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Antitrust Regulation: $39 Billion Bid for T-Mobile USA Ends

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December 20, 2011
  • It’s official: AT&T announced yesterday it has ended its effort to purchase T-Mobile USA. The company explained it could no longer combat federal opposition to form the nation’s largest cellphone service provider.
  • “The decision to scrap the $39 billion takeover — which would have been the biggest deal of the year — is a major setback for AT&T, which had pinned its hopes for growth on the acquisition,” reports The New York Times. “The company wanted T-Mobile’s cellular airwaves, or spectrum, to relieve its congested network and offer faster service for data-hungry devices like the iPhone.”
  • Consumer advocates believe the merger would have led to a powerful duopoly of AT&T and Verizon Wireless.
  • “Consumers won today,” said Sharis A. Pozen, the Justice Department’s acting assistant attorney general for antitrust. “Had AT&T acquired T-Mobile, consumers in the wireless marketplace would have faced higher prices and reduced innovation.”
  • AT&T said in a statement that it would continue to invest in wireless spectrum, and suggested that wireless customers “will be harmed and needed investment will be stifled by the regulators’ decisions.”

Experts Suggest Gesture Recognition is the First Step Toward 3D UIs

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December 19, 2011
  • EE Times provides an interesting overview of the technologies and uses of 3D gestural user interfaces in this article by Dong-Ik Ko and Gaurav Agarwal of Texas Instruments.
  • “Gesture recognition is the first step to fully 3D interaction with computing devices,” begins the article. “The authors outline the challenges and techniques to overcome them in embedded systems.”
  • Featured sections include: 1) “Limitations of (x,y) coordinate-based 2D vision;” 2) “z (depth) innovation” (such as stereo vision, structured light patterns and time of flight sensors); 3) “3D vision technologies;” 4) “z & human/machine interface;” 5) “Technology processing steps;” 6) “Challenges for 3D-vision embedded systems” (such as two different processor architectures and lack of standard middleware); and 7) “Anything cool after z? (new ways to see beyond, through, and inside people and objects).”
  • “Gesture recognition takes human interaction with machines even further. It’s long been researched with 2D vision, but the advent of 3D sensor technology means gesture recognition will be used more widely and in more diverse applications,” predict the authors. “Soon a person sitting on the couch will be able to control the lights and TV with a wave of the hand, and a car will automatically detect if a pedestrian is close by.”
  • Ko and Agarwal suggest that gesture recognition is only the beginning: “Transparence research will yield systems that are able to see through objects and materials. And with emotion detection systems, applications will be able to see inside the human mind to detect whether the person is lying.”

Predicting CES TV Tech Trends: OLED, Better 3D, Voice Control, More Apps

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December 19, 2011
  • Senior editor Dave Katzmaier and television reviewer Ty Pendlebury of CNET offer their predictions regarding what TV tech trends to look for at CES 2012.
  • “Dave’s Divinations” include: 1) More passive 3D, cheaper active glasses with a universal standard, better 3D picture quality; 2) LEDs will outnumber non-LED LCDs (“Add CCFL-based LCD TVs to the list of ‘almost dead’ TV technologies”); 3) Better Internet suites, more Web browsers, and Google TV, voice control/search, and built-in Skype; 4) Bigger and cheaper TVs (“Sharp’s resurgence in 2011 with its relatively affordable 70-inch TVs hints that other makers will also strive to make jumbo flat panels more affordable”); and 5) Cameos by bigger OLED and next-gen glasses-free 3D, including a 40-inch-plus OLED from LG.
  • “Pendlebury’s Prognastications” include: 1) Kinect in your TV (“we’ll see at least one TV featuring technology from Israeli company PrimeSense, which develops the 3D sensors used in Kinect”); 2) Bezel-less TVs (“such as this year’s Samsung D7000…with an incredibly slim bezel”); 3) OLED (“won’t be a viable technology until about 2015, but this year we’ll see more bendy, wacky, and see-through OLED panels”); 4) 1080p passive 3D (“where the TV performs the shutter effect — this is opposed to active systems, which feature shutter glasses”); and 5) Remote viewing apps (“watching content directly from the TV tuner or HDMI input”).
  • The post includes a fun “Blast from the Past” section for those of you who like to revisit reports from previous CES events.

