MEMS mics are taking over. Almost every mobile device has ditched its old-fashioned electret microphone invented way back in 1962 at Bell Labs. Expect new piezoelectric MEMS microphones, which promise unheard of signal-to-noise ratios (SNR) of up to 80 dB (versus 65 dB in the best current capacitive microphones) in 2015. MEMS microphones are growing like gangbusters.
Analysts and veterans of the International CES expect to see plenty of 4K ultra-high-definition televisions, new smartwatch uses, and a large section of the show floor dedicated to robotics. 2015 will be the first year CES gets behind 4K in a big way, as lower price points make the technology more attractive to consumers. Samsung, Sony, Sharp, and Toshiba will be big players in the 4K arena. OEMs must solve the problem of intelligence and connectivity before 4K will really take off. CES attendees may also see 4K TVs optimized for certain tasks, along with a variety of sizes. There will be 10-inch and 14-inch and 17-inch UHD displays.
4K is not enough anymore? 8K – finally come true? Korean giant LG has promised to introduce ehdan 8K TV at CES 2015 exhibition in January. 8K means a total of 33.2 million pixels, or 7680 x 4320 resolution. 4K video material fate is still uncertain, 8K video can not with certainty not available for a long time.
Sound bars will be a big issue at shows. One problem with new TVs — the thinner they are, the harder it is to get sound out.
Open file formats Matroska Video (MKV) and Free Lossless Audio Codec (FLAC) gets more widely used as Windows 10 To Feature Native Support For MKV and FLAC.
Watching shows online is more common now. More people are watching videos on smaller screens. You can use a tablet as personal TV. Phablets and portable televisions have taken off in China, Japan, and Korea, where many people watch videos during long commutes. Tablets now have become so ubiquitous and inexpensive that you can buy them for a specific application. Much of the innovation will be in software, rather than hardware — tuning the tablets to boot up like a television instead of an Android tablet
We’re all spending more time with smartphones and tablets. So much so that the “second screen” may now be the “first screen,” depending on the data you read. It seems inevitable that smartphones and tablets will replace the television in terms of time spent. Many metrics firms, including Nielsen, report on the rapid increase of mobile device usage—especially when it comes to apps. Half of YouTube’s views now come from phones and tablets.
Qualcomm will push this year broadcast LTE. That will be picked up more and more by some vendors in tablets, so they can have broadcast TV signals, but it doesn’t have to be generic LTE.
There will be lots of talking on traditional TV vs new streaming services, especially on who gets which program material and at what price. While it’s possible to create a TV platform that doesn’t deal with live channels, smart TVs and game consoles alike generally try to integrate the content as best they can.
Netflix’s new strategy to take on cable involves becoming best friends with cable to get its app included on set-top boxes of cable, fiber and satellite TV operators. Roughly 90 million U.S. households subscribe to cable or other forms of pay TV, and more than 73 million subscribe to the biggest five operators alone. That’s why Netflix has been working hard to team up with one of these major operators.
Google intends to integrate content best it can. Google Publishes ‘Live Channels For Android TV’ App Into The Play Store. G The “Live Channels for Android TV” app is unsurprisingly incompatible with phones and tablets, maybe because for some reason those markets are intentionally artificially tried to be kept separate.
Virtual reality video is trying to get to spotlight. Samsung’s new Milk VR to round up 360-degree videos for Gear VR article tells that Milk VR will provide the videos for free as Samsung hopes to goose interest in virtual reality. Milk VR service will provide free 360-degree videos to anyone using a Gear VR virtual-reality headset (uses Galaxy Note 4). Samsung wants to jump-start the virtual-reality movement as the company is looking at virtual reality as a potential growth engine at a time when one of its key traditional revenue sources — smartphones — has slowed down. The videos will also serve as a model for future filmmakers or artists looking to take advantage of the virtual-reality medium, as well as build up an ecosystem and viewership for VR content.
Although digital video is increasing in popularity, analog video remains in use in many applications.
1,154 Comments
Tomi Engdahl says:
Gregory Ferenstein / VentureBeat:
Netflix says piracy is still a major competitor, cites Popcorn Time’s rise in the Netherlands
Netflix CEO shows why piracy is a major threat again (in 3 charts)
http://venturebeat.com/2015/01/21/netflix-ceo-shows-why-piracy-is-a-major-threat-again-in-3-charts/
Netflix had thought it beat back the threat of piracy. Back in 2011, when it popularized movie streaming, Netflix traffic overtook peer-to-peer file sharing in U.S. traffic. “How Netflix is killing piracy” read a Slate headline. Indeed, Google trends data show how Netflix handily crushed torrent.
The reason was obvious: Pirating wasn’t so much about free material as it was about convenience. DVDs were a pain in the neck. Users wanted immediate access. In 2011, Netflix was faster than finding a reliable pirated copy, so people happily switched for a few dollars a month.
But then, savvy software pirates took a page out of their playbook and created “Popcorn Time,” a super-slick torrent application that was ironically dubbed “Netflix for Torrents.”
“Piracy continues to be one of our biggest competitors. This graph of Popcorn Time’s sharp rise relative to Netflix and HBO in the Netherlands, for example, is sobering,” Netflix wrote in their shareholder earnings reporter released yesterday
Popcorn Time has all the convenience of Netflix and includes all the new movies online available in theaters. It’s possible that the wild success of The Interview‘s direct-to-consumer launch could convince more Hollywood studios to publish movies online.
I think many in my peer group have no interest in going to a theater. Personally, I see it as a giant waste of time and money. I watch movies on my laptop in the comfort of my pajamas, while playing around on Facebook or getting work done.
Tomi Engdahl says:
DIY Single Pixel Digital Camera
http://hackaday.com/2015/01/21/diy-single-pixel-digital-camera/
[Artlav] wanted to build a digital camera, but CCDs are expensive and don’t respond well to all wavelengths of light. No problem, then, because with a photodiode, a few stepper motors, the obligatory Arduino, and a cardboard box, it’s pretty easy to make one from scratch.
The camera’s design is based on a camera obscura – a big box with a pinhole in one side. This is all a camera really needs as far as optics go
just build a cartesian robot inside the box and throw a photodiode in there.
[Artlav] was able to get some very high resolution images across a huge range of wavelengths
Make a wide spectrum camera at home
http://orbides.1gb.ru/photobot.php?lng=eng
Let’s say you want to make a camera. A digital camera to take pictures in any spectral band.
No CCDs, no car-priced thermal IR matrices.
It may not be perfect, but it was worth the effort.
The camera described here can be made out of low-level components – a photodiode, some stepper motors, an obligatory Arduino and a wooden pinhole box.
Tomi Engdahl says:
8-out Multi-Channel Codecs with S/PDIF Receiver
http://www.eeweb.com/company-news/cirrus_logic/8-out-multi-channel-codecs-with-spdif-receiver
The CS42518/28 are multi-channel audio codecs featuring S/PDIF receiver and a recovered S/PDIF clock or OMCK system clock selection. It is available with system sampling rates up to 192 kHz and utilizes differential analog architecture in a 5 V analog power supply.
The CS42518/28 audio codec family provides two audio a/d (analog to digital) converters and eight digital/analog converters (DACs) Delta-Sigma converters, as well as an integrated S/PDIF receiver.
Tomi Engdahl says:
IEEE to adopt HDBase-T, standardizing UHD transmission over Category 6 cabling
http://www.cablinginstall.com/articles/2015/01/ieee-1911-hdbaset-category-6-cabling.html?cmpid=EnlCIMJanuary192015
The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), along with the HDBase-T Alliance, jointly announced that the IEEE Standards Association Standards Board approved the HDBase-T Specifications 1.1.0 and 2.0 as part of the IEEE’s standards portfolio. The HDBase-T standard will become IEEE 1911 standard once the adoption process is complete.
