Here are some audio and video trends for 2019:
The global Hi-Fi Systems market was valued at million US$ in 2018 and is expected to grow. EISA Awards has selected Hi-Fi product category winners, but I did not see anything really fancy new innovations that would excite me there. The Hi-Fi speaker market has seen considerable consolidation over the years but is expected to grow. The global Hi-Fi speaker system market is highly competitive. Various established international brands, domestic brands and as well as new entrants form a competitive landscape. The market is expected to have higher growth rate as compared to the previous years due to the booming electronic industry globally. It is due to the rising income of individuals globally and increasing affordability of technology products globally. Due to technological adoption and smart gadgets, North America region is showing steady growth in the Hi-Fi speaker system market. On technology standpoint the Hi-Fi market is mainly based on pretty much stabilized technology as class D amplifiers have been on mainstream for many years.
Smart TVs are everywhere. The vast majority of televisions available today are “smart” TVs, with internet connections, ad placement, and streaming services built in. Despite the added functionality, TV prices are lower than ever. Your new smart TV was so affordable because it is collecting and selling your data. It is clear that TV companies are in a cutthroat business, and that companies like Vizio would have to charge higher prices for hardware if they didn’t run content, advertising, and data businesses. Google wants sensors and cameras in every room of your home to watch, analyze, you, patents show.
Streaming services competition stays high. Apple’s embracing the TV industry for the first time: Vizio and LG TVs will support AirPlay 2 and HomeKit, while Samsung TVs will get an iTunes Movies & TV app, as well as AirPlay 2 support. Google and Amazon are playing are important players on smart speaker markets.
4K video resolution is still as hot as in 2019 – it us becoming mainstream and getting cheaper. Peraso showcases 4K wireless video at CES 2019. LG has produced a market-ready rollable OLED TV. The new 75-inch 4K Micro LED TV announced at CES 2019 proves Samsung is serious about scaling the technology to do battle with OLED. But it seems that even in 1029 “4K” trend remains woefully deficient from a compelling-content-availability standpoint. CES 2019 is already full of weird and wonderful monitors.
But new higher 8K resolution is being pushed to market. The “8K” (resolution) tagline was apparently everywhere at CES this year. Samsung announced a 98-inch 8K TV because why not. LG has come strong to CES 2019 with an 88-inch 8K OLED TV, a 75-inch 8K LED/LCD TV, HDMI 2.1, new auto calibration features, Alexa built in, and many more features. It seems that this ongoing evolution is occurring out of necessity: as a given-size (and -pixel-dense) display becomes a low profit margin commodity, manufacturers need to continually “up-rev” one or both key consumer-attention-grabbing parameters (along with less quantifiable attributes like image quality) in order to remain profitable … assuming they can continue to stimulate sufficient-sized consumer demand in the process. I am not sure if they can stimulate 8K to mass market in next few years.
Wall size TVs are coming. Samsung announced a modular TV at CES. Samsung first showcased this MicroLED TV technology at CES 2018, showcasing how the screens were composed of millions of individual LEDs. Individuals screens could be combined to create massive displays, which the company calls The Wall TV. The wall-sized displays shown in recent years at CES are, in my opinion, quite ridiculous, at least for the masses.
HDMI updates are coming. At present, the HDMI equipment uses the 2.0 standard (adopted in 2013) tht provides support for example for 4K video. HDMI Forum announced a new 2.1 standard already in November 2017, but it just starter showing in CES in January 2019. 8K fiber-optic HDMI cables seen at CES 2019. The 2.1 standard is a big change in technology at the bus bandwidth increases from 18 gigabit to 48 gigabits per second. This enables up to 10K video transmission and up to 120 frames per second.
Bendable displays are really coming to PCs and smart phones. LG’s “rollable” display shown this year neatly showcased the technology’s inherent flexibility while also addressing the question of how to hide a gargantuan display when it’s not in use. Several foldable smart phones have been shown. Chinese company Royole was showing off the FlexPai at CES in Las Vegas.
Micro displays for VR and AR glasses have developed. MicroLED is better looking, more efficient and more versatile than any previous display tech. Now all Samsung, Sony, LG and others have to do is figure out how to manufacture it affordably.Nanoco Technologies and Plessey Semiconductors have partnered to shrink the pixel size of monolithic microLED displays using Nanoco’s cadmium-free quantum-dot (CFQD quantum dots) semiconductor nanoparticle technology. Microchips and organic LEDs that deliver 4K-like high resolution displays a quarter of the size and half the weight of existing virtual reality (VR) headsets have been developed under a European Union project. Marc Andreessen says VR will be “1,000” times bigger than AR even though VR seems to be the popular whipping boy amongst the tech community.
