gyroscopes operate with a resonant frequency of the sensing mass at around 20 kHz.
the devices are immune to the damage that could be caused by ultrasonic cleaning equipment (typically operating at about 30 kHz) that many customers use to clean devices before equipment assembly.
Tomi Engdahl says:
3-Sweep: Turning 2D images into 3D models
http://hackaday.com/2013/09/12/3-sweep-turning-2d-images-into-3d-models/
As 3D printing continues to grow, people are developing more and more ways to get 3D models. From the hardware based scanners like the Microsoft Kinect to software based like 123D Catch there are a lot of ways to create a 3D model from a series of images. But what if you could make a 3D model out of a single image? Sound crazy? Maybe not. A team of researchers have created 3-Sweep, an interactive technique for turning objects in 2D images into 3D models that can be manipulated.
But by combining the cognitive abilities of a person with the computational accuracy of a computer they have been able to create a very simple tool for extracting 3D models.
3-Sweep: Extracting Editable Objects from a Single Photo
http://www.faculty.idc.ac.il/arik/site/3Sweep.asp
Tomi Engdahl says:
Digital camera becomes video transmitter
http://hackaday.com/2013/09/12/digital-camera-becomes-video-transmitter/
In the arena of high altitude balloons, Canon’s PowerShot series of digicams are the camera du jour for sending high into the stratosphere. There’s a particular reason for this: these cameras can run the very capable CHDK firmware that turns a $100 digicam into a camera with a built-in intervalometer along with a whole bunch of really cool features. It appears this CHDK firmware is much more powerful than we imagined, because [Chris] is now transmitting pictures taken from a Canon a530 to the ground, using only the CHDK firmware and a cheap radio module.
These PowerShot cameras have an ARM processor inside that runs VxWorks, a minimal but very capable OS for embedded devices and Mars rovers
SSDV encoder written in C, [Chris] was able to get the camera to transmit images with a small radio transmitter that fits in the battery compartment.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Broadcasting at the moment you’re talking about the subject is the most ultra-sharp 4K image. Many television broadcasts UltraHD beginning to experiment, so soon will start to become available to consumers a more accurate picture capable devices.
4K TV sets have already been presented. Now, faced with an ultra-sharp image set-top boxes are capable of receiving.
STMicroelectronics introduces today in Amsterdam, beginning broadcasting technology IBC exhibition in the first set-top-box constituencies that support the UltraHD and the image of the HEVC compression technology (High Efficiency Video Coding).
Monaco is the most powerful family of the chip is capable of discharging STiH412 UltraHD-quality images.
All circuits are ARM Cortex-A9-based solutions clocked at 1.5 GHz
Source: http://www.etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=356:ultrateravaa-digipaatteisiin&catid=13&Itemid=101
Tomi Engdahl says:
Nokia’s 41Mp Lumia 1020 ‘launches’ in UK – but hoi polloi must wait
Gazillion-pixel flagship mobe now on pre-order, shlebs party away
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/09/13/lumia_1020_launches_in_uk_but_wait_goes_on/
Nokia’s impressive 41Mp Lumia 1020 flagship may have “launched” worldwide
Tomi Engdahl says:
Netflix Uses Pirate Sites to Determine What Shows to Buy
http://torrentfreak.com/netflix-uses-pirate-sites-to-determine-what-shows-to-buy-130914/
This week Netflix rolled out its video streaming service in the Netherlands where it hopes to build a massive user base in the years to come. One of the keys to achieve this goal is getting the rights to the most popular movies and TV-shows, and this is where pirate sites come in. Netflix Vice President of Content Acquisition Kelly Merryman says that popularity on file-sharing platforms determines in part what TV-series the company buys.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Sandisk reveals 4K capable Compactflash cards
Offers 256GB capacity
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2294714/sandisk-reveals-4k-capable-compactflash-cards
STORAGE VENDOR Sandisk has been quick to capitalise on the latest buzzphrase in television with the launch of its Sandisk Extreme Pro Compactflash memory card that sports 256GB capacity.
With its Video Performance Guarantee (VPG-65) assuring users of write speeds at a consistent 65MBps, the memory card is capable of recording 4K television, the successor to HD TV. Recording directly in 4K has been an obstacle to widescale adoption of the new format, so with this latest leap, it won’t be long before we will be able to see how many wrinkles our favourite newsreaders have under all that makeup.
Sandisk also includes a one year licence for Rescuepro recovery software, just in case of you accidentally delete the shot of a lifetime.
Flash memory technology continues to advance at a rapid pace, and it presents exciting possibilities for both professional and consumer users.
Tomi Engdahl says:
With 30 tuners and 30 TB of storage, SnapStream makes TiVos look like toys
Houston company’s monster DVRs power Colbert, The Daily Show, and other big TV names.
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/09/with-30-tuners-and-30-tb-of-storage-snapstream-make-tivos-look-like-toys/
When you’re picking out a DVR for your home, there’s a pretty short list of candidates—TiVo has its new 6-tuner DVRs, or you can get something from your cable provider, or you can roll your own. But consumer-grade DVRs don’t really scale all that well for media companies that need to record and process lots of TV. When you’ve got 30 or more channels that you need to be recording simultaneously, your cable company’s DVR isn’t really up to snuff anymore and it’s time to call in the big guns.
Houston-based SnapStream makes a line of DVRs that scale to truly silly sizes—its products are the monster trucks of the DVR world.
But SnapStream’s boxes do a lot more than simply record TV—they’re actually a home theater PC geek’s dream. Because Snapstream works so closely with media production companies, its DVRs sport functionality that no consumer set could possibly get away with having. For example, a SnapStream cluster is just as good at repackaging, transcoding, and distributing content for re-use as it is for recording it in the first place—functionality you won’t find on a consumer-grade DVR.
From HTPC app to enterprise hardware
SnapStream actually got its start as Beyond TV, an early HTPC application that let Windows users record cable TV to their hard drives. The application was not free, but it was a more cost-effective way for users to get TiVo-like functionality without having to actually pay for a TiVo or other full DVR.
By 2006, the proliferation of DVRs packaged with cable services began to significantly limit BeyondTV’s mass-market appeal, since prospective customers could simply get a DVR bundled with their service rather than needing to build their own out of a spare PC. Looking for new opportunities, the BeyondTV folks began looking at companies using TV and DVRs in a corporate environment, asking them what kind of a product they needed to make their businesses work.
Prior to SnapStream, the big media companies were using isolated DVRs to record all the different television shows they needed to capture. “You look at these guys and you’d see two racks full of TiVos, and it’s like ‘okay, on this day, this show is on this TiVo, and on the next day the next day’s show is on this other TiVo,’ and it was a very manual and intensive process….being able to sit down at a single interface and find everything instantly was a big change for them.”
