Here are some audio and video trends picks for the year 2017:
It seems that 3D craze is over. So long, 3DTV – we won’t miss you – BBC News reports that at this year’s CES trade show, there was barely a whimper of 3D TV, compared to just two years ago when it was being heralded as the next big thing. In the cinema, 3D was milked for all it was worth, and even James Cameron, who directed Avatar, is fed up with 3D. There are currently no major manufacturers making 3DTVs as Samsung, LG and Sony have now stopped making 3D-enabled televisions. According to CNet’s report, TV makers are instead focusing on newer technologies such as HDR.
360 degree virtual reality video is hot how. Movie studios are pouring resources into virtual reality story-telling. 360-Degree Video Playback Coming to VLC, VR Headset Support Planned for 2017 article tells that VLC media player previews 360° video and photo support for its desktop apps, says the feature will come to mobile soon; dedicated VLC apps for VR headsets due in 2017.
4K and 8K video resolutions are hot. Test broadcasting of 8K started in August 2016 in Japan and full service is scheduled for 2018. According to Socionext Introduces 8K HEVC Real-Time Encoder Solution press release the virtual reality technology, which is seeing rapid growth in the global market, requires an 8K resolution as the current 4K resolution cannot support a full 360-degree wraparound view with adequate resolution.
Fake News Is About to Get Even Scarier than You Ever Dreamed article tells that advancements in audio and video technology are becoming so sophisticated that they will be able to replicate real news—real TV broadcasts, for instance, or radio interviews—in unprecedented, and truly indecipherable, ways. Adobe showed off a new product that has been nicknamed “Photoshop for audio” that allows type words that are expressed in that exact voice of someone you have recording on. Technologists can also record video of someone talking and then change their facial expressions in real time. Digital avatars can be almost indecipherable from real people – on the latest Star Wars movie it is hard to tell which actors are real and which are computer-generated.
Antique audio formats seem to be making come-back. By now, it isn’t news that vinyl albums continue to sell. It is interesting that UK vinyl sales reach 25-year high to point that Vinyl Records Outsold Digital Downloads In the UK at least for one week.
I would not have quessed that Cassettes Are Back, and Booming. But a new report says that sales of music on cassette are up 140 percent. The antiquated format is being embraced by everyone from indie musicians to Eminem and Justin Bieber. For some strange reason it turns out there’s a place for archaic physical media of questionable audio fidelity—even in the Spotify era.
Enhance! RAISR Sharp Images with Machine Learning. Google RAISR Intelligently Makes Low-Res Images High Quality article tells that with Google’s RAISR machine learning-driven image enhancement technique, images can be up to 75% smaller without losing their detail.
Improving Multiscreen Services article tells that operators have discovered challenges as they try to meet subscribers’ requirements for any content on any device. Operators must choose from a variety of options for preparing and delivering video on multiple screens. And unlike the purpose-built video networks of the past, in multiscreen OTT distribution there are no well-defined quality standards such as IPTV’s SCTE-168.
2017: Digital Advertising to overtake TV Advertising in US this year article tells that according to PricewaterhouseCoopers, “Ad Spend” on digital advertising will surpass TV ads for the first time in 2017.For all these years, television gave a really tough fight to internet with respect to Ad spend, but online advertising to decisively take over the market in 2017. For details check How TV ad spending stacks up against digital ad spending in 4 charts.
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Tomi Engdahl says:
American Tech Companies Are So Afraid Of Offending Indians That They’re Censoring All Their Products
https://www.buzzfeed.com/pranavdixit/why-silicon-valley-is-censoring-itself-as-it-expands-in?utm_term=.qyazG293LN#.gn5aeyj3xB
In the world’s largest democracy, Amazon Prime Video deletes most nudity and profanity, Google bans retailers from buying ads for erotica, Amazon and Flipkart refuse to sell adult products, and Tinder suggests its users should get parental approval for their dates.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Sara Fischer / Axios:
Streaming companies like Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu snagged 162 Emmy nominations, almost a third of the total and the most ever awarded to tech companies
Tech’s growing Emmy clout
https://www.axios.com/streamers-sweep-emmy-nominations-2458864289.html
Streaming companies like Netflix, Amazon and Hulu snagged nearly 1/3 of Emmy nominations this year, the most ever awarded to tech companies. That’s up from 91 nominations for streamers in 2016.
Why it matters: Streaming companies are pouring billions of dollars into content (around $4.5 billion this year for Amazon and Hulu and $6 billion for Netflix) and it’s paying off. Earlier this year, Amazon and Netflix both took home Oscars, the first time for any tech company. Their bankrolls and massive audiences reflect a big shift in the television business from traditional TV companies to digital streaming companies.
Tomi Engdahl says:
DIY Dedicated YouTube Live Streaming Camera!
https://www.hackster.io/tinkernut/diy-dedicated-youtube-live-streaming-camera-7a825e
As a YouTuber, I’m always looking for ways to streamline different tasks. Live streaming is definitely something that has the opportunity to be a LOT simpler. It would be nice if you just had a camera that you can take with you, turn on, and live stream. So that will be the primary goal of this project: to make a dedicated camera for live streaming to YouTube.
My idea is to make a video camera using a Raspberry Pi 3, 2.8″ LCD Touchscreen, and the Pi Camera as the basic platform. We’ll also need a small USB microphone to record audio, and some type of rechargeable battery to power it all.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Benedict Evans:
As tech platforms experiment with TV content, a look at how corporations controlling music and ebooks lost their strategic value to tech companies — People in tech and media have been saying that ‘content is king’ for a long time – perhaps since the VHS/Betamax battle of the early 1980s, and perhaps longer.
Content isn’t king
http://ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2017/7/13/content-isnt-king
People in tech and media have been saying that ‘content is king’ for a long time – perhaps since the VHS/Betamax battle of the early 1980s, and perhaps longer. Content and access to content was a strategic lever for technology. I’m not sure how much this is true anymore. Music and books don’t matter much to tech anymore, and TV probably won’t matter much either.
Most obviously, subscription streaming has more or less ended the strategic importance of music to tech companies.
Since music no longer stops people from switching between platforms, it’s gone from being a moat (especially for Apple, the one platform company that actually had a strong position) to a low-margin check-box feature. That doesn’t mean that these services are exactly commodities – each builds its own recommendation tools, some experiment with routes to market (with mobile operators, for example), and some try exclusive early access to new pop songs. But they all have roughly the same underlying library of tens of millions of tracks, and the differences between them are fundamentally tactics, not strategies, just as music itself is a tactic: it is now merely marketing, not a moat.
Something similar applies to ebooks. Like Spotify, the Kindle app is on any platform, so it doesn’t stop you switching devices. Unlike music, your books are still bought (mostly: there are some subscription services but they don’t cover mainstream titles), and locked with DR
Meanwhile, whenever I talk to music people or book people, very quickly the conversation becomes a music industry conversation or a book industry conversation.
All of this of course takes us to TV, the industry that’s next on the tech industry’s content journey. Just as new technology unlocked massive change in music and (rather less so) in books, it is now about to break apart the bundled, linear channel model of the TV industry (this is especially the case in the USA, which has a hugely over-served pay TV market). As this happens, there are all sorts of questions that follow on: what happens to channels that might be able to make more going direct to consumer (HBO, perhaps); what happens to channels that might benefit from being in a bundle and lose from having to go direct (ESPN, perhaps), where the syndication model goes, and so on, and so on. One thing that does seem very likely, deterministically, is that the curve of viewing distribution will get steeper: the shows that are watched mainly because they’re broadcast at 8pm on Saturday will suffer, and so will the channels that are watched because they’re high up on the program guide. Channel brands, shows and episodes are unbundled. We’ve been talking about this in theory for over a decade, but finally, praxis is here.
