HDTV disappointments

Posted by Unknown Minggu, 31 Desember 2006 0 komentar

I spent a chunk of time looking at HDTVs in Best Buy and the Sony shop yesterday, and wasn't impressed. Overall, what I saw on the displays looked full of compression artefacts, with poor colour. Most of them were 720p displays, with the 1080p ones starting about $4,000. It seem there is some buyer's remorse around too, as customers grapple with upconversion and, no doubt, with HDCP's deliberate degradation. It sounds like Pip Coburn's warning in The Change Function - that flat panel TV's are a no-brainer, but HDTV complexity could mess things up with extra perceived pain of adoption - was more accurate than Mark Cuban's 'HDTV beats the net' rant.

I also had a look round the Apple store yesterday, and saw excellent HD quality on a $2000 HD iMac, and a $999 23" Cinema display (not to mention the $2000 30" display which is way beyond 1080p in size). Where did I get the HD content? Over the net - The Harry Potter 5 trailer and Rocketboom's HD edition. The problem of connecting computers to HD screens is a mess, but it is one of the media industries' own creation, as they insisted on a new connector with DRM in the cables. Another friend of mine is working on some interesting new projection systems that may mean that all the computers will need is a white wall to point at.


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Happy New Year...

Posted by Unknown 0 komentar
...to the Line Islands of Kiribati.

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AT&T's bait and switch

Posted by Unknown Jumat, 29 Desember 2006 0 komentar
Susan Crawford explains the fraudulent concession to neutrality from AT&T in an attempt to get their merger approved before the year-end. The small print excludes their 'IPTV' service from neutrality, which was the point at issue. I have already covered the underlying flaw in their special pleading; what we see is a bizarre coalition of legacy TV and legacy networking to sacrifice the low-latency traffic paths we need for gaming, two-way conversations and other communication servcies for the goal of replicating the 'you have to watch it right now' TV experience we are rejecting in droves now we have a choice.
Update: The FCC approved it anyway, and watered down the neutrality commitment further:
AT&T made a series of voluntary commitments that are enforceable by the Commission and attached as an Appendix. These conditions are voluntary, enforceable commitments by AT&T but are not general statements of Commission policy and do not alter Commission precedent or bind future Commission policy or rules.

Commissioner Adelstein seemed to think there was a new policy here:
Most significantly, the Commission takes a long-awaited and momentous step in this Order by requiring the applicants to maintain neutral network and neutral routing in the provision of their wireline broadband Internet access service. This provision was critical for my support of this merger and will serve as a “5th principle,” ensuring that the combined company does not privilege, degrade, or prioritize the traffic of Internet content, applications or service providers, including their own affiliates. Given the increase in concentration presented by this transaction – particularly set against the backdrop of a market in which telephone and cable operators control nearly 98 percent of the market, with many consumers lacking any meaningful choice of providers – it was critical that the Commission add a principle to address incentives for anti-competitive discrimination. Defining the exact parameters of any neutrality provision is, almost by definition, complex and difficult. The precise contours, scope, and exclusions in this provision reflect compromise and a predictive judgment about how, in the words of Prof. Tim Wu, “to preserve the most attractive features of the Internet as it now exists.” The work is not done, however. It is critical that we remain vigilant and continue to explore comprehensive approaches to this issue; but I expect this significant step will inform the debate in the coming months and years. I appreciate the efforts of the many diverse groups and individuals who have contributed to this effort and, in particular, I want to thank Commissioner Copps for his leadership on this issue and for his commitment to the effort to devise a carefully-crafted condition.

Looks like he got bait and switched too.

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Starship Troupers

Posted by Unknown Kamis, 28 Desember 2006 0 komentar

John Scalzi and Brad DeLong have kicked off a serious debate about the different interpretations of Starship Troopers by Heinlein and Verhoeven. However, I think they are both neglecting the important critical interpretation by Sarah Brightman and Hot Gossip .

One reason Torchwood has been disappointing is that it's "Dr Who with shagging" premise isn't really enough to sustain it. Camp and sexist as it was, the original Star Trek did try to grapple with moral and societal dilemmas. A big part of the enormous power of the revived Dr Who series is that the Doctor lives by a moral code and stands by Rose without yielding to his temptations. They have you feeling the unrequited love of Madame de Pompadour and sympathy with a wounded Dalek. Torchwood's aimless bed-hopping is more like Katy Manning posing with a dalek.


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James Brown memorialised in video

Posted by Unknown Rabu, 27 Desember 2006 0 komentar
The death of James Brown yesterday has shown up in a surge of blog interest - he dominates the Technorati popular videos chart today, and is the top search and is a top tag (and there are lots of videos tagged James Brown too). Kevin Burton's tool is showing some Brown videos too, though he is indexing a smaller pool of bloggers; I'd look at the Megite one too if it were public.

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Video WTF

Posted by Unknown Jumat, 22 Desember 2006 0 komentar
Whenever digital video engineers gather together, there is a mutual camaraderie based on the woes of supporting the NTSC standard. I suspect with a few drinks in them they'd form a mob and string up whomever came up with the frame rate of 30000/1001 and drop-frame timecode. However, the sins of our video forefathers pale into insignificance compared to what is going on with DRM video in Windows Vista.

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Podcasts by Royal Appointment

Posted by Unknown Kamis, 21 Desember 2006 0 komentar
Last week at a bloggers gathering in London I was commenting that Private Eye had 3 cartoons about podcasts in, including one about listening to the Queen's podcast on Christmas Day, so clearly the stuff we were doing is becoming mainstream. Then today Dave Winer points out that the Queen does have a podcast. Here's the feed link. It's come a long way since Bloggercon 2003. And even longer since I got to line up the Nagra tape recorders for the recording of the 1988 Queens Speech while I was at the BBC.

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