SnapStream’s approach was to consolidate and scale up. Rather than relying on racks of isolated DVRs, SnapStream’s enterprise DVR clusters together multiple capture servers that all pool together their storage. The servers run Windows Server 2008R2 and the proprietary SnapStream application, and they each contain a stack of hard disk drives in a RAID 5 4+1 configuration. The SnapStream application uses Microsoft SQL Server for storing metadata, and recorded video files are stored on the NTFS-formatted file system as regular files. Larger customers can also use existing SAN or NAS systems as file stores
Video is typically ingested into the SnapStream DVRs directly from a cable feed at 480p, 720p, or 1080i through component inputs on heavy-duty QAM capture cards (typically costing up to $1500 each), thus bypassing the need for CableCard or any other type of integration with the cable infrastructure.
However, this isn’t always the case—many of SnapStream’s media customers that share parent companies also share broadcast-resolution digital assets directly with each other over high-bandwidth private WAN links, skipping the cable network all together.
The SnapStream DVRs can transcode and scale video from and to a variety of formats and resolutions and can even be used to output data over SDI, so that recorded clips can be seamlessly integrated into a TV show’s production workflow.
The ability to record dozens of video streams isn’t worth much without the ability to locate the things
Seeing this in action was quite cool.
Get in the box, get out the box
The SnapStream system itself is designed to be open in just about every way that a consumer DVR isn’t; the API is yet another example of the kind of technology that could easily be possible with consumer DVRs if not for overbearing copyright holders.
SnapStream’s software is fundamentally a Windows product, and so it leverages the host operating system heavily for IO and communication rather than rolling its own tools.
The eye in the sky
Media production, though, isn’t the only area where SnapStream’s big DVRs have caught interest—the government likes them, too, at lots of levels. Here in Houston, for example, a number of different city departments employ SnapStream’s DVRS, including the mayor’s office and the Houston Police Department. Here, it’s not so much the ability to record TV that matters—though that’s important—but rather the ability to monitor TV.
SnapStream’s closed caption search can work not just reactively, going through past recorded shows, but also proactively, monitoring the words being spoken (and captioned) on all the recorded channels.
Getting your hands on one
Although SnapStream doesn’t have any non-business customers, there’s nothing preventing you or me from going out and purchasing a SnapStream system—except the price, of course. SnapStream units start at $10,000 for a small business-oriented system with four tuners and 465 hours of HD content; they stretch up to hundreds of thousands of dollars for the systems in place serving large customers with dozens of channels and thousands of hours of HD content.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Online Music Service Rdio in Deal With Cumulus
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/16/business/media/a-digital-deal-for-cumulus-and-rdio.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
As radio broadcasters go digital and online music services try to stand out in a crowded market, both are finding ways to scratch each other’s backs.
On Monday, Cumulus Media, which operates 525 radio stations, will announce a deal with Rdio, a subscription music service from the founders of Skype, that will give Cumulus an online outlet and help Rdio compete against more established players like Spotify.
In exchange for what it calls a significant equity stake in Rdio’s parent company, Pulser Media, Cumulus will give Rdio broad access to its programming and promote Rdio on its stations.
“This is our digital play,”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Giant video walls powered by a Raspberry Pi
http://hackaday.com/2013/09/16/giant-video-walls-powered-by-a-raspberry-pi/
There’s no denying that giant video walls are awesome, but creating one usually means a fairly complex setup with either multiple computers or very expensive video cards. Now, with Pi Wall, you can make a video wall as large as your wallet will allow with only one Raspi per monitor, and a single master pi to control the whole shebang.
As long as you have a few displays with an HDMI input, it’s easy to turn them into a giant monitor. Just plug one Pi per monitor into a network switch, have a Pi (or other Linux box) transmit a video to all the video tiles, and sit back and enjoy the show.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Video wall building comments from http://hackaday.com/2013/09/16/giant-video-walls-powered-by-a-raspberry-pi/
Leapo says:
September 16, 2013 at 4:26 pm
Aren’t most modern PC graphics cards now capable of this, even the cheap ones?
DisplayPort allows daisy chaining, so as long as your graphics card has one or two DisplayPorts you could chain up a pile of monitors without a problem.
Not saying this isn’t cool, but saying it requires an expensive / special graphics card isn’t entirely true. Even Intel Integrated Graphics 4000/2500 supports running three screens, can’t get much more low-end or cheap than that as a starting point…
Using a Pi is also hardly a cheap solution, not when you need one per-screen. The wall featuring 9 displays cost $225, which is more than enough to buy a very nice graphics card with between 4 and 6 DisplayPort outputs (and each of those DisplayPorts can have 3+ monitors daisy-chained).
Leapo says:
September 16, 2013 at 4:58 pm
Most people considering a video wall are pretty likely to already have a computer on-hand to toy around with. A computer is also (generally) required to get a Pi up and running, so you’d need one anyway.
Most people considering a video wall will also want matched monitors, which generally means buying them all in one hit anyway.
If you’re getting all new monitors anyway, might as well get DisplayPort capable ones (and yes, this can be easily found on TVs). Also possible to use cheap single-link active adapters to connect via DVI / HDMI.
Graphics cards will scale better than this (after a point). Newegg has a Radeon HD 7750 for $249 that has six DisplayPort outputs, and each of those outputs can drive 3 monitors. That’s 18 monitors off one card, with a full PC’s worth of power to throw behind putting impressive visuals up
$249 with graphics cards = 18 monitors
$249 with Raspberry Pis = 10 monitors
$500 with graphics cards = 36 monitors
$500 with Raspberry Pis = 20 monitors
$750 with graphics cards = 54 monitors
$750 with Raspberry Pis = 30 monitors
And by that point you’re dealing with 30 Raspberry Pi’s instead of one PC, which can get pretty ungainly (and difficult to keep in sync and/or keep overall latency down)
Tomi Engdahl says:
CRC testing in video applications
http://www.edn.com/design/consumer/4420830/CRC-testing-in-video-applications
Quantifying the impact of a small engineering change in a complex video signal chain can often be a thankless task; evaluating whether a lower cost digital video cable has degraded system performance; whether a power supply tweak has increased the system’s jitter tolerance; whether an alternate PLL configuration has provided greater power supply noise immunity; typical challenges which the design and production engineers of today’s video product design and manufacturers must overcome.
Although numerous video evaluation tools are available to assist in such activities, these often consume significant portions of capital budgets, take time to setup, require training to operate properly, and offer results which can be difficult to interpret. A simple error detection algorithm such as a Cyclic Redundancy Check (CRC) can be used as an effective tool, despite a number of limitations, in advance of investing significant efforts in perfecting systems using the more complicated and expensive evaluation tools; especially when time to market, cost and resources are important considerations.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Comment on video walls from http://hackaday.com/2013/09/16/giant-video-walls-powered-by-a-raspberry-pi/
VLC also has video wall provisions.
So does X11, its called XdmX. Which is used by several universities for large data visualization systems, and the like.
I worked on this display using XdmX in highschool. We built the thing with 12 display nodes and 1 server. It was a mess to configure and keep running. If I remember correctly, we used a special network that did nothing but the video.
