The Future of Broadcast Television Initiative (FoBTV) launched at the NAB Show last week with 13 international broadcast and engineering groups.
The goal is to create a global standard for digital broadcast TV, one that will enable future services such as ultra high-definition television, 3D, and mobile and Internet services.
“The challenges of a global specification may seem daunting, but the benefits of achieving such a goal are enormous,” said Phil Laven, chairman of the Digital Video Broadcasting Project in Switzerland.
The world standard is intended to replace current incompatible digital standards including ATSC in North America, DVB-T and DVB-T2 in Europe, and others.
“Over the years multiple standards around the world have cost the industry and consumer billions in any currency,” said Lavin. “Consumers now expect that their portable devices will be able to receive TV signals anywhere in the world. Thus, a single global standard is becoming essential.”
FoBTV does not plan to write the standard on its own, but hopes to work with standards-setting organizations around the world, including the Advanced Television Systems Committee in the U.S.
Social media innovation for TV was making inroads at NAB last week, but the interest in integration is even greater, according to Sam Decker, CEO of Mass Relevance.
“There are so many technology providers here, and the interest in social TV is disproportionate to the innovation,” he said during the show. “It’s such a small part of all the real estate and discussions that are happening.”
Decker notes that the tech crowd is “beginning to react to demands from producers who want more social functionality in the production process,” reports Lost Remote.
The comments suggest that social media may be where the Internet was in the late 1990s regarding TV, writes Cory Bergman in the post, adding that now “we can feel the beginning of a shift to infuse social in just about every TV production product.”
The article cites some interesting innovation in this space, including the new Engage platform from TV graphics firm Chyron, a social media prompter for TV talent from Never.no, automatic content recognition (ACR) solutions from Audible Magic and Civolution, and more.
In response to the release of Project Glass, a Forrester analyst recommends that “smart developers should start experimenting with applications for wearables on the ‘big five’ platforms (Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Facebook) today,” TechCrunch reports.
Sarah Rotman Epps says within three years, wearables will “matter to every product strategist,” but before they go mainstream, they’ll have to be backed by one of the “big five.”
“Indeed, Forrester’s analysts think wearables will follow a similar path to that of the smartphone market: In the first phase, Apple will create an early app and accessory ecosystem for wearable computing. Google’s open platform, however, will give developers more freedom and broader wearable experimentation. Microsoft, thanks to its recent shift toward open Web standards, will then be able to offer something akin to an ‘anti-platform’ platform for a future operating system for wearables that could be even more flexible than Apple’s and Google’s offerings,” the article states.
In a related Engadget post, the Oakley eyewear company has been working on ways to project information onto sunglasses since 1997.
The company hopes to “start by augmenting the world of sports before ultimately blending into more consumery pursuits with shades that could run solo or pair up with a smartphone,” according to the post. It hopes to trump the likes of Project Glass by focusing on style.
While the function of the glasses is important, so is the design, notes Oakley CEO Colin Baden, who understands that when it comes to putting something on the face, consumers can get very particular about the look and feel.
A Sony-led consortium that includes the Blackstone Group, Abu Dhabi’s Mubadala Development Co., Raine Group and David Geffen, has received EU approval for its $2.2 billion purchase of EMI’s music publishing business.
The deal includes a provision to sell some assets to address the concern about unfair competition. Those assets include Virgin UK, Virgin Europe, Virgin U.S. and Famous Music UK — plus catalogs of artists such as Gary Barlow, Ozzy Osbourne, Ben Harper, Placebo, The Kooks, Lenny Kravitz and Robbie Williams.
“Sony and Mubadala have offered to divest valuable and attractive catalogs containing bestselling titles as well as works of successful and promising authors,” said Joaquin Almunia, European commissioner for competition issues. “I am therefore satisfied that the competitive dynamics in the online music publishing business will be maintained so as to ensure consumer choice and cultural diversity.”
With this deal, Sony becomes the largest music publisher worldwide with rights to some 3 million songs.
Amazon Web Services is introducing the AWS Marketplace where customers can rent business software from IBM, Microsoft, SAP and others.
Software — to include databases, software developer tools and business applications — can be rented by use, which can extend from hours to months. In addition, there are a number of open source packages such as Drupal and WordPress.
Unlike Apple’s App Store or the Android Market, AWS will not likely include thousands of products as their focus is business applications.
“Strategically, Amazon is potentially raising the barrier to competition,” reports The New York Times. “Recently companies including Hewlett-Packard, Dell, and IBM, among others, have pledged money and talent to developing an open source alternative to Amazon Web Services. These companies, which joined Rackspace, a cloud computing provider, hope to offer computing clouds similar to Amazon’s service, plus their own software.”
