According to a recent press release from the Advanced Television Systems Committee, the organization has “announced the approval of the ATSC NRT (Non-Real-Time) Content Delivery standard, a backwards-compatible enhancement to digital TV broadcasting that provides a framework for the delivery of a broad range of exciting new services. The new ATSC NRT standard is designated as A/103.”
Delivery of non-real-time services via A/103 will “allow broadcasters to deliver file-based content, including programs and clips, information for emergency alerts and even commercial applications such as digital signage.”
The new broadcast standard will support terrestrial transmission and mobile DTV receivers.
“ATSC’s new NRT standard gives broadcasters the capability to deliver all types of file-based content to consumers,” explains ATSC President Mark Richer. “Using broadcast television, programmers will be able to send content that a viewer may watch at their convenience.”
The release cites several anticipated applications for NRT services including: “Push Video-On-Demand (content ranging from short-form video clips to feature length movies); news, information and weather services; personalized TV channels; music distribution; [and] reference information on a wide range of topics.”
“This will make broadcast more competitive with satellite, cable and Internet services,” notes ETCentric staffer Phil Lelyveld.
Early reviews for Microsoft’s Windows 8 are trickling in, and Business Insider notes they are so far “extremely negative.” Will Windows 8 become the next Vista?
“In my time with Windows 8, I’ve felt almost totally at sea — confused, paralyzed, angry, and ultimately resigned to the pain of having to alter the way I do most of my work,” writes Farhad Manjoo for Slate.
“Windows 8 looks to me to be an unmitigated disaster that could decidedly hurt the company and its future… The real problem is that it is both unusable and annoying,” notes John Dvorak for Marketwatch.
“I still think it’s needlessly confusing and hard to use… I’ve spoken to other people who have been testing Windows 8 for months,” adds analyst Matt Rosoff. “A lot of them found it puzzling like I did, and it’s getting worse, not better, with each beta update.”
If consumers agree with these evaluations, they may just put off upgrading their systems or switch to a Mac or iPad. The article notes that this could be disastrous for Microsoft and possibly mark the beginning of the end for Windows dominance.
“It’s dangerous to predict the decline of Windows. People have been doing it for years and it’s amounted to nothing. Microsoft is a powerful, resilient company,” comments Business Insider. “However, if ever there was a time when it was ready to fall, that time is now. Apple is at the top of its game. And, if the critics are even half-right, Microsoft is at the bottom of its game.”
By 2016, Cisco estimates that annual global IP traffic will grow from 369 exabytes in 2011 to 1.3 zettabytes (equal to a trillion gigabytes).
Similarly, the number of devices will grow from 10.3 billion in 2011 to 18.9 billion in 2016. This amounts to some 2.5 connections for each person on earth!
There will be 3.4 billion Internet users in 2016 amounting to 45 percent of the world’s population. Broadband speeds will increase from 9mbps to 34mbps.
Average global IP traffic is estimated to reach 150 petabytes/hour. Cisco says this is equivalent to 278 million people streaming an HD movie.
Consumer video is a major growth driver with Internet video users almost doubling to 1.5 billion by 2016. The amount of video will increase to 1.2 million video minutes over the Internet every second.
While PCs accounted for 94 percent of consumer Internet traffic in 2011, this will fall to 81 percent with the increased use of tablets, smartphones and TVs.
Customers will be able to buy Samsung’s Galaxy S III from any of the four major carriers and U.S. Cellular later this month. The phone will cost $199.
According to AllThingsD, “Samsung’s Galaxy S phones have traditionally provided the iPhone with its closest sales rival” and the newest phone plans to challenge the iPhone with its introduction of S Voice, a voice recognition system meant to operate similarly to iPhone’s Siri.
“The Galaxy S III runs the latest version of the Android operating system (Ice Cream Sandwich) and has a 4.8-inch Super AMOLED HD touchscreen and an eight-megapixel camera, as well as a front-facing 1.9-megapixel camera,” notes the article.
President of Samsung Telecommunications America Dale Sohn boasts that “Galaxy S III introduces new technological innovation and takes sharing to the next level.”
The Galaxy S III hit shelves in Europe last week. The international version runs on a quad-core processor, whereas the U.S. phone will include a dual-core processor.
Sony revealed its NEX-FS700U Full HD super slow motion camcorder at that NAB Show in April and since then has accepted nearly 1,000 pre-orders, according to one Sony executive.
The new camera, scheduled to be available in late June, is priced at around $10,000 and captures footage at up to 960 frames per second.
“The camcorder supports full HD quality at 120 and 240 frames per second in a 16 or 8 second burst mode respectively,” writes Carolyn Giardina for The Hollywood Reporter. “Its 480 fps and 960 fps at reduced resolution are available.”
