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Movie Burning Kiosks Coming To Retailers
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The motion picture industry is in talks with some major retailers about installing DVD burning kiosks in stores.
It's an interesting idea, but one that almost entirely misses the
point. Hollywood's movie distribution system is in dire need of a fix -
very few will dispute that. Movie attendance has been suffering, DVD
sales are slumping, and all the industry has managed to do is come up
with a half-baked, unpopular download service
and a scant handful of simultaneous releases. In another attempt to
sort of give consumers what they want, the motion picture industry is
thinking about allowing retailers to set up in-store kiosks for distribution.
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Viral Music Videos A Problem For RIAA
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A few years ago music videos were considered promotional, a
tease to get the viewer to buy the whole album. However, now that a
commercial market for music videos is springing up, the music industry is not quite happy
with YouTube, iFilm, Google Video and other video sharing sites
distributing the music videos of famous artists. Billboard magazine
says: 'The RIAA estimates that sales of music videos topped $3.7
million in three months, after being introduced in October. Meanwhile,
the major labels also are sharing in the profits of ad-supported
video-on-demand offerings from AOL, Yahoo, Music Choice and others.
That is revenue the music industry is keenly interested in protecting.
Hopes are that YouTube and others will ink similar deals with the
industry in the long run.'
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Texas to Provide Online Bordercams
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The BBC reports that Texas intends to erect a network of online webcams at its border to Mexico. The intention is apparently to use viewers as a kind of distributed processing network, with a free phone number to report border-jumpers." From the article: "'A stronger border is what Americans want and it's what our security demands and that is what Texas is going to deliver,' Mr Perry said. The cameras will cost $5m (£2.7m) to install and will be trained on sections of the 1,000-mile (1,600km) border known to be favoured by illegal immigrants
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Yahoo! Launches YouTube Competitor
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Yahoo! launched
Yahoo! Video
allowing users to upload, share and tag their videos. For Windows users
the player uses the standard Yahoo! Player, while Mac and Linux users
get video encoded in Flash. Yahoo! joins a highly competitive field of video services currently led by MSN Video, YouTube and Google Video. The Associated Press reports on the Yahoo! Video launch as well.
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High performance FFT on GPUs
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The UNC GAMMA group has recently released a high performance FFT library which can handle large 1-D FFTs. According to their webpage,
the FFT library is able to achieve 4x higher computational performance
on a $500 NVIDIA 7900 GPU than optimized Intel Math Kernel FFT routines
running on high-end Intel and AMD CPUs costing $1500-$2000. The library
is supported for both Linux and Windows platforms and is tested to work
on many programmable GPUs. There is also a link to download the library
freely for non-commerical use.
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BitTorrent's Bram Cohen against Network Neutrality
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BitTorrent inventor Bram Cohen warns on potential 'absurdity' of Network Neutrality laws and concedes that his hook-up with Cachelogic is creating a system that might contravene Network Neutrality. He suggests there'd be no difference between big media footing the bill for their own upload costs of their offerings and subsidizing the consumer's download costs of the same.
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Hardware Firms Go Against Crowd on Net Neutrality
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Some of the largest hardware firms in the world, like Cisco and 3M, have sent a letter to U.S. policymakers asking them not to be too hasty on mandated net neutrality laws." From the News.com article: "'It
is premature to attempt to enact some sort of network neutrality
principles into law now,' says the letter, which was signed by 34
companies and sent to House Majority Leader Dennis Hastert and Minority
Leader Nancy Pelosi. 'Legislating in the absence of real understanding
of the issue risks both solving the wrong problem and hobbling the
rapidly developing new technologies and business models of the Internet
with rigid, potentially stultifying rules.
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House Committee Approves 'Net Neutrality' Bill
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Ars Technica is reporting that the US House Judiciary Committee approved a bill yesterday that will prevent broadband providers from charging extra fees to websites for delivering their content to users." Ars's response is only guarded optimism, unfortunately. From the article: "The
fate of the bill is not clear, as there are now two competing bills
vying for the attention of the House floor. HR 5252, the Communications
Opportunity, Promotion and Enhancement Act, was overseen by the House
Committee on Energy and Commerce and is expected to be considered by
full House. That bill is seen by some proponents of 'Net neutrality as
being too weak, particularly after a Committee vote tossed aside an
amendment put forth by Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA) that would have enshrined
the principle of network neutrality into US law. There is speculation
that the bill, HR 5417, could be proposed as an amendment to HR
5252.
