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.
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Tomi Engdahl says:
At the Super Bowl, 4K might literally be a game-changer
CBS’s six high-res cameras could do away with debatable calls
http://www.theverge.com/2013/2/2/3943312/super-bowl-4k-is-a-game-changer
4K has a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem in most situations. 4K content looks good on any TV, but its disadvantages — extra bandwidth and cost chief among them — outweigh the slight quality bump on a 1080p television. But for CBS and the NFL, more pixels means more and clearer zoom, and that means they’ll know whether the ball hit his knee or not.
“I said to myself right then,” Aagard told me, “‘I wonder if we can use these new 4K cameras to make this better.’”
In addition to its 80-plus HD cameras planted around the Superdome and throughout New Orleans, CBS will be shooting this year’s Super Bowl with six 4K cameras. Japanese company For-A supplied the cameras — Aagaard says CBS considered a handful of different 4K models, particularly Sony’s, before being wowed by For-A’s offering
CBS and the NFL believing 4K replays are ready for their big debut at the biggest game of the year
Tomi Engdahl says:
YOU On Demand Offers Films On VOD In China Weeks After They Debut In Theaters
http://www.deadline.com/2013/01/you-on-demand-china-vod-movies/
Studio and theater owners who wonder what would happen to sales if movies are rushed to home video should keep an eye on what’s happening in China. Warner Bros has begun an experiment to stay ahead of DVD pirates by putting films on the You On Demand VOD cable platform as early as four weeks after they first appear in theaters in the U.S. YOD is talking with its other studio partners — including Disney, Paramount, NBCUniversal, and Lionsgate — about following suit.
So does that mean all WB’s movies will come out on VOD before a theatrical release in China?
Tomi Engdahl says:
Amazon Web Services Launches New Transcoder Service
http://news.investors.com/technology/012913-642310-aws-customers-can-now-transcode-video-assets.htm
Amazon.com’s (AMZN) cloud computing infrastructure business, called Amazon Web Services, unveiled a new service Tuesday called Amazon Elastic Transcoder. It transcodes video files between different digital media formats.
Amazon says customers can use the elastic transcoder to create enterprise, training, user-generated, broadcast, or other video content for their applications or websites. Customers can use Amazon Elastic Transcoder by visiting aws.amazon.com/elastictranscoder.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Amazon patents digital resale market
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/02/06/amazon_patents_digital_resale/
If Apple ever wants loan-or-onsell capabilities in iTunes, it will probably find itself discussing patents with Jeff Bezos.
“A secondary market which allows users to effectively and permissibly transfer “used” digital objects to others while maintaining scarcity is therefore desired.”
That “maintaining scarcity” is a delicious phrase: Amazon wants to defeat the infinite copyability of bits and bytes in the face of all experience.
What Amazon seems to have in mind is this: that as people move to the cloud (which is part of its business model after all), they’ll quit storing stuff on local devices. Unlike the world of CDs or books, a digital secondary market involves passing around bits and ensuring the deletion of the originals – and if both reside on the same servers, the process would be greatly simplified … and vastly more manageable – which is actually the real point of the patent.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Home appliance trade looking for a savior from assistance services and net sales
Traditional home appliance stores believe we can succeed in the field of turmoil by providing customers with more services, such as installation and user guidance.
For example, if the TV buyer wants to watch movies through the internet, he may need some help connections.
“He needs to buy a TV and broadband may be connected to broadband services to mobile broadband modem. Instead, it requires skill,” says the chairman of the Union Home Technology Päivö New Erkkilä.
Household appliance stores have had to happen, when the sale has moved online, cheap supermarkets and shops.
Source: http://www.3t.fi/artikkeli/uutiset/talous/kodinkonekauppa_etsii_pelastajaa_apupalveluista_ja_nettikaupasta
Tomi Engdahl says:
Unlock Siri-like apps with 3-D voice processing
http://www.edn.com/design/communications-networking/4406219/Unlock-Siri-like-apps-with-3-D-voice-processing
Voice quality is a hot issue due to the recent rise of voice control interfaces for tablets, computers, smart TVs and other consumer electronic devices. Without intelligible speech, automatic voice recognition can’t function properly and to be consider as reliable input device. This problem is compounded by noisy environments, which can severely degrade the quality of speech to the point where voice control is totally inoperable.
Noise cancellation technique took a leap forward with the introduction of a second microphone in smart phones, enabling both microphones to operate in similar manner to the human auditory system. However, this capability does not provide sufficient noise cancellation to eliminate all background noise for voice calls or voice control, while driving or riding on public transportation, or even at home when, for instance, music is turned up loud.
Advanced noise cancellation technology uses an additional sensor in addition to the standard two audio microphones, and then applies a 3D-Vocal algorithm to perform multiple voice processing tasks including echo and background noise cancellation, loudness equalization and general voice enhancement. Removing background noise significantly improves the accuracy rate of ASR, (Automatic Speech Recognition) and voice-call applications for smart phones, tablets and other mobile devices.
Tomi Engdahl says:
‘Digital anchor’ app makers say they plan to ‘expand the options’ for news consumers
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/02/06/digital-anchor-app-makers-say-they-plan-to-expand-the-options-for-news-consumers/
“We’re not looking to replace any kind of television programming,” said Leslie Bradshaw, chief operating officer for Guide. “We’re looking to expand the options. In my mind — and I think this goes for anything, whether it’s news or, frankly, safety in cars — whenever there’s competition, and whenever there’s choice, the consumer always wins out.”
“You can take the same article by the same journalist who has all that experience and consume it while [you're] cooking on your tablet in the kitchen,” he said. “Or I could run it on my Smart TV in the morning while I’m getting dressed instead of CNN Headline News. I can focus on the journalists I care more about, which actually might be smaller publications.”
Right now the app’s avatars range from more realistic-looking human presenters to anime-style characters to dogs, cats, and androids. Initially, Laker said, the results were mixed.
“The human avatars, about 1 in 5 people, the human avatars really freaked them out,” he said.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Multi-screen marketing
http://www.tsbc.com/multi-screen-marketing/
The 2012 consumer is much savvier than earlier counterparts. Therefore, engaging your target consumer has become more complex than ever before.
Google identified two distinct behaviors.
Sequential usage.
