My picks from audio and video trends for 2016:
Smartphone have increased screen sizes and have finally become mobile TVs: Smartphones have overtaken the tablets as the most popular mobile device for viewing videos. The most watched content were targeted at teenagers videos and animation series for children.
Smartphone cameras are great, or at least close enough to great that you don’t notice the difference. We’ve reached the point where you’ve got to work pretty hard to find a phone with a mediocre camera. Compared to a DSLR, smart phone cameras are lousy because they use tiny sensors, but still the camera in your pocket is crazy good considering the limitations manufacturers work under. The vast majority of top-tier smartphones use Sony sensors for their main cameras. The molded plastic lens elements in many cameras have reached the point where they’re essentially perfect. Smart phones are already deployed in many newsrooms for mobile journalism video shooting as it is easier (and cheaper) to learn how to film and edit on your phone than it is to use a big camera.
For new smart phone camera technologies you could see array of lenses to enable Lytro-like refocusing, create 3-D depth maps, and improve image quality in low light. In many cases smart phone cameras and DSLR are complimentary: Although the smartphones have decimated the point-and-shoot segment, sales of DSLR and other high-end rigs remain.
Live streaming video from smart phone becomes mainstream. Periscope was one of the first apps to really make live streaming events simple and easy enough that people wanted to do it. Many other apps are following the trend. Facebook begins testing live video streaming for all users.
Drone videography will ger more popular as drones become more popular. Many people will learn basic and creative aerial filming techniques for drone video cameras.
Whether or not the 2016 International CES holds any big surprises remains to be seen. This year’s CES will focus on how connectivity is proliferating everything from cars to homes, realigning diverse markets. It is quite probable that 4K TV will be big at this years’ CES show due to growing demand and falling prices. 4K becomes mainstream in 2016. CES will also have some 8K sets, though the market for 8K is at least five years away if not more (Tokyo Olympics in 2020 may be broadcast in 8K). Some new display technology is coming. LG has already demoed rollable 55, 66 and 77-inch OLED-based panels. Avegant’s Glyph technology literally beams video content onto your retinas. Analysts Predict CES 2016 Trends article gives you more ideas what to expect.
We can finally declare that 3D image in TV was a flop. Five years ago, it was estimated that the 3D technique can occupy the rapid pace of living cinemas addition. Then slowed different with technologies. But why the technology is virtually failed even though every new TV set has been added to display the 3D image as an option? Analysts said some people lack the ability to stereoscopic vision and for many, the 3D image caused eyestrain or nausea. Stereo image is to be left to various virtual reality applications.
After a year in which the weakness of smart TVs were exploited, Samsung goes on the offensive in 2016. Samsung’s new Tizen-based TVs will have GAIA security with pin lock for credit card and other personal info, data encryption, built-in anti-malware system, more. Samsung’s betting big on the internet of things and wants the TV to sit at the heart of this strategy. Samsung believes that people will want to activate their lights, heating and garage doors all from the comfort of their couch. If smart TVs get a reputation for being easy to hack, then Samsung’s models are hardly likely to be big sellers.
Whole TV industry need to go through a major transition as in most major developed markets, TV growth is slowing and in some cases stagnating. TV will account for 38.4 percent of the $503 billion global ad market in and will drop to 38 percent of the market in 2016. Digital ad spending will overtake TV as biggest category by 2017 or 2018.
Streaming video will be big in 2016. Almost all of the networks are streaming their content and streaming media is going mainstream fast. Third, 15% of American adults report they have become “cord cutters” – meaning they have abandoned paid cable or satellite television service. Many of these cord cutters say that the availability of televised content from the internet and other sources is a factor in their move away from subscription television services.
There seems to be a strong nostalgic audio trend going in. Whether it’s a sweet portable record player, a tabletop wooden radio or a full-size jukebox, the market for vintage-inspired electronics remains strong. Aside from record players, the vintage trend carries over to radios and speakers.
It seems that Americans were willing to spend on vinyl records. Nielsen numbers show that vinyl record sales rose 260 percent between 2009 and 2014, and sales for 2015 are on track to beat 2014’s total vinyl sales of 9.2 million units. Vinyl records generated more revenue in the first half of 2015 than free-to-use streaming services, but that’s not the full story. Despite vinyl sales increase it’s clear that the future of the music industry is digital. Total revenues from the digital music sector is expected to rise while physical sales will drop. Future is filled with streaming music services – both subscription services and free.
On the other end of audio spectrum High resolution audio tries to push to market at CES (again). Hi-Res Audio is the fastest growing category in music. Apple Music is planning to launch new its Hi-Res music streaming in 2016.
W3C group formed in the summer of 2015 a new working group: The Music Notation Community Group consists of representatives from some of the biggest names in the music notation software business who’ve come together to create a standardised way to display western music notation in your browser. It believes are achievable goals that can be met in 2016.
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Tomi Engdahl says:
Neural Network Teaches itself to Count Cars
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1329096&
BrainChip Holdings Ltd. (Perth, Australia), the listed parent company of BrainChip Inc., has reported the development of an Autonomous Visual Feature Extraction system (AVFE) based on its spiking neural processor technology.
BrainChip’s neural network processor is known as SNAP and uses signal spikes as a means of data transfer and a method known as Spike Time Dependent Plasticity (STDP) for learning
Tomi Engdahl says:
Finding a new ribbon microphone angle
http://www.edn.com/design/analog/4441594/Finding-a-new-ribbon-microphone-angle?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_analog_20160310&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_analog_20160310&elqTrackId=4369c18a3be3459991cf880d0fd5fea2&elq=9c5441fb89b945ac84a93fc9a1860158&elqaid=31239&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=27321
One of the more elegant events in engineering is when someone takes an old idea, rethinks it and brings it back in a new and innovative way. Among people who have done so are David Royer, Rick Perrotta and their colleagues at Royer Labs. I ran into David and Rick recently and had a chance to talk with them about their ribbon microphones, and how they are using new metals, new designs and JFETs.
Ribbon microphones date back to the early 20th century, with the first ones patented by electronics legend Walter Schottky and co-inventor Erwin Gerlach in 1924. RCA and the BBC patented their own versions in the 1930s.
Soon after opening Royer Labs, David and Rick filed a patent simply titled, “Ribbon Microphone.” This patent involved a new approach, offsetting the ribbon toward the front of the microphone to accommodate higher sound pressure. Instead of magnets that tapered toward a ribbon, the Royer Labs design uses magnets that are square.
These design changes, along with improved magnets that became available in the 1990s, are big parts of Royer Lab’s success.
Neodymium magnets increased the microphone’s output, as did changing the ribbon’s position.
Royer Labs’ method corrugates the aluminum ribbon with a precise pair of temperature-controlled gears. “That produces a ribbon that is corrugated with a much more elastic nature, making it more durable,”
Royer Labs uses Linear Systems JFETs on their phantom-powered microphones, the R-122, the SF-2, and the SF-24.
“With traditional passive ribbon microphones, you had better have very quiet preamplifiers if you’re going to use them for distant miking,”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
YouTube Gaming expands to several new markets, adds 60fps playback, DVR mode, and pop-out player support to Android — YouTube Gaming expands to new markets, improves its browsing and viewing experience on mobile — YouTube Gaming, the video network’s dedicated application for streaming …
YouTube Gaming expands to new markets, improves its browsing and viewing experience on mobile
http://techcrunch.com/2016/03/10/youtube-gaming-expands-to-new-markets-improves-its-browsing-and-viewing-experience-on-mobile/
YouTube Gaming, the video network’s dedicated application for streaming and recorded game videos, and competitor to Amazon-owned Twitch, this morning announced an expansion into several more markets and a host of new features aimed at offering an improved browsing and viewing experience in its app. One of the changes will see the network more heavily promoting its “Live” game streams, which follows October’s launch of Mobile Capture – a feature that lets gamers directly stream from their Android devices.
In addition, Google says that its live stream player on Android will also now receive an upgrade to support quality switching, 60fps playback and DVR mode. These features were previously available on iOS and the HTML5 desktop player.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The world’s thinnest lens revolutionize cameras
Molybdeenidisulfidikide. Australia in Canberra on this material, the National University researchers have built a lens, which is significantly of all existing cameras, lenses thinner. It has a thickness of only 6.3 nanometers.
The invention opens the way for a very flexible and displays the current lower miniatyre cameras. smartphone cameras also can be implemented in a more thinner.
According to researchers, one atom layer of molybdenum disulfide turned out to be an excellent optical material One layer is 0.7 nanometers thick, but through the projected beam of light will grow 50-fold in 38 nanometers away.