“If the AWS Marketplace is successful, Amazon will boast a greater range of software choices,” concludes the article. “The presence of IBM in Amazon’s service indicates that some companies are already hedging their bets.”
Om Malik, writing for GigaOM, suggests that physical media is dead: “It is being replaced with ‘apps’ thanks to broadband connectivity and anywhere computing that has come to us via smartphones, tablets and other connected devices.”
“From music playlists to catalogs to retail stores to television — it wouldn’t surprise me if everything is an app in short order,” he adds. “And that future is scary and yet full of opportunities.”
Malik cites the migration from CDs to streaming services such as Pandora and Spotify and download options including iTunes and Amazon. He notes the growing popularity of e-books and options such as Netflix and Hulu for movies and television.
“The unifying fabric behind all these new behaviors is broadband. For the longest time, physical media was the container that moved content. Records became compact discs. Movie film became VHS tapes and then DVD. Books didn’t really change. And neither did newspapers and magazines. They are all mere containers,” he explains.
“In the post-broadband world, Internet is the truck, and app stores are the newsstand and book store. Result: the slow and steady decay of physical media as a container for content,” says Malik, adding that the subsequent impact will be immense, despite the fact that we are still thinking in terms of the old containers.
He suggests the upheaval has already begun and illustrates his point with examples including the impact on the U.S. Postal Service, commercial printers and traditional advertising models.
Google has revealed the results of their work to re-architect their internal network infrastructure around OpenFlow.
Google’s network, which is described as equivalent to “the second largest ISP in the world,” consists of a user-facing network and a second network that interconnects its worldwide data centers.
OpenFlow is a key part of the Software Defined Networking (SDN) approach that separates network equipment from the overall management. The result is the capability to manage the network fabric as a whole and dramatically increase its efficiency.
Moreover, Google which began working on an OpenFlow network in 2010 has actually been designing and building its own network gear as it was not yet available.
The result is a network that operates at almost 100 percent utilization, rather than the 30-40 percent of other networks.
Google is revealing their OpenFlow work with hopes that equipment vendors will begin manufacturing gear that supports it. Google is a member of the Open Networking Foundation, which promotes OpenFlow. Other members include Yahoo, Microsoft, Facebook, Verizon and Deutsche Telekom, and Nicira.
Software Defined Networking as represented by OpenFlow is a fundamental change in thinking of complex digital networks that promises to remake the entire network industry, impact how companies and governments manage their networks, and enable new kinds of network applications.
T3 Motion at NAB this week announced the launch of two new trailer systems designed specifically for film production.
The T3MT and T41 systems eliminate the need for tracks during shooting. The camera attaches to the vehicle rather than the camera operator.
The battery-powered vehicles go forward and reverse and include a cameraman seat, Steadicam and Glidecam mounting posts, and 7-inch HD monitor.
“Few products on the market facilitate tracking camerawork from 0-15 miles per hour — tracking shots at low speeds can be arduous and difficult to manage. Our T3 Motion broadcasting products provide a tracking platform that allow for a uniquely clean and efficient production process, facilitating tracking shots without operator fatigue,” stated T3 Motion CTO Ki Nam in a press release.
The T3MT and T41 Trailer packages start at $10,000.
At the NAB Show in Las Vegas this week, Adobe demonstrated its new version of Creative Suite 6 (CS6).
Pricing has not been announced, and the company was vague about the release date, other than to say it would be ready during the first half of 2012.
The suite includes Premiere Pro video editor, After Effects motion graphics effect generator, Photoshop image editor, Audition sound editor and mixer, and additional tools for disc authoring, media encoding, script development, production scheduling, color grading and more.
“The biggest updates to existing apps come to Premiere Pro, After Effects, and Photoshop,” reports PCMag. “CS6 Premiere Pro gets a redesigned and simplified user interface, with large view for the source and preview video at top left and right. The interface is still highly customizable, and you can even switch back to its previous layout and add and remove buttons to taste.”
“Clips can now be skimmed through with the cursor, a la Apple’s iMovie, and you can mark rough in and out edits right in the clip thumbnails,” explains the article. “Markers also get more power, with color coding; comments and durations can now be assigned to them, as well. A new trim mode shows both the outgoing and incoming frames, and there’s lots more keyboard shortcut support (10 assignable) for trims and trim modes. Effects can now be applied to multiple clips using layers and masks, not unlike in Photoshop.”
At NAB, Dolby 3D, a glasses-free display standard, was being shown on a smartphone, tablet, and a prototype 4K 56-inch display.
