Streaming Now Officially the Number One Way We Listen to Music in America
http://pitchfork.com/news/70724-streaming-now-officially-the-number-one-way-we-listen-to-music-in-america/

Streaming consumption beat digital sales for the first time in history, according to new Nielsen report

It’s official: according to a new year-end report released by Nielsen, over the course of 2016, streaming became the primary mode of music consumption in the U.S. Overall on-demand audio streams surpassed 251 billion in 2016–a 76 percent increase that accounts for 38 percent of the entire music consumption market. Plus, “the on-demand audio streaming share [of total music consumption] has now surpassed total digital sales (digital albums + digital track equivalents) for the first time in history.”

(An average of 1.2 billion streams per day versus 734 million downloads for all of 2016.)

Facebook Developing Copyright ID System to Stem Music Rights Infringement
http://www.billboard.com/articles/business/7639969/facebook-developing-copyright-id-system-music-rights-infringement

As Facebook continues to grapple with its role in proliferating “fake news” amidst the heated U.S. election this year, it has another showdown looming on the horizon — this one with the music industry. In the wake of NMPA president/CEO David Israelite’s op-ed in Billboard in October, in which he called out the social media giant for hosting videos with copyrighted music without securing licensing deals or paying creators, Facebook is working to develop a copyright identification system — similar to YouTube’s Content ID — that would find and remove videos containing copyrighted music, a source tells Billboard. The story was first reported by the Financial Times.

Some operating systems are targeted at a single use to minimize the overhead and maximize the power of the hardware. One such focused OS is OpenELEC. This Linux distribution is designed to serve as a media center — nothing more, nothing less. Today, the popular distro reaches stable version 7.0. There are images for both x86 and Raspberry Pi 2 and 3, meaning there is a very good chance you own compatible hardware.

OpenELEC 7.0 Linux distribution now available for PC, Raspberry Pi, and WeTek Core
http://betanews.com/2016/12/29/openelec-7-0-linux-distribution-kodi-pc-raspberry-pi-wetek-core/

“OpenELEC 7.0 release contain a Kodi major version bump.”

Fabien-Chouteau]’s thermal printing camera isn’t the first — you’ve got the Gameboy Camera/Printer and a few others to thank for that. But it’s a great example of the form. The camera combines an Adafruit thermal receipt printer with an OpenMV camera, both easily sourced, if not exactly cheap. It even adds a ST7735 LCD for live display of the camera’s image, just like consumer-grade cameras!

DIY instant camera
DIY camera with an OpenMV module and thermal printer
https://hackaday.io/project/18913-diy-instant-camera

It’s safe to say that Bang & Olufsen isn’t about to trash its reputation for head-turning, high-end speaker design with the new BeoLab 90. Named in honor of the the Danish company’s 90th anniversary, the gargantuan BeoLab 90 stands 4 feet (123.5 cm) tall, weighs in at over 300 pounds (137 kg) and delivers an earthshaking 8,200 watts through a complex array of drivers and amplifiers … all for just under US$40,000.

This is a loudspeaker that breaks the traditional form. Buried within the beautiful 360-degree design are 18 speaker drivers (7 tweeters. 7 mid-range and 4 woofers), each with its own custom designed amplifier.

The key is a combination of technologies that take into account room acoustics and give the listener far more control over the actual direction and width of the sound that comes from the loudspeaker.

Active Room Compensation technology adjusts the sound output according to factors like room composition, furniture location, and the placement of the loudspeaker relative to where you’re sitting. In addition, Beam Width Control allows you to select a different “sweet spot” to suit different listening locations and the number of people in the room. These features, along with various presets, can be controlled using a smartphone app.

The BeoLab 90 sports an array of wired connections along with WiSA-compliant wireless connectivity, which uses the 5.2 – 5.8 GHz band for the transmission of uncompressed 24-bit wireless audio at sample rates of up to 96 kHz in.

LG Levitating Portable Speaker Hovers Magically in Midair While Delivering Great Audio Performance

Images captured by the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS1) compiled to form the world’s largest map of the visible universe have been released to the public.

