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:
ABC to Test Expanding Nielsen Ratings to Mobile
http://adage.com/article/special-report-tv-upfront/abc-test-expanding-nielsen-ratings-mobile/241465/
ABC will begin measuring advertising in videos viewed with mobile and tablet apps during a trial run with Nielsen, the network said at its upfront presentation to ad buyers Tuesday afternoon.
It will be the first test expanding Nielsen’s Online Campaign Ratings to mobile, allowing ABC to measure audience demographics and understand the reach and frequency of online campaigns within apps, according to executives. Nielsen’s online ratings currently include video viewed on computer and tablet browsers.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Exclusive: Google readies its Spotify competitor with Universal and Sony now on board
http://www.theverge.com/2013/5/14/4331110/google-lands-universal-music-sony-for-spotify-competitor
By signing the three largest record labels, it’s likely we’ll see Google roll out its new subscription music services at I /O
Google plans to add separate music subscription services to YouTube and Google Play, the entertainment hub for the Android operating system
When Google rolls out the new services tomorrow at I/O, it will mean that it gets the jump on Apple, which is also trying to launch a new streaming-music service. According to reports, Google’s subscription services would resemble Spotify, and offer on-demand songs that would be streamed to their PCs and mobile devices. In contrast, Apple is working on an online radio service that is said to be more akin to Pandora, a service that plays songs at random similar to traditional radio.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Video Distribution Platform Brightcove Announces A Streaming Module For Live Events
http://techcrunch.com/2013/05/14/brightcove-live-events/
For sports and live competitions in particular, live is becoming ever more important — and content companies are keen to meet that demand. But of course, doing so means using a whole different system for distribution than what they usually use.
OR DOES IT?
Not necessarily anymore, thanks to a new module from video distribution platform Brightcove that will make it a lot easier for its customers to roll out live video streams on a wide variety of devices. The brilliantly named Brightcove Video Cloud Live module allow Brightcove customers to manage live events with many of the same features as their on-demand video streams.
The module will provide high-quality, multi-bit rate streams to PCs, smartphones, tablets, and even connected TV devices. And it’ll do so all within the same distribution platform that their existing on-demand library uses. So they’ll be able to take advantage of the same analytics, monetization, and other features available from Brightcove. Customers will also be able to create an on-demand version of a live stream instantly after an event is over, enabling them to manage the full lifecycle of an event all in one platform.
Brightcove recently announced the availability of live video encoding through Zencoder, which the company acquired last summer.
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Tomi Engdahl says:
Android@I/O: Just press Play
http://officialandroid.blogspot.fi/2013/05/androidio-just-press-play.html
As our developer audience knows, Android is more than simply a phone or tablet. It’s a platform, an ecosystem, and an opportunity for developers around the world to build exciting services and apps that reach millions of people every day.
Our library is your library: Google Play Music All Access
Google Play Music All Access is a new monthly music subscription service that lets you listen to millions of songs across your devices. You can create a radio station from any song or artist you love, browse recommendations from our expert music team or explore by genre. And when millions of songs just aren’t enough, Google Play Music lets you combine our collection with your own collection. You can store 20,000 songs for free in the cloud and listen to them alongside the All Access catalog. It’s $9.99 a month, and you can try it free for the first month.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The 5 Coolest Things From the Google I/O Keynote
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2013/05/coolest-things-google-io/
Google Play Music All Access
Google finally introduced its rumored streaming service, which combines music from your personal library with the millions of tracks available in Google Play Music. It’s “radio without rules,” as Google’s Chris Yerga put it.
Google+ Photo Tools
No one really thinks “Google” when they think of photos or photo editing, but that may change with the smorgasbord of hosting, sharing, and editing features added to Google+ today.
One of the coolest of these is Highlight, which sifts through your photos and tosses out the crappy ones, because it can do things like recognize if a photo is blurry or has terrible exposure
Google Now
Google Now gives you exactly what you are looking for, as soon as you asked. And now, you don’t even have to ask.
Maps
Google’s redesigned Maps experience for mobile and desktop is all about making maps smarter, more visually compelling, and increasingly personalized.
Larry Page’s Speech and Q&A Session
“Technology should do the hard work so that people can get on with doing the things that make them happiest in life,”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Google urges fast adoption of VP9 video compression
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57584706-93/google-urges-fast-adoption-of-vp9-video-compression/
The computing industry has just begun taking the VP8 codec seriously, but Google wants people to adopt its brand-new successor.
Google is nearly done with its VP9 video technology, and it wants the world to use it.
At its Google I/O conference Wednesday, company employees made the case for the royalty-free, open-source technology as a higher-quality alternative to today’s dominant video codec, H.264. Moving to VP9 — available now in testing on Chrome and YouTube — will save bandwidth costs.
“If you adopt VP9, as you can very quickly, you’ll have tremendous advantages over anyone else out there using H.264 or VP8, (its predecessor),” said VP9 engineer Ronald Bultje in a talk here at Google’s developer conference. “You can save about 50 percent of bandwidth by encoding your video with VP9 vs. H.264.”
The VP9 specification will be finalized on June 17, but developers can use it today by enabling it through Chrome’s about:flags mechanism and visiting YouTube’s VP9 video channel.
Halving network usage is a great incentive to adopt VP9, but there are a lot of caveats.
One problem is that Google is moving very fast. Software such as Web browsers on PCs can be updated rapidly, but it’s harder and slower work to build hardware support into chips so mobile phones can decode video without crushing battery life. The industry barely has started coping with VP9′s predecessor, VP8, which has been on the market for three years.
One problem is that Google is moving very fast. Software such as Web browsers on PCs can be updated rapidly, but it’s harder and slower work to build hardware support into chips so mobile phones can decode video without crushing battery life. The industry barely has started coping with VP9′s predecessor, VP8, which has been on the market for three years.
But there’s another big part of the VP9 sales pitch: no royalty payments. VP9 is free to use, unlike H.264. HEVC/H.265 also will be free to use once the licensing organization MPEG LA finishes up its patent royalty plans. Google sees that as an unacceptable financial burden for startups, programmers, schools, and others who might want to launch a video project on the Internet.
Google has a strong self-interest in VP8 and VP9: YouTube. Cutting network usage saves Google money
“We can significantly increase the speed of the Internet.”
