3D Displays May Be Hazardous To Young Children

from Slashdot:

 "Turns out 3D television can be inherently dangerous to developing children, and perhaps to adults as well. There's a malaise in children that can prevent full stereopsis (depth perception) from developing, called strabismus or lazy-eye. It is an abnormal alignment of the eyes in which the eyes do not focus on the same object — kind of like when you watch a 3D movie. As a result, depth perception is compromised. Acting on a hunch, the guys over at Audioholics contacted Mark Pesce, who worked with Sega on its VR Headset over 15 years ago — you know, the headset that never made it to market. As it turns out, back then Sega uncovered serious health risks involved with children consuming 3D and quickly buried the reports, and the project. Unfortunately, the same dangers exist in today's 3D, and the electronics, movie, and gaming industries seem to be ignoring the issue. If fully realized, 3D just might affect the vision of millions of children and, according to the latest research, many adults, across the country." 

The Audioholics article is a good candidate for perusing with Readability — the pseudo-link popups are blinding.

Screen Resoultions & HDTV

Hello Mr. Sokol

I have on several occasions consulted your page on Video Format
Resolutions (http://www.videotechnology.com/0904/formats.html) when I
needed to find out about a specific resolution. I'm happy to say that
the page has never failed me. Until now.

I'm curious about the 1360x720 resolution of many (as I understand it)
entry-level tv's. Does this format have a name and where does it come
from?

If you know the answer, I was hoping that you'd consider putting it on
your excellent webpage.

Yours
KB

1366 x 768 is the resolution of some of the low end HDTV's this is a side effect of the LCD panels as there are far fewer manufacturers of the raw panels then there are the TV's made from them. These panels were made for computer display and it is easy for them to make in to HDTV's.

See also:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WXGA  ( I need to add this to my chart.)
 &
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-definition_television

1280x720 is 720P resolution, most HDTV from Broadcast and Cable is in this format and these TV's rescale it to 1366 x 768 which take a real hit in picture quality as it has the effect of low pass filtering the image (removing detail) most people will never appreciate the difference as there far enough back and it's still a huge improvement over the old analog NTSC we had.

1360x720 seems to be a graphics card resolution, probably to get the 720p video to play, in researching I don't think you can get Pixel accurate display using that.
There is no restrictions to the resolutions graphics cards can output. With many VGA chip set's you program it to output any arbitrary X Y resolution up to the limits of it's memory and video dac (digital to analog converter) Older CRT displays would make a best effort to display it, LCD's though have to map the input to actual display pixels.

I don't think anyone is making sets with a native 1360x720 resolution.
You should look up what your display's native resolution is and set your video card to match this will give the best possible image as each screen pixel that your OS sees will match each display pixel on the actual LCD that you see. 

I myself have a 52" Aquos which was the smallest with a full 1920x1080 pixel LCD panel at the time.
I then am using a ATI Radeon HD4350 graphic card with HDMI out.

Using that I was able to get Pixel accurate 1920x1080, although by default the driver insisted on scaling the image to be smaller.

Basically having a 1920x1080 display from the PC's perspective, then sending that bit map shrunk down 10% or so, then sending that in 1920x1080 resolution down to the TV over HDMI resulting in black bars all the way around around my image and blobs rather then text when displaying. This completely killed my pixel accuracy.

With some effort I was able to find that setting and fix it.

John

Is Apple trying to claim it invented video calling?

On ZDNET

Here’s an aspect of Apple that annoys me - trying to claim it invented something that’s clearly been around for years.

What’s worse is when normally sensible tech pundits seem too suffer collective amnesia and go along with the deception.

Take video calling, or FaceTime as Apple is calling it.

See the video on the ZDNet link above.

One Video Card, 12 Monitors

PowerColor HD5970 Eyefinity 12

PowerColor Manufacturer web site.

$719 at Newegg  6/7/2010

Read About it at:

http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/30/powercolor-hd5970-eyefinity-12-makes-six-screens-yesterdays-new/

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1652779/powercolor-hd5970-display-outputs


http://tech.slashdot.org/story/10/06/07/1533240/One-Video-Card-12-Monitors

WebM - Video Licensing Problems Resolved

WebM is a new free video codec based on Google (formerly On2) VP8 with the Vorbis open-source audio codec.