The SOPA Piracy Debate Rages On: Looking at Both Sides

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December 16, 2011
  • PaidContent has published a compelling analysis of the controversy that has recently arisen over the Stop Online Piracy Act.
  • “The issue isn’t that complicated,” suggests the article. “At its core, it’s about deciding the role of different industries in monitoring and enforcing intellectual property rights. Unfortunately, the debate so far has been all about hysterics and hyperbole. SOPA supporters are casting opponents as free-loading, unpatriotic criminals. Meanwhile, the bill’s detractors say that brand owners want to bring about Chinese-style censorship and the ‘end of the Internet.'”
  • ETCentric staffer Phil Lelyveld points out that the article provides a rational assessment of both sides of the SOPA discussion and offers additional context to the Wikipedia blackout story we reported earlier this week.
  • “The problem with this rhetoric is not just that it’s inaccurate but that, after a point, it’s boring,” suggests paidContent. “The SOPA screaming attracts partisans but few people who want to discuss a balanced approach to the piracy problem.”
  • The article calls for “a shift not just in substance but in tone” that would lead to a rational public discussion on intellectual property enforcement.
  • ETCentric‘s Dennis Kuba submitted a related CNN opinion piece written by leaders of Global Voices Online, an international citizen media network. As an example of the passion emerging from this subject, the editorial concludes: “Passage of the Stop Online Piracy Act or Protect IP will send a loud signal to governments everywhere that it is fine to monitor and censor citizens’ online behavior to catch and prevent ‘infringing activity,’ which too often means political and religious dissent. The result will be a world even more dangerous and difficult for bloggers and activists than it already is.”

CALM Down: FCC Instructs Advertisers to Lower the Volume

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December 15, 2011

We finally have progress on the CALM Act. After making its way through Capitol Hill, the act has formally been adopted in a ruling by the FCC, and will go into effect in December 2012.

“Responding to years of complaints that the volume on commercials was much louder than that of the programming that the ads accompany, the FCC on Tuesday passed the Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation Act (CALM) to make sure that the sound level is the same for commercials and news and entertainment programming,” reports the Los Angeles Times.

The act, which makes it so commercials will have to “remain in-step with the audio levels of scheduled programming,” comes a year after Congress passed commercial volume legislation and instructed the FCC to create enforcement rules.

“I cannot tell you how many hundreds of citizens have told me — personally, through emails and letters, at public hearings, even across the family dinner table — how obnoxiously intrusive they find loud commercials,” explained FCC Commissioner Michael J. Copps.

“We’re glad that consumers are finally going to get some relief from extra-loud TV ads,” said Parul P. Desai, policy counsel for Consumers Union. “People have been complaining about the volume of TV commercials for decades.”

Secret Record Label Demands: Will Subscription Music Ever Be Profitable?

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December 14, 2011
  • Digital music veteran Michael Robertson, founder and former CEO of MP3.com and current CEO of MP3tunes and DAR.fm, offers a compelling take on digital music services in GigaOM.
  • Robertson suggests that the economics of the current digital music subscription model is one-sided, based on copyright law that grants record labels and publishers a government-backed monopoly, forcing services such as Spotify, Rhapsody, MOG and Rdio to comply with their demands.
  • The article contends that the current model may make it impossible for digital vendors to turn a profit.
  • Until recently, strict non-disclosure agreements prevented a full understanding of this part of the industry. “For the first time, people are talking, and these previously secret demands are being made public,” writes Roberston, before he details eight ways the labels and publishers are constraining music services.
  • Areas of concern include: 1) General deal structure; 2) Labels receive equity stake; 3) Up front (and/or minimum) payments; 4) Detailed reporting, including monthly play counts; 5) Data normalization; 6) Publishing deals; 7) Most favored nation (deal term demanded by every major label); and 8) Non-disclosure (strict language prohibiting the digital music company from revealing what they pay to the labels).
  • Robertson’s final note: “Online radio services such as Pandora take advantage of a government-supervised license available only to radio broadcasters thus sidestepping dealing with record labels. While the per-song fees are daunting, they bypass virtually all of the terms listed above.”

Lumus to Demo 720p See-Through Video Glasses at CES

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December 14, 2011
  • Coming to CES: Lumus will preview its see-through HD video glasses that offer clear 3D video in 720p and even allow interaction with the world via augmented reality.
  • A 1080p version is also on its way, but commercial offerings of the glasses may not happen for some time.
  • “The lenses are completely transparent (and can be tuned for folks with vision problems) and when enabled the glasses display a crystal clear, 87-inch screen about ten feet away from you,” which TechCrunch reports is stunning. “The displays themselves are 1280 x 720 pixels and Lumus has created iPhone-compatible adapters that can display HD video right through the pumps and into the lenses.”
  • “Although these guys will be showing their gear at CES, they’re going the OEM route and are currently looking for partners to use the technology in AR displays, video games, and media players,” explains the post. “There won’t be any Lumus-branded ‘They Live’ style super glasses any time soon, although they do have some major players interested in the technology.”
  • TechCrunch predicts that wearable devices such as this will eventually replace hand-held screens.