Just as for music or books, though, these are all fundamentally TV industry questions.
A question here, though, is how well a TV service, perhaps with a stand-alone monthly subscription, as for Apple Music, maps to an 18-30 month handset replacement cycle.
Perhaps a deeper question, setting aside the purely strategic calculations
If and when Apple does go back to southern California, meanwhile, it does so with nothing like the kind of negotiating power that it had in iPod days – Amazon and Netflix (if not also Google and Facebook) have seen to that. But that doesn’t mean that content companies have much more power either. Part of ‘content is king’ was the idea that (at least in theory) content companies can withhold access to their libraries entirely, and in the past one might have presumed that that meant they had the power to kill any new service at birth. In reality, rights-holders have always had too strong a need for short-term revenue to forgo broad distribution, and few of them individually had a strong enough brand to extract a fee that was high enough to justify exclusivity. They always have to take the cheques – individually to meet their bonus targets, and collectively to meet their earnings estimates.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Todd Spangler / Variety:
Netflix reports Q2 revenue of $2.79B, vs. $2.76B expected, and total streaming subs grew 5.2M to 104M, vs. 3.2M expected; stock up 10%+
Netflix Blows Past Q2 Expectations for Subscriber Growth, Adding 5.2 Million New Customers
http://variety.com/2017/digital/news/netflix-q2-2017-earnings-1202497619/
Stock surges to all-time high after quarterly subscriber gains top forecasts
Netflix added 5.2 million overall streaming subscribers in the second quarter of 2017, dramatically beating investor expectations for both U.S. and international growth.
In the U.S., the company packed on 1.07 million streaming subs and added 4.14 million overseas. Wall Street analysts had expected Netflix to add 3.2 million streaming customers in the period (600,000 in the U.S. and 2.6 million internationally), which was in line with the company’s guidance issued in April.
Tomi Engdahl says:
I am an Iconoscope
http://hackaday.com/2017/07/19/i-am-an-iconoscope/
We’d never seen an iconoscope before. And that’s reason enough to watch the quirky Japanese, first-person video of a retired broadcast engineer’s loving restoration.
Quick iconoscope primer. It was the first video camera tube, invented in the mid-20s, and used from the mid-30s to mid-40s. It worked by charging up a plate with an array of photo-sensitive capacitors, taking an exposure by allowing the capacitors to discharge according to the light hitting them, and then reading out the values with another electron scanning beam.
You could argue that the iconoscope is the precursor to the CCD camera of today, which also uses capacitors to store the image. In that sense, it’s not so weird. But old TV tech is full of yet stranger devices. If you’d like to start down that rabbit hole, try the Nipkow Disk camera or the Eidophor projector.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
NBC News launches “Stay Tuned”, a twice-daily news show on Snapchat, which is aimed at younger viewers who no longer watch traditional TV — NBC News is bringing news broadcasts to Snapchat, the company announced today, with the launch of a twice-daily headline news show it’s calling “Stay Tuned.”
NBC News launches ‘Stay Tuned,’ a twice-daily Snapchat news broadcast
https://techcrunch.com/2017/07/19/nbc-news-launches-stay-tuned-a-twice-daily-snapchat-news-broadcast/
NBC News is bringing news broadcasts to Snapchat, the company announced today, with the launch of a twice-daily headline news show it’s calling “Stay Tuned.” The show aims to connect with younger viewers who no longer get their news from traditional television, nor connect with a trusted anchor during a nightly broadcast as generations before them.
Instead, the two- to three-minute news show will feature four or five segments focused on the top national and international stories of the day, including politics, pop culture and more. Beyond simply airing the news, the show also aims to explain its importance and provide context.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Scaachi Koul / BuzzFeed:
Inside the challenges facing MTV as it tries to reinvent itself in the internet age while continuing to be motivated by nostalgia — MTV used to be closely in tune with youth culture, creating cultural phenomena instead of merely covering them. Now, it looks like they’re just trying to catch up.
MTV Isn’t What It Used To Be
https://www.buzzfeed.com/scaachikoul/who-wants-their-mtv-in-2017?utm_term=.jp3NAaePnW#.gfLaj3M9yb
MTV used to be closely in tune with youth culture, creating cultural phenomena instead of merely covering them. Now, it looks like they’re just trying to catch up.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Richard Gao / Android Police:
YouTube to shutter Video Editor and photo slideshows tools Sep. 20; Enhancements feature, which lets users trim, blur, and filter uploaded videos, will live on — YouTube has been the biggest video-sharing site out there for many years, but that doesn’t mean that everything about it is very good.
YouTube’s Video Editor and photo slideshows are being discontinued on September 20th
http://www.androidpolice.com/2017/07/20/youtubes-video-editor-photo-slideshows-discontinued-september-20th/
YouTube has been the biggest video-sharing site out there for many years, but that doesn’t mean that everything about it is good. Two of those not-so-good things include the Video Editor and photo slideshows, which are both sparingly used. For that reason, YouTube is discontinuing the use of these two features after September 20th, 2017.
A community manager posted in the Google Product Forums’ YouTube Help Forum that both of these things would be going the way of the dodo in two months. The reason cited for this decision? Limited usage, and that YouTube wants to focus its efforts on creating new tools and updating other, more popular features. That’s understandable, as neither the Video Editor nor the photo slideshows is especially useful. After all, software like iMovie and Movie Maker can do the same things quite easily.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Verge:
Artists, producers, managers on how SoundCloud alienated them with a messy transition to a paid biz model that made little money for the company and artists
How SoundCloud’s broken business model drove artists away
‘25 million plays, and zero dollars’
https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/21/15999172/soundcloud-business-model-future-spotify-streaming
In December 2012, as part of a major redesign, SoundCloud introduced a feature called the repost. Similar to Tumblr’s reblog or Twitter’s retweet, reposts were designed as a way to help new music spread virally. But from the start, artists abused the feature by constantly reposting their own tracks, pushing them back to the top of their followers’ feeds every few days.
Fans and artists alike loudly complained — but SoundCloud, which was busy fighting an existential threat from major record labels, didn’t address the abuse for nearly three years.
In the meantime, artists and fans alike flocked to rival services like Spotify, Google, and Apple. Ask the artists who first turned SoundCloud into a premier destination for discovering new music and they’ll tell you that they abandoned it only after years of neglect on the platform. Interviews with artists, producers, and managers illustrate how SoundCloud squandered early enthusiasm for its service with a messy transition to a paid business that ultimately made little money for artists — or SoundCloud — while driving away the listeners and creators that were its lifeblood.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Optical mapping 3D display takes the eye fatigue out of virtual reality
http://www.laserfocusworld.com/articles/2017/06/optical-mapping-3d-display-takes-the-eye-fatigue-out-of-virtual-reality.html?cmpid=enl_lfw_lfwdetectorsandimagingnewsletter_2017-07-11
Virtual-reality (VR) headsets display a computer-simulated world, while augmented-reality (AR) glasses overlay computer-generated elements with the real world; although AR and VR devices are starting to hit the market, they remain mostly a novelty because eye fatigue makes them uncomfortable to use for extended periods. A new type of 3D display could solve this long-standing problem by greatly improving the viewing comfort of these wearable devices.
