Posts Tagged ‘Theater’

Consumer Electronics Show 2012

In: Technology

By: Steve Stanfill on Jan 17, 2012 at 5:19 pm

As I write this, the CES 2012 show is in full swing in Las Vegas.  My other duties have precluded my attending this year, but there are a number of technologies that are “up and coming” that might be of interest to our readership:

Gesture and Voice control of Electronic Devices–This seems to be a wave (ahem) of the future.  Samsung showed off a gorgeous TV that used gesture and voice control rather than the conventional remote.  Microsoft Kinect for Windows seems to be gaining some traction as well.  Apple is rumored to be developing a television with a “Siri-like” interface.  All of this actually makes sense.  If we can talk to our cars and our smartphones, it’s just a matter of time before this technology is commoditized to other devices as well.  I will give my personal “tech editor” award to the first company that makes a voice command driven remote that will translate to IR/RF and with older home theatre components.  Now that would be a “universal” remote!  And you wouldn’t have to search for the “light” button!

OLED Televisions–”Organic Light Emitting Diode” sets debuted in several booths this year.  This display technology is very power efficient and allows the design of very thin displays.  This technology has been used in smartphones and tablets for a number of years, and has found its way into the design of large displays.  In theory, display panels could be manufactured less than 1/4″ thick-certainly a conversation piece in anyone’s living room.  I question the practical advantages of such a thin display, in terms of shipping, set up, connectorization, etc.  There are no inherent quality advantages of OLED over currently available technologies, but that said, my sense is that we will see more of this technology in larger displays as manufacturing/logistical challenges are conquered.

Thunderbolt–The Intel “Thunderbolt” connectivity standard appears to be gaining mainstream acceptance.  Thunderbolt boasts incredibly fast data transfer rates, as well as the ability to connect multiple devices with different functions; i.e. an external disc drive and a display monitor in the same I/O port, for example.  Throughput is over 20 times faster than USB 2.0.  Apple’s new laptop line has had Thunderbolt connectivity for a while now, but peripherals and Wintel computers hosting the standard were pretty scarce.  Acer has embraced the standard with its new Aspire Ultrabook computer and both Seagate and Western Digital showed new external drives with the standard embedded. This particular technology becoming more ubiquitous  is a good thing IMHO as this is  a really, really good technology–very user friendly and highly capable.

A couple of notable points–3DTV was not generating the buzz that it did last year, although Samsung and LG, among others, still seem to be committed to the technology.  Most set companies appear to be pushing internet apps into their more mainstream (read: “cheaper”) televisions.  The show was again awash in tablets, just as it was last year.  But market penetration numbers have not changed much.

A great time to be alive, if you’re a gadget guy!

Until next time…

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The Hangover Part 2: Déjà Vu All Over Again

In: Entertainment

By: Sharon Santella on Jun 20, 2011 at 8:38 am

Memorial Day weekend – a time for honoring our past and current soldiers, family BBQs, and of course, the official beginning of summertime movie blockbusters. It is also my birthday. So, every year my husband takes me to see any movie of my choice (in other words, usually movies without aliens or things blowing up).  Last year it was Sex and the City 2. Poor guy. This year I selected a movie that would make us both happy – The Hangover Part 2. Before going, my girlfriend said, “It’s going to be the same as the first one.” My response was, “I hope so! I’ve watched the original about 50 times and it is still funny.”

The Hangover Part 2 didn’t disappoint me, but you really have to understand what you are going to see. A bachelor brunch that turns into one beer on a Thailand beach, which turns into the “wolf pack” sans Doug (Justin Bartha)  waking up in a seedy motel in Bangkok complete with a monkey and the self-proclaimed  international criminal, Mr. Chow (Ken Jeong). The writers took the easy way out and recycled the storyline from the original, except filming the movie in Bangkok instead of Las Vegas. With one outrageous and shocking line after line, it kept me laughing and sometimes screaming through the movie and even the credits. The car chases were stellar and surprising. I often wonder how in the world they (Hollywood) rehearse and film those scenes – especially jumping over a river.  Ed Helms (Stu, the Dentist), Bradley Cooper (Phil: the “wolf pack leader”) and Zack Galifianakis (Alan: the self-proclaimed, “stay at home son”) work perfectly together.

Now, for the record, The Hangover Part 2 is rated “R” and should not be seen by anyone that it is not intended for. Not kidding. Really. Don’t bring anyone to see it under the age of 18. In fact, the theater I went to, was asking for identification from everyone.

This is a sequel and should be watched with that in mind. If you enjoyed the first and understand that the second is a similar script, you will enjoy Part 2 with the over-the-top lines that are simply there to shock and awe. While there aren’t any rumors of a Part 3 and I certainly don’t mean to start any, there is still one person to get married and suffer a hangover – Alan (Zack Galifianakis). We’ll see what the studios do with that one.

