There’s no doubt that the audio visual industry has proven its ability to survive and thrive in trying times. Global events have facilitated the rapid evolution of audio visual technologies, and these only continue to advance. Here are some audio visual trends for 2022 collected from many sources (click the link colored to text to get to the information source):
Growing consumer demand for audio content: People are listening to all forms of audio content: news, music, podcasts and books. Nielsen reports 75 per cent of people working from home are streaming music every week, with 40 per cent tuning in daily.
Rapid smart speaker adoption: Smart speakers and voice assistants are becoming common home appliances. One-third of U.S. households are equipped with smart speakers and 44 per cent of U.S. adults use voice assistants. Smart speakers let listeners to respond to ads using voice commands. Consumers are rapidly embracing voice to access information, entertain themselves and shop. The ability to instantly answer consumers’ questions and help them solve problems is becoming a key advantage for marketers who lean into audio.
Digital Audio is becoming multi-devices: Historically, digital audio has been widely consumed via mobile devices; it can now also be launched from a variety of new technologies including tablets, connected speakers, TVs and even smart watches.
Prosumer audio: Prosumer audio gear has remained on a steady upward curve over the last few years. With podcasting, live streaming, and at-home work solutions more popular than ever, it’s been a fantastic few years for prosumer audio sales. Their need for reliable, slightly elevated gear to take their content to the next level is proving highly profitable for certain companies.
Content Still Rules: Audiophiles are fiercely loyal to their favorite DJs, hosts, podcasters, artists and stations. As a result, they’re spending more time than ever listening to audio daily. Listeners consume programming on their own terms.
TikTok has caused a seismic shift in the world of content creation, skewing it ever further into a mobile-first industry. To capitalise on the market, more and more mobile-friendly gear is being created, forgoing the need for hundreds of adaptors and plugging straight into AUX, USB-C, or iPhone ports (or working wirelessly).
Many amplifier technologies in use: While classic class AB amplifiers are more and more often replaced with class D amplifier technology, there is still special audiophile markets for class A amplifiers and tube based amplifiers. New technology just coming to the class D amplifiers are GaN-based audio amplifier powered with switch mode power supply. They promise premium audio systems with good sound quality in a small and light format.
Vinyl records: Vinyl is here to stay, it seems, despite all technological advances that would have seemed to threaten it. Vinyl records (and coincidentally, cassette tapes) are selling like hot cakes again. Vinyl sales have been steadily rising for some time, but in 2020 for the first time in 34 years, vinyl has surpassed CD sales.
Streaming has killed CD: CDs sales are continuously and quickly declining thanks to streaming and music flash drives.
The race to wireless zero latency: Companies around the world are racing to find a solution that all but eliminates latency from wireless audio, removing the need for cables in an increasingly space, waste, and aesthetically-conscious world.
Green screens: As events become more hybrid, green screens will play a significant role, enabling speakers to be placed directly in the content becoming part of the message. Green screens are a great cost-effective way to insert branding and infographics, which works perfectly for online events and we will see them become adopted further for conferences. There are also cameras with depth sense features and software that can use pretty many background for green screen type effects without building a real green screen.
Hybrid events: Events have had to embrace the constant mix of who can attend, who can possibly attend and who is not afraid to attend and as such have flipped to hybrid. Although not necessarily an AV trend, hybrid events are unsurprisingly on the increase as people work from home and corporate travel is halted. In those events content needs to be clear and targeted to get the information across efficiently. There is demand for standalone apps that can enhance hybrid events such as Slack, Slido and Survey Monkey.
Touchless Environments: COVID-19 has accelerated the desire for automation and touchless environments from a nice-to-have to a must-have. They minimize the amount that people come into contact with shared surfaces. Following the throes of COVID-19, it appears that touchless building controls are here to stay.
Remote Control And Remote Management: We’re seeing an increase in demand for remote management software that allows one person, or a small group of people, to log into a remote system and review the status of a set of classrooms or meeting spaces. Increasingly in 2022, companies can implement remote monitoring and maintenance for audio visual systems to support the advancement of technology. Whether your organization is expansive or small, remote audio visual support teams can significantly reduce operating costs for your business.
Live Streaming: As more people look to tune into events from home, we’re seeing an increased need for equipment that supports live streaming.
Video Walls: In many commercial spaces, there’s often a need for a large video display. In past years, many spaces have opted for projection screens as opposed to large LCD displays or video walls, solely because the cost was much lower. The price of video walls getting close to similar to a projection screen, and the benefits almost always outweigh the slightly higher cost.
Service And Maintenance: As more commercial spaces look for ways to save, there’s been an increasing demand for AV integrators to handle service and maintenance in order to maximize the lifespan of AV products. Businesses are focussing on reducing the overhead costs associated with maintaining and installing the equipment. Companies having expertise in sectors other than AV cannot have a dedicated team to manage and monitor their AV equipment.
Snake oil: Many audiophiles are infected by the snake oil curse, which causes them to chase endlessly after what is supposedly better sound reproduction. Audio interconnect and speaker cables have become a profitable business built on imaginative marketing and misinformation. This market now extends into power cords, HDMI, and optical cables. Untold sums of money have been wasted on the fanciful claims of cable vendors. There is lots of ridiculous pieces of pseudo-audiophile nonsense out there. Try to avoid this bullshit in 2022. Try to to restore peace of mind, and the enjoyment of music.
Hybrid environment: Although some employees are returning to the office, it is doubtful that society will return to an entirely on-site work environment. Remote workspaces from 2020-21 on will now be ‘Hybrid’ (home and office). AV technologies are playing a crucial role in creating a modern working environment. Hybrid technologies are changing their form, we had just a Skype call before the pandemic and now we have Zoom, Microsoft Team Rooms, Google Meet, etc with more advanced features allowing space for seamless collaboration and communication. Hybrid environments are expected to go beyond that with continuous innovation and development. Remote employees, distant customers, healthcare providers, and educational institutions can utilize unified communication solutions. It is now increasingly important to adopt technologies that make collaboration easier. At one time, frequent video communications, online learning, and compact hardware design were ambitious audio visual innovations that were hard for people to imagine. Today, they’re top priorities for business, educational, and religious spaces of all types, and are critical to how people interact in those spaces.
Silent Video Gains Momentum: It’s estimated that 85% of short videos viewed on Facebook are watched without sound. Yet as much as 41% of video would be incomprehensible to viewers without sound. Video marketers are using captions, context and other “no-audio” tactics to convey information.
Social Media Goes Video-First: video content is one of the internet’s main attractions. Users are being drawn to video-first platforms. One of the most common reasons people use social media is to view video. But with video streaming set to be as much as 82% of total web traffic by 2022, the importance of video content to marketing strategy is massive and still growing.
Digital audio: Digital audio consumption accelerated in 2021 and commercial engagement followed the audiences. In 2022 we foresee three key commercial trends in the digital audio space: Data-led targeting capabilities provide a powerful way to get advertising cut through, Creativity is a constant rather than a ‘trend’ in advertising and Audience Growth is attracting new advertisers. Programmatic audio is divided into three main supply sources – music streaming (through suppliers like Spotify), podcasts (the biggest opportunity for brands), and online broadcast radio (now more attractive with the addition of data overlay opportunities). Amongst these audio heavyweights we can see emerging innovation in the form of conversational and actionable audio ads.