“HDBase-T enables all-in-one transmission of ultra-high-definition video through a single 100-m/328-ft Category 6 cable,” the announcement explained, “delivering uncompressed 4K video, audio, USB, Ethernet, control signals, and up to 100 watts of power. HDBase-T simplifies cabling, enhances ease-of-use, and accelerates deployment of ultra-high-definition connectivity solutions. The cost-effective LAN infrastructure and power transmission support also help reduce and simplify installation and electrical costs.”
“This collaboration with the IEEE is a major milestone for HDBase-T and for the Alliance, as the IEEE is one of the leading standards organizations in the world.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
DisplayLink demos 5K display connectivity over single USB cable
http://www.cablinginstall.com/articles/2015/01/displaylink-demos-5k.html
This week at the 2015 International CES in Las Vegas, DisplayLink, the consortium for USB graphics technology, is demonstrating the latest commercially available Dell UltraSharp 5K monitors connected over a single, standard universal USB cable providing 5120×2880 resolution. The new system for future-proof notebook expansion is being showcased at CES from January 6-9 2015 at the DisplayLink booth #36258 in event venue’s South Hall 4.
DisplayLink said the demonstrated solution both solves the 5K connectivity problem and equally enables non-5K PC, notebooks, and tablets to connect to 5K displays over a standard universal “Plug-and-Display” USB 3.0 cable connection.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Technical trade-offs for video surveillance
http://www.cablinginstall.com/articles/2015/01/technical-trade-offs-video-surveillance.html
A recent technical white paper from Motorola is entitled Video Surveillance Trade-Offs. The brief investigates how, for security and AV deployments in the areas of public safety and law enforcement, finding the right combination of image quality, frame rate and bandwidth in video surveillance networks is primarily “a question of balance.”
“The benefits of video surveillance – from monitoring and real-time protection to investigation and evidence preservation – are largely dependent on the quality of the images transmitted by digital video surveillance cameras and networks,” points out the paper’s executive summary.
VIDEO SURVEILLANCE TRADE-OFFS
A QUESTION OF BALANCE: FINDING THE RIGHT COMBINATION OF IMAGE QUALITY, FRAME RATE AND BANDWIDTH
http://www.motorolasolutions.com/web/Business/_Documents/static%20files/VideoSurveillance_WP_3_keywords.pdf
Tomi Engdahl says:
Fake Engine Noise Is the Auto Industry’s Dirty Little Secret
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/15/01/22/1619252/fake-engine-noise-is-the-auto-industrys-dirty-little-secret
Now Drew Harwell reports at the Washington Post that the auto industry’s dirty little secret is that the engine growl in some of America’s best-selling cars and trucks is actually a finely tuned bit of lip-syncing, boosted through special pipes or digitally faked altogether. “Fake engine noise has become one of the auto industry’s dirty little secrets, with automakers from BMW to Volkswagen turning to a sound-boosting bag of tricks,” writes Harwell. “Without them, today’s more fuel-efficient engines would sound far quieter and, automakers worry, seemingly less powerful, potentially pushing buyers away.” For example Ford sound engineers and developers worked on an
“Active Noise Control” system on the 2015 Mustang EcoBoost that amplifies the engine’s purr through the car speakers.
America’s best-selling cars and trucks are built on lies: The rise of fake engine noise
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/americas-best-selling-cars-and-trucks-are-built-on-lies-the-rise-of-fake-engine-noise/2015/01/21/6db09a10-a0ba-11e4-b146-577832eafcb4_story.html?hpid=z2
Stomp on the gas in a new Ford Mustang or F-150 and you’ll hear a meaty, throaty rumble — the same style of roar that Americans have associated with auto power and performance for decades.
It’s a sham. The engine growl in some of America’s best-selling cars and trucks is actually a finely tuned bit of lip-syncing, boosted through special pipes or digitally faked altogether. And it’s driving car enthusiasts insane.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Camera That Changed the Universe
http://science.slashdot.org/story/15/01/22/239239/the-camera-that-changed-the-universe?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Slashdot%2Fslashdot%2Fto+%28%28Title%29Slashdot+%28rdf%29%29
As the Hubble Space Telescope gets set to celebrate the 25th anniversary of opening its eyes to the Universe, it’s important to realize that the first four years of operations were kind of a disaster. It wasn’t until they corrected the flawed primary mirror and installed an upgraded camera — the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2)
Throwback Thursday: The Camera that changed the Universe
As the Hubble Space Telescope nears its 25th anniversary, it never stops
https://medium.com/starts-with-a-bang/throwback-thursday-the-camera-that-changed-the-universe-3c3b2c8ad951
Tomi Engdahl says:
Darrell Etherington / TechCrunch:
Microsoft reveals Windows Holographic augmented reality user interface and HoloLens headset
http://techcrunch.com/2015/01/21/microsoft-reveals-windows-holographic-an-augmented-reality-user-interface-for-the-world/
Sean O’Kane / The Verge:
Windows Holographic will let NASA explore what Curiosity sees on Mars
http://www.theverge.com/2015/1/21/7868635/windows-holographic-nasa-curiosity-rover
Microsoft announced the futuristic at-home augmented reality project Windows Holographic today, and one of the many different uses the company teased was a collaboration with NASA and the Curiosity rover team. Now, NASA has released more information on the software it built for Holographic, a program called OnSight.
By using Microsoft’s HoloLens visor, NASA scientists will be able virtually explore the areas of Mars that Curiosity is studying in a fully immersive way. It will also allow them to plan new routes for the rover, examine Curiosity’s worksite from a first-person view, and conduct science experiments using the rover’s data.
That’s a big deal, according to OnSight’s project manager, who’s quoted in the release. “This tool gives them the ability to explore the rover’s surroundings much as an Earth geologist would do field work here on our planet,” he says.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Broadcom unpacks 4K UHD display tech for networking at CES
http://www.cablinginstall.com/articles/2015/01/broadcom-4k-uhd-display.html
In the following video report from the show floor of the recent CES 2015 in Las Vegas, Broadcom’s Thomas Fehr, director of product marketing for the company’s broadband and connectivity group, talks in detail about the latest in Ultra HD (UHD) and 4K video technology.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Verge:
11 of 14 projects in Sundance Film Festival’s experimental showcase use virtual reality — How virtual reality ate the Sundance Film Festival — The future of independent film may not be film at all — The most buzzworthy feature of 2015′s Sundance Film Festival isn’t a film at all …
How virtual reality ate the Sundance Film Festival
The future of independent film may not be film at all
http://www.theverge.com/2015/1/24/7882339/sundance-film-festival-2015-virtual-reality
The most buzzworthy feature of 2015’s Sundance Film Festival isn’t a film at all, but a pair of virtual reality goggles you strap to your head. Three years after VR made its debut at Sundance, the technology has fully established itself. An entire section of the festival is now devoted to VR experiences, many of them more interactive than what we’ve seen to date. Talk to filmmakers and they’ll tell you they can’t remember being so excited: some say it’s like they’re present at the dawn of a new medium.
“filmmakers say they can’t remember being so excited”
Virtual reality debuted at Sundance in 2012 with Nonny de la Peña’s Hunger in Los Angeles, which used an early head-mounted display to place viewers in the middle of a food line outside a church.
In the wake of Oculus’ success, and under the direction of curator Shari Frilot, VR dominates New Frontier this year. “I think what’s behind the explosion is the marketplace embracing it,” Frilot says. Of the 14 projects in the showcase, 11 are enhanced by virtual reality. Most are independent art projects, but not all: Fox Searchlight is also here with Wild — The Experience, putting users in between actresses Reese Witherspoon and Laura Dern in a scene inspired by the recent movie of the same name.