This is when you move from one device to the next to complete a task over time. For example, I enjoy dabbling in online shopping. I happily browse on my smart phone but would never make a purchase as I prefer to wait until I’m at a computer to see the item on a bigger screen, to avoid making a purchase I’ll later regret.
Simultaneous usage.
This is the art of using multiple devices at the same time. Google’s report found the most likely concurrent activity is the use of a smart phone with a television. They found 88% of people who used devices simultaneously had their phone in their hands while watching TV. Although the majority of the time what we’re doing with the phone isn’t related to what we’re watching, 22% of the time simultaneous usage is complementary. That is, we’re accessing content directly related to what we’re watching.
After reading the report, I instantly became aware of my multi-screen usage
In my humble opinion, the most significant thing is the need to start thinking strategically and creatively about multi-device communications.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Using stable, reliable systems for mission-critical video walls
http://www.eetimes.com/design/military-aerospace-design/4406450/Maintaining-reliability-in-video-wall-technologies-
The advancements in video wall technology are opening up more windows on the world, conveying new thoughts and messages of the latest developments in many areas. From digital signage in sports, entertainment, shopping and other public venues to mission-critical control rooms for military operations, power and energy, factory automation, transportation management, security and surveillance, video wall controller technologies are bringing us to a whole new world of immediate visualization, extensive collaboration and more responsive and effective decision making based on access to accurate and timely information.
At the core of a video wall application is one or more output/input graphic cards plugged into a computer system–the video wall controller. The function of the video wall controller is to capture all the video sources to be viewed, convert them to a common format, then scale and spread them across the video wall matrix.
As mentioned, many video walls are in mission-critical environments, such as military command centers, or nuclear power plant control rooms; computer systems used for video wall controller platforms are not ordinary commercial computers, but highly ruggedized, stable, reliable industrial computers designed with special considerations for video wall applications.
That is to say, successful and outstanding video wall performance relies on the marriage of powerful video card(s) and reliable industrial computer(s). This is the nexus of the partnership between the display solutions provider, Matrox Graphics, and global IPC manufacturer, Advantech.
When images on a video wall are enlarged, reduced or moved across multiple monitors, it requires huge transient video data transfers between and among multiple Mura MPX cards
For example, a 1080p full HD video stream generates 0.5 GB/sec data throughput; when four such video streams are captured by a MuraTM MPX card and displayed through four output ports on a different card, a 2.0 GB/sec card to card (slot to slot) data transfer occurs.
When multiple graphic cards are employed in a computer system to drive a multiple monitor video wall, the power consumption is huge and there rise system heat problems that need to be carefully dealt with in both board and system design levels.
This is one of the reasons why a video wall controller is usually more pricy than other IPCs or ordinary computers. However, the price tag is worth it as system shutdown or failure due to overheat could be catastrophic in mission-critical applications.
Remote control and monitoring is also an important part for maintaining system health and operational reliability. When a computer system is going awry, abnormal signals will surface first in temperature, voltage or fan rotation speeds.
Conclusion
The advancement of video wall technology is changing the industrial landscape and the way we see and react to the world.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Beat By Dre: The Exclusive Inside Story of How Monster Lost the World
http://gizmodo.com/5981823
There’s never been anything like Beats By Dre. The bulky rainbow headphones are a gaudy staple of malls, planes, clubs, and sidewalks everywhere: as mammoth, beloved, and expensive as their namesake.
But Dr. Dre didn’t just hatch the flashy lineup from his freight train chest: The venture began as an unlikely partnership between a record-industry powerhouse and a boutique audio company best known for making overpriced HDMI cables.
You might know this; you might own a pair of beats that still has Monster’s tiny, subjugated logo printed on them. But what you don’t know is how, in inking the deal, Monster screwed itself out of a fortune. It’s the classic David vs Goliath story—with one minor edit: David gets his ass kicked and is laughed out of the arena. This is the inside story of one of the all time worst deals in tech.
Monster expanded into pricey HDMI cables, surge protectors, and… five different kinds of screen-cleaner. Unnecessary, overpriced items like these have earned Monster a reputation over the years as ripoff artists, but that belies the company’s ability to make audio products that are actually pretty great. The truth is, audio cable is a lot like expensive basketball shoes: There are a couple hundred people in the world who really need the best, and the rest of us probably can’t tell the difference. Doesn’t matter: Through a combination of slick persuasion and status-pushing, Noel Lee carved out a small empire.
But you can only sell so many $200 cables. The next step was speakers, but the company started in on speakers too late; the hi-fi era was over. Plenty of people were content with the sound their TVs made, or at most, a soundbar. Monster took a bath.
But speakers for your head? This was the absolute, legit next big thing.
After Kevin’s quest for surround sound partners, Iovine and Dre approached Monster with a dazzling offer: Let’s build electronics.
Monster took the rap duo’s vague audio aspirations and pointed them in one very lucrative direction: high-end headphones. Bose was something your dad bought. Everything else was either crap or too obscure and complex for consumers to pick out. “Let’s build headphones together,” Noel decreed.
Back to the kitchen. Monster went through “40 or 50 prototypes,” and saddled itself with some extraordinary risk.
Monster solidified an agreement that got Beats Electronics alive and shipping headphones, but not without gigantic forfeit: Jimmy and Dre’s side of Beats would retain permanent ownership of everything that Monster developed.
The Dr. Dre task force took Monster’s audio gear and pimped it, tirelessly, as a gadget status symbol without rival. That was the plan—period. Marketing, Iovine told Kevin Lee, would take too long. Education would take too long. Instead, the strategy was to enchant the public: Beats would be “the hottest product to have, and sound will be a Trojan horse. And that’s what we did. Beats was in every single music video,” says Kevin. Iovine made sure Beats had prominent placement across Interscope’s sterling roster, infiltrating the money and product lust-addled brains of video-watching America.
It worked. Disposable income was disposed of in the hundreds upon hundreds of millions. “Kids did go into a Best Buy and bought Beats not because it sounded cool, but because it made them look cool,” admits Kevin.
Monster bristles at the suggestion that Beats had everything, even anything to do with engineering: “Absolutely not, they don’t have any engineers,” says Noel. Kevin piles on: “Beats [had] zero [engineering role],” a reality of the deal he says is “undisputed—Monster engineered the sound in Beats by Dre headphones. They told us what they wanted and they approved it, but we made that sound possible.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Video: PBS Off-Book Explores the Open-Source Art Movement
http://www.designnews.com/author.asp?section_id=1394&doc_id=258446
PBS’s Off-Book series recently released a digital short on an art movement involving the creative use of computer programming. Off-Book is a bi-weekly web series all about exploring new art movements that are pushing the boundaries of our creative potential with the onset of new-age media.