There seems to be no shortage of angst with the current (and unfortunately burgeoning) popularity of usage of the term artificial intelligence (AI). Intelligence has been defined in many ways which makes it hard to get good picture on what is going on. I am still waiting for sensible intelligent AI to do something useful. But the ability for a sufficiently trained deep learning system to pattern-match images, sound samples, computer viruses, network hacking attempts, and the like is both impressive and effective.
Potential problems related to the coming of self-driving car technologies and cameras are expected. A man at CES in Las Vegas says that a car-mounted lidar permanently damaged the sensor in his new $1,998 Sony a7R II mirrorless camera. Man says CES lidar’s laser was so powerful it wrecked his $1,998 camera because the LIDAR laser power rules ensure lasers are safe for human eyes—but not necessarily for cameras. Is this something that camera and car manufacturers need to figure out together?
2019 Will Be the Year of Open Source from software and even hardware. Open source video player app VLC has now reached 3 billions downloads.
When almost all AV products are pushing more and more features, it seems that almost Everything is too complicated for an average Joe.
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Tomi Engdahl says:
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/19/rc-car-becomes-cable-cam/
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https://hackaday.com/2020/08/06/just-who-makes-tubes-these-days/
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https://controlgeek.net/blog/2020/8/20/musical-time-using-a-conductors-beats-to-vary-the-speed-of-a-video-and-other-media
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https://controlgeek.net/blog/2020/8/20/development-and-evolution-of-show-technology-articles-and-timeline
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https://controlgeek.net/blog/2020/8/20/midi-20
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$1 Hearing Aid Could Treat Millions With Hearing Loss
https://science.slashdot.org/story/20/09/24/2311203/1-hearing-aid-could-treat-millions-with-hearing-loss?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Slashdot%2Fslashdot%2Fto+%28%28Title%29Slashdot+%28rdf%29%29
Saad Bhamla, an undergraduate in Mumbai, India, has invented a do-it-yourself hearing aid made from inexpensive, easy-to-find parts. “At bulk rates, Bhamla says, it would cost just under $1 to make,” reports Science Magazine. “But anyone with the freely available blueprints and a soldering iron can make their own for not much more — maybe $15 or $20, Bhamla says.” From the report:
Inspired by his grandparents and a hearing-impaired colleague — who is the first author on the new paper — Bhamla and his team set out to develop a cheap hearing aid built with off-the-shelf parts. They soldered a microphone onto a small circuit board to capture nearby sound and added an amplifier and a frequency filter to specifically increase the volume of high-pitch sounds above 1000 hertz. Then they added a volume control, an on/off switch, and an audio jack for plugging in standard earphones, as well as a battery holder. The device, dubbed LoCHAid, is the size of a matchbox and can be worn like a necklace.
This $1 hearing aid could treat millions with hearing loss
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/09/1-hearing-aid-could-treat-millions-hearing-loss
As an undergraduate in Mumbai, India, Saad Bhamla wanted to do something nice for his maternal grandparents: Buy them a pair of hearing aids. But the prices were shockingly high—and far beyond his means. Now, 15 years later, the bioengineer has invented a device to help grandparents across the globe: a do-it-yourself hearing aid made from inexpensive, easy-to-find parts. The no-frills device, described in a new study, could help restore hearing to millions suffering from age-related hearing loss—for less than the price of a bottle of water.
The new device is “incredibly compelling,” says Frank Lin, an ear, nose, and throat doctor at the Cochlear Center for Hearing and Public Health at Johns Hopkins University who was not involved in the work.
Globally, 230 million people aged 65 and older experience age-related hearing loss. Typically, high-pitch sounds become harder to distinguish, like electronic beeps and speech sounds such as “s” and “th.” Conversations can seem mumbled, and background noise feels distracting and invasive. Such deficiencies can be isolating, Lin says, and his research suggests they can also accelerate cognitive decline.
Inspired by his grandparents and a hearing-impaired colleague—who is first author on the new paper—Bhamla and his team set out to develop a cheap hearing aid built with off-the-shelf parts. They soldered a microphone onto a small circuit board to capture nearby sound and added an amplifier and a frequency filter to specifically increase the volume of high-pitch sounds above 1000 hertz. Then they added a volume control, an on/off switch, and an audio jack for plugging in standard earphones, as well as a battery holder. The device, dubbed LoCHAid, is the size of a matchbox and can be worn like a necklace. At bulk rates, Bhamla says, it would cost just under $1 to make. But anyone with the freely available blueprints and a soldering iron can make their own for not much more—maybe $15 or $20, Bhamla says. The parts are easy to source, he says, and putting them together takes less than 30 minutes.