Measuring only 1 x 2 in., the new optical mapping 3D display module, developed by Liang Gao and Wei Cui of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, increases viewing comfort by producing depth cues that are perceived in much the same way we see depth in the real-world.
An optical mapping display creates a 3D image. An OLED screen is divided into four subpanels that each create a 2D picture. The spatial-multiplexing unit (SMU) shifts each of these images to different depths while aligning the centers of all of them with the viewing axis. Through the eyepiece, each image appears to be at a different depth.
The researchers are now working to further reduce the system’s size, weight and power consumption. “In the future, we want to replace the spatial light modulators with another optical component such as a volume holography grating,”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Google releases object detection API for TensorFlow open-source software library
http://www.vision-systems.com/articles/2017/06/google-releases-object-detection-api-for-tensorflow-open-source-software-library.html?cmpid=enl_vsd_vsdnewsletter_2017-07-06
Google has announced the release of the TensorFlow Object Detection API, which is an open-source framework built on top of the TensorFlow open-source software library for machine learning that makes it easy to construct, train and deploy object detection models, according to the company.
https://github.com/tensorflow/models/tree/master/object_detection
Tomi Engdahl says:
How will deep learning impact the vision industry?
http://www.vision-systems.com/articles/2017/06/how-will-deep-learning-impact-the-vision-industry.html?cmpid=enl_vsd_vsdnewsletter_2017-07-06
Over the past few years, deep learning has become one of the hottest topics in the industry. Companies such as Facebook and Google are putting time, effort, and money into the technologies, and within the machine vision industry, there are an increasing number of products being released that feature the technology.
Take for example the 2017 Vision Systems Design Innovators Awards. Out of 43 honorees, six of these companies developed products relating to machine learning or deep learning, or artificial intelligence of some type, which more than the previous two years. Furthermore, Cognex—perhaps the largest vision company in the world—recently put an emphasis on the technology when they acquired award-winning deep learning software company ViDi Systems. Cognex isn’t alone, either, as companies like Intel, Xilinx, DJI, and NVIDIA have all placed an importance on deep learning and machine learning technologies.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Do Dash Cams Make for Better Drivers?
https://www.eeweb.com/blog/max_maxfield/do-dash-cams-make-for-better-drivers
Do you think that you might modify your driving habits if you knew a dash cam was recording your actions?
Tomi Engdahl says:
Evolving Radio/Audio for Connected Cars
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1332047&
Changes in antennas, displays, in-vehicle networks and new digital radio standards have made car radios much more versatile, while bringing new challenges to car radio vendors.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Kurt Wagner / Recode:
Facebook has acquired a content rights startup called Source3 to help fight video pirates
Facebook has acquired a content rights startup called Source3 to help fight video pirates
Facebook wants to make sure video creators can’t get ripped off.
https://www.recode.net/2017/7/24/16021448/facebook-acquisition-source3-video-rights-management-ip
Facebook has acquired a startup to help it crack down on users who share pirated videos and other content without permission. Source3 builds technology to detect intellectual property that has been shared by internet users without permission.
Facebook is acquiring both the technology and at least some of the team behind Source3, which announced the deal on its website.
Facebook has had a lot of issues with pirated content in the past, and it has been two years since the company first announced “Rights Manager,” technology to detect and remove video clips shared by people who don’t have rights to the video. YouTube offers something similar, though more advanced, called Content ID.
http://www.source3.io/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
Twitter confirms it’s winding down its SnappyTV video editing tool, acquired in 2014, shifting features to Media Studio
Twitter confirms it is winding down SnappyTV, shifting features to Media Studio
https://techcrunch.com/2017/07/25/twitter-confirms-it-is-winding-down-snappytv-shifting-features-to-media-studio/
Twitter has been making an effort for some time to streamline and simplify its interface to make its social media platform more accessible to new and more casual users, and it is doing the same in the backend of its service. In the latest development, we have confirmed that Twitter is preparing to wind down SnappyTV, a service it acquired in 2014 for quickly clipping, editing and sharing live video clips on Twitter and other social platforms.
In its place, Twitter plans to bring several of SnappyTV’s features into Media Studio, a dashboard for businesses and power users to upload, schedule and manage media tweets that looks like it might have been launched about a year ago.
Reports started to emerge earlier today about the company’s plans to sunset SnappyTV.
https://business.twitter.com/en/help/troubleshooting/media-studio-faqs.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
Samsung investigated: 32 inches already too small
Half of Finnish households have at least 42-inch television. Only 23 per cent of the respondents reported that the primary household television was 32 inches or smaller, and it is clear from a survey conducted by Samsung.
A survey commissioned by Samsung reveals that Finns are still watching TV. In addition to direct broadcasts, 86 percent of Finns have used streaming services for TV shows, movies or videos. Ykkönen is the Yleisradio Areena service that can be viewed without logging in.
Streaming content is considered on TV devices (39%), but also on a computer, tablet, and cellphone. The most popular are YLE Areena (61%), YouTube (57%), Katsomo (39%), Netflix (34%), Screen (31%), Viaplay (11%), CMore (10%) and HBO Nordic ).
Source: https://www.uusiteknologia.fi/2017/07/26/samsung-tutkitutti-32-tuumaa-jo-liian-pieni/
Tomi Engdahl says:
TVAddons domains transferred to law firm, could spy on Kodi users watching pirated material
A worrying development for many Kodi users
https://www.techspot.com/news/70297-defunct-kodi-domains-transferred-law-firm-could-used.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
Michael Abrash / Oculus:
Oculus’ Michael Abrash on how vagaries of human visual, auditory perception can cause issues for VR development, and the tech advances needed to overcome issues
VR’s Grand Challenge: Michael Abrash on the Future of Human Interaction
https://www.oculus.com/blog/vrs-grand-challenge-michael-abrash-on-the-future-of-human-interaction/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Alex French / New York Times:
How The Lego Movie spawned a trend toward non-narrative movies aimed at existing fan bases, like The Emoji Movie and a potential Fruit Ninja movie — Hollywood is aggressively adapting material that doesn’t have a narrative or even any characters. But not all intellectual property is created equal.
http://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/27/magazine/why-hollywood-is-trying-to-turn-everything-into-movies-even-mindless-games-like-fruit-ninja.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
Former Google SVP says Android phones ‘years’ behind the iPhone in photography
https://9to5mac.com/2017/07/31/iphone-versus-android-photography/
Former Google senior vice president of Social, Vic Gundotra, has said that Android phones are literally years behind the iPhone when it comes to photography – and it’s Android’s fault.
Gundotra started by praising the quality of the iPhone 7 Plus camera in a Facebook post.
The end of the DSLR for most people has already arrived. I left my professional camera at home and took these shots at dinner with my iPhone 7 using computational photography (portrait mode as Apple calls it). Hard not to call these results (in a restaurant, taken on a mobile phone with no flash) stunning. Great job Apple.
But he went further …
In response to a comment suggesting that the Samsung S8 camera was even better, Business Insider spotted that Gundotra disagreed. He said that not only was Apple way ahead of Samsung, but Android was to blame.
I would never use an Android phone for photos!
Here is the problem: It’s Android. Android is an open source (mostly) operating system that has to be neutral to all parties. This sounds good until you get into the details.