And hardware support should come sooner, likely the third quarter, when Google releases the designs that let chipmakers build it into processors for free.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Nintendo claims ad revenue on user-generated YouTube videos
http://www.polygon.com/2013/5/16/4336114/nintendo-claims-ad-revenue-on-user-generated-youtube-videos
Nintendo is now claiming ad revenue on user-generated “Let’s Play” videos that feature the game company’s content, according to YouTube user Zack Scott who received a “content ID match claim” issued by Nintendo.
“For most fan videos this will not result in any changes, however, for those videos featuring Nintendo-owned content, such as images or audio of a certain length, adverts will now appear at the beginning, next to or at the end of the clips. We continually want our fans to enjoy sharing Nintendo content on YouTube, and that is why, unlike other entertainment companies, we have chosen not to block people using our intellectual property.”
“Just because you purchased content doesn’t mean that you own the rights to upload it to YouTube. Even if you give the copyright owner credit, posting videos that include content you purchased may still violate copyright law,” reads a statement from the website’s FAQ.
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Tomi Engdahl says:
Google TV: silent but not forgotten at I/O 2013
http://www.theverge.com/2013/5/17/4341684/google-tv-silent-but-not-forgotten-at-i-o-2013
Android is coming to our TVs, but has Google already lost the battle for the living room?
It’s easy to miss the Google TV booth here at I/O 2013, hidden in the corner of the third floor. That may not be an accident
We’ve been told that Google TV isn’t going away — the company can’t give up, because the market and opportunity are too large. But Google’s changing its approach to your living room, beginning with the update this week. Google TV is now based on Android 4.2.2, the latest version of the operating system, and offers developers much more — when Google TV first started three years ago, the team forked Android to build the OS, and a source described this update as “bending the fork back in.” Google TV is Android, and Android is Google TV — or it will be, whenever the update becomes available. It’s what Google TV should have been from day one.
In fact, for better or for worse your television is now just another screen size in Google’s eyes. Google TV was originally forked because the Android team was so focused on smaller screens, but as the OS developed it became more amenable to larger screen sizes, both on phones and tablets. Now Google is betting that your 4-inch phone and 10-inch tablet aren’t so different from your 60-inch TV.
Google’s keynote this year focused on optimizing apps for tablets, and a tablet-specific section of the Play store; next year building apps for your TV may be the focus. But tablets may not be just another screen size, and TVs certainly aren’t: turning touch-enabled apps designed to be used in the palm of your hand into something that works on a six-foot screen ten feet away, controlled by your button-filled remote control, is no small task. But Google would rather you just think of it as the same old Android.
Google made two key missteps when it originally unveiled the product: bringing a “launch and iterate” process to a market where change is slow and cumbersome, and not explaining how niche the audience for Google TV was. It’s a complicated, often difficult setup, but it’s powerful — and only those willing to deal with difficult and complicated need apply.
As it tries to take over your living room, Google’s not only fighting its bad reputation among users, but among content providers
If the hundreds of millions of device sales and the 6,000-plus developers here at I/O are any indication, Android is a vibrant and thriving ecosystem, the world’s most popular mobile OS. Whether it’s the right one for TVs is another question entirely
Tomi Engdahl says:
At Google Conference, Cameras Even in the Bathroom
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/17/at-google-conference-even-cameras-in-the-bathroom/
The future came crashing down on me this week at the Google I/O developer conference while I stood at a bathroom urinal.
I had just wrapped up a conversation with a man who owned a pair of Google’s Internet-connected glasses, Google Glass. He had explained that one of the gadget’s greatest features is the ability to snap a photo with a wink. “It’s amazing, you just look at something, wink your eye and it just takes a picture,” he said enthusiastically.
Everywhere I looked at the conference, people were wearing Google Glass. Hundreds of them. Maybe more than a thousand! They were on the escalator. At the coffee stations. Press lounges. Lingering in the hallways like gangs of super nerds. They looked like real people as they nibbled on M&M’s and nuts at the snack bars. Except they weren’t; these “humans” were able to take pictures with their eyes and then post them to the Internet.
The developers present who didn’t own the company’s augmented reality glasses stared at those who did with awe.
Often, Google Glass owners looked strange. Many were using their cellphones while wearing the glasses — defeating a declared purpose of the new gadget, to free you from having to look at your phone.
Tomi Engdahl says:
How two Valve engineers walked away with the company’s augmented reality glasses
http://www.theverge.com/2013/5/18/4343382/technical-illusions-valve-augmented-reality-glasses-jeri-ellsworth-rick-johnson
Three months ago, celebrated video game publisher Valve did something completely out of character: it fired up to 25 workers, in what one employee dubbed the “great cleansing.” At the time, co-founder Gabe Newell quickly reassured gamers that the company wouldn’t be canceling any projects, but it just so happens that one project managed to get away.
Valve was secretly working on a pair of augmented reality glasses… and those glasses are still being built by two Valve employees who lost their jobs that day.
They formed a company, Technical Illusions, to commercialize the tech. This weekend, they flew down to Maker Faire to show their crazy prototype to the world for the very first time.
It’s called CastAR, and it’s nothing like Google Glass or the Oculus Rift. The idea here is to project a miniature virtual reality, which you can see and interact with in three dimensions, into the real world.
Four key components make it work. First, a pair of miniature projectors attached to the glasses beam images from a connected PC. A special retroreflective projector screen bounces them back to your face. There, the active shutter glasses filter out images for each of your left and right eyes, 120 times a second, so that you see those images in 3D.
Lastly — and this is the tricky part — a camera built into the glasses sees infrared LEDs positioned around the edges of that projector screen so that the glasses can optically track the exact position of your head, allowing the software to adjust the 3D perspective in real time so that you can physically look around objects that don’t even exist.
After Maker Faire, a Kickstarter project is the next step: in late summer or early fall, interested parties will be able to pledge money towards the system’s development. Ellsworth and Johnson think they can get the cost of a basic system below $200 thanks to the commodity components they’re using and their own expertise;
Ellsworth and Johnson didn’t want to let go. “I didn’t even want to do VR and AR at first, but someone else in our group was really excited about it and I played along,” Ellsworth says, but after six months she decided that AR was the future and apparently wound up on the losing side of Valve’s internal struggle.