Unfortunately, several of the experiences at New Frontier replicate the problematic types of VR we’ve seen for years: static scenes, devoid of interaction. And others demonstrate how many of the tricks and techniques that have worked in movies for decades need to be thrown out entirely
“You can do so much more than gaming stuff. You can also tell stories.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Walmart starts selling its Vudu Spark streaming stick for $25
https://gigaom.com/2015/01/23/walmart-is-getting-ready-to-sell-its-vudu-spark-streaming-stick/
Remember Walmart’s very own HDMI streaming stick, which I spotted in the FCC’s online database two months ago? Turns out Walmart already started selling it for just $24.95, and is now getting ready to make it more widely available.
Walmart’s Vudu video streaming service just added a dedicated section for the Vudu Spark, as the streaming stick is called, to its website that includes lots of details about the device.
Here are a few more details about the Spark, straight from Vudu.com: It’s a HDMI streaming stick that is controlled with a dedicated remote control and powered via USB.
As I predicted back in November, Vudu Spark is very much a one-trick pony. The user manual reveals that it only comes with Vudu’s app preloaded
Walmart is pricing it pretty aggressively. Not only does it cost $10 less than Chromecast, the company is also offering new and existing customers up to $25 in Vudu credits for activating the stick.
Tomi Engdahl says:
With PlayStation Now, Sony proves that game streaming works
Streamable PS3 game selection is a bit lacking, but service provides a good sampler.
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2015/01/playstation-now-review-sony-finally-proves-streaming-gaming-is-viable/
Suddenly this was an opportunity. Has the idea of running games on remote servers advanced at all since OnLive’s ahead-of-its-time launch back in 2010?
We’ve been kicking the tires on the service for about a week now, and what we’ve found is a surprisingly compelling addition to the pay-per-game ownership model of retail discs and downloads. If you have the bandwidth and a yearning to sample some PS3 classics among the service’s somewhat limited initial selection on your PlayStation 4, PlayStation Now is well worth checking out.
When initially reviewing OnLive back in 2010, running a game through the offering’s remote servers was a noticeably worse experience than running that same game locally. Even with a 20Mbps FiOS connection, our reviewer “could tell that the game was not running natively” thanks to “framerate bumps, sudden resolution drops, and gameplay blips.”
Things have changed quite a bit in the intervening time. For one, we tested PlayStation Now on a relatively beefy (but still residential-level) 75 Mbps FiOS connection in the Washington, DC suburbs. At that speed, the streaming experience was practically indistinguishable from loading a disc on a local PS3.
Of course, not everyone has such a healthy Internet pipe leading into their home these days (#humblebrag). To see how the service scaled, we went into our router settings and intentionally limited the bandwidth going to the PlayStation 4.
Our throttle testing started with a limit of 5 Mbps of download speed, which Sony recommends as the minimum “for an optimal gaming experience.” At that bandwidth level, the service usually wouldn’t even start; instead, a pre-launch connection test told us that the connection simply wasn’t good enough for PlayStation Now.
At 7 Mbps, we were able to start PlayStation Now reliably—but with a significant performance hit.
At a limit of 8 Mbps, the image returned to what seemed like 720p HD and boasted a solid frame rate throughout.
If your PS4 can clock in for downloads above 9 Mbps, though, you’re in for an impressively functional streaming gaming experience.
So PlayStation Now works as advertised, provided you have a good enough Internet connection. The question then becomes if the subscription service provides enough value for the money in terms of its selection of games. The answer here will depend a lot on what you’re looking for from the service.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The era of buying music is over:
The Death of Music Sales
If CDs are “dead,” so is iTunes.
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/01/buying-music-is-so-over/384790/
CDs are dead.
That doesn’t seem like such a controversial statement. Maybe it should be. The music business sold 141 million CDs in the U.S. last year. That’s more than the combined number of tickets sold to the most popular movies in 2014 (Guardians) and 2013 (Iron Man 3). So “dead,” in this familiar construction, isn’t the same as zero.
And if CDs are truly dead, then digital music sales are lying in the adjacent grave. Both categories are down double-digits in the last year, with iTunes sales diving at least 13 percent.
The recorded music industry is being eaten, not by one simple digital revolution, but rather by revolutions inside of revolutions, mouths inside of mouths, Alien-style. Digitization and illegal downloads kicked it all off. MP3 players and iTunes liquified the album. That was enough to send recorded music’s profits cascading. But today the disruption is being disrupted: Digital track sales are falling at nearly the same rate as CD sales, as music fans are turning to streaming—on iTunes, SoundCloud, Spotify, Pandora, iHeartRadio, and music blogs.
Now that music is superabundant, the business (beyond selling subscriptions to music sites) thrives only where scarcity can be manufactured—in concert halls, where there are only so many seats, or in advertising, where one song or band can anchor a branding campaign.
Nearly every number in Nielsen’s 2014 annual review of the music industry is preceded by a negative sign, including chain store sales (-20%), total new album sales (-14%), and sales of new songs online (-10.3%). Two things are up: streaming music and vinyl album sales.
So what about vinyl? It is rising, yes, rising like a wee baby phoenix, from a prodigious pile of ashes. Nine million two hundred thousand vinyl LPs were sold in 2014, up 51 percent annually, even faster than the growth in video streams.
And how about the hits? The top 1 percent of bands and solo artists now earn about 80 percent of all revenue from recorded music
Tomi Engdahl says:
Startup Expands 3D to the Room
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1325389&
With still 26 days to go, Kickstarter project Immersis from French startup Catopsys has almost reached its funding goal of USD100.000, promising to turn any room into a fully immersive 3D interactive environment.
More research was carried out under the CATOPSYS (CATadiOptric Projection SYStems for virtual and mixed reality) collaborative project, which yielded a first patent for a panoramic projection device (published in 2009).
From then on, several prototypes were developed under this project, one with a 180° screen and direct projection, the other with a dome and 360° projection (from two video projectors).
From first proof of concept in academia to Catopsys officially becoming a company in 2013, it took over eight years of research and development to fine tune the software building blocks necessary for real-time computational anamorphosis applied to panoramic 3D projection.
In effect, the anamorphic projection process consists in taking any panoramic content (from video games, 3D applications or any other panoramic photo formats such as Google’s Photosphere format) and distort its perspective based on the projector’s position and the actual 3D mapping (at pixel-level) of the room in which the projection is to be viewed.
Most other 3D immersive solutions available today rely on one projector for each side of a dedicated room
This is why room-level 3D immersion is mostly used for industrial applications and sometimes for entertainment. Cheaper consumer alternatives include regular projectors fitted with a fisheye lens for panoramic projection, but inevitably, the resulting image is distorted.
“This 3D-based anamorphosis is nothing trivial,”
“The major differentiation is in our software, since we take a 3D model of the room as the basis to deform the image and map it to the shape of the room, based on the projector’s position,” Duhautbout added, “and we hold the patents for that.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Holographic Images for Healthcare
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1325408&
Like a scene from a science fiction film, this new holographic technology allows doctors and surgeons to view and interact with virtual representations of organs in real-time.
It looks like something out of a science fiction film: a human heart floating in mid-air in such a way that a doctor can walk around it and see it in action from all sides. This technology has the potential to completely revolutionize the way surgeons get to see inside their patients. Already tested in pilot programs, the technology should start appearing in medical care facilities in 2016.
Fans of the television show Grey’s Anatomy got to see a holographic clip of the technology in an episode that aired this past spring.
In partnership with Philips, RealView Imaging conducted a pilot study that applied the imaging technology to minimally-invasive structural heart procedures at Schneider Children’s Medical Center in Petach Tikva, Israel. The system projects an image that is visible without any specialized viewing apparatus and that can be manipulated at a touch. As this press release explained, “RealView’s innovative visualization technology was used to display interactive, real-time 3D holographic images acquired by Philips’ interventional X-ray and cardiac ultrasound systems.”
3D imaging has already proven its benefits with regard to deepening surgeons’ understanding of their patients’ anatomies in the form of 3D printed models of hearts.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Natt Garun / The Next Web:
Sling TV review: Not quite the cord cutter’s dream, but a bargain for millennial families
http://thenextweb.com/insider/2015/01/26/sling-tv-review/
The unbundling trend is trickling down from apps to television with the launch of Sling TV, Dish Network’s US-only, live TV subscription service at just $20 a month – no contract required.
