A Kickstarter project called Lib-Ray is seeking to create an open source format for HD video on SDHC cards.
The project was created by Terry Hancock, a contributor to Free Software Magazine and research assistant who worked on the McDonald Observatory Planet Search program.
Lib-Ray will include a wizard for authoring high-definition videos, a player for the Flash media, and authoring documentation that would allow others to make improvements. It will use the common MKV video container format with VP8 video at 30 frames per second in 1080p and later add extensions for 60fps, 3D and 4K video.
The project is intended for a business model where donors share the costs of the production and the movie is given in return in an open-source format.
“It seems like it ought to be really hard, because Blu-ray was expensive to develop,” Hancock told Ars Technica. “But when you look closely, you realize that all of the money went to pay for the DRM. The actual task of making a video standard that supports high-definition playback and a menu system is just not that complicated. There are open standards, so it’s just a matter of picking the ones you want to use and making sure you have a player that can handle those choices.”
Samsung has revealed the production-ready version of its 55-inch OLED television, the prototype for which initially debuted at CES in January.
At the World’s Fair in Korea, the company demonstrated the ES9500, expected to ship in Korea later this year for more than $9,000.
“Samsung has gone crazy with features that start with the word Smart,” reports Digital Trends. “We’ve got Smart Interaction, Smart Evolution and Smart Content, all of which can be found on other high-end Samsung TVs, and respectively refer to voice and gesture controls, an upgradeable dual-core processor and Samsung’s extensive range of online content and apps.”
“Now we’ve got Smart DualView, which allows two people to watch two different programs on the same screen at the same time, in full high definition too, by using special 3D glasses with wireless headphones attached,” adds the post.
LG also debuted a 55-inch OLED model at CES. Rumors suggest it could be introduced this month in the $8,000 range.
Dish Network’s new Hopper DVR includes a feature known as “Auto Hop,” which can automatically skip past commercials.
“The Hopper DVR costs Dish subscribers $10 a month in addition to a $99 upfront fee,” reports the Wall Street Journal. “Dish also offers a less-expensive traditional DVR with no upfront charge and a $6 monthly fee. The Hopper is made by Echostar Corp., which like Dish is controlled by satellite-TV pioneer Charlie Ergen.”
Auto Hop may alarm broadcasters by threatening network advertising revenues. Already nearly a quarter of U.S. households use DVRs and regularly fast-forward through commercials.
Dish is clearly sensitive to this and has limited Auto Hop’s use for nationally broadcast prime-time programs aired on ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC to after 1:00 a.m. the day after they air.
The new feature may become a factor in broadcasters’ attempts to seek higher retransmission fees from pay TV companies.
Cult of Mac claims to have a source that has seen the long-rumored Apple high-definition television.
“According to our source, who has asked to remain strictly anonymous, the Apple HDTV looks like Apple’s current lineup of LED-backlit Cinema Displays but is ‘much bigger,'” explains the post. “It has a built-in iSight camera for making free FaceTime video conference calls. And it has Siri, the iPhone 4S’s voice-activated virtual assistant.”
Cult of Mac claims the “well-placed” source has provided strong tips in the past, although not all of them have involved concepts that have gone beyond the prototype stage.
In an update to the post, Paul Gagnon of NPD DisplaySearch guesses that an Apple TV product will ship in 2013.
“He noted that Apple’s Chinese supplier, Foxconn, has invested $1.6 billion in Sharp’s TV unit, which can efficiently make large size panels up to 60-inches,” explains the post, adding that Gagnon expects a conventional introduction. “They will not be anything exotic like OLED or 4K resolution. There will likely be two to four models ranging from 40-inches to 60-inches. They will be standard 1920 x 1080p resolution and cost between $1,000 to $2,000 or slightly higher.”
Kentucky-based Gyroskope has developed a platform for musicians to upload video content including live concerts, recording sessions and behind-the-scenes footage.
“Videos are uploaded to a social platform, and the artists set their own prices for how much they want to charge,” reports Fortune. “The videos, which are streamed from the cloud, can be viewed in a Web browser as well as on iPhones, iPads and Android phones.”
Musicians collect all of the revenue, but pay Gyroskope a monthly fee, “ranging from as low as $19 a month for the ‘indie’ plan to $499 a month for the ‘platinum plan,'” explains the article.