Source: http://etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=4123:maailman-ohuin-linssi-mullistaa-kamerat&catid=13&Itemid=101
Tomi Engdahl says:
Startup InVisage’s CEO: Why Image Sensor Revolution Is Upon Us
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1329186
InVisage Technologies Inc. (Menlo Park, Calif.) is an image sensor startup that is nearly ten years old and that has taken in more than $100 million in venture capital. The company has been developing image sensors based on a quantum-dot material called QuantumFilm that replaces conventional silicon photodiodes but that is integrated on supporting CMOS technology.
It now has two products out in the market and is starting to gain traction, according to Lee
Lee added that it is the combination of the quantum dots and the carrier material that allows charge transfer. “It’s because of the packing regime we are in.” The dots are of a diameter of between about 3 and 5 nanometers and it is these dimensions that affect the electron band structure and govern the sensitivity to light.
JL: “Image sensors are our focus for the short- and medium-term future. It is where our expertise is. But semiconductor development is getting harder and More-than-Moore opportunities are increasing, so there is the possibility it [QuantumFilm] can be applied elsewhere in the future.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Amy X. Wang / Quartz:
Click fraud moves into music streaming, draining money from companies and artists, and it’s almost impossible to detect
Music streaming has a nearly undetectable fraud problem
http://qz.com/615359/steady-chunks-of-money-are-being-quietly-illicitly-stolen-from-music-streaming/
Right now, Spotify, Tidal, and Rhapsody are all battling multi-million-dollar lawsuits alleging copyright issues and improper royalty payments—with one seeking as much as $150 million in damages.
But amid all the high-profile tumult, music streaming is facing a much more quiet, insidious problem: Click fraud.
Click fraud—the use of automated digital bots to “click” on payment-generating links and steal money by pretending to be consumers—has long been a problem in the online advertising industry. Websites stand to lose as much as $7.2 billion from fraudulent traffic in 2016, according to a study this January from the Association of National Advertisers.
This is now also a growing problem for the music industry, amid a rapid transition to online streaming services as the primary mode of distributing music and source of royalty payments. In the US alone, the streaming industry is projected to reach roughly $2 billion by 2019. The ascent of services like Spotify, Apple Music, Deezer, and Tidal—along with their per-stream payment models—has created an alluring target for fraudsters who need only a few auto-generated dance tunes and a modicum of coding expertise to fashion bots that basically snatch money out of thin air.
What’s most alarming, experts say, is the industry’s refusal to acknowledge the size of the issue. “It’s something that will probably increase. Whether that results in thousands of misappropriated dollars or millions, I don’t know,”
And it doesn’t only hurt companies like Spotify. Because of the way streaming services pay musicians, fraudulent “streams” of fake artists actually take away money from real artists—so big chunks of your monthly subscription fees may not be going to your favorite bands, but totally anonymous strangers who write code, not music.
How do you cheat streaming?
It’s actually remarkably easy.
Streaming services pay royalties on a per-stream basis, pooling customers’ regular payments ($10 a month per user for Spotify, for example) and divvying that up among musicians depending on their relative popularity. The more streams an artist gets, the more money he or she is paid. So if someone sets up an “artist” account with Spotify and uploads a few fake tracks, then creates a bot to stream those tracks on repeat—that’s a regular profit. And one that doesn’t have to be split with labels, producers, or any of the other players involved in a legitimate music deal.
Engineer William Bedell came out with a step-by-step tutorial on how to set up a click fraud scheme last year. It was “mesmerizing to watch the plays rack up,” wrote Bedell, who says he made more than $32 a day from fake streams with minimal effort.
“If it’s done properly, it’s nearly impossible to detect,” says Laguana. “There’s no way to know why somebody chose to click on something.”
I Built a Botnet that Could Destroy Spotify with Fake Listens
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/i-built-a-botnet-that-could-destroy-spotify-with-fake-listens
Did you know you can leave a muted Spotify playlist on repeat all night and generate roughly 72 cents for your favorite band? Or that you could previously leave a browser tab of Eternify open all day and net the band $2.30?
Better yet, did you know you can program a botnet on your old laptop to generate $30 a day in fake Spotify listens?
Automated streaming is a lucrative heist involving robots emulating humans, but I did not encounter many Turing tests during my dry run. There wasn’t even a CAPTCHA or email verification when creating accounts. The barriers to entry are clearly minimal.
Here is Spotify’s basic business model: The site takes the total revenue from ad sales, which totaled $117 million in 2014, and pockets 30 percent. The remaining 70 percent of the ad money is shared between rights holders, based on the number of plays they receive.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ben Sisario / New York Times:
Spotify and National Music Publishing Association reach settlement over unpaid mechanical rights royalties; sources say the payout pool is between $21M and $30M — Spotify Reaches Settlement With Publishers in Licensing Dispute — Spotify will pay more than $20 million to music publishers …
Spotify Reaches Settlement With Publishers in Licensing Dispute
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/18/business/media/spotify-reaches-settlement-with-publishers-in-licensing-dispute.html?_r=0
Tomi Engdahl says:
InVisage To Share Image Sensor Technology
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1329243&
InVisage Technologies Inc. (Menlo Park, Calif.) is prepared to provide its quantum-dot based image sensor technology to other image sensor vendors, according to Jess Lee, the company’s CEO.
In interview with EE Times Europe (see CEO interview: InVisage’s Lee discusses an image sensor revolution) Lee said it would be good for InVisage to have other companies as customers of its technology and that the company was looking raise money with partners as investors.
“We see QuantumFilm as a platform used by us as the first and second customer. To have third and fourth customers is better for us. We are prepared to work with partners to enable them with QuantumFilm,” Lee said in the interview.
InVisage has used some of this money to build a fabrication facility in Hsinchu, Taiwan. This fab is used for a small but key part of the production process, the laying down of the QuantumFilm material on CMOS wafers. For the rest of its manufacturing process InVisage uses foundry TSMC and packaging and test companies
The CMOS image sensor market was worth about $10.1 billion in 2015 and will have a compound annual growth rate of 11.1 percent over the period 2015 to 2019, according to market research firm IC Insights
Tomi Engdahl says:
Analog lives in the guitar pedal stomp box
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/anablog/4441671/Analog-lives-in-the-guitar-pedal-stomp-box?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_funfriday_20160318&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_funfriday_20160318&elqTrackId=9c787984d2cf4ea9801d9ca42eb814c7&elq=ce2a12d8b96d402c946335a600719477&elqaid=31392&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=27439
Electro-harmonix has just released a $220 guitar pedal that evokes the sound of the B-series Hammond organ.
“There’s no sampling in this pedal. It uses pitch shifting and wave shaping algorithms to modify the guitar signal. If you strum too lightly, the pedal sometimes doesn’t modulate correctly. When playing blues or rock styles, strumming too softly is not a problem. Any Jon Lord song plays just fine. I even played Styx’s Blue Collar Man (autoplay) and this pedal kicked butt. When I was at the guitar shop checking this pedal out, I had people tripping out over the sounds I was getting.”
I look at instruments as a quicker way to enter sounds than MIDI programming each note. Analog aficionado Scott Hooper told me he could spend 10 minutes per note creating a saxophone with MIDI, or he could just hire a sax player.
I know some musicians who are adamant that delays in digital recording are horrible. MIDI is one-millisecond time slices, and I have had several friends tell me that is too coarse. I don’t think nanoseconds matter, but a few milliseconds might. You can look at a recording delay as the musician standing further back on stage by whatever the travel-time of sound is. That’s about 1000ft/sec, so every millisecond of delay means the musician is moving back a foot. A video frame is 33ms, so you definitely don’t want one member of the band standing back that far. I don’t think a millisecond or two would be very serious.
Tomi Engdahl says:
EE + music theory = confusion
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/20-20khz/4420100/EE—music-theory—confusion
I’ve enjoyed listening to music all of my life, but never really understood how it “worked.” For example, what did it mean when a piece of music was composed in the key of G minor? The concepts of scales, chords, intervals and progressions etc., were mostly a mystery to me.
So, after deciding it would be fun to better understand music theory, I quickly amassed several tutorials and books, including a recommended “Idiot’s Guide” volume, and dived in. But I immediately encountered an unexpected stumbling block – a language barrier. In this case one between musicians and engineers, where terms such as “tone,” “pitch,” and “note” can and do have different meanings.
As an engineer working in audio, I would view these terms interchangeably. Any specific “tone” or “note” or “pitch” represents a particular frequency, and I would naturally think of sounds in that way.
One of the first things I had to come to grips with as I began reading through the material was the standard musical scale, represented as a repetition of the same seven notes – C, D, E, F, G, A, B – over and over on a piano keyboard. Obviously each of the different notes on a keyboard must have a unique frequency, so why weren’t they designated by unique identifiers?
