Cell phones with build in cameras are replacing cheap pocket size digital cameras and video cameras. Best cell phone cameras can be better in many ways than cheap pocket digital cameras from few years back. And most people do not want to carry separate devices for each function (at least without a very good reason), when a smart phone can handle calls, Internet, photos and video shooting.
CES 2013 fair had more pocket advanced size cameras on display than DSLRs, but the trend on then was that business was going down due cellular phone cameras getting better. So camera manufacturers are integrating more cellular phone like features to their cameras (like Android OS with wireless connectivity to photo sharing sites) and concentrate on building good superzoom and DSLR type cameras. You need to have something clearly different than what cell phone can offer: huge zoom, good performance in low light or works also in harsh environment. Wireless connection is getting more and more common, either built-in or using memory card with WiFi.
As Sales Slip, TV Makers Strain for the Next Sensation because hardware companies want to make their products stand out in a sea of black rectangles that can show the content user want to watch. And one that is particularly acute for television makers. The hardware is becoming kind of boring and exciting things are happening in software. TV manufacturers continue to push the idea of “smart” sets by adding apps and other interactive elements.
Connected TV technologies get more widely used and the content earlier viewable only on TV can be now seen on many other screens. Your smartphone is the screen in your pocket. Your computer is the screen on your desk. Your tablet is a screen for the couch. Almost every major electronic device you own is a black rectangle that is brought to life by software and content.
In the last two years, television makers have tried a push with 3-D sets. But now It’s official: 3D is dead. The tech industry’s annual hot air balloon show is gone. On the one hand, 3D has become ubiquitous enough in televisions that people are unwittingly buying it when opting for a high-end new HDTV to fill their living room.
Post HDTV resolution era seems to be coming to TVs as well in form of 4K / UltraHD. This year, television makers like Samsung, Sony, LG and Panasonic are trying to grab attention by supersizing their television screens and quadrupling the level of detail in their images. They are promoting what they call Ultra High-Definition televisions, which have four times as many pixels as their high-definition predecessors, and can cost as much as a car. It’s a bit of a marketing push. It seems that all LCD makers are looking to move their business models on from cheap mass production to higher-margin, premium offerings. They try to innovate and secure their future viability by selling fewer, but more profitable displays.
4K at CES 2013: the dream gets real article tells that the 4K bandwagon is fully loaded and ready to get rolling. The US TV maker isn’t alone in stepping up to the higher resolution in its new flagship models. Sony, Panasonic and Sharp, Japan’s traditional big-screen TV leaders, are all attending this year’s CES with proper retail products. Manufacturers Need You to Buy an Ultra-High-Def 4K TV. Save Your Money because just as HDTV was slow to take off, the 4K start will be slow. It’s more than the price that’s keeping these things from hitting critical mass. 4K is only for ultra-premium markets this year.
4K resolution TV has one big problem: The entire ecosystem isn’t ready for 4K. The Trouble With 4K TV article tellst that though 4K resolutions represent the next step in high-definition video, standards for the format have yet to emerge and no one’s really figured out how to distribute video, with its massive file footprint, efficiently and cost effectively. Getting 4K content to consumers is hard.
Even though 4K resolution is widely use in digital cinematography, but there is no suitable consumer disk format that supports it and the bandwidth need to stream 4K content would be huge. Given that uncompressed 4K footage has a bit-rate of about 600MB/s. Broadcom chip ushers in H.265 and UltraHD video tells that H.265 video standard, aka HEVC or MPEG-5, squeezes more pixels over a network connection to support new high-resolution 4K TVs.
You should also note that the new higher resolution is pretty pointless for a small TV (where the TV mass market is now). Ultra HD would make a difference only on screens that were at least 80 inches, measured diagonally. For smaller screens, the extra pixels would not be visible to a person with 20/20 vision viewing from a normal viewing distance. Ultra HD TVs can also be a flop. But let’s see what happens in the world where nowadays tiny smart phone screens can have full HDTV resolution.
Keep in mind that 4K is not any absolute highest resolution expected in few years. 8k resolution TVs are coming. Sharp showed a 8K resolution TV with 7680 x 4320 resolution at CES2013. For more details on it read Sharp 8K Super Hi-Vision LCD, 4K TV and Freestyle wireless LCD HDTV hands-on article.
Another development than pushing up the resolution to make high end display products is OLED technology. OLED is another new technology to make expensive products. The much buzzed-about device features next-generation, high-quality OLED screens. OLED stands for organic light-emitting diode, and they offer a bevy of benefits: more energy efficient, cleaner image, wide viewing angle and devices can be made thinner. You can also make TV screen curved in shape. In a race between television titans, LG has beat Samsung in becoming the first manufacturer to introduce a 55-inch OLED television to market: the largest OLED TV panel to date.. OLED products are very expensive (LG TV $10,300 in US dollars). OLED display can also have 4K resolution, so you can combine two expensive technologies to one product. Market analysts say that they believe the technology will not become more affordable until 2015.
The Verge Awards: the best of CES 2013 article lists for example product like Samsung 4K “easel TV”, Sony 4K OLED TV, Teenage Engineering OD-11 Cloud Speaker and Oculus Rift virtual reality gaming.
All your audio, video kit is about to become OBSOLETE article tells that although much of the audio and video technology packed into CES 2013′s 1.9 million square feet of exhibition space is indeed impressive, one panelist at an emerging-technology conference session channeled a little 1974 BTO, essentially telling his audience that “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.” Deep-geek soothsayer predicts smart audio, Ultra HD eyewear, much more in coming years. Audio is going to become adaptive, changing its wave forms to fit each user’s personal aural perceptions. Active noise reduction is finding its way into cars. HD audio will be coming to mobile phones. MEMS-based microphones and speakers are also on the runway. Consumer-level video will see in the future much higher resolution devices with much higher frame rates.
903 Comments
Tomi Engdahl says:
EFF Makes Formal Objection to DRM in HTML5
Draft Proposal from W3C Could Stymie Web Innovation
https://www.eff.org/press/releases/eff-makes-formal-objection-drm-html5
Today the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed a formal objection to the inclusion of digital rights management (DRM) in HTML5, arguing that a draft proposal from the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) could stymie Web innovation and block access to content for people across the globe.
“This proposal stands apart from all other aspects of HTML standardization: it defines a new ‘black box’ for the entertainment industry, fenced off from control by the browser and end-user,” said EFF International Director Danny O’Brien. “While this plan might soothe Hollywood content providers who are scared of technological evolution, it could also create serious impediments to interoperability and access for all.”
DRM standards look like normal technical standards but turn out to have quite different qualities. They fail to implement their stated intention – protecting media – while dragging in legal mandates that chill the speech of technologists, lock down technology, and violate property rights by seizing control of personal computers from their owners.
EFF filed this objection as its first act as a full member of W3C.
