CNET suggests this year’s CES is more difficult than usual to predict what will take shape in terms of home theater trends.
However, the following is expected: 1) The slow death of discs (emphasis on streaming video features more than Blu-ray playback); 2) More Google TV products; 3) New suites of streaming media apps (“The recent Xbox dashboard update definitely showed a way forward for streaming-media boxes and Blu-ray players, integrating voice search and cross-platform search at the same time”); 4) Cheaper AirPlay premiums on more devices; and 5) Less 5.1, more sound bars.
The following is on the CNET wishlist: 1) Cloud music in home theater (“Amazon Cloud and Google Music apps would be excellent additions to Blu-ray players and streaming video boxes this year”); and 2) The ultimate cord-cutters box (“…we’re hoping to be surprised by a totally new product that combines streaming-video and over-the-air HDTV in an affordable box that requires minimal setup”).
Google announced this week it has begun to roll out new features to Google+ for individual and business users.
New features include: Graphical Circle prioritization tool (volume slider), a revamped Notifications tab, multi-manager support for Google+ Pages, Follower and +1 integration, and a revamped Photo Lightbox with new tagging functionality.
The Digital Trends post includes three video demos that illustrate the new features.
In a related post, Mashable reports the social network is being bolstered by Google searches. The company has integrated Google+ brand page information in primary search results, providing great incentives for brands to join up.
As of yet, only some brands — such as Toyota and AT&T — have had their G+ pages among top search results. Content from the G+ page uses the Direct Connect function (typing in the brand name and a “+” in Google search to produce their G+ page), so only those companies that are eligible for Direct Connect will have their G+ pages among their search results.
CNET speculates what trends will emerge at January’s CES regarding networking and storage technologies.
Wireless: “Just a while ago, Broadcom, one of the major makers of networking chipsets, showed me a preview of the new 802.11ac standard that brings the top speed to up to 1.4Gbps, almost 50 percent faster than a Gigabit connection, that is. And if that’s not fast enough, Velocity also recently introduced the first chipset based on WiGig Alliance-backed 802.11ad 60Ghz wireless standard that offers up to 7Gbps ceiling throughput speed.”
“Networking will also be available in more home appliances, such as TVs, refrigerators, ovens, microwaves, and even cars,” adds the article. “Broadcom said it will also be demoing for the first time a new Ethernet-based solution for the rear-view camera, which not only enhances the quality of the image but also makes the whole solution more affordable and lighter.”
In terms of the Cloud, expect to see routers that come with mobile apps for control from smartphones, and personal cloud developments from hard drive and NAS server vendors.
CNET also predicts: “In terms of data transfer speed, hardware vendors will introduce their versions of Thunderbolt-enabled storage solutions.”
Clear Channel’s iHeartRadio service is now available on Microsoft’s Xbox 360.
Users can control their favorite stations with voice or hand gestures via the Kinect. Those without the Kinect can use their controller.
Xbox LIVE Gold subscribers can access more than 800 broadcast and digital radio stations through iHeartRadio, plus custom stations and social features through iHeartRadio’s relationship with Facebook.
“This is the beginning of a long battle with Pandora for integration in consumer electronics devices and the dashboard,” reports RBR-TVBR. “Bear in mind, just on the consumer electronics side, Pandora is already bundled with many Wi-Fi radios, home theater systems, Blu-ray players, TV sets, etc.”
BBC last week broadcast an hour-long documentary titled “Steve Jobs: Billion Dollar Hippy,” in which BBC’s Evan Davis examines Jobs’ “audacious message of revolution” and attempts to answer the question: “How did a drug-taking college dropout create one of the most successful corporations in the world?”
“This is the inside story of how Steve Jobs took Apple from a suburban garage to global supremacy,” explains Davis in the opening.
The documentary is available on YouTube (for now); Forbes has embedded the video into its article covering the special.
Interview subjects include tech insiders such as Tim Berners-Lee, Steve Wozniak, Robert X. Cringely, Steven Levy and John Sculley; friends, colleagues and competitors from Jobs’ early years; marketing and business leaders; Apple executives, technologists and designers from the company’s different eras; and for some added cultural perspective, English author and TV personality Stephen Fry.
Appropriately flavored by the occasional Bob Dylan tune, the documentary examines Jobs’ efforts with Apple, Next and Pixar; his sometimes bumpy relationships; the ebb and flow of a career marked by success and failure; and at the heart of it all, as aptly described by Stewart Brand, “Steve Jobs never left his countercultural frame of reference and so his way of staying forever young was to stay forever hippy.”