Tomi Engdahl says:
Sound Pressure Level (SPL) Calculators
CUI’s SPL calculators for its line of buzzers and speakers allow a user to convert a specified SPL on a datasheet to different real-world conditions, or to compare sound pressure levels between two devices with different specified parameters on their respective datasheets.
http://www.cui.com/products/spl/speakercalculator?utm_source=iContact&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=*Customer%20Newsletter&utm_content=March+2016+Customer+Newsletter
http://www.cui.com/products/spl/buzzercalculator?utm_source=iContact&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=*Customer%20Newsletter&utm_content=March+2016+Customer+Newsletter
Tomi Engdahl says:
The signal to noise ratio at your ears
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/living-analog/4441663/The-signal-to-noise-ratio-at-your-ears?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_analog_20160317&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_analog_20160317&elqTrackId=a63df51779404b4386fc20330fdd4159&elq=f01abba99a2d47fdaa27eedf6c30d0af&elqaid=31371&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=27421
There are two verbal communication problems I sometimes run into which some folks just DON’T seem to understand. I write this in the first person, but I submit that these problems are commonplace.
If we’re near to some ambient noise source such as a room air conditioner or maybe there is noise coming from passing traffic and you try to talk to me at a voice level which at your own ears is of equal signal level with the ambient noise around you, a signal to noise ratio of zero decibels where you are, I will be experiencing the same noise level as you yourself and so, when your voice comes to my ears, it will have been attenuated to a sound level lower than that ambient noise, thus yielding a signal to noise ratio of less than zero decibels at my ears and what you’re saying will not be intelligible. The farther away I am from you, the worse that situation will be.
In such a case, you will not succeed in getting your message through to me because the zero decibel signal to noise ratio at your ears
In other words, please speak up so you can actually be heard.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Finding a new ribbon microphone angle
http://www.edn.com/design/analog/4441594/Finding-a-new-ribbon-microphone-angle?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20160315&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20160315&elqTrackId=c5fb94a96865471a995d00cf2f1c9d84&elq=2aa8830adff147ccb53f3873e4e63abc&elqaid=31313&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=27381
One of the more elegant events in engineering is when someone takes an old idea, rethinks it and brings it back in a new and innovative way. Among people who have done so are David Royer, Rick Perrotta and their colleagues at Royer Labs. I ran into David and Rick recently and had a chance to talk with them about their ribbon microphones, and how they are using new metals, new designs and JFETs.
These design changes, along with improved magnets that became available in the 1990s, are big parts of Royer Lab’s success. Royer said metallurgy has made massive leaps beneficial to ribbon microphone development. “It just so happened that somebody brought neodymium magnets to my attention in about 1997 or so,” Royer said. “I was thinking, `Hmm, little lightweight magnets that have horrifically powerful magnetic fields? This sounds interesting.’ I got my hands on a few, started experimenting with them, and I was really, really amazed at what I was able to come up with.”
Neodymium magnets increased the microphone’s output, as did changing the ribbon’s position. “We actually moved the ribbon forward in the transducer so that as the ribbon is being driven harder and harder by a sound wave, instead of going from the center of magnetic flux it goes into the center,” Perrotta said. “It makes the microphone actually more efficient as it’s driven harder.”
Royer Labs’ method corrugates the aluminum ribbon with a precise pair of temperature-controlled gears.
Custom tape-wound toroidal transformers also improved the design, Perrotta said. And the final piece for some designs was the addition of a phantom-powered FET stage.
LIS’s FETs were quieter, at about a tenth of the price
“With traditional passive ribbon microphones, you had better have very quiet preamplifiers if you’re going to use them for distant miking,” Royer said. “Otherwise, the deficiencies of the preamplifiers you’re using will bite you on the nose. Since we couldn’t control the preamplifiers that people have, the active microphone does a nice end run around that problem.”
Patents and design advancements don’t always translate into user satisfaction, and for artists it’s the sound they hear when recordings are played back that matters.
Royer said working with artists to help them discover how best to use a microphone can be tricky. “Basically, I think the best way to boil that down is to set a microphone up and have the artist listen to the playback,” he said. “Like it or not, I think when it comes to sound quality, we still are sort of in a position of it being at least as much of an art as it is a science.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Stuart Dredge / Music Ally:
RIAA report: streaming accounted for more US recorded-music revenue than downloads in 2015, rising from 27% in 2014 to 34% in 2015
US music industry body the RIAA has published its figures for 2015, revealing that recorded-music revenues rose by 0.9% last year to $7bn.
http://musically.com/2016/03/22/us-recorded-music-revenues-rose-slightly-in-2015-says-riaa/
That’s estimated retail value: the amount of money people spent on physical music, downloads and streams. The wholesale value – the money flowing back to rightsholders – rose 0.8% to $4.95bn.
Another key point from the RIAA’s announcement: streaming is now the biggest chunk of US recorded-music revenues, rising from 27% in 2014 to 34% in 2015 – overtaking download sales in the process.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Steve Dent / Engadget:
Version of Toonz animation software, used in Futurama series, to be open sourced March 26
Animation software used by Studio Ghibli will soon be free
Toonz was used to produce “Tale of the Princess Kaguya” and the “Futurama” series.
http://www.engadget.com/2016/03/21/toonz-studio-ghibli-edition-open-source/
You may not have heard of Toonz animation software, but you’ve no doubt seen work it was used in: Studio Ghibli films like Spirited Away and Tale of the Princess Kaguya (above), or the animated series Futurama. Now, the Toonz Ghibli Edition used by legendary Japanese filmmakers like Hayao Miyazaki is going open-source, making it free to use by studios and novice animators alike. The deal came after Japanese publisher Dwango acquired the software from Italian developer Digital Video. It’s now focusing on customization and training, but will still sell a premium version to companies “at a very competitive price.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Samsung’s latest camera is the best
the device recorded the best overall rating DxOMark test. Galaxy S7 edge got the test 88 points.
With that number S7 passed devices that have since December kept top possession – Galaxy S6 Edge + and Sony Xperia Z5′s.
The result also confirms the new trend cell phone cameras: fewer but higher quality pixels is better.
Samsung S4 has 12 megapixels camera (previous S6 model had sixteen megapixel cell).
S7′s secret lies in the camera’s new dual-pixel technology: on both sides of the pixel there is a photodiode. Dual pixel structure of light sensing a two-step. This clearly allows existing cells focus the image focus of interest. Each pixel cell detects light coming from the phase difference, so that the cell additionally produces a more accurate focus quality images in low light conditions.
Source: http://etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=4155:samsungin-uusimmassa-on-paras-kamera&catid=13&Itemid=101
Tomi Engdahl says:
Music streaming sales outstrip digital downloads for first time
https://thestack.com/cloud/2016/03/23/music-streaming-sales-outstrip-digital-downloads-for-first-time/
Revenues from music streaming has finally surpassed those of digital downloads, according to a report released by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).
Its ‘News and Notes on 2015’ review [PDF], released yesterday, shows that music streaming in the U.S. brought in 34.3% of the overall revenue for the year – generating $2.4 billion (approx. £1.7 billion) out of a total $7 billion. If the numbers are accurate, streaming beat music downloads by 0.3%.
Tomi Engdahl says:
An Affordable Panasonic Grid-EYE Thermal Imaging Camera
http://hackaday.com/2016/03/24/an-affordable-panasonic-grid-eye-thermal-imaging-camera/
Thermal imaging cameras are objects of desire for hackers and makers everywhere, but sadly for us they can be rather expensive. When your sensor costs more than a laptop it puts a brake on hacking.
Thankfully help is at hand, in the form of an affordable evaluation board for the Panasonic Grid-EYE thermal imaging camera sensor. This sensor has sparked the interest of the Hackaday community before, featuring in a project that made the 2014 Hackaday Prize semifinals, but has proved extremely difficult to obtain.
All that has now changed though with this board. It features the Grid-EYE sensor itself, an Atmel ATSAM-D21G18A microcontroller, and onboard Bluetooth, but has an interesting feature that, as well as being a standalone device, can be used as an Arduino shield. A full range of APIs are provided, and the code is BSD licensed.
it has a resolution of only 64 pixels in an 8×8 grid. But its affordability and easy availability
GRID-EYE BLE-capable thermal camera
A tiny, sub-$100 8×8 pixel thermal camera with BLE connectivity
https://hackaday.io/project/1389-grid-eye-ble-capable-thermal-camera
Grid-Eye Evaluation Kit
Grid-EYE sensor Evaluation Kit enables fast prototyping of IoT and many other applications
https://eu.industrial.panasonic.com/grideye-evalkit
Thermal camera projects have featured quite a few times here on Hackaday. Some have been based on the FLIR Lepton module, like this one that combines its image with a 640×480 visible camera
http://hackaday.com/2015/12/25/build-your-own-thermal-camera/
http://hackaday.com/2014/09/07/building-the-worlds-smallest-thermal-camera/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ken Yeung / VentureBeat:
Sources: Google building Periscope-like live streaming app YouTube Connect for iOS and Android — Google is building YouTube Connect, a live streaming app to take on Periscope — Google has quietly been building a new live streaming app called YouTube Connect, VentureBeat has learned.