Trillion-Frames-Per-Second Video: The Slowest Fastest Camera

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December 14, 2011
  • Researchers at MIT have developed a new imaging system that can record one trillion exposures per second. “That’s fast enough to produce a slow-motion video of a burst of light traveling the length of a one-liter bottle, bouncing off the cap and reflecting back to the bottle’s bottom,” reports MIT News.
  • Andreas Velten, one of the system’s developers at the MIT Media Lab, describes it as the “ultimate” in slow motion: “There’s nothing in the universe that looks fast to this camera,” he explains.
  • “The system relies on a recent technology called a streak camera, deployed in a totally unexpected way,” explains the article. “The aperture of the streak camera is a narrow slit. Particles of light — photons — enter the camera through the slit and pass through an electric field that deflects them in a direction perpendicular to the slit. Because the electric field is changing very rapidly, it deflects late-arriving photons more than it does early-arriving ones.”
  • However, to produce the super-slow-motion videos, the crew needs to perform the same experiment repeatedly: “It takes only a nanosecond — a billionth of a second — for light to scatter through a bottle, but it takes about an hour to collect all the data necessary for the final video.” Media Lab Associate Professor Ramesh Raskar calls the system “the world’s slowest fastest camera.”
  • “Although impractical for non-repeatable situations like filming live action, this research could lead to better, cheaper lighting,” points out ETCentric staffer Phil Lelyveld.
  • Be sure not to miss the 3-minute MIT Media Lab video.

Facebook Now Responsible for More Than Half of All Online Sharing

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December 14, 2011
  • Social sharing remains on the rise and mobile sharing has grown over 600 percent since 2010, according to a new comprehensive report from sharing platform AddThis and social data aggregator Clearspring that analyzed more than 1.2 billion users.
  • According to the study, Facebook now comprises 52.1 percent of sharing on the Web. Twitter makes up 13.5 percent (52 percent in Japan, interestingly) and has shown 576.9 percent growth.
  • “Tumblr sharing has grown over 1299.5 percent, and is accelerating. This growth sharply contrasts with Digg and Myspace, whose sharing rates continue to fall (by 47.7 percent and 56.9 percent respectively),” reports The Next Web. “Facebook continues to grow, and Chrome is on its way to becoming the world’s most social browser.”
  • The post includes an infographic that outlines 2011 social sharing trends.

Panasonic 3D Plasma Named as CES Design and Engineering Honoree

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December 13, 2011
  • Panasonic has been named a CES Innovations Design and Engineering Awards Honoree for its 65-inch Professional Plasma Display.
  • The company is targeting the home theater and post-production markets with its TH-65VX300U and claims the display’s “color reproduction approaches digital cinema standards.”
  • According to the press release: “The display’s ultra high-speed drive technology achieves clear and extremely detailed 3D video and also enhances 2D content. The advanced drive provides smoother gradation, which is double the smoothness of conventional models, resulting in richer gradation expression in a dark area of the screen allowing the viewer to see what is happening in extremely low-lit areas.”
  • The release also suggests the high-speed drive technology enables “crisp and clear” images, especially for sports and action films.
  • “The display also features a scaler bypass function which allows for pure degradation-free images and the use of an external scaler,” explains Panasonic. “With 3D images…the display features phosphor improvements and original lighting controls that deliver clear images with virtually no crosstalk.”

Network World Offers a Quick Gadget Preview for the 2012 CES

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December 13, 2011
  • Network World has posted a slideshow of 20 gadgets and services expected to be featured at January’s CES.
  • The products are no surprise since they were already showcased at CEA’s recent press event in New York City, but the slideshow is a fun teaser for some of the gadgets we can expect to hear more about next month.
  • Highlights of the slideshow include: Biscotti HD video calling system that plugs into your HDTV, the Tailgater Portable HDTV System from Dish Network, Motorola’s $299 Universal Lapdock 100 with 10-inch screen and keyboard, the $80 ZAGGkeys FLEX keyboard accessory for universal smartphone and tablet support, Polaroid’s new Z340 camera with SD card and instant printing, and Sennheiser’s $150 X320 headphones designed for the Xbox 360.