If you want to know more read:   Google shares VP8 code to create new video format



From Slashdot:

"The WebM licensing problems have been resolved. The copyright license is straight BSD now, and the patent license is separate and has no impact on the copyright license. Quoting Chris DiBona: 'As it was originally written, if a patent action was brought against Google, the patent license terminated. This provision itself is not unusual in an OSS license, and similar provisions exist in the 2nd Apache License and in version 3 of the GPL. The twist was that ours terminated "any" rights and not just rights to the patents, which made our license GPLv3 and GPLv2 incompatible. Also, in doing this, we effectively created a potentially new open source copyright license, something we are loath to do. Using patent language borrowed from both the Apache and GPLv3 patent clauses, in this new iteration of the patent clause we've decoupled patents from copyright, thus preserving the pure BSD nature of the copyright license. This means we are no longer creating a new open source copyright license, and the patent grant can exist on its own.'"

Netflix Business Opportunity

Reed Hastings the CEO of Netflix has posted an excellent presentation on the future of Video Streaming and Netflix.

See slide show at slideshare.com:  Netflix Business Opportunity

HTML5 vs. Flash — the Case For Flash

From Slashdot:

"InfoWorld's Peter Wayner offers seven reasons why web designers will remain loyal to Flash for rich web content, despite 'seductive' new capabilities offered by HTML5. Sure, HTML5 aims to duplicate many of the features that were once the sole province of plugins (local disk storage, video display, better rendering, algorithmic drawing, and more) and has high-profile backers in Google and Apple, but as Wayner sees it, this fight is more about designers than it is about technocrats and programmers. And from its sub-pixel resolution, to its developer tools, to its 'write once, play everywhere' functionality, Flash has too much going for it to fall by the wayside. 'The designers will make the final determination. As long as Flash and its cousins Flex and Shockwave remain the simplest tools for producing drop-dead gorgeous websites, they'll keep their place on the Internet.'

Google shares VP8 Code to create a new free video format called WebM.

from Technology Review: Google Gives Away Video Software to Lure Developers

An open and free video format offers new opportunities for Web programmers.

Google acquired VP8 in February, when it bought On2 for $120 million.

Google combined VP8 with an existing open-source audio codec, called Vorbis, to create a new free video format called WebM. The new format is designed to complete the capabilities of HTML5, the latest version of the free and open code that underlies the Web.

"One of the core tenets of the Web is that it relies on open standards like HTML, TCP/IP, and JavaScipt," said Google's project management VP Sundar Pichai to an audience of more than 5,000 at the I/O conference on Wednesday. "It's great to see video get that option as well."

Software Describes Surveillance Footage In AI-Generated Text

From Slashdot:

"A computer vision research group at UCLA has put together a system that watches surveillance footage and generates a text description of the events in real time. It only works on traffic cameras for now but demonstrates how sophisticated computer vision is becoming. Interestingly, the system was built thanks to a database of millions of human-labeled images put together by Chinese workers."

Zhu and UCLA colleagues Benjamin Yao and Haifeng Gong developed a new system, called I2T (Image to Text) puts a series of computer vision algorithms into a system that takes images or video frames as input, and spits out summaries of what they depict. "That can be searched using simple text search, so it's very human-friendly," says Zhu.

More links:
http://www.imageparsing.com/

Steve Jobs talk at the D8 Conference.

From Steve Jobs talk at the D8 Conference.

On the subject of Google TV, Jobs had some interesting words:

The television industry fundamentally has a subsidized business model that gives everyone a set-top box, and that pretty much undermines innovation in the sector. Ask TiVo, ask Roku, ask Google in a few months. The only way this is going to change is if you start from scratch, tear up the box, redesign and get it to the consumer in a way that they want to buy it. But right now, there’s no way to do that….The TV is going to lose until there’s a viable go-to-market strategy.

He explains that this is why he still calls Apple TV a "hobby": television can't fully connect and integrate with the Internet given the cable companies' control of set-top boxes. Google's attempt, remember, takes a new approach by often staying out of sight, but Jobs seems to think that option won't see much more success than Windows Media Center or any of the other attempts at connecting televisions.

Screen That Rolls Up While Still Playing Video

Read Article at:
Video: Sony Unveils Paper-Thin OLED Screen That Rolls Up While Still Playing Video

Just 80-microns-thick

Head mounted camera tracks with your eyes

Read at:
http://hackaday.com/2010/05/25/head-mounted-camera-tracks-with-your-eyes/

Vudu online video rental service.

http://www.vudu.com/ offers a High Definition On-Demand Movie Service, similar to Blockbuster. This is a pay per movie with a 24 hour viewing time. This is different from Netflix which is pay one monthly price and all you can eat.