SI Movie1 for Sinha et al. PLOS ONE 2020. Construction of the LoCHAid.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0gnbOJ3nDo
https://github.com/bhamla-lab/LoCHAid-2020-PLOS-ONE
Tomi Engdahl says:
Compact and relatively low-cost, the “four-dimensional” camera system can capture 3D data as well as the unique spectra of materials.
Smart “Hyperspectral Stripe Projector” Captures 3D Data, Spectral Information in Real-Time
https://www.hackster.io/news/smart-hyperspectral-stripe-projector-captures-3d-data-spectral-information-in-real-time-7800b26fa3d5
Compact and relatively low-cost, the “four-dimensional” camera system can capture 3D data as well as the unique spectra of materials.
Engineers at Rice University have unveiled a new type of 3D camera system, dubbed a Hyperspectral Stripe Projector (HSP), which combines four dimensions: the three spatial dimensions, plus a spectral dimension.
“We’re getting four-dimensional information from an image, three spatial and one spectral, in real time,” Associate Professor Kevin Kelly explains of the team’s work. “Other people use multiple modulators and thus require bright light sources to accomplish this, but we found we could do it with a light source of normal brightness and some clever optics.”
“Regular RGB (red, green, blue) cameras basically give you only three spectral channels,” adds lead author Yibo Xu. “But a hyperspectral camera gives us spectra in many, many channels. We can capture red at around 700 nanometers and blue at around 400 nanometers, but we can also have bandwidths at every few nanometers or less between. That gives us fine spectral resolution and a fuller understanding of the scene.”
The team’s work has been published under open-access terms in the journal Optics Express.
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://www.thomann.de/blog/fi/mita-on-elokuvien-aanisuunnittelu/?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=feed&utm_content=blog_sound_design
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If Listening To Music Gives You Chills You May Have A Unique Brain
https://www.iflscience.com/brain/if-listening-to-music-gives-you-chills-you-may-have-a-unique-brain/
Tomi Engdahl says:
‘They used my picture and I should’ve got paid for it’
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-53998711
Tomi Engdahl says:
Automate 35mm film scanning with Arduino and Python
https://blog.arduino.cc/2020/09/24/automate-35mm-film-scanning-with-arduino-and-python/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://www.iflscience.com/brain/what-you-see-in-your-peripheral-vision-is-basically-an-optical-illusion/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/stunning-winners-of-the-nature-infocus-photography-awards-highlight-pressing-conservation-issues/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Watch The Mind-Blowing Winning Videos From 2020′s Nikon Small World In Motion Competition
https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/watch-the-mindblowing-winning-videos-from-2020s-nikon-small-world-in-motion-competition/
Tomi Engdahl says:
3D Printing a Colossal Camera Arm to Capture More Professional Shots
https://www.hackster.io/news/3d-printing-a-colossal-camera-arm-to-capture-more-professional-shots-d0a864af0f38
Purchasing a camera arm like this would have cost thousands of dollars, but Alexandre Chappel was able to build his own on a budget.
professional movie cameras, along with all of the equipment needed to utilize them, are very expensive. Most amateurs and hobbyists are never going to be able to afford to purchase them. But with a little ingenuity, you can approximate that gear on a budget. Alexandre Chappel did that by using 3D-printed parts to build a massive camera arm.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=V9e9ZWflCQU
Tomi Engdahl says:
DIY 3D Camera with Raspberry Pi
Photographers on a budget can build their own 3D camera using a pair of Raspberry Pis and Raspberry Pi High Quality Cameras.
https://www.hackster.io/news/diy-3d-camera-with-raspberry-pi-ef403d059fd9
https://magpi.raspberrypi.org/articles/make-a-3d-camera
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The Intense Sound of 1,000 Analog Oscillators
https://spectrum.ieee.org/geek-life/profiles/the-intense-sound-of-1000-analog-oscillators
Which raises the question: Can you ever have too many oscillators?
The KiloDrone was built to answer that question. It’s a drone synth, which means it produces sustained sounds, rather than the characteristic attack and decay of, say, a piano. Typically, a drone synth has two to eight oscillators. The KiloDrone, as its name suggests, has 1,000.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Less Than 50% Of Entertainment Industry Says Any Progress Made Since #MeToo, Survey Says
https://www.forbes.com/sites/carlieporterfield/2020/09/29/less-than-50-of-entertainment-industry-says-any-progress-made-since-metoo-survey-says/?utm_campaign=forbes&utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_term=Gordie/#676f7264696
Three years after accusations against disgraced movie producer Harvey Weinstein pushed the #MeToo movement to national prominence, less than half of those working in entertainment say they have seen any progress in addressing power abuse in the industry, according to a new survey.