“The NEX-FS700U uses a new 4K Super 35 CMOS sensor, and Sony said it is planning a future firmware upgrade aimed at enabling the camera to output 4K bitstream data over 3G HD-SDI when used with an optional Sony 4K recorder,” notes Giardina.
Netflix upgraded its iOS app last week by improving upon some existing functionality and adding new features.
The streaming video service has updated the iPhone and iPad software by enlarging the scrub bar to make it easier to navigate through videos, enlarging the volume controls, and adding icons for switching between language choices.
Additionally, a “do not share” option is now available in the player for Facebook users who want to keep their video choices private.
CNET highlights the scrub bar update: “The bar itself is bigger and better, letting you more easily navigate to any section of your video. Thumbnails now appear above your finger on the scrub bar so you can travel to a specific scene of your favorite TV show or movie. You can also rewind 10 seconds at a time.”
According to the Netflix blog, the same features will soon be available for Android users.
Web designer Jake Caputo and coder Dominic Balasuriya teamed up to collect data on how much people would be willing to pay for access to a standalone HBO GO subscription.
After collecting over 2,000 data points in tweets, the consensus seemed that people would pay slightly over $12 per month for access to HBO programming and movie releases on tablets, phones, and connected TVs.
Caputo created the site takemymoneyhbo.com and Balasuriya wrote a script to analyze the data stream coming from tweets with the hashtag #takemymoneyhbo.
HBO currently makes $7 to $8 per subscriber per month.
TechCrunch speculates that even though HBO could hypothetically make more money per user by opening HBO GO access to everyone (currently users must have HBO through their cable provider to have access to the service), offering HBO GO without the cable tie-ins would not only anger cable companies, but would increase distribution and sales costs.
The Walt Disney Company already allows sports fans to watch ESPN on mobile devices using the WatchESPN app, and soon Disney Channel fans will experience the benefits of the TV Everywhere trend with a similar app that provides access to Disney Channel content on mobile devices.
“TV networks have been increasingly embracing TV Everywhere, the industry term for letting paying cable and satellite customers watch TV on mobile devices,” explains Ad Age. “The strategy is intended to make cable and satellite subscriptions more appealing and undermine the threat from streaming services such as Netflix and Hulu.”
Disney will first offer the app to Comcast customers. CEO Bob Iger described the deal as “an important step because it delivers more value to the multichannel distributor and it delivers more value to the customer.”
The company plans to bring ABC Family and ABC to its streaming offerings in the future, reports Ad Age.
Two of Napster’s founders, Sean Parker and Shawn Fanning, introduced their newest project on Tuesday, a video chat site called Airtime.
It allows users to chat with Facebook friends or strangers using a webcam. “Users can search for chat partners based on their interests, shared social connections and location. Once connected, they can talk, type messages or even watch YouTube videos together,” explains The New York Times.
“The downside of all our interactions online is that they are constrained by the social graph,” notes Parker. “There is a gaping hole that exists. Facebook shrunk the world and constrained our interactions to the 500 people that you are connected to.”
Airtime was inspired in part by the chatting service Chatroulette, which randomly pairs people together online for video chats. But Airtime is taking precautions against some of the problems that users ran into on Chatroulette, namely the fact that many were paired up with chatters unclothed.
“To combat that, they have built in a number of systems, including facial-recognition software that sends up a flag if no faces are detected on camera, and a ranking system that scores people based on their interactions. People who are frequently ‘nexted,’ or passed over for another partner, will have a lower ranking than those who stay in lengthy chat sessions,” details the article.
Airtime has already attracted financial backers, raising close to $40 million in venture funding thus far.
New analysis of tablet advertising suggests that although the Kindle Fire is 2.7-inches smaller than the iPad, users actually click on advertisements at a higher rate on the Fire than on Apple’s device.
But the report also notes that most of the Fire’s clicks come from Baby Boomers (ages 45 to 64) and that these people are unlikely to make purchases from tablets.
The report explains that consumers 18 to 34 are most likely to own an iPad and that customers 25 to 34 are the most likely to make purchases from a tablet.
The solution may be in building advertisements that can operate on multiple screen sizes. Advertisers will likely lean this way soon if Apple’s rumored iPad Mini ever comes to fruition.
In a related CNET article, the iPad continues to dominate the tablet market, while the demand for Amazon’s Kindle Fire is dwindling. The tablet market is growing rapidly, with sales numbers up 185 percent last year and 18.2 million devices shipped in just the first quarter of this year.