ViewSonic will showcase new products at CES including its ViewPad tablet line, the 32-inch tabletop EXOdesk and a capacitive multi-touch universal display.
According to the press release, the company will expand its tablet line to include “new 10-inch business and consumer-focused tablets running Windows and Android operating systems.”
“The ViewPad 7e, an Android-based 7″ tablet offers Amazon services for Android integration, Amazon Kindle for eBook reading and RiteTouch for writing directly on the screen,” explains the release. “The business line of tablets, which include the ViewPad 10pro, run Windows 7 Professional and provide the ability to boot Android as well.”
The EXOdesk, the result of a partnership with EXOPC, is a “10-point touch table top which runs a custom user interface open to HTML5 developers. The desk…will be powered by an Intel Core i7 processor, Intel’s integrated graphics and will run Windows 7 operating system.”
NBC announced yesterday that it plans to stream the 2012 Super Bowl on February 5th.
“In the biggest example to date that Web streaming is becoming a must-do service…the Super Bowl — the most-watched event on television — will be streamed online and to mobile phones for the first time ever,” reports Digital Trends.
In addition to February’s championship, NBC will also stream Wild Card Saturday and the Pro Bowl. The games will be available via NBC.com and the NFL Mobile app, available to Verizon Wireless customers.
NBC will offer additional content such as extra camera angles, game highlights and live game stats. “Because of the added features on the Web stream, NBC found that people weren’t just watching the game on their PCs; they were watching on both the TV and on the website, likely to get the bigger screen view while being able to access the added content,” explains the post.
Last year’s Super Bowl match-up between the Packers and Steelers drew 111 million viewers, making it the most popular broadcast of 2011.
LG is working with Intel to incorporate wireless digital video over Wi-Fi, known as WiDi, into its Cinema 3D Smart TV line.
The WiDi-enabled sets, expected to be featured at CES, will be built into the TVs and will not require a receiver box.
“WiDi was developed by Intel to stream video content from an Intel-based laptop, notebook or other external mobile device to a TV, projector or display monitor,” explains TWICE. “Currently, the system requires a receiver box or dongle be connected to a TV’s video input, but the agreement would enable the system to be built into LG’s Cinema 3D sets.”
“The WiDi system uses point-to-point connectivity and features a wireless interface for instant viewing of content on the wirelessly connected display,” adds the article.
According to LG, the system also supports streaming online content accessible through mobile devices, including YouTube videos and streaming TV shows from broadcast sites.
Time Warner spokesman Jeff Simmermon announced on Friday that Time Warner Cable will finally offer the HBO GO streaming and MAX GO apps.
“The cable company will run a short trial to test out the streaming app on the Time Warner Cable network and roll out the app to all 12 million subscribers during January 2012,” reports Digital Trends.
HBO GO offers approximately 1,400 titles (to HBO subscribers only) for laptops, PCs, Android and Apple smartphones, the iPad, gaming consoles and set-top boxes such as Roku. The MAX GO app offers about 400 titles including original programming, movies and MAX After Dark.
“HBO has already signed agreements with other cable companies such as Comcast, Charter Communications, AT&T U-verse, DirecTV, Dish Network and Verizon FIOS,” explains the post. “The largest holdout at this point is Cablevision with approximately three million subscribers.”
LG has announced a 2012 updated version of its Magic Motion Remote Control, which is expected to be on display at CES.
“Last year’s model let you navigate any 2011 LG smart TV like a Wii, and the refresh takes a new ergonomic design and adds voice recognition for text input, a scroll wheel, and Magic Gestures,” reports The Verge.
It has yet to be announced exactly what gestures are supported.
“The remote also has a new 3D button you can push to turn on the TV’s 2D-to-3D conversion software — that’s probably not terribly useful, but might make for a neat parlor trick when you have guests over,” jokes the post.
LG says the new Magic Motion will be available in the first quarter of 2012.
Facebook “can be sued by people who claim showing advertisements that their friends ‘like’ violates a California law regarding commercial endorsements,” reports Bloomberg Businessweek.
U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh in San Jose has cleared the way for Facebook users to sue the social network over its use of their likenesses in sponsored ads.
The case centers on claims regarding sponsored stories, which use the names and profile photos of users who have “liked” a given brand.
The judge ruled that plaintiffs could claim they had been economically harmed by the ads, but tossed out a claim that Facebook had unfairly profited from the ads.
“We are reviewing the decision and continue to believe that the case is without merit,” wrote a Facebook spokesman in an e-mailed statement.
The number of Americans using smartphones to access TV content is on the rise, according to a new study by research firm Vanson Bourne, on behalf of Motorola Mobility.