“The W3C needs to develop a policy regarding DRM and similar proposals, or risk having its own work and the future of the Web become buried in the demands of businesses that would rather it never existed in the first place,”
“ÅX(‚Ç‚«‚Ç‚«)ƒXƒgƒƒxƒŠ[ ƒMƒ^[ ƒ‰ƒ“ƒLƒ“ƒO ”ªÎ ƒtƒ‰ƒ“ƒNƒŠƒ“ ƒMƒ^[ ƒMƒ^[ ƒXƒeƒbƒJ[ ƒMƒ^[ ƒXƒeƒbƒJ[ ƒoƒ“ƒh ƒXƒeƒbƒJ[ ƒe[ƒv ƒe[ƒv ƒMƒ^[ ƒXƒeƒbƒJ says:
Hello! I simply would like to give an enormous thumbs up for the good data
you have here on this post. I will be coming again to your blog for more
soon.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Cord-Cutters Lop Off Internet Service More Than TV
http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB10001424127887324682204578513262440196772-lMyQjAxMTAzMDIwOTEyNDkyWj.html
For all the fuss over Americans dropping their cable subscriptions in favor of Internet video, another type of cord cutting appears to be more common.
Hundreds of thousands of Americans canceled their home Internet service last year
Last year around 1% of U.S. households stopped paying for home Internet subscriptions and relied on wireless access instead, according to consumer surveys by Leichtman Research Group Inc. Just 0.4% of households in the last year canceled their pay-television subscriptions in favor of getting video entertainment over the Internet via services such as Hulu or Netflix.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Fan TV revealed: is this the set-top box we’ve been waiting for?
http://www.theverge.com/2013/5/30/4380108/fantv-set-top-box-fanhattan
Built in secret, Fanhattan is finally showing off its Yves Behar-designed device to the world.
In June 2011, a Silicon Valley startup released a well received iOS app named Fanhattan to serve as a central place for finding streaming video. More recently, Fanhattan brought its service to the web.
The device, which does not have a price or a ship date beyond “later this year,” will include live and on-demand TV, streaming services, and a cloud DVR
Fanhattan is trying to succeed where so many other entrants in the interactive television space have failed, creating a TV experience truly integrated with the internet.
Everyone from the pioneering WebTV to the forthcoming Xbox One has required a separate cable box to bring content from the internet to the television; Fan TV merges those functions into a single device. “The company is trying to completely overhaul the entire system,”
Ultimately, Fan TV will work only if cable providers agree to partner with the company to provide a live TV stream.
Still, IPTV — live television delivered over the internet — is in its infancy. Sony, Comcast, Time Warner and Apple are among the companies that are reportedly building IPTV offerings, which would compete with existing services including AT&T U-verse and Verizon FiOS. But as of the first quarter of this year, only 12.8 percent of US homes have at least one television that can connect to the internet
Tomi Engdahl says:
Google nuke thyself: Mountain View’s H.264 righteous flame-out
How MPEG LA tamed a giant – and will again
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/05/31/mpeg_la_h264_grenade_for_google/
Back in 2010, champions of a free web were ecstatic over Google’s plan to seed the internet with a patent-free video. VP8 was going to crush the patent-heavy H.264, now celebrating its 10th birthday.
In May of 2010, Google open-sourced VP8, the video compression codec component to the audio-visual WebM format
Mozilla and Opera – who’d kept H.264 out of their browsers – were very much onboard
But three years later, the party’s over – and it’s Google and VP8 that were nuked. Mozilla – maker of the web’s third biggest browser – has swallowed H.264 in Firefox and Mountain View in March signed up to a licence for technologies in H.264.
On paper Google could – and should – have succeeded. It owns YouTube, a video service with so may users that Google reckons that, averaged out, every single person on the planet has watched 140 video views. It therefore had a critical mass of web video. Android runs most smartphones on the planet, meaning Google has the means to deliver royalty-free WebM video.
What thwarted Google was MPEG LA
H.264 has taken over the web quickly: drafted in May 2003 there are today 1,600 licensees versus 2,000 for MPEG-2, which dates back to 1996.
MeFeedia in 2011 surveyed the millions of video feeds it indexes and serves and found H.264 played 80 per cent of HTML5 video, while WebM accounts for 2 per cent
It was MPEG LA that helped ensure H.264′s continued dominance
In May 2010, MPEG LA’s chief executive Larry Horn said his group was looking into forming a patent pool against VP8
The pressure seemed to pay off and – as is so often the case in the world of patents and alleged infringements – it was the behind-the-scenes maneouvring ahead of any court action that paid, and saw Google sign a licensing deal.
Under the agreement, Google agreed to license “techniques that may be essential” to VP8
So it would have been MPEG LA that acted in this case against Google, without prompting.
MPEG LA is owned by 10 companies including Cisco, Sony, General Electric and Google, thanks to its purchase of the phone business owned by Motorola.
MPEG LA doesn’t create technology standards like MPEG 2 or H.264, but it does charge for them.
H.265 will improve coding efficiency to reduce the bitrate requirement – the goal is for a 50 per cent compression gain over H.264.
Like H.264, it’ll be MPEG LA that’s the money-making end of the business for the tech companies whose patents get baked into H.265. “We are facilitating a pool for H.265,” according to Horn, who said the plan was for meetings in April and May with a licence to be issued this year.
Tomi says:
4K Computer Monitors Are Coming (But Still Pricey)
http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/13/05/31/2225252/4k-computer-monitors-are-coming-but-still-pricey
“When TV makers started pushing 4K screens on unsuspecting public, that just recently upgraded to 1080p, many had doubted what value will they bring consumers”
“What if 4K TVs will push PC makers to offer 4K screens too, wouldn’t that be great? Well, they are coming. ASUS has just announced one!”
“this one is “only” about $5,000″
Tomi says:
Asus launches the first consumer-oriented 4K monitor, yours for around $5,000
http://www.extremetech.com/computing/157058-asus-launches-the-first-consumer-oriented-4k-monitor-yours-for-around-5000
Tomi says:
Asus launches the first consumer-oriented 4K monitor, yours for around $5,000
http://www.extremetech.com/computing/157058-asus-launches-the-first-consumer-oriented-4k-monitor-yours-for-around-5000
Asus has announced that its 31.5-inch PQ321 monitor, which appears to be the first consumer-oriented 4K desktop monitor, will go on sale in the US in June. There is no official word on pricing, but our guess is that it should be around $5,000
Asus’s PQ321 is 31.5-inch 16:9 IGZO (Indium Gallium Zinc Oxide) monitor with a resolution of 3840×2160 (4K or UHD). which equates to 140 pixels per inch (surpassing Retina quality, if you’re sitting more than a couple of feet away).
Porsche Prichett says:
The only service that I have ever used that didn’t get my youtube video banned was youtubeviewseller.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Apple Is Said to Be Pressing for Internet Radio Deals
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/03/technology/apple-is-said-to-be-pressing-to-complete-deals-for-internet-radio.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
After months of stalled negotiations over its planned Internet radio service, Apple is pushing to complete licensing deals with music companies so it can reveal the service as early as next week, according to people briefed on the talks.
Tomi Engdahl says:
UMG Watermarks Audiophile Files, Pisses Off Paying Customers
from the hisssssssssssssssss dept
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110809/04114515451/umg-watermarks-audiophile-files-pisses-off-paying-customers.shtml
Universal Music Group’s latest attempt at watermarking
A customer of Passionato, a site dedicated to bringing audiophiles high quality recordings of classical music, notices that he was getting an odd thrumming noise on his FLAC file of Tchaikovsky’s 5th Symphony that he got from Passionato (the file was advertised as lossless), a noise that wasn’t present on the file he got directly from UMG. There’s some back and forth between helpful board members about some technical issues that could have been the problem, but eventually, after multiple users go and test files similarly, they arrive at the conclusion that it must be watermarking.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Music fans can not complain Finland alternatives exist. Today we created an accessible online music pioneer Napster’s streaming service.