Virtual and Augmented Reality: Although virtual and augmented reality first entered the public consciousness via video games or social media filters, they are now infiltrating every aspect of our lives. Given the rapid evolution of technology, it is inevitable that these advancements will impact the audio visual industry. Companies specializing in the development of VR and AR technologies are noticing an increase in interest from educational institutions wishing to create an enhanced learning experience. Within the healthcare sector, VR solutions are assisting healthcare professionals with socializing medically isolated patients. Virtual reality has been in development within the audio visual industry for many years. In 2022, virtual reality is becoming mainstream. Or at least tries.
Shift from linear TV to streaming: Video streaming goes beyond traditional TV viewing for people under 45. The lion’s share of viewing by those over 45 is still grabbed by linear television.
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Tomi Engdahl says:
Canon’s EOS R5C is a 2-in-1 stills and cinema camera
Better video capability in exchange for a little chunk
https://www.theverge.com/2022/1/20/22892766/canon-eos-r5c-announced-specs-release-date-cost
The EOS R5C will be released in March for $4,499. That’s $600 more expensive than the EOS R5, but then you’re almost getting another separate camera at the same time. For some creators and producers, the all-in-one convenience could be worth it.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Filmhub, which lets filmmakers distribute their work to over 100 streaming channels, including Amazon Prime Video and Apple TV, raises a $6.8M seed led by a16z
Filmhub, backed by $6.8M from a16z and others, helps filmmakers get their work streamed
Sarah Perez@sarahintampa / 5:00 PM GMT+2•January 19, 2022
https://techcrunch.com/2022/01/19/filmhub-backed-by-6-8m-from-a16z-and-others-helps-filmmakers-get-their-work-streamed/
As the streaming market grows, so has the demand for content. But even though it’s now easier than ever for filmmakers to create, distribution is still often controlled by traditional systems — meaning many filmmakers are still being shut out of Hollywood if they don’t have the right connections. A company called Filmhub is working to solve this problem by making distribution easier and more efficient, via technology. With its platform, filmmakers can directly distribute to more than 100 streaming channels, including big names like Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV, IMDb TV, TCL, Tubi, Plex and others.
Today, Filmhub is announcing a $6.8 million seed round led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z).
Filmhub got its start in 2016 as a side project by co-founder Klaus Badelt, an LA-based film composer who has worked on more than 100 titles over the years, including “The Thin Red Line,” “Gladiator,” “Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl” and others. He had seen the opportunity in the space as the cost of production decreased and more films were getting made, but weren’t able to get strong distribution. Badelt later teamed up with tech industry veteran Alan d’Escragnolle, who had previously worked at places like Square, Mint.com and Google, to take the project full time in 2020.
Since then, Filmhub has been focused on growing the business, adding streaming channels as partners, and bringing on more filmmakers who want an easier way to have their work discovered by an audience, without having to give up their rights.
Filmhub begins by interviewing the filmmakers to ensure their content meets the technical specifications of the streamers it works with. The company will then get that content up on as many streaming services as possible using automated technology and its own sales team. Though its name is “Filmhub,” d’Escragnolle clarifies this content doesn’t have to just be full-length movies. It can also be serialized content like TV shows, shorts or any sort of professionally produced content. But its focus is on working directly with the filmmakers, he says.
“We believe that the traditional studio system doesn’t end up being the most friendly to filmmakers. For instance, if you make a studio film as a filmmaker, you’re typically paid upfront,” explains d’Escragnolle. But if the film takes off, the filmmaker may not be able to share in the revenues their work earns, he points out. “We believe that there’s an opportunity to restore power to the creator and the original filmmaker, and allow them to build a library of their own,” d’Escragnolle adds.
In a way, what Filmhub is doing is similar to what other distribution platforms — like DistroKid — have done for the music industry, as they’ve allowed artists to upload their work directly to top streaming services instead of having to first sign a deal with a label.
Typically, Filmhub takes a 20% revenue share of the royalties made by the films it distributes. However, the rates each streaming service pays Filmhub will vary.
In time, Filmhub aims to launch its own direct-to-consumer streaming service, which will feature the filmmakers’ content. It hopes to make this service available across devices and even as an add-on within other companies’ existing streaming platforms.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The problem with today’s vinyl records
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJd4XWDb_FE
So many of today’s vinyl releases sound digital. They do not contain the magic of vinyl. Here’s why.
Tomi Engdahl says:
TikTok Is Testing Paid Subscriptions
By Mahira Dayal
· about 14 hours ago · Source: The Information
TikTok is testing the idea of allowing its creators to charge subscriptions for their content, a spokesperson told The Information. Earlier Wednesday, rival Instagram announced it was offering paid subscriptions to a small group of influencers. Currently ByteDance-owned TikTok supports tips, which let fans send creators money through their profiles. Viewers can also react to videos by buying…
https://www.theinformation.com/briefings/tiktok-is-testing-paid-subscriptions
Tomi Engdahl says:
DRM is almost always more an obstacle to legitimate use than to piracy…
4K Blu-ray discs no longer work with Intel Alder Lake chips
https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/your-4k-blu-rays-no-longer-work-with-intel-alder-lake-chips/
Following Intel’s decision to remove software guard extension (SGX) compatibility for 12th-gen Alder Lake processors, the company’s latest chips will no longer be capable of playing 4K Blu-ray discs.
As spotted by Bleeping Computer, Intel’s updated data sheets now show SGX as a deprecated technology. Consequently, those buying or building a PC with the latest Intel CPUs will not be able to play Blu-ray movies in 4K resolution on their systems.
In addition to removing support for Alder Lake silicon, Intel has also removed the ability to playback Blu-ray discs for its 11th-gen processors.
Bleeping Computer points out that the inability to play Blu-ray content is associated with such discs requiring Digital Rights Management (DRM), which uses SGX in order to function. Intel initially included support for protected Blu-ray discs via the Skylake generation of chips in 2016.
Despite Intel describing SGX as technology that “helps protect against many known and active threats” by incorporating an additional layer of defense, it was repeatedly exploited by researchers who managed to uncover various security flaws.
In recent years, Blu-ray discs have decreased in popularity as digital technology continues to evolve.
Blu-ray drives are simply not a priority anymore
Blu-ray discs do offer some distinct advantages over streaming. Users don’t need to depend on an internet connection and discs are not prone to any lag. Furthermore, certain movies are removed from streaming services when the rights expire, while a physical disc ensures guaranteed playback.
With this in mind, those who wish to use Blu-ray discs on a system with an Intel processor will require a CPU from the 7000, 8000, 9000, or 10000 ranges. The Skylake 6000 series features SGX support, but without the inclusion of HDCP 2.2, users will likely encounter HDMI 2.0 compatibility issues.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Metalenz PolarEyes upgrades digital sensing with polarized light
https://techcrunch.com/2022/01/20/metalenz-polareyes-upgrades-digital-sensing-with-polarized-light/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://hackersonlineclub.com/steganography-data-that-hidden-behind-the-images/
Tomi Engdahl says:
This Liquid Lens Changes Its Focal Length As You Apply a Variable Voltage
Designed for simplicity, this liquid-based lens impresses — but the technology needs work before it can be scaled to bigger sizes.
https://www.hackster.io/news/this-liquid-lens-changes-its-focal-length-as-you-apply-a-variable-voltage-f91c5c6fc0ca
Tomi Engdahl says:
foobar2000 is an advanced freeware audio player for the Windows platform
https://www.foobar2000.org/
Tomi Engdahl says:
A Bug in Early Creative Commons Licenses Has Enabled a New Breed of Superpredator
Copyleft trolls, robosigning, and Pixsy.
https://doctorow.medium.com/a-bug-in-early-creative-commons-licenses-has-enabled-a-new-breed-of-superpredator-5f6360713299
Tomi Engdahl says:
A Bug in Early Creative Commons Licenses Has Enabled a New Breed of Superpredator
Copyleft trolls, robosigning, and Pixsy.
https://doctorow.medium.com/a-bug-in-early-creative-commons-licenses-has-enabled-a-new-breed-of-superpredator-5f6360713299
Here’s a supreme irony: the Creative Commons licenses were invented to enable a culture of legally safe sharing, spurred by the legal terror campaign waged by the entertainment industry, led by a literal criminal predator who is now in prison for sex crimes.