Tomi Engdahl says:
YouTube celebrated 8 years:
Here’s to eight great years
http://youtube-global.blogspot.fi/2013/05/heres-to-eight-great-years.html
When YouTube’s site first launched in May 2005, we never could have imagined the endless ways in which you would inspire, inform and entertain us every day.
Today, more than 100 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute. That’s more than four days of video uploaded each minute! Every month, more than 1 billion people come to YouTube to access news, answer questions and have a little fun. That’s almost one out of every two people on the Internet.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Android drives cameras to GPUs, plans IR support
http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4414713/Android-drives-cameras-to-GPUs–plans-IR-support
The next version of Android will enable using graphics cores for computational photography and infrared links for TV remote controls. Meanwhile, mobile developers need better tools for harnessing the power of the graphics cores in the works for 2014 and beyond, said an Android developer.
“Only this year have mobile GPUs gotten powerful enough to do something beyond render a screen so you can do computation with them using [Google’s] Renderscript,” said Dave Burke, engineering director of the Android team in a talk at Google I/O. “The [smartphone] camera can evolve—there’s so much more you can do in hardware and software, too,” he said.
Enabling computational photography on graphics cores is one of the priorities for Google’s Android team.
Google’s Camera 3.0 spec will be released later this year. It will also provide support for 3-D depth data, said a Google Android developer.
A number of impressive mobile graphics cores are coming to market over the next year
Renderscript remains Google’s tool of choice for general purpose parallel processing on graphics cores
“I’ve been writing way too much native code this past year,”
Google is working on more low level APIs for video and streaming, he added.
one Android engineer said the software also will support infrared sensors for use in TV remotes
Tomi Engdahl says:
Telecom’s Big Players Hold Back the Future
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/20/business/media/telecoms-big-players-hold-back-the-future.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
If you were going to look for ground zero in the fight against a rapidly consolidating telecom and cable industry, you might end up on the fifth floor of the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York.
Ms. Crawford argues that the airwaves, the cable systems and even access to the Internet have been overtaken by monopolists who resist innovation and chronically overcharge consumers.
The 1996 Telecommunications Act, which was meant to lay down track to foster competition in a new age, allowed cable companies and telecoms to simply divide markets and merge their way to monopoly.
In a recent conversation, she explained that wired and wireless connections, building blocks of modern life, are now essentially controlled by four companies. Comcast and Time Warner have a complete lock on broadband in the markets they control, covering some 50 million American homes, while Verizon and AT&T own 64 percent of cellphone service.
“They have acted in parallel to exclude competitors and used every lever they had to gain control over their markets. My whole book is essentially an argument to buy stock in cable companies,” she said with a laugh.
In 2012, Verizon entered into a joint marketing agreement with the cable companies, blessed by the Federal Communications Commission, so the former competitors are now firm allies.
“There has been a division of, ‘You take the wires, we’ll take wireless,’ which means that there is very little competition and investment, and very little access to high-speed connections,”
While consumers love to complain about their cable companies and Internet service, it’s sort of like the weather — no one does anything about it because no one can.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Why Google Will Crush Nielsen
http://www.mondaynote.com/2013/05/19/why-google-will-crush-nielsen/
Internet measurement techniques need a complete overhaul. New ways have emerged, potentially displacing older panel-based technologies. This will make it hard for incumbent players to stay in the game.
The web user is the most watched consumer ever. For tracking purposes, every large site drops literally dozens of cookies in the visitor’s browser.
But when it comes to measuring a digital viewer’s commercial value, sites rely on old-fashioned panels, that is limited user population samples. Why?
Panels are inherited. They go back to the old days of broadcast radio
Nielsen Company made a clever decision: they installed a monitoring box in 1000 American homes. Twenty years later, Nielsen did the same, on a much larger scale, with broadcast television.
Publishers monitor the pulse of their digital properties on a permanent basis.
It is now possible to pinpoint a single user browsing the web with different devices in a very reliable manner.
Obviously, Google is best positioned to perform this task on a large scale.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft Unveils Xbox One
http://games.slashdot.org/story/13/05/21/1739209/microsoft-unveils-xbox-one
“Today at a press conference leading up to E3, Microsoft unveiled its next-gen games/entertainment console, the Xbox One. Their stated goal for the Xbox One is to have a single device provide “all of your entertainment.””
“Watch TV” will bring up the TV app very quickly.
” Hardware specs: 8-core CPU/GPU, 8GB RAM, a Blu-ray drive, a 500GB HDD, USB 3.0, and Wi-fi Direct.”
What we know about the Xbox One
http://news.cnet.com/8301-33692_3-57585577-305/what-we-know-about-the-xbox-one/?part=rss&subj=news&tag=title
CNET’s Bridget Carey breaks down the new features of the Xbox One, including live TV and Kinect controls, and what questions Microsoft still needs to answer.
Xbox One Revealed
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2013/05/xbox-one/
From Green Light to Boot-Up: Behind the Scenes of Xbox One’s Development
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2013/05/xbox-one-development-photos/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Six challenges for integrated TV on the Xbox One
http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-33199_7-57585543-221/six-challenges-for-integrated-tv-on-the-xbox-one/
Live TV integration was a major part of the Xbox One’s announcement, but it faces a lot of hurdles to succeed where others have failed.
Out of all the console makers, Microsoft currently has the most forward-thinking vision for merging the worlds of television and gaming. Sony barely mentioned entertainment in its PS4 press event, while the Wii U has some neat ideas, but has been painfully slow to implement them. Microsoft’s sleek live TV demos made for great press conference fodder, but when you get down to the details, there’s not much there that differentiates the Xbox One from previous approaches.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Improving high-end active speaker performance using digital active crossover filters
http://www.edn.com/design/consumer/4414835/Improving-high-end-active-speaker-performance-using-digital-active-crossover-filters
Consumer requirement for fewer wires connecting their home entertainment systems is driving up the demand for wireless active speakers. In order to achieve the best audio quality from high end active speakers, adoption of alternative technologies can improve performance; in this context, digital active crossovers can be shown to make a significant contribution.
Current wireless active speakers consist of four elements in the signal path before the drive unit; receiver, DAC, amplifier and crossover. The receiver may be Bluetooth running a high performance codec. The amplifier could be a conventional analogue input class AB type to ensure a high audio quality with high a performance DAC at its input. The final element in the signal path is a passive crossover network.