It’s because when Samsung innovates with the underlying hardware (like a better camera) they have to convince Google to allow that innovation to be surfaced to other applications via the appropriate API. That can take YEARS.
Also the greatest innovation isn’t even happening at the hardware level – it’s happening at the computational photography level.
Apple doesn’t have all these constraints. They innovate in the underlying hardware, and just simply update the software with their latest innovations (like portrait mode) and ship it.
This theme – that Google takes an early lead and is then overtaken by Apple – appears to be happening again in another camera-related area: augmented reality.
Tomi Engdahl says:
TI Brings DLP Pico Projectors to the Masses
DMD chip priced under $20
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1332100&
Texas Instruments’ micro-opto-electromechanical-system-based Digital Light Processor (DLP), with millions of micromirrors per digital micromirror device (DMD) MOEMS chip, revolutionized digital cinema, earning the technology’s inventor an Oscar in 2015. After the 87th Academy Awards ceremony, TI began downsizing its technology for consumers. Today, TI is releasing the 0.2-inch, quarter-million-mirror DLP2000 at a price of less than $20, with an evaluation module (EVM) priced at less than $100, making it the most cost-effective pico-projector enabler to date, according to analysts. Competing units for the consumer market use as few as two raster-scanning mirrors.
“The new TI DLP LightCrafter Display 2000 is a breakthrough, since it brings the price down to a point that any developer can consider it for their applications,”
TI is the leading supplier of pico-projector chips, having shipped more than 1 million units in the first half of this year, Abowd said. Most of those units shipped to China, but the devices “are also increasingly popular in the U.S., such as in the ultra-thin pico projector Moto Mod, which snaps on to the Moto Z2 Force Edition smartphone,” she said.
The DLP solution released today offers “a $19.99 DMD chip plus matching controller, power management, and driver chips,”
The chip undercuts the price of the previous TI generation’s least expensive model by three times and should enable consumer applications to break the $100 price barrier by Christmas 2017.
TI DLP® LightCrafter™ Display2000 EVM User’s Guide
http://www.ti.com/lit/ug/dlpu049/dlpu049.pdf
Tomi Engdahl says:
PicoProjector Info
http://www.picoprojector-info.com/tags/technical-/-research
Tomi Engdahl says:
Is It Time to Bring Back the TV Antenna?
http://www.electronicdesign.com/blog/it-time-bring-back-tv-antenna?code=UM_NN7TT3&utm_rid=CPG05000002750211&utm_campaign=12213&utm_medium=email&elq2=49c083757ae4409d9d7ebabf70a084d5
Over 80% of us subscribe to some form of pay TV service, whether cable- or-satellite based. We get hundreds of channels, most of which we do not watch. And while the service is generally good, the monthly cost continues to go up. According to research firm Parks Associates, the average U.S. monthly pay TV bill is $84, but many pay more. With premium channels and high-speed internet service bundled in, monthly bills are often ballooning to over $200 per month (too much even for the generally affluent).
On top of that, Parks Associates says that about 63% of consumers also subscribe to one or more of the over the top (OTT) streaming services like Netflix or Hulu. 31% have multiple OTT subscriptions. This leads me to wonder our video viewing habit is growing out of control. Most people today sit in front of a screen all day, be it a computer, smartphone, tablet, or TV set. Is that a good thing?
The increasing cost is causing subscribers to downgrade their service to save money. Some consumers have “cut the cord” completely in favor of an internet service subscription only plus some OTT for movies and TV series. The outcome of these trends has essentially stopped the growth of pay TV services. The appeal of OTT is that you can watch it on your smartphone, tablet, or oversized 4K TV thanks to Wi-Fi.
Perhaps the most interesting revelation by Parks Associates research is that many consumers have dropped pay TV completely and opted for over the air (OTA) TV. The percentage of U.S. households that use antenna-only TV has grown from about 9% in 2013 to 15% today, and that number continues to grow.
My daughter and son-in-law recently cut the TV cord in favor of OTA TV. They kept the high-speed DSL line. After analyzing their TV consumption they concluded they could get all the news, sports, and entertainment they wanted from local TV channels. My two grandkids mostly watch movies on their smartphones or tablets, so they did retain their modestly priced Netflix subscription. The outcome is a radically lower TV bill.
That trend could continue once OTA 4k TV is available. The Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC) is working on a new U.S. standard to cover 4k, including high dynamic range (HDR) and other advanced features. ATSC 3.0 standard, as it is called, will use OFDM and LDPC error correction to make this happen. That is not compatible with the existing ATSC 8VSB standard now in use, so during any transition, TV sets will need to cover the current and 3.0 standards.
Tomi Engdahl says:
HBO hacked: Upcoming episodes, Game of Thrones data leaked online
HBO chairman: ‘Disruptive, unsettling, and disturbing for all of us’
http://ew.com/tv/2017/07/31/hbo-hacked-game-of-thrones/
HBO has joined the ranks of Hollywood entertainment companies to suffer a major cyber attack.
EW has learned that upcoming episodes of a couple series and at least one alleged script or treatment have been put online by hackers who breached the company’s systems — with more threatened to be coming soon.
“HBO recently experienced a cyber incident, which resulted in the compromise of proprietary information,” the network confirmed in a statement.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Star Wars Video That Baffled YouTube’s Copyright Cops
https://www.wired.com/story/the-star-wars-video-that-baffled-youtubes-copyright-cops
Every director knows that the score can make the scene. Anyone who’s ever watched a rough cut without soundtrack music can confirm this.
Fans of the YouTube channel Auralnauts, which posted the doctored Star Wars scene in 2014 as a tongue-in-cheek tribute to the emotional power of Williams’ score, loved it for that weirdness. But another set of viewers—the holders of the rights to the movie’s soundtrack—tuned in to these sounds of silence and heard something else: the ka-ching of a cash register.
That’s what the Auralnauts discovered earlier this summer when they received word that Warner/Chappell—the global music publishing arm of Warner Music Group—had filed a monetization claim on their “Star Wars Minus Williams” video through YouTube’s Content ID System. That’s right: The copyright holder was claiming ownership of something that wasn’t there. Under the claim, Warner would receive any future ad revenue earned by the video, which has been viewed more than four million times. The company’s effort to monetize silence transformed the Auralnauts video: Once just a clever gag, it quickly became a flashpoint in the broader YouTube conflict between freedom of expression and copyright protection.
The Auralnauts channel has steadily grown to more than 48 million views and 200,000 subscribers in total—enough so that the New York City-based creators have harbored hopes of focusing on their YouTube channel full time instead of simultaneously working other jobs.
The music industry has long complained about YouTube making ad money at the expense of music copyright holders under “safe harbor” provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) that excuse service providers from being liable for copyright infringements. In response, Google-owned YouTube points to its automated Content ID system, which gives copyright holders the option to either take down videos based on copyright claims or take the ad revenue generated from the videos.
The monetization option has proven especially popular among music publishers. A 2016 report by Google found that music companies chose to monetize more than 95 percent of YouTube videos involved in copyright claims instead of blocking the videos, and YouTube ended up paying the music industry $1 billion in ad revenue that year.
Since debuting in 2007, Content ID has helped maintain an uneasy truce between YouTube and copyright holders, even as YouTube has displaced broadcast radio and other music streaming services to become the most popular format for people to discover new songs and listen to music.