Tomi Engdahl says:
How does the music industry get people to pay for digital content?
http://www.themediabriefing.com/article/what-publishing-can-learn-from-the-music-biz-about-making-people-pay-for-digital-content
Music and news are very different businesses, but the digital age presented them both with a very similar problem: how do you get someone to pay for something they can get for free?
It’s a question the music industry is tackling with some success according to the latest Ofcom report on media piracy. So what can news and entertainment publishers learn from this?
The fall in piracy has accompanied growth in digital sales which helped the music industry grow revenues 0.3 percent last year – the first rise since 1999 when physical CD sales were at their peak.
After years of protesting about illegal downloads and filesharing killing paid-for sales, the music business has focused on convincing people to pay by building and supporting better and more convenient digital products.
Apple’s iTunes provided an easy way to buy digital music when it launched in 2003, but its success had no effect on burgeoning online piracy. The real innovation has come from affordable, good quality streaming services, most notably in the UK and across Europe with Spotify.
Getting people to pay isn’t just about good products, it’s also about price.
All those newspaper groups that have arbitrarily set their subscription package prices at around £10 a month should take note that the likelihood someone will pay takes a sharp upward turn under £7.50.
Nevertheless, good digital products, sensible pricing for an attractive package and investment in marketing, can all persuade people to pay for content that is easy to get elsewhere.
Tomi says:
Pyongyang gets 3D movies
http://www.northkoreatech.org/2013/09/17/pyongyang-gets-3d-movies/
Could North Korea be on the cusp of a 3D movie boom? A movie theater capable of showing 3D motion pictures has been built at Pyongyang’s Rungna People’s Pleasure Park, according to a weekend report by the state-run Korea Central News Agency.
The theater, which also includes video game rooms, was inspected recently by Kim Jong Un, who called for similar theaters to be built across the country, the report said.
Kim reportedly watched two 3D movies, “Winners” and “Don’t wait for us,” in “Audience room No. 5″ of the complex. The movies were produced by Mokran Video, one of North Korea’s major movie production houses.
Images published by KCNA showed the audience room was a small theater with just two rows of four seats each.
In addition to movies, the complex is reported to have video game rooms.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Transcoding engine enables home gateways to stream any content to any device
http://www.edn.com/electronics-products/other/4421044/Transcoding-engine-enables-home-gateways-to-stream-any-content-to-any-device
STMicroelectronics has introduced what it claims to be the industry’s first transcoding engine to enable a home gateway to distribute any type of content to any type of connected device in the home.
Initially implemented in the STiH416 (‘Orly’) and fully supported in the recently introduced STiH407/STiH410/STiH412 (‘Monaco’) SoCs, the new transcoding engine is set to become an integral part of all of ST’s Home Gateway solutions.
The IC leverages the best-of-breed Faroudja de-interlacing and post-processing techniques to convert any digitally encoded stream into any other format suitable for devices that would lack the processing power or memory capacity to handle the data directly.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Faroudja
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faroudja
Faroudja Labs was a San Francisco based IP and research company founded by Yves Faroudja.
Faroudja specialized in video processing algorithms and products. Its technologies for deinterlacing and inverse telecine have received great acclaim within the consumer electronics industry and have been widely used in many electronic devices, such as TV sets, set top boxes and video processors.
Efforts by Faroudja generated more than 65 patents and provided technology licenses to consumer electronics companies, and helped receive three Technology & Engineering Emmy Awards (one for advanced encoding techniques, a lifetime achievement for Yves Faroudja and one for HDTV upconversion used in network broadcast applications), as well as numerous other awards.
Faroudja Video Optimized is a calibration and logo branding program available to TV and Set-Top Box manufacturers who use STMicroelectronics system-on-chip (SoC) solutions with integrated Faroudja video processing algorithms. The program helps properly initialize the video signal processing and optimize the LCD panel to produce an accurate picture.
DCDi by Faroudja (directional correlational de-interlacing) technology is an advanced deinterlacing algorithm for upconverting and deinterlacing standard definition NTSC content for display on high-definition flat panel TVs
Tomi Engdahl says:
As Amazon Preps Its Apple TV Killer, It Plays Nicely With Apple TV
http://allthingsd.com/20130917/as-amazon-preps-its-apple-tv-killer-it-plays-nicely-with-apple-tv/
Amazon is planning on going head to head with Apple TV later this fall.
But before that happens, it will work nicely with Apple TV: Amazon’s Instant Video app now supports AirPlay, which means you can stream old episodes of “The Good Wife” on your iPad, and fling them to your big screen.
This is a small but important update to Amazon’s video offering. Prior to this, Amazon video customers — either those who bought or rented stuff from the company’s catalog, or who got it free with their Amazon Prime membership — could watch their stuff on just about any device except a TV connected to the Web with Apple TV.*
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ray Dolby dies: EE pioneer in noise reduction
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/20-20khz/4421137/Ray-Dolby-dies–EE-pioneer-in-noise-reduction
Ray Dolby, who developed the Dolby noise reduction system used in a multitude of professional and consumer audio applications, has died. An electrical engineer, Dolby invented the Dolby Sound System in 1965 at his company Dolby Laboratories, which he had founded the same year.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Damian Dinning’s feedback on the Lumia 1020
http://pureviewclub.com/2013/17346
It’s relatively easy to see how ambitious the development of the original Nokia 808 PureView was.
A super-large 41mp sensor, in a phone!? Reportedly so mad in fact that tech bloggers didn’t run with leaks they received apparently, because they considered such rumours of a 41mp phone as so far beyond belief it was a story without any form of credibility!
I fondly remember some of the initial reactions. Perhaps my favourite being that of a CEO of a well-known far-east based company who visited the Nokia booth immediately after the announcement at MWC. After taking a few minutes to carefully study the performance he then slammed the device down on the counter, uttered an expletive term (I won’t mention here on Marc’s site) and then promptly stormed off with his entourage trailing behind him!
When it came to considering development of its follower, the team were certainly not short of ambition either. They knew it would need to be thinner given the trend for thinness [at times, a somewhat ridiculous infatuation] in the industry, but also knew that there would be a natural expectation for it to also be ‘better’
In summary, the team would need to deliver a slimmer product with the design language that has become a Lumia trademark, which would therefore dictate a smaller camera module, yet one which would meet or exceed the cumulative expectations set by both the Lumia 920 and 808 PureView – so no small task!
Despite my departure from Nokia I’ve had a number of people asking for my view on the Lumia 1020, especially compared to the previous benchmark, the 808 PureView.
Regardless of the improvements OIS brings to still image quality as well as extending the range of situations you can record in where others are simply unable to record an image e.g. low light, its addition to video can easily be underestimated! When I’ve previously used the Lumia 920 and now the 1020, it blows me away how smooth video can be. Panning can look as if you’re using a Steadicam, it’s that good!