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USPTO Rules Fogent JPEG Patent Invalid
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Groklaw has reported that the USPTO has ruled the broadest claims of the JPEG Patent held by Fogent to be invalid.
PUBPAT, the organization that requested the review, released the news last month.
The ruling will be hard to overturn as the 'submitters knew about the prior art but failed to tell the USPTO about it.'
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Cablevision Sued Over Remote DVR Plan
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NBC, CBS, ABC, and Fox have joined together and filed an injunction against Cablevision
over their plan to introduce remote DVRs to their customers. 'They
argue that while precedent may allow for legal time-shifting among home
TV viewers, Cablevision's plans should require a special license from
the broadcasters.' Cablevision's plan to create a centrally-hosted DVR
was previously covered here on Slashdot.
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MPAA Being Sued For Allegedly Hacking Torrentspy
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Valence Media, the parent company of Torrentspy.com, one of the web's largest torrent search engines, has filed a lawsuit against the MPAA for allegedly hiring a hacker to steal e-mail correspondence and trade secrets. From the suit: 'The Motion Picture Association of America willfully and intentionally obtained without authority, conspired to obtain without authority, purchased, procured, used and disclosed private information that it knew was unlawfully obtained through unauthorized access to Plaintiffs' computer servers and private email accounts, in violation of United States and California privacy and computer security laws.
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MS Proposes JPEG Alternative
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Microsoft's new competitor to the omnipresent JPEG format has been shown at WinHEC and is discussed on CNET. The Windows Media Photo
format has many promises associated with it. The program manager is
claiming 'We can do it in half the size of a JPEG file.'. While 'the
philosophy has been that licensing should not be a restriction', it is
interesting that the specification requires a click-through agreement to even read it.
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DRM Protest in Hazmat Suits
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The Free Software Foundation launched a new anti-DRM initiative
May 23 protest at Bill Gates's keynote speech to Microsoft
developers in Seattle. They're calling the new campaign 'Defective by
Design' and have named Big Media, device manufacturers and proprietary
software companies as targets. CivicActions
is participating as a coalition partner in the campaign. Protesters
donned HazMat suits, apparently to emphasize the hazard Digital
Restrictions Management poses to their rights.
There are also a few pictures available over at Defectivebydesign.org.
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Google to Distribute Online Video Ads
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An AP story about Google's plan to start distributing online video ads. From the article: "The
video expansion, announced late Monday, will affect thousands of Web
sites that rely on Google to post ads related to the surrounding
material on a page. For instance, a news story about housing might
prompt Google to display an ad for real estate agents. Google isn't
allowing the video ads to appear on its own Web site -- a heavily
trafficked destination that produced 58 percent of its $2.25 billion in
revenue during the first three months of this year."
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8 MegaPixel Digital Sensor Unveiled
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Micron has unveiled an 8-megapixel digital sensor,
that 'enables pocket-sized cameras and cell phones to capture bursts of
10 high-quality photos in a single second or even high-definition
video.'" From the article: "'We're saying it can go in a
point-and-shoot camera selling in the $200 to $300 range,' said Suresh
Venkatrama, Micron's director of the digital camera segment. 'It brings
high-quality digital video and photography down to the consumer space.'
The new sensor is a type of chip known as a 'complementary metal-oxide
semiconductor,' or CMOS. Analysts say the technology, which is also
used in memory chips and microprocessors, will challenge the dominance
of traditional light-sensing charge-coupled devices, or CCDs.
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Airport Video Surveillance Goes Hi-Tech
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BusinessWeek has a piece on new tech used in the airport of Helsinki
to monitor behavior and alert people when predefined situations arise.