This week’s episode, dubbed “The Art of Creative Coding,”
Keith Butters, of Barbarian Group, later presents the evolution of the Cinders program. The re-mastered code used to develop the iTunes visualizer was given new life in the form of Cinders; a library of code designed to provide artists the necessities to focus on their creations more so than the coding itself. This toolbox of audio, video, and graphics code also operates as an open-source project
The home stretch of the PBS short has Jonathan Minard and James George talking about the Frameworks community and their RGBD Toolkit. The toolkit was created by the pairing of an Xbox Kinect with DSLR cameras to experiment with the possibility of new forms of cinema.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Google strikes Freesat deal to launch YouTube on TV
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/mediatechnologyandtelecoms/media/9860880/Google-strikes-Freesat-deal-to-launch-YouTube-on-TV.html
Google’s battle with broadcasters has stepped up a gear after the company signed a deal with Freesat to launch a full-blown YouTube television channel.
The YouTube channel will be accessible via an app, alongside other so-called “on-demand” services like the BBC iPlayer.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Rig turns iPhone into 3D camera
http://www.electronicproducts.com/News/Rig_turns_iPhone_into_3D_camera.aspx
Innovative Kickstarter project finds another use for the ever-versatile iPhone
Though 3D films are increasing in popularity at the box office, the technology isn’t exactly accessible to the average amateur or student film makers. But a new stereoscopic rig and app currently generating attention on Kickstarter could put the power of 3D filmmaking into the hands of every consumer with an iPhone and a story to tell.
The S3Rig syncs two iPhones together to create 3-dimentional films.
Called the S3Rig, short for “Stereoscopic Smartphone Starter Rig,” the product is simple but powerful, allowing users to insert two iPhones side by side and begin recording immediately. The S3 app syncs the two phones together using Bluetooth for simultaneous recording, allowing one smartphone to control the second.
Tomi Engdahl says:
eMusic no longer requires subscription, opens the indie music floodgates
http://www.engadget.com/2013/02/11/emusic-subscription/
service will be dumping its subscription requirement, letting customers download music from the site without being forced to buy into a monthly fee. The new model, which puts the site in line with most of its musical competition
Tomi Engdahl says:
The World’s Top 10 Most Innovative Companies in Consumer Electronics
http://www.fastcompany.com/most-innovative-companies/2013/industry/consumer-electronics
7_Beats Electronics
For snatching up half the headphone market. Dr. Dre & Co. are building an audio empire–the ubiquitous Beats By Dre headphones now account for 50% of the billion-dollar market, and last year the company moved into larger territory by embedding its technology in phones and computers.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Sound Affects
http://www.edn.com/design/analog/4406642/Sound-Affects
Architects focus on the eyes but our spaces sound terrible. There is a certain unconsciousness about the sound around us every day.
Julian Treasure is author of the book Sound Business, the first map of the exciting new territory of applied sound for business, and he has been widely featured in the world’s media
His three TED talks have been viewed an estimated four million times. The first is on the four effects of sound; the second on sound and health and the third, which has over a million views on the TED website alone, is on conscious listening.
Treasure comments, “….I have experienced so many commercial spaces, from shops and offices to schools and transport terminals, where poor sound is having devastating effects on sales, on communication, on productivity, on customer satisfaction, or on wellbeing.” He is chairman of The Sound Agency, a UK-based consultancy that helps clients achieve better results by optimizing the sound they make in every aspect of business.
Tomi Engdahl says:
W3C to explore a proposal bringing DRM hooks to HTML
http://www.engadget.com/2013/02/12/w3c-to-explore-a-proposal-bringing-drm-hooks-to-html/
The web is defined by the free, open exchange of information, right? Not necessarily. The W3C has decided that it’s “in scope” for its HTML Working Group to explore a specification for the Encrypted Media Extensions framework, which would allow companies to plug in their own copy protection for web content. In other words, the effort would add support for DRM extensions to the web itself, rather than leave it to content plugins like Flash.
Tomi Engdahl says:
New LED driving techniques reduce power in LCD TVs
http://www.edn.com/design/consumer/4406820/New-LED-driving-techniques-reduce-power-in-LCD-TVs
According to the SEAD (Super-efficient Equipment and Appliance Deployment) initiative, televisions are responsible for approximately 3 to 8% of global residential electricity consumption. An analysis conducted by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory suggests that advances such as more efficient LED driving can yield major reductions in television electricity consumption in the coming years.
There seems little doubt that LCD technology with LED backlighting is the only viable way to reach the efficiency targets that authorities are proposing.
Highly touted OLED technology – as recently reported – may not come any time soon, if ever. The investment required for this “bleeding edge” large panel technology is prohibitive. However, large display panels with current state-of-the-art TFT-LCD technology and “smart” direct LED backlighting with local dimming is far less expensive than OLED but compares well for both power consumption and picture quality.
But today’s LCD TVs, even those with LED backlighting, are still some distance from achieving the efficiency targets they will face in the coming years. However, new design techniques in LED driver circuits promise to deliver significant energy savings that will go a long way to helping TV manufacturers meet the tough requirements for power consumption.
Tomi Engdahl says:
More and more Finnish wants to watch TV, movies and TV series for yourself in the most appropriate time. TV-on-demand is growing rapidly.
Source: http://www.tietoviikko.fi/kaikki_uutiset/telkkaria+ei+katsota+niin+kuin+ennen/a878696?s=r&wtm=tietoviikko/-14022013&
Tomi Engdahl says:
Yes, Intel Is Building a Web TV Service (A Box, Too)
http://allthingsd.com/20130212/yes-intel-is-building-a-web-tv-service/?refcat=diveintomedia
It was a poorly kept secret to begin with, but now it has finally been revealed: Intel is indeed developing an Internet TV service, and a set-top box to boot.
Speaking at D: Dive Into Media Tuesday, Erik Huggers, corporate vice president at Intel Media, confirmed rumors that have been circulating for months.
“We have been working for about a year now to set up a group called Intel Media,” Huggers said “It’s a new division with new people — people [we've hired] from Apple, Netflix and Google. And it’s devoted to developing an Internet television platform.”
