Belkin announced three new products this week designed to streamline home theater configurations and deliver HD content wirelessly.
The company’s new $250 ScreenCast AV 4 wirelessly connects up to four home theater devices (such as a Blu-ray player) to an HDTV via a transmitter connected to the device’s HDMI connection. The transmitter can locate AV equipment up to 100 feet away.
The ScreenCast AV 4 can transmit full-HD 1080p resolution, 3D video, and up to 5.1 channels of surround sound. “The included infrared emitter connects to the ScreenCast AV transmitter and relays the signal from your AV devices’ remote controls, allowing you to use the existing controllers, even when the devices are located in another room,” explains the press release.
In addition to its ScreenCast AV 4, Belkin has unveiled two other new products. “The company’s Universal HDTV Adapter and Universal Wireless AV Adapter, meanwhile, offer up wireless for TVs, making it possible to stream content with dual-band 2.4GHz and 5GHz,” reports Engadget. “The Universal Wireless HDTV Adapter offers up streaming for a single Internet-ready set, while the Universal Wireless AV Adapter works with up to four AV devices. Both are available this month, and will run you $79.99 and $99.99, respectively.”
ESPN has announced an eight-year extension of “Monday Night Football” that includes 3D broadcast rights, expanded NFL studio programming, highlight rights for TV and ESPN.com, continued Spanish language rights, the Pro Bowl, the NFL Draft, and rights to simulcast network coverage on tablet devices through the WatchESPN app.
The deal, which runs from 2014 to 2021, “should help quell ideas that ESPN 3D might be axed after its removal from U-verse,” suggests Engadget.
According to the press release: “The extensive package of NFL rights will fuel the continued growth of ESPN year-round, boosting its core television business while at the same time supporting the company’s ‘best available screen’ strategy with NFL programs on TV, online and on mobile devices via authentication and digital rights.”
The agreement will also lead to “Monday Night Football” celebrating its 50th anniversary season on ESPN in 2020.
FilmFunds, a new venture launching this week at the Toronto International Film Festival, will use a crowdsourcing approach to help determine whether a film or TV show would draw an audience.
FilmFunds’ test group of some 60 million moviegoers will review synopses, trailers, artwork and other marketing materials and vote whether to “Like” a project. The results can help put a project into production and get it completed, distributed and marketed.
According to Variety: “Site divides projects into three categories — materials of projects members can help put into production, completed projects member votes can help get finished or distributed, and a marketing portal where studio pics can gain support and members can recruit friends and pre-sell tickets through websites like Fandango.”
A FilmFunds mobile app provides more information after a user takes a snapshot of a poster, trailer or film title.
The article also references Emotional ID, which “translates real-time facial reactions and emotions during test previews into measurable results.”
The FilmFunds site allows users to enter as a Filmmaker (“Get your projects seen and potentially produced”) or a Fan (“Promote projects and interact with filmmakers”).
According to the site: “FilmFunds enables you to choose what you want to see and then we get it made. Our connections in the industry finalize deals but your vote is the catalyst. The more you participate the bigger the rewards. A few ‘suits’ used to call all the shots. FilmFunds puts YOU in charge. We’re just here to help!”
Amazon has become “the most disruptive company in the media and technology industries,” suggests Wired.
Amazon’s rumored tablet has the potential to be the perfect machine to sell both digital goods delivered immediately or physical goods delivered in two days.
“Why not make an independent movie or television show and release it through Amazon?” asks the article. “Once the video is hosted on Amazon’s servers, it’s available for immediate digital download or streaming through Prime to desktops, tablets or set-top boxes. Both streaming and downloads promise a revenue share for content creators. Customers could buy a Blu-ray or DVD that Amazon burns and ships on demand — no storage, no overhead.”
While some of the content may not prove to be top quality, some of it could be the next Funny Or Die or Channel 101 while dramatically impacting distribution: “The breadth and independence of buying choices could easily differentiate Amazon from traditional studios — or even for those studios themselves, from competing services like Netflix.”
Amazon may also offer its forked Android-based OS as a platform to hardware partners providing a new platform with its own code, app and media stores, cloud services and revamped UI.
“In a year from now,” writes Forrester analyst Sarah Rotman Epps, “we could see a range of ‘Amazon tablets’ made by different hardware manufacturers.”
In its first four days of availability, the PostSecret iTunes app has drawn more than 100,000 users sharing more than 50,000 secrets.
The $1.99 app is an extension of the popular community art project that started with people mailing in postcards containing their secrets and later spawned five New York Times bestselling books and a 2.1 million member online community.
