Posts Tagged ‘Technology’

Streaming to Tablets–Part Deux

In: Technology

By: Steve Stanfill on Aug 12, 2011 at 9:27 am

Several weeks ago I wrote a piece on the dispute between Time Warner and Viacom. (See that article here.)  At the center of the “TV Everywhere” paradigm is the legal question whether consumers should have access to content on any device that they’ve paid for as part of their cable subscription without additional fees being levied on the cable provider and consumer.  Most cable companies, as you would expect, feel that a cable subscription to a channel should extend to every viewable device within the home at no extra charge to the distributor or consumer.  Content providers see additional screens as an opportunity for more revenue.

In an announcement made this afternoon, CableVision (another large cable player who had introduced a “TV Everywhere” service) and Viacom announced that they had settled this dispute to their mutual satisfaction.  In a joint statement, the companies said: “Viacom and Cablevision have agreed to resolve their pending litigation, and the Viacom programming will continue to appear on Cablevision’s Optimum Apps for iPad and other IP devices. In reaching the settlement agreement, Cablevision and Viacom were able to resolve the iPad matter and an unrelated business matter to their mutual satisfaction. Neither side is conceding its original legal position or will have further comment.”

Hmmm….wonder what that means.  At least one on line source opined that Viacom had indeed bowed to the legal opinion of Cablevision, but I’ve been unable to find any other corroboration of that possibility.

As I indicated in a previous post, the cat is out of the proverbial (technical) bag IMHO.  I do not believe that the content providers’ desire for more revenue based on screen size or portability is a sustainable model.

Case in point:

Several weeks ago I replaced one of my televisions with a Samsung 7000 series LED HDTV. Samsung calls it a “Smart TV”, and indeed, carries with it a full series of apps as well as a QWERTY remote and the ability to surf the net via its built in wifi.  Guess what else is part of the technology?  Yup…streaming all channels from the TV set to a second screen, the Samsung Galaxy tablet!  Now at present, there are some limitations on this paradigm if you are not using the built in digital QAM or ATSC tuners, but I suspect that it is only a matter of time before enterprising manufacturers increase the functionality of the app and extend the option to iOS devices as well as other screens using the Android OS.

The point is that this idea has consumer inertia that will push continued development of multiple screen access to content.  Try as they might, content providers have historically had little control over the consumer electronics industry generally, and I don’t believe that they will bear sway here either.

These developments in the industry should help the content providers realize that forcing distributors of content to pay additional freight for implementing elegant solutions to “TV Everywhere” makes little sense, and is not a sustainable business model.

Until next time…

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Digital Video Transition–Almost complete

In: Technology

By: Steve Stanfill on Jul 22, 2011 at 4:01 pm

It’s been a long hot summer, though not over yet by any means.  WOW!’s video teams have been very busy with the digital video transition, which is complete in Michigan and Ohio, and in full swing in Illinois and Indiana.  The transition should be complete in Illinois by the end of August, with the Evansville market complete the following week.  We anxiously await the completion of this massive undertaking, which will allow expanded programming options for our customers.  High Definition channel lineups particularly will be beefed up as a result of this process.

I admit that I’m a selective TV viewer–part of this selectivity is that I seldom watch a program that isn’t in Hi-Def anymore.  Just can’t hardly bring myself to do it.  I relax that standard, obviously, as I enjoy some older content that didn’t have the benefit of HD technology when it was filmed, but even here, there are some pretty amazing HD transfers of older, film-based content.  The stuff that can’t be helped much is that which was shot  with analog standard-def video production techniques in the 70’s and 80’s.

Interestingly, video took a significant uptick in quality in the 90’s, driven by improvements in professional video gear that supported upwards of 540 scan lines.  Most of the video produced in the 20 years previous to that was between 240 and 300 scan lines–read: “not that great”.  These aforementioned production upgrades may have been as a result of anticipated demand for analog “Laserdisc” recordings that were offered to consumers in the 90’s.

Considered obsolete in this digital age, Laserdiscs looked pretty amazing on “enhanced definition” sets of the time.  Based on optical disc technology, the Laserdisc was, nonetheless, an analog format that had been refined to a “fare-thee-well”, and it still looks pretty good on present day HD sets, for that matter.  It was the pinnacle of analog-based consumer media.  I still have, though do not use, a Sony player and about 20 discs–big 12 inch diameter numbers that could be used as lethal weapons if thrown like a frisbee at an unsuspecting target.  DVD’s and Blu-ray are much more convenient–and safer ;)

So as WOW! officially retires its analog lineup with the completion of the digital transition, I may put my LaserDisc collection up on ebay to celebrate.  I hope that you find a way to celebrate the new HD content and viewing options this transition enables.

Until next time….

