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…

It appears that one of our competitors, Time Warner Cable has gotten into some hot water by offering an iPad app to customers for viewing content they pay for in their homes. Apparently, Viacom, Discovery, and Fox sent cease and desist letters to TWC, demanding that their content be pulled from the iPad application they began offering last month.  Time Warner countered with legal maneuvers of its own, filing a request for summary judgement in a U.S. District Court in southern New York.

In a statement, Time Warner Cable’s executive VP and General Counsel said, “We have steadfastly maintained that we have the rights to allow our customers to view this programming in their homes, over our cable systems, without artificial limits on the screens they can use to do so, and we are asking the court to confirm our view.”  Further, TWC launched the very next day an additional 17 channels from content providers who apparently had no problem with the iPad app Time Warner released.

It appears to me that technology should trump the “old school” thinking on this issue.  If the assumed goal of a content provider is to have as many eyes as possible viewing content it produces, why would it want to limit any screen that a paying customer owns from viewing content ?  Go figure.

Regardless of your point of view on this issue, it promises to be hotly debated for the next several weeks.  This issue is also emblematic of many other issues where technology that is widely embraced by the public ends up trumping industry policy.

When the VCR was first introduced many years ago, the video content creation industry reacted by petitioning the US Congress to ban the devices outright.  When that failed, they tried to push through a “tax” on blank video tapes that would discourage their use.  Virtually the same playbook was read in the audio content industry when digital audio recorders (DAT) were introduced in the early ’90’s.  Complex legal maneuvers, copy protection schemes, petitions to government authority, and ultimately the technologies themselves came and went.  None of the histrionics of a slightly paranoid industry made it off the block.

Here’s the thing.  Most people understand that the creation of quality content costs money, and are willing to pay for quality entertainment, whether music or video production. Those very very few that are bent on bootlegging or infringing copyrights will likely find a way to do so, in spite of DRM protections.

Until next time….

In light of customer feedback on this issue, our executive team revisited various issues surrounding the encryption of digital content. Since I’m a technical guy, I’m not sure precisely what went on “behind the scenes”, but the determination was made that WOW! digital signals in the basic tier will no longer be encrypted in any market post digital transition.

This means that if you have a digital television with a digital QAM tuner, a DTA will not be required to receive the basic cable tier of channels that was historically transmitted on the analog spectrum.  This change has already been effected in the Columbus market, and will be implemented in the Cleveland market within the next two weeks.  Michigan, Indiana, and Illinois customers have not yet gone through any phase of the digital transition, so digital channels there will be unencrypted from the “get go”.

I have included a channel grid for the Columbus market below.  Most of the new QAM tuner televisions will display the actual WOW channel number, but some older digital sets will display the actual RF channel followed by an MPEG ID shown in the grid below.  A fewer number of older sets will display the RF number followed by a number internally generated by the set itself, indicated by a “?” in the grid below. Customers may need to perform channel “rescans” after channels become available, also indicated in the grid below.

We appreciate your patience with this process.  As I’ve indicated before, this is necessary to provide the channel line ups that our customers request, including new HD channels.

Until next time….

If you’re a movie lover, there are some great new movies for the entire family premiering soon including Shrek Forever After; Despicable Me; and Alpha and Omega.

There’s even more OnDemand choices with HBO OnDemand, Starz OnDemand or ShowtimeOnDemand if you have those premium channels.

For more information on WOW! OnDemand and what’s premiering, visit our VOD page by clicking here.

Happy Holidays!

In an effort to help those of you who may have technology gifts in mind, I will post some recommendations in some of the major categories of technology over the next few weeks.  I hope that you will find it useful.

Digital Cameras

Lots of choices here, and I admit quite a bit of professional bias.  I like Nikon and Canon, folks that have been making photography equipment for decades, and who have long established reputations in film and digital.  But if you read online reviews, certainly Sony and Casio (names we associate with “other” electronics) have some digital camera offerings out there which are very good, and in many cases, less expensive than the traditional Japanese camera brands.

A quick word about resolution–there is a perception out there that “higher (more megapixels) is better”, and, in general, that is true.  Like all technical generalizations, though, it doesn’t tell the whole story.  A “high megapixel” camera will not necessarily yield better pictures than a well designed 10 megapixel camera.  The more pixels you squash onto a CMOS chip, the more the designer has to work to mitigate digital noise and other artifacts that reduce the fidelity of the image.  The primary advantage of a camera that captures more than 10 megapixels is that it allows you “crop” an image to enhance a subject and still have enough image information to create a usable 8×10 or 11×14 print–this is not important to all users.  The cameras selected below all happen to be greater than 10 megapixels, and are well designed examples of  “high megapixel” sensors.  But if you find a well regarded brand at 10 megapixels or so at the right price, it’s likely that you would be very satisfied with the image quality if you’re not into image cropping or other software enhancement of your digital images.

