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Television Revolution: Apple Moving Forward with Plan to Re-Imagine TV

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December 19, 2011
  • Apple is reportedly in talks with media companies to move forward with television plans originally envisioned by the late Steve Jobs.
  • “In recent weeks, Apple executives have discussed their vision for the future of TV with media executives at several large companies, according to people familiar with the matter,” reports The Wall Street Journal.
  • Apple is working on a TV that uses wireless streaming. For example, one might watch a program on a TV and continue watching on another device such as a smartphone.
  • Apple has also described future TV technology that recognizes a user across multiple devices. Users could control it using voice and gestures to make TV more personal and easy to use. The company is believed to be working on integrating iCloud so one could watch a saved or purchased program on different devices. A subscription-TV service has also been discussed.
  • The article cites the apps and services offered by the likes of Google and Microsoft as well as cable, satellite and phone companies. “The pace of change puts media companies that make TV shows and program TV channels in a dilemma,” suggests the article. “On one hand, they hope that they can increase their profits by selling new services on new devices. But they are worried that a proliferation of new services could undermine the existing TV business, which brings in more than $150 billion a year in the U.S. in advertising and consumer spending on monthly TV subscriptions from cable, satellite and telecommunications companies.”

Mobile Data Tsunami: U.S. Teens Triple their Usage in Q3 2011

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December 19, 2011
  • While monthly data usage for teens nearly tripled from Q3 2010 to Q3 2011, usage for other age groups doubled.
  • Nielsen recently analyzed mobile usage trends among U.S. teens by evaluating 65,000+ cell phone bills. “In the third quarter of 2011, teens age 13-17 used an average of 320MB of data per month on their phones, increasing 256 percent over last year and growing at a rate faster than any other age group.”
  • For teens, messaging is the primary use, averaging seven messages each waking hour. Other data intensive activities for teens include mobile Internet, social networking, email, app downloads and app usage. Interestingly, voice use has declined as messaging is perceived as faster, easier and more fun.
  • “Teen females are holding the messaging front, sending and receiving 3,952 messages per month versus 2,815 from males,” reports MacDailyNews.
  • The post includes infographics and a link to Nielsen’s “State of the Media: The Mobile Media Report Q3 2011.”

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.

Gracenote to Demo Second-Screen Content Recognition App at CES

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December 16, 2011
  • Gracenote announced it will introduce its second screen content recognition platform at CES.
  • “The company, which became a wholly owned subsidiary of Sony three years ago, aims to compete with similar solutions from Yahoo’s IntoNow and social check-in services like Miso and GetGlue,” according to GigaOM.
  • Similar to IntoNow, the app listens to the program’s audio track to identify and link to program information such as actors, music and products. Gracenote’s technology “makes it possible to identify both on-demand movies as well as live TV content,” explains the post.
  • The company is looking to license its technology to CE manufacturers, broadcasters and developers.
  • Included in the post: Stephen White, president of Gracenote, provides a 2-minute video demo.

Milestone: Apple Mac App Store Passes 100 Million Downloads

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December 16, 2011
  • The Mac App Store is now the “largest and fastest-growing PC software store in the world,” according to Apple. About a year after its opening, the Mac App Store has passed the 100 million downloads milestone.
  • Even so, the Mac App Store has not had the rapid success of the iOS App Store which reached 1 billion downloads only nine months after its debut. The iOS App Store has over 500,000 apps and more than 18 billion app downloads, about a billion a month (Google’s Android Market just hit the 10 billion download mark).
  • The Mac App Store only has about 8,459 apps but is “still a huge success,” GigaOM reports. “[It] will likely continue to grow as it ships on future Macs and increasingly becomes a go-to resource for customers looking to get new apps on their machines. Apple’s ability to attract top-tier developers away from direct Web distribution models will also be a key factor in helping it expand its library.”

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.”

What will Twitter Redesign of Enhanced Brand Pages Mean for Users?

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December 15, 2011
  • Twitter is working on enhanced brand pages — expected to roll out in the next few months — designed to encourage social advertising and marketing.
  • Forbes shows a revamped Disney/Pixar page, commenting that it “looks pretty slick, especially for Twitter, whose interface and opportunities for brand interaction with consumers have been spartan at best to date.”
  • “So far, Twitter is working with 21 top marketers, the usual ones such as Coca-Cola, Nike, American Express, and others that have established brand beachheads on Facebook already,” the article adds.
  • According to the Twitter Advertising blog: “Communicating with users isn’t just about what you say. It’s also about how you say it. Now, your profile page does more to help you make an impression with a large header image for displaying your logo, tagline, and any other visuals.”
  • Forbes has included an interesting 2-minute video demo.

