Technology360

"Analog?" So funny, and yet not

The Ides of March come about a month early for television broadcasters next year when millions of over-the-air viewers -- many of them elderly -- must deal with receivers that, without converter boxes, become livingroom plant stands.  Having just installed a new HD set in the livingroom and moved the analog set to an upstairs bedroom and installed one of the coupon converter boxes there for a technology-intimidated friend, I can testify that it's a challenging task.  FOX's Talkshow with Spike Ferensten has a great send-up of the various television spots on the conversion that are now playing on stations across the country.

Do yourself a favor and watch this piece.  But have a Kleenex handy.  It will make you laugh big time, but when it's done, if you're a broadcaster, it might also make you cry.  Link:  MSN Video.  Thanks to Karen Olstad for that link.  --Dennis

R.I.P., HD DVD

Back in the early 80s, I bought a Betamax VCR and replaced that with another Betamax VCR before that format bit the dust and VHS won.  I can really pick 'em.  Just over a year ago, I bought a Toshiba HD DVD when Costco dropped the price to $300.  It's now a pretty good upscaling DVD player, but you can buy them for under $100.

Cliff Edwards writes:

... while Toshiba lies vanquished, the Blu-ray camp now faces a slew of technical, business, and marketing challenges in driving consumer adoption of their victorious standard. To an extent, those issues have been just as much to blame as the format war for slowing the adoption of the high-definition successor to the standard DVD format. "Now that the format war is over, it's just dawning on everybody that our work is just beginning," says Andy Parsons, chairman of the Blu-ray Disc Association, and a senior vice-president at Pioneer. ...

Link:  BusinessWeek.  --Dennis

Farewell to the Great CRT

Television engineering legend Charlie Rhodes has a wonderful history of television displays in an article of this name in TV Technology.  Thanks to Cliff Benham for the tip.  --Dennis

Why Low Def Is the New HD

Daniel Eran Dilger takes a while to get to his point (though along the way you get a very good education about consumer video), but that point is a very interesting one about the video marketplace today.  He writes:

... Apple happens to be positioned to ride the sweet spot of LD/SD content right now, and has the infrastructure and hardware to deliver HD content using the same iTunes ecosystem with Apple TV in the future. Apple has bet on the mainstream 720p HD format as the best balance between high quality content and downloadable file sizes.  ¶  That will enable the company to transition to offering HD programming from iTunes as consumer’s bandwidth availability increases and the demand for HD expands. Until that happens on a large scale, Apple will continues to sell the most content because it has targeted what consumers want–convenient downloads–not what other vendors are all trying to sell: high end, high priced HD. ...

... Estimates suggest that by the end of the year, there will be an installed base of about a million standalone HD-DVD and Blu-Ray disc players, besides the 7-8 million PlayStation 3 consoles that can also play Blu-Ray discs. That makes less than ten million HD players in total, compared to around 40 million video playing iPods, and hundreds of millions of iTunes installations capable of playing back iTunes content directly from a computer or through an Apple TV. ...

Link:  RoughlyDrafted Magazine.  Highly recommended article.  Thanks to Craig Birkmaier for the tip.  --Dennis

Innovation at the Met

The Metropolitan Opera, of all organizations, has been doing a very innovative thing by transmitting its performances in HDTV to movie theaters around the country as well as other innovations.  Non-profit fundraising guru Bob Stein writes:

... [CEO Peter Gelb] has taken opera to the streets--free large-screen broadcasts in Times Square (opening night of Madame Butterfly), introduced $20 rush orchestra tickets and broadcast live performances to movie screens around the world. He's brought directors from the theater world to stage operas, and he even recruited design celeb Isaac Mizrahi to create the costumes for Orfeo ed Euridice.  ¶  What has resulted is a revitalized Met. According to Bloomberg.com,

Sales during the 2006-07 season rose 7.1 percent to 810,225, said Gelb, who succeeded Joseph Volpe in August. In all, the Met sold 83.9 percent of tickets offered for its 3,800- seat opera house at Manhattan's Lincoln Center compared with 76.8 percent last season.