“Sharing a secret and connecting with someone that has a similar secret provides a cathartic release for people to overcome loneliness,” explains creator Frank Warren. “While the PostSecret app allows secret sharers to connect, they are doing so in a safe, anonymous and protected environment where no personal information exchanged.”
Wired.com adds: “At a time when we often don’t know if our connection to our gadgets is pulling us away from actual human interaction or revealing too much about who we are and where we go, creating an app that collects our most intimate secrets and keeps us anonymous — while simultaneously making us feel closer — could prove to be a welcome relief.”
An Android version of the app is expected later this year.
This fall’s TV season may see some shifts in terms of viewership numbers, due in large part to media technology trends, suggests Variety.
As TVs continue to become connected to the Web via Blu-ray players and gaming consoles in more homes, the technology may impact viewing habits and not turn out to be as positive for TV programming as originally envisioned by the industry.
New research from Knowledge Networks suggests users may use their Web-connected TVs to perform other online activities before getting around to watching programming. Variety points out that online access to TV content also provides “the option of using a full-sized TV screen for all sorts of activities and functions previously associated with a computer, from perusing photos to long-distance chatting with relatives to playing games or frequenting chat rooms.”
The article poses a compelling question: “So do programmers have a new threat — one where using the TV doesn’t mean actually watching their content?”
Jaguar Financial Corporation CEO Vic Alboini, an investor in struggling Research In Motion, is urging the BlackBerry maker to consider selling the company. He has recommended that RIM form a committee of independent executives to explore the proposal.
According to the article: “RIM is seeing its once commanding presence in the smartphone market eroded by the likes of Android and Apple’s iOS: where a year ago RIM accounted for 19 percent of the market, second-quarter figures from Gartner put the company’s current share at 12 percent.”
Alboini suggests that selling RIM would maximize the company’s value to investors, who have watched their investments in the Canadian company significantly decline during the last year.
“RIM has been hanging hopes for its future on the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet, as well as a new swath of smartphones expected to land in 2012 based on RIM’s recently-acquired QNX operating system — the same OS used in the PlayBook,” reports Digital Trends. “So far, industry response to the PlayBook has been muted, with many citing its reliance on a BlackBerry handset for email as a major impediment — and U.S. mobile carrier Sprint recently backed out of plans to offer a 4G version of the PlayBook, citing lack of customer interest.”
Dr. Raymond Soneira of DisplayMate Technologies has concluded that current Passive 3D HDTVs provide a better viewing experience than Active Shutter technology, despite the lower retail price and seemingly less-advanced technology.
Dr. Soneira conducted extensive testing between four high-end 3D LCD HDTVs, two with Active Shutter glasses and two with Film Pattern Retarder (FPR) Passive glasses. (The findings are detailed in the Gizmodo post.)
According to Soneira, both technologies have their perceived strengths and weaknesses: “For Active Shutter Glasses the main issues are excessive flicker, image crosstalk and ghosting, insufficient brightness, problems with viewing comfort and cost of the glasses. For Passive Glasses the main issues are questioned resolution and sharpness, restricted viewing distances, angles and positions.”
However, following the shoot-out, Soneira concluded that “Passive Glasses TVs delivered substantially and demonstrably better all around 3D imaging, 3D contrast and sense of 3D depth, better 3D sharpness, better overall 3D picture quality, immersion and realism, and freedom from 3D ghosting, image crosstalk, and flicker.”
The debate over Passive vs. Active Shutter 3D technology has been ramping up since the introduction of Passive 3D, which has led to division within the industry and confusion amongst consumers. Currently, Samsung and Sony manufacture Active Shutter 3D TVs, while LG and Vizio make Passive 3D sets.
An upgraded iHeartRadio will be released by Clear Channel in a few weeks, to be kickstarted by a two-day music festival in Las Vegas.
The service is Clear Channel’s answer to Pandora, which now has more than 100 million users.
A key feature of the new iHeartRadio app will be playlist creation based on an “intelligence platform” from Echo Nest that will reportedly incorporate 5 billion pieces of information collected from 15,000 music blogs.
According to Echo Nest CEO Jim Lucchese, his company has processed 30 million songs in the past 12 months, while Pandora has categorized 800,000 tracks in the past 10 years.
“Echo Nest provides similar technology to MTV, The BBC, MOG and Rhapsody,” reports Radio Ink.