“Apple accounted for 11.8 million of those shipments, or 65 percent of the market. That’s largely thanks to the launch of Apple’s third-generation iPad and a price reduction on iPad 2 models,” explains CNET. Samsung Electronics comes in second, shipping 1.1 million tablets.
The Windows Phone Marketplace is growing fast, taking just over five months to double its numbers in application submissions.
The Marketplace has had around 100,000 applications submitted in total, averaging 313 submissions daily.
“As a disclaimer, this doesn’t mean we currently have access to all hundred-thousand apps — just over 10,000 of them are no longer available, which translates into 88,371 apps being live somewhere in the world,” explains Engadget.
The Windows Phone Marketplace achieved this milestone about five months faster than the Android Market and three months slower than the iOS App Store.
“Given the popularity of both competitors, we’d say that developer growth has been strong and steady for Windows Phone — and with an exciting ‘sneak peek’ of the OS’s future (Apollo) coming up in a couple weeks, the trend is likely to continue increasing at an exponential pace,” adds the post.
While Android has about 50 percent of the global handset market share, compared to less than 30 percent for Apple’s iOS, Web traffic for the two show a much different story.
Apple accounts for more than 60 percent of mobile Web traffic. Android has only 20 percent. Similarly, e-commerce sites report that most mobile buying comes from Apple devices.
Android users appear to be made up of a largely consumer mass market which is less interested in reading, using apps or buying. If true, the value of Android as a platform is less than its market share numbers suggest.
This may have long term consequences regarding which mobile development platform becomes dominant.
In a related Business Insider article, senior editor Jay Yarow suggests Android is suddenly in a great deal of trouble. He cites trends such as developers leaning toward iOS, the fact that Android has been an “utter disaster in the tablet space,” Verizon’s plans to back Windows Phones, and lack of interest in Android’s latest operating system Ice Cream Sandwich.
In late May, Apple published its first ever iOS security guide intended for an IT audience.
“The new guide includes four sections dedicated to topics like system architecture, encryption and data protection, network security, and device access,” reports TechCrunch.
According to the guide: “Apple designed the iOS platform with security at its core. Keeping information secure on mobile devices is critical for any user, whether they’re accessing corporate or customer information or storing personal photos, banking information, and addresses.”
“For organizations considering the security of iOS devices, it is helpful to understand how the built-in security features work together to provide a secure mobile computing platform,” adds Apple.
TechCrunch suggests not to view the guide as a trend towards openness, but rather as a repackaging of largely existing information specifically designed for an IT audience.
“It’s important that these details are documented in language IT understands as more and more businesses allow personal devices on their network and implement their own BYOD (bring your own device) programs,” notes the post.
Sony has announced its new home cinema projector that offers super high-definition at 4096 x 2160 image resolution.
“The VPL-WV1000ES is the first 4K resolution projector designed for home theaters,” reports Electronista. “The new projector displays not only the ultra-high definition 4K format, but also upscales SD and HD content to 4K resolution.”
The $26,000 projector touts brightness of 2,000 ANSI-lumens and 1,000,000:1 dynamic contrast ratio with a 330W bulb promising 2,000-2,500 hours of life.
It features a 2.1x motorized zoom and can display images from 60 to 300 diagonal inches.
“The projector also supports 3D content, although it relies upon active-shutter 3D glasses, requiring USB-chargeable 3D glasses,” notes the article. “It comes with two HDMI ports, component input, a mini D-sub port, and an Ethernet port.”
Foursquare’s Twitter feed has exploded with the hashtag #allnew4sq — a not so subtle hint at the complete revamping of the location-based application expected within the next week.
During the past year, Foursquare users have begun using the application less as a way to check in and let everyone know where they are at all times, and more as a way to find what local restaurants are popular or what activity is generating a lot of buzz on a particular night.
“Foursquare has been slowly (and sometimes in leaps and bounds) building its data set, learning the habits of its users, all as part of a quest to offer better recommendations, to help them find destinations that they’ll like — and just better explore their worlds,” reports TechCrunch.
This has Foursquare in line to compete with recommendation service Yelp. In a related article, Business Insider notes that if Foursquare can improve on Yelp’s user experience, it can overtake Yelp as the premier recommendation service.
“Improving recommendations so that they take your location into account, as well as your interest graph and time of day, along with a map and social experience that competes with Yelp, Foursquare 2.0 could be a whole lot more appealing,” adds TechCrunch.
According to a recent press release from the Advanced Television Systems Committee, the organization has “announced the approval of the ATSC NRT (Non-Real-Time) Content Delivery standard, a backwards-compatible enhancement to digital TV broadcasting that provides a framework for the delivery of a broad range of exciting new services. The new ATSC NRT standard is designated as A/103.”
