the BROADer issue

Sky HD viewers to get stereoscopic 3-D within a year?

 

After months of secret tests, BSkyB has suggested it could be in a position to pipe MPEG4 stereoscopic 3-D images to Sky customers with HD+ set top boxes within a year. Viewers would need to buy stereoscopic 3-D TVs to see the pictures. They're expensive - around £2,500 in the UK - but getting cheaper all the time. 

Spurred on by the success of the BBC's test screening of the Calcutta Cup rugby match in March 2008, Sky has been recording football and rugby games. They've also recorded a 3-D version of the game show 'Gladiators' and a Ricky Hatton fight. 

Sky aren't the only broadcaster trialling stereoscopic broadcasts, as Quantel's Mark Horton and his colleague at the time, Norman Rouse, revealed in this programme, recorded in the Summer.

Sports, music, opera and theatre are all obvious choices for the stereoscopic broadcast treatment. So-called 'alternative content' should also be the catalyst for digital 3-D cinema growth. It will be interesting to see whether live action movies, big budget TV programmes (3-D Doctor Who or Torchwood anybody?) and more mainstream content can find a home in the third dimension.

One stumbling block the new service could encounter is the public's attitude to wearing the special 3-D glasses. However, as Jeffery Katzenberg revealed at IBC, the situation should be helped by the arrival of designer 3-D glasses that double as sunglasses.

Channel 4 to go private to solve funding issues?

On the Rapid TV site, Chris Forrester reports that RTL may want to buy Channel 4.

To secure its future, C4  has said it wants a slice of the BBC's licence fee or a merger with BBC Worldwide. 

It needs to plug a £150m funding gap due to low advertising revenues, its primary source of income.  

To help Channel 4 stimulate sales, the BBC may offer Channel 4 access to iPlayer, which, unlike the current incarnation, could be commercialised. 

We could see a newer, possibly richer, Channel 4 in the New Year. 

Independent programme makers will be looking for commissions if the financial hole is filled. Some, particularly those who provide Channel 4's more challenging content, may wonder whether a change to private ownership might kill its remit to cover difficult and controversial topics.

Soho location for Pendulum's 'Slam' promo

I've recently been introduced to Pendulum and I'm getting up to speed. If you're not familiar with them, they're an Australian drum n' bass band, originally from Perth, now based in the UK.

For the Soho inhabitants out there, this video, for what many on the fan sites think is their best track, was shot around Berwick Street, Broadwick Street and D'Arblay Street.

By all accounts, it created a few ripples...

I can't find anything about who produced or post-produced the video. Nor can I spot anybody I know.

Can you shed any light on who's responsible for the work or identify any of the passers-by?

Virgin Media 50MB broadband due here soon?

Fingers crossed, we'll get early access to Virgin Media's new, faster broadband.

The BBC site suggests Warrington might be the first place in the UK to get the 150% speed bump, from 20MB to 50MB. 

When it arrives here will it change the way we watch TV and movies and use the internet? I'll let you know...

iPlayer to be opened up to Channel 4 & ITV?

 

It was interesting to see this item on The Guardian's website this morning revealing that the BBC may offer iPlayer to two of its terrestrial TV rivals. It's only a week or so since we found out that the trio's proposed Project Kangaroo online VOD service had been torpedoed by The Competition Commission.

Channel 4 and ITV have been developing their own versions of iPlayer - 4OD and the newly named ITV Player (groan). Whether they are as good as or better than iPlayer is one question.

Aside from the commercial and public/private partnership aspects (Channel 4 would prefer cash or a stake in BBC Worldwide to plug a £150m funding gap), the move would open up the BBC's high speed post production infrastructure to much wider use.

Is the existing BBC infrastructure robust enough to cope? Would it have to be scaled up? Is this move good news for technology suppliers?

BBC >Click offers a guide to display technology

The BBC's >Click has done a fair job of updating its viewers and readers on the latest in display and projection technology on this page from its web site. 

It covers OLED TVs, miniature projectors, Musion Systems' update on the Pepper's Ghost illusion, and the much talked-about replacement for books and newsprint, the e-reader.

One of the contributors, Ken Blakeslee of Web Mobility Ventures, will be a familiar name to some IBC conference delegates. 

HIs showcase in IBC's New Technology Campus is always full of innovations and curiosities, many looking for a wholesale rather than retail market. 

He also takes an active role in the technology-spotting for the conference's What Caught My Eye session.

CNN adds an extra dimension to US election coverage

I was drawn to a piece on the TV Technology site this morning about the use of virtual three-dimensional contributors during CNN's election night coverage, hosted by Wolf Blitzer. 

CNN's Washington bureau chief Peter Bohman has wanted to add some zest to remote interviews for some time and tie them closer to what's happening in the studio. 

Bringing field reporters onto the set 'Star Wars'-style might seem slightly bonkers to some, but it looks like it worked. The virtual contributors were Jessica Yellin and Wil.I.Am from The Black Eyed Peas. 

This is what CNN's viewers saw on the night. Here's a clip of Blitzer and Bohrman talking about how it's done. The TV Technology article explains the technological feat behind this TV first. 