I’ve read a lot of commentary around the 1020’s still image quality. Whilst the majority would seem to be extremely positive, I’m very much aware that there have been a number of negative comments. Those seem to be centred on noise, sharpening and colour saturation or as a summary some may say, ‘over-processed’. Especially when making comparisons with the 808 which made a reputation for itself based on its unprocessed images, something no other competing device today can emulate.
Before Nokia introduced the 808 we had learnt that there were a growing group of people who appreciated vibrant and sharp images viewed full-screen.
The 808 was equipped with both saturation and sharpness settings in its creative mode.
Having worked for a few years at Kodak, I had been exposed (pardon the poor pun) to a lot research and insight in to subjective preferences relating to colour reproduction.
Colour is perhaps the hardest aspect of digital imaging to get right in the first place across a wide range of scenarios and colours, but it becomes significantly more complex as you throw in subjective preferences.
Kodak typically provided more vivid and vibrant colour whilst Fuji was better known for its more natural reproduction.
Kodak’s colour science was to effectively attempt to reproduce colour as your ‘mind’s eye’ remembered it.
Nokia benchmark image/video quality by capturing images/videos in a variety of conditions with a range of devices which all reproduce colour (as well as other image attributes) slightly differently. These images are then evaluated in fixed controlled and repeatable conditions
When Apple introduced their first real effort at a camera in an iPhone with the iPhone 4, the colours were often commented on as being over saturated.
I am of the belief that there are two core user groups which need to be considered here. The first I would summarise as the more involved photographer, especially those that spend time using applications such as Adobe’s Photoshop. Typically preferring images to be as untouched or free of enhancements from the manufacturer as possible, so they are left free to optimise the images according to their own specific preferences. These individuals are important because they can potentially influence many others.
The second group is far greater in size but less influential. Typically the preferences here are towards vivid colour (as long as it looks right, according to the ‘mind’s eye’). In terms of subjective image quality they can be influenced by relatively high levels of sharpening as they tend not to be ‘pixel peepers’ and so never look at images at such high magnification to see sharpening artefacts. High levels of sharpening can create the perception of far more detail in an image when viewed at full screen on a laptop or tablet for example.
Apple appears to do very well against this second group, whilst traditionally Nokia, especially with products such as the N8 and 808 are highly appreciated amongst the former group.
Referring to our two groups again, for full screen viewing I would argue Nokia have it close to bang on in terms of noise, sharpness and detail.
However, for the pixel peepers amongst you, based on multiple forums and comments provoked by reviews, it’s clearly considered to be noisy and over sharpened when comparing against DSLR’s or even Nokia’s own 808.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Heads up about an upcoming YouTube mobile feature
http://youtubecreator.blogspot.sg/2013/09/heads-up-about-upcoming-youtube-mobile.html
This upcoming feature will allow people to add videos to their device to watch for a short period when an Internet connection is unavailable. So your fans’ ability to enjoy your videos no longer has to be interrupted by something as commonplace as a morning commute.
This is part of our ongoing updates to give people more opportunities to enjoy videos and channels on YouTube mobile.
Tomi Engdahl says:
No Internet? No Problem: YouTube Getting Ready to Let You Watch Videos Offline, on Your Phone.
http://allthingsd.com/20130918/no-internet-no-problem-youtube-getting-ready-to-let-you-watch-videos-offline-on-your-phone/
YouTube streams more than six billion hours of video a month. Soon it will let people watch some of those videos even if they’re not connected to the Web.
Next month, Google’s video site will let viewers save clips on their phones and other mobile devices for up to 48 hours, so they can watch them when they’re not online.
The videos will still be free, and Google will run ads on the clips, which will be available via its mobile apps.
That’s a big change for the eight-year-old company, which has previously required a live Web connection to watch its videos (though there are plenty of workarounds).
YouTube announced the move in a blog post published late last night
Tomi Engdahl says:
Nokia Music moves to “mobile only” model in India
http://www.bgr.in/manufacturers/nokia/nokia-music-moves-to-mobile-only-model-in-india/
It seems that Nokia has officially pulled the plug on its web and desktop music store that enabled users to download music on their PC. A notice on the site, first noticed by Medianama, says that the Nokia Music site is no longer available and users can still access Nokia Music on their phones. However, this is not new as Nokia has moved to a mobile-only Nokia Music subscription plan and the desktop store had been shut down for new subscribers way back in December 2011.
Nokia Music was launched in 2009 and gave users access to unlimited DRM-free music on select phones for a select period of time depending on the phone. The shutting of the online store, however, is a big loss as it was the only way users could download music in high bitrate files.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Space station presents MultiTouch technology
NASA to use the Finnish display wall
Finnish multi-touch gained a high level of customer, the U.S. space agency acquired in a multi-touch wall and table the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
The displays are intended for educating the visitors center.
Six 55-inch MultiTaction Cell-evidence are combined into one convenient table, and they tell and show the details of the images to the U.S. shuttle program.
“Displays help visitors explore the spacecraft, as well as to settle an astronaut position for more than 60 different interactive content. Both the ISS and the shuttle timeline wall table have been very popular. Visitors like these because applications are fun and easy to use, “Kennedy’s visitor center development manager Doug Wohlert says.
MultiTouch made interactive displays based on its self-developed software and hardware. The company is headquartered in Helsinki, Finland.
Source: http://www.tietokone.fi/artikkeli/uutiset/nasa_kayttaa_suomalaista_nayttoseinaa
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft to Develop More TV Programs as It Readies Xbox One
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-09-18/microsoft-to-develop-more-tv-programs-as-it-readies-xbox-one.html
Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) said it will expand its TV programming beyond the show based on its best-selling “Halo” game as it tries to position the new Xbox One console as a portal for games, videos and music.
Xbox One is an attempt to merge TV watching with video game playing as Microsoft teams with partners including the National Football League to offer features such as viewing highlights and game scores. To underscore that broader approach, Microsoft is producing a live-action “Halo” show, in which director Steven Spielberg will be involved, and has a production team in Los Angeles developing concepts.
“They have literally hundreds of ideas that they are incubating right now,” Spencer said. “We will have some new announcement for TV shows coming pretty soon.”
The Xbox One will be released in the U.S. on Nov. 22 with a price of $499. The company’s first new console in almost eight years uses voice commands and motion sensing to recognize users and let them shift between games, live TV and Skype through an improved Kinect device that will come with the machine.
The PS4, Sony’s first new console in seven years, and Microsoft’s Xbox One are each projected to sell 3 million units worldwide this year
Tomi Engdahl says:
In January, the Las Vegas consumer electronics trade show CES was first introduced in the curved-screen TVs. While the idea might seem silly at first, curved screens is getting tens of billions business.
Next Display Technology Touch Display Research has estimated that the curved displays market will grow to $ 27 billion by 2023.
In addition to televisions Research Institute believes that the curved screen will quickly highlight the new smart watches and e-reading devices.
