According to South Korean business publication Maeil, LG will launch its first 55-inch OLED TV in May for about $8,000. The unit was originally slated for availability during the second half of 2012.
New OLED TVs from LG and Samsung drew a great deal of attention at CES in January.
If Maeil is correct, LG’s launch will beat competitor Samsung to market while capitalizing on the timing of the upcoming summer Olympic games.
“What TV manufacturers desperately need right now is a luxury product with some big-time margin,” suggests Digital Trends. “The price erosion that has taken place with TVs over the past few years has brought the public to expect bargain prices, even on top-tier plasma and edge-lit LED displays. In order to justify charging big-time bucks again, the performance margin needs to grow proportionately. OLED provides that opportunity.”
In spite of larger and faster hard drives, digital tape has not gone away. In fact, next generation tape drives are capable of 525MB/sec and a price of $25/terabyte, which is less than one quarter the cost of a hard drive.
The Ultrium Linear Tape Open specification will ultimately have 32TB cartridges and 1.2GB/sec throughput.
LT0-5, which currently supports up to 3GB compressed data, and the Linear Tape File System (LTFS) together allow tape to handle demanding new applications, such as cloud storage, Big Data and streaming media. LTFS allows partitioning of the tape so one can quickly find the tape’s contents on partition 0 and locate the data on partition 1. This allows one to keep data in a near-line environment.
Tapes are increasingly being used by media companies to efficiently store master quality video. Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures Entertainment, National Geographic, The New York Times and the NCAA are using Thought Equity, a cloud-based storage service whose system uses an LTO-5 tape library with LTFS to handle more than 10 petabytes of data.
The Amazon Appstore is upgrading to version 2.3 after having reached the one year marker.
“The update raises the filesize cap on APK application bundles from 20MB to 50MB — a welcome increase that matches what’s available from Google’s own Play store,” reports The Verge. “Unlike Play, however, Amazon’s Appstore doesn’t support secondary downloads, which bring the actual maximum Play download size to a much higher 4GB.”
The update also resolves the problem previously experienced of app update notifications popping up even after being disabled.
The Amazon Appstore is only available in the U.S. and has far fewer apps than Play, but “the frequent sales and free apps of the day definitely make it worth checking out,” the post states.
In 2011, Google made $38 billion in total revenue, mostly from its advertising on PCs which earns the company about $30 per PC annually. In contrast, the company’s mobile OS, Android has made less than $550 million for Google since 2008, coming out to around $10 per handset.
The Internet giant offers the OS free to smartphone manufacturers and makes money from advertisements and app sales (a 30 percent cut on all Android devices).
Google has said that mobile will be central in its future and reported “seeing a huge positive revenue impact from mobile, which has grown 2.5 times in the last 12 months to a run rate of over $2.5 billion,” said CEO Larry Page in an October earnings call. Ironically, Google made more than four times as much revenue from Apple devices that employ its Maps and Google Search than it did from Android in the same time period.
These figures became public in a damages offer with Oracle in anticipation of a patent and copyright infringement trial. Google has offered to pay Oracle a percentage of revenues from Android amounting to $2.8 million.
Netflix has faced a lot of ups and downs in recent months and is often viewed by studios as “the service that killed their cash cow named DVD,” Mobiledia reports.
However, a new report from IHS predicts online video viewing will surpass DVD consumption, taking over 57 percent of all movie watching in 2012. The transition suggests that studios may want to reconsider their aversion to Netflix, at least for TV.
Recent Nielsen ratings found that shows like “How I Met Your Mother” and “Mad Men” saw a sizable boost in ratings after having been available on Netflix. “How I Met Your Mother” is in its seventh season, so a jump in ratings is typically rare.
“Netflix’s ability to increase the ratings of shows that have been on for years makes it much more attractive for studios to strike licensing deals with the company. A show with higher ratings makes the program much more valuable to networks, putting more money into studios’ pockets,” the article states.
“Netflix is not raking in the money for studios the way DVDs once did, but the number of people flocking to it and similar services is going up, while the number of people buying movies at their local retailers is falling,” Mobiledia reports. “Consumers’ rising interest in watching movies online makes it clear that studios will not be able to cling to DVD and Blu-ray sales forever. At some point they’ll at least have to consider the question, ‘Is Netflix the answer?'”