Vudu also work on a number of Blueray and TV's from Mitsubishi, LG, Samsung, Sanyo, Sharp and Toshiba.

LG's BD390 BlueRay disk player

Nero Files Antitrust Complaint Against MPEG-LA

From Slashdot:
"German technology company Nero AG has filed an antitrust complaint against the MPEG-LA, the company that manages the H.264 patent pool. Nero claims that the MPEG-LA has violated the law and achieved and abused 100% market share, by, among other things, using 'independent experts' that weren't independent after all, not weeding out non-essential patents from the pool (in fact, it has grown from the original 53 to more than 1000), and retroactively changing previously-agreed-on license terms."

First Look: H.264 and VP8 Compared

 VP8 is now free, but if the quality is substandard, who cares? Well, it turns out that the quality isn't substandard, so that's not an issue, but neither is it twice the quality of H.264 at half the bandwidth. See for yourself.

Read at StreamingMedia.com

Revenge of the Cable Customer

On Slashdot:

 "After years of poor service and poor reception, years of hoping the cable guy shows up sometime within that four hour window, years of constant price increases ... it may be payback time for cable customers. Cable TV companies are trying to treat customers better. Considering the industry has long had some of the worst customer satisfaction ratings of any industry, it may take a while to overcome that reputation. But they'd better succeed. Cable customers are switching to satellite and phone companies in droves. According to industry research, cable companies lost five million video customers from 2006 to 2009."

Technical analysis of VP8

Read: The first in-depth technical analysis of VP8 on Diary Of An x264 Developer blog

Overall verdict on the VP8 video format

Overall, VP8 appears to be significantly weaker than H.264 compression-wise. The primary weaknesses mentioned above are the lack of proper adaptive quantization, lack of B-frames, lack of an 8×8 transform, and non-adaptive loop filter. With this in mind, I expect VP8 to be more comparable to VC-1 or H.264 Baseline Profile than with H.264. Of course, this is still significantly better than Theora, and in my tests it beats Dirac quite handily as well.

Supposedly Google is open to improving the bitstream format — but this seems to conflict with the fact that they got so many different companies to announce VP8 support.  The more software that supports a file format, the harder it is to change said format, so I’m dubious of any claim that we will be able to spend the next 6-12 months revising VP8.  In short, it seems to have been released too early: it would have been better off to have an initial period during which revisions could be submitted and then a big announcement later when it’s completed.

Update: it seems that Google is not open to changing the spec: it is apparently “final”, complete with all its flaws.

Also a good read is:   Flash, Google, VP8, and the future of internet video

probabilistic computing could be faster, cheaper and lower power for video.

Read article: Professor works to revolutionize computer chips

 Krishna Palem began wondering how much a slight reduction in the quality of calculations might improve speed and save energy.

The first real-world test of the probabilistic computer chip which thrives on random errors, ran seven times faster than today’s best technology while using just 1⁄30th the electricity.

Just think: One need never again worry about draining an iPhone battery in a day or even a week.

“The results were far greater than we expected,” said Palem, a Rice University professor who envisions his chips migrating to mobile devices in less than a decade.

While Palem’s technology may not have a future in calculating missions to Mars, it probably has one in such applications as streaming music and video on mobile devices, he said.

Much as the brain automatically fills in missing words in incomplete sentences, Palem said, the brain compensates for a few errant pixels in a mobile phone’s video screen. “In effect, we are putting a little more burden on the CPU in our heads and a little less burden on the CPU in our pockets.”

Command line video processing using FOSS

Daniel Paluska is getting away from the point-and-click by editing videos from the command line. Using the free open source software packages FFmpeg, Imagemagick, and Sox he produces new clips from multiple videos with effects like overlaying, slicing, and assigning each video to a different quadrant.

Read Article at:
The Broadcaster Project

Seagate confirms 3TB drive

Seagate’s senior product manager Barbara Craig has confirmed “we are announcing a 3TB drive later this year,” but the move to 3TB of storage space apparently involves a lot more work than simply upping the areal density.

The ancient foundations of the PC’s three-decade legacy has once again reared its DOS-era head, revealing that many of today’s PCs are simply incapable of coping with hard drives that have a larger capacity than 2.1TB.

To get past this you need  UEFI, 64-bit OS and new partition table


http://www.thinq.co.uk/news/2010/5/17/exclusive-seagate-confirms-3tb-drive/