Napster’s name is back in the music scene had a bad echo when it was combined with initially very much in the illegal sharing of music online. Now we are respectful of the laws, however, and quite similar to those of other competitors. U.S. service works with your Rhapsody, Napster in Europe.
Napster has been operating in some European countries already, but now it was opened in 14 new countries.
Source: http://www.tietokone.fi/artikkeli/uutiset/lisaa_suorasoittoa_suomalaisille_napster_avautui
Tomi Engdahl says:
Intel’s ‘Thunderbolt 2′ official, coming later this year
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-57587687-92/intels-thunderbolt-2-official-coming-later-this-year/
Intel’s next Thunderbolt technology — hitherto known by the code name Falcon Ridge — now has an official moniker. The tech is slated to be built into future Intel chipsets.
Intel has officially dubbed the next version of its high-speed port “Thunderbolt 2.”
The technology was actually revealed at the National Association of Broadcasters conference in April under the code name Falcon Ridge.
Technically, Thunderbolt 2 is a controller chip that doubles the speed of the first-generation port, supporting up to 20Gbps bidirectionally.
Current versions of Thunderbolt are limited to an individual 10Gbs channel each for both data and display, less than the required bandwidth for 4K video transfer, Intel said in a blog post Tuesday.
That means the cables can now support both transferring a 4K video and putting it on screen at the same time.
Also, the “addition of DisplayPort 1.2 support in Thunderbolt 2 enables video streaming to a single 4K video monitor or dual QHD monitors,” Intel said.
Tomi Engdahl says:
BBC boffins ponder abstruse Ikea-style way of transmitting telly
‘What’s it supposed to be, dad?’ ‘Leave your father alone’
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/06/05/bbc_boffins_punt_ikeaoriented_radio/
Future broadcasting could resemble IKEA flat pack furniture – with the bits and pieces of each transmission assembled at home, perhaps in ways not intended by the designer – if boffins at the BBC get their way.
The traditional approach is to mix the media before it’s transmitted in a linear stream. But brainboxes at BBC R&D are looking at an “object oriented” transmission approach, which envisages the “receiver” – a TV, radio or fondleslab for example – reassembling a bundle of media objects after it gets them.
The ever-increasing computational power of media receivers makes such research plausible.
The O-O transmission idea isn’t new – here’s a paper [PostScript format] from 1997 on the subject, and another from 2004, for example – but it is more viable every day.
There are some advantages of putting together the bits and pieces at the receiver
One is that the method makes it easy to serve content set up for lots of different kinds of platform, so the stream can include elements for all devices and the client chooses the most appropriate one. Another is that it offers the listener more choice: you could choose where to “sit” during a transmission of a live performance, or adjust presets as on an equaliser.
“How do we deal with phenomena like media bubbles and conformation bias? What are the implications of this for the writing and production process?”
But don’t underestimate the appeal of O-O transmission to two groups of people. One is BBC middle management, who will form “a metadata working group” at the drop of hat, and spend years having meetings which typically achieve nothing – but consume a lot of license fee money.
The other group is TV manufacturers, who are facing a grim future as undifferentiated, commoditised floggers of flat panels. O-O might allow them to sell more expensive sets.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Google’s YouTube Triples Mobile Sales Amid Wireless Shift
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-06-05/google-s-youtube-triples-mobile-sales-amid-wireless-shift.html
Google Inc.’s YouTube has tripled advertising sales on mobile devices in the past six months, the company said, contributing as much as an estimated $350 million to revenue at the video-sharing website.
About a quarter of YouTube’s 1 billion global users now access the service via handheld devices, spurring a increase in promotional spending to reach that audience, according to Lucas Watson, vice president of sales at YouTube.
With faster wireless networks and accelerating adoption of smartphones and tablets, U.S. mobile video-ad sales are projected to expand to $2.69 billion in 2017, increasing more than 10-fold from last year, according to EMarketer Inc.
“The commercial business has exploded,” Watson said in an interview. “It’s a huge part of our business, and we know that’s where it’s headed.”
More than half of smartphone users in the U.S accessed YouTube’s application in March, according to Nielsen Holdings NV (NLSN). At least 70 million people in the U.S. were on the app in March, up 42 percent from a year earlier, the researcher said.
YouTube’s program, available as a download from Apple’s App Store and featured on devices running Google’s Android operating system, shows commercials before a video starts playing. The challenge in mobile advertising is to keep consumers engaged to view promotional clips
“People have less patience on the phone; consumers have become more task-oriented,”
YouTube automates the task for marketers buying advertising, splitting airtime between computer browsers and mobile devices, Watson said.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Wochit’s DIY newsroom platform attracts $4.75M, former Reuters executive as CEO
http://venturebeat.com/2013/06/04/wochits-diy-newsroom-platform-attracts-4-75m-former-reuters-executive-as-ceo/
News moves fast, and video is an important medium for staying on top of stories as they break.
Video production platform Wochit has raised $4.75 million and hired media veteran Keith McAllister to make creating and publishing high-quality videos as efficient as possible. Wochit produces videos as news breaks or topics start to trend. The technology automates a majority of the steps involved in creating videos so they can be released more quickly and cheaply.
Wochit monitors tens of thousands of social media and syndication feeds to pinpoint trending stories. As stories come up, Wochit produces video content as fast as possible for publishers to distribute through their own networks.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Why Pandora wants to grow its presence on connected TVs with a new HTML5 app
http://venturebeat.com/2013/06/05/pandoras-new-tv-web-app-brings-its-smart-radio-service-to-xbox-360-ps3-smart-tvs/
Streaming music company Pandora has released a new web application for TVs, the company announced today.
The push to bring Pandora to television screens follows the company’s efforts to grow the smart radio service by making it available in Internet-connected automobiles and mobile devices. And while Pandora is available as a native app on many Smart TVs, Blu-ray players, and a handful of set-top boxes like Roku, the service has been noticeably absent from game consoles. That’s a bit odd considering that most people are connecting their televisions to the web through the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3. However, the new TV web app is built in HTML5, which makes it available to any TV streaming device (like those consoles) or smart TVs with web browsers.
It may seem silly for an audio-only radio service to worry about its presence on devices primarily used for video, but there are a few reasons why Pandora is interested. The first reason comes down to enhancing the user experience
Conrad explained that listeners will likely prefer the HTML5 TV app because it’s more consistent than the multitude of native Pandora apps for various brands of set-top boxes and smart TVs.
Another big reason the company is focusing on boosting Pandora usage on TVs? Advertising.
“It’s conceivable that we could eventually sell video advertising for the new 10-foot Pandora [TV] experience,” Conrad said. Right now the company’s biggest source of revenue comes from audio advertising, and to a lesser extent display ads on desktops, smartphones, and tablets.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Smart TVs riddled with DUMB security holes
Fake content, snooping, LAN attacks and more
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/06/06/smart_tvs_riddled_with_dumb_security_holes/
It’s been known for some time that “smart TVs” are dumb about security, but a German researcher has demonstrated that the stupidity goes so far as to enable remote snooping or even a takeover of the in-set computer.