So television from LG and Samsung have their own curved OLED telecommunications vision for sale. Sony will be rapidly followed later in the year.
Source: http://www.etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=388:kaarevista-ruuduista-tulee-jattibisnes&catid=13&Itemid=101
Tomi Engdahl says:
Flexible Curved Displays to Top $27 Billion by 2023
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1319531&
Flexible and curved displays are a booming market that is just getting off the ground. From flexible displays for mobile devices like e-books to curved wraparound displays that provide an immersive experience for television viewers, the market for flexible and curved displays is growing rapidly, according to a Touch Display Research report released this week.
“The flexible and curved market will be $388 million this year,” Jennifer Colegrove, president and analyst of the Santa Clara, Calif., research firm, told us. “And we forecast it will grow to $27 billion by 2023 at a compound annual growth rate of 53 percent.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Netflix is giving people their Net fix, Nielsen says
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57603465-93/netflix-is-giving-people-their-net-fix-nielsen-says/
Streaming services like Netflix and Hulu are feeding “incredible binge appetites” for programming, the researcher says, with the vast majority of users watching at least three episodes of the same show in a single day.
If you watched the entire season of “Orange Is the New Black” in one weekend, you’re not alone. In fact, Nielsen says you have a lot of company.
According to an analysis of over-the-top video by the ratings and research company, 88 percent of Netflix users and 70 percent of Hulu Plus users report streaming three or more episodes of the same TV show in one day — what is known as “binge” viewing.
Netflix, which commands the largest share of the audience of streaming viewers, has been at the forefront of a original programming push from streaming-video services, including Hulu and Amazon’s Prime Instant Video services as well.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Cox Pulls Plug on Internet TV Trial
http://variety.com/2013/digital/news/cox-pulls-plug-on-internet-tv-trial-1200633468/
Cable operator’s over-the-top service, aimed at price-sensitive cord-cutters
After a three-month test, Cox Communications has ended the broadband-delivered subscription TV service it launched in Southern California that had used Fanhattan’s set-top box.
Cox said it would continue to evaluate results from the flareWatch test to determine if such a service made commercial sense. The MSO didn’t say how many users were part of the trial.
“This limited trial was conducted as part of Cox’s ongoing customer research to determine how to best evolve our offerings to meet customers’ changing needs,” a Cox rep said in a statement.
Cox’s service was aimed at price-sensitive “cord cutters,” a small but growing segment of consumers who are dropping pay TV. FlareWatch offered a mix of popular programming at a lower price than traditional cable TV packages.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Nielsen to Add Data for Mobile TV Viewing
Firm Also Will Roll Out Service That Measures TV Tweets
http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB10001424127887323308504579085341986969458-lMyQjAxMTAzMDEwOTExNDkyWj.html
Nielsen has long been a kingmaker in the TV industry. Its ratings data, which tracks viewership of shows, determines how advertisers shell out some $66 billion annually. But the company has been slow to adapt to new technologies and expand its reach to other media services, industry critics say.
Now Nielsen is making some significant moves.
Next week Nielsen will announce plans to augment its TV ratings data with information on viewing on tablets and smartphones, meeting a major demand of media companies that say they aren’t getting credit in the current system for viewing on mobile devices. The change won’t take effect until next fall’s TV season, however.
Nielsen also plans to roll out a planned Twitter-related ratings service on Sept. 30. It will measure the audience that sees tweets about TV shows to help gauge their popularity. Early findings showed that for every one tweet about a TV show, roughly 50 people see it, the company says.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Sony Plans To Launch Gaikai PS3 Library in 2014
Sony will use the cloud technology to provide PS3 games to stream to PS4 and Vita.
http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/09/19/sony-plans-to-launch-gaikai-ps3-library-in-2014
Sony Worldwide Studios president Shuhei Yoshida said that Sony plans to launch Gaikai cloud services with a library of PS3 games in North America next year.
A selection of games will be available at launch, which will expand over time – Yoshida mentioned that users will want a good selection of titles to browse through from the beginning, like with Netflix, so the plan is to launch with a decent number of available games. They will be available to play through PS4, PS Vita and the recently-announced Vita TV.
Sony will launch this service in 2014 in North America.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Online piracy of entertainment content keeps soaring
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/envelope/cotown/la-fi-ct-piracy-bandwith-20130917,0,1550997.story
The amount of Internet bandwidth used to illegally download movies, TV shows, music, books and video games has jumped 160% since 2010, a study says.
Despite the growth of Netflix, Amazon.com and other legal channels for watching entertainment online, the volume of pirated movies, TV shows, music, books and video games online continues to grow at a rapid pace.
The amount of bandwidth used for copyright infringement in North America, Europe and Asia Pacific has grown nearly 160% from 2010 to 2012, accounting for 24% of total Internet bandwidth, according to a study from NetNames, the British brand protection firm.
At the same time, the number of people engaged in copyright infringement has grown dramatically too. In January2013, 327 million unique users illegally sought copyrighted content, generating 14 billion page views on websites focused on piracy, up 10% from November 2011, according to the report.
Titled “Sizing the Piracy Universe,” the study was commissioned by NBCUniversal, owned by Comcast Corp., and is a similar to one NetNames (formerly Envisional) conducted in 2011.
“While legitimate services have come along like Netflix, the piracy world hasn’t stood still,” said David Price, director of piracy analysis at NetNames. “People are infringing all kinds of content, including films, television, music and games. Over 300 million people infringed copyright at least once. That’s an enormous number of people. It just shows how embedded this particular activity has become in people’s lives.”
The results underscore the challenges Hollywood studios, music companies and other industries face in their long-standing efforts to combat piracy, which has spread rapidly along with the growth of Internet usage.
The Motion Picture Assn. of America, which represents the major production companies in Hollywood, mounted an ill-fated effort to crack down on illegal websites through legislation in Congress. But the bills they backed — known as SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (Protect IP Act) — died in Congress in 2012 after a massive opposition campaign led by Google Inc., Wikipedia and other Internet giants that viewed the laws as an unwarranted intrusion on Internet freedom.
Payment processors — including PayPal, Visa and American Express — agreed in 2011 to a set of best practices to investigate complaints and stop processing transactions for sites that distribute counterfeit and pirated goods. And last year, Google said it was modifying its search engine to penalize websites suspected of hosting pirated movies, music, video games and other copyrighted material.
But such actions have done little to slow the spread of online piracy, which has accelerated as Internet bandwidth has grown worldwide and as illegal sites improve their customer experience, Price said.
“At the moment it hasn’t had a major effect at all in terms of how easy it is to locate infringed content,” Price said.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Nokia Lumia 1020: It’s an imaging BEAST… and it makes calls too
41 meeelllion-pixel monster’s no phone freakshow
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/09/20/nokia_lumia_1020_review/
Review Nokia’s marketing department is comparing its new imaging champ, the Lumia 1020 smartphone, to digital SLR cameras. That’s just silly.