It’s an ironic concept: A US-based cable service aimed at cord cutters who don’t want to pay for cable.
Available for Android, iOS, PC, Mac and Roku (with support for Amazon Fire TV, Fire TV stick, Xbox One and LG Smart TVs coming soon), all you have to do sign up for the service then log on to the website or add the Sling TV app to your streaming device to get started.
On the homepage is a list of channels available, with live TV playing in the background.
Getting connected to Sling TV’s live programming was speedy.
Sling TV’s got just enough to please each member of a typical family, plus a few on-demand titles (paid and free).
The nice thing about Sling TV is the contract-less commitment. Cable providers and premium channels get into carrier disputes fairly often, so should your favorite Sling TV channel get dropped, you can cancel the service with no strings attached.
In the New York City region, Time Warner Cable offers 200 channels plus internet for $90. Opt for just internet and Sling TV, and you’re down to $55 a month. It’s a considerable difference if you happen to only watch TV for sports, cooking shows and cartoons.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Mario Aguilar / Gizmodo:
Music artists who refuse YouTube’s aggressive Music Key terms lose all YouTube monetization options
Why Google Is Strong-Arming Artists Into Signing With YouTube Music Key
http://gizmodo.com/why-google-is-strong-arming-artists-into-signing-with-1681466872
According to her, these are the stipulations of continuing to use her YouTube account as she has now.
1) All of my catalog must be included in both the free and premium music service.
2) All songs will be set to “montetize”, meaning there will be ads on them.
3) I will be required to release new music on Youtube at the same time I release it anywhere else.
4) All my catalog must be uploaded at high resolution, according to Google’s standard which is currently 320 kbps.
5) The contract lasts for 5 years.
Ultimately for Keating it’s not a question of whether she wants to participate in a streaming service or not—her music is on Spotify, and she’s even leaked torrents of her tunes herself. For her, the issue is about choice. She doesn’t see why she should have to participate in the system
Tomi Engdahl says:
What you need to know to make successful YouTube marketing videos for your brand
http://blog.revfluence.com/2014/12/04/what-you-need-to-know-to-make-successful-youtube-marketing-videos-for-your-brand/
Tomi Engdahl says:
YOU. Your women are mine. Give them to me. I want to sell them
YouTube’s copyright killjoy bots amok
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/01/24/your_women_are_mine_give_them_to_me_i_want_to_sell_them/
This is the risk you take if you insist on uploading your wife to YouTube.
Be prepared for a sorry tale of sex, lies, videotape and attempted copyright theft.
Now this friend of mine and his wife – both scarily smart but, y’know, a bit kuh-razy in their down time – were larking about with some recording equipment and video-editing software, and thought it might be a laugh to see if they could produce some ASMR material. Faster than you could knead a knuckle into the back of a neck, they bashed out a few short-and-cute psychedelic video samples and uploaded them to YouTube.
The next thing they know, YouTube has slapped them with an official notification that a company has claimed the copyright on their video. Er, what?
More specifically, a company representing another bunch of creative types had decided that my friends – let’s just call them “David” and “Heidi” to protect their identity – had nicked their content in the production of their ASMR videos. This came as quite a surprise, since these videos were composed of Heidi’s unique vocal talents set to original, random computerised backgrounds produced on the fly by David using Final Cut Pro X animation generators.
Content ID MIGHT be a clever piece of software. There’s just no evidence to support that
In the event, all my friend had to do was respond to the claim and it was settled within 24 hours. It was a simple mistake on the part of the claimant. No worries, all smiles, glad to get it sorted, etc.
Then it happened again, a different company trying their luck to claim copyright another of my friends’ videos. Once again, they responded and managed to get the claim rescinded on the same day. What the heck is going on?
It’s like this. YouTube provides recognised copyright owners with a tool called Content ID that helps them profile their own content and hunt for unauthorised copies across the YouTube servers. When it finds a match, it flags a message on the user’s YouTube channel to say that it has identified copyright content in the allegedly offending video, giving the user the opportunity to respond or take the video down.
Here’s the first problem: Content ID might be a clever piece of software but it is also thick as shit. Comparing the videos above, the only common feature is that there are gradient colours in the background. Duh, me see pink, me see purple, me see match. Ker-Ching! Content ID, he catch pirate!
Here’s the second problem: when a user responds to the claim, the message isn’t sent to YouTube but to the copyright claimant.
Getting used to this by now, David fired off his response – “it’s my wife’s voice, it’s Final Cut Pro X generating the visuals” – but this time there was no apology and withdrawal of the claim. Instead, INgrooves simply confirmed the claim by return, whereupon my friends’ YouTube channel automatically got slapped down with a naughty-boy strike. Three strikes and you’re kicked off YouTube.
David tried to complain and received a second automatic rejection by INgrooves. At this stage, there appears to be no appeal. YouTube assumes that if the alleged copyright owner reconfirms the claim after the user’s response, the claim must be valid.
By making its erroneous claim and ignoring the user response, the company effectively took over ownership of David and Heidi’s work, before plonking their own monetisation scheme onto it and, one assumes, they had the potential to earn pocket money from it themselves.
The fact remains that INgrooves stole my friend’s wife and sold her for profit on YouTube. Does this mean if I upload some holiday videos, they will try to steal my children and sell them too?
Wonky? You deal in video copyright! How can you do that without actually LOOKING at the videos you claim have been pirated?
Tomi Engdahl says:
Bryan Bishop / The Verge:
Oculus announces Story Studio to make its own VR movies, first film “Lost” debuts this week — Oculus is now making its own virtual reality movies — Story Studio is the company’s internal team exploring what it calls ‘VR cinema’ — The prominence of virtual reality …
http://www.theverge.com/2015/1/26/7896179/oculus-vr-story-studio-original-movies-sundance
Tomi Engdahl says:
3D Printed Speaker Pushes Rapid Prototyping Boundaries
http://hackaday.com/2015/01/27/3d-printed-speaker-pushes-rapid-prototyping-boundaries/
We think FormLabs has really figured out the key to advertising their line of 3D printers — just design really cool stuff that you can 3D print in resin, and release them publicly! To celebrate a firmware upgrade to the Form 1+, they’ve designed and released this really cool 3D printed speaker which you can make yourself.
Of course, this isn’t the first time someone has 3D printed a speaker, but [Adam’s] done a pretty slick job of it. They’ve released all the design files for free (you do have to request them), but it’s foreseeable that it could be printed on a standard FDM machine with support material — it’s just much easier with a resin based printer.
http://formlabs.com/en/company/blog/2015/01/06/new-year-new-resolution/
Tomi Engdahl says:
HDBase-T Alliance: ‘Fight the cable invasion’
From the show floor of the recent CES 2015, the HDBase-T Alliance (HDBT) broadcast the following technology infomercial, which scores points for being both entertaining and demonstrative.
http://www.cablinginstall.com/articles/2015/01/hdbt-cable-invasion.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
HDMI protection devices improve Ultra-HD viewing
http://www.edn.com/electronics-products/other/4438428/HDMI-protection-devices-improve-Ultra-HD-viewing
Single-chip HDMI signal-conditioning and ESD protection ICs from STMicroelectronics, the HDMI2C1 series employs active pull-ups on all DDC (Display Data Channel) lines to maintain 4K Ultra-HD signal integrity and minimize dependence on HDMI cable quality.
The integrated ESD protection offers increased bandwidth of 10 GHz to pass high-speed 4K signals without distortion. In addition, low clamping voltage of 10 V and a fast response time of 30 ns prevent unwanted transients from damaging HDMI chips.