About 99.5 percent of monetization claims on sound recordings are automated through YouTube’s Content ID System, according to statistics provided by a YouTube spokesperson. The system uses digital fingerprinting of audio and video to flag infringements of copyrighted material uploaded to the service.
But in the case of “Star Wars Minus Williams,” someone at Warner/Chappell took the rare step of manually filing a claim against the Auralnauts video.
In an added twist, the Warner/Chappell claim incorrectly identified the “Star Wars Main Title” track as being present in the Auralnauts video.
“While yes, there is technically a trace of John Williams present in our video, it is neither enough to arguably warrant a claim, nor is it even the correct track they are claiming,” Koonce says.
Koonce and Moorhaus disputed the claim through YouTube’s system. That choice makes the Auralnauts case even more unusual: Such claims are challenged less than one percent of the time, according to YouTube.
Warner/Chappell responded by rejecting the dispute of its claim. That left the Auralnauts with a tough choice: They could appeal the rejected dispute by providing more information about themselves and their reasoning. But if a copyright claimant such as Warner/Chappell does not back down from its claim, the video is likely to get taken down from YouTube entirely—and in that event, the Auralnauts would also be penalized
Three such takedowns and YouTube will delete your channel.
In any case, Lyons suggests that the Auralnauts video has a very good chance of being protected under fair use legal doctrine
Tomi Engdahl says:
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Plex brings its Live TV streaming service and DVR to Apple TV and Android, adds “time-shifting” feature to pause, rewind, and fast-forward through live TV — Plex today is taking its Live TV service, including its DVR, out of beta, while also expanding to Apple TV and Android …
Plex brings its Live TV streaming service to Apple TV and Android, adds time-shifting
https://techcrunch.com/2017/08/02/plex-brings-its-live-tv-streaming-service-to-apple-tv-and-android-adds-time-shifting/
Plex today is taking its Live TV service, including its DVR, out of beta, while also expanding to Apple TV and Android, and introducing a new “time-shifting” feature that allows you to pause, rewind and fast-forward through your live TV programs. The company first introduced its DVR capabilities for those who connect a TV tuner and antenna to their Plex setup last fall, then moved to more fully target DIY cord cutters this summer with the added ability to stream live television.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Samsung launches brighter-than-projectors LED cinema display
http://www.laserfocusworld.com/articles/2017/07/samsung-launches-brighter-than-projectors-led-cinema-display.html?cmpid=enl_lfw_lfw_detectors_and_imaging_newsletter_2017-08-03
Samsung Electronics (Seoul, Korea) installed its first ever commercial Cinema LED Screen at Lotte Cinema World Tower in Korea. Designed as a High Dynamic Range (HDR) LED theater display, Samsung says the Cinema LED Screen creates a more captivating and vibrant viewing experience through next-generation picture quality and true-to-life audio thanks to a collaboration between HARMAN Professional Solutions and Samsung Audio Lab.
Stretching nearly 10.3 m (33.8 ft) wide in size, the Cinema LED Screen accommodates a variety of theater configurations while ensuring superior levels of technical performance, reliability and quality. The display brings the visual power of HDR picture quality to the big screen, and enlivens content with both ultra-sharp 4K resolution (4096 x 2160) and peak brightness levels (146 fL) nearly 10 times greater than that offered by standard projector technologies. Additionally, the Cinema LED Screen’s futuristic, distortion-free presentation leverages ultra-contrast and low-tone grayscale settings to showcase the brightest colors, deepest blacks and most pristine whites at a nearly infinite contrast ratio.
To go with the stunning video technology within the ‘SUPER S’ theater of Lotte Cinema, Samsung has paired its Cinema LED Screen with state-of-the-art audio technologies from JBL by HARMAN. This integration includes powerful speakers bordering the screen, proprietary audio processing technology, and JBL’s Sculpted Surround system, producing an unparalleled sight and sound experience the way the content creators intended.
Samsung Debuts World’s First Cinema LED Display
https://news.samsung.com/global/samsung-debuts-worlds-first-cinema-led-display
The First LED Screen Theater Amplifies the Immersive Experience Through HDR LED Display and JBL by HARMAN’s Audio Solution
Tomi Engdahl says:
ESSENTIALS OF TIN CAN MIC DESIGN
Based on the Cortado contact microphone
https://hackaday.io/project/19514-essentials-of-tin-can-mic-design
Most DIY audio enthusiasts are familiar with the standard “tin can mic” (or variations thereof), in which a piezo disc is taped onto the bottom of a tin can and then plugged into a high impedance voltage amplifier, like a guitar amp. These types of microphones are nice because they are so easy to make, but they are quite limited in most other areas, including bandwidth, microphonics, signal-to-noise ratio, impedance matching, and cable driving. These issues usually result in a very noisy and brittle sounding microphone. To overcome these limitations, we at Zeppelin Design Labs developed the “New and Improved Tin Can Microphone” (Figure 1), which features a Cortado buffered, balanced contact mic, and is described in detail in this Instructable. Using common household items along with a simple circuit, this mic has a tonality similar to the classic tin can mic (for all you Tom Waits fans), but improves upon nearly every other feature.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Apple’s Adoption Of HEVC Will Drive A Massive Increase In Encoding Costs Requiring Cloud Hardware Acceleration
https://apple.slashdot.org/story/17/08/03/1927235/apples-adoption-of-hevc-will-drive-a-massive-increase-in-encoding-costs-requiring-cloud-hardware-acceleration
For the last 10 years, H.264/AVC has been the dominant video codec used for streaming but with Apple adopting H.265/HEVC in iOS 11 and Google heavily supporting VP9 in Android, a change is on the horizon. Next year the Alliance for Open Media will release their AV1 codec which will again improve video compression efficiency even further. But the end result is that the codec market is about to get very fragmented, with content owners soon having to decide if they need to support three codecs (H.264, H.265, and VP9) instead of just H.264 and with AV1 expected to be released in 2019. As a result of what’s take place in the codec market, and with better quality video being demanded by consumers, content owners, broadcasters and OTT providers are starting to see a massive increase in encoding costs. New codecs like H.265 and VP9 need 5x the servers costs because of their complexity.
Tomi Engdahl says:
TechCrunch:
GoPro beats Q2 targets with $297M revenue, up 34% YoY, vs. $269M expected, as the company commits to fixing software, supply chain issues
GoPro actually had a good quarter and the stock is spiking 15%
https://techcrunch.com/2017/08/03/gopro-actually-had-a-good-quarter-and-the-stock-is-spiking-15/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Dani Deahl / The Verge:
YouTube Red subscribers can now save songs, albums, and playlists for offline listening in YouTube Music app
YouTube Music now lets you save songs, albums, and playlists for offline listening
Offline mode just got a major upgrade
https://www.theverge.com/2017/8/4/16094998/youtube-music-customize-offline-listening-adding-songs-albums-playlists
YouTube Red users have had the option to listen to music offline in YouTube Music for some time, but only through the offline mixtape feature, which is automatically populated based on your listening history. While this technically worked, there was no way to have any additional control over what you were able to listen to. Now, users can also choose specific songs, playlists, and albums to save for offline listening.
To save music for offline listening, tap on the Menu icon (marked by three dots), next to any song, playlist, or album, and select Save Offline.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Frame grabbers offer extended interface capabilities
http://www.vision-systems.com/articles/print/volume-21/issue-7/features/frame-grabbers-offer-extended-interface-capabilities.html?cmpid=enl_vsd_vsd_newsletter_2017-08-07
Faster cameras, high-speed and emerging interface standards were on show at this year’s Vision Show in Boston.