According to the survey of nearly 10,000 self-identified entertainment industry professionals, only 48% reported seeing any improvement in the abuse of power in the industry since #MeToo took off in 2017.
The vast majority of workers (more than 90%) said they would welcome a helpline to call, resources on how to report an incident, training for bystander intervention and other measures.
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Japanese hacker Sanasol was able to digitize his old Nikon FM film SLR using an M5Stack ESP32 Camera.
This Hacker Converted a Vintage Film Camera Into a DSLR
https://www.hackster.io/news/this-hacker-converted-a-vintage-film-camera-into-a-dslr-7b40c533d2b7
Sanasol was able to digitize his old Nikon FM film SLR using an M5Stack ESP32 Camera.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Chris Welch / The Verge:
Google Chromecast (2020) review: excellent value for a 4K device and Google TV is great, but performance sometimes dips and home screen isn’t customizable — The new Google TV software makes it easy to find something to watch — The new Chromecast is a much different product …
Google Chromecast (2020) review: reinvented — and now with a remote
The new Google TV software makes it easy to find something to watch
https://www.theverge.com/21495609/google-chromecast-2020-review-streaming-remote-control?scrolla=5eb6d68b7fedc32c19ef33b4
Tomi Engdahl says:
Cinematography miniature effects
https://www.facebook.com/195610820484477/posts/3353172351394959/
https://www.facebook.com/195610820484477/posts/3350191558359705/
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JPEG XS ̶ a game changer technology for future production workflows.
Find out more on #IBCSHOWCASE
https://bit.ly/3l8GQWA
FRAUNHOFER IAIS: JPEG XS IMAGE CODING FOR VIDEO OVER IP
https://www.ibc.org/ibcshowcase/fraunhofer-iais-jpeg-xs-image-coding-for-video-over-ip/6686.article
JPEG XS is a new mezzanine video codec standard targeting highest quality for slight compression ratios at low complexity and low latency. It addresses the needs of the broadcast industry to send production feeds over multiple Ethernet based links and offers visually lossless quality while reducing the amount of data by a factor of up to 12.
Tomi Engdahl says:
You’re looking at one of the largest lighting rigs ever built. It’s made up of 1k CP62 bulbs, each individually controllable by a dimmer. The rig was powered by four MEMS one megawatt generators, three running and one as backup.
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Movie : 1917
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Directed by Sam Mendes
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Cinematorgapher Roger Deakins
https://www.facebook.com/195610820484477/posts/3356244577754403/
Tomi Engdahl says:
“Nopeasti huomasimme, että etenkin tutuista kappaleista tuli keskelle työpäivää sellainen hyvä fiilis ja noste.”
-Proviisori Minna Lähdevuori
https://www.musiikkiluvat.fi/taustamusiikki-luo-apteekkiin-rauhallisen-tunnelman/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=apteekkihaastattelu_lokakuu_fbad_teksti_v1
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Bond was the last straw: Regal and Cineworld will reportedly close all theaters in US and UK next week
The dominoes are falling
https://www.theverge.com/2020/10/3/21500538/regal-cineworld-theaters-shut-down-james-bond-us-uk?fbclid=IwAR2lOaqfWt7aobPvfp4S17YruxWNJ55w-eWYew4gyATG264BqGd7F-r6n-g&fbclid=IwAR391LB6YKB-BmD_bb1KF1q0eYp0qm0HbmBzywwB5DZXxW7uQ-irz2zvCuU&fbclid=IwAR00IocMxyvueSZoOHrYAFpE53s0-HWo-4IGRH5hgIJMQWRlbR_IFhqqWyk
Cineworld, owner of the largest chain of theaters in the UK and Ireland and the second-largest in the United States — Regal Cinemas — will reportedly close all its theaters next week, according to Variety, The Sunday Times, and others.
Variety reports that all 543 theaters in the US will be closed, which account for the chain’s 7,000+ screens in the region. The Sunday Times reports that it will close all 128 theaters in the UK and Ireland, too.
Both say James Bond is the reason.
Yesterday, the 25th James Bond film — No Time to Die — was pushed back to April 2021 due to the ongoing pandemic, denying theaters one of the last major tentpole releases due out this year.
The news is coming as a shock to Cineworld’s employees
Cineworld in particular reported a loss of $1.6 billion in the first half of 2020. AMC, the largest US theater chain, has experienced dire results due to the pandemic as well.