According to the manufacturer, the use of an HDMI2C1 device can save 80% of pc board space compared to that occupied by discrete protection components.
he series also features level shifters for the HDMI DDC, CEC (Consumer Electronic Control), and Hot-Plug Detect (HPD) lines with back-drive protection.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Intel, Microsoft Improve Odds for AR
Augmented Reality 101
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1325410&
There’s been an onslaught of announcements in the AR/VR field in just the last few weeks. The biggest was last week’s unveiling by Microsoft of its HoloLens platform. HoloLens projects three-dimensional images into the air, integrating virtual digital elements into the physical world. Picture Ben Kenobi talking to Princess Leia.
Microsoft’s announcement turned tech-savvy media into instant AR/VR believers — sort of. Microsoft’s demo was definitely cool.
But does this mean that 2015 will finally become the year when AR/VR starts going mainstream in earnest?
Before we know the answer, we should consider what’s already clear. Big guns in the tech industry have departed the sidelines and begun throwing money and talent at AR/VR. Earlier this month, Intel announced a $24.8 million investment in Vuzix, a maker of enterprise-grade smart glasses.
AR: Next-gen computing battle
All these data points show that the industry sees AR/VR as a new platform where the next-generation computing battle will unfold.
Ori Inbar, co-founder and CEO of AugmentedReality.org, sees AR “inevitable.” He said, “Consider the innovation cycles of computing from mainframes, to personal computers, to mobile computing, to wearables: It was driven by our need for computers to get smaller, better, and cheaper. Wearables are exactly that — mini computers on track to shrink and disappear on our bodies.”
Microsoft noted that HoloLens will run on the Windows 10 operating system and that it should be pretty simple for developers who write software for other Windows 10 devices to adapt their code to it. Evidently, Microsoft has invited other VR and AR companies to start building experiences and hardware based on its new holographic platform.
IHS analyst Harding-Rolls calls the HoloLens initiative in particular and AR/VR in general “Microsoft’s attempt to take a major role in establishing” the next-generation computing platform.
Well, that’s the big picture.
“Currently the major technology companies are split between deeply immersed virtual reality solutions and more open, less immersed, augmented reality solutions, which are generally less physically disorientating.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Jonathan Vanian / Gigaom:
Netflix is revamping its data architecture for streaming movies — Netflix is revamping the computing architecture that processes data for its streaming video service, according to a Netflix blog post that came out on Tuesday. — The Netflix engineering team wanted an architecture
Netflix is revamping its data architecture for streaming movies
https://gigaom.com/2015/01/27/netflix-is-revamping-its-data-architecture-for-streaming-movies/
The Netflix engineering team wanted an architecture that can handle three key areas the video-streaming giant believes greatly affects the user experience: knowing what titles a person has watched; knowing where in a given title did a person stop watching; and knowing what else is being watched on someone’s account, which is helpful for family members who may be sharing one account.
Although Netflix’s current architecture allows the company to handle all of these tasks, and the company built a distributed stateful system (meaning that the system keeps track of all user interaction and video watching and can react to any of those changes on the fly) to handle the activity, Netflix “ended up with a complex solution that was less robust than mature open source technologies” and wants something that’s more scalable.
There’s a viewing service that’s split up into a stateful tier that stores the data for active views in memory; Cassandra is used as the primary data store with the Memcached key-value store built on top for data caching. There’s also a stateless tier that acts as “a fallback mechanism when a stateful node was unreachable.”
This basically means that when an outage occurs, the data stored in the stateless tier can transfer over to the end user, even though that data may not be exactly as up-to-date or as relevant as the data held in the stateful tier.
In regard to caching, the Netflix team apparently finds Memcached helpful for the time being, but is looking for a different technology
Things got a bit more complex from an architecture perspective when Netflix “moved from a single AWS region to running in multiple AWS regions”
For Netflix’s upcoming architecture overhaul, the company is looking at a design that accommodates these three principles: availability over consistency; microservices; and polyglot persistence, which means having multiple data storage technologies to be used for different, specific purposes.
Netflix’s Viewing Data: How We Know Where You Are in House of Cards
http://techblog.netflix.com/2015/01/netflixs-viewing-data-how-we-know-where.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
YouTube flushes Flash for future flicks
HTML5 tag will henceforth shift video whenever possible
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/01/28/youtube_flushes_flash_for_future_flicks/
Those additions mean HTML5 is at least as functional – or more so – than Flash, and if YouTube detects you are running Chrome, IE 11, Safari 8 and beta versions of Firefox, it’ll now deliver video using and flush Flash.
YouTube’s also decided to can what it calls the “’old style’ of Flash
Tomi Engdahl says:
‘YOUTUBE is EVIL’: Somebody had a tape running, Google…
Cellist Zoe Keating strikes back with YouTube transcript
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/01/29/oops_google_somebody_left_a_tape_running/
Analysis It’s not often a $450bn multinational is humbled by a single classical musician with a tape recorder. Yet that seems to be what happened this weekend.
Google spends billions on marketing, paying lobbyists and buying influence. It funds over 150 organisations and overtook Goldman Sachs last year as the biggest corporate political donor in the USA.
What they probably didn’t reckon on was the solo artist apparently keeping a record of their conversations.
Last week the cellist re-opened last year’s controversy of the treatment of independent musicians and small operators by Google’s YouTube service by asking her fans for advice. If she refused to sign the new terms, Google would stop paying her, but could continue to use her music on YouTube, she reported. If she signed, she’d lose control of her work. The contract would tie her down for five years.
However, Keating appears to have kept verbatim notes – strongly indicating that a tape was running – and she’s now published the transcript of the conversation she said she’d had with the YouTube rep she’d been negotiating with for a year.
The transcript is available here. Keating wants to continue her current deal with Google as it stands – but that’s not an option, as the rep makes clear in the transcript.
He writes:
In other words by saying “no” to Music Key, [you allow] YouTube [to] still feature user generated videos on their service AND you won’t get any money. Think about it. This is like saying “no” to a record deal but result[ing] in the label having your songs forever and paying you nothing! YouTube is EVIL.
A familiar argument over the past 15 years is that copyright is a regulatory-style impediment wielded by large old companies to impede progress.
With strong copyright, neither Old Man nor New Man could get away with such actions as YouTube has attempted here: assuming control of global digital distribution against the artist’s consent. But thanks to the erosion of legal protection, power has shifted away from the individual, and towards “The Man”, on a scale never seen before. Because copyright is so weak today, Google can try it on.
Transcript: http://zoekeating.tumblr.com/post/109312851929/clarity
Tomi Engdahl says:
The American App Economy Is Now “Bigger Than Hollywood”
http://developers.slashdot.org/story/15/01/28/1745258/the-american-app-economy-is-now-bigger-than-hollywood
Technology business analyst Horace Deidu found an interesting nugget while closely examining an Apple press release from earlier this year: “The iOS App Store distributed $10 billion to developers in 2014, which, Deidu points out, is just about as much as Hollywood earned off U.S. box office revenues the same year.” That means the American app industry is poised to eclipse the American film industry.
The App Economy Is Now ‘Bigger Than Hollywood’
The web might be the most important medium in American culture.
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/01/the-app-economy-is-now-bigger-than-hollywood/384842/
What is the major cultural force in America right now? It might just be apps and the web.
While reading a self-laudatory Apple press release, the technology business analyst Horace Deidu found something remarkable: The iOS App Store distributed $10 billion to developers in 2014, which, Deidu points out, is just about as much as Hollywood earned off U.S. box office revenues the same year.
Now, for “App economy” revenue worldwide to approach Hollywood revenue worldwide, those ads and services would have to bring in a lot of money.
One thing is true, though. In its release, Apple claims that its App Store has created 627,000 jobs. Deidu contrasts this to the 374,000 jobs that Hollywood creates.