But because of a small oversight in old versions of the licenses created 12 years ago, a new generation of legal predator has emerged to wage a new campaign of legal terror.
To make matters worse, this new kind of predator specifically targets people who operate in good faith, only using materials that they explicitly have been given permission to use.
What a mess.
Start with this: US copyright law provides for $150,000 in statutory damages for “wilful infringement.” If you violate someone else’s copyright and they can prove you knew you were breaking copyright law, they can hit you for up to $150,000, even if they can’t show that they’ve lost a dime in the process.
Enter the copyright troll, who uses the statutory damages system to engage in highly automated, mass-scale extortion.
So if you’ve posted a still from a movie to social media or participated in an infringing Bittorrent download or quoted a news article on a message board, you might someday hear from a copyright troll, who’ll send you an email demanding, say, $10,000 as a “license fee” for your use of their client’s copyrighted work; if you don’t pay, the troll will threaten to take you to court, demanding that $150,000 in statutory damages, plus legal fees.
Creative Commons: Permissioned Permissionlessness
21 years ago, Larry Lessig, Hal Abelson and Eric Eldred and their team launched Creative Commons, a nonprofit that was supposed to create a DMZ for the copyright wars.
Creative Commons was supposed to solve a serious copyright problem, namely, that there were a lot of people who wanted to share their work with others, but there was no way to formalize that sharing agreement without spending vast fortunes on copyright lawyers to negotiate the sharing terms.
Creative Commons’ solution to this was a kind of robo-lawyer: a simple online tool that a creator could use to specify the terms on which they were willing to share their work — whether commercial use was okay; whether new, “derivative” works could be made from it; and whether the resulting works were required to be shared under the same terms — and out would pop valid copyright license.
CC, and its sister international organization, iCommons, worked with lawyers around the world to create a set of compatible licenses that were enforceable under non-US copyright systems, and wove language into each license making them all interchangeable. That meant you could create a video that used stock footage from a French creator and music by a Canadian creator to create a short video that adapts a story by a Japanese writer.
This is objectively cool.
It’s also incredibly successful. CC licenses are used to facilitate all kinds of collaborative endeavor, from Wikipedia to Thingiverse to Github to Flickr.
But the drafters of the Creative Commons licenses made a small oversight, one that was not rectified for 14 years after the project’s launch. That oversight has given rise to a new kind of copyright troll: the copyleft troll, a copyright predator that exclusively targets people who haven’t violated copyright.
Like I said, what a mess. What an awful, awful mess.
Crossing the Tees: They Get You With the Fine Print
The first three versions of the Creative Commons license contained a small, significant oversight, one that now exposes millions of people to effectively unlimited legal risk.
The original version of the CC license stated that the license would “terminate automatically upon any breach.” That meant that if you failed to live up to the license terms in any substantial way, you were no longer a licensed user of the copyrighted work.
These two facts — automatic termination on breach, statutory damages of $150,000 — created the copyleft troll.
Copyleft trolls are a combination of entrepreneurial individual extortionists and law-firms that actively recruit would-be extortionists with a pitch that’s very similar to the copyright troll’s come-on: sign up with us and we’ll find people who made minor errors in their use of your Creative Commons works, and then send them a speculative invoice for a “license,” on threat of a copyright lawsuit that could run them $150 grand plus legal fees. We’ll split the take.
The basis for the threat isn’t that they infringed copyright — rather, it’s that they made the equivalent of a typo, like failing to dot an i or cross a t
Specifically, all CC licenses (save for the Public Domain dedication) require that users:
Name the creator (either as identified on the work, or as noted in instructions to downstream users)
Provide a URL for the work (either as identified on the work, or as noted in instructions to downstream users)
Name the license
Provide a URL for the license
Note whether the work has been modified
Get any of this attribution wrong and you’re potentially a copyright infringer, and looking at $150,000 in damages.
Creative Commons users really don’t get this, by and large — neither the technical requirements for attribution nor the potential risk of getting it wrong.
I see that failure to correctly attribute as a minor annoyance, but copyleft trolls see it as a payday.
The Honeypot: Weaponizing Administrative Ignorance
Given the dismal state of attribution literacy in the world, it’s inevitable that anyone who uploads a lot of works under Creative Commons licenses will get a lot of incorrect attributions. If you’re a copyleft troll, then, all you need to do is generate a bunch of works, slap superannuated Creative Commons licenses on them, upload them to a popular CC repository like Flickr or Wikimedia Commons, and wait for your prey to make minor attribution errors, then send them invoices for thousands of dollars on threat of a $150,000 statutory damages claim.
Copyleft trolls target people who correctly believe that they are allowed to use a work, but who make minor administrative errors.
Here’s the use that I was being threatened over: Nenad Stojkovic’s picture of hand clicking on a mouse. If you followed that link, you’ll see that I credited Stojkovic, provided a link to the full-rez image, named the license and linked to it, too. I did that in multiple places: both in the Twitter thread and in the alt text of the image.
I mean, of course I did. I was there when Creative Commons was born! I was the organization’s European director!
So this is beyond copyleft trolling: they’re not threatening someone who made a small attribution error and was technically in violation of their license: rather, they sent repeated threats (I missed the first one) to someone who correctly attributed their client’s image. I am an attribution stickler. Each and every time I used that image, I correctly attributed it.
If you send threats instead of requests for correction, you are a terrible person and you should feel really bad about yourself.
The point of Creative Commons is to allow copyright holders to exercise their copyrights — specifically, to exercise their copyrights in a way that facilitates sharing and re-use. If you are a lawyer who responds to minor CC license errors with legal threats instead of requests for correction, then you are a predator in violation of your own code of professional ethics and you should be shunned by your peers for bringing the law into disrepute.
Legal correspondence is reviewed by a lawyer or other legal professional. Legal threats are always overseen by a lawyer.
Pixsy’s own marketing materials describe its processes: the company sends bots around the web looking for its clients’ images, they figure out who posted those images, then they send legal threats to those people.
I think that’s exactly what happened here.
there are billions of CC works with old licenses hanging around out there — if any of those creators ever turns troll, then anyone who recently used their work with a malformed attribution could face legal threats
Everywhere CC licensed works are hosted, the pre-4.0 versions of the Creative Commons licenses — the ones without the “cure” provision — should be disfavored.
What would that look like?
Upgrade on Upload: Anytime someone tries to upload a CC image with a pre-4.0 license to a repository like the Internet Archive, Wikimedia Commons, Thingiverse or Github, they should be asked if they are the creator, and, if so, should be prompted to upgrade the license to the current version;
Upgrade in Place: Every repository that hosts CC works that carry pre-4.0 licenses should send an email to every account holder urging them to opt into a process to upgrade them immediately to the latest license.
Warnings: Every repository that hosts CC works that carry pre-4.0 licenses should place a prominent warning on every page that includes these works, explaining that this work uses an outdated and disfavored license and that a failure to correctly attribute it could attract a $150,000 statutory damages awards.
