MasterImage 3D Unveils HD 720 and WUXGA Glasses-Free Mobile 3D

  • Hollywood-based MasterImage 3D unveiled a new technology that allows for glasses-free viewing of stereoscopic content on mobile devices.
  • The company is demonstrating a glasses-free HD 720 resolution 3D display for 4.3-inch smartphones and WUXGA 1920×1200 resolution 3D display for 10.1-inch tablets.
  • The technology relies on a proprietary “cell-matrix” parallax barrier, which the company claims allows for a wider viewing angle than existing glasses-free 3D technologies.
  • MasterImage’s parallax barrier is also switchable, allowing the device to be rotated between landscape and portrait modes.
  • The company is currently licensing the technology to several manufacturers, with the first devices using the technology expected to hit the market in the third quarter of 2012.
  • Where to see it: South Hall 21727

Time for Change: MPAA Chief Reaches Out to Chinese Film Community

  • Speaking at the Shanghai International Film Festival, MPAA president Christopher Dodd urged China’s film community to broaden its engagement with Hollywood.
  • Dodd called China’s movie market a “success story in the making,” with a growing capacity to create films, as well as a considerable appetite for consuming them, with more than 6,200 screens.
  • U.S. studios have historically been frustrated by distribution restrictions in China, which only allows about 20 foreign films into the country each year, and returns less than 20 percent of revenue to the studios.
  • Dodd and other officials from the MPAA have been assisting U.S. trade officials in efforts to persuade China to ease these restrictions.

Online Privacy Protection Act Applies to Mobile App for First Time

  • The Federal Trade Commission ruled Monday that W3 Innovations, the company behind popular mobile applications for kids, including “Emily’s Girl World” and “Emily’s Dress Up,” should pay a $50,000 penalty for collecting personal information from kids without parental permission.
  • The commission found the company in violation of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, marking the first time that law has been applied to a mobile application.
  • “The F.T.C.’s COPPA Rule requires parental notice and consent before collecting children’s personal information online, whether through a Web site or a mobile app,” explained Jon Leibowitz, chairman of the commission. “Companies must give parents the opportunity to make smart choices when it comes to their children’s sharing of information on smart phones.”
  • The decision coincides with a period of increased concern about privacy and mobile technology, as the industry considers new privacy protections to fend off potential federal regulation.

Caps on Mobile Data Plans: No More All-You-Can-Eat Buffets

  • As smartphones gain greater market penetration, and data-intensive applications become more popular, cellular carriers are creating limits on how much data customers can consume, and raising the price of that data.
  • T-Mobile, AT&T and Verizon have all phased out their unlimited plans, and introduced tiered plans that charge customers based on how much data they consume. Only Sprint still offers an unlimited data plan.
  • Some developers worry that the caps will stifle innovation of data-intensive applications, and that customers may blame the applications if they go over their limits. This problem is compounded by the fact that consumers have no intuitive sense of how much data a given application may be using.
  • Industry analysts predict that the availability of data will become an increasingly important profit stream for cellular carriers, and a key point of competition between them.

UK Intends to Make Legal Personal Copying of CDs and DVDs

  • The British Parliament signaled today that it intends to legalize the copying of CDs and DVDs onto digital devices for personal use. The new law will not allow people to share content over the Internet without permission of the copyright holder.
  • The move will update Britain’s 300-year-old copyright laws, making them comparable to laws adopted in other European nations.
  • The change was recommended by a government-requested report, carried out by a professor of digital economy at he Cardiff School of Journalism.
  • The report also recommended the creation of a central digital copyright exchange where rights could be bought and sold, but the government has not signaled its intention to act on that recommendation.

FCC Study Reveals Broadband Internet Closer to Advertised Speeds

  • A study released last week by the FCC reports that broadband Internet speeds in the U.S. are within 80 percent of the speeds advertised by Internet Service Providers. The study calls this a “significant improvement” from just two years ago, when some ISPs were delivering Internet at less than half the advertised speed.
  • The study looked at 13 U.S. broadband providers delivering Internet over cable, DSL, and fiber-optic services. Overall, Verizon’s service was best at meeting or exceeding advertised speeds, while Cablevision’s was the worst.
  • There are currently no sanctions or enforcement mechanisms in place to punish ISPs for advertising faster Internet than they deliver, a situation that some public interest groups insist must change.
  • The study comes as the FCC is promoting its National Broadband Plan, a roadmap expanding Internet speed and availability nationwide.
  • A full copy of the report, as well as the raw data from the study, are available at the FCC website: fcc.gov.

Hulu to Debut its First Long-Form Original Production

  • Hulu will unveil an original documentary series on August 17. “A Day in the Life” is produced by documentary filmmaker Morgan Spurlock, and will be available exclusively on Hulu.
  • The half-hour show will follow the daily lives of celebrities, including business mogul Richard Branson and musician will.i.am.
  • Hulu is not the only online video site to venture into original programming. In March, Netflix announced an original series of its own: “House of Cards,” starring Kevin Spacey.
  • The series is Hulu’s largest and most ambitious original production, and will premiere as the service continues to court prospective buyers. Yahoo, Google, and Amazon are rumored to be potential bidders.