A new patent filed by Apple suggests Siri could be coming to MacBooks or even third party devices.
The “Voice Control System” patent has the iPhone 4S connecting wirelessly to notebooks, laptops and third party devices such as cameras.
Siri’s popularity on the iPhone 4S has led to many asking when the functionality will be available for Mac computers. If the patent filing is any indication, Siri will at least be able to control a Mac via the iPhone.
“Apple may well use this system with the iPhone 5, but judging by the patent image… they could bring it to the iPhone 4S before the next level iPhone is released later this year,” reports SlashGear. “This type of generational jump in functionality is generally reserved for new device releases, so perhaps it’s going to come with the next version of the Mac computer instead. Perhaps look to the MacBook Air-thin MacBook Pros of this mid-2012 instead.”
Nuance Communications has become a leader in voice technology. Already in use for Apple’s Siri, the company is developing voice technology to command televisions, cars, computers, and smart devices such as coffee makers, refrigerators, thermostats, alarm systems and appliances.
Nuance’s Dragon Go voice assistant app for Android and iPhone, which has been downloaded several million times, listens to voice commands regarding mobile entertainment, streaming media, social networking, and shopping.
It is actively working directly with websites like Spotify, Yelp, YouTube, AccuWeather, ESPN, Facebook, Fandango, LiveNation, Pandora, Twitter, Wikipedia and others. The app bypasses search engines like Google and Bing, which are both developing their own voice command systems.
Nuance is also working with major corporations to develop voice-enabled information systems. In healthcare, a Nuance system can scan dictated doctor’s notes for key information. US Airways has created “Wally,” a voice operated customer service that can anticipate and respond to requests for flight information.
LG will soon introduce a Dragon TV-enabled voice-command system that can find programs, make calls via Skype, shop on Amazon and even allow viewers to update their Facebook and Twitter accounts.
Smartphones have had a significant impact on Internet radio usage, which has increased more than 30 percent in the past year.
“The weekly usage of Internet radio (which includes both the online streams of terrestrial broadcasters and streams from pure-play streamers such as Pandora) has increased from 22 percent of Americans 12+ in 2011 to 29 percent in 2012,” Tom Webster of Edison Research wrote on his blog.
“This is a number that we are accustomed to seeing grow bit by bit each year, but this is the largest year-over-year increase we’ve seen since we began tracking this stat in 1998,” he added.
More specifics will be available when Edison and Arbitron release the 20th edition of “The Infinite Dial: Navigating Digital Platforms” in April.
“Smartphones have changed the game here from music as active entertainment choice to music as the quite literal soundtrack to your life,” says Webster.
A new CNBC survey suggests that more than half of all U.S. households own at least one Apple product.
“Of the households that own Apple products, they own an average of three, making the overall ownership rate of the American public 1.6 Apple products per household. About 25 percent plan to buy another Apple product in the next year,” reports Mashable.
“The survey shows Apple buyers tend to skew male, young, with higher education and incomes (77 percent of households making $75,000 or more have an Apple product),” adds the post. “If you have kids, the likelihood of being an Apple household grows — 61 percent compared with 48 percent if you don’t.”
CNBC polled 836 Americans during three days in March to conduct the study, and suggests the margin of error is plus or minus 3.4 percent.
Although Netflix isn’t bringing back the dreaded Qwikster concept completely, the company is taking steps to differentiate its DVD-by-mail rental business from its unlimited video streaming service.
Some customers can no longer rate and review movies and TV shows on the main Netflix listing anymore. They are instead redirected to the solely-DVD site, “dvd.netflix.com.”
The move looks to divide DVD from instant, but separates the reviews for the same movies across two different sites.
“Over the last week subscribers have also noticed that searching for titles that are only available for rental as a DVD, won’t show up in the results,” VentureBeat reports. “Instead, search results return unrelated streaming titles. The recommendation interaction between DVDs, unreleased titles, and streaming titles has apparently also been altered.”
“The market for night classes and online instruction in programming and Web construction, as well as for iPhone apps that teach, is booming,” reports The New York Times. “Those jumping on board say they are preparing for a future in which the Internet is the foundation for entertainment, education and nearly everything else.”