Automated Attribution: Every repository that hosts CC works should have a one-click system to create an attribution string for each of the works it hosts, which is transferred to the user’s clipboard.
Thankfully, some of this is already underway.
https://creativecommons.org/2021/12/08/principles-for-license-enforcement-published/å
Tomi Engdahl says:
Anne Steele / Wall Street Journal:
Spotify is removing Neil Young’s music after he gave the company an ultimatum between his music and Joe Rogan’s podcast with COVID-19 vaccine misinformation
Spotify Takes Down Neil Young’s Music After His Joe Rogan Ultimatum
https://www.wsj.com/articles/neil-youngs-music-is-being-taken-down-by-spotify-after-ultimatum-over-joe-rogan-11643230104?mod=djemalertNEWS
Folk-rock star had over six million monthly listeners on the service, which he blames for spreading fake info about vaccines
potify Technology SA has removed Neil Young’s music, the company confirmed Wednesday, as the folk-rock star isn’t wavering in his objections to Joe Rogan’s podcast.
The “Heart of Gold” and “Harvest Moon” singer earlier this week penned an open letter to his manager and label asking them to remove his music from the service, saying it is spreading fake information about Covid-19 vaccines through Mr. Rogan’s show. “They can have Rogan or Young. Not both,” he wrote.
Mr. Young’s record label, Warner Music WMG 0.61% Group Corp.’s Warner Records, formally requested Spotify remove the music Wednesday.
“We want all the world’s music and audio content to be available to Spotify users. With that comes great responsibility in balancing both safety for listeners and freedom for creators,” a Spotify spokesman said Wednesday. The company has detailed content policies in place and has removed over 20,000 Covid-19-related podcast episodes since the start of the pandemic, he added.
“We regret Neil’s decision to remove his music from Spotify, but hope to welcome him back soon,” he said.
For Spotify, the controversy is a significant test of its big bet on Mr. Rogan, one of podcasting’s most popular and polarizing voices. Spotify struck a deal with Mr. Rogan in 2020 worth more than $100 million, according to people familiar with the matter, bringing his loyal followers and lucrative show exclusively to its service. Mr. Rogan is central to Spotify’s podcast strategy in attracting listeners and ad dollars to its platform and shows.
While the letter has since been removed from Mr. Young’s website, he has been in discussions with his label and Spotify since then, and continued to hold his ground, according to people familiar with the matter.
Spotify represents 60% of the streaming of his music to listeners, Mr. Young wrote, and pointed listeners to where his music is still available to stream, including Apple Music, Amazon Music and Qobuz, a high-res music streamer. Mr. Young also thanked his label for supporting him in his wishes to leave Spotify.
Before the removal, Mr. Young had 2.4 million followers and over six million monthly listeners on Spotify.
Mr. Rogan’s show has created tensions for Spotify before. Earlier this month, a group of 270 scientists and healthcare professionals signed an open letter to Spotify accusing the podcast of “promoting baseless conspiracy theories” and asking the service to take action against mass-misinformation events on its platform.
While Mr. Young’s label is the licenser to Spotify and legally has control over how and where his music is distributed, it is typical for a record company to take an artist’s wishes into account. An act of Mr. Young’s cachet in particular tends to have more control over their career and creative output.
Last year publicly traded music investment firm Hipgnosis Songs Fund Ltd. announced a deal to purchase a 50% stake in Neil Young’s songwriting catalog. The sale fetched a price between $40 million and $50 million, according to people familiar with the deal.
Streaming accounts for 84% of recorded music revenue in the U.S., according to the Recording Industry Association of America. Spotify is by far the largest music-streaming service by paid subscriptions.
Classic tunes like those found in Mr. Young’s catalog, in particular, have been streaming well, as services attract older subscribers and younger listeners discover the favorites of their elders.
During the pandemic, nostalgia listening surged even more. On streaming services, music older than 18 months is a major growth area, making up some 70% of listeners’ consumption, according to MRC Data, formerly Nielsen Music.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Why Old Music is Killing New Music
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYX1YFiQTDw
In this episode I am discussing the new Ted Gioia article in The Atlantic called Is Old Music Killing New Music? Old songs now represent 70 percent of the U.S. music market. Even worse: The new-music market is actually shrinking.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Most important sentence in the article:
“The problem isn’t a lack of good new music. It’s an institutional failure to discover and nurture it.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
“The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There’s also a negative side.”
― Hunter S. Thompson
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://www.uusiteknologia.fi/2022/01/28/uuden-ajan-televisiostudio-tampereelle/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Top 50 Songs On Spotify 2021
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxNLFdyEVoE
Tomi Engdahl says:
The New World Of Touch Screen DJ Controllers In 2022
https://homedjstudio.com/best-dj-controller-with-screens/
As technology improves so do DJ controllers. The biggest innovation in recent history is the addition of screens. This has given DJs newfound freedom when DJing. Less time staring at the laptop and more time focusing on the controller. But, some controllers are better than others. In this review, we check out the best DJ controllers with screens currently available.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Wall Street Journal:
Antenna: Apple TV+, Disney+, HBO Max, and others struggle to retain US subscribers who joined to watch a hit show; some subscribers only stay for a few months — Roughly half of U.S. viewers who joined right after ‘Hamilton’ and ‘Wonder Woman 1984’ were gone in six months, data show
Disney+, HBO Max and Other Streamers Get Waves of Subscribers From Must-See Content. Keeping Them Is Hard.
Roughly half of U.S. viewers who joined right after ‘Hamilton’ and ‘Wonder Woman 1984’ were gone in six months, data show
https://www.wsj.com/articles/streaming-data-netflix-hbo-disney-hulu-11643560207?mod=djemalertNEWS
Streaming-video services get a surge of subscribers when they launch a hotly anticipated show or movie. But many of these new customers unsubscribe within a few months, according to new data, a challenge even for the industry’s deep-pocketed giants.
The data, which subscriber-measurement company Antenna provided to The Wall Street Journal, illustrate the extent to which the streaming wars require all players to consistently churn out popular and often expensive programming to keep fickle subscribers satisfied.
“You constantly need new content,” said Michael Nathanson, an analyst for MoffettNathanson. Streaming services not only have to build vast libraries of old shows and movies, he said, they also “need a couple big, nice theatrical movies every quarter to make it feel like it’s really valuable.”
Roughly half of U.S. viewers who signed up within three days of the release of “Hamilton,” “Wonder Woman 1984” and “Greyhound” were gone within six months, Antenna data show.
Even if streaming services only retain half of the users they sign up during big bursts, that still translates into sizable numbers of longer-term subscribers
Streamers’ challenges are exacerbated by the fact that most services are available through a monthly subscription, making it easy for viewers to cancel when they are done binge-watching a specific show.
The proliferation of streaming services has given users an array of options. HBO Max, Disney+, Peacock, Apple TV+ and Discovery Inc.’s Discovery+ have entered the field since 2019, while ViacomCBS Inc. has rebranded and expanded its CBS All Access service, now known as Paramount+. All are fighting for market share with more established players including Netflix Inc., Amazon.com Inc.’s Prime Video and Disney-controlled Hulu.
American households subscribed to 3.6 streaming services on average last year, according to Kagan, a media research group within S&P Global Market Intelligence.
“The cost to build, the cost to market and the cost to retain customers will all be going up in a competitive market,” Mr. Nathanson said.