That group’s mandate: Build the best Internet television service ever.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Your own head-mounted display for under two bills
http://hackaday.com/2013/02/14/your-own-head-mounted-display-for-under-two-bills/
Not only does it work well for gaming, it came in at under $200 all in. You think your girlfriend makes fun of you now for wearing that big microphone headset while playing? Just wait until she gets a load of these!
he display itself is a 7″ LCD module from eBay that boasts a hair better than 720P resolution: 1280×800. He’s using a pair of ski goggles to strap the display to his noggin.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Monster Cable Finds Itself On The Other Side Of A Trademark Case (But Still Losing)
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130203/23380821872/monster-cable-finds-itself-other-side-trademark-case-still-losing.shtml
As you’re probably aware, Monster Cable is somewhat famous as a trademark bully — at times going after completely unrelated businesses that use the word “monster”
Dolby is suing Monster for trademark infringement
You would think that, for a company so incredibly (and ridiculously) aggressive in enforcing its own trademark, it would be a bit more careful in designing its own damn logos.
Comments:
…are Monster HDMI cables so ridiculously overpriced because they have to pay all these lawyers? I always thought it was because they just enjoyed screwing over the public.
They prefer to say “premium branded”. That’s code for “electrically equivalent, but with a cooler (purloined) brand name.”
Their business model requires consumer confusion to work. They understand trademarks perfectly well and know exactly what they’re doing.
Whether it’s Monster or any other brand if you are paying anymore than $5 to $9 for v1.4 HDMI cables you are paying way to much.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Opera buys mobile video optimization specialist and browser maker Skyfire for up to $155m
http://thenextweb.com/insider/2013/02/15/opera-buys-skyfire-labs-a-mobile-video-optimization-specialist-and-fellow-browser-maker/
Opera revealed plans to transition its Web browsers to WebKit this week, and the Norwegian firm is making more moves after announcing the acquisition of Skyfire Labs, a mobile video optimization specialist and fellow mobile browser maker
Much like Opera, the Mountain View-based company helps mobile operators boost their capacity by reducing the size of video and multimedia by up to 60 percent, thanks to its Rocket Optimizer product.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Researchers lock in structural color — could lead to fully-reflective, high-res, color-display screens
Breakthrough could lead to next-generation displays
http://www.electronicproducts.com/Computer_Peripherals/Display_Graphics/Researchers_lock_in_structural_color_could_lead_to_fully-reflective_high-res_color-display_screens.aspx
Researchers at the University of Michigan have developed a reflective screen technology that could lead to the next generation of smart gadgetry capable of being read outdoors on even the brightest of days.
The great thing about reflective displays is that they don’t need backlight to be read as conventional displays. As a result, they tend to consume less power than comparable backlit technologies.
“Light is funneled into the nanocavity, whose width is much, much smaller than the wavelength of the light. And that’s how we can achieve color with resolution beyond the diffraction limit. Also counterintuitive is that longer wavelength light gets trapped in narrower grooves.”
Using the print industry’s framework of cyan, magenta, and yellow as guidance, the team recorded the following discoveries using groove depths of 170 nm and spacing of 180 nm:
• A slit 40 nm wide will trap red light and reflect cyan color;
• A slit 60 nm wide will trap green and reflect magenta; and
• A slit 90 nm wide will trap blue and reflect yellow.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Why I’m Cutting the Cord, and How Cable Can Get Me Back
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/09/cord-cutters-why/
Like electricity and hot water, pay TV has become a vital source of comfort in my home. But unlike the basic utilities, pay TV has become incredibly expensive. So while it’ll take a radical change in how I consume media, pay TV has got to go.
I’m paying $94 a month for basic digital cable. $94 a month for something I’ve been supplementing with streaming services because I’ve realized I only watching a few shows on a few channels. The rest is just noise.
That noise has pushed me to the Apple TV, Netflix streaming, and the Amazon Instant Videos service I can access through my smart TV. While Netflix is still reeling from its recent stumbles, I’m still a huge fan.
That doesn’t mean I won’t miss cable. There will be shows that slip through the cracks. I’ll have to cover my ears when coworkers are talking about the latest episode of the hot show because it appears online a week later. And no matter how easy tech companies make cutting the cord seem, it’s still not as easy as sitting on the couch and flipping through a program guide until you find something that explodes and/or makes you laugh. Pay TV is magnificent, but its a firehose of content when most people need a trickle.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Cable’s Walls Are Coming Down
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/09/cord-cutters-soon/
Everybody hates the cable company. The big cable carriers constantly score among the lowest in customer satisfaction among all industries.
Yet the cable operators continue to thrive largely because they operate as natural monopolies — the upfront capital costs of laying new cable keep potential competitors at bay. The satellite services don’t fare much better in terms of consumer love, and they too enjoy similar barriers to entry (satellites!).
But get ready for a sea change. Even if you’re tied to a subscription television service today, there’s a great chance you’ll become a cord-cutter in short order.
On-demand content from the mainstream outlets is also everywhere — Apple, Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, Microsoft and Sony are all happy to take your money to deliver programming that once was exclusively distributed by cable and satellite providers. Roku just got a bundle of investment cash from NewsCorp after selling some 3 million set-top boxes this year. Apple sold 1.3 million Apple TVs just last quarter, and over 4 million so far this fiscal year.
And if you have an Apple TV and the newest Mac operating system, AirPlay mirroring makes it SEC-school easy to download shows — legally or not — to your computer and watch them on your ginormous TV. Then there’s Google, which just rolled out its own cable competitor on fiber optic lines. Meanwhile Comcast is desperately trying to get you to forget that it’s, you know, Comcast.
Despite its current financial health, subscription TV knows cord-cutting is inevitable, and the industry is trying desperately to protect its assets. The cable and satellite services have three final stongholds that are keeping most people tethered: live sports, live news and first-run premium content.
As those two last walls (live sports and news) crumble, they’ll topple the third. For now, it’s not economically feasible for most networks, especially HBO, to show original programming online at the same time they show it on-air.
Cutting the cord is still an outlier activity. You have to do too much searching, use too many specialized devices, and configure too many settings to get what you want. But as devices from Google, Apple, Roku and others make internet delivery indistinguishable from cable and satellite delivery, we’re going to wake up one morning and find cord-cutting has gone completely mainstream. And those devices are pretty much already here.