Nruns researcher Martin Herfurt has taken work begun at the Darmstadt University of Technology to demonstrate a range of remote attacks on Samsung Hybrid Broadcast Broadband TVs – HbbTVs – that include WiFi eavesdropping, fake analytics, content redirection, fake news tickers, Bitcoin mining and more.
More entertaining, however, is the number of ways an attacker could redirect the viewing of a victim, because the smart TVs use an embedded Web browser – in the case of Samsung, complete with Javascript support and WebKit 1.1 compatibility – which among other things reads HTML embedded in DVB streams.
This, Herfurt writes, makes it trivial for an attacker to inject their own URLs into the stream, or use DNS attacks to redirect the TVs to their own content. He also noted that none of the broadcasters using HbbTV capabilities are doing so over SSL, allowing content spoofing.
All of these attacks suggest other, even more malicious, possibilities: “Once attackers managed to redirect the HTTP requests of the TV to controlled sources, many different HTML-/Javascript-based attacks become possible,” he writes.
Finally, Herfurt notes, the presence of the Javascript XmlHttpRequest object in the TVs provides a vector for a number of attacks on the LAN the device is attached to.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Tech patents latest: Google, Cisco search pockets to sling $490m at TiVo
There you go, no need to worry about that trial, eh?
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/06/07/google_cisco_tivo_patent_settlement/
Googorola and Cisco have settled their upcoming patent infringement trial with TiVo out of court, agreeing to pay the telly box firm $490m upfront.
The patented technology in question covers the playing back of digital video that was recorded live, pausing said footage in the right place, and similar work; TiVo, a maker of digital video recorder boxes, has spent nearly a decade chasing companies it has accused of ripping off its designs.
Today, TiVo said it had now straightened things out with Motorola Mobility, now owned by Google (2012 profit: $10.7bn), and Cisco (2012: $8bn) along with Time Warner Cable – and that it had agreed to “certain patent licensing arrangements” with Google and Cisco for an upfront lump sum of $490m.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Will laws soon stop you from filming your neighbors?
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-57588425-71/will-laws-soon-stop-you-from-filming-your-neighbors/?part=rss&subj=news&tag=title
Many no doubt nice human beings are installing closed circuit TV systems in order to protect their properties from marauding anarchists or burglars
Once they have these systems, they begin to realize that they can use them to snoop on their neighbors
the United Kingdom, is considering the idea that CCTV systems might have to be regulated by law.
CCTV systems are becoming increasingly sophisticated. Which means that more and more neighbors are complaining that their intimate activities are being filmed.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Amulet camera records your life, stores it in cloud
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-57588398-1/amulet-camera-records-your-life-stores-it-in-cloud/?part=rss&subj=news&tag=title
ParaShoot is a compact, wearable prototype camera that can record at intervals or continuously. Slap on a custom cover to make it cute or fashionable.
“The destruction of music through YouTube is enormous.”
That’s what pianist Krystian Zimerman told an audience in Germany when he stopped his performance to demand a fan stop recording it with a smartphone.
But if you think the ubiquity of phone cameras is more than a little annoying, get ready for one that goes around your neck and can record automatically.
ParaShoot is a pint-sized, wearable prototype HD camera that hangs from a loop around your neck.
It grabs video from your perspective, but there’s no hassle of whipping a phone out.
It works with any smartphone, which can be used as a remote control and viewfinder.
The subject of a $260,000 Kickstarter campaign by Matt Sandy and Collin Glaum (whose LinkMe SMS bracelet proved unsuccessful), ParaShoot could have a $269 list price if it makes it to market.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Adobe Releases Photoshop Lightroom 5 With New Healing Brush, Radial Gradient, and Straightening Tools
http://www.macrumors.com/2013/06/10/adobe-releases-photoshop-lightroom-5-with-new-healing-brush-radial-gradient-and-straightening-tools/
Following the release of a public beta nearly two months ago, Adobe today announced immediate availability of the official release of Photoshop Lightroom 5, the company’s professional photo management and manipulation software.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Vine Passes Instagram In Total Twitter Shares
http://marketingland.com/vine-passes-instagram-total-twitter-shares-47579
Still not sure about the idea of making and sharing six-second looping videos? Consider this: On Friday there were more Vines shared on Twitter than Instagram photos.
It’s the first time Vine links have surpassed Instagram links on Twitter.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Intel offers to pay up for Internet TV programming deals
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/07/us-intel-television-idUSBRE9561A520130607
Intel Corp’s talks to buy content from media companies for its new TV service are advancing, and the chipmaker is offering to pay as much as 75 percent more than traditional cable rates, people familiar with the talks said.
Tomi Engdahl says:
More graphene! This time in a broadband photosensor
http://www.laserfocusworld.com/articles/2013/05/more-graphene–this-time-in-a-broadband-photosensor.html
Cameras fitted with a new graphene-based sensor developed at Nanyang Technological University (NTU) will soon be able to take clear and sharp photos in dim conditions, according to NTU.
The sensor is believed to be the first to be able to detect broad-spectrum light from the visible to mid-IR with high photoresponse, says NTU. If so, it would be suitable for use in many types of cameras, including IR cameras, traffic cameras, satellite imaging, and so on.
The graphene sensor is supposedly 1000 times more sensitive to light than current imaging sensors found in today’s cameras and uses ten times less energy, as it operates at lower voltages. When mass produced, graphene sensors are estimated by NTU to cost at least a factor of five less than conventional sensors.
His device, made by fabricating a graphene sheet into novel nanostructures, was featured in a paper published this month in Nature Communications. The nanostructures trap electrons, which is the key to achieving high photoresponse in graphene, making it far more effective than the normal CMOS or CCD image sensors, says Wang.
“While designing this sensor, we have kept current manufacturing practices in mind,” sys Wang. “This means the industry can, in principle, continue producing camera sensors using the CMOS (complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor) process, which is the prevailing technology used by the majority of factories in the electronics industry. Therefore, manufacturers can easily replace the current base material of photosensors with our new nanostructured graphene material.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Video gaga: How technology is transforming live concert bootlegging
http://thenextweb.com/media/2013/06/08/how-technology-is-transforming-concert-bootlegging/
“If you put your cameras down you might be able to live in the moment,” chided Ian Brown, frontman of iconic Mancunian indie band The Stone Roses.
“Please do not watch the show through a screen on your smart device/camera. Put that shit away as a courtesy to the person behind you and to [band members] Nick, Karen and Brian.”
Then, a month ago, Mercury Prize-winning British quartet Alt-J began trialing new technology designed to encourage fans to keep recording equipment in their pockets, and steer eyes towards the stage and ensuing live performance.
There’s a rising tide against the infiltration of smart devices at live shows, and for good reason.
Bands and other performers are looking to regain the full attention of their audience, while promoters and others with a vested interest in artists’ affairs are keen to profit from this insatiable desire to ‘relive’ an event once it’s come to a close. If they can’t fight it, they’d may as well embrace it and try and make a few bucks out of it with legitimate services.
When Napster arrived on the scene back in 1999, the music industry didn’t know what hit it.
But for every ying, there’s a yang. Napster also heralded a digital music revolution that saw the dawn of mp3 players, iTunes and Spotify. By giving the music-loving public an easy conduit to downloading or streaming music on-demand, this went some way towards restoring order.