From the article: "The system can alert staff to events which may need
further investigation without the need for every camera to be observed
by staff. For example, suspect packages or vehicles left unattended
will be flagged up and staff alerted. Similarly if the system detects
queues growing beyond a pre-defined length in the security zone staff
will be alerted of the need to open another lane"
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Sony's Blu-Ray demo on the level.
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Gearlog.com has retracted a previous accusation against Sony regarding their alleged use of a DVD+R instead of a Blu-Ray disc in a demonstration. In the original announcement,
Gearlog.com claimed that Sony was using a DVD+R to demonstrate Blu-Ray
technology, in an attempt to show that Sony was not ready to market the
product.
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Stream MythTV to Your Cell Phone
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How To for streaming your MythTV recordings to your 3G cell phone. In involves getting your myth box to convert recordings to 3gp format and then setting up Apple's Darwin Streaming Server to handle streaming the videos from a webpage it sets up.
Microsoft released Windows Media Player 11 last month.
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Could HD Video Could 'Choke the Internet'?
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Yahoo! is carrying an AP story explaining how ISPs are worried large streaming videos could 'choke the Internet.' This is used as a yet another reason for tiered pricing for access to content providers." From the article: "Most
home Internet use is in brief bursts -- an e-mail here, a Web page
there. If people start watching streaming video like they watch TV --
for hours at a time -- that puts a strain on the Internet that it
wasn't designed for, ISPs say, and beefing up the Internet's capacity
to prevent that will be expensive. To offset that cost, ISPs want to
start charging content providers to ensure delivery of large video
files, for example.
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YouTube Founders Interviewed
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FORTUNE's Adam Lashinsky interviews co-founders Steve Chen and Chad Hurley.
'In just five months, YouTube has gone from beta testing to part of the
national zeitgeist. The website is a place where anyone with a home
video can post it online and create an endlessly entertaining diversion
for bored office workers -- who've been watching 40 million clips a
day.'
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Electric Companies Get Involved With Broadband
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The Marketplace Morning Report on NPR has an interesting piece on how electric companies are getting into the high-speed Internet business with 'Broadband over Power Lines', or BPL." From the article: "By
purchasing the right equipment power companies can quickly offer
Internet service to millions of new customers. There are several pilot
projects being launched in the US, including one in the Pittsburgh
suburb of Monroeville. That service is being offered by Duquesne
Broadband -- a spinout of the local power company.'
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TiVo Signs Up for Internet Video Content
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TiVo, in an increasingly diversified attempt to offer new content
to its subscriber base, today announced a partnership with Internet TV
pioneer Brightcove to bring content partner video offerings from this
company to Tivo boxes. The first fruits of this relationship should
begin appearing within the coming months.
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100 Million Pixels of Virtual Reality
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It's ironic that Iowa State University (ISU) announced a big
upgrade of its C6 virtual reality (VR) room the same day as SGI filed
for bankruptcy. Back in 2000, this 10x10x10 foot room was powered by
SGI Onyx2 computers. The new version of this six-sided VR room will use
96 graphics processing units from Hewlett-Packard. And with its 24 Sony
digital projectors, the researchers at ISU will immerse themselves into
images of about 100 million pixels in the most realistic VR room in the world.
Of course, this upgrade is not cheap. But with this $4 million
addition, this new C6 should lead to new advances in urban planning,
genetics, engineering or unmanned aerial vehicles.
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NPR talk of the Nation discusses YouTube.
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6/6/06 Talk of the nation had a great disucussion about You Tube youtube.com
They touched on a number of very interesting things.
Viral Video, Copyright Volation issues, Lasy Sunday (search this on Youtube)
The lack of advertizing on youtube. And problems with putting them on there.
The cost of bandwidth. 20 Terabytes a day must be around 1 Million a month
The fact that YouTube is bleading money at a fantastic rate.
Sequoia Captial put in 11 Million Dollars.