All the advantages enjoyed by subscription TV today are melting away. In five years, those advantages will have been eliminated entirely. In a decade, many of today’s constraints will seem laughable. The idea that you had to pay for 400 other channels just because you wanted to watch a single show will be akin to paying for internet access by the hour.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Why Intel could be the company to finally crack internet TV
Everyone else has tried, now it’s the chipmaker’s turn
http://www.theverge.com/2013/2/18/3992038/why-intel-media-could-finally-crack-internet-tv
Intel? Really? There were rumors and reports for months that Intel was mounting a play for internet TV, but there was always an element of implausibility to them. Finally, on February 12, Intel VP Eric Huggers publicly announced that the company had been negotiating with major content companies and would introduce a set-top box and internet television platform before the end of 2013.
Make no mistake: Intel is proposing something genuinely audacious here. It’s live multichannel programming delivered over a broadband data pipe, but sold separately. It might be delivered over coaxial cable if that’s where you get your broadband, but that’s an accident. It could just as easily be over fiberoptic or wireless. You could switch providers and keep your TV service exactly the same; you could move across the country and keep your TV service exactly the same.
“You would have your own broadband and we provide the device and the service,” says Intel Media spokesperson Jon Carvill. Later, Carvill clarified: the customer “would buy the device and then subscribe to the services they want… Live TV, on demand content, and applications.” It’s a big bet that broadband speed and ISP data caps will continue to increase, as ISPs focus on what’s increasingly the most profitable part of their business, the data plans.
Intel is the tech giant we’ve taken for granted. It’s one of the leaders in a field that has generally spectacularly failed to understand the hearts and minds of consumers. Also, we can’t forget: Intel was a key partner in the launch of Google TV (along with Sony, Logitech, and yes, Google), which launched in a thick cloud of promises and potential but in almost two and a half years has done almost nothing to change our experience of television.
Now, Google and Apple got into internet television mostly because they’d conquered their corners of the desktop and mobile markets and were trying to expand into new spheres.
Internet TV is hard in ways that have little to do with technology. Striking deals with content partners is very hard. Bringing a product to market that’s comparable with what cable and satellite providers can offer, let alone more compelling, is extremely hard. It’s hard if this is what you do every day in your core business. It’s unbelievably hard if you’ve never done this before. Very few people would be surprised if Intel, like Google, couldn’t pull this off.
Tomi Engdahl says:
BII REPORT: Why The “Second Screen” Industry Is Set To Explode
Watching television while also using a smartphone or tablet is one of the most popular leisure activities of the mobile era.
The mobile industry is working hard to create mobile apps and sites that relate to what’s on TV, in order to capitalize on this behavior.
This approach is often referred to as the “second screen,” the idea being that the tablet or smartphone becomes a TV companion device, allowing for added levels of interactivity— whether on social networks or dedicated second screen apps and sites that complement on-air content.
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/bii-report-why-the-second-screen-industry-is-set-to-explode-2013-2#ixzz2LQ3ngDr8
Tomi Engdahl says:
Hacked auxiliary port for a car stereo
http://hackaday.com/2013/02/19/hacked-auxiliary-port-for-a-car-stereo/
installing Auxiliary ports on most car stereos is this easy. The dealership wanted $95 to put one in, but he managed to add a 3.5″ audio-in port to his car stereo for just a couple of bucks.
Tomi Engdahl says:
WTF is… Miracast?
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/02/21/feature_wtf_is_miracast/
The AirPlay alternative for streaming video, games from your Android to your telly
Less than six months ago, there were just a handful of Miracast-certified products listed in the Wi-Fi Alliance’s kit database. Now there are nearly 150. A spectacular improvement for a little known technology. So what is it?
Miracast was formally launched in September 2012, but it was Google’s announcement a month and a half later that the system would be integrated into Android 4.2 Jelly Bean which gave the technology all its momentum of late.
Miracast is essentially a brandname for the Wi-Fi Alliance’s Wi-Fi Display specification, itself derived from Intel’s Wireless Display (WiDi) technology, which can be used to stream the output of one of the company’s integrated graphics cores to a compatible TV – or to a TV with a suitable adaptor hooked up to one of its HDMI ports.
Less than six months ago, there were just a handful of Miracast-certified products listed in the Wi-Fi Alliance’s kit database. Now there are nearly 150. A spectacular improvement for a little known technology. So what is it?
Miracast was formally launched in September 2012, but it was Google’s announcement a month and a half later that the system would be integrated into Android 4.2 Jelly Bean which gave the technology all its momentum of late.
Miracast is essentially a brandname for the Wi-Fi Alliance’s Wi-Fi Display specification, itself derived from Intel’s Wireless Display (WiDi) technology, which can be used to stream the output of one of the company’s integrated graphics cores to a compatible TV – or to a TV with a suitable adaptor hooked up to one of its HDMI ports.
Both WiDi and AirPlay were designed on the back of the notion that users had content on mobile devices that they would quite like to watch on a large screen.
About four years ago, a number of firms began offering plug in devices to create ad hoc wireless links between laptops and TVs
Tomi Engdahl says:
Video Discovery Startup Fanhattan Launches A Web Interface, With More Than 1 Million Movies And TV Titles
http://techcrunch.com/2013/02/21/fanhattan-on-the-web/
It’s not easy hard to find video on the web. But with dozens of premium content providers out there and millions of videos to choose from, figuring out what’s worth watching can be a challenge. That’s why Fanhattan is bringing its video discovery platform to the web.
Fanhattan originally launched as an iOS app for the iPad, allowing its users to search and discover content across a wide range of apps that content producers and distributors had launched on the device. Rather than checking out Netflix, Hulu Plus, Amazon, iTunes, and other premium content providers individually, users can search for the content they want across all those platforms through the Fanhattan app.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Nielsen Agrees to Expand Definition of TV Viewing
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/nielsen-agrees-expand-definition-tv-422795
After a meeting in New York Tuesday, the ratings company will roll out a system to measure broadband, Xbox and, in time, iPads, with more changes to come.
The Nielsen Co. is expanding its definition of television and will introduce a comprehensive plan to capture all video viewing including broadband and Xbox and iPads, several sources tell The Hollywood Reporter.
Nielsen is said to have an internal goal of being able to measure video viewing on an iPad by the end of this year, a process in which the company will work closely with its clients.