Outside the Box: USC Student Competition Draws Video Game Innovation

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December 15, 2011
  • The electronic game industry is looking to student projects for innovation.
  • Nearly 160 students showcased eight semester-long game projects to an audience of industry professionals at USC’s Demo Day.
  • “It was the 13th time students have publicly exhibited their work but the first jointly planned effort between USC’s School of Cinematic Arts’ interactive media division and its Viterbi School of Engineering’s department of computer science,” reports the Los Angeles Times. “The two schools have offered an advanced games class together since 2007.”
  • “The great thing about having students make games in academia is that they can think outside of the boxes that the commercial industry is bound by,” explains Michael Zyda, director of USC’s GamePipe Laboratory. “When the commercial industry invests in a new title, they have to get a huge return. Students can take big risks. It’s an interesting model for innovation.”
  • Zyda keeps track of his students after they leave GamePipe and “estimates that alumni have developed games that have reached more than 375 million players.”

Louis CK Live at the Beacon Theater: New Online Distribution Model?

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December 15, 2011
  • In a compelling example of an artist successfully producing and selling his own material, comedian Louis CK recently put his self-produced show online and earned $200,000 in three days.
  • The cost of the six camera shoot at the Beacon Theater was around $170,000, largely paid for from ticket sales for two shows.
  • The comedian developed his own website to sell his video at a cost of $32,000.
  • In the three days his video was offered online, he has sold over 110,000 copies at $5 apiece for a profit of $200,000. Interestingly, his video was NOT copy protected.
  • In addition to collecting the profits himself, Louis CK was able to do exactly the show he wanted, without outside influences.

CALM Down: FCC Instructs Advertisers to Lower the Volume

By
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.”

CES Predictions: Forrester Lists Five Anticipated Computing Form Factors

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December 14, 2011
  • Forrester Research analyst Sarah Rotman Epps reveals the consumer electronics computing form factors that she expects to see at CES 2012, as reported in eWeek.
  • First is wearable devices, including current technology like the Lark sleep tracker or biometric bracelets that connect wearers with their devices.
  • Next, embedded devices — “gadgets that include computing processors and sensors, such as refrigerators, coffee machines, and other Web-enabled devices” — are expected to become more popular, allowing the remote use of devices.
  • “Epps also sees ‘surfaces,’ or larger interactive displays that rely on multi-touch, voice and gesture input, facial recognition, near-field communication (NFC) signals and any other manner of wireless technologies and sensors,” explains the article.
  • Screens will be reinvented, made flexible to be folded, rolled up or flexed and will come in all shapes and sizes.
  • Lastly, Epps predicts mini-projectors to make advances, allowing users to manipulate interactive projections in 3D space.
  • “The most successful products will work with other products — for example, wearables that talk to smartphones and TVs; surfaces that are activated by the presence of your smartphone,” Epps said. “We’re living in a multi-device, multi-connection world, and the best experiences will be those that work across devices and platforms.”

Watch It: Startup Launches Movie Queue that Works Across Platforms

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December 14, 2011
  • Plexus Entertainment has launched a beta-version of its new movie-bookmarking service called “Watch It” that allows users “to keep track of movies they’re interested in, where those movies are playing, and to be proactively notified of all the different ways to view those films,” reports TechCrunch.
  • The post describes the service as “a Netflix queue for movies on the Web.” In addition to being a stand-alone site, Watch It buttons have launched on film sites, social media pages, industry trade publications and more.
  • “From theaters to streaming movies on demand from Amazon Instant Video, VUDU, and iTunes, the Watch It button enables users to create and maintain personalized queues of movies they want to see, with a range of tools for sorting and filtering those movies that they’ve queued. Watch It is also leveraging social networking by allowing users to share their movie choices with friends via Facebook Connect,” TechCrunch explains.
  • The service also has the ability to provide valuable analytics for movie marketers and promoters and can be used for reader engagement and a source of commerce with the easily embeddable button.

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.

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