To me, that the American app industry may eclipse the American film industry is more interesting for what it means culturally. There’s a growing sense that the products of the sector we usually call “tech” are attaining cultural primacy—the web is the new TV.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Eric Lempel / PlayStation.Blog:
Sony announces Spotify-powered PlayStation Music streaming service for PS4, PS3, and Xperia devices; Music Unlimited shutting down March 29
PlayStation, Meet Spotify
http://blog.us.playstation.com/2015/01/28/playstation-meet-spotify/
Hello everyone! I’m thrilled today to introduce a new music destination called PlayStation Music, with Spotify as the exclusive partner. We’ve partnered with our friends at Spotify to bring its award-winning digital music service to PlayStation Network this spring in 41 markets around the world.
The new service will launch initially on PS4 and PS3, as well as Xperia smartphones and tablets. You’ll of course be able to listen to your favorite playlists – including existing playlists from current Spotify users as well as Spotify curated playlists – and enjoy the service on all of Spotify’s supported devices.
Tomi Engdahl says:
A Camera With Computer Vision
http://hackaday.com/2015/01/28/a-camera-with-computer-vision/
Computer vision is a tricky thing to stuff into a small package, but last year’s Hackaday Prize had an especially interesting project make it into the 50 top finalists. The OpenMV is a tiny camera module with a powerful microcontroller that will detect faces, take a time-lapse, record movies, and detect specific markers or colors. Like a lot of the great projects featured in last year’s Hackaday Prize, this one made it to Kickstarter and is, by far, the least expensive computer vision module available today.
OpenMV
Python-powered machine vision modules
http://hackaday.io/project/1313-openmv
The OpenMV project is a low-cost, extensible, Python-powered machine vision modules, that aims at becoming the Arduino of machine vision…
The camera was programmable in C, and had a simple serial protocol and SPI/I2C/PWM..but I wanted to make it really easy and fun, so I used MicroPython to script the camera and I wrote an IDE that can view the frame buffer, run scripts or upload them to the camera…
Features:
Scriptable in Python3.
$15 BOM/1000′s including 4-layer PCB (OpenMV1).
On board uSD or internal flash storage for storing scripts/images/video.
2MP RGB/YUV/JPEG sensor (OV2640).
Recording/Streaming MJPEG: to SD or via external WiFi shield.
Extension Header: breaks UART/PWM/SPI/I2C
Friendly IDE: upload/execute scripts, upload templates, view the framebuffer.
16MB SDRAM: on-board enables uClinux to run on OpenMV2
Image processing:
Viola-jones object detection (comptatible with OpenCV’s cascades)
Template matching with NCC (normalized cross correlation)
FAST/FREAK: keypoint detector/descriptor and matching.
Face Recognition: With LBP (Local Binary Patterns) work in progress.
Misc: RGB->LAB CLUT, kmeans clustering, histogram, median filter, scaling, sub-image and blitting, alpha blending.
The Hardware:
MCU: The MCU I choose is the STM32F4xx, an ARM Cortex-M4 micro running at 168-180MHz. It has a single precision FPU, DSP capabilities and a DCMI (Digital Camera Interface). Having a hardware camera interface along with the FPU/DSP made this particular MCU a perfect match for the project.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Brian Steinberg / Variety:
Nickelodeon to unveil stand-alone streaming video subscription service in February
http://variety.com/2015/digital/news/nickelodeon-to-unveil-stand-alone-subscription-video-service-in-february-1201418266/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Broadcom Flips on Future Set Tops
Chip vendor courts cable, over-the-air boxes
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1325481&
Broadcom is nestled in a sweet spot between traditional cable companies and newer over the top (OTT) content providers, which are both battling and enabling each other in a fight for viewers and dollars.
The company’s chipsets for next generation set top boxes enable the downlink speeds necessary for both sides of the TV equation, while providing a possible hub for a smart home. Broadcom’s DOCSIS 3.1 cable modem SoC is the basis for its set top box vision, combing dual-band Wi-Fi and a custom applications processor to reach 5 Gbit/second downstream speeds and 2 Gbit/s upstream.
The new DOCSIS standard binds channels to achieve its downstream speed, while moving the noisy upstream beyond 40 MHz to 150 MHz for faster acknowledgments and improved performance. Cable companies such as Time Warner need to continuously improve their technology in order to compete with the likes of Verizon FiOS and Google Fiber, Broadcom’s Rich Nelson told EE Times.
“Cable companies have a quandary: do I keep offering better and better broadband speeds, but I keep putting my video in peril because it’s enabling a competitor,” Nelson continued.
Broadcom’s 1×1 Wi-Fi and video chips are already inside the Roku and Amazon Fire streaming services, and the company demonstrated a 2×2 .11ac chip at the International CES.
That chip cannot be powered off USB and uses MHL instead, though Nelson noted that MHL is on all new televisions and is always on.
DOCSIS 3.1 deployments will likely occur in 2016 with lower rates around 1 Gbit/s. Nelson was skeptical about the immediate future of 60 GHz in the television space
Broadcom is also counting on set-top boxes with Wi-Fi to increase chip demand as higher speeds coming into the home drive 4K content. To show how set-top boxes can use Wi-Fi, the company demonstrated an 802.11ac 5 GHz WiFi chip streaming 4K video at 25 Mbits/s.
“In North America, many boxes are already connected because they’re sharing a hard drive, but a lot of them are connected via coax,” Nelson said, citing AT&T’s commercial for a wireless receiver. “Using Wi-Fi in those set-top boxes, like with AT&T U-verse, is a lot easier — you don’t need to have the TV near a coax connection.”
Once those set-top boxes are wirelessly connected, they could serve as a hub for a smart home. Broadcom partnered with Smartenit to integrate home automation technology with its home gateway SoC
One analyst from Gartner, however, wasn’t sure about the set top as the center of a home ecosystem. The home Internet of Things is only being adopted in a very low percentage of high-earning households because the price is too high and the usefulness isn’t clear.
“Right now it’s a gimmick and the interest level is just not there,”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Rambus Readies Lensless Image Sensor Platform
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1325479&
Intellectual property licensor Rambus is going to provide a “platform” for the maker community and others to use to experiment with its previously announced lensless image sensors, according to CEO Ron Black.
Rambus is developing a lensless form of image sensor that replaces the lens with a diffraction grating and computation. Image sensors for smart objects don’t necessarily need to see the world the same way, or in as much detail, as humans. They can use lower cost, lower energy image sensors and a little computation.
The use of gratings and computation can provide a non-bulky optical sensor that can be added to many things as a means of providing contextual awareness.
Technology News
Rambus develops lensless image sensor for IoT
http://analog-eetimes.com/en/rambus-develops-lensless-image-sensor-for-iot.html?cmp_id=7&news_id=222906870
IP licensing company Rambus Inc. (Sunnyvale, Calif.) is developing a lensless form image sensor that replaces the lens with a diffraction grating and computation. The idea is that it will provide a low-cost and non bulky form of imaging that can be added to many things as a means of improving their contextual awareness, that could not justify the bulk and cost of lensed image sensors.
When the Rambus diffraction grating replaces the focusing lens the output of a standard image sensor becomes a complex pattern of spirals, that would be meaningless to a human observer.
Rambus has developed algorithms that allow computation of position of the image field that would have produced the spiral-based pattern thereby providing a sense of vision to the object.
it might be more than enough to provide a robot or airborne drone with enough visual capability to avoid obstacles
Tomi Engdahl says:
CAMdrive is an Open Source Time-lapse Photography Controller
http://hackaday.com/2015/01/29/camdrive-is-an-open-source-time-lapse-photography-controller/
You may already be familiar with the idea of time-lapse photography. The principal is that your camera takes a photo automatically at a set interval. An example may be once per minute. This can be a good way to get see gradual changes over a long period of time. While this is interesting in itself, time-lapse videos can often be made more interesting by having the camera move slightly each time a photo is taken. CAMdrive aims to aid in this process by providing a framework for building systems that can pan, tilt, and slide all automatically.
http://www.rohrhofer.org/r-tec/
Tomi Engdahl says:
32×32 Channel CobraNet® Module
http://www.eeweb.com/company-news/cirrus_logic/32×32-channel-cobranet-module
The CM-1 is a 32 × 32 channel CobraNet® module featuring 100BASE-Tx Ethernet interface and a secondary 100BASE-Tx Ethernet interface – a redundant network connection for fault tolerance.