The article cites a number of interesting new start-ups such as Udacity, Treehouse and General Assembly (among others), that are hoping to meet this growing need.
“But at the center of the recent frenzy in this field is Codecademy, a start-up based in New York that walks site visitors through interactive lessons in various computing and Web languages, like JavaScript, and shows them how to write simple commands,” explains the article.
More than a million people have registered for Codecademy since it was first introduced last summer, and it got a big boost when Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced his New Year’s resolution to use the service to learn code. The free site, which plans to earn revenue by connecting new programmers with recruiters and start-ups, has raised close to $3 million in financing.
“Inasmuch as you need to know how to read English, you need to have some understanding of the code that builds the Web,” said Sarah Henry, an investment manager from Pennsylvania who recently took several classes through New York-based Girl Develop It. “It is fundamental to the way the world is organized and the way people think about things these days.”
Apple iPhones, which cost about one percent of a 1970s mini-cam, are being deployed by news organizations for field reporting.
Gannett, for example, has purchased over 1,000 iPhone 4S smartphones for its reporters and photographers, both at local TV stations and newspapers, which are collaborating on stories.
The iPhone was selected because there are a number of apps and accessories available including iMovie, Splice, Brightcove Mobile Upload, QIK, mCAM, Steadicam Smoothee, Camera Table Dolly, LiveAction Camera Grip, Kogeto Dot and Manfrotto Pro Monopod.
“During a recent Florida State-Duke basketball game, Gannett’s Tallahassee Democrat switched live between nine different video streams, highlighting on-court strategy with Telestrator-style graphics,” reports TVNewsCheck.
The iPad is also being deployed for news production both in the field and in the studio. Some of the more popular iPad apps being used include OradControl, VizReporter and Avid Studio.
Best Buy’s $1.7 billion loss for the last quarter of its fiscal year will lead it to close 50 “big-box” stores, cut 400 corporate jobs, and reduce infrastructure and non-product costs.
“The retail chain hadn’t named the stores in question, but expected these and other cost savings to cut $250 million in 2013 and $300 million just for retail by the 2015 target,” reports Electronista.
The company, however, is still moving ahead with 100 Best Buy Mobile stores, some 50 of which will open in China.
Best Buy notes that pressure from Internet sales and less focus on TV affected their results. It is responding by introducing a Connected Store concept where customers can get price comparisons via Web kiosks, staff will be trained in product integration and there will be instant checkout similar to an Apple Store.
Verizon is seeking a partnership with Comcast, Time Warner, Bright House Networks and Cox Communications. The $3.9 billion deal to buy spectrum licenses would also allow Verizon and the cable companies to sell each other’s products.
One such product would include a mobile TV service that could be offered by the end of the year.
Lowell McAdam, Verizon Communications CEO, is hoping to offer a mobile service where consumers could pick the content they want rather than paying for bundles of channels. McAdam says media companies have acknowledged the need to offer consumers more choice like an a la carte service.
Verizon is looking to have content providers pay for the amount of data consumed by streaming video.
“Critics have called the deals anti-competitive, charging that they signal a truce between longtime rivals,” reports the Wall Street Journal.
Comcast may be ignoring the concept of net neutrality as it looks to make its Xfinity TV app more competitive on Xbox Live.
Going up against top streaming services like Netflix, Hulu Plus, HBO Go and Vudu, the Comcast app is setting itself apart by offering free data usage when streaming via Xbox 360.
Comcast allows its customers 250GB of data per month before they charge overage fees. VentureBeat says this cap is “generous,” enabling about 80 hours of content on streaming services as well as regular Internet use. While using Xfinity on other devices or Xfinity.com will still use up the allotted monthly data, the Xbox Live app doesn’t contribute to the data cap.
Comcast has said that “since the content is being delivered over our private IP network and not the public Internet, it does not count against a customer’s bandwidth cap,” differentiating it from other usage that relies on “public” Internet.
VentureBeat writer Tom Cheredar suggests the move “takes the concept of net neutrality, and throws it right out of the window,” and that the private network justification seems like a bit of a stretch.
“I’m not sure I buy this logic. Arguably, Netflix also has its own ‘private’ network that is only accessible through the ‘public’ Internet,” he said.