If there was one apparent trend at May’s Vision Show in Boston, it was the disparate number of camera-to-computer interfaces that are now available to developers of machine vision systems. They range from GigE, through USB 3,0, Camera Link to CoaXPress (CXP) each of which have their own price/performance tradeoffs.
Today, the GigE standard, for example, allows data to be transferred at 1 Gigabit/s using low-cost, Ethernet cables. More established standards such as Camera Link that are available in Base (255 MBytes/s), Medium (510 Mbytes/s), Full (680Mbytes/s), and Extended-Full configurations (850 MBytes/s) allow camera-to-computer distances of up to 10m (without repeaters) and use more expensive Camera Link cables. Other, faster implementations such as the CoaXPress (CXP) standard allow data rates of up to 6.25Gbits/s per channel also using Coax cables to achieve long camera to cable connections.
While established standards such as Camera Link have been offered for more than 15 years, PCI frame grabbers for the interface are becoming smaller and less expensive.
The first, the FireBird Camera Link Deca frame grabber (1xCLD-2PE4) has a 4-lane Gen2 PCI Express interface and supports Version 2.0 of the Camera Link specification, including both 80 bit modes: 8 bit 10-tap and 10 bit 8-tap modes (Camera Link Deca) at clock rates up to 85 MHz
P Cores
Two IP cores are available from the AIA (Ann Arbor, MI, USA; http://www.visiononline.org) that support each of the physical layer implementations of the Camera Link HS standard. While the M core currently supports 3.125 Gbits/s per lane, the X protocol supports speeds of 10.3 Gbits/s per lane. Using a single CX4 copper cable, up to seven data lanes and one command channel is supported by the M core while a single data lane and command channel is available when using an SFP+ connection. While the X protocol currently specifies the use of a SFP+ connector resulting in a single bidirectional channel of 10.3Gbps, using a Quad Small Form-factor Pluggable (QSFP) connector will enable X protocol Camera Link HS systems to support four channels of data, allowing a fourfold data throughput over a single fiber cable.
While the CX4 connector can be used to transfer data over copper cable, Teledyne DALSA showed how the latest CX4 active optical cable from Alysium (Nuremberg, Germany; http://www.alysium.com) could be used to extend the camera-to-computer distances of CLHS M implementations.
Networking standards
While such high-speed interfaces are more expensive than lower-speed interfaces such as GigE and USB 3, companies such as Pleora (Kanata, ON, Canada; http://www.pleora.com) are looking to reduce the cost of designing high-speed imaging systems by developing interfaces that will use emerging networking standards to allow such cameras to transmit GigE Vision compliant data over NBASE-T.
“Rising bandwidth requirements for mobile devices had led to a demand for network-access speeds of 2.5 Gbps and 5 Gbps,”
Leveraging this standard in the development of its prototype Camera Link to NBASE-T converter, Pleora has designed a system that allows data from Camera Link Medium cameras to be transmitted using the GigE Vision standard at up to 100m over CAT-5e Ethernet cables (Figure 4).
While the technology demonstrator system shown at the show was packaged as a system, Pleora intends to introduce a low-cost GigE Vision over NBASE-T development kit for approximately $2,000.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Dual camera system checks automotive electronic assemblies
http://www.vision-systems.com/articles/print/volume-22/issue-7/features/dual-camera-system-checks-automotive-electronic-assemblies.html?cmpid=enl_vsd_vsd_newsletter_2017-08-07
Semi-automated imaging system analyzes component placement and Data Matrix data to inspect automotive electronic assemblies at speeds of five parts per minute.
Automated Optical Inspection (AOI) systems are used in the production of printed circuit boards (PCBs) for the electronics industry. In the manufacturing of products such as smartphones, consumer products and computers, such fully-automated AOI systems check for component defects, component placement and component length, width and height at high speed. Needless to say, such systems are expensive because they incorporate disparate imaging technologies to perform these tasks.
In many electronics manufacturing processes, however, especially those where small batches of products are produced, semi-automated systems can be employed. In such systems, an operator is required to place the part in a fixture, position it and initiate the inspection process. Although slower than fully automated inspection systems, semi-automated systems are more cost effective because they may not require developers to incorporate conveyors, or three-dimensional (3D) component analysis demanded by fully-automated AOI systems for high-speed PCB inspection.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Designers leverage off-the-shelf components for embedded vision systems
http://www.vision-systems.com/articles/print/volume-22/issue-7/features/designers-leverage-off-the-shelf-components-for-embedded-vision-systems.html?cmpid=enl_vsd_vsd_newsletter_2017-08-07
Developments in FPGA software, custom-built processors, single-board computers and compact vision systems offer designers a variety of choices when building embedded vision systems.
Cross-pollination
In developing products for any type of embedded vision system, developers must be aware of the cross-pollination that exists between various hardware and software products that are available. Developers of mobile devices, for example, can take advantage of embedded vision processors that incorporate multiple processing elements to perform imaging tasks. Similarly, camera and frame grabber designers can leverage the power of an FPGA vendor’s intellectual property (IP) to perform functions such as camera standards interface conversion, Bayer interpolation and lens distortion correction.
FPGA libraries
Just as developers of cameras and frame grabbers can leverage the power of soft-core processors, they can also take advantage of FPGA IP libraries to perform dedicated image processing tasks. These include camera interfacing, image pre-processing functions such as Bayer interpolation, image compression, stereo vision, face detection and motion detection.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Product Focus: Fiber emerges as an alternative camera-to-computer interface
http://www.vision-systems.com/articles/print/volume-22/issue-5/features/product-focus-fiber-emerges-as-an-alternative-camera-to-computer-interface.html?cmpid=enl_vsd_vsd_newsletter_2017-08-07
Boasting long-distance image transfer, fiber is emerging as an alternative camera-to-computer interface
In choosing cameras for machine vision applications, systems integrators are faced with a number of options ranging from the resolution of the image sensor, the data rate required and the types of lenses needed. These choices are compounded by the number of different and emerging standards that exist for camera-to-computer connections, each of which has its own price/performance trade-offs. Such standards include networking based interfaces such as Gigabit Ethernet, bus-based designs such as USB3 Vision or point-to-point protocols such as Camera Link, Camera Link HS (CLHS) and CoaXPress (CXP).
Using passive copper cable, each standard has its own limitations. For USB 3 Vision, for example, this is specified as 3-5m, for GigE Vision up to 100m, for Camera Link 7-15m, for CLHS 7-15m and for CXP-6 (6.25 Gbits/s), 35m. For each of these camera interfaces, longer camera-to-computer extensions can be accomplished in a number of ways that include active cables, active optical cables (AOCs), optical repeaters, and fiber-based camera and fiber-based frame grabbers each of which, like the cameras and camera interfaces themselves, have different price/performance trade-offs.
For each of the most popular camera interfaces, active copper cables can be used to extend the distance achievable. These active copper cables use analog ICs integrated within cable connector modules to compensate for the signal degradation associated with passive copper-based cables.