IBM and 3M have announced they will partner to build 100 layer silicon towers that promise a “computer chip 1,000 times faster than today’s fastest microprocessor enabling more powerful smartphones, tablets, computers and gaming devices.”
“That’s a heady claim for a tech that doesn’t yet exist, but is already taking swings at current faux 3D transistors,” comments Engadget.
Under the agreement, IBM will provide its experience in packaging the new processors, while 3M will develop an adhesive that can be applied in batches and allow for heat transfer without damaging logic circuitry.
If successful, the companies would create commercial microprocessors composed of layers of up to 100 chips. According to the press release: “Such stacking would allow for dramatically higher levels of integration for information technology and consumer electronics applications. Processors could be tightly packed with memory and networking, for example, into a ‘brick’ of silicon… The companies’ work can potentially leapfrog today’s current attempts at stacking chips vertically – known as 3D packaging.”
During his bleak forecast of the publishing industry at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, novelist Ewan Morrison suggested the rise of the e-book will mean the end of writers as a profession, as piracy and a demand for steep discounts take over the book industry as it has with music, newspapers, games, porn, photography, telecommunications and home video.
Publishers will no longer be able to provide advances to enable writers to make a decent living and writers will increasingly depend on the “long tail” which cannot support them. Morrison adds that only established writers will prosper.
In 10 to 15 years, he believes the largest “publishers” will be Google, Amazon and Apple.
“The writer will become an entrepreneur with a short shelf life, in a world without publishers or even shelves,” predicts Morrison.
A study of Yahoo’s assets and performance conducted in the past two weeks has led independent directors to conclude a management change was needed. As a result, Carol Bartz, Yahoo’s CEO, was fired and will be replaced on an interim basis by the company’s CFO Tim Morse.
Yahoo’s interest in bidding for Hulu is expected to continue.
The company’s performance has been lackluster and characterized by missteps and high levels of executive turnover under Bartz, resulting in a flat stock price over 2 1/2 years, despite a 60 percent rise in the Nasdaq Composite Index.
“The board hasn’t hired an executive-search firm or financial advisers to help in a strategic review, but is expected to do so soon, said someone familiar with the matter,” reports The Wall Street Journal. “The strategic review isn’t expected to include an evaluation of whether Yahoo should be put up for sale, but will focus on so-called ‘organic’ growth, including the possibility of acquisitions or partnerships, the person added.”
Bartz wrote a memo to her employees Tuesday afternoon: “I am very sad to tell you that I’ve just been fired over the phone by Yahoo’s Chairman of the Board. It has been my pleasure to work with all of you and I wish you only the best going forward.”
Apple claims there are more than 600 U.S. school districts that have at least one classroom where each student is receiving an iPad to use throughout the school day.
The popular tablets feature interactive programs in math, note-taking apps, videos and tutorials on everything from history to foreign languages.
The tablets are reportedly very popular in special education and for those who learn visually.
Textbook publishers are racing to develop curriculum specifically for iPads. Moreover, digital programs are less costly than textbooks and have interactivity and videos as well.
“I don’t want to generalize because I don’t want to insult people who are working hard to make those resources,” says Burlington High (Massachusetts) principal Patrick Larkin of textbooks, “but they’re pretty much outdated the minute they’re printed and certainly by the time they’re delivered. The bottom line is that the iPads will give our kids a chance to use much more relevant materials.”
Dish is expected to introduce a streaming movie service under its Blockbuster brand next month. The move will introduce a competitor to Netflix and coincide with that company’s recently announced price increase.
When Dish acquired Blockbuster’s assets in April for $320 million, it received content rights that it has sought to beef up through discussions with the studios.
“This ought to begin changing the way investors think about Dish,” said Ryan Vineyard, an analyst at RBC Capital Markets. “It goes from being an old-school pay-TV company to launching what could be a really high-growth business.”
Dish currently ranks as the second largest U.S. satellite-TV provider behind DirecTV.
Joshua Schachter, founder of social bookmarking tool Delicious, recently launched a new social media project. “Jig” is a network that Schachter describes as a hub or marketplace for social transactions.
“He said he feels that other social Web services focus too much attention on popular people and topics — rather than more precise, meaningful and useful connections between people,” reports The Wall Street Journal.
The site puts a practical spin on the social-Q-and-A model, with users posting specific problems and soliciting answers from their targeted social graph.
At Jig.com users simply complete the “I need” query in order to start the process. For example, I need a lawyer, I need to lose weight, I need a car rental in Mexico, etc. Once your query has been entered, you have the option of filling in fields for Location and Details.