Streaming services spent about twice as much on content—both to create originals and acquire the rights to old movies and shows—last year than they did in 2017, according to projections from Ampere Analysis, a research firm. Netflix alone planned to spend $17 billion on content last year, the company said in April.
More established services with larger libraries of content have shown higher subscriber-retention rates than new entrants.
“We always say that library titles tend to increase engagement and minimize churn,”
Not all successful shows draw spectacular subscriber numbers on day one. Some of the most popular streaming programs of the past couple of years, including “Ted Lasso” and Netflix’s “Squid Game,” were sleeper hits that required a few weeks of word-of-mouth to gain a big following in the U.S.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ann-Marie Alcántara / Wall Street Journal:
Pinterest adds an augmented reality tool for furniture to its mobile app, letting users see how 20K products from retail partners would look in their homes — The new tool expands on its existing technology used for beauty products — Pinterest Inc. is introducing a new augmented reality tool …
Pinterest Adds Augmented Reality Feature for Home Decor
The new tool expands on its existing technology used for beauty products
https://www.wsj.com/articles/pinterest-adds-augmented-reality-feature-for-home-decor-11643641203?mod=djemalertNEWS
Tomi Engdahl says:
Teräväpiirtokuvaa Pekingin olympialaisista
https://www.uusiteknologia.fi/2022/02/01/teravapiirtokuvaa-pekingin-olympialaisista/
Pekingin talviolympialaiset näkyvät Ylen lisäksi HD-teräväpiirtolaadulla TV5:n AntenniTV:n 27 kanavapaikalla 2.–20. helmikuuta ajan. Digita ja TV-yhtiö Discovery Finland ovat sopineet lähetyksien välittämisestä teräväpiirrolla.
Uuden sopimuksen myötä TV5-kanava on Pekingin talviolympialaisten ajan katsottavissa HD-laatuisena koko Suomessa. Sen kautta voi seurata Pekingin talviolympialaisten miesten ja naisten jääkiekkoturnauksia.
Tomi Engdahl says:
New DJ Splitter Cables Guide + Troubleshooting
https://djgear2k.com/dj-splitter-cable-guide/
What is a DJ splitter cable?
DJ splitter cable is a cable that splits stereo input into two mono outputs that are able to output different sound. The reason why the two outputs are able to output different audio data is because this type of cable splits stereo audio by L/R (left/right) stereo channels. The left channel goes to the one cable and the right channel to another one.
Most modern DJ software after connecting a DJ splitter cable into the device on which the software is used are able to split the device’s stereo output so that for instance the left channel output corresponds to the master output (what people will hear) and the right channel output corresponds to the headphone monitor output (what only the DJ is able to hear).
After setting up a DJ splitter cable you plug in your headphones into one of its sockets and your speakers into the other.
Disadvantages of using a splitter cable
Because of the way a DJ splitter cable functions, both your headphone out and your main master output will be mono.
Although nowadays most club PA systems are wired in mono and the difference is often less noticeable the higher the sound volume goes, this might be a problem for some of you that want to utilize full power of the stereo output. In this case an external audio interface would be a better solution.
How much does a DJ splitter cable cost?
You can get an appropriate DJ splitter cable for as low as a few dollars but remember that low quality of a cheap splitter cable can sometimes cause problems such as audio bleed and the cable might be more likely to get damaged overtime.
Our recommended DJ splitter cable
If you want to save yourself some trouble choosing a DJ splitter cable that will actually work for you, you can get the official Native Instruments splitter that will work with any DJ software that supports DJ splitter cables. It’s quality is backed by its soild reviews!
https://hosatech.com/press-release/y-or-y-not/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://hackaday.com/2022/02/02/know-audio-a-mess-of-cables/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://hackaday.com/2022/02/03/getting-root-on-linux-amplifier-adds-new-inputs/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Didelot Maurice-Michel “Hacked SONOS and YouTube” to Build a Simple Stream Conversion Server
Taking advantage of support for web radio streams, Maurice-Michel has written a Python server for YouTube streaming — with apps to follow.
https://www.hackster.io/news/didelot-maurice-michel-hacked-sonos-and-youtube-to-build-a-simple-stream-conversion-server-960a10abfc51
How I hacked SONOS and YouTube the same day
Or how to play YouTube videos on you SONOS, easy and for free.
https://www.deadf00d.com/post/how-i-hacked-sonos-and-youtube-the-same-day.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
The standalone camera’s slow-but-predictable demise
https://www.edn.com/the-standalone-cameras-slow-but-predictable-demise/
And now I’m talking about the demise of the standalone camera market? Why, and replaced by what?
First off, I’m not suggesting a complete evaporation. Professional-grade cameras (still, video and hybrid alike) will stick around for the foreseeable future. But the bulk of the market as measured by volume shipments, tailored for consumers, is already well on the way to fading away. Some of this is due to cannibalization; as the earlier-mentioned word “hybrid” suggests, while you historically might have bought two separate cameras—still and video—you can now get by with just one, which credibly handles both media types with aplomb.
As another cannibalization example, mirrorless cameras are steadily replacing DSLR predecessors, as the mirrorless successors’ electronic viewfinders become increasingly resolution-rich and color-accurate, for example, and as their lens suites become increasingly focal length-complete and high quality. Canon has already announced the demise of its ongoing DSLR development, for example, although Pentax (the platform basis of all the “glass” I’ve collected over many decades) is thankfully still soldiering on.
Some of this trend is due to the end of evolution: when you’ve already got a camera that captures 16 or 20 Mpixel stills and 4K video, what (if any) lingering motivation exists to invest in a successor?
Panasonic is still selling—and The Wirecutter is still “best-in-class” recommending—a camera whose introduction dates back to late 2016. If that’s not indicative of a market in which evolution has effectively ended, I don’t know what is!
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://www.iflscience.com/brain/people-with-anxiety-are-more-likely-to-experience-and-enjoy-asmr/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://www.cxnetwork.com.au/the-unreal-truth/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Bringing a seamless live production workflow to Valve’s Dota 2 TI esports tournament
https://www.svgeurope.org/blog/headlines/bringing-a-seamless-live-production-workflow-to-valves-dota-2-ti-esports-tournament/
When one of the world’s largest gaming developers approached specialist Norwegian virtual production agency, Myreze, it was tasked with a project of a mammoth scale; producing a virtual set and live streamed workflow to bring the once physical Dota 2 esports stadium tournament to a global audience.
With a prize pot of $40 million, expectations and the quality of delivery were high for gaming giant Valve, which runs the annual tournament. The outcome of the collaboration produced more than 125 hours of live content across the ten-day event, with over 110 million hours of content watched (excluding China). The tournament also made Twitch’s third most watched video of all time and was nominated as a ‘Best e-Sports Event’ at the 2021 Game Awards.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Industry challenges: EMG looks at the growing importance of sustainability in live production
https://www.svgeurope.org/blog/headlines/industry-challenges-emg-looks-at-the-growing-importance-of-sustainability-in-live-production/
The pandemic challenged the industry as nothing else has done before or since. We have become used to dealing with rapid and sudden changes in technology, business models, and even consumer behaviours over recent years. But to compress the R&D of fully embracing remote production workflows all the way up to top tier sports into a couple of months has been an astounding achievement.
Remote production is very much here to stay as a result. COVID made it a necessity and its cost effectiveness means that there is no way that the industry will be willing to go back to the previous models. It has had additional benefits though that will prove to be even more significant overall. And one of the key areas there – and one of the main underlying trends that will shape the industry through 2022 – is sustainability.