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Space Video

In: Technology

By: Steve Stanfill on Jul 05, 2011 at 2:02 pm

Once in while I run across technical media that is extremely well produced. What that definition is, of course, is in the eye of the beholder. But for me, the primary criteria is the successful sharing of technical ideas and concepts to non-technical people. This has been a huge challenge for scientists and engineers for hundreds of years. Even scientific luminaries (such as Galileo and Copernicus) have struggled with this challenge.

The particular media I have in mind is produced as a joint venture of NASA and ESA (European Space Agency) and is known as the “Hubblecast”. These well produced shorts show the general public the fabulous views of the universe provided by Hubble and other space instruments with simple explanations of scientists’ “best guess” of what the images are telling us terrestrial mortals. Produced in HD, they are simply head and shoulders above many similar efforts. They are available to view on the website Hubblecast or available as free podcasts in the Apple store.

For years, much of government run efforts to study space have been the exclusive province of the scientific community, with an occasional grainy picture and discussion thrown out to the general media. The Hubble telescope itself, by virtue of its initial execution failure, was initially perhaps the most media centric of any of the NASA/ESA projects, and not in a good way. When launched in 1990, scientists found that the main mirror had been ground incorrectly, severely compromising the capabilities of the telescope. However, after a space shuttle based service mission in 1993, the telescope was modified and brought up to its design specifications.  That event got far less coverage than the highly publicized failure.

Whether driven by its initial PR disaster or Simple Subsequent Enlightenment (SSE), Hubble’s governing agency has since appeared to bend over backwards to make this marvelous bit of science available to all. Hubble’s orbit outside the distortion of Earth’s atmosphere allows it to take extremely sharp images that are stunning in their clarity and drama. Hubble’s Ultra Deep Field image capability, for instance, allows for the most detailed visible-light images ever made of the universe’s most distant objects. Many Hubble observations have led to breakthroughs in astrophysics, such as accurately determining the rate of expansion of the universe, the presence of “dark matter”, and other significant discoveries.  Here are a couple of links that may be of interest:

http://hubblesite.org/

http://hubble.nasa.gov/

and saving the best for last– http://www.spacetelescope.org

Now for a little personal philosophy–being a technologist who has always tried to communicate with and relate to non-technical folks, I hope this is a sustainable trend amongst the scientific and technical community.  Sometimes technical people get a “bad rap” for not relating well to others, and frankly, much of the time they deserve it.  It’s about time that we lose that stereotype, and better communicate our knowledge, our passion, and our humanity.

Until next time…

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Skype and Microsoft

In: Technology

By: Steve Stanfill on May 10, 2011 at 5:18 pm

Well the big news of the day is that Microsoft intends to acquire Skype for $8.5 billion dollars.  The big “M” wants to shore up its presence in web technologies generally as it has seen its foothold on core technology erode from competitors like Apple and Google.

This morning’s press release opined, “The acquisition will increase the accessibility of real-time video and voice communications, bringing benefits to both consumers and enterprise users and generating significant new business and revenue opportunities.”  Accessibility to whom, I wonder….

In the 36 or so years Microsoft has been in business, it has acquired 128 companies, purchased stakes in 60 companies, and spun off 24 internal or external ventures.  It is safe to say that Microsoft is a product of its M&A activity, perhaps more so than any other major US company. Many of its core technologies have been acquired rather than internally developed.  It will be interesting to see what Microsoft does with this, its largest acquisition to date.

I sit here somewhat frustrated that these large companies are posturing for position in the communications space.  One of the fundamental problems with Skype, FaceTime, Google voice, etc. is that while they are all based on SIP standards, they have enough proprietary baggage in their code to prevent effective communication with other users on other SIP platforms; that is to say that an Apple Facetime user cannot call a Skype client, and a Skype client can’t call a Google voice client.  I should mention that all of these clients have the ability to go out on the public switched telephone network (PSTN) to a telephone number for a modest fee, but that defeats the purpose of SIP clients and keeping everything on the IP network.  At some point, it’s got to be more about ubiquitous technology communicating rather than who can amass the largest exclusive user base.

Right now, I have Facetime, Skype, and Google clients on my computer.  And I have to remember who uses which client on the other side of the cloud when I want to communicate via SIP video.  Not an ideal situation in my book.

At WOW!, we have recently acquired some technology that we hope may eventually solve this problem for our customers.  Don’t get too excited because it’s a ways out, but the idea would be to allow WOW! telephone users access to multiple client platforms, and also support video with a soft client on your computer.  So not only would you be able to use your telephone as you do now, but you would be able to use that same telephone client to access Skype, FaceTime, etc.  And, with the addition of a soft client on your computer (yeah, I know, another one…..), you would have access to video conferencing with other WOW! customers and Skype/FaceTime/Google as well, using only your phone number.

I don’t know what the future holds for Skype specifically, but there are developments in this space that promise some terrific prospects for the future.

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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