Disney/Pixar’s Soul is still slated for theaters in November, and both Wonder Woman 1984 and Dune were expected in December, but it seems even more likely that they’d be delayed if these theaters are closed. At this point, we’re beyond mere caution: the dominoes are falling.
Cineworld “Considering The Temporary Closure” Of U.K. Cinemas & U.S. Regal, No “Final Decision” Yet – Update
https://deadline.com/2020/10/cineworld-regal-closing-cinemas-no-time-to-die-delay-1234590897/
Tomi Engdahl says:
VJ-kulttuuri sai ensimmäisen kotimaisen festivaalinsa: Ideoita visuaaliseen ilmaisuun haetaan vaikkapa Leonardo da Vinciltä
Helsingissä järjestetty Aavistus Festival tarjosi katsauksen audiovisuaaliseen kulttuuriin.
https://yle.fi/uutiset/3-11578533
Tomi Engdahl says:
Thomas Nicholson / WIRED UK:
YouTubers are using AI software like DeOldify to upscale and “enhance” historic footage into 4K, but historians say the result undermines the footage
YouTubers are upscaling the past to 4K. Historians want them to stop
https://www.wired.co.uk/article/history-colourisation-controversy
YouTubers are using AI to bring history to life. But historians argue the process is nonsense
The first time you see Denis Shiryaev’s videos, they feel pretty miraculous. You can walk through New York as it was in 1911, or ride on Wuppertal’s flying train at the turn of the 20th century, or witness the birth of the moving image in a Leeds garden in 1888.
Shiryaev’s YouTube channel is a showcase for his company Neural Love, based in Gdansk, Poland, which uses a combination of neural networks and algorithms to overhaul historic images. Some of the very earliest surviving film has been cleaned, unscuffed, repaired, colourised, stabilised, corrected to 60 frames per second and upscaled to vivid 4K resolution.
For viewers, it almost feels like time travel.
But these vivid videos and images haven’t wowed everyone. Digital upscalers and the millions who’ve watched their work on YouTube say they’re making the past relatable for viewers in 2020, but for some historians of art and image-making, modernising century-old archives brings a host of problems. Even adding colour to black and white photographs is hotly contested.
“The problem with colourisation is it leads people to just think about photographs as a kind of uncomplicated window onto the past, and that’s not what photographs are,” says Emily Mark-FitzGerald, Associate Professor at University College Dublin’s School of Art History and Cultural Policy.
Peck says Neural Love makes clear to clients the huge difference the company sees between “the restoration aspect and the enhancement aspect”. They see the removal of scratches, noise, dust or other imperfections picked up during processing as a less ethically fraught process to upscaling and colourising. “You’re really returning the film to its original state,” she says.
That’s not a view many academics hold, however. Luke McKernan, lead curator of news and moving images at the British Library, was particularly scathing about Peter Jackson’s 2018 World War One documentary They Shall Not Grow Old, which upscaled and colourised footage from the Western Front. Making the footage look more modern, he argued, undermined it. “It is a nonsense,” he wrote. “Colourisation does not bring us closer to the past; it increases the gap between now and then. It does not enable immediacy; it creates difference.”
DeOldify and Neural Love, though, see their tools as a means of bridging the gap of understanding opened up by a century of technological advancement. Their tech is a means of making jerky, jittery images seem suddenly modern, but for historians, the distance between now and then is the whole point. “It’s the effort that creates the understanding,” McKernan writes. “Without that there is no true sympathy, only false sentiment. Film that looks like it was shot last week belongs only to last week.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
HDR Ultra-High Contrast TVs — Market Trends and Competing Technologies
https://www.eetimes.com/hdr-ultra-high-contrast-tvs-market-trends-and-competing-technologies/
The TV displays market is a competitive space which has continued to drive the development of new HDR technologies to enhance picture quality for LCDs, the dominant display technology today. Some of these new technologies aim to deliver a contrast performance which is equivalent to OLED, but at lower cost in order to be able to address the mass consumer market.
The deeper blacks possible from HDR displays are strongly desirable in TVs (for movies, particularly in low lighting) but also for other products such as surface-integrated automotive displays, monitors and notebooks. While OLEDs offer excellent blacks, LCD can offer much brighter luminance, meaning HDR LCD has the opportunity to offer the best of both worlds for the viewer.
What’s next?