But what the Lumia 1020 can lay claim to is that it takes the best photos of any current modern smartphone – by a clear head and shoulders. And Nokia has packaged it into a modern phone, rather than an exhibit at hardware manufacturer’s freak show.
It isn’t perfect, and it could use a few tweaks. But as it stands, considering that the competition from Apple, Samsung and HTC’s smartphones is strong, this is impressive. Even against Samsung’s Frankenstein-like hybrid, the S4 Zoom, which clumsily grafts the optical lens from a point-and-shoot digicam onto a budget Android smartphone. Now, perhaps for the first time, a phone can take photos with a level of richness and detail good enough for posterity – for the mantelpiece or a family album – rather than for Facebook.
The Lumia 1020 actually integrates two imaging technologies: a highly novel one developed by Nokia over several years, and one borrowed from dedicated cameras but miniaturised into a phone. Both are unique to Nokia. However, both have appeared before, never together, and the combined result is amazingly, smaller than the predecessors.
The first is an unusual approach that uses silicon and software to compensate for the physical limitations of a short focal length and small aperture. Instead, a huge sensor captures many more pixels than you need, and then software algorithms distil this down to a five-megapixel image of great richness and detail.
The sensor is 41 megapixels, creating as a first step a 34 megapixel image
The second technology appeared last year – and brings the optical image stablisation (OIS) found in dedicated cameras to a phone. This first appeared on the Lumia 920 and 925 models, and it allows for very stable video recording, and some startling photos in poor light, as the shutter can be exposed for longer than it would otherwise be. In the 1020, the entire imaging module itself is mounted on ball bearings (rather than on gyroscopes as in the 920 and 925), and the camera compensates for a shaky hand or wobbly undercarriage in real-time.
Your phone won’t get full in a hurry from taking lots of pictures – it’s HD video recording that’s the real hog.
The 1020 is the second phone on the market to feature the huge sensor developed by Nokia.
Remarkably Nokia achieves all this in a fairly slimline package: the design goal for the imaging unit was 10mm, and the phone is 10.4mm thick; the imaging unit protrudes by around 3mm.
And as with Nokia’s 920 and 925 Lumia models, the imaging can captures scenes in low light conditions others can’t, as the shutter can be held open for longer. In practice, you have to keep very still to get good results for this to work.
The downsides – three separate camera apps?
One is that the 1020 comes with three camera apps, rather than integrating them nicely into one. By default, you’ll be using a new Nokia camera app called Pro Cam – this is what’s invoked when you press the hardware camera button. Pro Cam makes settings like exposure and ISO easily available in a clever new design. Most smartphone cameras offer such tweaks, but they’re typically hard to find and oeprate and so tend to be used about as often as Anne Frank’s drum kit.
One or two aspects of the 1020′s predecessor, the 808 PureView, didn’t make it – things like Burst Mode – but I expect to see this incorporated in software updates.
In addition, the shot-to-shot time is a second or two longer than rivals. For many situations it doesn’t matter, but if you’re shooting sports or children, then the extra second can seem like an eternity.
One additional caveat is that SkyDrive automatically uploads your camera roll to Microsoft servers – the presentation version, not the larger master. Which is a nice feature, but it does so at a default medium size and using compression that introduces zaggies.
And compared to the 808 PureView, the Lumia 1020 has cranked up the saturation.
Some people prefer the richer colours of the latter, while others prefer the more realistic output of the 808.
The Lumia 1020 isn’t quite perfect. There should only be one camera app, not three, and the shot-to-shot time is a second longer than it should be, which, allied to the lack of a burst mode means you may miss some moments if shooting children, animals or sports scenes, for example. However only Nokia’s own hard-to-get, and now discontinued PureView 808 takes better photos on a phone – and even if you find an 808, its legacy OS Symbian will struggle to perform on a par with the market standard today.
While I personally preferred the shots taken using the 808, the 1020 wins out on versatility. In addition to extremely high quality camera shots the best, but the 1020′s HD video and audio capture quality is unmatched by any smartphone. Given a steady hand, it can produce excellent results in low light, without a flash, where rivals are swamped by noise.
Tomi Engdahl says:
WHY do phone cams turn me into a clumsy twat with dexterity of an elephant?
Fresh evidence our digital imaging specialist can’t use a digicam
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/09/20/something_for_the_weekend_digital_cameras/
Digital photography is a sore point with me. Despite spending 20 years of touting myself around newspapers and magazines as a “digital imaging specialist”, albeit to end up writing idiot ramblings published on Friday afternoons by a legendary online publisher that really ought to know better, I do not find digital cameras easy to use.
Back in the mid-1990s and the early days of consumer digital photography, I must have tested hundreds of cameras – methodically, in detail, in laboratory conditions.
For me, the ability to capture and reproduce colour digitally is an issue of gamut and hardware profiling, neither necessarily indicating the unique qualities of a digital camera as opposed to any other digital imaging device. Surely what matter most are the ability to capture detail without messing it up with artefacts and noise, while at the same time capturing at high enough real pixel resolution to ensure the contrasting illusions of sharpness and continuous tone are maintained.
So, given a certain pixel resolution, the quality of the images captured by a digital camera depends almost entirely on the size and quality of the lens.
Armed with my modest professional bag of tricks, I do just fine. But the moment you hand me a consumer camera or ask me to use a smartphone’s camera function, I go to pieces. I hold it upside down. My finger falls over the lens. I press the pop-up flash button instead of the shutter.
Can you blame me? There are so many little buttons and bells and whistles and sliders and knobs and switches and flanges and port covers and displays and meters concentrated on a hardware surface of less than two square inches, consumer cameras are a mess.
Worst of all is the time lag in smartphones between pressing the shutter button and the dumb-ass camera app taking its hands out of its metaphorical pockets and deigning to actually capture what’s in front of the lens.
Anyway, let’s bring this back to Apple’s recent announcements: I’m beginning to think the bigger lens and faster processor on the iPhone 5S might make a difference after all. Perhaps best of all for casual, spur-of-the-moment photography such as my gig shots is its new burst mode which, as described, might improve my chances of taking home a photo of the band on stage rather than the backside of the person standing in front of me.
Burst mode, after all, is precisely the kind of feature that suits everyday consumer photography. When I’m snapping away with my phone handset, don’t show me buttons and control panels, just make it happen.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Can You Hear the Difference?
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/rowe-s-and-columns/4421042/Can-You-Hear-the-Difference-
It’s not unusual to use USB to carry digitized audio. After all, even USB 1.1 has the bandwidth. You may have USB speakers or you may stream audio from a hard drive that’s connected to your computer through a USB cable. Can you hear the distortion that the USB link adds to your music? Some people think they can.
One of our bloggers just sent me a link that, as connections go, is absolutely hilarious. The Absolute Sound, a site for audiophiles, posted its 2013 TAS Editors’ Choice Awards: Digital Interconnects. Let’s start with the first one.