Listen to:
Viral Video and the Rise of YouTube
June 3-9, 2006
Infocomm (was ICIA) for AV Communications Industry
Orlando, FL
June 4-8, 2006
GlobalComm 2006
Chicago, Illinois
June 5-6, 2006
PROJECTION SUMMIT
Orlando Florida
June 6-7, 2006
Digital Media Summit
Los Angeles, CA
June 13-18, 2006
SILVERDOCS Film Festival 2006 AFI & Discovery Channel, Documentary Festival
Silver Springs, MD
June 20-22, 2006
PROMAX / BDA promotion, marketing, and design of all electronic media.
New York
June 20-22, 2006
POF World - Plastic Optical Fiber & Ethernet
Santa Clara Convention Center, Santa Clara, CA
June 26-29, 2006
Cinema Expo International Motion Picture Theatre Industry.
Amsterdam RAI
If you in California, then you have probably see this add on TV. TV for ALL
This site states:
Texas-based AT&T and its sidekick Verizon are trying to get the California Legislature to deregulate them so they can get into the Cable TV business in California.
and
We won't give away the store here to monopolies like AT&T and Verizon that want to raise telephone rates on the middle class to pay for a scheme to provide new cable service only to wealthy neighborhoods.
I can't believe the bullshit these guys are selling. Penn and Teller could do a show on it.
Everyone Cable TV providers and Phone companies are wanting to push "Triple Play". It's a side affect of the convergence that was predicted years ago by Negroponte and others. This is where all media converge into one media a digital network, currently called the Internet.
With Triple play a pun based on American Baseball, companies will provide TV, Phone and Internet over IP (internet protocol). This is also referred to as "Voice, Video and Data". basically there will be IPTV, VOIP and just IP, but really it's all IP on the inside.
So what's happening is as Cable TV companies are trying to go into the VOIP phone business, they are trying to legislate there competition out of the business.
This is really unfair to try to trick people into getting their politicians so confused and pressure to start restricting people options. One of and great founding premises of the Internet it free open access for everything. Overall it's a very large reason for it's success even though there has been drawbacks such as SPAN and DOS attacks, it's openness for any new applications to be developed and ran without restrictions and having to get permission from anyone that has allow such innovation.
The Convergence is a very good thing, and once you get past the Alphabet soup the marketing people are cooking up it's all actually much simpler.
The once thing that nobody seems to be realizing yet, is that as a consumer with a broadband Internet connection, I can already get all of that NOW TODAY! without there extra bullshit that they are trying to sell me.
ATT Labs' inclusion in MoCA is another endorsement of MoCA technology as the emerging de facto standard for broadband in-home networking of digital entertainment.
AT&T LABORATORATIES IS NEWEST MEMBER OF MoCA
CHICAGO, GLOBALCOMM, June 6, 2006 -The Multimedia over Coax Alliance (MoCA - TM)
announced its latest member, AT&T Laboratories, Inc. AT&T Labs will represent
AT&T, and membership in MoCA is part of AT&T's strategy to investigate and promote
a seamless method for moving digital content throughout the home, via any technology
and medium that makes the most technical and economic sense for the end consumer.
The various AT&T affiliates and subsidiaries already offer an expansive portfolio
of services for the home as the number one provider of DSL and local voice services,
and a major supplier of Wi-Fi capability in the U.S.
"We are evaluating MoCA technology as one option for distributing IP-based video
services in customers' homes," said David Deas, vice president networks & services,
AT&T Laboratories Inc. "We look forward to working with the Alliance as it continues
to strengthen technology and standards for digital communications over in-home
coaxial cables."
"AT&T Labs is a valuable new member of MoCA and brings vast experience and insight
to the MoCA organization. With the MoCA standard able to address operator and
retail segments using in-home coax, AT&T Labs' leading representation of triple
play over DSL significantly helps MoCA meet its goals," said Ladd Wardani, President
of MoCA.
About MoCA
The Multimedia over Coax Alliance (MoCA) is an open, industry driven initiative
promoting distribution of digital video and entertainment through existing coaxial
cable in the home. MoCA technology provides the backbone for whole home entertainment
networks of multiple wired and wireless products. The MoCA BoD includes Comcast,
Cox Communications, EchoStar Technologies, Entropic Communications, Linksys, Motorola,
Panasonic, RadioShack, Toshiba and Verizon. For more information, please visit
http://www.mocalliance.org/.