Nielsen already captures a small amount of out-of-home viewing, such as at a few colleges. If a student comes from a Nielsen home, his or her TV viewing is tracked when the student goes off to college.
Tomi Engdahl says:
CES: Using Eye Movements to Control a Computer or TV (Video)
http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/13/02/21/1730226/ces-using-eye-movements-to-control-a-computer-or-tv-video
Imagine not being able to move a mouse or use a keyboard to control your computer. Frustrating, right? A company Timothy Lord found at CES named Eyetech has a solution for this problem: an eye tracker system that can control your computer or TV (or whatever) purely through eye movements. This isn’t something you buy on a whim; the system costs $3000.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Aereo expands TV on-the-go service to 3 more states, launches first big ad campaign
http://paidcontent.org/2013/02/25/aereo-expands-tv-on-the-go-service-to-3-more-states-launches-first-big-ad-campaign/
Aereo is disrupting the traditional TV model with a service that lets users subscribe to TV for a day at a time and watch in on their iPhone. Today, it expanded beyond New York City to a total of 29 counties.
“Today, consumers are tethered to expensive and outdated technology that limits how, when and where they can enjoy their own television programming,” said Aereo’s CEO Chet Kanojia in the news release. “Aereo’s technology now lets us provide simplicity, ease of use and rational pricing – three things that have all but disappeared for the consumer.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Chromebook Pixel review: another impractical marvel from Google
http://www.engadget.com/2013/02/25/chromebook-pixel-review/
For the receiving end, Google has also integrated an array of microphones throughout the machine to help with active noise cancellation, including one positioned to detect (and eliminate) keyboard clatter when you’re typing whilst in a Hangout or the like.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Stop Trying To Make WebOS Happen. It’s Not Going To Happen
http://techcrunch.com/2013/02/25/stop-trying-to-make-webos-happen-its-not-going-to-happen/
We need to face facts: WebOS is dead. Barring the unwavering support of the enthusiast community, the former mobile OS will never become a commercial product and, LG investment or no, the possibility of WebOS surviving a sale is nil.
TV operating systems are about as low as you can go in the graphical environment game. TVs face a snails-pace upgrade cycle, are orphaned by their makers, and are nearly invisible to the consumer. Slapping WebOS into a TV is tantamount to sticking it onto a medical device – you’re assured a slow and steady obsolescence.
Tomi Engdahl says:
How an iPhone App Made An Oscar-Nominated Film Possible
http://mashable.com/2013/02/24/iphone-app-8mm/
The film Searching For Sugar Man is nominated for Best Documentary at this year’s Academy Awards. But it might have not been completed if it wasn’t for an iPhone.
Shot primarily on 8mm film, the movie ran out of funding when there were still a few scenes left to be shot. To complete the film, director Malik Bendjelloul used his iPhone and a $1.99 iPhone app called 8mm Vintage Camera to capture the remaining scenes, which were then added to the finished documentary.
The end result? Video footage that looks indistinguishable from the scenes recorded on expensive 8mm film.
It’s a use case that Hongyu Chi, President of Nexvio the company behind 8mm Vintage Camera never could have imagined.
“It’s like the wildest dream come true, “ Chi told Mashable.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Adobe outs Photoshop Touch for phones, ready to outfit pockets for $4.99
http://www.engadget.com/2013/02/27/adobe-photoshop-touch-for-phones/
Jealous about your mates’ ability to edit photos and whatnot via their mid-sized slates? Well, Adobe has just announced a solution that’s ready to equip your handset of choice. That’s right, the pro design software outfit added Photoshop Touch for phones that wields “core” Photoshop capabilities, Scribble Selection and supports those high-res snapshots.
Tomi Engdahl says:
NPD: Illegal P2P music sharing declined 17% in 2012 as Internet users turn to free, legal streaming services
http://thenextweb.com/media/2013/02/26/npd-illegal-p2p-music-sharing-declined-17-in-2012-as-internet-users-turn-to-free-legal-streaming-services/
These latest figures come from NPD’s annual music study, which shows P2P wasn’t the only sharing activity to shrink. In fact, it looks like music sharing as an activity in general is dying out, at least if you look at some of the most popular ways of doing so:
Music files burned and ripped from CDs owned by friends and family fell 44 percent.
The number of files swapped from hard drives dropped 25 percent.
The volume of music downloads from digital lockers decreased 28 percent.
Tomi Engdahl says:
For the First Time Since Napster, Music Sales Are Growing
http://allthingsd.com/20130226/for-the-first-time-since-napster-music-sales-are-growing/
The last time music was a growth business was 1999 — back when people bought millions of Britney Spears CDs, and GeoCities was the third-most popular Web property in the world. You know what’s happened since then.
But music’s slide may have finally stopped. Last year, recorded-music sales inched up 0.3 percent worldwide, to $16.5 billion, according to industry trade group IFPI. That’s the first time global sales have increased since the Napster era, and it echoes bumps we’ve seen earlier in the U.S. and other markets.
If the growth sustains, it means that the predictions we’ve been hearing for a decade and a half have finally come true: Digital sales are increasing fast enough to outpace the decline in physical. Last year, digital grew 9 percent and accounted for 34 percent of revenue.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Two displays, one video output: A Matrox workaround works pretty well, but isn’t perfect
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/brians-brain/4407852/Two-displays–one-video-output–A-Matrox-workaround-works-pretty-well–but-isn-t-perfect
Tomi Engdahl says:
Shazam: ‘TV advertising is going to become our primary revenue stream’
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/appsblog/2013/feb/27/shazam-tv-advertising-future
With tens of millions of weekly active users, British startup wants to make second-screen ads a big deal for broadcasters
Shazam recently announced a major milestone: 300m users. That’s all the people who’ve ever tagged something using the company’s app. An impressive figure, but not one that reveals what Shazam’s current active userbase is.
It’s this scale that’s important to Shazam’s expansion into the second-screen TV space, where apps designed to complement TV viewing like Zeebox and GetGlue are still counting their downloads in millions.
Shazam says its users are currently tagging 10m songs, shows and ads a day.
It’s that second-screen TV business that holds the key to Shazam’s future, though. Starting in the US, which accounts for 90m of those first 300m users of the company’s app. Shazam creates content within its app for every programme on 160 American TV channels, serving it up when viewers tag the show.