AudioQuest Diamond
0.75m, $549; 1.5m, $695
Deep musical involvement? We’re talking a digital cable here. Audiophiles, please get your ears out of the sand and listen to me. USB is a digital bus. As long as the receiver can properly receive the bits and tell the difference between a logic 1 and a logic 0, the digital representation of the audio at the receiver’s output will be a perfect replica of that which was transmitted.
You claim that you can hear the difference between an inexpensive and expensive USB cable? I’m sorry, but you have been deceived. On average, digital links deliver one bit error for every 1012 bits sent. You can’t possibly hear that. Next, you’ll tell me that you can hear the difference in clock jitter produced by that inexpensive cable. Again, as long as the bits are properly interpreted, there is no difference in signal as a result of a cable.
If there is any distortion in the entire audio chain, it’s on the analog side.
Now, I can understand not buying the cheapest of USB cables, but I’d do that for reliability, not audio quality.
Don’t fool yourself. Paying $695 for a USB cable will not get you better audio. You will get the same audio quality from a $6.95 cable. The audio quality is a function of the original encoding, the decoding, the analog signal processing and amplifier, and the speaker. Go ahead, prove me wrong.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Extend USB 3.0 Vision Applications Over Fiber
http://www.designnews.com/author.asp?section_id=1365&doc_id=267886&cid=nl.dn14
With more than 10 billion devices in the market already, USB is undisputedly the most successful computer connection interface to date. But for machine vision applications, USB 2.0 has been only a minor player due to relatively low throughput rate (480 Mbit/s) and distance reach (5 m) compared to rival vision camera interfaces like FireWire, GigE Vision, and Camera Link.
The standard having been formally published last January, USB3 Vision cameras support up to 5 Gbit/s to produce high-quality resolution, vibrant colors, and high frame rates comparable to Camera Link at a fraction of the total solution cost.
The only flaw with this technology is the distance limitation. Not all copper cables can support USB 3.0’s higher bandwidth at any appreciable distance. While great strides were made to improve throughput from USB 2.0’s 480 Mbit/s to USB 3.0’s 5 Gbit/s, distance took a step backward from 5 m to 3 m.
Fiber-optic cabling is the obvious choice over copper to increase distance, especially for newer transmission standards such as OM3 multimode fiber.
The stars seem to be aligned with USB 3.0 and fiber to work together to resolve the distance gap. But it’s never quite that easy.
ExtremeUSB has long been the extension standard for USB 1.1 and 2.0, and is now bridging the gap for USB3 Vision. It supports plug-and play-functionality (no software drivers required) and is compatible with all popular operating systems. ExtremeUSB 3.0 extenders are designed to extend USB3 Vision-compliant applications up to 100 m over OM3 multimode fiber, and have been validated by machine vision camera leaders like IDS, Lumenera, NET, Point Grey, The Imaging Source, Ximea, and others.
Tomi says:
Drive-in movies in the last act?
In the United States the traditional drive-in open-air cinemas threaten to atrophy. The reason is the film industry transition from film to digital.
At best, the United States had more than four thousand drive-in open-air theater, now there are less than four hundred.
The whole area is now threatening to topple over, not so much on lack of viewers but on technical development: the film industry is finally transferred the film to digital.
- The deadline has been given, but the theaters have been warned that if they do not get digital equipment, they do not get any movies, says the theater owner Jeffrey Kohlberg.
Expensive new equipment is inaccessible to small businesses that run drive-in movie theater business in USA. igital equipment cost up to a hundred thousand dollars, which is a huge sum for many of the drive-in in the field of small business owners.
- Most theaters can not afford this reform. Probably half of the drive-in theaters lost, Kohlberg says.
Hollywood studios may stop making 35 mm film copies of their movies this fall – an area, however, is still negotiating. Many businesses fear that when they close their doors this fall – they will be permanently closed.
Source. http://yle.fi/uutiset/drive-in-elokuvien_viimeinen_naytos/6842911
Tomi says:
BRAVIA Smart Stick costs $149, adds Google TV experience to Sony’s TVs
http://www.engadget.com/2013/09/19/sony-bravia-smart-stick-google-tv-launches/
After appearances in early FCC leaks and a quick preview this weekend, Sony has officially announced its next Google TV device, the BRAVIA Smart Stick. We already knew the MHL and USB connected dongle would only work with Sony’s 2013 or later HDTVs, and its functionally similar to the company’s previous Google TV boxes so what’s left?
Tomi says:
Finnish invention help: More intelligence to ice hockey – note the scoring places
Soon the ice hockey rink will be like more intelligence to the League of buying the game is aimed at developing intelligent systems for the next season. There is a Finnish technology – including Nokia’s location-based smart ice hockey.
Hockey League negotiates a new generation of intelligent systems the introduction of several Finnish companies. 3T’s information, the system supply contract to compete at least in Helsinki urheiluanalytiikkayritys Sstatzz and Oulu Kuru Digital.
“The negotiations will take place, and it is at the moment the price and on what type of system being developed. Our strategy is that the costs must be tolerated, and a long-term solution, “League President and CEO Juha-Pekka Vuorinen.
The most advanced option is Sstatzzin system, which measures the players and the disc mounted transmitters, as well as the triangle positioning system allows players to ice season, and the players and puck movement.
Nokia’s positioning technology, the system was introduced in Euroleague last season
“This technology allows to include more detailed maps of the shot, which would appear, which bets have the mask, and how much,” the founder of Sstatzz Harri Hohteri says.
System analysis would make the game much more in-depth in one fell swoop, when available would be many times the amount of data compared to the present. From Data to survive for example, the individual player movements, figures skating, ice time second increments as well as the current grouping of the players on the ice.
The technology has yet developed: heavy hockey shots put out so much shock that the acceleration sensors are put to very high stress. Sstatzzin that this is not an insurmountable obstacle. The bigger problem is the price, which is Vuorinen that “far too high”.
Sstatzzin competing with the Kuru Digital offers liigalle clearly cheaper option, which would measure only the large players in ice time location-based services instead.
This technology is now used to
While the players’ positioning technologies, systems will only joining the troughs, all teams are using technology in training and game analysis in some other way.
For example, one season favorites, the Miami Dolphins, the use of Kuru Digital measuring system for players to ice season.
“We are the only operation in Finland this,” Kärpät Juha Junno says.
Kuru Digital’s other services include the goalkeeper coaching supporting software.
Helsinki IFK, in turn, rely on a number of different assistive devices provided by the company. Heart Rate Monitors and belts are Suunto, and the statistics are traditionally used by Microsoft Excel.
“In addition, we have the iPads and laptops, which are used to analyze operating performance,” IFK’s sporting director Tom Nybondas says.