All these competing HDR technologies face their own specific technical and manufacturing challenges. Some of them are easier to overcome than others and it will be ultimately up to display makers and the supply chain to invest and realize the most promising technologies – manufacturing costs will play an important role as they will impact on product price, as will of course demand and market potential. Time will tell which technology will prevail, but with so much innovation happening, TVs performance is only set to improve.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Keep Your YouTube Habits To Yourself With FreeTube
https://hackaday.com/2020/10/07/keep-your-youtube-habits-to-yourself-with-freetube/
Entering the conversation: the FreeTube project, a cross-platform application whose mission is to regain privacy and put the control of one’s data back into the user’s hands. Bypassing YouTube and its player, the watch history and subscriptions — which are still possible — are kept only locally on your own computer, and you can import either of them from YouTube and export them to use within FreeTube on another device (or back to YouTube). Even better, it won’t load a video’s comments without explicitly telling it to, and of course it keeps out the ads as well.
https://freetubeapp.io/
What is FreeTube?
FreeTube is a YouTube client for Windows, Mac, and Linux built around using YouTube more privately. You can enjoy your favorite content and creators without your habits being tracked. All of your user data is stored locally and never sent or published to the internet. FreeTube grabs data by scraping the information it needs (with either local methods or by optionally utilizing the Invidious API). With many features similar to YouTube, FreeTube has become one of the best methods to watch YouTube privately on desktop.
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Many people suffer from Tinnitus, or phantom sounds, in the ears, but treatment remains elusive. Now a new trial shows that stimulating patients’ tongues with electricity while listening to selected sounds could ease symptoms
Treating Tinnitus Through the…Tongue?
https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-human-os/biomedical/devices/treating-tinnitus-through-thetongue
It can sound like a soft buzzing in one’s ears. Or a sudden hissing. Or a loud roaring. Tinnitus, the sensation of hearing phantom sounds, ranges from annoying to debilitating, and it affects an estimated 10 to 15 percent of the population. Unfortunately, finding relief from these symptoms can be tough.
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Logan Moore / Wall Street Journal:
Dispo, a camera app which makes users wait until the next morning for photos to “fully develop”, raises $4M led by Alexis Ohanian’s new fund Seven Seven Six
Reddit Co-founder Alexis Ohanian’s New Venture Fund Invests in Disposable Camera App
https://www.wsj.com/articles/reddit-cofounder-alexis-ohanians-new-venture-fund-invests-in-disposable-camera-app-11602072245?mod=djemalertNEWS
Seven Seven Six fund leads a $4 million seed round for social-media platform Dispo, also known as David’s Disposable
Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian’s new venture fund made its first investment, in a Los Angeles-based app that lets users relive the nostalgic features of disposable cameras, the companies announced Wednesday.
The Seven Seven Six fund led a $4 million seed round for the social-media platform, Dispo, also known as David’s Disposable, created by internet star David Dobrik and friend Natalie Mariduena.
Mr. Dobrik and Dispo CEO Daniel Liss say the app offers users what other social-media platforms haven’t: Authentic real-life moments captured without editing.
Dispo users snap a picture and wait until 9 the next morning for the photo “to fully develop” and can order prints directly from the app to their home.
“With disposable photos, you’re not sitting there and making sure you get the right photo,” Mr. Dobrik said.
He said the idea came from his friends using real disposable cameras during parties. They enjoyed the process of waiting to reveal what photos they took together, he said.
In contrast, other social-media platforms like Instagram and Snapchat have leaned on the use of filters and animations.
Tomi Engdahl says:
How To Shoot A Great Project Video
https://hackaday.com/2020/10/09/how-to-shoot-a-great-project-video/
Creating projects is fun, but the real value, as far as the imaginary Internet points are concerned, is how well you show them off for the clout. Taking a few snaps is fine, but if you want to produce a quality video of your project, it pays to put some thought and effort into the process.
Tomi Engdahl says:
How robots made this food commercial look effortless
For beautiful food, sometimes you need a robot.
https://www.vox.com/21515004/robot-commercial-film
Giralt’s toolkit includes Arduino programming, Maya, welding, epoxies, super-expensive cameras that can shoot incredible slow motion, and a lot of elbow grease and ingenuity. This form of commercial art shows how technology can make amazing images happen — and you don’t always need computer graphics to do it.
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Movie theaters struggling to find any new Hollywood movies to show should consider cutting deals with an unlikely provider: Netflix, Amazon and other big streaming services, a report suggests.
Struggling Theaters Should Buy Movies From The Streaming Services, Analyst Suggests
http://on.forbes.com/6189G4IbB
With Hollywood studios pushing most blockbusters into next year or even later, the already grim prospects for movie theaters are only getting worse, with a dearth of content exacerbating audiences’ Covid-19 concerns.