Broadband in Gas?
Wireless transmission of ultra-wideband signals using
existing gas pipelines. Delivering a Terabit of television,
telephone, blogs and chat rooms down a gas pipe strikes
us as being rather logical in an off piste kind of way.
Nethercomm.s technology requires no
modification to existing natural gas distribution infrastructures and
can carry enormous amounts of data by simply making use of the entire
spectrum buried within the existing natural gas pipelines. The
technology delivers connectivity over the last mile of broadband
networks without interference or degradation of other wireless
transmissions. By not consuming or sharing costly spectrum, and not
requiring installation of last mile cable or fiber, Nethercomm is
prepared to make broadband substantially more affordable while
increasing end-user bandwidth to unprecedented levels.
NetherComm
Ruckus Wireless, which apparently used to be known as Video54
launched last year it's MediaFlex product. It is able to deliver "triple play" services that is able to deliver telephone, video and broadband Internet to customers wirelessly throughout the home.
* Extends 802.11b/g range and coverage by up to 300 percent
* Enables IPTV streaming from any broadband gateway
* Stabilizes the air with smart-MIMO technology that automatically steers RF signals around interference
* Mitigates multipath fading and avoids interference
Triple play over Wi-Fi gives consumers the freedom to put
phone, computer and audio/visual equipment anywhere within their homes
without wires - effectively eliminating installation hassles and ugly
cabling.Previously, it has not been possible for Wi-Fi networks to
transmit TV/video pictures of a high enough quality.
According to there site:
Ruckus' wireless multimedia system incorporates state-of-the-art advances, such as its patent-pending BeamCast technology and first-of-its-kind wireless traffic engineering software called SmartCast. SmartCast classifies traffic types, prioritizes traffic and delivers reliable IPTV multicast streams to up to three set top boxes located in different quarters of a home. Combined, BeamFlex and SmartCast directly extend Wi-Fi signals to any user, constantly steer RF signals around interference and prioritize traffic types over the air.
Video54 article
The new Exstreamer 100 Audio Decoder from SMARTHOME.
Stream audio from your computer all around the house using your network
and one of these boxes. It may not be as .in yer face, state of the
art. fabulosi as wireless streamers, but it should work better through
thick walls and floors. $195.00.
Turn your PC into a music server with the Exstreamer 100,
a network MP3 player for digital audio streaming. By connecting an
Exstreamer 100 to your network-connected PC, web server, or local USB
memory stick, you.ll be able to play MP3, G.711, and PCM audio files
over your local area network.
So the good folk at Dinendi have released their latest, and lowest cost Mirror TV Kit.
What is it? Basically a frame with a 2 way mirror on the front which
you can slide over your flat screen television as a disguise. Now just
$299.00 for the 32. and 20. version. Bargain eh?
nbsp;Turn your LCD or Plasma TV into a .Mirror TV. with the
Framed TV Mirror kit. * 3. deep frame to completely hide most TVs *
Mirror when the TV is off * TV image shows through when TV is on *
Different mounting options to support almost any flat panel TV Our TV
Mirror frames are simple to install and fit on virtually any screen
converting it into a hidden TV.
The Startech VS310HDMI HDMI Digital Switcher.
With remote control. We could see the future and it involved multiple
HD devices . set top boxes, DVD players, televisions, media centers etc
. all sporting sparkly new HDMI ports and no way to connect them up
without a lot of plugging and unplugging. Until now, that is.
It retails around $150.00.
Avoid the frustrations of having to swap out video devices
because your display doesn.t have enough HDMI inputs to accomodate
them. With the VS310HDMI, you can connect up to 3 devices with HDMI
output (e.g. DVD players, satellite receivers) to a single HDMI input,
saving hassle and costly upgrades. Plus, with the added convenience of
the included remote control, switching HDMI sources becomes as easy as
the push of a button.
http://www.videospark.com/ Flash Video resources *****
Check out the FLV Player, version 2.3
Excellent article on how to make flash videos
Video Sharing Sites
PiXPO
BUBBLESHARE
GUBA
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