Source: http://www.3t.fi/artikkeli/uutiset/teknologia/suomalaiskeksinto_auttaa_lisaa_alya_latkaan_maalintekopaikat_kayttoon
Tomi Engdahl says:
The secret company behind Twitter’s TV takeover
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57603896-93/the-secret-company-behind-twitters-tv-takeover/
Mass Relevance puts Twitter in front of television audiences, boosting the social network’s public profile and altering its perception as a place for
Twitter enters millions of homes on a nightly basis with the help of a secret weapon: Mass Relevance, the most important company at the intersection of social media and television that you’ve never heard of.
Founded in December 2010, the Austin-based startup is responsible for nearly every tweet that makes it to your television screen.
“The vast majority of social content you see on TV is powered by our platform,” Decker told CNET.
Strictly speaking, Mass Relevance is software-as-a-service for brands, agencies, and producers. It’s a technology platform that instantly scans content flowing through the APIs of social media companies, Twitter in particular, and filters it according to the client’s desires. The rapid filtering piece, which is far cooler than it sounds, is what gives television producers like Nicolle Yaron of “The Voice” the confidence to put viewer comments on display and to let audiences vote live on a song for contestants to sing.
The platform, using real-time filters, sifts through hundreds of thousands of tweets, dumps the retweets and replies, purges the content producers know they don’t want — profane tweets, for instance — and then presents what’s left in a queue where someone manually approves the tweets to go on screen. The system can also collect and analyze data for visualizations and power audience polls.
Twitter is the brand, but Mass Relevance is its business-to-business counterpart, Altimeter Group digital advertising and media analyst Rebecca Lieb told CNET. The startup is one of Altimeter’s clients.
“Mass Relevance liberated tweets from the small screen and is throwing them into the real world,” she said.
Twitter was already interested in the technology to get its content onto TV.
“None of us knew anything about TV,” Decker said, “but we knew a lot about digital and social and building scale.”
Just like Twitter, Facebook is now handing over every public post in a real-time feed to the company so that it can win over television producers who want access to the thoughts and opinions of 1.15 billion people.
Though Twitter has long been synonymous with television, Facebook’s audience, more than five times greater than Twitter’s, is just too big to ignore.
“We’re really trying to make a show that works for everybody,” Yaron said. “We do want to speak to everyone and we want everyone to speak to us.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
In online TV first, Netflix wins Emmy for drama directing
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57604071-93/in-online-tv-first-netflix-wins-emmy-for-drama-directing/
David Fincher wins an Emmy for directing Netflix’s “House of Cards,” and the Internet TV provider breaks ground — again — for online only programming.
Netflix won its first Emmy award — the kind doled out at the flashy, star-studded televised ceremony — Sunday night, as David Fincher won for best directing of a drama series.
The online subscription-video service, which has been touting itself of late as the “world’s leading Internet television provider,” was nominated for 14 primetime Emmy awards this year, the first time that an online-only service had shows in the running for one of television’s top creative honors.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Emmys Highlight a Changing TV Industry
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/21/business/media/emmys-highlight-a-changing-tv-industry.html?pagewanted=all
The Emmy Awards have witnessed many new players on the red carpet over the years, but there has never been a gate-crasher quite like Netflix.
Its “House of Cards” is nominated for outstanding drama, the first time that a program distributed on the Internet has competed at the Emmys right alongside programs distributed through rabbit ears and satellite dishes. And the prospect that a streaming video service like Netflix could end up a winner at the Emmys ceremony on Sunday night has cast a spotlight on just how profoundly the television landscape has changed.
Still, most television critics and other self-professed Emmys experts suspect that it’s the cable channel AMC, not Netflix, that will have the most to celebrate at the awards show.
Netflix won’t say how many people have watched “House of Cards.” HBO’s “Thrones” might be the most popular of the six; HBO said the season finale in June attracted nearly 14 million viewers once on-demand viewership was calculated. About 12 million people saw the season finale of “Downton Abbey”; more than seven million saw “Homeland”; and nearly five million saw “Mad Men.”
For the second year in a row, no dramas from the big four broadcast networks were nominated.
“This is just the beginning,” he said. “If you look at the quantity of product being developed at Netflix and Amazon and Hulu and Xbox, it’s certainly reasonable to expect that this evolution will accelerate. Having said that, the quality of content on broadcast and cable is certainly at an all-time high as well.”
“The industry is accelerating from a quality standpoint and from a buzz and pop culture standpoint,”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Cable Fights to Feed ‘Binge’ TV Viewers
Comcast, Verizon FiOS Vie With Netflix, Amazon for Rights to Show Complete Series
http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB10001424127887324807704579083170996190590-lMyQjAxMTAzMDIwMDEyNDAyWj.html
The battle for the binge TV viewer is on.
Big pay-TV operators including Comcast Corp. CMCSA -0.02% and Verizon Communications Inc.’s FiOS are taking steps to vastly expand their on-demand TV offerings. In doing so, they are edging toward turf occupied by online players like Netflix Inc., NFLX +2.73% creating a tug of war over where people turn when they want to “binge” on a full season’s worth of programming.
Consumers are watching less programming as it airs on TV and increasingly seeking on-demand entertainment. Netflix and some other online players have largely popularized binge-viewing, and pay-TV companies want to keep pace.
Comcast struck a deal to offer all episodes of some 21st Century Fox Inc. broadcast and cable shows on its on-demand service this season, people familiar with the matter say.
Netflix—which has become a go-to service for viewers watching past seasons of series like AMC’s “Breaking Bad”—contends that overexposure of shows through on-demand services will reduce their value before they become available to the streaming service when a season is over.
Now, the companies that supply TV programming must choose who to keep happy: Netflix and other online distributors—a source of fast revenue growth—or the traditional pay-TV distributors that are much bigger customers.
Two camps are emerging. Some content companies, like 21st Century Fox and NBCUniversal, are more willing to give expanded on-demand rights to pay-TV operators. (NBCUniversal is owned by Comcast, the largest pay-TV provider.) Others such as Walt Disney Co. DIS -1.08% and CBS Corp. CBS -0.87% are more reluctant.
“Ultimately, if you look at where the bulk of investment for programming comes from, now and forever it will come from people who pay cable subscriptions,” he said. Netflix is “freeloading” off the current distribution system, he said.
A Netflix spokesman disputed that assessment, saying the company invests more than $2 billion per year in content and its service helps build audiences for shows. Some Hollywood executives credit Netflix for making certain types of shows, like serialized dramas, more viable to produce.
Verizon FiOS’s Mr. Denson said the willingness to give too much great content to online players is shortsighted. “You’re creating a beast that’s going to come back and eat you,” he said.
Mr. Landgraf said Netflix’s efforts to convince content owners not to license their programming represents a radical shift in the industry’s pecking order.
For years, he said, the companies that invested seed capital to create shows—major TV networks—have “rightfully” dictated terms to the companies running reruns, requiring, for example, that syndicators wait four years before running repeats every day of the week.
Now, he said, Netflix is the new syndicator of the digital era, but is trying to call the shots.
“It is fundamentally out of step with how things work,” he said.