However, this only really applies to studio-recorded music. If you want to relive that special night at New York’s Bowery Ballroom, San Francisco’s Fillmore or London’s Brixton Academy, there’s still the same-old problem as before. YouTube kind of fills a void here, but you’ll no doubt agree that 90% of the recordings are plain awful. This is changing though.
In days gone by, anyone wishing to bootleg a gig would have to smuggle in some fairly chunky equipment. The advent of the smartphone era empowered anyone to be a have-a-go bootlegger, but it’s only in recent times where devices have been of sufficient quality to bring real value to those watching online via YouTube and other platforms. I mean, the Nokia N8 was used to produce a whole feature film.
just think how easy it would be to record a fairly good multi-angle video. Three or four friends positioned in different parts of an auditorium, each armed with a high-spec smartphone, could produce a high-quality video of any show.
There’s already the software to easily stitch together such content too. Vyclone (previous coverage) for example, lets users sync and edit multi-angle videos directly from their mobile phones. It only works with footage captured simultaneously which is perfect for gigs, and it uses the longest audio track from the available videos as the source, before normalizing the rest of the audio to create a sense of cohesion.
The technology is already there for seriously good fan-shot concert videos, and the more this technology improves and proliferates, the more this will cause headaches for those with a direct financial interest in live performances. As things stand, many venues ban professional-grade recording equipment – so we’re talking optical zoom lenses here. But it will be near-impossible for auditoriums to ban smartphones, which is why we’re now seeing the beginnings of a counter-response.
These technological advances are a win-win for music fans – they can leave a gig with the entire show recorded to their mobile phone, while doing just what Ian Brown suggested by “living in the moment”. But it’s not without its flaws.
Tomi Engdahl says:
friends, cameras, action
vyclone is a social video platform that lets you co-create, sync and edit multiple views of a shared moment, effortlessly.
http://vyclone.com/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Game Of Accounts: Sharing HBO Go Passwords To Watch ‘Game Of Thrones’ Could Result In Prison
http://www.ibtimes.com/game-accounts-sharing-hbo-go-passwords-watch-game-thrones-could-result-prison-1298659#
The restricted access for HBO programming led “Game of Thrones” to break piracy records and become the most downloaded television show of 2012. “Game of Thrones” was illegally downloaded at a rate of 3 million times per episode.
For users not comfortable with piracy, another option has grown increasingly popular among “Game of Thrones” fans — sharing HBO account information. In a recent New York Times article No TV? No Subscription? No Problem?, Jenna Wortham noted how she used, “the information of a guy in New Jersey that I had once met in a Mexican restaurant.” Dave Their of Forbes admitted that he used his sister’s boyfriend’s father’s account in exchange for his Netflix information.
College Humor even made a video mocking the whole phenomenon, saying HBO Go sounds “illogical” and that sharing passwords is “basically stealing.”
Actually, sharing passwords is stealing under the current Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, which makes it a misdemeanor with a maximum one-year prison sentence to “obtain without authorization information from a protected computer.” It is also a violation of the Digital Millennium Copy Act because it is knowingly circumventing a protection measure set up to prevent someone from watching content like “Game of Thrones” without paying. Forbes points out that a crafty prosecutor could also claim that using an HBO Go password without paying is a form of identity theft.
If the government proved that the information stolen reached $5,000, someone could potentially face a felony with a sentence of multiple years in prison.
Tomi Engdahl says:
‘TV Everywhere’ mobile initiative still hasn’t gotten there, executives admit
http://www.dallasnews.com/business/technology/headlines/20130611-tv-everywhere-mobile-initiative-still-hasn-t-gotten-there-executives-admit.ece
TV was supposed to be everywhere by now — watchable anytime, anywhere, on your smartphone or tablet. But four years into the industry’s effort, network executives readily admit: TV isn’t everywhere.
The promise of “TV Everywhere” has been a key strategy in the cable and satellite TV industry’s fight to retain customers in the face of challenges from online video providers such as Netflix.
With TV Everywhere, customers who pay for packages with hundreds of television channels are supposed to be able to watch them on mobile devices and computers as well for no extra charge. That perk is meant to make pay TV packages seem more worthwhile and keep customers from defecting.
Yet many rights deals still haven’t been worked out. More important, audience measurement firms have been slow to count viewing on mobile devices, so advertisers have been reluctant to pay as much for commercials on phones and tablets compared with television sets.
“We either don’t get any credit at all, or if we do get credit it’s at a fraction of what we would have gotten if they first watched it live on the TV,” Ron Lamprecht, NBCUniversal’s executive vice president for digital distribution, said during a panel at The Cable Show, an industry conference this week.
This gap in ad revenue has created a kind of chicken-and-egg scenario. Networks and pay TV providers aren’t able to offer as many shows online because they don’t want to spend too much for rights without knowing they can make their money back. So, viewers can’t reliably find their favorite shows online and don’t use the services much.
nintendodirect.uni.me says:
Hello there, I found your website via Google even as searching for a related subject, your website came up, it appears good. I’ve bookmarked to my favourites|added to my bookmarks.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Time Warner Cable Content Incentives Thwart New Web TV
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-06-12/time-warner-cable-content-incentives-thwart-new-web-tv.html
Time Warner Cable Inc. (TWC) and other pay-TV operators are offering incentives to media companies that agree to withhold content from Web-based entertainment services such as those pursued by Intel Corp. (INTC) and Apple Inc. (AAPL), people with knowledge of the matter said.
The incentives can take the form of higher payments, or they can include threats to drop programming, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the discussions are private.
Cable companies are seeking to keep customers by ensuring access to exclusive content while fending off competition from upstart Web providers.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Time Warner Cable Says It’s Blocking Some Programmers from the Web — But It’s Still Not Holding Up Web TV
http://allthingsd.com/20130612/time-warner-cable-says-its-blocking-some-programmers-from-the-web-but-its-still-not-holding-up-web-tv/
Is Time Warner Cable blocking some TV programmers from selling their stuff to online video outlets?
Yes we are, says Time Warner Cable.
Short version: “Everyone does it, and we’re hardly the worst offender.
“It is absurd to suggest that, in today’s highly competitive video marketplace, obtaining some level of exclusivity is anticompetitive. Exclusivities and windows are extremely common in the entertainment industry; that’s exactly how entertainment companies compete.”
So does this explain why would-be cable competitors, like Intel, have yet to reach deals with programmers?
Not really, according to industry executives I’ve talked to.
Their argument: Time Warner Cable has deals that penalize some programmers from selling to new outlets. But it doesn’t have those deals with the biggest programmers, like Discovery, Viacom and Comcast’s NBCUniversal – which are the ones that an Intel, or an Apple, or whomever, would need to sign on to launch a competitive TV product.
Tomi Engdahl says:
ESPN Is Killing 3D Broadcasts By the End of the Year
http://gizmodo.com/report-espn-is-killing-3d-broadcasts-by-the-end-of-the-512858617
ESPN will kill ESPN 3D by the end of the year. The ill-fated 3D sports channel that started as an experiment in 2010 won’t be broadcast in any dimensions soon. This is huge news considering the significant investment that TV manufacturers and broadcasters have put forth in an effort to bolster the struggling tech.
We reached out to ESPN, and the company confirmed rumors about the end of its 3D broadcasts. ESPN citied lackluster adoption of the technology as the main reason.