Survey results suggest the numbers account for nearly a quarter of U.S. consumers — an almost five-fold increase, reports Connected Planet.
Some 9,000 consumers in 16 countries were polled, with results indicating that trends in mobile networking and social media continue to influence TV viewing.
Consumers spend an average of 12 hours online per week and an additional six hours engaged in social media. “The result of this convergence is Social TV with about 60 percent of global respondents saying that they have discussed a program with friends on social networks.”
“With the traditional broadcast TV industry under pressure, and their adoption of new IT infrastructures generally being almost a decade behind telecom, they should be seriously worried by telcos offering TV type services,” comments Connected Planet.
It’s official: AT&T announced yesterday it has ended its effort to purchase T-Mobile USA. The company explained it could no longer combat federal opposition to form the nation’s largest cellphone service provider.
“The decision to scrap the $39 billion takeover — which would have been the biggest deal of the year — is a major setback for AT&T, which had pinned its hopes for growth on the acquisition,” reports The New York Times. “The company wanted T-Mobile’s cellular airwaves, or spectrum, to relieve its congested network and offer faster service for data-hungry devices like the iPhone.”
Consumer advocates believe the merger would have led to a powerful duopoly of AT&T and Verizon Wireless.
“Consumers won today,” said Sharis A. Pozen, the Justice Department’s acting assistant attorney general for antitrust. “Had AT&T acquired T-Mobile, consumers in the wireless marketplace would have faced higher prices and reduced innovation.”
AT&T said in a statement that it would continue to invest in wireless spectrum, and suggested that wireless customers “will be harmed and needed investment will be stifled by the regulators’ decisions.”
EE Times provides an interesting overview of the technologies and uses of 3D gestural user interfaces in this article by Dong-Ik Ko and Gaurav Agarwal of Texas Instruments.
“Gesture recognition is the first step to fully 3D interaction with computing devices,” begins the article. “The authors outline the challenges and techniques to overcome them in embedded systems.”
Featured sections include: 1) “Limitations of (x,y) coordinate-based 2D vision;” 2) “z (depth) innovation” (such as stereo vision, structured light patterns and time of flight sensors); 3) “3D vision technologies;” 4) “z & human/machine interface;” 5) “Technology processing steps;” 6) “Challenges for 3D-vision embedded systems” (such as two different processor architectures and lack of standard middleware); and 7) “Anything cool after z? (new ways to see beyond, through, and inside people and objects).”
“Gesture recognition takes human interaction with machines even further. It’s long been researched with 2D vision, but the advent of 3D sensor technology means gesture recognition will be used more widely and in more diverse applications,” predict the authors. “Soon a person sitting on the couch will be able to control the lights and TV with a wave of the hand, and a car will automatically detect if a pedestrian is close by.”
Ko and Agarwal suggest that gesture recognition is only the beginning: “Transparence research will yield systems that are able to see through objects and materials. And with emotion detection systems, applications will be able to see inside the human mind to detect whether the person is lying.”
Senior editor Dave Katzmaier and television reviewer Ty Pendlebury of CNET offer their predictions regarding what TV tech trends to look for at CES 2012.
“Dave’s Divinations” include: 1) More passive 3D, cheaper active glasses with a universal standard, better 3D picture quality; 2) LEDs will outnumber non-LED LCDs (“Add CCFL-based LCD TVs to the list of ‘almost dead’ TV technologies”); 3) Better Internet suites, more Web browsers, and Google TV, voice control/search, and built-in Skype; 4) Bigger and cheaper TVs (“Sharp’s resurgence in 2011 with its relatively affordable 70-inch TVs hints that other makers will also strive to make jumbo flat panels more affordable”); and 5) Cameos by bigger OLED and next-gen glasses-free 3D, including a 40-inch-plus OLED from LG.
“Pendlebury’s Prognastications” include: 1) Kinect in your TV (“we’ll see at least one TV featuring technology from Israeli company PrimeSense, which develops the 3D sensors used in Kinect”); 2) Bezel-less TVs (“such as this year’s Samsung D7000…with an incredibly slim bezel”); 3) OLED (“won’t be a viable technology until about 2015, but this year we’ll see more bendy, wacky, and see-through OLED panels”); 4) 1080p passive 3D (“where the TV performs the shutter effect — this is opposed to active systems, which feature shutter glasses”); and 5) Remote viewing apps (“watching content directly from the TV tuner or HDMI input”).
The post includes a fun “Blast from the Past” section for those of you who like to revisit reports from previous CES events.