A greener world
The COP26 conference at the end of 2021 highlighted just how important sustainable models of production are across all industries. Broadcasting is no exception. At the moment there is little legislation in the area, but as the urgency of limiting emissions to arrest global warming increases, so we can expect sustainable business practices to become increasingly mandated in turn.
Broadcasters are ahead of the curve on much of this, with several pioneering companies already realigning their operations and ensuring any new infrastructure builds meet best environmental practices.
Film and TV production is already onboard too. Indeed, work undertaken by industry sustainability body, albert, in the UK helped contribute to a 10% drop in the amount of carbon one hour of TV contributes to the atmosphere between 2017 and 2019.
It is the figures from the latest Annual Review from albert covering May 2020 to April 2021 that really grab the attention though. During that COVID-impacted period, the average emissions per hour of television dropped 52% from 9.2tn CO2e to 4.4tn CO2e.
Moreover, for events/OB it was even greater. Emissions associated with an hour of events/OB in 2020 were a third of what they were in 2019 due, according to albert’s calculations, to a decrease in travel and accommodation emissions (down by 78% and 90% respectively).
The report states: “But if some positives can be taken away from 2020, then it must be that there are alternative ways to work which still allow our industry to continue to make excellent programmes, while limiting our impacts on the planet.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
This is my next webcam
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gZpdU1NPYY
If you’re looking for a webcam that’s better than what you have, whether that’s a plug-and-play webcam you may have paid too much for during the pandemic or the (likely) lousy one that’s inside of your laptop, we’ve gathered a few unique and great options, including ones that cost next to nothing.
0:00 Intro
0:29 Opal C1
3:07 DSLR webcam
3:59 Webcams under $200
4:14 Elgato Facecam
4:59 DroidCam (Android and iOS webcam)
5:35 Elgato EpocCam
5:55 Smartphone webcam accessories
6:12 Conclusion
Read more: https://www.theverge.com/e/22680689
Tomi Engdahl says:
Windows explorer has an option to remove properties from media files:
Remove Properties and Personal Information. For example, removing Exif data from JPEG files https://blog.didierstevens.com/2022/02/08/windows-explorer-improper-exif-data-removal/
There is an issue with this feature: it does not properly remove Exif data.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The commonly stated range of human hearing is 20 to 20,000 Hz. Under ideal laboratory conditions, humans can hear sound as low as 12 Hz and as high as 28 kHz
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hearing_range
Tomi Engdahl says:
Catie Keck / The Verge:
YouTube details creator updates: new video effects, editing capabilities, and monetization tools for Shorts, Shopping expansion, Studio improvements, and more — A lot of new features are in the works for 2022 — YouTube is expanding the ways creators can monetize their content …
YouTube is adding new ways for creators to make money with Shorts and shopping
https://www.theverge.com/2022/2/10/22925936/youtube-creators-feature-shopping-live-streaming-gifted-memberships?scrolla=5eb6d68b7fedc32c19ef33b4
A lot of new features are in the works for 2022
Tomi Engdahl says:
Variety:
Disney+ ended 2021 with 129.8M subscribers, up 37% YoY; in the US and Canada it had 42.9M subscribers, international excluding Hotstar 41.1M, and Hotstar 45.9M
Disney Plus Ends 2021 With Nearly 130 Million Subscribers, Smashing Growth Forecasts
https://variety.com/2022/biz/news/disney-plus-subscribers-2021-earnings-1235175715/
Stock surges as Disney blows past Wall Street quarterly earnings estimates
Tomi Engdahl says:
Miten video tekstitetään saavutettavasti puheentunnistusohjelman avulla? Kokemuksia Sanelius Web -ohjelman käytöstä
https://www.humak.fi/blogit/miten-video-tekstitetaan-saavutettavasti-puheentunnistusohjelman-avulla-kokemuksia-sanelius-web-ohjelman-kaytosta/
Tomi Engdahl says:
MIPI CSI-2 4.0 Brings New Features for Always-On Low-Power Computer Vision at the Edge
Always-On Sentinel Conduit (AOSC) aims to reduce the complexity and power draw, while Multi-Pixel Compression (MPC) drops the bandwidth.
https://www.hackster.io/news/mipi-csi-2-4-0-brings-new-features-for-always-on-low-power-computer-vision-at-the-edge-5f070c545190
Tomi Engdahl says:
What your smart TV knows about you – and how to stop it harvesting data
Modern TVs gather data that can be monetised. How much of this surveillance can you avoid without turning your smart TV dumb?
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/jan/29/what-your-smart-tv-knows-about-you-and-how-to-stop-it-harvesting-data
Tomi Engdahl says:
Plask: A New Free Tool for Extracting 3D Motion From Videos
Check out this cool AI-powered 3D animation editor and mocap tool that you can use for free.
https://80.lv/articles/plask-a-new-free-tool-for-extracting-3d-motion-from-videos/
Tomi Engdahl says:
What Happened To GoPro?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzYnAZkayRc
GoPro is one of the most popular action cameras in the world which is not surprising given that GoPro basically invented the niche themselves. Before GoPro, adrenaline junkies had to either had to spend a substantial amount of money purchasing expensive camera equipment or they had to settle with recording from a distance. GoPro’s cheap and durable cameras revolutionized the way that sports could be captured from the first-person point of view. Even today, GoPro cameras are still quite dominant within the action camera space. However, the same cannot be said about the company itself which has been losing hundreds of millions per year since 2015. When GoPro initially went public, investors pumped the stock to nearly $100 per share, but as GoPro missed expectation after expectation, investors have fled the stock making it nearly a penny stock today. Nick has been trying to stage a turnaround over the past few years and it looks like it may be working given that GoPro just had their first positive 12 month period since 2015. This video explains the meteoric rise and unforgiving fall of GoPro and what happened to GoPro.
Timestamps:
0:00 – The Merciless Fall From Grace
0:58 – The Good Life
4:03 – Blinded By Success
7:04 – Living In The Future
7:40 – Poor Expansion
8:35 – Lack Of Passion
9:15 – Keep It Simple
Tomi Engdahl says:
Huawei patentoi 3D-kameran kännykkään
https://etn.fi/index.php/13-news/13172-huawei-patentoi-3d-kameran-kaennykkaeaen
iljattain esitellyn Huawei P50 Pocketin yhtiö on varustanut pyöreällä kansinäytöllä, jota voidaan käyttää myös älypeilinä.
Ratkaisu koskee patenttia, jonka Huawei on jättänyt WIPOon heinäkuussa 2021. 43-sivuinen dokumentaatio “Ulkonäköanalyysimenetelmä ja elektroninen laite” julkaistiin 27. tammikuuta. Dokumentaatiossa mainitaan kolmikamerajärjestelmä, joka pystyy ottamaan 3D-kasvokuvia tarkan kasvoanalyysin suorittamiseksi. Tämän mahdollistamiseksi ensimmäinen ja toinen kamera sijoitetaan kohtisuoraan toisiinsa nähden. Kolmas kamera sijoitetaan väliin siten, että ensimmäisen ja toisen kameran välinen etäisyys on yhtä suuri.
Tämä on niin sanottu hyödyllisyyspatentti, mikä tarkoittaa, että Huawei voi toteuttaa patentoitua teknologiaa eri tavoin. Dokumentaatiossa puhutaan esimerkiksi tällaisen kameran integroimisesta läppäpuhelimeen – kuten P50 Pocket. Patenttikuvissa näkyy kuitenkin tavallinen puhelinmalli.