Last year, Panasonic footed the bill for the production of a 3D feed of the Olympics, which it provided for free to the United States. It was beautiful! But not even the Olympics could make 3D adoption stick. Apparently, the experience just isn’t better enough for people to strap-on specs—even when they’ve already got 3DTVs.
ESPN said it is looking to the future of UltraHD. Indeed, broadcasters and manufacturers are currently developing trials for 4K broadcasting, and the word is that the 2014 World Cup will be broadcast in UHD straight from Brazil. Let’s hope high-resolution fares better than the third dimension.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Greece faces strike over broadcaster closure
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/europe/2013/06/201361222530660575.html
Most business and public-sector activity expected to come to a halt as two labour unions react to government’s decision.
Greek workers will stage a nationwide strike, forcing hospitals to work on emergency staff and disrupting transport, in protest against the “sudden death” of state broadcaster ERT, switched off in the middle of the night by the government.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Millennial Viewers Prefer Cross-Platform TV
http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/202194/millennial-viewers-prefer-cross-platform-tv.html?edition=61064#axzz2W0E0RMqS
A growing number of millennial TV consumers are committed to a “broadband-only” existence — all of which could spell some trouble for traditional TV content/channel owners.
The new study says 13% of 18- to-34-year-olds — some 8.6 million — are broadband-only customers.
More young consumer TV movements may be on the way. Many millennial “cross-platformers” are looking to stray from the pay-TV services altogether — around 17.9 million 18-34 TV consumers and another 32 million 18-49 consumers, says the study.
Research shows that 58% of broadbanders would consider subscribing to TV for a bundle of networks from their broadband provider, streamed live and on-demand. On demand services is a major lure: 92% of respondents ages 18-34 want video-on-demand streamed everywhere and anywhere and 94% would feel more positive about networks that offer VOD streamed everywhere.
Still, there are loyalists. Fifty-five percent intend to keep pay TV primarily because they like the option of watching live TV, while 44% of pay-TV-craving broadbanders miss their favorite live shows.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Trajectory of Television—starting with a big history of the small screen
From surrogate storyteller to high-def streaming infotainment, TV has come a long way.
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/06/the-future-of-tv-a-star-is-born/
Though it’s a relatively recent invention, television is a pillar of Western—and even global—culture.
Even as “millennials” stray away from the idea of “watching” TV in a form recognizable or understandable to advertisers, most households in the first world still have big screens in the living rooms. For more than 60 years, television has filled the role of surrogate storyteller for a world that no longer has to spend evenings huddled around open fires. Even in the so-called “emerging market” countries, television is pervasive: TVs are inexpensive, and their ability to mesmerize and entertain ensures that they are found everywhere.
But how did we reach this point, and does anyone really know what comes next? It wasn’t so long ago that we chose to tell each other tales like shamans and bards, but nowadays we spend endless evenings staring at phosphors and LEDs.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Improving Photo Search: A Step Across the Semantic Gap
http://googleresearch.blogspot.fi/2013/06/improving-photo-search-step-across.html
Last month at Google I/O, we showed a major upgrade to the photos experience: you can now easily search your own photos without having to manually label each and every one of them. This is powered by computer vision and machine learning technology, which uses the visual content of an image to generate searchable tags for photos combined with other sources like text tags and EXIF metadata to enable search across thousands of concepts like a flower, food, car, jet ski, or turtle.
This past October the state of the art seemed to move things a bit closer to toddler performance.
We built and trained models similar to those from the winning team using software infrastructure for training large-scale neural networks developed at Google in a group started by Jeff Dean and Andrew Ng. When we evaluated these models, we were impressed; on our test set we saw double the average precision when compared to other approaches we had tried.
Some things are unchanged: we still use convolutional neural networks — originally developed in the late 1990s by Professor Yann LeCun in the context of software for reading handwritten letters and digits. What is different is that both computers and algorithms have improved significantly.
First, bigger and faster computers have made it feasible to train larger neural networks with much larger data.
Second, new training techniques have made it possible to train the large deep neural networks necessary for successful image recognition.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Lucas And Spielberg Predict “Massive Implosion” Of Hollywood Caused By Tech Industry
http://techcrunch.com/2013/06/13/lucas-and-spielberg-predict-massive-implosion-of-hollywood-caused-by-tech-industry/
George Lucas and Steven Spielberg aren’t so bullish on the future of the film industry. At a talk at USC, the pair agreed that it’s on track to have a “massive implosion”. At the core of their argument: there just isn’t enough time in the day for consumers to support all the films released in theaters. Films are competing with all the content and options that the Internet provides.
Studios in Hollywood are the equivalent of venture capital firms of Silicon Valley. They live and die on the homeruns. Each movie could be thought of as a startup. It all starts with an idea and grows into a team that creates and releases some piece of content out into the world where it’s loved or hated.
The summer is filled with the biggest bets. The cost to produce and market a single film these days can balloon to over $300 million. The studios need a film to pull in nearly a billion in box office revenue, the same on DVD and have a good, multi-year sale to television for it to be considered a success. Sprinkle in some airplane viewing rights and that’s a win for them.
Lucas and Spielberg don’t think that’s a sustainable model. Soon, a couple of those megabudget films are going to nosedive, and everything will change.
They suggest the marketplace will contract because there isn’t enough time in the week for us to go to the movies anymore. With Netflix producing top quality content, and video games cutting into weekends, it leaves little room for date night out at the cineplex.
The duo says that the studios will be forced to reevaluate how to distribute films.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Greek state TV switched back on as European broadcasters step in
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2013/jun/13/ert-greek-tv-switched-on
ERT feed taken from studio and retransmitted into Greek homes over prepaid satellite link by EBU
Greek state TV broadcasts were dramatically switched on again on Thursday after broadcasters across Europe stepped in to try and keep ERT on air, in defiance of a government order to close the service down citing “chronic corruption” and “waste”.
The EBU said the signal is available globally on these satellites: Hotbird 13A in Europe, APSTAR 7 in Asia and Intelsat 19 in Oceania.
Tomi Engdahl says:
France won’t support EU-US free-trade talks if film, TV industry are affected
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/france-wont-support-eu-us-free-trade-talks-if-film-tv-industry-are-affected/2013/06/11/10f60f64-d2a6-11e2-b3a2-3bf5eb37b9d0_story.html
STRASBOURG, France — A cloud is hanging over the upcoming free-trade talks between the European Union and the United States after France said it won’t back any deal that threatens the country’s prestigious film, radio or TV industries.
The stakes are high because any deal could have major implications for global trade and could serve as a model for future deals. Together, the U.S. and the EU make up nearly half the world economy and 30 percent of global trade.
The audiovisual sectors have traditionally been excluded from global free-trade agreements under what is known as the “cultural exception,” which allows governments to subsidize and protect them.
European officials have said the “cultural exception” would be preserved. But many are concerned that once audiovisual services are on the table, their protections could be eroded in the back-and-forth tussle of tough negotiations.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Gatekeepers of Cable TV Try to Stop Intel
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/13/business/media/gatekeepers-of-cable-tv-try-to-stop-intel.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
As Intel tries something audacious — the creation of a virtual cable service that would sell a bundle of television channels to subscribers over the Internet — it is running up against a multibillion-dollar barricade.