Pricing is determined based on the number of videos and required bandwidth.
The service currently has 24 customers including musicians, festival organizers and comedians, but Gyroskope expects to increase this base when it plugs into Facebook and Twitter this month. It also plans to start streaming live events in real-time later this year.
Lenovo broke ground this week on a new facility in China that will focus on smartphone and tablet PC research and development. The company plans to spend $800 million on the effort.
The company also introduced an Internet-enabled television to the China market. “The TV is the first to run Google’s Android 4.0 and is powered by a dual-core 1.5GHz Qualcomm CPU,” reports eWeek.
Independent software developers have already produced more than 1,000 apps for the smart TV, now available in Lenovo’s Le Store online storefront.
“Lenovo has also teamed with SMG’s BesTV to a create an ISmartv joint venture that already provides viewers with more than 300,000 hours of high-definition video resources, and the Smart TV will come with a ‘Sandwich’ user interface said to integrate ‘touch, voice, air mouse, gravity sensor, smart keyboard and [a] traditional television remote control in a ‘Six in One’ Smart Remote Controller,'” explains the article.
Fortune offers interesting snapshots of how large firms are leveraging innovative uses of social media marketing. It’s a compelling overview of the evolving landscape in which many companies are still trying to find their footing.
Walmart, for example, has 15 million fans on Facebook and uses a blend of product announcements and fan interaction for events such as National Puppy Day.
The Home Depot’s Facebook page emphasizes the local community service projects initiated by its employees.
Pepsi’s Facebook page is a vehicle for user-generated marketing “with photos of Pepsi cans or bottles in interesting poses or settings, such as the back of a power boat,” describes the article.
Fortune explains that Starbucks’ Facebook page is “different than many other corporate sites given the almost 180,000 people (and nearly 30 million fans) talking about the company… Mixed in between posts mentioning the company by a viewer’s own Facebook friends, you’ll find deals, a healthy dose of community service, and direct feedback for upset customers. It’s also easy for users to manage their Starbucks card or send e-gifts to friends.”
The Top 10: Walmart, The Home Depot, Pepsi, Disney, Starbucks, Google, Capital One, Nike, JetBlue, McDonald’s.
Google is still the most visited mobile site, but U.S. smartphone users spend more total time accessing Facebook.
According to comScore’s first mobile-media rankings, the real winner is apps themselves. “Four in every five minutes spent with mobile media are with apps, even though equal numbers of people visit mobile websites and apps,” reports Advertising Age.
The report indicates that Facebook accounts for 12 percent of time spent on smartphones, with 78 million adults visiting the social network via phones in March alone.
These figures bode well for Facebook’s efforts in the mobile-ad space. “If Facebook’s recent Internet past is any bellwether, mobile may represent the next major boost to its ad revenue,” suggests Advertising Age.
“In just a few years, Facebook has become the top U.S. seller of online display ads, besting giants like Google, Yahoo and Microsoft,” points out the article. “Google collects the largest share of U.S. mobile-ad spending, which is expected to hit $2.6 billion this year, according to eMarketer.”
Samsung has acquired mSpot, a mobile entertainment start-up that streams movie rentals from companies including Sony, Disney, Paramount, NBCUniversal, Lionsgate, and Warner.
Financial terms have not officially been disclosed, but earlier reports place the acquisition in the $8.8 million range.
According to TechCrunch: “mSPot also offered a cloud-based music service, which let you upload your music to the cloud, and stream this content from a multitude of devices, ranging from PCs, Macs, to the iPhone, iPad and Android. Last year the company launched a Pandora-like radio-service for personal music collections.”
Samsung says it will use mSpot to provide an “entertainment experience of music, video and radio services for users of Samsung devices, while extending mSpot’s cloud and streaming solutions to a broader base of global entertainment fans… mSpot’s entertainment services will be a key integrated offering on newly announced Samsung mobile devices.”
Researchers at Google have developed a technique called auto-directed video stabilization designed for recording video via smartphones and mobile devices with greater stability and improved image quality.
The technique mimics how motion is smoothly recorded in professional productions with dollies and tripods.
“The technology supports an algorithm that automatically determines the best camera path and recasts the video as if it were filmed using stabilization equipment,” reports MediaPost. “The research is being integrated into YouTube to support videographers.”