CobraNet, the industry-leading digital audio networking technology from Cirrus Logic, has established itself as the product of choice for multi-vendor networked audio.
The CM-1 is a DSP based solution providing an interface in the form of a compact, low-power module. Featuring up to 32 simultaneous bi-directional audio channels, the CM-1 is designed for easy integration into a wide variety of audio products such as signal processors, mixers, amplifiers and powered speakers.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Super Bowl Commercials With Hashtags Slipped To 50% In 2015
Facebook was the most mentioned social network with four; Snapchat made its debut.
http://marketingland.com/super-bowl-commercials-hashtags-slips-50-2015-116658
Fifty percent of 2015 Super Bowl ads carried hashtags, a bit of a slip from the record 57% during the 2014 game. Facebook was the social network most mentioned, though mentions of specific social networks were again very sparse.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ask Slashdot: Is There a Modern IP Webcam That Lets the User Control the Output?
http://ask.slashdot.org/story/15/02/01/134238/ask-slashdot-is-there-a-modern-ip-webcam-that-lets-the-user-control-the-output
Owners of a local shop have a menu that changes daily and wanted an IP webcam to update an image on their web-site.
The biggest issue today is that the new webcams that come out don’t support FTP, they all support sending images/video direct to a “private cloud” (e.g., Simplicam, Dropcam, etc…).
While security systems and home automation has been discussed recently, I haven’t found any recent discussions on webcams that give a user control of where the content is sent.
Comments:
Restaurant sites are what usability pros show onscreen when they want to get a belly laugh from the audience.
The reason is that restaurants are focused on looks before usability. This leads them to use pictures of text, PDFs, and the hated Flash.
Use any webcam or USB connected camera and ‘motion’ a Linux FOSS tool that lets you program picture taking any which way you want.
You’re looking for a “webcam”, stop looking for a “webcam” and you will find what you want.
Bingo. These festures are easily found on most modern IP security cameras. And the bonus is they can be configured remotely after initial setup. Mobotix is the high end brand, Axis is high quality….and lower end brands may fit the bill as well.
So: D-Link DCS-930L:
* about $30
* wired or wireless network
* IP camera
* 640×480 (may be low-ish, but should be enough for a menu if properly framed in the FoV)
* FTP client support
I’d go with a Raspberry Pi (35$), either with a camera module [raspberrypi.org] or a no-infrared module [raspberrypi.org]; a small shell script will do, google for it!
WB350F
It is a regular pocket camera that can connect to wifi and email photos. It might work for you.
Even my $20 basic D-Link (DCS-930L) IP enabled camera has FTP upload capability. I’m pretty sure the very similar TP-Link one does as well. These are not really as hard to find as the OP suggests.
I’ve had no issues with TRENDNet IP cameras.
They support FTP. And can be controlled easily enough.
Tomi Engdahl says:
How To Make Streaming Royalties Fair(er)
https://medium.com/cuepoint/how-to-make-streaming-royalties-fair-er-8b38cd862f66
Let’s change how streaming royalties are calculated, and save the full-length album while we’re at it
Streaming services, most notably Spotify (by far the largest) use what could be called a parimutuel royalty system: all the money collected goes into a big pool, Spotify takes their 30% off the top, and whatever is left is distributed to artists based on their share of overall plays. Spotify explains how it all works right here. It sounds perfectly fair and reasonable: if an artist wants to make more money all they need to do is get more plays. But there’s a major disconnect in this economic model that has not been discussed widely: Spotify doesn’t make money from plays. They make money from subscriptions.
under the current streaming royalty system payouts are heavily tilted towards artists that get massive numbers of plays. And once a pop artist crosses a certain threshold it is a mathematical certainty that their royalties will actually exceed what their fans paid in subscription fees.
In the past some have argued that forcing consumers to buy the whole album when they just want a single song is a “ripoff”, but I don’t think anyone believes the solution to this perceived problem is to have unrelated artists benefit from the sale of music they had no hand in creating. Yet that is exactly what streaming services are currently doing.
Royalties: in detail
The formula below explains the Spotify royalty system in more detail
http://www.spotifyartists.com/spotify-explained/#royalties-in-detail
Tomi Engdahl says:
David Lieberman / Deadline:
Disney CEO Bob Iger mulling possible direct-to-consumer streaming services for ESPN, Marvel, and Star Wars — Bob Iger Hints At Streaming Service Plans For Marvel And ‘Star Wars’ — The Disney CEO tossed in the possibility of new direct-to-consumer offerings in response to a question …
http://deadline.com/2015/02/bob-iger-hints-streaming-services-marvel-star-wars-1201365680/
Everett Rosenfeld / CNBC:
Disney blows past estimates in Q1, revenue of $13.39B, $1.27 EPS; broadcast up 35%, cable down
http://www.cnbc.com/id/102389868
The media giant beat analysts’ expectations across nearly every division.
The studio business did see lower theatrical distribution compared to the same time last year, and that owed to “Big Hero 6″ paling compared to “Frozen” in the prior-year quarter.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Janko Roettgers / Gigaom:
Cable TV viewing declined by more than 12 percent in January
https://gigaom.com/2015/02/03/cable-tv-viewing-declined-by-more-than-12-percent-in-january/
Looks like Netflix and other streaming services are starting to have an impact on traditional TV viewing: Total live TV ratings were down 12.7 percent year over year across the networks of major media companies, according to a note from Nomura Research, which is based on recent numbers from Nielsen. Nomura analyst Anthony DiClemente wrote that this was “one of the worst declines we have seen since we launched coverage of these companies.”
So why is live TV struggling? DiClemente pointed the finger at streaming services as the reason for the decline: “Netflix, Amazon Instant Video, and Hulu, continue to siphon viewers away from linear TV,” he concluded.
There are some differences between individual networks, which in turn weigh on media companies’ bottom lines.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Interesting Internet controlled backpack stereo project:
SnoTunes Lets You Rock Out in the Winter
http://hackaday.com/2015/02/03/snotunes-lets-you-rock-out-in-the-winter/
It’s a whopping 160 watt stereo, has 7-8 hours of battery life, is somewhat water resistant, and can be controlled wirelessly. Its brain is a Raspberry Pi B+ running Kodi (which was formerly XBMC).
It fetches and downloads YouTube music videos and can create a playlist that can be manipulated by text message. You can share YouTube links to have it download and queue the songs, you can skip the songs (but only if four people make the request), and it even automatically parses the music video titles to extract the song name and band.
SnoTunes
http://mattbilsky.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=SnoTunes
One of my jobs for USCSA (United States Collegiate Ski and Snowboard Association) is to bring music to the start of our races. Every day I would get request for racers to play specific songs when they were getting ready to start. This was a real pain. So I though wouldn’t it be nice if listeners can text message in their song requests?
The Raspberry Pi itself is running the RaspBMC distribution and uses the Kodi (formerly XBMC) for media playback.
I purchased a USB wireless microphone
Tomi Engdahl says:
Machine vision is a true multi-disciplinary field, encompassing computer science, optics, mechanical engineering, and industrial automation. While historically the tools of machine vision were focused on manufacturing, that’s quickly changing, spreading into medical applications, research, and even movie making.
Source: http://www.vision-systems.com/whitepapers/2015/01/a-first-blueprint-for-machine-vision-look-record-then-perfect.html?adid=email2
Tomi Engdahl says:
Sony to Ramp CMOS Image Sensor Production
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1325549&
Sony Corp., the world’s leading supplier of CMOS image sensors, has said it will invest 105 billion yen (about US$895 million) in the next financial year to increase its production capacity for stacked CMOS image sensors.