So here goes:

Compact Point and Shoot–

Nikon S8000 or S8100(newer version just released)-  This is a very nice 14 megapixel camera that does everything pretty well.  A bit expensive in its class, but has a full 10X zoom with effective image stabilization technology.  Doesn’t have an articulated LED display which would be a frustration to some, but does all the basics pretty well, and does have Nikon optics.  You will need a SD memory card (think 16 Gig) as the built in memory will only take about 5 pictures at full quality.  Street price ~$240

Canon SX210IS- This is a great little 14 megapixel camera that again, does everything pretty well.  Has the advantage of allowing manual control for those that want to experiment, or need to handle a difficult photographic situation. No articulated display–does have famous Canon optics.  Street price ~$250

Entry Level DSLR

My favorite here for a “prosumer” DSLR is the Canon EOS Rebel T2i.  This is an 18 megapixel DSLR with Canon’s best autofocusing system, the ability to do full HD video as well as still pictures, and excellent image quality.  My suggestion is to purchase with a “kit” lens–EFS 18-55 mm Canon–a nice lightweight all purpose “wide to portrait” zoom with image stabilization.  Of course, all Canon EF and EFS glass (including the professional “L” series lenses) will fit and work well with this camera body.  Street price for T2i with kit 18-55mm IS lens–$699

Next week, other “goodies” in which you may have interest.  May you all have a wonderful and blessed Thanksgiving.

Until next time…

WOW! Business Solutions is the commercial arm of our business.  This team of experts can develop a customized service plan to meet the unique needs of your business whether your own a large business, small business, or home-based business.  In terms of post-sale service delivery, WOW Business Solutions also has a team of highly skilled, experienced field techicians and service support staff, to keep your business up and running smoothly.  So, if your livelihood depends upon internet, cable, or phone, it may be worth your while to at least go check out the WOW! Business Solutions  website, give them a call, and see what they can do to meet your business needs.

Here’s the thing.  If we are to consider the action of the pupil in the eye adjusting to varying light, the eye has almost 24 f-stops of dynamic range–said another way, we can see a starlit sky in the dead of the arctic night all the way to sun blazing off of a placid lake on the equator at noon-an increase of one f-stop essentially doubling the brightness perceived.  But even at a static pupil aperture, the eye can still detect between 11 and 14 f-stops of dynamic range, and we use the dynamic range of that wonderful instrument daily to see detail that no past or present camera (including film) technology can capture.

The state of the art dynamic range available from the sensors on high end digital cameras or video cameras today is about 8.5 f-stops–material outside of that shows up as either straight black or straight white.  So while an eye can look at a scene and see 11-14 f-stops of dynamic range, a digital camera/video camera will only detect slightly more than 8 f-stops, and because this is a logarithmic scale, this is a significant difference in performance.

The technique I presently use in my digital photography is to bracket three quick exposures, one under exposed, one properly exposed, and the final over exposed.  Both my cameras can be set to do this automatically, and both support “rapid fire” exposures–up to 8 frames per second.  So this can be done quickly as one is shooting the picture(s), but (and here’s the rub) these three negatives must then be combined digitally using computer processing techniques to create a single high dynamic range image.  In other words, almost 64 megabits of data from multiple negatives must be processed to create a single 20 megapixel image in HDR.  The results are stunning–detail that looks realistic to the eye when properly done.  Like anything else, this technique can be taken to the extreme and not all HDR pictures are particularly life-like.

So what does this have to do with my TV?  Most current video displays have the raw ability (if not the actual circuitry) to display dynamic range that simply isn’t available in most video content.  It is possible that the “next big thing” in video will be getting the content, storage, transmission streams, etc. to move to true high fidelity video (not just high definition) by increasing the dynamic range to something closer to what the human eye can perceive.  My sense is that this element may be more important to video cognoscenti than 3D in terms of actually enhancing the video experience.

Next week, I’ll discuss the fine points of this future technology and the ramifications to the industry should it be adopted.  In the meantime, take a look at this sample of HDR video–understand it’s highly compressed and just a rough approximation of what is possible, but very intriguing nonetheless.

HDR video sample

Until next week….

Hulu has taken the Internet by storm and continues to grow in popularity. So much that WOW! has teamed up with Hulu to offer to our customers an easy way to watch your favorite TV shows without leaving your WOW! homepage. Loving it!
I am able to catch up on my favorite shows such as The Bachelorette or Greek without ever leaving my page.

I would highly encourage you to check out this great new addition to our customer portal at www.portal.wowway.net and click on TV shows.