Alternatively, utilising high performance Class D amplifiers, efficiency savings can make direct driving woofer and tweeter a reality. If the Class D amplifier features a digital input, the availability of DSP resources can facilitate the implementation of high performance digital crossovers which can offer substantial advantages over their passive counterparts.
Comment:
All too often, audio systems are designed around “specmanship” rather than high fidelity. The worst offenders are:
1) Frequency response without regard for phase or transient response, and
2) Total harmonic distortion (since THD can be made quite small by using excessive feedback, which compromises transient response).
IM and TIM can be useful though since they are measures of nonlinearity that do correlate well to perceived quality … anharmonic distortion is quite annoying.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Xbox OneGuide brings HDMI in/out, overlays for live TV
http://www.engadget.com/2013/05/21/xbox-one-hdmi-passthrough/
Today Microsoft revealed the Xbox One, and confirmed rumors that its new game console is ready to take over as the heart of your home theater. The new box features HDMI in and out for passthrough with your cable or satellite box. It’s even able to control connected devices with Kinect 2.0-detected voice and gesture commands thanks to IR blasters and HDMI-CEC. On stage, executives showed off the Xbox OneGuide, demonstrating a way to pull up information including trending programming or fantasy sports stats while watching live TV.
There’s also a live TV show for Halo in the works, and Microsoft brought NFL commissioner Roger Goodell on stage to talk about integration with the number one pro sports league.
Tomi Engdahl says:
First-round bids due this week for Hulu
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/envelope/cotown/la-et-ct-first-round-bids-due-this-week-for-hulu-20130523,0,2707653.story
The first round of bids were due this week for Hulu, the popular online TV service whose prospective sale has attracted interest from digital media players as well as cable operators.
Hulu, launched five years ago, has attracted 22 million monthly viewers — and 4 million who pay $8 a month to watch even more shows on their portable devices or through their game consoles.
For bidders, Hulu presents an opportunity to acquire a powerful brand in the fast-growing arena of online video, which has seen the number of subscribers to the Hulu Plus service double in a year and reported revenue of $695 million in 2012.
However, some interested parties have balked at the terms of the content licensing agreement, which extends programming rights for Hulu Plus only for two years, according to the people familiar with the matter. Parties have been pushing for a minimum three-year guarantee.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Shazam Revamps Its iPad App For Second Screen Action, Can Now “AutoTag” In Background While You Watch TV
http://techcrunch.com/2013/05/23/shazam-revamps-its-ipad-app-for-second-screen-action-can-now-autotag-in-background-while-you-watch-tv/
Although the majority of Shazam‘s over 93 million U.S. users still use the app on their smartphones to identify, tag and share the songs they’re “hearing,” a growing chunk of that user base – around 10 million in the U.S. last year – has used Shazam to identify TV programs and ads.
Today, the company aims to better serve this audience with the release of a new, universal iOS application which introduces a number of new features, including the ability to have the “shazaming” process run automatically in the background.
Some TV shows will work continue to work with the company to offer enhanced experiences, like “American Idol” had done in the past, and “The Voice” is doing now. These experiences are generally offered to TV show producers for free, with the stipulation that they have to promote Shazam on air.
“Auto-tagging sets us apart from the industry,” explains Shazam’s EVP of Marketing, David Jones of the app’s big new feature. “The whole idea is that Shazam was already lightning fast and couldn’t be easier – it was press one button and, in a couple of seconds, you got the answers. We just one-upped ourselves. We got rid of that step,” he adds.
Today, the app supports 160 channels of live or DVR’d TV, including all nationwide programming and most nationwide TV ads as well – even the ones which have not been Shazam-optimized by those paying to run ad campaigns. To date, over 150 brands have run over 250 TV ad campaigns, leading to a “double-digit millions” revenue stream run rate
Tomi Engdahl says:
John McCain: Cable TV, the right way
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-mccain-cable-tv-choice-20130523,0,1435979.story
My legislation would ensure that consumers could buy only those channels they want to watch.
America’s 100 million cable and satellite subscribers are forced to pay ever-higher bills for a growing number of channels they do not watch. The American people are being ripped off.
Meanwhile, services such as iTunes and Netflix have led a revolution in how consumers purchase and experience music and video entertainment. They have upended entire industries to allow consumers to buy digital content where they want, when they want. Amid all this change, two entrenched interests — the cable television and video programming industries — have teamed up to use federal regulations to stack the deck against consumers.
The 82% of American households that subscribe to cable or satellite television are stuck paying escalating prices for “bundled” packages of more than 100 channels, despite the fact that the average viewer tunes in to only about 18 of them.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Old Media Is Not Dead: Why Hedge Funds Have Fallen In Love With CBS
http://www.buzzfeed.com/peterlauria/old-media-is-not-dead-why-hedge-funds-have-fallen-in-love-wi
Some of the smartest money on Wall Street is betting that CBS shares can go a lot higher. How the oldest of old-media companies became a hedge fund darling.
Even though shares of CBS have gained an astounding 1,500% over the last four years and closed trading Tuesday at $51.03, some of the smartest money on Wall Street thinks its stock can go higher still.
More precisely, hedge funds appear to have fallen in love with CBS stock, among them managers George Soros and Ray Dalio, who runs the industry’s largest fund.
The confidence in CBS stock among hedge fund managers goes against the conventional wisdom that old media, particularly CBS, which is the oldest of old-media companies, is dead. Quite the opposite, in fact, financially it is thriving.
“There has been an overall reevaluation of content in the market based on all new revenue streams,” said Needham & Co senior entertainment analyst Laura Martin.
But CBS, like other media companies, has Silicon Valley to thank for driving its biggest new revenue line: streaming media. The more cash-rich tech companies such as Netflix, Amazon, Google, Apple, Intel, and others bid against each other for streaming video rights, the more they are fattening the bottom lines of media companies like CBS.
CBS earlier this month reported its best earnings quarter ever, with record revenue and net earnings of $4.04 billion and $463 million, respectively.
Taken together, those factors are why the smart money on Wall Street is buying into CBS.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Say what? TV ads still too loud
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-burk-loud-commercials-20130422,0,4035666.story
The federal CALM act seems to have done little to tone down the volume of commercials.