Kolme kameraa tallentavat kasvoista 3D-mallin. Kamerajärjestelmä pystyy patentin mukaan tarjoamaan tietoa ihon huokosista, rypyistä, epäpuhtauksista, tummista silmistä tai näiden yhdistelmästä. Käyttäjä voi pyörittää kasvoja haluamallaan tavalla pyöreän kosketusnäytön kautta, jotta voit tarkasti analysoida tietyn osan kasvoistasi.
Laskelmat ovat melko edistyneitä, myös huokosten syvyys ja koko mitataan. Esimerkiksi nenän ympärillä olevien mustapäiden määrä voidaan myös määrittää. Lisäksi voidaan antaa tietoja nenäpoimustasi ja variksen jaloistasi. Valokuva valokuvatuista kasvoista näkyy sitten puhelimen näytöllä.
Patentilla kuvatun tekniikan kohderyhmä viittaa vahvasti naisiin. Lisätietoja patentista LetsGoDigitalin sivuilla.
https://nl.letsgodigital.org/smartphones/huawei-smartphone-3d-camera/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Freesound is a collaborative database of Creative Commons Licensed sounds. Browse, download and share sounds.
https://freesound.org/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Their Bionic Eyes Are Now Obsolete and Unsupported
Second Sight left users of its retinal implants in the dark
https://spectrum.ieee.org/bionic-eye-obsolete
For four years, Campbell had been using a high-tech implant in her left eye that gave her a crude kind of bionic vision, partially compensating for the genetic disease that had rendered her completely blind in her 30s. “I remember exactly where I was: I was switching from the 6 train to the F train,” Campbell tells IEEE Spectrum. “I was about to go down the stairs, and all of a sudden I heard a little ‘beep, beep, beep’ sound.”
It wasn’t her phone battery running out. It was her Argus II retinal implant system powering down. The patches of light and dark that she’d been able to see with the implant’s help vanished.
Terry Byland is the only person to have received this kind of implant in both eyes.
Yet in 2020, Byland had to find out secondhand that the company had abandoned the technology and was on the verge of going bankrupt. While his two-implant system is still working, he doesn’t know how long that will be the case. “As long as nothing goes wrong, I’m fine,” he says. “But if something does go wrong with it, well, I’m screwed. Because there’s no way of getting it fixed.”
Ross Doerr, another Second Sight patient, doesn’t mince words: “It is fantastic technology and a lousy company,” he says. He received an implant in one eye in 2019 and remembers seeing the shining lights of Christmas trees that holiday season. He was thrilled to learn in early 2020 that he was eligible for software upgrades that could further improve his vision. Yet in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, he heard troubling rumors about the company and called his Second Sight vision-rehab therapist. “She said, ‘Well, funny you should call. We all just got laid off,’ ” he remembers. “She said, ‘By the way, you’re not getting your upgrades.’ ”
These three patients, and more than 350 other blind people around the world with Second Sight’s implants in their eyes, find themselves in a world in which the technology that transformed their lives is just another obsolete gadget. One technical hiccup, one broken wire, and they lose their artificial vision, possibly forever. To add injury to insult: A defunct Argus system in the eye could cause medical complications or interfere with procedures such as MRI scans, and it could be painful or expensive to remove.
Neural implants—devices that interact with the human nervous system, either on its periphery or in the brain—are part of a rapidly growing category of medicine that’s sometimes called electroceuticals.
But recent advances in neuroscience and digital technology have sparked a gold rush in brain tech, with the outsized investments epitomized by Elon Musk’s buzzy brain-implant company, Neuralink.
Not all these companies will succeed, and Los Angeles–based Second Sight provides a cautionary tale for bold entrepreneurs interested in brain tech. What happens when cutting-edge implants fail, or simply fade away like yesterday’s flip phones and Betamax? Even worse, what if the companies behind them go bust?
After Second Sight discontinued its retinal implant in 2019 and nearly went out of business in 2020, a public offering in June 2021 raised US $57.5 million at $5 per share. The company promised to focus on its ongoing clinical trial of a brain implant, called Orion, that also provides artificial vision. But its stock price plunged to around $1.50, and in February 2022, just before this article was published, the company announced a proposed merger with an early-stage biopharmaceutical company called Nano Precision Medical (NPM).
None of Second Sight’s executives will be on the leadership team of the new company, which will focus on developing NPM’s novel implant for drug delivery.
he company took hundreds of patients on a roller-coaster ride of technological innovations, regulatory successes, medical and financial setbacks, and a near-total meltdown. Now, as the company fades away, the future of high-tech vision implants seems blurrier than ever.
The clinical trials of the first-generation Argus I (with a 16-electrode array) and the subsequent Argus II retinal implant (with a 60-pixel array) resulted in European regulatory approval in 2011 and U.S. approval in 2013.
The Argus II system consists of more than just the implant, which is surgically implanted in a procedure that takes about 4 hours. The user also wears special glasses outfitted with a small camera that sends video down a wire to a video processing unit (VPU), typically attached to the user’s belt.
The VPU reduces the images to patterns of 60 black-and-white pixels and sends them back to a transponder in the glasses, which beams them wirelessly to an antenna on the outside of the eye. From there, the signal goes to the 60-electrode array attached to the patient’s retina.
creating flashes of light that correspond to the low-resolution video feed.
“These people were completely in the dark,” he says. “They couldn’t tell the difference between a bright day at the beach and being in a coal mine in Pittsburgh. The idea that they were getting some kind of vision, it was kind of electrifying—for the patients and the doctors.”
While the Argus II was technically impressive, it faced financial headwinds. Second Sight was selling the Argus II for around $150,000 in the United States—about five times as much as other neuromodulation devices, according to Greenberg. But even so, he says, the company was losing money: “With all the overhead of sales and regulatory people, it wasn’t profitable.”
One Argus II patient estimated that the total cost of the device, surgery, and rehabilitation was $497,000. Typically, at least 80 percent of the device fee and most of the other costs were covered by insurance.
“I really wanted to be able to tell them, this is great; it’s a success. And I couldn’t do that,”
tells Spectrum that in his decades of work with people who were born sighted and later lost their vision, he’s learned that “they often develop a desperate hope for something that will help and are willing to try anything.” Arditi feels that Second Sight promised more than it delivered. “I found it very disturbing that [Second Sight] sold so many of these devices to patients who were relying on hope rather than proven performance.”
Barbara Campbell, who received her implant during the clinical trial of the Argus II, did find the bionic vision system useful. As a New York City resident, she used it outside on the busy sidewalks and while taking a subway or bus. “The more I used it, the benefits increased,” she remembers. “I think I was retraining my brain to see stuff.”
But in 2013, after four years of regular use, Campbell’s system shut down in the subway station, and despite some repair attempts by Second Sight, never worked again. While she talked with her doctors about having the implant removed, she ultimately decided that the risks of another surgery weren’t worth it. She still has the defunct technology in her left eye.
Simply not working isn’t the worst thing that could happen—there’s also the possibility of medical problems. Second Sight conducted an FDA-mandated postapproval study of the Argus II, following 30 patients from 2007 to 2019. Over that time, 36 serious and 152 nonserious “adverse events” were observed.
Byland was told about “virtual electrodes,” that is, software upgrades that would boost his system fourfold to around 250 pixels, as well as a new video processing unit. “I was sold,” he says. “I felt like we were on the verge of really making a big breakthrough.”
Other Argus II patients Spectrum spoke with were also told they would be getting upgrades, such as a digital camera, thermal imaging, and even facial recognition software. In 2016, a USC professor even raised the possibility of color vision.