Amazon Expands its Online Library with NBCUniversal Deal

  • Amazon has announced a deal with NBCUniversal to offer Universal films online, in a move designed to step up competition with services such as Netflix and Hulu.
  • Amazon offers subscribers to its “Prime” program discounts on shipping of products, and free access to an online library of films. The service costs $79 a year.
  • Amazon announced an agreement last week with CBS that expanded its library to more than 8,000 titles. The NBCUniversal deal will grow Amazon’s library to more than 9,000 movies and TV shows (compared to Neflix’s 20,000).
  • Films such as “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” “Being John Malkovich,” and “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” are part of the deal.

IEEE Publishes 802.22 Standard for Wireless Internet

  • The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) published the 802.22 standard for Wireless Regional Area Networks (WRANs), designed to make wireless Internet widely available in sparsely populated areas.
  • The new standard sends and receives data in the so-called “whitespaces,” the places in the UHF and VHF spectra between TV broadcast signals.
  • IEEE claims the standard will allow transmission of data at speeds of up to 22 Mbps, and will be able to communicate over distances as great as 100 kilometers without interfering with reception of existing TV broadcast stations.
  • In addition to channel specifications, the standard addresses “the required cognitive radio capabilities including dynamic spectrum access, incumbent database access, accurate geo-location techniques, spectrum sensing, spectrum etiquette, and coexistence for optimal use of the available spectrum.”

Review: Gizmodo Excited about ESPN 2.0 for XBox 360

  • Gizmodo calls the new ESPN 2.0 service, available on Microsoft’s Xbox 360 beginning August 25th, “super polished and super useful.”
  • The new interface includes the ability to watch two content streams in 720p simultaneously, a series of scrolling live thumbnails to select other games and access scores and stats, and the ability to control the system using voice commands over the Kinect.
  • Viewers can pause one game to focus on another, for example, or watch replays on one side of the screen while the other game keeps playing, or even access the same game twice (using one screen for replays and keeping the other screen for live coverage). Additionally, a live scoreboard runs vertically down the right side of the screen.

GE Holographic Discs Intended for Long-Term Archiving

  • GE announced that is has developed the ability to write data on its prototype holographic discs at speeds equal to that of a Blu-ray burner.
  • The new discs use the same form factor as current optical discs, but using a micro-holographic technology, are able to hold as much as 500GB of data.
  • The discs are comprised of a polycarbonate material containing millions of stamped micro-holograms. Gizmodo explains: “When the light source — whose beam is the same wavelength as that of a Blu-ray drive — hits the disc, it erases the necessary amount of holograms to represent the data it’s recording.”
  • Although physical media seems to be losing relevance based on today’s technologies, the discs are intended for long-term archival uses. With a projected life of more than 100 years, they may serve as a solution for long-term storage of digital film and video content.

Apple Launches New OS and Reports Record Profits

  • Apple Inc. officially unveiled its newest operating system — OS X 10.7 “Lion” — on Wednesday. The OS introduces many features that mimic functions seen on its popular iPad.
  • The company also reported record earnings in the third quarter, despite any major new product announcements. Revenue was up 82 percent, and profits more than doubled, as consumers continued to purchase iPhones and iPads in record numbers (Apple computers also continued to sell, although iPod sales declined 20 percent).
  • Global sales of iPads nearly tripled to 9.25 million during the third quarter. Apple credits some of the success to adoption of the device by businesses such as Alaska Airlines and Nordstrom.
  • The New York Times reports that Apple’s current market value is 10 times Dell’s and nearly five times Hewlett-Packard’s.

Motion-Capture Technology Improved for Shooting Exteriors

  • Twentieth Century Fox’s “Rise of The Planet of The Apes,” premiering next month, made extensive use of performance capture techniques in its exterior shots.
  • Visual effects house Weta Digital, that developed motion capture techniques for “Avatar,” considers this the next step in the technique’s evolution.
  • “Avatar” was shot largely on enclosed sound stages, while “Rise” shot motion-capture performances on exterior sets.
  • Weta Digital created a portable performance capture rig teamed with special LED markers placed on the actors, enabling the production to take place in broad daylight.
  • “It was like the final step of mixing live-action and digital filmmaking,” explains senior visual effects supervisor Joe Letteri.
  • Actor Andy Serkis, a veteran of several performance-capture films, is developing a studio and academy to teach the technique, with the goal of making it more affordable and accessible even to lower-budget films.

Hollywood Digital Push Brings Together Technicolor and Deluxe

  • Technicolor Inc. and Deluxe Entertainment Services announced a new partnership for film print production and distribution, as the demand for film prints continues to wane.
  • According to the Los Angeles Times: “Technicolor will subcontract its 35mm film print business in North America to Deluxe,” while “Deluxe will farm out its 35mm print distribution business to Technicolor.”
  • Technicolor closed its North Hollywood plant earlier this year, and will soon close a plant outside of Montreal.
  • Technicolor will open a smaller facility in Glendale focused on producing prints for IMAX and other big screen theaters.
  • Plummeting demand for prints stems from theaters converting to digital projection; the transition has taken place in nearly half of the 42,000 screens in the U.S.

AFTRA Ratifies Residuals for Streaming Video Games

  • A new contract was recently ratified by members of the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA) that will provide performers who work on video games a onetime payment when games are streamed over the Internet.
  • The so-called “cloud gaming fee” is the first of its kind, and resolves a longstanding dispute over compensation for the remote delivery of video games.
  • The union represents some 70,000 actors, recording artists and broadcasters.
  • AFTRA’s sister union SAG has yet to negotiate a new video game contract.