By the way, though by no means as impressive as a technical exercise, British TV viewers may remember that Jeremy Vine brought us this item during the BBC's 2006 election programme.

Logitech ships its one billionth mouse

If you bear in mind there are maybe 6.5 or 7 billion people on the planet, the announcement that Logitech has produced its one billionth mouse, according to this story on the BBC site, is quite a sobering thought.

According to a Logitech spokesperson, they're the first company to ship one billion units of anything.

Challenges welcomed ...

OK, we've maybe all clicked on several Logitech devices each over the last few years and many of them have ended up in skips, which will distort the figures, but it's still a staggering statistic.

The experts tell us facial and movement recognition will usurp the mouse and begin to take over. In the meantime, Logitech's stock price is up 1.45% at $12.61, market watchers.

Pioneer set to push Blu-ray disc capacity to 400GB

According to TV Technology, Pioneer are not only launching a hybrid Blu-ray, DVD+/-RW and CD writer on the market early in 2009, they're also bumping up Blu-ray disc capacity significantly.

The new 400GB discs will initially be read-only, but they will be backwards compatible with current players.

Prepare yourselves for the 2009 release of every episode of (fill in your favourite long-running, seasonal TV programme here) in a sensibly-priced Blu-ray box set.

The writable version of the disc is another matter. If the discs and drives are not too expensive, the new format will attract the attention of people managing both domestic and large-scale media archives.

Project Kangaroo crippled by Competition Commission

The Competition Commission has ruled that Project Kangaroo will be subject to operating restrictions if the online joint venture between BBC, ITV & Channel 4 is ever allowed to launch.

It looks like Ashley Highfield's instincts were right and his move to Microsoft was a smart one.

Today, The Guardian publishes this Project Kangaroo timeline in the Technology section of its website.

Telefonica trials stereoscopic 3-D over IP in Brazil

Rapid TV News's Chris Forrester reports that Telefonica is conducting a stereoscopic 3-D trial in Sao Paolo, Brazil, using IP delivery over the city's fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) infrastructure.

The households taking part in the trial have been given Philips lenticular displays.

I'll post more updates about similar tests as I come across them.

Open TV Network offers podcast-style VOD via iTunes

The Open Television Network and its klickTab online payment system make for an interesting and appealing combination. Current programming is pretty niche, but the concept would work just as well for more mainstream content.

Download video and audio content podcast-style, as well as PDFs, and use your iTunes to play, transcode and distribute the programmes you choose to subscribe to.

It's not easy to provide a short explanation of why it's appealing. Have a look at their 81 second video on the front page of their site and it should all make sense.

It's a great model for content that will appeal to a small audience and cannot attract the funding or sponsorship it needs to make it onto the more established platforms.

Canon ends dispute & gets set to launch OLED rival

According to FT.com, Canon has settled a dispute with Applied Nanotech over illegal sub-licensing of patents that will allow them to press ahead with the development of new TV sets that use SEDs, surface-conduction electron emitter displays. Rival OLED (organic light-emitting diode) technology, supported by Sony and Samsung, is already in development.

The patent dispute and the economic downturn have badly affected development and delayed the launch of products. Canon also had to buy toshiba out of its share of the joint venture. In the meantime LCD and plasma prices have dropped considerably and entered the mass market.

Why it might not be Blu-ray's Christmas

Everywhere I look I see doom and gloom stories surrounding Blu-ray sales for Christmas. At first I thought it was PR spin from online download service providers.

We have a Blu-ray player, and the pictures certainly look great, even on a modest-sized 32" Bravia. I know disc prices will begin to fall eventually, and the current premium isn't too off-putting.

However, the Blu-ray player in our house also happens to be the main (PS3) games console. We have two sons aged 11 and 14. You can work out the rest.

Although I'd much rather see the tell-tale Blu-ray case when a top family film is unwrapped on Christmas morning, there will be a certain relief if it's been bought on DVD. At least there'll be an opportunity to watch it on a player located in another room. At £150-£200 for a standalone Blu-ray player, that's too much to lay out for the convenience of multi-room viewing. If Steve Jobs didn't find the format such "a world of hurt" I could use a laptop

I'm sure mine isn't an original thought and this sort of practical, commercial issue is one of the biggest obstacles Blu-ray faces during over the next 23 shopping days.

Solid state drive fixes promised soon by SanDisk

Memory prices for cameras, PDAs etc. are already dropping nicely. HDD prices are plummeting (£80 for a 1TB drive in PC World), while P2 is feeding the professional appetite for fast, reliable, flexible memory.

SanDisk is one of the world's largest manufacturers of solid state memory devices, and was recently a Samsung acquisition target.

Ahead of the 2009 CES in Las Vegas, Ars Technica reports that the company has announced that it soon hopes to crack the three main issues surrounding SSDs; high price, low drive capacity and poor random write performance.

Sandisk will push the nantechnology boundary a bit further and invest more in the development of multi-level cell (MLC) drives. At present, SLC drives are 1-bit per block of memory, while the new drives, which Sandisk hopes will be available in 2009, will be 3-bit and 4-bit (see diagram):

To compensate for a potential performance hit, SanDisk is also developing a new file system, ExtremeFFS.