When I heard that a national law to ban loud TV commercials had taken force in December, I was skeptical.
Why did we need a Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation Act (CALM), I wondered, when more urgent issues demanded action?
Like most people, though, I use TV as a sedative, so those eruptions advertising discount mattresses provoke substantial irritation, not to mention irony. I wouldn’t have minded if the CALM act had let me snore.
Nope. More than four months after it took effect, much overloudness prevails.
Since the CALM act, introduced by Rep. Anna G. Eshoo (D-Menlo Park), stipulates no mandatory penalties or enforcement mechanisms, I’m not betting that the scofflaws will face much more than all the stern disapproval the government can muster.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Twitter Launches TV Ad Targeting, Twitter Amplify For Real-Time Videos In Stream
http://techcrunch.com/2013/05/23/twitter-launches-twitter-amplify-for-real-time-videos-in-stream-partnering-with-bbc-fox-fuse-and-weather-channel/
Twitter today made the latest push in its bid to cozy up to Madison Avenue and the world of big-budget advertising, by tapping more into the kind of mainstream mediums where advertisers like to spend their money. Today the big focus is TV and your living room. In New York, the company announced Twitter Amplify, a way of bringing real-time video into the site, with initial partners including the broadcasters BBC America, FOX, Fuse and The Weather Channel. And it also announced TV ad targeting, one of the first fruits of the company’s acquisition of BlueFin Labs.
Meanwhile, the instream broadcasting clips that are part of Twitter Amplify, starting with BBC America, FOX, Fuse and The Weather Channel, will be very closely tied to ads and video directly on the platform.
Twitter has been making increasingly strong moves this year to get its platform to be more ad-friendly (and revenue-friendly).
Tomi Engdahl says:
Twitter Cozies Up to Television With New Ad Products
http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2013/05/23/twitter-cozies-up-to-television-with-new-ad-products/
Twitter rolled out two advertising products on Thursday aimed at showing it wants to be television’s friend, not foe.
The social networking site, powered by its recent acquisition of social media data company Bluefin Labs, unveiled a new capability to let advertisers send follow-up ads on Twitter to people who have just seen their ad on TV. Twitter knows who those people are because they are tweeting about the shows.
But while digital media companies like AOL and Yahoo spent most of this spring “upfront” ad negotiation season declaring how they were going after television’s pot of advertising money, Twitter was very careful to say no such thing.
“I think what advertisers are looking for is, how do I make my TV buy go farther than it is today, and how do I make my digital buy go farther than it is today?” said Adam Bain, Twitter’s president of revenue, in an interview. “That’s why we are calling it a force multiplier, because it makes both things go farther.”
“While the formal distinctions between ‘TV’ and ‘Digital’ budgets are fast eroding for us and our clients, our investments in Twitter tend to be largely incremental to TV,” he said. “It’s extending the reach and performance of our TV spend by leveraging the social influence of the engaged television viewer.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Netflix is the largest bandwidth hog
Network TV company Netflix has become the number one Internet’s capacity user. Netflix in the United States during peak hours (around ten in evening) a third of internet traffic is Netflix bitstream.
The growing popularity of Netflix is the nut to crack for telecom operators. The service takes an ever-growing amount of data bandwidth, which is much more in demand. Operators to Netflix type of aesthetic service providers need to invest to increase capacity networks, but they do not get money from the service.
Netflix buy the server and other computing capacity of Amazon’s cloud service. This is interesting in the sense that Amazon also has its own in competition with Netflix video on demand service.
Source: http://www.tietoviikko.fi/kaikki_uutiset/netflix+on+suurin+kaistarohmu/a903936?s=r&wtm=tietoviikko/-25052013&
Tomi Engdahl says:
Broadcasters go after Aereo by suing smaller competitor, Aereokiller
http://www.theverge.com/2013/5/24/4363108/broadcasters-go-after-aereo-by-suing-smaller-competitor-aereokiller
ABC, NBC, and Fox file a new copyright suit against a far less formidable opponent
The nation’s largest television broadcasters filed a copyright lawsuit against FilmOn.TV and its Aereokiller service yesterday, alleging that the service retransmits TV programming without authorization or compensating them, according to a story in Variety. Aereokiller is the flippantly-named competitor to Aereo, the company that uses dime-sized antennas to capture over-the-air TV transmissions and then streams them to subscribers by way of the internet.
This is part of an escalating fight for control of the country’s TV airwaves. The broadcasters say that if Aereo, or any other company is allowed to distribute their programming without licensing it then nobody will. A big chunk of the broadcasters’ revenue comes from the retransmission fees it charges cable companies.
The broadcasters appear to be suing Aereokiller again because it has proven to be a far less formidable opponent in court than Aereo.
Aereo has accused the broadcasters of venue shopping and using up the public’s legal resources while they search for sympathetic courts.
Who knows? Maybe the Aereo conflict becomes the digital era’s equivalent of Sony Betamax case, when the high Court ruled that Sony’s video recorder wasn’t illegal in part because creating video copies of TV shows for personal use was legal.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Update: Live video played on LED strip display
http://hackaday.com/2013/05/26/update-live-video-played-on-led-strip-display/
[Paul] took this LED display along with him to Maker Faire. To give it some interactivity he figured out a way to make it play live video. It is also activated using some stomp actuators built from piezo speaker elements and rubber floor mats.
Back in February he was showing off the RGB LED strip display. He had it playing video but that was all dependent on using previously processed files. This upgrade uses a BeagleBone Black (the newest rendition of the ARM-based development board).
Tomi Engdahl says:
Yahoo going after Hulu’s subscription revenue
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57586250-93/yahoo-going-after-hulus-subscription-revenue/?part=rss&subj=news&tag=title
Yahoo just spent $1.1 billion of its cash horde to acquire Tumblr,
Now Yahoo is taking a run at Hulu, with its 4 million subscribers paying $7.99 per month, original programming , and more than 70,000 full TV episodes. Hulu could immediately put Yahoo’s video efforts and revenue in a different league.
The video site, currently owned by Disney, News Corp., and Comcast, generated $695 million in revenue in 2012 from ads and subscription fees, up from an estimated $420 million in the previous year. Yahoo had revenue of about $5 billion in 2012 from display and search advertising.