For those deploying cameras using standard networking protocols, there may be no need to deploy active cables since the GigE Vision standard specifies a cable length of up to 100m can be used. However, in Ethernet-based systems, active cables may be required since passive Ethernet cables will transfer camera data without amplification or equalization – a process that may or may not be performed by the Ethernet switch. According to Amphenol, switches with so-called “dumb” SFP+ ports, for example, need active SFP+ cables powered by the switch to amplify and equalize data signals
Currently the most common type of 10Gbit Ethernet cable is the 10GBase-SR fiber-optic cable that supports an SFP+ connector with an optical transceiver rated for 10Gbits/s
While active optical cables (AOCs) accept the same electrical inputs as traditional copper cable connectors, they use optical fiber between the camera and the computer. At present, though more expensive than passive cables, AOCs offer systems developers the opportunity to increase camera-to-computer distances without sacrificing compatibility with standard electrical interfaces.
Power over optical
While the use of optical interfaces have benefits such as long distance data transmission and lack of signal degradation due to EMI, such cables often do not supply power to the camera unless optical fiber/metal hybrid cables are used. However, it is possible to transmit power over fiber. In 2012, scientists from Sandia National Laboratories (Albuquerque, NM, USA; http://www.sandia.gov) invented one of the earliest power-over-fiber systems, using laser diodes and miniature photovoltaic cells.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Nano display chip for $20
DLP2000
(ACTIVE) DLP® 0.2 nHD DMD
http://www.ti.com/product/DLP2000
Features
Ultra Compact 0.2-Inch (5.55-mm) Diagonal Micromirror Array
640 × 360 Array of Aluminum Micrometer-Sized Mirrors, in an Orthogonal Layout
7.56-Micron Micromirror Pitch
12° Micromirror Tilt (Relative to Flat Surface)
Corner Illumination for Optimal Efficiency and Optical Engine Size
Dedicated DLPC2607 Display Controller and DLPA1000 PMIC/LED Driver for Reliable Operation
Tomi Engdahl says:
How to ensure your internet connection and home network are primed for cord cutting
Cutting the cable cord can save you a lot of cash. We’ll show you how to make sure your home is ready for it.
https://www.techhive.com/article/3187758/streaming-media/how-to-ensure-your-internet-connection-and-home-network-are-primed-for-cord-cutting.html
Should you cut the cable-TV cord in 2017? Our guide will help you decide
Streaming video isn’t a magical replacement for cable, but cord cutting no longer entails making so many trade-offs.
https://www.techhive.com/article/3154345/streaming-hardware/should-you-cut-the-cable-tv-cord-in-2017-our-guide-will-help-you-decide.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
Brian Heater / TechCrunch:
US appeals court rules against patent troll Personal Audio, affirming its podcasting patent is invalid — A year after taking up the case, the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has ruled in favor of the Electronic Frontier Foundation in its challenge against podcasting patent troll, Personal Audio.
Personal Audio loses its appeal for podcasting patent
https://techcrunch.com/2017/08/07/personal-audio-loses-its-appeal-for-podcasting-patent/
A year after taking up the case, the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has ruled in favor of the Electronic Frontier Foundation in its challenge against podcasting patent troll, Personal Audio. The decision is a massive relief for the vibrant and ever-growing medium, which has been operated under the threat of lawsuit for a number of years.
It’s also part of the EFF’s larger on-going fight against overly broad tech patents. And the organization doesn’t mince words. Daniel Nazer, who has been working closely on the case, is the EFF’s “Mark Cuban Chair to Eliminate Stupid Patents.”
The case involves Personal Audio’s broad patent for a “System for Disseminating Media Content Representing Episodes in a Serialized Sequence,” which the company used to levy suits against a number of podcast providers, including Adam Corolla, HowStuffWorks, CBS, and NBC. The EFF filed a petition challenging the patent in 2013, urging the US Patent and Trademark Office to take another look at the broad ruling.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Set-top box replacement options
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/brians-brain/4458697/Set-top-box-replacement-options?utm_content=buffer21aed&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer
My successor options, aside from renting a STB for each TV? Not many.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Emil Protalinski / VentureBeat:
YouTube rolls out chat to all its Android and iOS users, includes group messaging for up to 30 users — YouTube today rolled out the ability to share videos with contacts directly in its mobile app for Android and iOS. Users can chat about shared videos using text, react with emoji …
YouTube adds mobile chat, because Google doesn’t have enough messaging apps
https://venturebeat.com/2017/08/07/youtube-adds-mobile-chat-because-google-doesnt-have-enough-messaging-apps/
YouTube today rolled out the ability to share videos with contacts directly in its mobile app for Android and iOS. Users can chat about shared videos using text, react with emoji, like messages with a heart, reply with other videos, and invite more friends to the conversation (up to a maximum of 30 people per group message).
YouTube first started testing letting groups of users share and talk about videos in May 2016.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Brian Heater / TechCrunch:
US appeals court rules against patent troll Personal Audio, affirming its podcasting patent is invalid
https://techcrunch.com/2017/08/07/personal-audio-loses-its-appeal-for-podcasting-patent/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Disney will pull its movies from Netflix and start its own streaming services
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/08/disney-will-pull-its-movies-from-netflix-and-start-its-own-streaming-services.html
Disney announced during its latest earnings report it intends to pull all its movies from Netflix
It also will launch an ESPN video streaming service in early 2018, including MLB, NHL and MLS content.
There’s also plans to launch a branded Disney direct to consumer streaming service in 2019
Disney wants to own a bigger piece of the streaming pie.
The company announced during its latest earnings report on Tuesday it intends to pull all its movies from Netflix.
Instead, Disney plans to launch a branded direct-to-consumer streaming service in 2019 starting in the U.S. and expanding globally.
CEO Bob Iger told CNBC’s Julia Boorstin Disney had a “good relationship” with Netflix, but decided to exercise an option to move its content off the platform. Movies to be removed include Marvel as well as Disney titles. It will also be making a “significant investment” in exclusive movies and television series for the new platform.
Tomi Engdahl says:
System Bits: Aug. 8
4D camera; AI sleep monitoring; learning to run.
Improving robot vision, virtual reality, self-driving cars
In order to generate information-rich images and video frames that will enable robots to better navigate the world and understand certain aspects of their environment, such as object distance and surface texture, engineers at Stanford University and the University of California San Diego have developed a camera that generates 4D images and can capture 138 degrees of information.
The researchers see this light field camera — with a single lens, and wide field of view — being used in autonomous vehicles and augmented and virtual reality technologies.
UC San Diego researchers designed a spherical lens that provides the camera with an extremely wide field of view, encompassing nearly a third of the circle around the camera.
This group previously developed the spherical lenses under the DARPA “SCENICC” (Soldier CENtric Imaging with Computational Cameras) program to build a compact video camera that captures 360-degree images in high resolution, with 125 megapixels in each video frame. In that project, the video camera used fiber optic bundles to couple the spherical images to conventional flat focal planes, providing high-performance but at high cost.
The new camera uses a version of the spherical lenses that eliminates the fiber bundles through a combination of lenslets and digital signal processing.
The new camera also relies on a technology developed at Stanford called light field photography, which is what adds a fourth dimension to this camera by capturing the two-axis direction of the light hitting the lens and combines that information with the 2D image.
Another noteworthy feature of light field photography is that it allows users to refocus images after they are taken because the images include information about the light position and direction. Robots could use this technology to see through rain and other things that could obscure their vision, the team reminded.
