Audio and video trends for 2019

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 growEISA 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.

 

1,491 Comments

  1. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Conspiracy theorists share schematic for “5G chip” they claim is implanted in COVID-19 vaccines – only it’s actually for the Boss Metal Zone
    https://www.guitarworld.com/news/conspiracy-theorists-share-schematic-for-5g-chip-they-claim-is-implanted-in-covid-19-vaccines-only-its-actually-for-the-boss-metal-zone

    Reply
  2. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Music fans pushed sales of vinyl albums higher, outpacing CDs, even as pandemic sidelined stadium tours
    https://www.cnbc.com/2021/07/13/music-fans-pushed-sales-of-vinyl-albums-higher-in-first-half-of-2021.html

    KEY POINTS
    Music consumption in the first half of the year has remained robust even without the sold-out stadium tours, according to a new report.
    In the first six months of 2021, 19.2 million vinyl albums were sold, outpacing CD volume of 18.9 million, according to analytics firm MRC Data, as fans look for tangible ways to connect with musicians.
    The top-selling vinyl album at the midyear point is Taylor Swift’s “Evermore,” which set a record for most vinyl copies sold in one week.

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  3. Tomi Engdahl says:

    3D Printed Cartridge Turns Any 35mm Film Camera into a Digital Camera
    https://petapixel.com/2021/07/16/3d-printed-cartridge-turns-any-35mm-film-camera-into-a-digital-camera/

    YouTuber befinitiv has published a video where he shows how he updated an old Cosina Hi-Lite film camera with a cartridge based on a Raspberry Pi that turned the analog camera into one capable of capturing digital photos and videos.

    Befinitiv’s video shows any curious minds how to build a custom film cartridge that turns any analog camera into a digital camera. With it, a photographer is able to drag any analog 35mm camera into the modern-day.

    “It can do everything you would expect from a digital camera nowadays,” he says. “It can do video, it can stream video over WiFi, and can store things on an SD card.”

    As noted by Hackaday, the design swaps the film canister that would normally be used with a Rasperry Pi Zero that is attached to a 3D-printed case which mimics the shape of the film canister and also houses and affixes the Pi camera in the location where the film would normally be exposed to light — behind the camera’s shutter.

    He removed the Pi camera’s lens to instead use his Cosina camera’s own optics and shows how he is able to take digital photos with the film camera that are of surprisingly decent quality.

    “[The Pi camera] behaves like the film did,” he explains

    The custom cartridge is powered by a small battery and converter that are housed in the 3D-printed film cartridge section. The whole unit fits nicely into the camera and allows the rear plate to cleanly close over it.

    https://hackaday.com/2021/07/15/analog-camera-goes-digital/

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  4. Tomi Engdahl says:

    BB ply is the general description for the multi layered ply (typically ~1.5mm per laminate). It’s one of the stiffest materials you can use but is more resonant at higher frequencies than MDF so needs attention to bracing and damping.

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  5. Tomi Engdahl says:

    http://www.uneeda-audio.com/pads/

    All About Pads
    A question that pops up frequently is that of building atteunator pads. Here is what you need to know, in one place.
    What is a Pad? Where can I use them?
    A pad is nothing more than a network made of resistors that creates loss (attenuation) in a transmission line. Pads can be designed with many different attributes: matched impedances, unmatched impedances, etc. You might use a pad to reduce the level of a +4dBu source to -10dBu, or to allow a microphone preamp to handle the signal from a hot microphone in front of a loud source (even with the preamp’s gain trim control at minimum, it still clips).

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  6. Tomi Engdahl says:

    For 56 years, NTSC II gave American video producers a single, consistent target to aim for
    https://www.provideocoalition.com/10-years-ago-the-analog-shutoff/

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  7. Tomi Engdahl says:

    How many frames per second can the human eye really see?
    By Alex Wiltshire January 19, 2017
    https://www.pcgamer.com/how-many-frames-per-second-can-the-human-eye-really-see/

    30 fps? 60 fps? If you’ve ever debated framerates, the cognitive researchers we spoke to have some complex answers for you.