For comparison, Netflix has more than 29 million domestic streaming subscribers and had over $1 billion in revenue for its first quarter in 2013.
Video is an area that Yahoo has been building up over the last several years. The company has video content deals with ABC News, CNBC Conde Nast, NBC Sports and Wenner Media, in addition to orignal Web shows.
Earlier this year, Yahoo tried to buy a majority stake in the site Dailymotion to boost its video presence in Europe and Asia
Tomi Engdahl says:
Yahoo’s Bid for Hulu in $600M to $800M Range — Even as It Preps Other Big Deals in Mobile and Communications
http://allthingsd.com/20130526/yahoos-bid-for-hulu-in-600m-to-800m-range-even-as-it-preps-other-big-deals-in-mobile-and-communications/
According to numerous sources close to the situation, Yahoo has bid from $600 million to $800 million for the premium video site Hulu.
It’s certainly an ambitious and busy M&A agenda for Yahoo’s CEO Marissa Mayer, who just forked over $1.1 billion in cash to purchase youth-skewing blogging site Tumblr last week.
Presumably, she is interested in upping Yahoo’s longtime lackluster video efforts — it famously lost out at the last minute on the acquisition of YouTube many years ago to Google — as the arena becomes more critical to advertisers.
Besides Yahoo, others interested in acquiring Hulu include: Separate bids from private equity firms KKR, Guggenheim Digital and Silver Lake Partners (in conjunction with Hollywood talent agency William Morris Endeavor); Time Warner Cable; Directv; and the Chernin Group.
In addition, there is much disagreement over who and how Hulu should be sold by two of its owners, Disney and News Corp., which have squabbled over its direction from the start.
“Hulu is a very nice brand and technology, but the entire negotiation will be about the control and price of the content,” said one person close to the situation. “It’s the only thing that matters.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Vine, hip-hop and the future of video sharing: old rap songs and new copyright rules
http://gigaom.com/2013/05/25/vine-hip-hop-and-the-future-of-video-sharing/
Summary:
Is there a reason Vine videos are exactly six seconds long? Yes, and it has a lot to do with high profile court cases that almost destroyed hip hop music.
Like hip-hop, Vine is way to sample and collect culture — and it may have to run the same legal gambit that rappers did a decade ago. If you haven’t tried it, Vine is a tool to make looping, six-second video clips and post them on social media or a website.
Vine exists because of new smartphone technology but it also replicates older forms of mashup culture. In particular, it mirrors what pioneering hip-hop artists started to do in the 1980s — taking sounds from myriad sources and sharing them through records like Paul’s Boutique and Ready to Die
Hip hop, copyright and six second samples
In the 1990s, hip-hop artists called the sounds they use “samples.” Copyright owners, however, called it theft instead and sued the musicians. The conflicts led to important court decisions about music
Fortunately, in the case of the Beastie Boys, a California appeals court took a more rational approach to the issue and ruled that a six second (the same length as a Vine video!) flute sample on the song “Pass the Mic” didn’t infringe on copyright. The Supreme Court, in 2005, refused to reconsider the decision.
The trouble with Prince’s request to take down the Vine videos is not so much the disappearance of the videos themselves — but instead that Vine and other forms of visual expression could meet the same fate as early hip-hop.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Behind Twitter’s Savvy Embrace of TV
http://www.digiday.com/brands/behind-twitters-savvy-embrace-of-tv/
Internet companies for the past decade plus have looked at TV with a mix of envy and disdain. The envy springs from the $120 billion the TV industry rakes in annually, a number that reliably climbs even as Internet execs scream hysterically with their Mary Meeker time-spent slides in hand. The disdain springs from techies viewing an industry based on Nielsen data — survey! — as impossibly backwards.
And so, 18 years after the first banner was run, the Internet industry remains the province of direct marketers. TV continues to chug along as the belle of the ball when it comes to brand building. We’ve been told by the Internet people that this will change simply too many times. Perhaps it’s time to acknowledge a few things: 1. The Internet isn’t that good at brand building, at least not with its advertising options; and 2. The TV industry is neither dumb nor going anywhere soon.
That’s what’s fascinating behind Twitter’s embrace of TV. The company has slowly but surely put a bear hug around the industry. TV execs (and brands) know well that people use Twitter while watching TV.
“If there’s anything that creates cultural moments, it’s television,”
That’s the magic behind its Twitter for TV-targeting product. It is saying to brands that they should keep running their TV commercials yet marry them with campaigns that go after viewers tweeting about the programming. And Twitter’s got a lot of science behind this thanks to its smart acquisition of Bluefin Labs.
Tomi Engdahl says:
BuzzFeed, CNN and YouTube Plan Online-Video Channel
http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB10001424127887323336104578503671011986446-lMyQjAxMTAzMDIwNzEyNDcyWj.html
BuzzFeed is accelerating its efforts to become a news destination for young adults, joining with CNN and YouTube to create a new, online-video channel.
On Tuesday, BuzzFeed will unveil “CNN BuzzFeed,” a YouTube channel based on content from CNN, including archival and current content, that is designed to be shared over social-media networks.
BuzzFeed already has a considerable presence in digital video through a half-dozen dedicated YouTube channels, but the partnership with CNN is its most comprehensive so far with a traditional media company.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Concert Industry Struggles With ‘Bots’ That Siphon Off Tickets
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/27/business/media/bots-that-siphon-off-tickets-frustrate-concert-promoters.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
As the summer concert season approaches, music fans and the concert industry that serves them have a common enemy in New York. And in Russia. And in India.
That enemy is the bot.
“Bots,” computer programs used by scalpers, are a hidden part of a miserable ritual that plays out online nearly every week in which tickets to hot shows seem to vanish instantly.
Long a mere nuisance to the live music industry, these cheap and widely available programs are now perhaps its most reviled foe, frustrating fans and feeding a multibillion-dollar secondary market for tickets.
Tomi Engdahl says:
CurvACE gives robots a bug’s eye view
http://www.gizmag.com/curvace-robot-compund-eye/27625/
Robots are getting down to the size of insects, so it seems only natural that they should be getting insect eyes. A consortium of European researchers has developed the artificial Curved Artificial Compound Eye (CurvACE) which reproduces the architecture of the eyes of insects and other arthropods. The aim isn’t just to provide machines with an unnerving bug-eyed stare, but to create a new class of sensors that exploit the wide field of vision and motion detecting properties of the compound eye.