By 2018, Byland’s impressions had shifted. Second Sight continued to ask him to do promotional visits, but testing had slacked off—and there was no sign of any new technology. “It just felt like maybe somebody there wasn’t being completely honest with me,” he says.
Company cofounder Greenberg says Second Sight’s long-term plan was always to pivot to a brain implant that would bypass the eye altogether and directly stimulate the visual cortex. A neural device could help more people with vision problems, even those who weren’t eligible for an Argus II implant because of severe damage to the retina or optic nerve. But Greenberg wasn’t able to steer the company through that transition.
On 18 July 2019, Second Sight sent Argus patients a letter saying it would be phasing out the retinal implant technology to clear the way for the development of its next-generation brain implant for blindness, Orion, which had begun a clinical trial with six patients the previous year. The U.S. National Institutes of Health is funding that trial as a $6.4 million project over five years.
“The leadership at the time didn’t believe they could make [the Argus] part of the business profitable,” Greenberg says.
“I understood the decision, because I think the size of the market turned out to be smaller than we had thought.”
Second Sight was quick to assure Argus patients that its support of their retinal devices would not change.
“We didn’t really support the basic Argus after that,” the engineer tells Spectrum. “We didn’t sell any more, we didn’t make any more, we didn’t have anything to do with it anymore.”
And worse was yet to come, for Argus and Orion patients alike.
In February 2020, the senior director of implant R&D left the company, swiftly followed by its CEO. On 30 March, Second Sight laid off the majority of its remaining employees and announced its “ intention to wind down operations,” citing the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on its ability to secure financing. Within weeks, most of its physical assets—including manufacturing equipment, scientific instruments, laptops, and shelving—went up for sale at auction.
Second Sight didn’t inform any of its patients of the company’s collapse. “No letter, email, or telephone call,” Ross Doerr wrote on Facebook after weeks of fruitlessly trying to contact the company. “Those of us with this implant are figuratively and literally in the dark.”
because an MRI’s intense magnetic fields can interact with the Argus II, MRI providers are instructed to contact Second Sight before performing any scans—and Second Sight wasn’t picking up the phone
Perk was using the system in November 2020 when the video processing unit (VPU) fell from his belt to the ground and shattered. “I had no vision, no Argus, and no support from Second Sight,” he remembers.
Perk shared his situation with the Argus II community in Europe, asking if anyone had spare parts. He quickly heard back from a patient who was no longer using the device and from a doctor with a spare VPU. By February 2021, he had a refurbished system, and Perk is now happily using it.
In its statement to Spectrum, Second Sight says that during its financial difficulties, its reduced workforce “was unable to continue the previous level of support and communication for Argus II centers and users.”
Even clinicians were taken by surprise by Second Sight’s collapse in 2020.
“If you provide excellent vision, there will be lots of patients. If you provide crappy vision, there will be very few.” —Daniel Palanker
“I still believe Orion has the potential to help many blind patients in a fiscally responsible way.”
The neurosurgeons involved in the work have been enthusiastic about the Orion technology.
Neurosurgeon Pouratian says that the 60-electrode brain implant is the most high-tech and precise neural implant to date, for any application. “From a technological standpoint, it’s pretty amazing in terms of its capabilities,” he says.
A much larger clinical trial would be required to gain FDA approval of the Orion. However, in the days after the merger announcement, Nano Precision Medical CEO Mendelsohn told Spectrum that the merged company was “not committing to any sort of timeline with the Orion,”
Second Sight may have given up on its retinal implant, but other companies still see a need—and a market—for bionic vision without brain surgery. Paris-based Pixium Vision is conducting European and U.S. feasibility trials to see if its Prima system can help patients with age-related macular degeneration, a much more common condition than retinitis pigmentosa.
Some clinicians involved in the Argus II work are trying to salvage what they can from the technology.
The researchers are experimenting with a thermal camera to help users see faces, a stereo camera to filter out the background, and AI-powered object recognition. These upgrades are unlikely to result in commercial hardware today but could help future vision prostheses.
Failure is an inevitable part of innovation. The Argus II was an innovative technology, and progress made by Second Sight may pave the way for other companies that are developing bionic vision systems. But for people considering such an implant in the future, the cautionary tale of Argus patients left in the lurch may make a tough decision even tougher. Should they take a chance on a novel technology? If they do get an implant and find that it helps them navigate the world, should they allow themselves to depend upon it?
Abandoning the Argus II technology—and the people who use it—might have made short-term financial sense for Second Sight, but it’s a decision that could come back to bite the merged company if it does decide to commercialize a brain implant, believes Doerr.
Birth of the Bionic Eye
In 2012, electrodes will bring eyesight to the blind
https://spectrum.ieee.org/birth-of-the-bionic-eye
Tomi Engdahl says:
Teradek Launches Spark 4K Wireless Video Transmission Solution for Pro A/V
Video feed is designed to be transmissible at up to a 4Kp30 resolution with 10-bit 4:2:2 color.
https://www.churchproduction.com/gear/teradek-launches-spark-4k-wireless-video-transmission-soluti/
Teradek, a member of The Vitec Group’s Creative Solutions division, introduces the company’s first ever wireless transmission solution for the A/V industry. Spark 4K offers 4K HDR video transmission for up to 500 feet, designed for no perceivable delay over the 5Ghz band.
Spark 4K is designed as Teradek’s response to the growing demand for practical and high-quality video transport solutions; a demand that has been exponentially driven by the COVID-19 pandemic as schools, churches, and businesses turned to live streaming events to stay engaged.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Kanye West Claims To Sell 6,200 Of The $200 Music Players He Says Will Be Only Way To Get His New Album
https://lm.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.forbes.com%2Fsites%2Fmarisadellatto%2F2022%2F02%2F18%2Fkanye-west-claims-to-sell-6200-of-the-200-music-players-he-says-will-be-only-way-to-get-his-new-album%2F%3Futm_campaign%3Dforbes%26utm_source%3Dfacebook%26utm_medium%3Dsocial%26utm_term%3DGordie&h=AT0rTwraTqznC9Jr3An7etYUYNgYpG-erz2x79RS7zBzp_aHSIL2E3Nw3ICsezL0PQ7eLJkqRA8BHlqWPR5nHwBclsmkUpKGUAeT2Ibq3nh86l5Tm9UppRf7XW_nVStnEg
Kanye West said Friday he sold over $1 million worth of “stem player” music devices in 24 hours, one day after announcing on social media that his upcoming album will only be available on the $200 music players and won’t be released on traditional streaming platforms.
Tomi Engdahl says:
BIONIC EYE PATIENTS ARE GOING BLIND AGAIN AFTER MANUFACTURER DECIDES THEY’RE OBSOLETE
“IT IS FANTASTIC TECHNOLOGY AND A LOUSY COMPANY.”
https://futurism.com/neoscope/bionic-eye-implants-expire
Their Bionic Eyes Are Now Obsolete and UnsupportedSecond Sight left users of its retinal implants in the dark
https://spectrum.ieee.org/amp/bionic-eye-obsolete-2656624624
Tomi Engdahl says:
ATEM Mini – Secrets and opportunites?
https://wphost.spider-e.com/?p=940
Tomi Engdahl says:
What’s Inside the ATEM Mini Pro? A Quick Teardown to see Just What Blackmagic has done!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Sy8NAw8Ir6c
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://www.fender.com/articles/gear/jazz-bomb-surf-staple-indie-icon-a-jazzmaster-history
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://www.valco.fi/