That barricade is guarded by Time Warner Cable and other cable and satellite distributors, which are trying to make it difficult — if not impossible — for Intel to go through with its plan. The distributors are using a variety of methods to pressure the owners of cable channels, with whom they have lucrative long-term contracts, not to sign contracts with upstarts like Intel, that way preserving the status quo.
Intel, however, is undeterred, and its executives intend to begin its TV service by the end of the year. They are ready and willing to pay more than existing distributors do for channels. But to date the company has not announced any deals with channel owners.
Prospective products like Intel TV, delivered through the broadband Internet infrastructure of Comcast, Time Warner Cable or another provider and sometimes called “over the top TV,” have the potential to radically alter the media marketplace in the United States.
Unlike Netflix, which sells a library of TV episodes and mainly supplements cable, a service like Intel’s — with dozens of channels, big and small, streaming through a modern interface — could cause more consumers to cancel their cable subscriptions. (They would have to keep a broadband subscription, however, unless or until wireless capacity improves.)
Tomi Engdahl says:
Steven Spielberg and George Lucas predict ‘massive implosion’ in film industry
Movie theaters may be left behind for the living room
http://www.theverge.com/2013/6/13/4425486/steven-spielberg-george-lucas-usc-film-industry-massive-implosion
George Lucas and Steven Spielberg think the film industry is heading towards a cliff. The pair behind some of the most successful franchises in movie history think that conservative programming choices and rapidly evolving distribution schemes have set the stage for a massive upheaval — and internet-based services may become the dominant medium when moviegoing as we know it crashes and burns.
People simply have a limited amount of time, said Spielberg. “We can’t expand the week. We can’t expand the 24-hour cycle. So we’re stuck with so many choices.” The enormous amount of available content has pushed movie studios to be more conservative, banking on the power of event films to break through the white noise of a crowded marketplace. “You’re at the point right now where a studio would rather invest $250 million in one film for a real shot at the brass ring,” he said, “than make a whole bunch of really interesting, deeply personal — and even maybe historical — projects that may get lost in the shuffle because there’s only 24 hours.”
“There’s going to be an implosion where three or four or maybe even half a dozen of these mega-budgeted movies are going to go crashing into the ground,” Spielberg said, “and that’s going to change the paradigm again.”
“It’s not going to have cable or broadcast,” Lucas said. “It’s going to be the internet television.”
As Lucas painted it, the shift will present new opportunities both for consumers and filmmakers. Viewers will have access to a wide variety of programming, “usually more interesting than what you’re going to see in the movie theater. And you can get it whenever you want, and it’s going to be niche-marketed, which means you can really take chances and do things if you can figure out there’s a small group of people that will kind of react to it.”
That kind of niche focus has already paid dividends for cable networks like HBO
“All you need is a million people,” Lucas said. “Which in the aggregate of the world is not very many people. And you can actually make a living at this. Where before you couldn’t.”
Comparing the industry’s panic over fleeting DVD sales and crumbling business models to the 2008 economic crash, he stressed that now is the time to look forward. “It’s a mess. It’s total chaos,”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Sources: DirecTV will acquire Hulu by month’s end, and why the deal makes sense
http://pandodaily.com/2013/06/13/sources-directv-will-acquire-hulu-by-months-end-and-why-it-makes-sense/
Several sources with knowledge of the ongoing Hulu acquisition talks tell PandoDaily that a deal is imminent and that DirecTV is the likely victor. The acquisition price will be written with a “B,” according to our sources, but just barely.
It’s no secret that Hulu’s owners are seeking an acquirer for the premium streaming video on demand (SVOD) platform.
The latest round of negotiations have ranged in price from half a billion to more than a billion dollars, with various deal structures, terms, and demands thrown around
On the first point, Hulu is a bit of a quagmire because its owners, Walt Disney Co., News Corp, and Comcast, are also its content partners. This means that its long term access to content becomes incredibly uncertain once the company is sold.
Due to their existing content licenses, multichannel video programming distributors (MVPDs) like DirectTV, Time Warner Cable, Verizon FIOS, and AT&T U-Verse are far better positioned than financial acquirers (private equity firms) or strategic acquirers (Yahoo).
Secondly, unlike Time Warner, Verizon, and AT&T, each of which have broadband and/or mobile carrier offerings, DirecTV lacks any significant online presence, making it the most highly incentivized of the group.
Through the deal, DirecTV would acquire more than 4 million paying Hulu Plus subscribers, which generated $695 million in revenue in 2012 (including ad revenue), meaning that the deal looks to be valued at less than two times revenue, although existing debt is also a factor.
For Hulu’s owners, now looks like the time to sell. The media giants are unlikely to get the $2 billion plus figures that were floated last year when the prospect of exclusive licenses were still on the table.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Yes, iTunes Radio could crush Pandora. But that’s just for starters
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-57589181-37/yes-itunes-radio-could-crush-pandora-but-thats-just-for-starters/
Apple might seem late to the streaming-music world, but really the digital music revolution is just getting going.
For all the attention given to streaming music, which now makes up the fastest-growing segment of the recorded-music industry, much of the world is still listening to AM/FM radio. Which is why network radio in the U.S. captured the bulk of the roughly $14.8 billion advertisers spent in 2012. At the same time, though, more and more radio fans are listening online, either by streaming AM/FM stations or by tuning into pure digital radio plays like Pandora.
While the shift to digital radio — whether that’s delivered up by algorithms or, as is the case with Pandora and Apple, by a mix of human selection and machine — is growing fast, it’s still in the early stages. Pandora, with its huge audience, says it has 7.33 percent of the total U.S. radio listening audience. That means plenty of people have yet to migrate to the Pandora camp — and those are people Apple is going after as well.
“It is our sincere hope to someday be able to offer Pandora globally,” says Pandora spokeswoman Amanda Livingood. “Our posture with respect to further international expansion is best described as ‘patiently opportunistic.’”
So while all the talk about how iTunes Radio is so much like Pandora is fair for now, Pandora is also way too U.S.-centric for Apple’s global ambitions. When Apple rolls out iTunes Radio this fall, it will be available only in the U.S., but Cue said Apple will add other countries over time. Those, according to music industry insiders, include the U.K, France, Germany, and Japan, but the service could be big very quickly.
And then there’s the car — where, according to Arbitron, the average American spends 15 hours a week. As Cue talked about at WWDC, Apple is working with more and more automakers to integrate iOS functions right into the car’s LCD. He rattled off a number of partners, including Honda, Mercedes, Nissan, Ferrari, Hyundai, Kia, and Infiniti.
Pandora, too, is working with plenty of automakers. Included in the stat sheet it sent out were these figures: Pandora comes in 175 aftermarket devices and is built into more than 90 different car models.
It’s a natural fit. According to one survey, 84 percent of respondents said they listen to AM/FM radio while driving. More telling, though, is that among the 18- to 24-year-old group, roughly one in five people said they stream music on Pandora via their cell phones while driving. You can see where this is all going: Get it all built into the car and this will be how many people will want their music.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Media tablet is your next TV
http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4416338/Media-tablet-is-your-next-TV
If your definition of “next-TV” is a 50-inch screen 4K UHDTV, you may disagree with the contention that you’re going to end up watching a seven-inch screen that fits in a purse. But in my humble opinion, that little tablet has already taken over.