The camera’s capabilities open up all kinds of applications in VR and robotics, along with various types of artificially intelligent technology to understand how far away objects are, whether they’re moving and what they’re made of.
Tomi Engdahl says:
System Bits: Aug. 8
4D camera; AI sleep monitoring; learning to run.
https://semiengineering.com/system-bits-aug-8/
Improving robot vision, virtual reality, self-driving cars
In order to generate information-rich images and video frames that will enable robots to better navigate the world and understand certain aspects of their environment, such as object distance and surface texture, engineers at Stanford University and the University of California San Diego have developed a camera that generates 4D images and can capture 138 degrees of information.
The researchers see this light field camera — with a single lens, and wide field of view — being used in autonomous vehicles and augmented and virtual reality technologies.
UC San Diego researchers designed a spherical lens that provides the camera with an extremely wide field of view, encompassing nearly a third of the circle around the camera.
This group previously developed the spherical lenses under the DARPA “SCENICC” (Soldier CENtric Imaging with Computational Cameras) program to build a compact video camera that captures 360-degree images in high resolution, with 125 megapixels in each video frame. In that project, the video camera used fiber optic bundles to couple the spherical images to conventional flat focal planes, providing high-performance but at high cost.
The new camera uses a version of the spherical lenses that eliminates the fiber bundles through a combination of lenslets and digital signal processing.
The new camera also relies on a technology developed at Stanford called light field photography, which is what adds a fourth dimension to this camera by capturing the two-axis direction of the light hitting the lens and combines that information with the 2D image.
Another noteworthy feature of light field photography is that it allows users to refocus images after they are taken because the images include information about the light position and direction. Robots could use this technology to see through rain and other things that could obscure their vision, the team reminded.
The camera’s capabilities open up all kinds of applications in VR and robotics, along with various types of artificially intelligent technology to understand how far away objects are, whether they’re moving and what they’re made of.
4D Camera Could Improve Robot Vision, Virtual Reality and Self-driving Cars
http://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/pressrelease/4d_camera_could_improve_robot_vision_virtual_reality_and_self_driving_cars
Tomi Engdahl says:
Half of new TVs are 4K levels
Finns are increasingly buying a 4K or Ultra HD television in their living room. According to electronics wholesalers, sales of these boxes grew by 118 per cent in the first half of the year.
Of all TVs, 4K models account for slightly more than half (51.3%). Total TV sales rose by 27.1 percent and the average price by 8.3 percent, so the average price is now EUR 629. Sales have been boosted by switching to bigger, over 55-inch screens as well as the desire to make use of streaming services.
Source: http://www.etn.fi/index.php/13-news/6644-jo-puolet-uusista-televisioista-4k-tasoisia
Tomi Engdahl says:
Jacob Kastrenakes / The Verge:
Disney to end Netflix film distribution deal in 2019, will launch ESPN streaming service in 2018 and Disney streaming services in 2019 — Disney will end its distribution deal with Netflix and launch its own streaming service, the company announced today. It intends to launch the service in 2019.
Disney to end Netflix deal and launch its own streaming service
https://www.theverge.com/2017/8/8/16115254/disney-launching-streaming-service-ending-netflix-deal
Disney will end its distribution deal with Netflix and launch its own streaming service, the company announced today. It intends to launch the service in 2019.
The move is a real blow to Netflix, which secured a valuable streaming deal with Disney back in 2012 — before streaming had really taken off. The deal only kicked into effect last year, so Netflix is barely seeing any benefit here.
At the same time, it’s a natural step for Disney, which has a huge library of valuable movies and shows to offer. Disney already makes it hard to get a lot of its top movies — requiring people to purchase, rather than rent, a film for instance — so it makes sense that we’re seeing the company try to draw even bigger profits from streaming.
Netflix won’t lose its Disney movies right away. Disney says it plans to cut Netflix off starting with the studio’s 2019 films, and Netflix says it’ll be able to keep all the Disney movies it gets through the end of that year.
Cynthia Littleton / Variety:
Disney’s Iger: strategic shift to streaming is both a defensive and offensive move that will include sacrifices, but is ultimately a better model
Bob Iger: Disney Sets ‘Extremely Important Strategic Shift’ With Movie, ESPN Streaming Launches
http://variety.com/2017/tv/news/bob-iger-disney-streaming-movie-pixar-disney-1202519974/
The plans unveiled Tuesday by Disney chairman-CEO Bob Iger amount to a massive strategic shift in the company’s content distribution strategy, one that aims to leverage the unique affinity that consumers have for the Disney brand name and the love that sports fans have for ESPN. The streaming push is enabled by Disney’s acquisition of a majority stake in BAMTech, the streaming platform that Iger credited with making the ambitious programming ventures possible because of the strength of its technology.
“We have to look at both of these (services) as huge priorities for the company,” Iger told Wall Street analysts during the company’s fiscal third quarter earnings call. “This is an extremely important strategic shift for us. … I would put this at the top of our list in terms of the company’s strategic priorities in the next couple of years.”
— Disney will launch an ESPN-branded streaming service early next year that is a vast expansion of the sports OTT product that has been in the works for some time. The new service will give users the chance to pick and choose from specific sports leagues and games and will offer some 10,000 events not carried on ESPN’s linear channels.
— Disney intends to launch a movie and TV service featuring Disney- and Pixar-branded titles, as well as original movie and TV series productions and some library product. That service will kick off with the pay TV window for the company’s 2019 theatrical slate, which includes “Toy Story 4” and the sequel to “Frozen.” This means that Disney is ending the pay TV output deal with Netflix that began in 2016.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Disney CEO Bob Iger says Marvel and Star Wars standalone streaming services are still being considered
Marvel and Star Wars standalone streaming services are still being considered, says Disney
https://techcrunch.com/2017/08/09/marvel-and-star-wars-standalone-streaming-services-are-still-being-considered-says-disney/
If you’re wondering why Marvel movies and Star Wars weren’t mentioned as being among the titles included in Disney’s upcoming streaming service, announced yesterday, that’s because they might be getting their own branded services instead. According to Disney CEO Bob Iger, the company is still considering how it wants to bring Marvel and LucasFilm titles to consumers. There’s been talk of launching proprietary Marvel and Star Wars services, he said on Disney’s earnings call on Tuesday.
But that decision is not yet set in stone.
“We’re mindful of the volume of product that would go into those services, and we want to be careful about that,” Iger explained.
The exec also noted that the other option on the table was to add the Marvel and Star Wars films to the new Disney streaming service. However, it sounds like the company isn’t sure that’s the right place for them. The feeling is that there may not be as much overlap between the Disney fans and Marvel or Star Wars fans to warrant such a move, he said.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Josh Constine / TechCrunch:
Facebook introduces Watch, its redesigned video section for original content, with producers earning 55% of ad revenue, rolling out Thursday — Facebook has a new home for original video content produced exclusively for it by partners, who will earn 55 percent of ad break revenue while Facebook keeps 45 percent.
Facebook launches Watch tab of original video shows
https://techcrunch.com/2017/08/09/facebook-watch/
Facebook has a new home for original video content produced exclusively for it by partners, who will earn 55 percent of ad break revenue while Facebook keeps 45 percent. The “Watch” tab and several dozen original shows will start rolling out to a small group of U.S. users tomorrow on mobile, desktop and Facebook’s TV apps.
By hosting original programming, Facebook could boost ad revenue and give people a reason to frequently return to the News Feed for content they can’t get anywhere else.