If the resolution is so bad, why compound eyes? The answer is that they have their own strengths. Compound eyes have a very large field of vision. The cross section of a compound eye is also thin, so it can wrap around an animal’s head without sacrificing the interior. And it’s extremely good at detecting motion.
Leaving aside metaphysics, it’s probable that what a compound eye sees is a single, blurry, pixelated image. That may seem like a disadvantage, but such a low-resolution pixelated image highlights movement beautifully, making compound eyes very good for motion detection.
CurvACE isn’t the first attempt to exploit the architecture of the compound eye, but CurvACE aims to make a much deeper emulation combined with fast digital image processing.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Engineer develops flat, spray-on optical lens
http://www.electronicproducts.com/Optoelectronics/Image_Sensors_and_Optical_Detectors/Engineer_develops_flat_spray-on_optical_lens.aspx
Breakthrough could change the way imaging devices like cameras and scanners are designed
Kenneth Chau, an assistant professor in the School of Engineering at the University of British Columbia’s Okanagan campus, with help from a team of U.S.-based researchers, has developed a substance that can be affixed to surfaces and turn them into flat lenses for ultraviolet light imaging of biological specimens.
“The idea of a flat lens goes way back to the 1960s when a Russian physicist came up with the theory,” Chau says. “The challenge is that there are no naturally occurring materials to make that type of flat lens. Through trial and error, and years of research, we have come up with a fairly simple recipe for a spray-on material that can act as that flat lens.”
“This is the closest validation we have of the original flat lens theory,” he explains. “The recipe, now that we’ve got it working, is simple and cost-effective.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Disruptions: At Odds Over Privacy Challenges of Wearable Computing
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/26/disruptions-at-odds-over-privacy-challenges-of-wearable-computing/
Perhaps the best way to predict how society will react to so-called wearable computing devices is to read the Dr. Seuss children’s story “The Butter Battle Book.”
The book, which was published in 1984, is about two cultures at odds
Well, the Zooks and the Yooks may have nothing on wearable computing fans, who are starting to sport devices that can record everything going on around them with a wink or subtle click, and the people who promise to confront violently anyone wearing one of these devices.
I’ve experienced both sides of this debate with Google’s Internet-connected glasses, Google Glass.
This is not just a Google issue. Other gadgets have plenty of privacy-invading potential. Memoto, a tiny, automatic camera that looks like a pin you can wear on a shirt, can snap two photos a minute and later upload it to an online service.
Apple is also working on wearable computing products, filing numerous patents for a “heads-up display” and camera.
But what about people who don’t want to be recorded? Don’t they get a say?
Deal with it, wearable computer advocates say. “When you’re in public, you’re in public. What happens in public, is the very definition of it
Mr. Starner has been experimenting with different types of wearable computers for over 20 years, and he said that although some people are initially skeptical of the computer above his eye, they soon feel comfortable around the device, and him. “Within two weeks people start to ignore it,” he said. Over the years, his wearable computers have become less obtrusive, going from bulky, very visible contraptions, to today’s sleeker Google Glass.
Mr. Starner said privacy protections would have to be built into these computers. “The way Glass is designed, it has a transparent display so everyone can see what you’re doing.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
1st public display of Kinetoscope, May 20, 1891
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/edn-moments/4414711/1st-public-display-of-Kinetoscope–May-20–1891
The Kinetoscope, an early motion picture exhibition device, was first publicly displayed on May 20, 1891.
Considered by some to be the first movie projector, the Kinetoscope was designed for films to be viewed by one individual at a time through a peephole
First described in conceptual terms by Thomas Edison in 1888, the Kinetoscope was largely developed by Edison Labs employee William Kennedy Laurie Dickson between 1889 and 1892.
Edison originally believing film projection was not a money making idea, and the device had nearly a decade’s worth of promotion before it was fully patented in 1897.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Most smart-TV owners do not connect their TVs to the Internet: manufacturers must respond
http://www.analysysmason.com/About-Us/News/Insight/smart-TV-May2013/#.UaW1EJxsUin
Although CE manufacturers and their distribution channels, particularly retailers, have been successful in getting smart TVs into consumers’ homes, they have not done so well when it comes to getting consumers to actually use the ‘smart’ functionality within the sets.
The low average penetration of connected smart TVs as a proportion of smart TVs (connection rate) of 44% (ranging from 50% of 18–34-year-olds to 32% of those aged 55 or over), is a lost opportunity for CE manufacturers aiming to develop new revenue streams and form deeper relationships with consumers. In particular, stakeholders need to address the following.
Lack of compelling content and applications, and limited differentiation:
most of it is fairly generic, and a lot of it may be irrelevant or uninteresting to many consumers.
Poor user interfaces: Perhaps more importantly than content issues, the ‘smart’ functionality of these sets is generally not integrated with linear viewing, which still remains the main purpose of the smart TV set. The ‘smart’ experience is delivered through a range of disjointed apps, making interaction difficult.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Xbox One could track everything you watch on TV
And reward you for staying tuned during the ad breaks
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2270959/xbox-one-could-track-everything-you-watch-on-tv
GAMES CONSOLE MAKER Microsoft’s Xbox One could track everything you watch on TV via the machine, a patent application has revealed.
Entitled “Awards and Achievements Across TV Ecosystem”, the patent was filed by the Redmond firm in 2011 but has only just been published.
“To increase interactive viewing and encourage a user to watch one or more particular items of video content, awards and achievements may be tied to those items of video content,” reads the patent filing.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Canon DSLR Hack Allows It To Shoot RAW Video
http://news.slashdot.org/story/13/05/28/2321200/canon-dslr-hack-allows-it-to-shoot-raw-video
When the Canon 50D DSLR camera was released back in 2008, it could take nice pictures, but it had no support for video recording. Now, through an enterprising hack by members of the Magic Lantern forums, the 50D can capture RAW video
Tomi Engdahl says:
Apple’s Cook hinted at the clock and tv
Cook said the IT conference in California, the iPhone manufacturer has “great plans”. He stated that the areas of interest include televisions and accessories products, such as smart watches.
- We need to focus on the products.