Link:  Major Giving.

The legendary Mark Schubin gave a talk about the Met's Live HD opera-to-theater broadcasts at October's Iowa DTV Symposium.  The talk (The Metropolitan Opera Live in HD: global cinemacasts, robotic cameras, and more) is available both as a PowerPoint (click here and scroll down to the Content Track's Tuesday at 2:30 session) and as an MP3 file.

Just went to the Met web site and see that one of their theaters is about a 75-mile drive from me, so I'm going to buy a ticket and check it out.  --Dennis

In-Stat: U.S. households with little or no interest in HDTV on the rise

Broadcast Engineering reports:

The percentage of U.S. households that said they were interested in HDTVs fell this year compared to those who expressed an interest last year, and the number or those reporting to have little or no interest has grown, according to a series of studies from market research firm In-Stat.  ¶  At the same time, worldwide interest in HDTV among consumers is rising, with particularly strong interest in France and South Korea, the research firm said. The reports also showed that consumers are choosing LCD TVs over their plasma display equivalents in good number, which will be responsible for LCD televisions claiming 75 percent of the market by 2011 and the plasma market share dwindling to below 15 percent. ...

--Dennis

Blu-ray outpaces HD DVD in U.S.

Reuters is reporting that Blu-ray HD discs outsold HD DVD discs in the U.S. by two-to-one in the first half of 2007.  I, of course, bought an HD DVD player when it dropped below $300 at Costco (context: I bought two Beta VCRs before I bought my first VHS one).  Blockbuster announced it's going to stock Blu-ray, but on the other hand Wal-Mart announced it's building a zillion HD DVD players in Asia for the holidays.  So maybe the jury is still out.

Two observations about HD DVDs:  The discs seem to be more sensitive to scratches than standard DVDs.  One we received from Netflix was unplayable for more than about 15 minutes at a time, then one had to start over and hope it skipped the scratch the next time.  Also, while the video quality is great, it's not hugely better on my 50-inch monitor than video from an upscaling standard DVD player.  Those now sell for under $100 and do a great job.  --Dennis

Link:  c|net News.com.

HD Internet streaming video

The NAB reports:

...  On July 24, ABC became the first network to launch Internet streaming of full-length programming in high definition, with a player providing full-screen 16:9 images at significantly higher quality than previously available. The service was launched in beta form, with episodes of Desperate Housewives, Grey's Anatomy, Lost, and Ugly Betty, with more programs to follow in the new season later in the year. The ABC HD service is available free of charge to consumers at: http://dynamic.abc.go.com/streaming/landing. ...

Link:  NAB TV TechCheck (pdf).  Thanks to Ralph Hogan.  --Dennis

Hype cycle for consumer technologies

Gartner has published its 2007 hype cycle chart for a large number of consumer technologies.   Click on image for larger version.  Note the relative positions of digital terrestrial radio (HD Radio) on the far left and digital terrestrial television (DTV) on the far right.  Via Bobbie Johnson at The Guardian Technology blog.  --Dennis

Bob Cringely: When is a TV not a TV? -- also, Neokast

Says Cringely:

When it is an Apple TV - the High Definition DVD-killer ...

... Apple TV will be the spoiler of many a Blu-ray or HD DVD sale because Apple TV is cheaper and easier, has no expensive consumable media, and HD movies will probably cost a little less to buy through iTunes than at Target. ...

But most of this column is about Neokast, a very interesting video distribution technology based on multicasting with which he suggests Apple hook up.  Unlike broadcasting, where multicasting means sending multiple program channels over one broadcast RF channel, the term multicasting here is used in the Internet sense, where it refers to a technology that enable multiple users to access a program without the origination point having to simultaneous send out multiple copies of that program -- one to each user.

Link: PBS.org.  See also Bob's NeoKast QuicKast entered beta this morning.  Link:  Technology Evangelist.  And Paul Kapustka's Neokast, Emerging from the shell.  Link: NewTeeVee.  --Dennis