Google is building YouTube Connect, a livestreaming app to take on Periscope
http://venturebeat.com/2016/03/23/google-is-building-youtube-connect-a-live-streaming-app-to-take-on-periscope/
Google has quietly been building a new livestreaming app called YouTube Connect, VentureBeat has learned. This service highlights the company’s efforts to double down on live video while also placing it in a position to compete directly against Twitter’s Periscope and Facebook Live. YouTube Connect will be available on both iOS and Android devices.
Google did not immediately respond for comment.
YouTube Connect has much of the same functionality that you’d already find with Periscope and Facebook Live, according to a source close to the matter. You can log into the app using your Google or YouTube account and immediately begin streaming from your mobile phone.
Tomi Engdahl says:
“Virtual reality is the next phase in the constantly metamorphosing world of adult entertainment.”
Pornhub launches a new channel devoted to VR porn
http://www.theverge.com/2016/3/23/11290610/pornhub-vr-free-porn-channel
With this launch, Pornhub is now providing both 180-degree and 360-degree VR scenes on its site for free. The content can be viewed on the desktop, but will most optimally be viewed with Google Cardboard, Samsung Gear VR, and Oculus Rift.
Pornhub is clearly excited about VR’s potential for revolutionizing pornography
Tomi Engdahl says:
Analog lives in the guitar pedal stomp box
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/anablog/4441671/Analog-lives-in-the-guitar-pedal-stomp-box?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_analog_20160324&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_analog_20160324&elqTrackId=ea78330ba0094984ab11510ae0ff35fe&elq=dd527950ae904cfc85b115663ddae6a6&elqaid=31470&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=27499
Electro-harmonix has just released a $220 guitar pedal that evokes the sound of the B-series Hammond organ.
“There’s no sampling in this pedal. It uses pitch shifting and wave shaping algorithms to modify the guitar signal.”
Wow, a Hammond organ for 220 bucks. The dual guitar/organ mode is neat but I suspect it will get old and over-used.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Netflix Throttles Its Videos on AT&T, Verizon Networks
Streaming service says it limits video quality to protect users from exceeding data caps
http://www.wsj.com/article_email/netflix-throttles-its-videos-on-at-t-verizon-phones-1458857424-lMyQjAxMTE2OTIyNDMyNDQxWj
AT&T Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc. were on the defensive last week after accusations swirled they were throttling the quality of Netflix Inc. video on their wireless networks.
It turns out it was Netflix that was doing the throttling.
Netflix, a leading proponent of open-Internet rules, has been lowering the quality of its video for customers watching its service on AT&T or Verizon Communications wireless networks.
Netflix said it caps its streams at 600 kilobits-per-second—much slower than what should be possible on modern wireless networks. It hasn’t previously disclosed the practice.
The fact that Netflix, not the carriers, is responsible for the lower quality illustrates the dilemma mobile-app makers face with data caps. The majority of all traffic on wireless networks is video, so providers must balance video quality against data consumption. Watching two hours of HD video on Netflix would consume up to 6 gigabytes of data, Netflix says. That is an entire month’s allowance under an $80 a month Verizon plan.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Janko Roettgers / Variety:
Periscope Has Been Used for 200 Million Broadcasts, 100 Million Since January Alone
http://variety.com/2016/digital/news/periscope-200-million-broadcasts-1201740099/
Twitter-owned social live streaming service Periscope celebrated its first birthday Monday by revealing a major usage milestone: Periscope has been used for more that 200 million broadcasts since its launch in March 2015. Periscope users also watch around 110 years (or close to 1 million hours) of live streams every single day, according to the company.
It’s worth noting that this time watched metric only includes live streams viewed via Periscope’s iOS and Android app, and not archived broadcasts, or streams watched on Twitter or on Periscope’s website. Twitter added Periscope live streams to its timeline in January, and the potential for a much larger audience is apparently not lost on broadcasters: Periscope’s number of total broadcasts doubled since January, when it surpassed 100 million.
Twitter acquired Periscope in early 2015 for $100 million.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Kanye West releases a track from new album to Apple Music & others, after promising a Tidal exclusive
http://techcrunch.com/2016/03/28/kanye-west-releases-a-track-from-new-album-to-apple-music-others-after-promising-a-tidal-exclusive/
The artist had originally said his album would be a Tidal exclusive, which drove fans to download the streaming music app in such great numbers that it ended up at the top of the U.S. App Store. Now, it appears West has changed his mind. He’s made one of the new songs from “The Life of Pablo” available on Spotify, Apple Music and Google Music.
The move is not entirely surprising, given West’s other antics surrounding the album’s release. Dubbed the industry’s “first SaaS album” (software-as-a-service, that is), West publicly promoted the work, then continued to tweak it and make changes even after its release.
The difficulties in purchasing also prompted mass pirating of the album – according to some reports, an estimated 500,000 people illegally downloaded the day after its release.
Tomi Engdahl says:
When what’s old is new again, with a twist
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/power-points/4441722/When-what-s-old-is-new-again–with-a-twist-?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20160325&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20160325&elqTrackId=342203f1edce4aa3b54d190d9efeb659&elq=f08f2f2e9b6e4a0c822f0f943fa98262&elqaid=31504&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=27529
It’s not just me who is having ideas about merging the old and new in products that either emulate old products but with new technology, or bring new features to older products via a new-but-old design. I recently saw that Mattel has upgraded the classic children’s View-Master toy (Figure 1) with a new, electronic View-Master Virtual Reality version
The new electronic version has the same general form factor, but you use your smartphone as the functional core. The opportunities and flexibility are, of course, orders of magnitude ahead of the original. At just $29.95, the new View-Master Virtual Reality Starter Pack is almost irresistible.
Kodak – yes, the “revived” film and photography pioneer that went bankrupt – is bringing back a movie camera with all sorts of digital features, but still uses 8-mm film
I just don’t see the point here, except for the “hip/cool/retro” factor
In contrast, I can understand cameras, such as the Lumenati CS1, which use a smartphone core with the form factor and serious appearance of a film-movie camera, but is a digital video camera.
If you could do an upgrade to an older product using today’s technology, but treating the basic form and function as a baseline, what would that be?
Tomi Engdahl says:
Janko Roettgers / Variety:
Sony to launch 4K movie streaming service, Ultra, on April 4; titles priced at $30, will not launch with on-demand rentals
Sony’s Ultra 4K Streaming Service Is Launching Next Month
http://variety.com/2016/digital/news/sony-ultra-4k-streaming-service-1201741039/
Sony is launching its 4K movie streaming service called Ultra next month: Consumers will be able to buy movies from the service, and stream to supported Sony 4K TV sets, starting April 4.
“We wanted to give consumers a streaming option that showcased the best 4K content that we can offer with the ease of a streaming service,” said Sony Pictures Entertainment VP Jake Winett during a press event in San Francisco on Tuesday.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Rotary Subwoofer Combines A Speaker Coil W/ a Fan
http://hackaday.com/2016/03/30/rotary-subwoofer-combines-a-speaker-coil-w-a-fan/
[Chris] got the idea to build his own after seeing the TRW-17, a commercial offering of a rotary subwoofer.
The prototype [Chris] has rigged up is only a 300W amplifier (180W RMS), but as you can see in the following video, it literally shakes his house.
DIY Ultra-low frequency rotary subwoofer doing 5 and 3Hz!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=poo6zCFXtKM
TRW-17
“The Worlds first True Subwoofer”
http://www.rotarywoofer.com/
Want to hear what 5Hz sounds like? A new woofer technology unlike any other and a new product category for home audio. This is the first home audio woofer delivering true response to DC. The Thigpen Rotary Woofer is the worlds first true infrasonic home audio or home theater woofer. Conventional subwoofers roll off rapidly below 20Hz. With no cone the rotary woofer achieves high efficiency at very low frequencies. Most subwoofers have a difficult time producing acoustic output below 20Hz at audible levels. They generally require large amounts of equalization, distortion rises rapidly, and even the most expensive available cannot produce significant output below 10Hz.