    What is the maximum framerate the human eye see? How perceptible is the difference between 30 Hz and 60 Hz? Between 60 Hz and 144 Hz? After what point is it pointless to display a game any faster?

    The answer is complex and rather untidy. You might not agree with parts of it; some may even make you angry. Eye and visual cognition experts, even those who play games themselves, may well have a very different perspective than you about what’s important about the flowing imagery computers and monitors display. But human sight and perception is a strange and complicated thing, and it doesn’t quite work like it feels.

    And finally, we’re special. Computer game players have some of the best eyes around. “If you’re working with gamers, you’re working with a really weird population of people who are probably operating close to maximal levels,” says DeLong. That’s because visual perception can be trained, and action games are particularly good at training vision.

    Perceiving motion
    Now let’s get to some numbers. The first thing to think about is flicker frequency. Most people perceive a flickering light source as steady illumination at a rate of 50 to 60 times a second, or hertz. Some people can detect a slight flicker in a 60 Hz fluorescent lightbulb, and most people will see flickery smears across their vision if they make a rapid eye movement when looking at the modulated LED tail lights found in many modern cars.

    But this only offers part of the puzzle when it comes to perceiving flowing smooth game footage. And if you’ve heard about studies on fighter pilots in which they’ve demonstrated an ability to perceive an image flashed on the screen for 1/250th of a second, that’s also not quite what perception of smooth, flowing computer game imagery is about. That’s because games output moving images, and therefore invoke different visual systems to the ones that simply process light.

    “In general, people can’t distinguish between short, bright and long, dim stimuli within a tenth of a second duration,”

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  8. Tomi Engdahl says:

    This Camera Can “See” the Bigger Picture Researchers’ new camera spots fast-moving objects over a wide angle of view
    https://spectrum.ieee.org/new-camera-sees-more

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  9. Tomi Engdahl says:

    The Real Story of Pixar How a bad hardware company turned itself into a great movie studio
    https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-real-story-of-pixar

    The story of Pixar doesn’t start with its founding—a tech company’s story rarely does. Rather, the original spark often comes from a university lab, a renegade group at a large company, or a hobbyist building stuff for fun. Pixar’s story doesn’t even start with the creation of Lucasfilm’s Computer Graphics Group, which developed the Pixar Image Computer, the company’s first product.

    The story, instead, goes back to a time when I and other researchers in computer graphics scattered around the United States began to see the technology as allowing a new art form: the creation of digitally animated movies. A handful of us began talking about when somebody would make the first one—”The Movie,” we called it—and the massive computing power it would take to pull it off. That kind of computing power was not affordable in the mid-1970s.

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  10. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Strictly speaking, the loudest possible sound in air, is 194 dB. The “loudness” of the sound is dictated by how large the amplitude of the waves is compared to ambient air pressure. A sound of 194 dB has a pressure deviation of 101.325 kPa, which is ambient pressure at sea level, at 0 degrees Celsius (32 Fahrenheit).

    https://www.zmescience.com/science/the-loudest-sound-ever-in-mankinds-history/

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  11. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Fictional movies within movies? Got ‘em. Fake shows within shows? You bet.
    https://nestflix.fun/

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  12. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai / VICE:
    Nvidia says part of its April keynote was led by a virtual replica of CEO Jensen Huang, created by scanning Huang and then training an AI to mimic his gestures — Nvidia pulled off a stunt to promote and showcase its latest technology by digitizing its CEO Jensen Huang in a conference keynote.

    Nvidia Reveals Its CEO Was Computer Generated in Keynote Speech
    https://www.vice.com/en/article/88nbpa/nvidia-reveals-its-ceo-was-computer-generated-in-keynote-speech

    Nvidia pulled off a stunt to promote and showcase its latest technology by digitizing its CEO Jensen Huang in a conference keynote.

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  13. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Google infringed on five Sonos patents, according to preliminary ruling
    https://techcrunch.com/2021/08/13/google-infringed-on-five-sonos-patents-according-to-preliminary-ruling/?tpcc=ECFB2021

    Way back in January 2020, Sonos sued Google over patent infringement. Today, the streaming speaker company scored an early victory with the U.S. International Trade Commission. A preliminary ruling penned by ITC chief administrative law judge Charles Bullock finds that Google infringed on five patents.