Source: http://www.itviikko.fi/uutiset/2013/05/29/cook-vihjasi-applen-kellosta-ja-tvsta/20137601/7?rss=8
Tomi Engdahl says:
YouTube now lets you add slow-motion effect to your videos
http://venturebeat.com/2013/05/28/youtube-now-lets-you-add-slow-motion-effect-to-your-videos/
YouTube has just added a new “slowmo” tool to its YouTube Editor enhancements, which does pretty much exactly what it sounds like. “You’ll get a smooth, slomo video that makes it look like it was filmed with a high-speed camera,” the site states on the YouTube creator’s blog.
And apparently, slow-motion videos are quite popular on YouTube
Tomi Engdahl says:
WeVideo Helps You Edit Your Videos Online (Video)
http://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/13/05/28/1620213/wevideo-helps-you-edit-your-videos-online-video
“This video is WeVideo CEO Jostein Svendsen talking about his company’s service”
“WeVideo’s free version (which puts a watermark on your finished video) might be a good way to try your hand at this necessary but unheralded part of the videomaking process.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Never mind your little brother – happy 10th birthday, H.264
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/05/30/happy_birthdy_h264_codec/
As technology advances, video codecs come and go naturally enough. But while H.265 is still waiting in the wings, we should pay tribute to the groundbreaking H.264, which is a decade old this month.
H.264 is possibly not the snappiest or most memorable name, but even 10 years on it remains an important video coding standard, one that made HDTV possible.
H.264 is complicated and it is only possible to give a general outline of how it works, but even at that level what it does is fascinating.
H.264 works in two major areas. Within the space of a single picture it can identify redundancy using spatial coding. Within the timespan of a series of pictures it can use temporal coding. Of these, temporal coding is the most powerful because much of the time little changes from one TV frame to the next.
Temporal coding uses comparison of successive pictures. Instead of sending a new picture each time, what is sent is a picture difference which is added to the previous picture to make the new one.
Where H.264 differs from its predecessors is in the greater use of prediction in the spatial domain. Given that TV scans along lines and the lines are sent in sequence down the screen, it is possible to predict what some new part of the picture, and/or the motion in it, may be like using information above and to the left that is already known.
Coders produce the bit rate that is demanded from them, whether the demand is reasonable or not. In the real world there is pressure to cram more channels into a given transmission and all video coders cut bit rate beyond what prediction allows by limiting the output of the spatial coders. This makes the spatial information more approximate and great care is taken to make those approximations as invisible as possible to the viewer using a model of the human visual system. This may succeed on easy material, but if the picture content is difficult to predict, the approximations become visible.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Canon celebrates 90 million EF lens production [5/29/2013]
Source: http://www.canon.fi/About_Us/Press_Centre/Press_Releases/Consumer_News/News/90_million_EF_lenses.aspx
Canon has reached a new milestone in the manufacture of the lens already manufactured 90 millionth EF lens
EF lens series production began in 1987, Utsunomiya plant, and at the same time presented the first EOS SLR. Demand has risen worldwide, and in 2011 the number of units of production increased from 60 million to 70 million in just nine months. To meet the demand for Canon increased its production to Taiwan, Malaysia and Japan’s factories.
EF lens range of 80 models
Canon was the first in the world market [1], for example, an ultrasonic motor-driven lens (USM) and Image Stabilizer (IS) technology, a multi-layer diffractive lens element (DO), as well as to reduce reflections SWC coating.
Tomi Engdahl says:
On-line and antenna transmissions are mixed: The future ruler of living room is a hybrid TV
Television technology has in recent years been living a hard transition period. Digital television, receivers became flat, and the HD technology is on its way to the mainstream.
The pace of change does not subside in the future. Now the big question is what the web seems to TV and play it back.
“Future TV is a hybrid. When you want the best possible picture of the level of quality and trouble-free delivery, the choice is broadcast. Personalised services and the net supply will be via broadband,” says Digita CEO Sirpa Ojala .
Hybrid TV, the material is a function to obtain the user as easy as possible, so that he does not need cumbersome to switch from one application to another
The transition to television and the Internet takes place between a few touch of a button on the remote control. You do not need to know, to view his antenna or broadband future content.
In a number of new TV sets such as Sony and Philips models, the hybrid option is already in place.
“In the fall, all new models already support this,” says Development Director Kalle Luukkainen from Digita.
Development has already significantly higher resolution 4K technology, uhdtv 4K (ultra high definition TV). In the picture is 3840 x 2160 pixels
4K starting to come living room sometime towards the end of the decade. HD broadcasts will remain at least until 2026.
Source: http://www.tietoviikko.fi/kaikki_uutiset/netti+ja+antennilahetykset+sekoittuvat+olohuoneen+valtias+on+jatkossa+hybriditelevisio/a905411?s=r&wtm=tietoviikko/-30052013&
Tomi Engdahl says:
Infineon launches 3-D sensor for gesture recognition
http://www.eetimes.com/design/industrial-control/4415317/Infineon-launches-3-D-sensor-for-gesture-recognition
Infineon Technologies AG (Munich, Germany) has introduced a family of 3-D image sensor chips designed to implement touchless gesture recognition. The sensors have been developed in cooperation with fabless chip company PMD Technologies GmbH (Siegen, Germany), a specialist in CMOS-based time-of-flight imaging sensors.
The Infineon 3-D image sensor chips will enable fast and reliable tracking of finger movements and hand gestures to complement today’s touch screen and mouse or stylus user interfaces.
IRS1010C has a resolution of 160 by 120 pixels and the IRS1020C which has a resolution of 352 by 288 pixels
The chip family includes the time-of-flight pixel matrix design and suppression of background illumination (SBI) technology licensed from PMD Technologies.
“The consolidation of the existing and mature Time-of-Flight 3D sensing know-how at PMD and the volume-proven, mixed-signal CMOS process technology and design expertise of Infineon will pave the way to the best possible user experience for touchless gesture recognition applications,” said Bernd Buxbaum, CEO of PMD Technologies, in a statement issued by Infineon.
Samples of the gesture ensors are available for development of 3-D camera systems with volume production scheduled for mid-2014. Also available is the CamBoard Pico reference design, a USB-powered QQVGA resolution 3-D camera based on the IRS1010C 3-D image sensor. The CamBoard Pico measures 85-mm by 17-mm by 8-mm.