A missing link in sound reproduction. Experience special effects like never before. If you want to hear and feel the 11hz hertz fundamental frequency from a helicopter rotor, the low frequency rumble of wind, the space of a concert hall or infrasonic information contained in an explosion, this is the only woofer technology available.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Foxconn gains Sharp’s LCD technology and manufacturing capacity
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/now-hear-this/4441745/Foxconn-gains-Sharp-s-LCD-technology-and-manufacturing-capacity?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20160330&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20160330&elqTrackId=ad8726703e4e4d7e90106ec7cc83dec5&elq=29f33448b3fe490295eb34fb82c79c41&elqaid=31596&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=27569
Taiwan’s Foxconn Technology, the world’s largest electronics contract manufacturer, has reached the finish line in its on-again, off-again pursuit for control of Japan’s Sharp Corporation, one of Japan’s major electronics brands.
Foxconn, whose largest customer is Apple, will gain Sharp’s liquid crystal display (LCD) technology and manufacturing capacity, adding to its existing LCD holdings in Innolux Corporation, Taiwan’s largest flat-screen maker.
The Taiwanese company will take a 66 percent stake in Sharp through investments by its subsidiaries such as Hon Hai Precision Industry, Foxconn (Far East) Limited, and Foxconn Technology. The takeover will bring Foxconn a step closer to Chairman Terry Gou’s dream of creating a company with a brand name and manufacturing scale on a par with South Korea’s Samsung Electronics.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The New Ultra HD Standard & Why It Matters for Quantum Dot Suppliers
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1329297&
Content is king. When it comes to new display technologies, this mantra certainly makes a lot of sense. After all, what would be the point of getting the latest TV on the market if you only had some old DVDs to watch? Good content is what justifies a hardware upgrade.
Unfortunately, content usually arrives late. When full HD TVs first became available, there was still a scarcity of content to be watched in 1920 × 1080 resolution. Today, history is repeating itself with 4K, high dynamic range (HDR) and quantum dots: the technology is available, but there is a lack of suitable content. Moreover, every manufacturer has been implementing these technologies differently, thereby resulting in a lot of confusion. Thus, the new UHD standard announced during CES 2016 was well overdue.
For quantum dot suppliers, having more content presented in BT .2020 will provide a great opportunity to demonstrate the benefits of wide color gamut displays.
Encoding in BT .2020
In a way, the certification can be seen as just another attempt to reassure consumers their new devices are “future-proof.” For manufacturers, the specifications are loose enough to accommodate everyone. For instance, the standard requires 1000 nits at peak brightness (unless the device is capable of very low black level, in which case 540 nits peak brightness is considered sufficient). It is obvious this decision was made to allow OLED TVs to be certified Ultra HD Premium, since high brightness is still an issue for OLEDs.
Where the new standard makes significant changes is in content production and distribution. In particular, all content labelled Ultra HD Premium will be encoded with BT .2020 color representation. This is a major step up from the old BT .709 color space, which is currently in use for most consumer content.
In the last two years, display manufacturers have commercialized what they call “wide color gamut” LCD panels. These displays use new phosphors or quantum dots to produce a wider range of colors. However, content encoded in BT .709 cannot fully exploit the capabilities offered by these displays.
BT. 2020 provides a much bigger color space than anything used before.
For quantum dot suppliers, having more content presented in BT .2020 will provide a great opportunity to demonstrate the benefits of wide color gamut displays. However, devices certified Ultra HD Premium will only have to cover the DCI P3 colour gamut, which is much smaller than BT .2020. So the new standard sets the bar very low when it comes to display performance.
It is, of course, still early to say whether the new standard will be popular. But it represents the best attempt thus far at defining how consumers should experience Ultra HD
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ashley Cullins / Hollywood Reporter:
RIAA, other industry organizations, music stars call for DMCA reform ahead of April 1 public comments deadline, say safe harbor, takedown provisions do not work
Music Industry A-Listers Call on Congress to Reform Copyright Act
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/music-industry-a-listers-call-879718
“Artists spanning a variety of genres and generations are submitting comments to the federal government’s U.S. Copyright Office today and tomorrow demanding reforms to the antiquated DMCA which forces creators to police the entire Internet for instances of theft, placing an undue burden on these artists and unfairly favoring technology companies and rogue pirate sites,” said the statement.
On Dec. 31, the Copyright Office announced its intent to evaluate the safe harbor provisions of the DMCA, which — to an extent — protect Internet service providers from third parties who illegally share content online.
The petition claims the safe harbor and notice-and-takedown provisions of the DMCA create a shield for tech companies and allow infringers to repost material after it has been removed.
The RIAA says 18 major music organizations submitted a 97-page joint brief “explaining the myriad flaws in the DMCA
The Internet Association, a group that represents leading tech companies like Facebook, Google and Netflix, commented on the issue Tuesday and said the DMCA is working effectively as intended.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ernesto / TorrentFreak:
Study finds that of 108M DMCA takedown requests, 99.8% targeted Google search, 28% of all requests are “questionable”, Google likely removes more than it should
28% of Piracy Takedown Requests Are “Questionable”
By Ernesto on March 31, 2016
Breaking
https://torrentfreak.com/28-of-piracy-takedown-requests-are-questionable-160331/
A new study published by researchers from Columbia University’s American Assembly and Berkeley reveals that more than 28% of the takedown requests received by Google are “questionable.” Nearly five percent of the takedown notices that were reviewed did not target the supposed infringing content, while another 24 percent raised other concerns, including fair use.
These requests have increased dramatically over the years. In 2008, the search engine received only a few dozen takedown notices during the entire year, but today it processes two million per day on average.
Copyright holders have used this increase to call for tougher anti-piracy actions from search engines and other intermediaries, claiming that the current system is broken. For its part, Google is concerned that the continued increase may lead to more mistakes.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Jason Rosenthal / Backchannel:
Lytro CEO Jason Rosenthal on why the company exited the consumer business to focus on providing Light Field powered solutions for virtual reality companies
War Stories: Why I Lit Up Lytro
https://backchannel.com/war-stories-why-i-lit-up-lytro-b46124da32a6#.iz720eixm
Scrapping the strategy may be the hardest choice a CEO ever has to make
A little over a year ago at Lytro, it became clear to me that we needed to drastically change the direction of our company. We’d already built two generations of consumer Light Field cameras and were deep into development on our third and fourth generation models. But I was increasingly filled with doubt about our product strategy and direction. Were consumer cameras really our biggest and best opportunity? If not, what should we be focused on instead? Could we pivot dramatically with so much invested in our current direction?
While traditional photography captures the brightness and color of light, a Light Field in addition captures the angle and direction of every ray of light, essentially creating a 3D model of the entire scene. This additional data unlocks a host of previously impossible capabilities ranging from the ability to create photo realistic immersive 3D worlds, to new ways of integrating computer graphics with live action, to ultimately software eating cameras as we know them. Lytro was founded by the incredible Dr. Ren Ng, now our Chairman and a professor at UC Berkeley, and was based on the pioneering work he did at Stanford for his PhD.
The incredibly hard part, as it turned out, was figuring out which application and market to apply our technology to first.
If you believe what you read in the tech press, the streets are going to be stained with Unicorn blood; but from my perspective we’ve seen this all before. For anyone who chooses to spend their career building technology startups, we will see it all again. In my experience, building a technology startup has always been hard.
We began to hear regularly from prospective customers that they weren’t interested in our cloud services. In their minds we were on a certain path to bankruptcy. But it wasn’t all bad news: they were very interested in buying the software we had developed to automate the operations of our own data centers, called Opsware.
Many of these learnings and experiences resonated as I thought about the right next step at Lytro in late January 2015. I realized that we simply were not on a path to build a winning product.
While consumer Light Field cameras offered a number of true technological breakthroughs such as interactive 3D pictures, radical lens specs, and the ability to focus a picture after the fact we had a number of disadvantages as well including 4X larger file sizes and lower resolution in comparison to other similarly priced cameras. The cold hard fact was that we were competing in an established industry where the product requirements had been firmly cemented in the minds of consumers by much larger more established companies. This issue was compounded by the fact that the consumer camera market was declining by almost 35% per year driven by the surge in smartphone photography and changing consumer tastes.
The bulk of the team began experimenting with different approaches to real world Virtual Reality which culminated with our announcement of Lytro Immerge in November. We’re still in the early days with Lytro Immerge but the product-market-fit of Light Field technology and VR has exceeded even our highest expectations.
