Posts Tagged ‘HDTV’

The State of 3D

In: Technology

By: Steve Stanfill on Aug 19, 2011 at 8:26 am

As we approach the “3/4 mark” for 2011, I thought it would be informative to check up on 3D television technology generally, and where the industry sits at this time.

Just this past week, Sony and Samsung announced a joint initiative to develop common standards for active shutter glasses that would allow interchangeability between televisions made by different manufacturers.  Implicit in this idea would be the potential availability of glasses manufactured by third parties, potentially driving the cost of 3D technology down over time.  In a jointly prepared statement, the companies revealed:

“Panasonic Corporation, Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., Sony Corporation and X6D Limited (XPAND 3D) today announced their intent to collaborate on the development of a new technology standard for consumer 3D active glasses, under the name, “Full HD 3D Glasses Initiative.”

“With this new agreement, the companies intend to work together on the development and licensing of radio frequency (RF) system 3D active glasses technology, including RF system protocols between consumer 3D active glasses and 3D displays such as televisions, personal computers, projectors and 3D theaters with XPAND active shutter glasses.

“The standardization will also include multiple types of infrared (IR) system protocols between 3D active glasses and 3D displays, ranging from the protocols jointly developed by Panasonic and XPAND 3D*, to the proprietary protocols of Samsung and Sony, respectively.”

In my opinion, this is good news for 3D fans.  Certainly anything that standardizes 3D technologies is a positive development, primarily because this standardization potentially lowers the cost of entry.

From a non-technical perspective however, 3D remains a wild card.  Sales rates for 3D televisions this past year have been 1% for the United Kingdom, 2% in Canada, and 5% in the United States.  This is not very encouraging from an industry perspective.  There is some question as to whether these low numbers are the result of “early adopters” holding off for price decreases similar to what happened with HDTV sets, or whether there is just a general lack of enthusiasm for the technology.

A recent study of 400 filmgoers by L Mark Carrier of California State University suggests that 3D technology does not allow viewers to experience more intense emotional reactions, more immersion, or any other potential advantages over their 2D counterparts.  Neither did viewers experience an enhanced ability to recall a film’s details.  Carrier’s study also suggested that watching films in 3D increased the risk of eyestrain, headache, or other vision trouble by a factor of 3.

“All other things being equal, I would say you’re increasing your chances of having some discomfort,” said Carrier at the America Psychological Association’s annual meeting on August 7th, 2011. “There aren’t going to be any benefits in terms of understanding the movie better or making the movie more meaningful, as far as we can tell,” he added.

This research potentially sheds light on why adoption rates for 3D have been so glacial.  I personally believe that another reason is simply that 3D should be an artistic tool for a gifted filmmaker to use with a light touch.  Implicit in that statement is the idea that not all films should use the technology–2D is the best choice for most of the quality content produced these days.  Simply shooting in 3D to get a short term financial hit from a theater release is a bad idea, and will backfire big time if the practice continues.  In fact, with one or two exceptions, 3D releases have not offered the box office boost producers were hoping for over the past 18 months or so.  It would be a shame if a potentially legitimate artistic tool would fall prey to misuse and overuse, souring a public already saturated in empty spectacle.

Until next time….

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Motion-JPEG2000 vs. H.264 (MPEG4)

In: Technology

By: Steve Stanfill on May 17, 2011 at 4:09 pm

Once in a while I come across a technical debate that fires me up.  Usually I’m just mildly so.   I’ve always subscribed to the idea that there are always alternatives to “the way we’ve always done it”, and generally I find that thinking outside the box is a virtue as an engineer.  There are times, though, when manufacturers or others in the business push ideas or standards with the primary purpose of selling new equipment, rather than to enable a substantive improvement over the status quo.

For several years, the movie industry has used a digital video codec called “Motion-JPEG2000″ to transport digital files of first run movies to theatre facilities.  It’s been several years since actual “film” has been used in the most modern theatre complexes.  Older projections systems do still exist, but they are a dying breed.  Most modern theatre projection systems are digital, and use data much in the same manner as your digital television set to produce picture and sound.  Motion-JPEG is a very good codec, particularly at high bit rates with mild compression, and this is why the movie industry uses it so extensively.  A single download to a movie theatre is then shown many times with very high quality.  This codec however,  does less well at higher compression levels when trying to conserve bandwidth or disc space.