One solution: buy movies from Amazon, Netflix and other streamers, the exact companies whose online alternatives are making the theaters’ continued operation so complicated. At least, that’s the suggestion from MoffettNathanson analyst Robert Fishman.
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://hackaday.com/2020/10/16/shocking-tinnitus-therapy-is-music-to-sufferers-ears/
Tomi Engdahl says:
How NOT to create MP3 music from cassette (Feat. Techmoan)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNgm8Cn-HpY
In this video, I take a look at a retro boombox by QFX which is advertised to convert cassette tapes to MP3, but everything is not as it seems.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Sony’s $5,000 3D display (probably) isn’t for you
https://techcrunch.com/2020/10/15/sonys-5000-3d-display-probably-isnt-for-you/?tpcc=ECFB2020
Sony just announced a $5,000 3D display, but odds are it’s probably not for you. Primarily known for its consumer goods, the company is targeting creative professionals with the Spatial Reality Display — more specifically, those working in fields like computer graphics and visual effects for films. Basically it’s a way for artists to view their 3D creations without having to wear a VR headset.
The company’s not the first to offer up this kind of technology for a fairly niche audience. The Looking Glass display is probably the best-known offering in the space up to this point. But unlike that massive 8K screen, Sony’s product is actually designed for a single user — specifically as a screen for their desktop PC. Also, it kind of looks like an Amazon Echo Show.
Looking Glass starts shipping its 8K holographic display
https://techcrunch.com/2020/05/26/looking-glass-starts-shipping-its-8k-holographic-display/
When Looking Glass Factory showed of its first holographic display way back in August 2018, it felt more like a proof of concept than anything — though it was immediately an impressive concept. In November of last year, the Brooklyn-based startup showed off an 8K display that used its holographic tech.
The feeling wasn’t quite as immersive, but the form factor certainly made more sense. The system has 33.2 million pixels and relies on a 45-element light field to provide a 3D effect.
Tomi Engdahl says:
AMC Shares Plummet 13% As It Attempts To Raise More Cash To Avoid Chapter 11 Bankruptcy
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanponciano/2020/10/20/amc-worlds-largest-movie-theater-shares-plummet-13-avoid-chapter-11-bankruptcy/?utm_campaign=forbes&utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_term=Gordie/#676f7264696
Shares of AMC Entertainment, the world’s largest movie theater chain with more than 1,000 locations, are tanking on Tuesday after the firm disclosed it’s raising cash–again–to avoid further restructuring.
Tomi Engdahl says:
There’s not much inside TVs these days
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2GX2TXwAO8
I didn’t realise how far LCD TVs had evolved since I last looked inside one. They have been stripped back to the minimum of standard modules. Mainly the power supply and signal processor.
This means that repairing them has become a board swapping exercise. They’re so standardised that salvaged and new boards cost less than the time to trace faults on the PCB itself.
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://hackaday.com/2020/10/20/light-fields-missing-ingredient-for-immersive-3d-video-gets-improved/
Tomi Engdahl says:
4 audio trends transforming the automotive industry
https://e2e.ti.com/blogs_/b/behind_the_wheel/archive/2020/07/13/automotive-audio-design-trends?HQS=asc-dc-padc-dc_polaris-exah-ta-ElectronicDesign-wwe&DCM=yes&utm_source=EG+ED+Update%3A+Power+and+Analog&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=CPS201019088&o_eid=7211D2691390C9R&rdx.ident%5Bpull%5D=omeda%7C7211D2691390C9R&dclid=CPmvu4OXyOwCFQecmgodsScC6Q
The automotive industry is focused on creating a comfortable driving experience – but without compromising fuel efficiency or manufacturing costs. Original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) are refreshing their audio system architectures frequently to enhance the user experience and ensure safety by incorporating new audio technologies.
Techniques using microphones, amplifiers, loudspeakers and advanced digital signal processing can help enable background noise reduction, clearer voice communication between passengers, and emergency and high-fidelity hands-free voice calling. These are the four audio trends transforming automotive audio design.
Trend No. 1: Active noise cancellation systems
As is already well established in the consumer electronics industry, OEMs are increasingly adopting active noise cancellation. Conventional noise-cancellation techniques such as passive insulation and specialized tires make vehicles heavier and reduce fuel efficiency. Active noise cancellation methods can achieve the same benefits, while weighing less compared to passive insulation methods and without affecting fuel efficiency.
Trend No. 2: In-cabin communication systems
Also called in-vehicle communication systems or in-car communications systems, in-cabin communication is just what it sounds like: it enables clear communication among occupants while inside the car. As shown in Figure 2, an in-cabin communication system works by strategically placing two to eight microphones to pick up the speech of each passenger, adaptively enhancing the speech of the person talking, reducing unwanted noise, and then playing the speech on the car audio loudspeaker system.