Content? That’s a mixture of episode descriptions, quizzes, tweets, cast information and playable clips of every song on the soundtrack, with links to buy song downloads, TV episodes and merchandise – the latter through a partnership with e-commerce firm Delivery Agent.
The custom experiences side of Shazam’s business has just been boosted by Fox Broadcasting Company’s launch of an initiative called Fox Now, in partnership with a firm called Watchwith. The scheme involves providing second-screen apps companies with extra material to synchronise with shows as they air.
“For the time being, second-screen is supporting the ads on the first screen, but there will come a time when second-screen revenues start to become significant enough that the television networks and advertising sales groups will really start to take notice,” says Jones.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Shooting forward: A look at a mature camera market
http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-6501_7-57571569-95/shooting-forward-a-look-at-a-mature-camera-market/
Digital photography is exploding, yet camera sales continue to slump. Here’s a look at the current market and what should change.
“We are so screwed.”
basically a showcase for how much you can do with a smartphone camera and how little a basic point-and-shoot offers.
So here you have all of these smartphone and mobile accessory manufacturers trying to give consumers a better camera experience, so that they can get better photos and videos without buying a camera. Camera manufacturers are seemingly so slow to adjust that the majority of their offerings are missing the mark.
camera manufacturers are terrible at getting you interested in their products
For as fast moving as the technologies are, there are still essentially two types of cameras: compacts with fixed lenses (i.e. they can’t be removed from the body) and interchangeable lens cameras, such as digital SLRs. But if you walked into a store you’d think there were many more.
Unfortunately, even if you know what you’re looking for and the amount you want to spend, there are so many models available from the major camera brands — Canon, Fujifilm, Nikon, Olympus, Panasonic, Ricoh/Pentax, Samsung, and Sony — that trying to find the right one is probably enough to make you stick to using your phone or risk being disappointed by your purchase.
Consumer indifference
For whatever advantages there are to having a dedicated camera, many people just don’t care.
With newer smartphones, the photos and video are good enough for sharing online and probably as good as or better than what you’d get from a basic point-and-shoot, which, again, are the models that are dying off the fastest.
If you’re willing to sign a carrier contract, you can grab a pricey smartphone for significantly less that does all kinds of things and has a good camera. There are no subsidies for cameras (not yet at least), so if you want a good camera you’ll have to pay for the whole thing and it’s only a camera.
Although the overall sales of compact cameras are dropping, there are segments of the market with sales growth: megazooms and rugged cameras. So what we have now are a lot of small-sensor point-and-shoots with long zoom lenses and a variety of water-, shock-, freeze-, and dustproof cameras.
Continuing on this path of more zoom, more megapixels, and fairly unnecessary improvements
in the end this, won’t keep consumers satisfied.
“this 16-megapixel camera isn’t nearly as good as my old 8-megapixel one.” Camera manufacturers have basically spent so much effort marketing megapixels to consumers that it’s tough to break the habit. But if you look at what’s at the high end of the market, the sensors are packing fewer megapixels than those at the bottom.
Most people didn’t shoot video with their digital cameras when it first started showing up, but now you can’t find a model without it. The same thing will happen for wireless features
Tomi Engdahl says:
Panasonic unveils lamp-free LED projectors
http://www.cablinginstall.com/articles/2013/february/panasonic-lamp-free-projectors.html?cmpid=EnlContractorFebruary282013
According to Panasonic, the LED/laser light source in the Solid Shine 1-Chip DLP projectors delivers up to 20,000 hours of virtually maintenance-free operation. All models in the series deliver 3,500 lumens of brightness and provide features that make the projectors ideal for use in educational institutions, as well as museums, command and control centers, and digital signage applications.
The proprietary Digital Link technology is an original function added to the projector, based on the transmission standards used in Crestron’s DigitalMedia 8G+ and Extron’s XTP systems, as well as others. Signals from the ET-YFB100G digital interface box can also be relayed to a non-Digital Link-ready projectors by using another manufacturer’s equipment based on the same technology.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Epson unveils HDBaseT-enabled projectors
http://www.cablinginstall.com/articles/2013/february/epson-hdbaset-projectors.html
Epson has released new commercial projectors that incorporate HDBaseT technology to enable professional installers to reduce deployment time and costs without sacrificing video quality.
Designed for commercial applications, the Epson EB-G6900WU and EB-G6800 projectors are company’s first releases as a member of the HDBaseT Alliance. Both models support HDBaseT technology for the transfer of five signals, including uncompressed HD video, audio, power and control, over distances of up to 100 m using standard Cat 5/6 cabling.
Images aimed at a curved surface or the corner of a room are automatically adjusted, allowing users to project without distortion. In addition, the projector can be rotated vertically by 360 degrees so users can easily move the display around the room to suit their needs.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Koozoo turns any old iPhone into a 24/7 spycam
http://www.theverge.com/2013/2/28/4039572/koozoo-app-livestream-your-yard
One entrepreneurial student with a great view of the bar jerry-rigged his webcam to broadcast live from his bedroom window to a website, and the site went viral.
“to create a method for people to have this view of the line and get in faster without the hassle of waiting in the cold,”
“The problem was that it was a weekend project, was difficult to set up, and was hacked together,” says Drew Sechrist — who is today launching a free app called Koozoo that turns any old iPhone into a 24 / 7 livestreaming video machine.
Once you download Koozoo to an old iPhone or iPod Touch (and soon, Android devices), setting up a video stream over either Wi-Fi or 4G takes less than a minute. The company will even mail you a window suction cup mount to give your old device the best possible view.
“Today we have ubiquitous smartphones, but also ubiquitous old smartphones,” Sechrist says. “There are billions of dollars of smartphones sitting in sock drawers all over the world.”
One of the clever aspects of Koozoo is that your phone doesn’t actually broadcast all day and night. The phone takes a snapshot every few minutes to use as a thumbnail, and only broadcasts live when a viewer using the Koozoo app tunes in. Video streams out at between 200 and 800 kbps, depending on your internet connection, which can max out at about 720p fidelity video, Sechrist says.
Koozoo doesn’t transmit audio in order to preserve some semblance of privacy — a word the company should be paying close attention to.
“There’s never been anything like this that makes public spaces of our metro areas visible to all by making it super simple to do,” Sechrist says, which is exactly why the service is ripe for abuse.