The television industry has largely used “MPEG2″ or “MPEG4″ compression for distribution, chosen largely by embedded technology in a given system.  Most distribution companies (cable, satellite, or fiber) have been moving to the newer “MPEG4″ technology because it’s a very effective codec that has high quality and lower bandwidth requirements. (See the discussions on MPEG here and MPEG4 specifically here).

Now a number of manufacturers are strongly proposing moving the JPEG standard into television distribution as well–a bad idea on several counts.  First, Motion-JPEG, while a great standard, is not materially better than the H.264 MPEG4 codec at the moderate levels of compression required to minimize bandwidth constraints or conserve digital storage space.  Second, the distribution model is fundamentally different in that cable and satellite systems carry multiple digital streams in real time, thereby requiring judicious use of available bandwidth.  Third, adopting this standard would instantly obsolete a great deal of the infrastructure present in the television distribution industry.

If the JPEG codec were a quantum leap in quality or efficiency, that would be a different story.  But this doesn’t appear to be the case.  Opinions vary, of course (see this highly technical discussion if you’re interested), but in my opinion, this appears to be a technology in search of a new home, and I’m not sure the landlord is on board.

Until next time…

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Evolutionary vs. Revolutionary Technologies

In: Technology

By: Steve Stanfill on Apr 26, 2011 at 4:16 pm

In 2006, Canon and Toshiba formed a joint venture to develop and produce “surface-conduction electron-emitter display” (SED) technology.  The technology held lots of promise; it had the ability to produce a bright, contrasty picture with very low motion latency and virtually no viewing angle “fall-off”.  It also held the promise to use much less power than either LCD technology or plasma, the two primary competitive technologies of the time.  I had the opportunity to see an SED display at the CES show in 2006, and the picture was stunning–head and shoulders above any of the mainstream display technologies of the time.

Canon opened a state of the art research and development facility near Himeji, Japan to develop and produce this new technology.  Four years later, the production facility was closed and the promising technology was dead.

What happened?  Certainly the 2008 recession and various legal troubles Canon encountered were factors.  But the primary reason that SED technology failed to reach the marketplace is that the competing LCD display technology was incrementally improving to the point that, by the time SED was ready for the market, the advantages of the technology were largely moot. LCD panels had seen significant improvements in brightness, contrast, viewing angle, and response time; further,  mass production of LCD panels had lowered the price of entry to flat panel television very significantly.  Even with a superior technology, Canon felt there was no economic or business incentive to continue down that road.

This points out the benefits of “evolutionary” rather than “revolutionary” engineering–refining products and services out of established technologies that meet the needs of consumers.  Certainly coaxial-cable based technologies fall in this category.  “Cable” has been around a long time…but no one would argue that today’s digital pictures, phone services, and high speed internet access are the same animal now that they were even a decade ago, even though the backbone technologies haven’t changed much.  Indeed, “cable based” services have enjoyed positive evolutionary development, and will continue to do so.

Next time you drive your internal combustion engined based auto, view a Blu-Ray disc, shower in softened water, use your microwave oven, use your iPad 2, etc. think about the “evolutionary” aspect of product development and its influence on our lives.

Until next time…

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Ultra HD Television–A CES peek at a new technology

In: Technology

By: Steve Stanfill on Jan 12, 2011 at 8:00 am

Well, the CES show in Las Vegas is now in the history books.  As predicted last week, there were lots of 3D video demos and lots of new “tablet” computers on display.  Lots of “me too” plays in both of these areas, as most thought there would be.

One technology that had some floor space this year was Ultra HD video.  While this technology has been “on the books” for a while now (originally proposed by NHK of Japan and the BBC of the United Kingdom in the early part of the last decade), it’s had some trouble being embraced by technology manufacturers, although that appears to be changing.

First, let me explain briefly what UHD is as the proposed standard–ultra HD is essentially a similar standard to the current 1080P standard in that it embraces 60 frames/sec, a 16:9 screen format, and a progressive scan technology.  The big difference is the number of pixels displayed.  The UHD standard is sometimes known as “4K”, referring to a horizontal line resolution of 4320 pixels, or four times the horizontal resolution of 1080P. The total pixel resolution of a UHD display is 4320 X 7680, a total pixel count of 33,177,600 pixels.