Trend No. 3: Emergency calling (eCall) systems and hands-free voice systems
As shown in Figure 3, an eCall system typically has one or two microphones for direct audio communication between the car and local emergency services in case of an emergency. A connectivity module digitizes and transmits the microphone signal to emergency operators. The speech from the emergency operator is played back on dedicated loudspeakers inside the car.
Like eCall systems, hands-free voice systems have between one and eight microphones, or an array of beamforming microphones, to enable clear voice calls and voice commands.
Trend No. 4: Centralized audio hubs
Looking ahead to future implementations, many OEMs are considering a centralized audio hub (shown in Figure 4) that would aggregate active noise cancellation, in-cabin communication, eCall and hands-free microphone inputs, digitize these audio signals, and send the digitized signal to each respective audio subsystem for further processing.
As trends in active noise cancellation, in-cabin communication and hands-free beamforming pick up, a centralized audio hub will reduce the amount of microphone routing required, the implementation complexity, and the cost associated with microphone cables.
These devices support analog and digital microphone and line inputs and integrate a programmable high-voltage microphone bias and input fault diagnostics. They provide a flexible digital filtering scheme with linear-phase and low-latency filters, multiple second-order infinite impulse response filters per channel, and high-pass filters. The PCM6260-Q1 family supports a flexible data output and control interface, allowing several devices to use the same output data and control the interface bus. The devices have general-purpose inputs/outputs, fine phase and gain calibration schemes, and a digital mixer and summer to optimize system performance.
The adoption of these new audio technologies in cars – while requiring major architecture changes – promise to bring a richer driving and in-car communication experience.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Computer screen teleprompter
https://hackaday.io/project/175453-computer-screen-teleprompter
This is a simple 3D printed teleprompter that reflects part of your computer screen directly in front of your webcam
This 3D printed teleprompter allows you to maintain eye contact with your webcam while video chatting with a person on screen, or while reading text into the camera. It allows you to avoid the shifty glances downward at your screen to read your notes. It requires one 6″x4″ mirror, and one 6″ x 4″ piece of clear plastic, which can be purchased online for < $2 each.
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/software/youtube-dl-removed-from-github-after-riaa-dmca-notice/
I don’t understand this. If there is a video in youtube which is free to view, what’s wrong with me downloading it?
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://etn.fi/index.php/13-news/11320-maailman-teravin-naytto-10-000-pikselia-tuumalla
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://hackaday.com/2020/10/28/the-10000-pixel-per-inch-display-is-now-possible/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Digital camera design: determine pixel size, focal ratio, and field of view
https://www.edn.com/digital-camera-design-determine-pixel-size-focal-ratio-and-field-of-view/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_campaign=link&utm_medium=EDNConsumerElectronics-20201028
Digital cameras are nearly everywhere today. According to LDV Capital, by 2022, there will be 45 billion cameras in operation worldwide. In 2019, over 500 hours of video was uploaded to YouTube every hour of the day. Besides our familiar smartphones, automotive, and home-security applications, digital cameras are used inside laboratory instruments to sequence DNA as well as in the search for dangerous Earth-threatening asteroids and all sorts of applications covering microscopic and macroscopic objects.
Despite the broad range of applications, these visible-light cameras share a common technology platform with a handful of interrelated design parameters that differentiate one from the other. From the perspective of basic operating principles, there’s little difference between the Keck Telescope imaging system on Maunakea in Hawaii and the selfie-cam in your smartphone. Basically, the design parameters are different.
So, what are these parameters and how does one go about engineering a camera system? From a design perspective, the two key components to choose are the optics and image sensor. But the choice of one will affect the choice of the other, as we shall see.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Maailman terävin näyttö: 10 000 pikseliä tuumalla
https://etn.fi/index.php/13-news/11320-maailman-teravin-naytto-10-000-pikselia-tuumalla
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://etn.fi/index.php/13-news/11332-korona-nostaa-viihde-elektroniikan-myyntia
https://www.uusiteknologia.fi/2020/10/29/suomi-osti-kasvavasti-aanentoisto-ja-it-laitteita-vahemman-kannykoita/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://hackaday.com/2020/10/28/making-a-3d-printed-dslr-camera-mount-even-better/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Early CGI | Tomorrow’s World | Brit Lab | BBC
https://m.youtube.com/watch?ab_channel=BBCEarthLab&v=gSpXMH9xJy0
From 1982, Tomorrow’s World takes a look at the beginning of computer generated images.