Just like Instagram and Vine, Koozoo will face a never-ending struggle with users who cross the boundaries of what’s acceptable as public content. “There will be grey areas of what’s appropriate content and what’s not,”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Giving Viewers What They Want
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/25/business/media/for-house-of-cards-using-big-data-to-guarantee-its-popularity.html?pagewanted=all&_r=2&
In the television business, there is no such thing as a sure thing. You can have a gold-plated director, a bankable star and a popular concept and still, it’s just a roll of the dice.
Or is it?
In any business, the ability to see into the future is the killer app, and Netflix may be getting close with “House of Cards.” The series, directed by David Fincher, starring Kevin Spacey and based on a popular British series, is already the most streamed piece of content in the United States and 40 other countries, according to Netflix. The spooky part about that? Executives at the company knew it would be a hit before anyone shouted “action.”
Big bets are now being informed by Big Data, and no one knows more about audiences than Netflix. A third of the downloads on the Internet during peak periods on any given day are devoted to streamed movies from the service, according to Sandvine, a networking provider. And last year, by some estimates, more people watched movies streamed online than on physical DVDs.
Film and television producers have always used data, holding previews for focus groups and logging the results, but as a technology company that distributes and now produces content, Netflix has mind-boggling access to consumer sentiment in real time.
Based on that information, Netflix bought “House of Cards.”
Netflix has always used data to decide which shows to license, and now that expertise is extended to the first-run.
“I think it is a little hysterical to say that Big Data will win the day now and forever, but it is clear that having a very molecular understanding of user data is going to have a big impact on how things happen in television,” he said.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The guilty truth: There’s too much content
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-57572257-71/the-guilty-truth-theres-too-much-content/?part=rss&subj=news&tag=title
How is any fully-functioning human being supposed to keep up with everything they’re interested in, online and off? They can’t. And it’s having psychological consequences.
All the supposedly intelligent, NPR-listening, Bluebottle coffee-drinking people are watching “Downton,” (as they intimately call it) and I had no idea who has been killed off and why it’s so terrible.
The guilt doesn’t stop there.
And talking of Netflix, there’s “House Of Cards.” Everybody’s seen it, except me. I watched a preview, but where am I going to snatch the 13 hours required to bathe in its twisted intrigue?
What am I supposed to give up? Books? Movie theaters? LOLcats? Am I supposed to take an iPad with me everywhere and watch some neglected work of art, while I’m simultaneously having dinner with, say, a client or a girlfriend?
During last week’s Oscars, I realized that I’d only seen one of the “Best Picture” candidates. I just hadn’t had the time.
The guilt just gets worse and worse.
I have no idea how the people who claim to have seen everything actually manage to see everything.
Naturally, I have a suspicion that they don’t see everything. They go to IMDb or Wikipedia, read up on the synopses, perhaps watch a 3-minute clip online and then come over all superior.
Tomi Engdahl says:
YouTube’s Show-Me-the-Money Problem
http://allthingsd.com/20130304/youtubes-show-me-the-money-problem/
The big picture for YouTube looks good. The world’s biggest video site keeps getting bigger, generating more video views and more ad dollars.
Things are fuzzier for some of YouTube’s biggest programming partners. Their views are also increasing. But the ad revenue YouTube generates for their stuff isn’t keeping pace.
In the near term, that’s pushing many big YouTube networks and partners to look hard for new sources of revenue. The bigger question is whether YouTube will be able to generate enough ad money for content makers to support the “premium” programming it has been trying to attract so it can compete with traditional TV.
The dollars programmers earn from YouTube’s ad-selling efforts range widely. But many big publishers say that after YouTube takes its 45 percent cut of the ads it sells, they frequently end up keeping about $2.50 for every 1,000 views their clips generate — that is, if their video generates a million views, they get $2,500. Other publishers say their split can be as high as $10 per 1,000.
Tomi Engdahl says:
A history of media streaming and the future of connected TV
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media-network/media-network-blog/2013/mar/01/history-streaming-future-connected-tv
We’re close to broadly available HD streaming which could trigger mass adoption of connected TV. Alex Zambelli gives the story so far
By the mid-2000s the vast majority of the Internet traffic was HTTP-based and content delivery networks (CDNs) were increasingly being used to ensure delivery of popular content to large audiences. Streaming media, with its hodgepodge of proprietary protocols – all mostly based on the far less popular UDP – suddenly found itself struggling to keep up with demand. In 2007 a company named Move Networks introduced a technology and service that once again would change the industry: HTTP-based adaptive streaming.
It was evident early on that another clash of proprietary streaming technologies would do more damage than good to an industry that was on the verge of maturing into mainstream, so in 2009 efforts began in 3GPP to establish an industry standard for adaptive streaming.
Early 3GPP standardisation work shifted to ISO/IEC MPEG working groups in 2010, where it moved quickly from proposals to draft status to ratification in less than two years. More than 50 companies were involved – Microsoft, Netflix and Apple included – and the effort was co-ordinated with other industry organisations such as 3GPP, DECE, OIPF and W3C. By April 2012 a new standard was born – Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP, colloquially known as MPEG-DASH.
Many companies were quick to announce MPEG-DASH support in their products as early as 2011, but as it often happens with standards the adoption process didn’t immediately begin at ratification.
Besides interoperability the other major hurdle facing streaming media and over-the-top (OTT) delivery is the quality gap. In just a handful of years streaming media technology has leapfrogged from less-than-standard definition video to rather solid 720p HD video, but the quality of even the best video-on-demand OTT services still falls short of broadcast television and Blu-ray audio-video quality.
That is a significant quality gap that needs to be overcome before OTT can truly challenge traditional media delivery, but fortunately there is hope on the horizon. As digital media quality is primarily dependent on bandwidth, there are two certain ways to increase the quality: by either increasing the bandwidth or by improving the compression efficiency at existing bit rates. The former can only accelerate as fast as general Internet bandwidth can, but the latter can be improved with new codec technologies. Such a codec technology is H.265
Such a boost could effectively help streaming media providers deliver 1080p (Full HD) video at the same 3-4 Mbps currently used for 720p video delivery, or increase the frame rate to 50/60Hz without requiring a proportional increase in bandwidth. In fact, many have hailed the news of H.265 as the beginning of the 4K video era where streaming video quality might finally outpace the slow-moving broadcast standards.