    “Today the ALJ has found all five of Sonos’ asserted patents to be valid and that Google infringes on all five patents,”

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  14. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Aug 15, 2021,
    07:00am EDT
    |
    69 189 views
    How Hackers Use Power LEDs To Spy On Conversations 100 Feet Away
    https://www.forbes.com/sites/daveywinder/2021/08/15/hackers-use-flickering-power-leds-to-spy-on-conversations-100-feet-away/?utm_source=FBPAGE&utm_medium=social&utm_content=5326231922&utm_campaign=sprinklrForbesMainFB&sh=17164f2e4530

    If you thought hackers being able to make use of any ordinary light bulb to spy on your conversations from 80 feet away was ingenious, wait until you see what they have come up with now.

    How does a Glowworm spy attack work?
    The researchers claim that Glowworm is a new class of TEMPEST attack: one with the ability to recover sound by the analysis of ‘optical emanations’ from the LED power indicator of a device. The invisible to the naked eye flickering of power LEDs, minute fluctuations in the intensity of that light caused by tiny voltage variations to speakers or the USB hubs they are connected to, during audio output. The methodology was tested on smart speakers and dedicated PC speakers with success where the LEDs were connected directly to the power line without any measures to counter the correlation between LED intensity and power consumption.

    Glowworm can only eavesdrop on audio output from the speaker itself, not any other audio in the same room. While the passive nature of Glowworm certainly makes it hard to detect, the usual electronic sweeps would not reveal an attack in progress; the one-sided nature of this eavesdropping is just one of the downsides to this otherwise fascinating research project.

    You’ve probably already jumped to the most obvious mitigation conclusion: as Glowworm requires a clear line of sight to the power LED, closing the curtains, turning speakers around to face away from any window or sticking a piece of, oh the irony, electrical tape over the LED will all kibosh it.

    Reply
  15. Tomi Engdahl says:

    The Illusion Of Digital Audio
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4mUMZ5SPFE

    Though based on principles established in the late 1930′s, digital audio encoding started to appear in the telecommunications industry in the 1960′s. Research into its commercial use was pioneered by the Japanese national broadcasting organization NHK and Nippon Columbia.

    This sampling process is known as quantization and its accompoliced by a device known as an analog-to-digital converter or ADC.

    The second element to encoding audio signals digitally is the how frequently samples of the signal are taken, or the sampling rate. The rate at which an ADC samples a signal determines the frequency response of the digitizing process.

    In modern digital audio, sampling rates of 48Khz are common, offering an average of 2-3 samples for frequencies at the uppermost limits of human hearing.

    While PCM is the more popular method of encoding audio signals digitally, other methods such as pulse density modulation or PDM are sometimes used.

    Reply
  16. Tomi Engdahl says:

    How old school video digitizers worked
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vpKsteIzJs

    In this episode I take a look at how oldschool video digitizers like the “computer eyes” for the Commodore 64.

    Reply
  17. Tomi Engdahl says:

    The Surprising Origins of Digital Audio Sampling Rates
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5bs5tTDby0

    You’ve probably seen them: 44.1 kHz and 48 kHz. But why are there two sampling rates so close together in the first place? John explains the origins of these two seemingly similar audio sampling rates.

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  18. Tomi Engdahl says:

    DON’T FALL FOR THE STARSCOPE MONOCULAR “TELESCOPE” SMARTPHONE LENS SCAM
    https://www.diyphotography.net/dont-fall-for-the-starscope-monocular-telescope-smartphone-lens-scam/

    This sort of thing seems to pop up quite regularly. Optics that defy the laws of physics that you can attach to your phone to make it better than a DSLR. And, bonus, it only costs $48! This time, it’s the StarScope Monocular, which makes some pretty bold and ridiculous claims, as you can see in this video from Computer Clan.

    Such companies prey on the inexperience of those who don’t know any better. To anybody who actually understands cameras, lenses and a bit of physics, such “lenses” could never do 99% of the things they claim they can in the real world.