Interestingly, viewers can adjust the 3D depth to suit their preferences. While side viewing is possible, the 3D effect is most pronounced when viewing near the center.
“Best known for its audio technologies, the company just launched its own 3D standard in cooperation with Philips, called Dolby 3D,” reports Engadget. “The platform-agnostic solution is far from ready to make its way into your living room, but it’s conceptually sound, and the prototype 4K 3D TV and mobile versions being demonstrated at Dolby’s NAB booth make us hopeful for the future.”
“As with all displays — especially those that support 3D — you’ll really need to see to believe, but we had an opportunity to do just that, and walked away very impressed,” comments Engadget.
The post includes a 3-minute video report from the show floor.
Google announced its new Brand Activate initiative for advertising at the Ad Age Digital Conference on Wednesday.
As part of the initiative, two new services rolled out for advertisers this week: Active View and Active GRP.
Active View will measure how long an ad remains on a user’s screen and how much of it is viewed. “If at least 50 percent of it is viewable for at least one second it’s counted as an viewed impression,” explains Engadget. “Active View is something that Google hopes will become a standard for all online advertising.”
In a related report, Yahoo! News describes Active GRP as “the online equivalent of the Gross Rating Point, a metric used by the television industry to estimate how many people saw a given ad. Active GRP is a digital version that will calculate the reach and frequency of a campaign, but — unlike standard GRPs — lets advertisers react in real time. (Hence the ‘active.’)”
The post includes a 2-minute video from Google outlining the initiative.
A survey of 1,000 TV viewers by Accenture offers insights into advertising via Facebook and Twitter, finding that about one-third have tweeted about the brand or show or “liked” their Facebook page after seeing the social media logos.
“The most common action for those who did interact with a show or ad while watching TV was liking its page on Facebook (20 percent). About 7 percent of viewers searched for a show’s hashtag on Twitter and 5 percent used Shazam while sitting on their couch,” TechCrunch reports.
“Surprisingly, the survey also found that 11 percent of viewers scanned a QR code while watching TV. That’s a rather large number, given that QR codes are still far from mainstream,” suggests the post.
However, those polled were less interested in being social or connecting with people of similar interests; rather, about a third of participants wanted to get coupons and others wanted to enter sweepstakes.
The survey also found that the majority of viewers who received content from these social media symbols were generally satisfied with what they found.
Panasonic, Olympus and Sony are designing mirrorless cameras to compete with Canon and Nikon in the high-end SLR market.
IDC forecasts that global shipments of mirrorless cameras will grow 60 percent this year to 6.43 million units, compared to an 18 percent growth rate for SLRs.
“The challengers are hoping to gain market share from an emerging type of camera that packs high-end features into a compact design,” reports the Wall Street Journal.
“Like SLRs, these cameras come with large sensors and interchangeable lenses that produce high-quality images. But they don’t have the conventional mirror-based viewfinders that reflect the image to the photographer’s eye. Instead, the image is digitized, allowing for a more compact body,” explains the article.
Additionally, the mirrorless models are generally more affordable than digital SLRs.
Advertisers are starting to reach out to consumers where they are spending their time: on their devices. A new report from the Interactive Advertising Bureau found online advertising in the U.S. reached $31 billion last year, increasing 22 percent from 2010.
“Mobile grew the most of all categories — 149 percent — but still represents a puny share of the overall market — $1.6 billion — according to the report issued on Wednesday. Digital video also rose 29 percent to $1.8 billion, search was up about 27 percent to $11.7 billion and display advertising jumped 15 percent to $11.1 billion, or 35 percent of all revenues. Search is still the largest category with 47 percent share,” reports Mashable.
Retail remains dominant in terms of ad spending, making up 22 percent of the overall total. Telecom and travel/leisure followed at 12 percent and 8 percent, respectively.
Internet ad spending still trails that of TV — which amounted to $38.5 billion in 2011 — but the increase shows the gap could be narrowing.
For its coverage of the 2012 Olympics in London, NBC Sports announced it will stream live video of all 32 sports via nbcolympics.com.
“The broadcaster, which launched its official Olympics website today, will offer access to the sports in real-time — before the time-delayed coverage that airs on the traditional TV stations in America. The site will also provide users with lots of archived content, stats, and other supplementary material,” VentureBeat reports.
The videos will be archived online shortly thereafter and then there’s the traditional TV broadcasts, which NBC doesn’t expect to be negatively impacted by the online offering.
“We’re not scared of cannibalization… Anytime you have a great event that happens before it shows on the air, it increases ratings and generates buzz,” Rick Cordella, vice president and general manager of NBC Sports Digital Media told The New York Times.