Now, as you can imagine, this type of resolution would result in an absolutely stunning picture, particularly in large displays greater than say, 60″ or so.  The problem is simply that the data flow required to sustain an Ultra HD picture is staggering.  Uncompressed, UHD requires a 24 gigabit per second data stream to sustain video and audio at the proposed standard (10-bit pixel depth).  Said another way, a 20 minute program would require 4 terabytes of storage and a fiber channel technology to sustain throughput to the display at 24 gig per second.

Now these specs are certainly not as scary as when the standard was first proposed, but support technologies to sustain this standard aren’t really mainstream yet either.  With mpeg 4 compression, it would be possible to compress the data stream to somewhere between 250Mb and 600Mb per second, depending on the content–that’s still a lot of bandwidth and/or storage to sustain a program of any length.  Current cable, satellite and fiber systems to homes do not presently support this type of throughput (even compressed), and terrestrial “over the air” broadcast would be out of the question.

All that said, Toshiba, LG, Panasonic, and others demonstrated UHD displays at the CES show, and created quite a buzz.  Most of these displays were massive– for example, the Panasonic version was 152″, and of course, in these very large displays the advantage of the additional pixel count was obvious.

There was one related technology at the show that bears mention.  Sigma Designs demonstrated a “VXP chipset” that will take a full HD (1080P) picture and extrapolate the extra pixel information required for a UHD display.  This is something like the “upconvert” algorithms that are used in modern Blu-ray players to enhance the quality of standard def DVD content to something resembling 1080P.  The demo was pretty stunning according to at least one correspondent.  Sigma plans to make this technology available to manufacturers in the 3rd quarter of 2011, so this will bear watching to see if the technology is widely adopted and lives up to the hype.

High Dynamic Range Video, VXP processing, and/or Ultra High Def…the next few years in video look to be very interesting indeed.

Until next time….

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Last Minute Gift Ideas for Geeks

In: Technology

By: Steve Stanfill on Dec 15, 2010 at 8:53 am

In the spirit of “Tech gifts, Pt. One and Pt. Two“, I thought I would offer a couple of last minute ideas for those geeks on your list who love technology.  By the way, I consider myself a “geek” and wear the term proudly.  The only difference between a “geek” and an “older geek” (me) is that I’ve finally gained the fashion sense not to wear a pocket protector.  Still have all the pens, but if they wear out the shirt, they wear out the shirt and I buy a new one ;)

Here goes:

Multi-tools–Any true geek loves the ability to fix something on-the-spot.  This “MacGuyver” like ability requires either hauling around a toolkit, or an effective “multitool” which can be carried in your pocket or small belt pouch.  Here are my favorites:

Leatherman tool–comes in all kinds of sizes, capabilities and price ranges.  Shop at Amazon or direct from Leatherman

Swiss Army–Been around forever–still build quality tools.  Generally lighter and less robust than Leatherman, they have the advantage of (generally) being small enough that you really can carry them in your pocket.  Comes in all sizes, styles and price ranges–One actually has well over 100 functions and costs around $1400!  Other than the $1400 model (which I would not recommend regardless of your budget), these are widely distributed from a number of retail outlets. My favorites are these:

Victorinox Swiss Army Champion–about $40

Victorinox Swiss Army Trekker–about $30

Pens–Geeks like pens and mechanical pencils to fill up all those pocket protectors.  Preferably Japanese or German, and the more industrial looking, the better.

Portable Hard Drives–Pocket drives that use the USB port on a laptop for the power source are terrific for moving data around from computer to computer.  Flash drives generally don’t have the capacity to satisfy any self respecting geek’s data needs.  Look for a size of at least 500 Gb or greater and stick with a well known brand–Western Digital, Seagate, Toshiba, and Maxtor.  Expect to pay between $60~$100.

Killer Remotes–managing all the remote controls in a typical geek’s life can be truly daunting.  Universal programmable remotes can consolidate all that remote clutter into a single device–one that will operate the TV, sound system, Blu-Ray, and WOW! DVR, as well as any other device in the home theatre.  The Logitech “Harmony” series gets great reviews generally.  Be sure to purchase one that will “learn” codes from existing remotes.  It will save lots of time in set up.

Until next time…

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