TechRadar Staff Outlines the 10 Gadgets to Look Forward to in 2012

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December 13, 2011
  • TechRadar offers an interesting snapshot of the 10 gadgets their staff is most looking forward to in 2012, some of which we should expect to see at CES next month.
  • “Where once we were waiting on the influx of dual-core tablets, now we’re looking at a quad-core revolution on the horizon,” explains the post. “We were looking forward to Android 3.0 and Google’s Chrome OS, but now we’re clamouring for Android 4.0 and Windows 8. Gaming also looks set to have a bumper year, with new consoles and technologies coming, and this is all before we get the usual raft of awesome announcements at CES 2012 in January.”
  • The following comprise the 10 picks that the TechRadar staff are most excited about: 1) New video streaming options and other content for the Amazon Kindle Fire — “perhaps the best gadget bargain of this era;” 2) Wii U with 1080p output, 3D support and a new controller; 3) Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime — the first Nvidia Tegra 3 tablet; 4) Windows 8 tablets with Metro interface and support for ARM processors; 5) Apple’s 2012 tablet (iPad 3 with retina display?); 6) PlayStation Vita with quad-core graphics processor; 7) Asus Padfone with Android 4.0 and Nvidia’s Tegra 3 quad-core CPU; 8) Sony PlayStation 3D display — “a brilliant way to get into 3D gaming without totally breaking the bank;” 9) Android 4.0 tablets with varieties of apps and widgets; and 10) Ultrabooks “that get it right.”

Combating Piracy: Does Hollywood Need to Rethink Windows Strategy?

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December 12, 2011
  • As consumers continue to expect ubiquitous, easy and immediate ways to access media content, Hollywood’s release windows strategy has become “the root cause of piracy,” suggest The Hill.
  • Research at Carnegie Mellon University shows that every week customers have to wait before they can buy a DVD leads to 1.8 percent lower DVD sales. Moreover, as pirated versions are available 14 weeks before legal versions, the result is a 70 percent increase in pirated movie downloads.
  • The article suggests that Hollywood needs to adjust its current windowing strategy by looking at selling content in theaters, on DVD and through digital services “around the same time, perhaps at different price points.”
  • When VCRs were first introduced, they were viewed by the industry as a potentially dangerous piracy tool. However, VCRs eventually became a highly lucrative mechanism for the home video rental business.
  • The Hill concludes, “technology required the industry to adapt then, and it requires the same now. If Hollywood and publishers can do so, they stand a much better chance of thriving in a global digital marketplace.”

Quantum Dot Television Technology: Will QD TV be the Next Big Thing?

By
December 12, 2011
  • Researchers have developed a new form of light-emitting crystals, known as quantum dots, that will be used to create thinner, flexible displays.
  • “The tiny crystals, which are 100,000 times smaller than the width of a human hair, can be printed onto flexible plastic sheets to produce a paper-thin display that can be easily carried around, or even onto wallpaper to create giant room-size screens,” reports The Telegraph.
  • The first commercial products to use the technology are expected to be flat-screen TVs with improved color and thinner displays, available by the end of next year. The flexible versions should take at least three years to become commercially available, although the technology may appear on small personal devices earlier.
  • “Something else we are looking at is reels of wallpaper or curtains made out of a material that has quantum dots printed on it,” explains Michael Edelman, chief executive of Nanoco,a company set up by the scientists behind the technology at Manchester University. “You can imagine displaying scenes of the sun rising over a beach as you wake up in the morning.”
  • According to Edelman, Nanoco is currently working with major Asian electronics companies on flat-screen TVs that incorporate the quantum dot technology.

Mitsubishi to Showcase 92-inch 3D DLP TV at CES in January

By
December 9, 2011
  • Mitsubishi has been named a CES Innovations 2012 Design and Engineering Awards Honoree for its 92-inch 3D DLP Home Cinema TV.
  • According to the press release: “Mitsubishi’s 92-inch TV includes a 16-speaker, fully immersive Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound system; new Clear Contrast Screen; Perfect Color; Perfect Tint; and the same 3D DLP technology used by 90 percent of 3D movie theaters.”
  • The company claims its $6,000 3D DLP model (WD-92840) is “the largest mass-produced TV on the market, covering a surface area greater than four standard 46-inch TVs combined.”
  • More details are expected during January’s CES in Las Vegas.

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