Pan-STARRS1 (PS1), one of the two telescopes located on site in Haleakala, Hawaii, captured half a million exposures, each about 45 seconds in length, over a period of four years. The shape of the image comes from making a map of the celestial sphere, like a map of Earth, but leaving out the southern quarter. If printed at full resolution, the image would be 1.5 miles long, and one would have to get close and squint to see details, according to the University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy.

PS1 has a 3° field of view and is equipped with a 1.4 Gigapixel mosaic focal plane CCD camera. The focal plane has 60 separately mounted, close-packed CCDs arranged in an 8 x 8 array. Each CCD device, called an Orthogonal Transfer Array, has 4800 x 4800 pixels, separated in 64 cells, each of 600 x 600 pixels. This Gigapixel camera (Or “GPC) saw first law on August 22, 2007, imaging the Andromeda Galaxy. Each image captured by the camera requires about 2 GBytes of storage, and exposure times will be 30 to 60 seconds, with an additional minute or so for computer processing.

“The Pan-STARRS1 Surveys allow anyone to access millions of images and use the database and catalogs containing precision measurements of billions of stars and galaxies,”

Pan-STARRS Releases Largest Digital Sky Survey to the World
http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/info/press-releases/panstarrs_release/

Camera pricing

After a high of 70% in 2014, manufacturers production roadmaps have steadily declined to 44% for production of cameras in the mid-price range between $150 and $650, which reveals some price stabilization after successive drops in the previous years. Low-cost cameras less than $150 are least significant to manufacturers and users in terms of percentage, at 26% and 11%, respectively. Compared with 2015, high-priced cameras from $650/$1,000/$3,000 have dropped by 12% points

CMOS vs. CCD

In the light of Sony’s discontinuation of CCD imagers, users see the greatest growth for companies such as ON Semiconductor, which currently holds a 29% market share. The declines foreseen by users and manufacturers for Sony in last year’s study haven’t materialized with 32% of all camera manufacturers currently relying on Sony. In 2 years, Sony is expected to grow back to the 37% levels it had before the discontinuation. Even more users this year rely on Sony compared to last year, with an increase from 35% to 53%.

Camera vendors cite that CMOS technology accounts for 85% of camera sales. Camera users expect to reach this purchasing level in the next two years.

While approximately 30% of users relied on sensors under 1 MPixel last year, in 2016, only 10% do.

Standard interfaces

GigE Vision dominates according to manufacturers, with 33%, followed by Ethernet with 15%. Compared with last year and based on a low proportion of American participants, the previously high Ethernet percentage has been reduced. Manufacturers and users expecting USB 3.0 and GigE Vision to grow fastest with an increase of 8% and 10% points, respectively.

More than 75% of manufacturers and, 60% of users expect bandwidths greater than 5 GB to become relevant or very relevant. 50% of manufacturers believe that USB 3.1 is the most important interface for high-speed applications, followed by 38% for 10 GigE. In contrast, 44% of users favor 10 GigE for fast transmission, and only 37% of users vote for USB 3.1.

Video Converter HandBrake 1.0.0 released
http://www.ghacks.net/2016/12/26/video-converter-handbrake-1-0-0-released/

The video conversion program is easy to use on the one hand, but offers advanced options for users who want more control over the conversion process.

In the best case, all you need to do is load one or multiple video files in the program, select one of the available output presets — e.g. Android 720p30, Playstation 1080p30 Surround, or Super HQ 1080p30 — and start the conversion process with a click on the “start encode” button.

So what is new in HandBrake 1.0.0? A lot. The presets that the program ships with have been updated big time. You get new device presets for devices released in recent time, new general use presets for best compatibility, new presets for web publication or sending, and new Matroska presets that include support for VP9 video with Opus audio.

Dish’s Sling TV website has (perhaps prematurely) unveiled a new set-top box, the AirTV Player. The device will let Sling TV subscribers stream live cable channels on their television — just like you can do right now with Sling TV on an Apple TV, Roku, or other streaming devices. But where the AirTV Player is different is that it will also integrate live, over-the-air network programming into that same interface with the help of an antenna (sold separately)