WiSA — wireless speaker and audio — offers the promise of changing and simplifying home theater setups by getting rid of speaker wires and even the A/V receiver. WiSA, which has support from 60+ manufacturers of home theater gear, including LG, TCL, Toshiba, Klipsch, and Bang & Olufsen, is a hardware and software specification for high resolution digital audio. As such, it can send audio wirelessly from a sound source to up to eight powered speakers within the same room, using 24-bit 48kHz or 96kHz signals. Read more

Despite the focus on successful subscription streaming services such as Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Disney+, free ad-supported TV services have actually been growing at a faster clip. AVOD (ad-supported video on demand) or FAST (free ad-supported TV) is flourishing largely via large media companies. Fox’s Tubi, ViacomCBS’ Pluto TV and Xumo, now owned by Comcast, are all performing well. Xumo has skyrocketed 2.5 times, reaching 24 million U.S. monthly active users. Comcast acquired Xumo in February 2020 from Panasonic and Meredith Corp. Read more

In his keynote address at the GPU Technology Conference (GTC), Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang stated that the company shipped more than one billion GPUs and its CUDA software development kit had six million downloads thus far in 2020. He revealed 80 new SDKs and 1,800 GPU-accelerated applications are available. The company also unveiled its BlueField-2, a powerful data center services accelerator. GTC was expected to draw 30,000 global attendees this week for more than 1,000 sessions and coincides with the Arm DevSummit, which features a chat between Huang and Arm chief executive Simon Segars. Read more

In his keynote address at Nvidia’s GPU Technology Conference, chief executive Jensen Huang demonstrated Omniverse, a virtual environment described as a “metaverse” for engineers, announcing an open beta. With Omniverse — which was inspired by the sci-fi concept of the metaverse — engineers can collaborate on and simulate designs in a photoreal 3D virtual environment. Nvidia has been providing early access to Omniverse for 18 months; it will be available for download this fall. Read more

“How will advances in network technology over the next 36 months impact the way we watch movies, play video games, and create and produce immersive and engaging experiences?” was addressed during the first “ETC Executive Coffee with…” Zoom session. The September 23rd meeting was hosted by Albert Lao, executive director of solutions architecture for the Americas, Verizon Business Group, who took time to speak with a group of USC students. After a short video describing Verizon’s plans for 5G and edge computing, Lao led a discussion on the future of streaming media, the post-pandemic theatrical experience, immersive media, and other topics related to entertainment and technology. You can watch a 22-minute highlight reel of the one hour discussion or start with a 4-minute preview video. Read more