Sony said it would take production across three production sites current level of approximately 60,000 wafers per month to approximately 80,000 wafers per month by the end of June 2016. Previously Sony had a mid-term target of 75,000 wafers per month but demand for sensors in smartphones has prompted Sony to accelerate its investment, the company said.
Sony said it is increasing production capacity for stacked CMOS image sensors to reinforce its leading position in the image sensor market.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Sam Machkovech / Ars Technica:
Pono Player review: FLAC does not sound noticeably better than high-quality MP3 audio, poor portability, sluggish touchscreen
Pono Player review: A tall, refreshing drink of snake oil
We give Neil Young’s high-res music player a spin and do a few cochlea kegels.
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/02/pono-player-review-a-tall-refreshing-drink-of-snake-oil/
I stole Lee’s take, because the Pono Player’s sales pitch must deal with this exact sort of hurdle deal. That’s especially true if the device is targeting the likes of many Ars readers or staff, who know better than to buy into the advanced-technology snake oil so often pushed on A/V geeks. Around the Orbital HQ, we’ve laughed off countless cables, circuit boards, speakers, and “advanced” displays—all smothered in gold in one way or another—that, when it came right down to it, didn’t make a squat of difference (or certainly not enough to command some ridiculous asking prices).
To many, Pono’s trying to do just that. “You need this device to hear music the best way possible”—in a music-playing world where everybody has a perfectly good media player in their smartphones. Yet, Pono’s push to deliver a not-crazy-expensive FLAC player has a surprisingly low number of peers. We’re not foolish enough to describe a $400 player (with no built-in speakers, by the way) as a bargain, but that’s chump change compared to the bonkers price of $1,200 that Sony slapped onto its latest Walkman.
The best thing we could say about on-the-go Pono use was that the unit fit neatly into our palm and felt like a media-player version of a drum stick. When this thing was cranked to high volume on a good song, we couldn’t help but flick our wrist along and rock out in public.
Our Pono Player came pre-loaded with only one song—unsurprisingly, a Neil Young cut
Pono MusicWorld, we should note, includes a horrible storefront that looks ripped from an early ’00s music-sharing app like LimeWire.
Considering Pono’s firm sales pitch about us needing the highest-res audio available, we were surprised to not find any “highest resolution only” filter in its internal storefront. This is where Pono’s snake oil really begins, because when you play any 192/24 songs on the player, it rewards you by—we’re not kidding—turning on a little blue neon light. This doesn’t happen if your 192/24 songs didn’t come from Pono’s storefront, however, as those are apparently not 192 enough.
The player’s touchscreen interface, which displays Pono’s custom Android fork, is serviceable enough.
Before we begin discussing how the Pono Player sounds, let us reiterate: Our testing was highly subjective.
The few blind tests we conducted, as predicted, were inconclusive. The only consistent response we got from three friends—all of whom are musically inclined, some more fiendish about audio gear than others—was that the Pono Player’s handling of one particular album, Sleater-Kinney’s 2015 alt-rock record No Cities To Love, sounded a little more crisp and distinct in both compressed MP3 and uncompressed, CD-quality FLAC on a Pono Player than on a MacBook Pro. This album, however, that wasn’t even a record sampled at an exotic, higher-res rate.
When it came to comparing albums that were nearly identical, save their sampling rates, we sometimes heard an opportunity to pick out sibilance in a vocal or the ringing sound of a cymbal and say, “Oooh, there’s the higher-res version.” We were right on those calls every single time.
We did notice a difference between songs rendered through a Pono Player and the same ones on either a stereo or a MacBook Pro.
Our verdict
To clarify our ultimate sonic takeaway: We noticed improvements, however slight, with higher-res audio on a Pono Player at low-to-medium volume during our workday than we did with the same files on a MacBook Pro. The same couldn’t be said for the resolution of the audio in question, however—certainly when listening casually but sometimes even when we were paying careful attention.
We’re not interested in re-buying our entire music libraries yet again to cash in on some very unsound assertions about audio sampling. We’re pretty happy with our CD-quality collection
We could see a Pono Player 2.0 being a killer device, honestly, especially since the iPod Classic has exited the space. Perhaps now there’s significant room for $300-ish high-end dedicated music players.
Tomi Engdahl says:
What’s That Sound? It’s the Amazon Echo Teardown … teardown … teardown
http://www.designnews.com/author.asp?section_id=1386&doc_id=276514&dfpPParams=ind_183,industry_consumer,kw_24,aid_276514&dfpLayout=blog
Amazon Echo: World’s smartest speaker, or world’s tallest Siri? Tech specs include:
2.5-inch woofer, with a reflex port to drop a little extra bass
2.0-inch tweeter
7-microphone array
Light ring volume adjustment
Remote control
Tomi Engdahl says:
Peter Kafka / Re/code:
Apple is Talking to TV Programmers About Its Own Web TV Service — Apple has spent years circling the TV business, without ever really getting into the TV business. Now it may be ready to try again. — Industry executives say Apple is in talks with TV programmers about deals …
Apple is Talking to TV Programmers About Its Own Web TV Service
http://recode.net/2015/02/04/apple-is-talking-to-tv-programmers-about-its-own-web-tv-service/
Industry executives say Apple is in talks with TV programmers about deals that would allow Apple to offer an “over the top” pay-TV service, like the one Dish has started selling with its Sling TV product, and the one Sony is getting ready to launch.
The theory is that Apple would put together bundles of programming — but not the entire TV lineup that pay-TV providers generally offer — and sell it directly to consumers, over the Web. That means Apple wouldn’t be reinventing the way TV works today, but offering its own version of it, with its own interface and user experience.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:
YouTube experiments with letting viewers choose multiple camera angles, to be tested by select performers
YouTube Launches Multi-Angle Video Experiment
http://techcrunch.com/2015/02/04/youtube-launches-multi-angle-video-experiment/
Here is a small but fun experiment that YouTube is rolling out today: videos that let you switch between different camera angles while the video is playing. These multi-angle videos are only an experiment right now and there’s only one video that actually showcases this feature so far.
If you want to give this a try, head over to Madilyn Bailey’s YouTube channel
As YouTube tells me, the process of creating these videos is automatic on the user’s side, but the technology the team developed to support this is not ready to scale to everyone yet.
YouTube is not the first video site that is trying this. Over the years, there have been multiple startups that focused on nothing else but developing similar features.
But if there is one video site that can probably make this work, it’s YouTube, simply because of the sheer size of the service’s user base.
Madilyn Bailey’s YouTube channel
https://www.youtube.com/user/MadilynBailey/ChooseYourView
Tomi Engdahl says:
Instagram introduces endlessly looping videos to please advertisers
http://www.theverge.com/2015/2/4/7976043/instagram-video-auto-play-looping-update
Instagram has tweaked its video settings so that clips automatically replay in users’ streams — a change that will be mainly welcomed by #brands keen to get as many views for their ads as possible. Users can choose to have videos preload on Wi-Fi only to save data, but this is not the default option, and there’s no way to disable autoplaying altogether.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Olympus Air is a wireless camera for your smartphone
http://www.theverge.com/2015/2/5/7983555/olympus-air-is-a-wireless-camera-for-your-smartphone
Sony’s QX lens cameras, which wirelessly and physically attach to your smartphone, didn’t turn out to be all that great — performance was painfully slow, and at their price and size you might as well just carry a decent Wi-Fi-equipped compact camera. But Olympus seems to think there’s the germ of a good idea in there and has announced its take on the concept: Olympus Air.
The Olympus Air A01 is a 16-megapixel Micro Four Thirds sensor and mount that can take any of the numerous lenses released for the format so far
Olympus’ version works with a series of apps, including one that replicates a physical camera mode dial and another that employs the Art Filters built into Olympus’ line of full Micro Four Thirds cameras.
Olympus Air has only been announced for release in Japan
A bundle with Olympus’ regular 14-42mm f/3.5-5.6 kit lens will run ¥49,800 ($425).