When I say “next-TV,” I mean TV as a boob tube, not a “second-screen device.” Gartner, Inc., for example, predicts that the tablet will become “the principal force behind social TV experiences.”
You can certainly while away the hours doing all sorts of social stuff on your tablet, just as you watch a big-screen TV in the living room. No question.
But I do suspect many of us also cuddle up with our tablet in a sofa or in a bed, simply to watch a movie or a TV show in selfish solitude — probably more often than we’d care to admit.
That idea of “the media tablet as your next TV” is the premise on which a number of companies — software and hardware developers included — are depending to capitalize their business in 2013 and beyond.
Some chip companies are pondering a display processor specifically designed for tablets.
display processing technology is becoming even more important on mobile devices.
Citing the Dutch giant’s famed TV heritage and a variety of video IPs accumulated at Philips Laboratories, Jeremy Thomas Davies, NXP Software’s product and development manager of applications, recently talked to EE Times about his company’s three-pronged strategy to “bring the living room HD TV experience to mobile.”
The company hopes to offer its “video experience module” to a) service providers; b) OEMs (chip suppliers and tablet vendors), and c) directly to consumers as a video sharpening app called CineXPlayer. The video experience module is designed to “upscale video stream resolution and bring HDTV-like experience to mobile,” claimed Davies.
“Look, whether they are using Imagination’s GPU core or ARM’s Mali, today’s multi-core apps processors are so powerful and they are more than capable” of sharpening video and intelligent video scaling, said Davies.
Other video enhancement algorithms to correct judder, motion blur, contrast, and color artifacts, for example, are “cooking in the pipeline,” Davies said.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Nokia, Qualcomm invest in array camera startup
http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4416351/Nokia-Qualcomm-invest-in-array-camera-startup
Array camera startup Pelican Imaging Corp. (Mountain View, Calif.) has closed a $20 million Series C round of funding bringing the total invested in the company to more than $37 million since its formation in 2008.
New investors include Qualcomm Ventures and Nokia Growth Partners who have joined existing investors Globespan Capital Partners, Granite Ventures, InterWest Partners and In-Q-tel.
Pelican Imaging has developed an array sensor architecture together with algorithms and software for image reconstruction, gesture recognition and other functions. Instead of using a single, high-resolution but expensive CMOS image sensor, the array camera averages multiple images to produce a single, enhanced-resolution image.
The computational imaging approach provides improved depth of focus at every pixel enabling users to perform a range of selective focus and edits, both pre- and post-capture. Camera’s made using the approach can be about 50 percent thinner than existing mobile cameras, which are limited by the depth of conventional image sensors.
Tomi Engdahl says:
You don’t need phone lines or cable for ANYTHING, says Dish
The satellite-dish man can sort you out with phone and broadband over the air too
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/06/17/dish_demos_broadband_without_the_cable/
Dish wants everyone to know it can do broadband too: using LTE kit and radio spectrum it plans to acquire from Clearwire, the TV broadcaster has been pushing 50Mb/sec into homes.
The trials ran in rural Virginia, using two towers to deliver between 20 and 50Mb/sec to homes using a 40cm receiving box fitted by the same chap who comes round to put the satellite TV in.
That’s important, because if Dish is going to compete with existing players then it will need that quad-service offering (mobile and fixed telephony, TV and internet access).
The trials were conducted in conjunction with local outfit nTelos Wireless, who provided 194MHz of spectrum starting at 2,496MHz.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Already 71 percent of the Finnish view on-line-screen TVs, says Sonera it it’s survey.
Nine out of ten Finns view TV programs in the traditional television broadcast in prime time on a weekly basis.
- Web-TV and pay-TV content viewing is at its highest in Finland. This study suggests that online TV is not eating a traditional television, they go hand in hand, says Taloustutkimus Research Director Kari Roose.
Pay-TV content whereas more than a third of the population, or 36 per cent. Most paid content view 25-44-year old men, of which more than half of the pay television content.
As many as 58 percent of respondents were very or fairly dissatisfied with the quality of television.
Source: http://www.ts.fi/uutiset/kotimaa/498995/Kysely+Jo+70+prosenttia+katsoo+nettitvta
Tomi Engdahl says:
Intel wants to be your new cable provider
But the chipmaker could face fierce adversaries in cable and ISP providers who control bandwidth and content
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9240059/Intel_wants_to_be_your_new_cable_provider?taxonomyId=229&pageNumber=1
Intel this year plans to sell a set-top box and Internet-based streaming media service that will bundle TV channels for subscribers, but its plans will likely face hurdles from the 800-pound gorillas of the streaming media market.
Huggers compared Intel’s as-yet-unnamed service to the BBC’s iPlayer, which makes programs available up to seven days after the original broadcast on any mobile device.
“If you miss something, it’s already there,” he said. “I think in this market we’ve yet to see a proper catch-up television service.”
Mike McGuire, a research vice president at Gartner, said that what Intel is planning is more akin to what Apple did with iTunes in that it doesn’t expect to make a profit off the service itself — at least not in the beginning.
“You can see the overall strategic value: Let’s create a service that [system manufacturers] can create apps and links to for their products, and that will compete against these other content ecosystems that are forming with Apple, Google, etc.,” McGuire said.
Jon Carvill, director of Intel corporate communications, said that while system manufacturers using Intel processors are a target market for the service, the primary product will be Intel hardware combined with its own service.
“It’s hardware, software and services coming from us,” Carvill added. “Our device is fully integrated. It’s not an app.”
Intel’s set-top box will also have a camera with recognition technology similar to that used in Microsoft’s Kinect box.
“It’s our belief that the TV experience can be more personal. They’ll have their programs and their profiles set up, especially in homes with multiple people,” he said. “And, there are ways you can watch without it as well.”
While Apple TV, Google Play and Microsoft’s Streaming Media Services can be seen as competitors, cable, Satellite and ISP providers such as Comcast, Time Warner and Verizon are also likely to push back against Intel, experts said. Those cable and ISP providers have well-established, long-term contracts with content providers such as ESPN and HBO. “They could say, ‘[If] you do sign this deal [with Intel], you’re in violation with the contract you signed with us,’” McGuire said.
One other scenario might be that cable and ISP providers simply favor their own streaming services with pricing models, or limit bandwidth based on what customers stream.
“You have the issue of access to content, but then you also have the issue of access to pipes,”
“If you just set the cap at a level where it would be unrealistic to use your broadband connection as a full cable replacement …, I think that is likely how the threat could work,” Bergmayer said.
Comcast could also offer its own IP streaming video service, and exempt its service from caps.
Tomi says:
Sonera poll in Finland: Young people do not care about intellectual property rights of television programs
Traditional television is facing social exclusion of young people’s life. Line of televisions and video rental, and illegal downloading have become more common
Only 38 percent of young people watch the TV programs on their broadcast times.
51 per cent of 18-24-year-old respondents did not consider the importance of compliance with copyright law when watching TV programs
Laptop is the most popular tool for young people watching TV programs after television. In particular, young women watch television programs forward to a laptop computer, and men are more likely to desktop computer.
Source: http://www.tietoviikko.fi/kaikki_uutiset/kysely+nuoret+eivat+valita+televisioohjelmien+tekijanoikeuksista/a909918?s=r&wtm=tietoviikko/-17062013&