Microsoft Research, meanwhile, is developing motion technology that will enable a mobile device to function as a weapon in a game, such as a sword used to go on the offensive or to block the attacks of other players.
“Phone-to-phone mobile motion games must have the ability to calculate accurate distance and range from each other. Then range, speed, and accuracy are calculated,” explains the post. “The process works similar to Kinect, a fixed infrastructure motion capture system that supports game motion in real-time.”
The Open Mobile Video Coalition will launch a free service in the fall called Dyle.tv.
“What makes this solution different, and perhaps what gives it the best chance to succeed, is that it is built upon the existing ATSC digital broadcast infrastructure,” comments Ben Bajarin for TechPinions. “DVB-H required quite a bit of new infrastructure investments and many did not make them,” he adds, referring to why earlier mobile TV efforts may have failed.
The cost for stations to install new hardware is only between $15-25,000 and can be done in two hours. Devices will require a DTV chip to access the signal.
Dyle.tv will be available as an Android and iOS app and the rights to major networks have already been secured. The service will launch in 210 markets across the U.S.
Bajarin speculates that this mobile TV service will not only be good for live news and sports programming, but for “catch-up” TV that would make for a compelling service.
Nokia announced new app partnerships for its Lumia line of phones at the CTIA Wireless show in New Orleans this week.
New apps will include the PGA Tour, keeping golf fans abreast of news and highlights, an ESPN sports app and a Lumia-only Fantasy Football app coming in the fall.
Gamers will be happy to hear of new titles from Electronic Arts, including “FIFA,” “Madden,” “NBA Jam” and others.
Rovio is also a significant piece of the puzzle, “creating a dedicated development team to create titles for Nokia Windows phones,” according to Engadget.
According to the official Nokia blog, AOL will launch its Entertainment Hub: “Exclusive to Nokia Lumia owners for six months from launch, this AOL app brings the cream of AOL’s content to Nokia Lumia owners. That includes the ability to play any of its 55,000 SHOUTcast radio stations, streaming albums with Listening Party. movie trailers and more.”
Nokia also announced new apps or updates from Groupon, PayPal, Time, Newsweek and others.
Dish Networks argues to AMC that by making their programming available in other venues such as iTunes, Amazon and Netflix, the shows become “devalued.”
Television programmers have been responding to this concern by pulling content from sites like Hulu or requiring authentication of subscriptions.
“The fact that networks are selling or giving away their stuff online has been a minor but growing issue in carriage fights for a while now,” reports AllThingsD. “But this is the biggest stink that a cable/pay TV provider has made about it, at least in public.”
Netflix argues that prior season episodes help generate interest in watching new shows. But there is evidence suggesting that Netflix repeats are also negatively impacting some cable programming such as kids’ shows. This may affect future renegotiations.
Rather than taking the traditional route of shopping a script around the Hollywood studios, independent filmmakers and producers are looking to attract an audience first without any studio involvement.
A script entered into a contest for Fresh Voices, a social network for screenwriters , was made into a teaser for “Already Gone” and will be posted on social networks. If it gets a sufficient audience, the short may be purchased and made into a feature film.
Studios can see which “pilots” are getting the most buzz to determine which projects to finance and how to market them.
“Studios spend a tremendous amount of money in marketing a film, but independent filmmakers are now capable of distributing their content on the smallest of budgets,” reports Mashable. “Sites like Kickstarter, Twitter and Facebook have changed how films are made.”
Mobile payments company Square continues to expand its reach, moving heavily into art fairs and farmers’ markets. The platform, which processes about $416 million in payments each month, has already proven successful with charities, taxis, food trucks, political campaigns and more.
The company claims that “at Etsy’s New York’s Spring Handmade Cavalcade last weekend in Brooklyn, over 90 percent of the vendors used Square to accept payments,” according to TechCrunch.
A similar event, Unique LA (the largest independent fashion market in the country), will be using Square to process payments this coming weekend. The event expects to see over one and a half million dollars in transactions.
“It’s not surprising that Square is being used by independent purveyors at fairs and markets. The company’s smartphone dongle and companion payments app makes taking credit cards easy,” suggests TechCrunch.
Square is now processing $5 billion in annual payments, with volume up 25 percent in the past month.