Unlock Immersive Storytelling with Complete Creative Control
https://www.lytro.com/immerge
Break away from the creative limitations of existing tools designed for flat video frames. Lytro Immerge is built from the ground up to seamlessly blend live action and computer graphics (CG) using Light Field data. With configurable capture and playback solutions, it supports a range of new immersive storytelling needs.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Casey Newton / The Verge:
Facebook announces Automatic Alternative Text on iOS, that uses AI to automatically describe images to blind users — Facebook begins using artificial intelligence to describe photos to blind users — Ask a member of Facebook’s growth team what feature played the biggest role in getting …
Facebook begins using artificial intelligence to describe photos to blind users
Second sight
http://www.theverge.com/2016/4/5/11364914/facebook-automatic-alt-tags-blind-visually-impared
Ask a member of Facebook’s growth team what feature played the biggest role in getting the company to a billion daily users, and they’ll likely tell you it was photos. The endless stream of pictures, which users have been able to upload since 2005, a year after Facebook’s launch, makes the social network irresistible to a global audience. It’s difficult to imagine Facebook without photos. Yet for millions of blind and visually impaired people, that’s been the reality for over a decade.
Not anymore. Today Facebook will begin automatically describing the content of photos to blind and visually impaired users. Called “automatic alternative text,” the feature was created by Facebook’s 5-year-old accessibility team.
Tomi Engdahl says:
HDCVI chipset pushes surveillance HD video 500 m over existing coax cable
http://www.cablinginstall.com/articles/2016/03/exar-hdcvi-surveillance.html?cmpid=Enl_CIM_CablingNews_April42016&eid=289644432&bid=1358279
Exar HDCVI Chipset summary of features:
– 1080p30, 1080p25, 720p60, 720p50, 720p30, 720p25 high-definition video formats
– PAL, NTSC standard-definition video formats
– Video, audio and control data transmission over 500m RG-59 coaxial cable
– Full compatibility with HDCVI 2.0 standard
Targeting high-definition video surveillance applications, Exar Corporation (NYSE: EXAR), a supplier of analog mixed-signal silicon for industrial, high-end consumer and infrastructure markets, has unveiled its High Definition Composite Video Interface (HDCVI) chipset, designed to deliver HD video over 500 meters on existing coaxial cable infrastructure.
The XR5P900 single-channel encoder and the XR5P920 four-channel decoder are fully compatible with other HDCVI products on the market as well as the HDCVI 2.0 standard administered by the HDcctv Alliance.
The XR5P900 HDCVI single channel encoder delivers uncompressed 1080p HD video up to 30 frames/second and 720p HD video up to 60 frames/second as well as audio and control data over the same coaxial cable. The device also supports standard-definition video in NTSC or PAL formats for compatibility with existing systems.
Video surveillance camera manufacturers can easily integrate the XR5P900 with an image signal processor or image sensor with a BT.1120 or BT.656 interface.
Tomi Engdahl says:
This neural network ‘hallucinates’ the right colors into black and white pictures
http://techcrunch.com/2016/03/31/this-neural-network-hallucinates-the-right-colors-into-black-and-white-pictures/
The machine overlords of the future may now, if it pleases them, eliminate all black and white imagery from the history of their meat-based former masters. All they’ll need is this system from Berkeley computer scientist Richard Zhang, which allows a soulless silicon sentience to “hallucinate” colors into any monochrome image.
It uses what’s called a convolutional neural network (several, actually) — a type of computer vision system that mimics low-level visual systems in our own brains in order to perceive patterns and categorize objects. Google’s DeepDream is probably the most well-known example of one.
Grass, for instance, has certain features — textures, common locations in images, certain other things often found on or near it. And grass is usually green, right? So when the network thinks it recognizes grass, it colors that region green.
http://richzhang.github.io/colorization/
Tomi Engdahl says:
NFL Communications:
NFL confirms streaming deal with Twitter for Thursday night games, allowing users to watch for free across mobile, tablet, web and connected TVs
National Football League and Twitter Announce Streaming Partnership for Thursday Night Football
https://nflcommunications.com/Pages/National-Football-League-and-Twitter-Announce-Streaming-Partnership-for-Thursday-Night-Football.aspx
Partners since 2013 through the Twitter Amplify program, the NFL and Twitter will provide free, live streaming video of Thursday Night Football without authentication to the over 800 Million registered and non-registered users worldwide on the Twitter platform on mobile phones, tablets, PCs and connected TVs.
Bloomberg:
Twitter acquires rights to stream NFL’s Thursday night games, part of an overall push into online programming and effort to attract mainstream users — Twitter Wins NFL Deal to Stream Thursday Night Games — Twitter Inc., making a strategic push into online programming …
Twitter Wins NFL Deal for Thursday Night Streaming Rights
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-05/twitter-said-to-win-nfl-deal-for-thursday-night-streaming-rights
Twitter Inc., making a strategic push into online programming, won a deal to show Thursday night National Football League games online.
The social-media company was said to have bid against a slate of heavyweights including Verizon Communications Inc., Yahoo! Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. Facebook Inc. dropped out of the contest last week
The deal gives Twitter a key piece of content to attract mainstream users in its quest to make its service a go-to place to react to and discuss live events.
Twitter would probably broadcast the games as a part of the six-month-old Moments feature, which could package a live event alongside commentary, behind-the-scenes tweets, and other content. Twitter also controls some of the advertising inventory for the games, Chief Operating Officer Adam Bain said on Twitter.
Tomi Engdahl says:
John Archer / Forbes:
Sony’s Ultra streaming service with $30 titles launches, but is only available in US, and for 2015 and 2016 Sony 4K Ultra HD TVs
Sony Launches Frustrating New 4K Ultra HD Movie Streaming Service
http://www.forbes.com/sites/johnarcher/2016/04/04/sony-launches-frustrating-new-4k-ultra-hd-movie-streaming-service/#25c7b5c043ff
While 4K/Ultra HD TVs are everywhere these days, true 4K sources are still relatively rare, even after the recent launch of the first Ultra HD Blu-ray player and discs. So the news that Sony has today launched a new 4K Ultra HD movie streaming service will likely sound like music to the ears of content-starved 4K TV owners. Be warned, though: the service comes with a couple of significant stings in its tail…
The new Sony service is called ULTRA, and as well as carrying films in 4K resolution it supports titles delivered in the new high dynamic range picture format (which introduces much more brightness and colour range to the video signal).
The service is handled via the Sony Pictures Store
Sony recommends broadband speeds of at least 20Mbps for ULTRA to stream well – roughly in line with the speeds recommended for Netflix and Amazon’s 4K UHD streams.
The ULTRA service is compatible with the UltraViolet scheme so that customers can connect their ULTRA profiles to existing UltraViolet libraries.
While you can only stream (not download) ULTRA into Sony’s 4K TVs, you could potentially download its 4K movie files to other UltraViolet-compatible devices.
If you buy one of Sony’s new 4K Android TVs this summer, you’ll be able to claim four complimentary movies when you sign up for the ULTRA service.
So far so good. Now, though, it’s time for the bad news. Kicking off with the facts that ULTRA is only available in the US, and is also only available on 2015 and 2016 Sony 4K Ultra HD televisions with the Android operating system.
The other seriously problematic thing about ULTRA is its cost. You can only buy the service’s 4K movies, not rent them, and the cost of buying them is set at a hefty $30.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Fidji Simo / Facebook:
Facebook overhauls Live Video with support for groups and events, reactions, comments, filters, and a global map — Introducing New Ways to Create, Share and Discover Live Video on Facebook — With Facebook Live you can use your phone to share a moment instantly with the people you care about.
Introducing New Ways to Create, Share and Discover Live Video on Facebook
http://newsroom.fb.com/news/2016/04/introducing-new-ways-to-create-share-and-discover-live-video-on-facebook/
With Facebook Live you can use your phone to share a moment instantly with the people you care about. This means your friends, family or fans can be there with you, and you can respond to their comments and see their reactions.
Since launching Facebook Live last summer to public figures via our Mentions app and more recently to everyone in the US using our iOS and Android apps we’ve been surprised and delighted with how people are using live video to connect and interact with each other all over the world.
Live for Groups and Events
“Going live” on Facebook feels special because you are going live with the people you care about. Today we’re rolling out the ability to go live in Facebook Groups and Facebook Events. Live in Groups allows you to broadcast to just the people in the Facebook Group – so you can go live in your family group, or share a workout plan in a fitness group.
Kurt Wagner / Re/code:
Facebook confirms it is paying media companies to use Live Video, sources say New York Times, BuzzFeed, Huffington Post, among those getting paid — It’s Not Just Celebrities — Facebook Is Paying Media Companies to Make Live Video, Too — Facebook wants big media companies like BuzzFeed …
It’s Not Just Celebrities — Facebook Is Paying Media Companies to Make Live Video, Too
http://recode.net/2016/04/06/facebook-paying-media-partners-like-buzzfeed-to-livestream/
Facebook wants big media companies like BuzzFeed and the New York Times to use its new livestreaming video service. So it’s paying them to do it.