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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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High Dynamic Range Video: Part 2

In: Technology

By: Steve Stanfill on Sep 01, 2010 at 8:37 am

Last week we discussed briefly the production of still photographs in high dynamic range.  Just recently, there has been some activity in doing ultra high fidelity video, using all the pieces of hi-def, plus increasing dynamic range and color bit depth.  Whether these technologies will make it into our living rooms in the near future is anybody’s guess, but they probably will see some type of implementation in the long term.

The upside we’ve already covered a bit in last week’s post.  Moving video to a dynamic range that more closely resembles what the eye is capable of perceiving is a good thing.  In the case of TV, it would resemble more “looking out the window” rather than at a TV screen.

The short video sample I posted last week was produced literally as a series of still HDR photographs (processed as I described last week), resembling more time lapse photography (which it truly was) rather than actual video.  If the same technique were to be used to produce video, the camera would need to take at least 3 pictures 24 times a second, or 72 frames per second to equal the current cinema standard of 24 fps.  (See discussion on this frame rate in this previous post.)  Then, that data stream would have to be processed in real time combining the over and under exposures of the same frame into one and sending it down the wire 24 times a second.  That’s alot of processing horsepower, and because of the complexity of the process, I do not think that this technique will ever be used for serious video production.

There are, however, those out there who are experimenting with High Dynamic Range capable CMOS sensors and associated A/D codecs.  There are some prototype sensors out there that are flirting with the 12 f-stop dynamic range specification, which is very close to the dynamic range of the eye.  But even with this vastly simpler technology, because of the additional digital information required, changes will have to be made.

One such camera is in the hands of Professor Alan Chalmers of the University of Warrick, UK.  With a 1080p resolution, his camera produces 24 meg of digital information per frame.  By my calculations, that would mean that a minute of footage would require 36 gig of storage space, and the superfast network architecture to support that storage/transmission.  This is 27 gig more per minute than standard uncompressed 1080p HD video.  Transmission and storage over existing infrastructure would require compression algorithms of nearly 100:1.  (See discussion of video codecs here.) That kind of compression, while theoretically possible, is certain to come with its own artifacts and compromises.

Production would also have to change.  As we all know, some actors and actresses have not benefited from the increased resolution of HD video.  This problem would be exacerbated in HDR.  More care (read money) would also have to be exercised in production of HDR; the guy behind the Rockefeller Center studio window making hand signals will be seen.

I personally hope that some of these technologies do take hold.  Increasing picture resolution through HD technology over the last few years has made a vast difference in the viewing experience for most of us.  I suspect that these next iterations of ultra high fidelity video have the potential to be at least as significant as hi-def has been in the last decade.  Present examples of this technology actually compress the tone-maps to make them viewable within present media constraints.  When/if genuine HDR television comes of age, we will see that HD was just the beginning.

More examples to view

Until next time….

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3D Pundits-Gotta love ‘em

In: Technology

By: Steve Stanfill on Aug 11, 2010 at 8:43 am

In followup to my post last week, Studio Daily, a great web site dedicated to the professional motion picture/audio industry, has posted the latest forecasts for sales of flat panel internet-enabled HDTVs.  Interestingly, from a professional group who has heavily promoted the idea and pushed acceptance of 3DTV, they are now willing to admit that for this year anyway, sales of 3DTV are a bit of a “bust”– 4.2 million 3DTV units contrasted with 27.7 million units of Internet Enabled TV (IETV).

“Despite aggressive promotions from the industry and intense consumer interest generated by the blockbuster Avatar and other titles, the 3D TV market in 2010 will be limited to a small pool of enthusiastic early adopters,” said Riddhi Patel, director and principal analyst for television systems at iSuppli. “In contrast, IETV is entering the mainstream in 2010. This is because 3D is still dealing with a number of barriers, including cost, content availability and interoperability, while IETV provides immediate benefits by allowing TV viewers to access a range of content readily available on the Internet.”

Duh!!  Obviously a true statement, but I get the feeling that the industry in general and content providers specifically would much rather have had 3D enter the mainstream in 2010 rather than that “internet thing” where video has become something of an industry phenomenon.  Loads of “free” (You Tube) and “commercial reduced” content is made available on the internet, ironically by many of the same content providers who extract premium prices for the same content from cable companies and other more traditional distribution mechanisms.  I’m not complaining, particularly as a consumer, but it points out the schizophrenia that is rampant in the business at present.

As I’ve discussed before, 3D will enter the mainstream if and only if it is embraced by a broad consumer spectrum.  My sense is that consumers may not be willing to pay a premium for 3D equipment and content.  I’m already seeing that at my local theatre–it has one screen playing a local 3D release in 3D (at a $3 price premium) and 3 other screens playing the same release in 2D.  Local folks don’t seem that enamored by the experience, particularly at $12+ per ticket.  (Having said that, IMAX has proven that there is a niche for “enhanced” visual experience, and one of my local theatre contacts indicated that there seems to be some customer excitement when those two technologies are combined, even at a $5 price delta.)  The question remains as to whether 3D will be accepted as mainstream, or simply remain a niche for certain content.  Message to industry–if the primary goal of 3D production is to extract additional profit as opposed to truly enhancing the visual experience on appropriate content, good luck on selling that to a broad consumer base.

Until next time….

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