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  19. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Intel’s six-year foray into depth-sensing and object-tracking computer vision systems comes to an end this week.

    Intel Shutters Its RealSense Arm, Departs the Computer Vision Market
    https://www.hackster.io/news/intel-shutters-its-realsense-arm-departs-the-computer-vision-market-221c7aaf02d7

    Intel’s six-year foray into depth-sensing and object-tracking computer vision systems comes to an end this week.

    Intel has confirmed that it is winding up the computer vision arm responsible for the RealSense depth-sensing object-tracking camera hardware family — to, the company claims, better concentrate on other areas of its business.

    Intel unveiled its first RealSense platform back in 2015, announcing vision processors and sensors for everything from face recognition as a biometric system for laptops through to navigation and tracking for autonomous drones.

    Five years ago, the company married RealSense with its embedded line-up by releasing the Joule with RealSense support — and while it dropped the Joule, Edison, and Galileo product lines in 2017, it continued to release updates for its RealSense lines.

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  20. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Samplerates: the higher the better, right?
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-jCwIsT0X8M

    In this video tutorial, Dan Worrall explains when and why you should use higher samplerates for your recordings and mixing sessions, and more importantly… when you should NOT. Also, Dan goes in depth about oversampling vs. higher sample rates.

    Reply
  21. Tomi Engdahl says:

    New Audio Watts vs Old Audio Watts (Public)
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQ4N-gCCl0o

    The way pro audio amp manufacturers rate power amps over years has changed drastically. A new watt is way different than an old watt and each has its assets and issues. Here is the first video of several I am doing on power amps.

    00:00 Intro
    00:44 All watts are not created equal
    01:23 Old amp power specs vs new amp specs
    02:00 Analogy to cars
    03:50 Different ways amps deliver power
    05:50 Power delivery duration
    07:10 Thermal constraints
    07:50 Impedance vs peak power vs time
    09:22 Amp capabilities vs music type
    10:55 Test methods to hear loaded amp output
    12:20 Outro

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  22. Tomi Engdahl says:

    108 Rare and Bizarre Media Types
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvXXkB2jic0

    How a forgotten 1949 Format War shaped the future of records
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbFgVjijrHI

    Reply
  23. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Is 32 bit audio better?
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7Ou-mXk6H8

    The longer the DWORD length is when you record, the less you will lose in post. The better the 16/44 master is in the end. Even in The early days, masters were done in 20 bit on digi-tape, then down to 16 for the CD.

    32-bit float is great when you’re unsure of the dynamic range such as field recording. It effectively eliminates digital clipping.

    Reply
  24. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Carbon Arc Projectors
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0iScIfqfCGk

    On with the show! Running carbon arc film projectors in Nauvoo,Il. This is the way films were run before the 1980′s.

    Reply
  25. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Canon Lens Production 1
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKNFW0YwDYw

    Making of Canon L Series 500mm F4L IS USM. Part 1 of 3 in the production of expensive camera gear. L series is Canon’s Premium lens line featuring fluorite lenses. IS refers to Image Stabilzation build into the lens, and USM refers to Ultrasonic Motor drive that makes focusing faster than older systems.

    Canon Lens Production 2
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzpt49qq6v4

    Making of Canon L Series 500mm F4L IS USM. Part 2 of 3 in the production of expensive camera gear. L series is Canon’s Premium lens line featuring fluorite lenses. IS refers to Image Stabilzation build into the lens, and USM refers to Ultrasonic Motor drive that makes focusing faster than older systems. Currently I’m using a Rebel XT, although I’m thinking of upgrading to an XTi or 5DMk2. This 500 with the New 5D would be a sweet combination.

    Reply
  26. Tomi Engdahl says:

    The Weird World in RGB
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYbdx4I7STg

    Have you ever wondered why the word looks so weird? Wait. Weird as in, like, all the time? Of course! We live in a weird world! But light, though! What about weird light? Ahhh, that’s what this video is all about.
    This is the strangest vid. description I’ve written in a while. Cool.

    Reply

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