In recent weeks Facebook has been pushing influential media properties and celebrities to use its Facebook Live product, which makes it easy to stream live video from your phone. Facebook has a lot of rewards for people who do what Facebook likes, and one of them is cash.
“We’re working with a few partners, and in some of the cases that includes a financial incentive,” Fidji Simo, the product director in charge of Facebook’s Live video push, told Re/code.
Tomi Engdahl says:
This TARDIS Is An Infrasonic Subwoofer
http://hackaday.com/2016/04/06/this-tardis-is-an-infrasonic-subwoofer/
If you’re a fan of action movies or dance music, you’ll probably be familiar with sub-bass. The moment in those James Bond explosions that thuds through your chest in the movie theatre? That’s the product of a large subwoofer, a tuned pipe housing a speaker working somewhere just above the lower limit of human hearing, in the tens of Hz.
But what about sound below the range of human hearing, below 20Hz? You can’t directly hear infrasound, but its presence can have a significant effect on the experience of the listener. [Mike Michaud] was interested in this phenomenon for his home movie setup so built himself an infrasonic subwoofer tuned to 17Hz. Since the resulting cabinet was rather large he disguised it as a vintage UK police telephone box
A resonant 17Hz speaker horn is a rather inconvenient size for a home theatre, at about 25 feet long. Fortunately there is no need for the horm to be straight
Folded Tapped Horn Subwoofer Tuned to 17hz
http://industriumvita.com/folded-tapped-horn-subwoofer-tuned-for-17hz/
17hz at 115db on 500 watts for $250.
It turns out that very loud infrasonic sound is not something humans normally experience very often, and when we do, it connects in some crazy visceral ways.
Very high amplitude infrasound is produced naturally by things like earthquakes and very powerful storms like tornadoes and hurricanes. We don’t really hear them like we do sound, or feel them like we do loud bass in the neighborhood of 80hz, but we do perceive them. They mostly just register as strange sense of dread or as an oppressive weight in the air, like an enormous power or sense of foreboding.
Hollywood has largely ignored infrasonics because it takes very large, very powerful audio equipment to produce them.
The LilWrecker is a derivative of dB’s housewrecker project.
http://www.avsforum.com/forum/155-diy-speakers-subs/1451519-lilmike-s-lilwrecker.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
Michelle Castillo / CNBC:
Sources: NFL selected Twitter because it felt Facebook undervalued content rights, has poor monetization model — Sources: Bad blood between NFL, Facebook led to Twitter deal — Twitter’s surprising deal to stream NFL games may have been the result of a dispute between the sports league …
Why the NFL went to Twitter instead of Facebook
http://www.cnbc.com/2016/04/06/sources-bad-blood-between-nfl-facebook-led-to-twitter-deal.html
Twitter’s surprising deal to stream NFL games may have been the result of a dispute between the sports league and the world’s largest social network — Facebook.
Several sources with knowledge of the NFL’s thinking said the league’s decision to partner with Twitter to stream 10 games next season may have been due to arguments with Facebook over how much its games are worth.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Huawei to double the camera is a big innovation
The smartphone is by far the most important tool for taking pictures these days.
The camera will start to be one of the most important features to the smartphone can stand out from their competitors. Huawei new P9-model dual camera may therefore hit the real bonanza.
Yesterday in London presented P9 model has been developed together with the camera manufacturer Leica. In the past has been presented afterwards to focus on graphics-friendly smartphones, but Huawei and Leica have taken this a whole new way.
P9 to the back of the shell has two cameras, one store in the RGB color information and the other a black and white data. The cells can be used to improve contrast and tones of the images in poor lighting conditions.
But more interesting use of two cell will be when they are used to store images with a short focus area – samples of which seem almost a professional photographer. Such forms and macro shots are stunning.
Source: http://etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=4226:huawein-tuplakamera-on-iso-innovaatio&catid=13&Itemid=101
Tomi Engdahl says:
Acne there, wrinkle here … A mouse click is Hollywood’s new Mida’s touch
Usually when people think of special effects, explosions, and the mind will be space battles. Special Effects everyday life is starker: mouse click can improve Hollywood actresses more beautiful and tuning their performance.
Vulture magazine article explains how television and film industry routinely uses a digital expertise näyttelijöihinsä. If the actor is eye bags, they will disappear in the second reading. If the skin has to be flawless, pimples disappear. Webs smaller? Successful. Six pack more visible? Be arranged.
In the same way the production studio can change the actor’s performance. If the expression described is not even enough to upset or sad, it highlights afterwards.
In one case, a television studio even changed the actor – simply replaced the actor’s face.
Source: http://www.tivi.fi/Kaikki_uutiset/finni-sielta-ryppy-taalta-hiiren-klikkaus-on-hollywoodin-uusi-midaan-kosketus-6539061
Tomi Engdahl says:
Stop! You will be monitored more accurately
Security and surveillance systems are an increasingly important part of our everyday lives. We were photographed, videotaped and monitored almost all the time. Today’s camera installations still use a higher level of processing and even artificial intelligence systems to automate data collection and the subsequent decision-making. Smile, you directed the camera is no longer so hidden!
Video surveillance has proven to be beneficial in many ways an advanced sensor
continuous technology development and the progress of the manufacture has taken video surveillance to a level where we can really get comfortable rely on the safety in use.
Due to lack of storage technologies in the early days of CCTV systems required to monitor the human eye, so some event had to time to get the most out of information. After that the picture was lost.
In fact, the man was a control processor alarm loop making a decision to trigger an alarm or not.
Machine vision now being integrated artificial intelligence that can produce a new generation of control systems. They need fewer operating personnel, are cheaper and recognize a larger range of items. These requirements raise the designers set the bar higher and higher more: now they need to integrate the functions at a higher level and a higher performance than ever before.
Design Issues & Concerns
Without modern memory chips speeds and densities, and without modern embedded processors in the performance of next-generation smart car vivid control systems would not be able to design a reasonable price or size. One reason is the additional burden of what improvement each image resolution can cause the entire rest of the system design.
Older 8-bit four-megahertz processors were enough well when engineers developed the first digital control loops.
The high-speed processors
Alongside video technologies has developed a number of advanced processor architectures and families, and they begin to be ready to meet the next generation of intelligent video surveillance. In all cases, use of external bus interfaces and most likely external high-speed DRAMs. The most advanced processors can handle assigned to several gigabytes of memory and support for a number of high-speed synchronous memory pathways such as DDR and SDR. The designers have to keep in mind when designing systems for memory bandwidth.
Transmission and concatenation
Communication requirements can be a key part of the design challenges of the next generation of control systems. When the data generated so much transmission speed keeps growing exponentially, as memory demands have increased. Also, the conveying distance becomes an issue to be considered. Even the popular one hundred megabit Ethernet link has its limitations when it is run long distances over CAT-type cabling.
Gigapixel level cameras have already become available in. NMOnet are concerned about security and privacy issues in society, but they can be prepared, that their doings are monitored continuously at increasingly higher resolutions. While the fiber connection supports data rates suurepia, copper has always been cheaper access to implement.
One of the most interesting emerging technology that is equivalent to, the bandwidth of the need alia, is CoaXPress standard. It is a coaxial cable acting, 6.25 gigabits per second, the transferring point-to-point link, which reaches up to 130 meters away.
What about wireless?
Although the wireless link to be possible, the range and bandwidth limitations make it practically unusable for most surveillance applications. In addition, the wireless links are easier to interfere, which would expose control applications with different attacks.
It is possible to use short links to wireless local centers or hubs.
It is not entirely unthinkable by the fact that in the near future all the surveillance cameras in public spaces will be integrated into the Internet of Things. This would mean that everyone would have access to all public surveillance devices
Source: http://etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=4233:seis-sinua-valvotaan-yha-tarkemmin&catid=13&Itemid=101
Tomi Engdahl says:
Nieman Lab:
Reuters Institute report: TV news must experiment and innovate to confront challenges of digital disruption
Digital disruption is coming quickly to TV news; how can broadcasters adapt and respond?
http://www.niemanlab.org/2016/04/digital-disruption-is-coming-quickly-to-tv-news-how-can-broadcasters-adapt-and-respond/
“The question should not be what will replace traditional television news. Nothing will. The question has to be: How can we move beyond television news as we know it?”
Television was supposed to be different, more resilient to digital disruption than print. For a long time, it was. It no longer is. Television today faces the full gales of creative destruction and digital disruption on a scale similar to what other media industries have faced. It is still an important medium, and will be so for years to come, but television will not remain the dominant force it was in the second half of the 20th century.
Viewing in countries like the U.S. and the U.K. has declined by three to four percent per year on average since 2012. These declines are directly comparable to the declines in print newspaper circulation in the 2000s. If compounded over 10 years, the result is a decline in viewing of a quarter or more. The average audience of many television news programs is by now older than the average audience of many print newspapers. The decline in viewing among younger people is far more pronounced, both for television viewing in general and for television news specifically.
Meanwhile, we see a rapid rise in online video viewing driven by video-sharing sites, video-on-demand services, and the integration of video into social media sites. The move to a “post-broadcast democracy” heralded by the rise of cable and satellite multichannel television in the 1990s and 2000s now point towards a “post-television democracy” as digital media are on track to overtake television as the most important sources of news.
The implications for journalism are potentially profound. Even as newspapers waned and digital media waxed in the 1990s and early 2000s, television remained the single most important and most widely used platform for news in many countries, and both private and public television news providers invested serious money in journalism serving international, national, and local audiences. Both the reach and the revenue will decline in the years ahead.
As television overall changes, television journalism too will have to change..
Because the environment is changing so rapidly right now, and because no clear set of best practices has been developed, the most important thing television news providers need to do to be in a position to respond effectively is to ensure that their organizations are capable of constant adaptation and change. Standard workflows and organizational forms can be very efficient, but they are rarely good at experimentation.
These approaches to experimentation, exploration, and innovation can help television journalists and television news providers confront the challenges television news face after more than half a century of pretty much uninterrupted dominance — how to reinvent its core social and political mission in a new environment, and how to find ways of resourcing it. The question should not be what will replace traditional television news. Nothing will. The question has to be: How can we move beyond television news as we know it?
Tomi Engdahl says:
iPhone Microscopy and Other Adventures
http://hackaday.com/2016/04/11/iphone-microscopy-and-other-adventures/
CMOS imaging chips have been steadily improving, their cost and performance being driven by the highly competitive smartphone industry. As CMOS sensors get better and cheaper, they get more interesting for hacker lab projects. In this post I’m going to demonstrate a few applications of the high-resolution sensor that you’ve already got in your pocket — or wherever you store your cell phone.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Lucas Matney / TechCrunch:
Lytro’s Cinema 755-megapixel light field camera offers 40K resolution at 300 FPS, could make green screens obsolete; rental packages start at $125K — Lytro’s 755 megapixel Cinema light field camera is going to kill the green screen — Lytro is taking its rich, volumetric 3D camera capture technology into the world of TV and film.
Lytro’s 755 megapixel Cinema light field camera is going to kill the green screen
http://techcrunch.com/2016/04/11/lytro-cinema-is-giving-filmmakers-400-gigabytes-per-second-of-creative-freedom/
Lytro is taking its rich, volumetric 3D camera capture technology into the world of TV and film.
The company’s light field solution is a truly beautiful technology that may eventually be in every camera we snap a shot or video with. The tech essentially uses data on all of the available light in a photo to separate objects by depth and store them in a three-dimensional grid. In the future this technology will allow the simple creation of VR-ready navigable 3D spaces, but right now it’s enabling filmmakers the ability to achieve a level of detail and flexibility in gathering shots and making post-production edits that wasn’t previously possible.
Today, the company introduced Lytro Cinema, which is the company’s effort to woo those in the television and film industries with cool camera technology that makes their jobs easier.
The Lytro Cinema camera gathers a truly staggering amount of information on the world around it. The 755 RAW megapixel 40K resolution, 300 FPS camera takes in as much as 400 gigabytes per second of data.
Lytro Cinema
https://www.lytro.com/cinema
The first professional Light Field solution for cinema, providing unparalleled creative freedom and flexibility on set and in post-production.
Lytro Cinema captures all the rays of light within a scene, providing a rich amount of Light Field data. Every pixel has color properties, directional properties, and its exact placement in space.
Lytro Cinema is defying the traditional physics of on set capture by virtualizing creative camera decisions. Infinite creative choices can be generated in post-production including unprecedented control over focus, perspective, aperture and shutter angle – recreating impossible shots.
POST-CAPTURE REFOCUS
& EXTENDED DEPTH OF FIELD
With Light Field cinematography, creative camera controls transform into flexible post-production processes, liberating shots from restrictive on-set decisions.
Focus the camera near or far, control the size of the aperture, and create a shot as if that exact decision was made on set.
Depth Screen
With depth screen, it’s as if there is a green screen for every object in the scene. But it’s not limited to any one object. It’s anywhere in space.
Composite foregrounds and backgrounds using depth information and reduce the demand for cumbersome and expensive green screens on set.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Martin Bryant / The Next Web:
Periscope tests letting you sketch on top of your live video streams, says it’s rolling out the feature to everyone in a few weeks — Periscope tests letting you draw on top of your live video streams — The current beta version of Twitter’s video streaming app Periscope includes a feature …
Periscope tests letting you draw on top of your live video streams
http://thenextweb.com/apps/2016/04/11/periscope-tests-letting-doodle-top-live-streams/
The current beta version of Twitter’s video streaming app Periscope includes a feature that lets you draw over the top of your own live feeds.
The new tool lets you draw in three primary colors or use a dropper to select a color from your live video. The doodles fade out after a couple of seconds, meaning that they’re likely to mostly be used for highlighting people or objects in a live feed.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Machine vision market in North America sets new record in 2015
http://www.vision-systems.com/articles/2016/03/machine-vision-market-in-north-america-sets-new-record-in-2015.html?cmpid=VSDTopicR04112016&eid=289644432&bid=1365041
Sales of machine vision components and systems in North America grew to $2.3 billion in 2015, the highest annual total on record, according to new figures released by the AIA.
Total machine vision sales figures, which grew less than 1%, includes the sales of machine vision components and machine vision systems.
Machine vision components sales grew 4% to $316 million 2015. This includes were lighting (16% growth), imaging boards (10%), and software (4%). Sales of machine vision systems in 2015 was flat at $2 billion, with application specific machine vision systems growing by 1% to $1.7 billion, and smart cameras contracting by 4% to $289 million.
“Fifty-nine percent of industry experts are expecting things to turn upward for machine vision component markets in the first six months of 2016, 39% believe they will remain flat, and three percent expect further declines,” said Alex Shikany, AIA’s Director of Market Analysis. “For machine vision systems, 56% of survey respondents believe the category will remain flat, 32% expect an increase, and 12% expect a decline.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Casey Newton / The Verge:
Facebook has built a 360-degree video camera called Surround 360, open-sources its specs and design — This is Facebook’s gorgeous, open-source 360-degree video camera — Hoping to dramatically increase the amount of 360-degree video on its platform, Facebook today unveiled a reference design …
This is Facebook’s gorgeous, open-source 360-degree video camera
Meet the new state of the art
http://www.theverge.com/2016/4/12/11395898/facebook-surround-360-video-camera-vr-f8-conference
Hoping to dramatically increase the amount of 360-degree video on its platform, Facebook today unveiled a reference design for a high-end video capture system and announced plans to release it as an open-source project on GitHub. Shaped like a flying saucer, Facebook Surround 360 uses a 17-camera array and accompanying web-based software to capture images in 360 degrees and render them automatically. Facebook says the design solves a variety of technical problems with 360-degree video capture better than anything now on the market, and is encouraging manufacturers and hobbyists to use its designs to build cameras of their own.
The rig includes 14 wide-angle cameras bolted onto the flying saucer, plus one fish-eye camera on top and two more on the bottom.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Cade Metz / Wired:
Mark Zuckerberg talks about Facebook’s future: Messenger bots, AI, live video, virtual reality, and open sourcing key technologies
How Will Zuckerberg Rule the World? By Giving Facebook’s Tech Away
http://www.wired.com/2016/04/mark-zuckerberg-giving-away-facebooks-tech-free/
‘The real goal is to build the community. A lot of times, the best way to advance the technology is to work on it as a community.’
Facebook has designed a 360-degree video camera, and it’s giving the designs away. The plan is part of Zuckerberg’s sweeping effort to move the Internet beyond text and photos and video to a new mode of communication.
More than five years ago, Facebook started open sourcing much of the specialized software it built to drive its online empire, including sweeping database and analysis tools like Cassandra and Hadoop. Then it started sharing designs for the hardware it built to prop up this empire, including computer servers and networking gear, even entire data centers. And just recently, the company said it would give away all sorts of hardware it’s been building as a way of delivering Internet access to all the people on Earth who don’t have it, including drones and communications lasers and wireless antennas.