June, 2008 | HD TV PROFESSOR

Month: June 2008

Slo-Mo HDTV for the Olympics

June 30, 2008 | Author: Muneeb Mannan

I-Movix has announced that they will be providing their SprintCam Live 2 HDTV cameras to Beijing Olympic Broadcast for the Summer Games coverage. The cameras will be deployed with mobile units at the major Olympics venues, according to a company press release. What makes these cameras special is that they can record the action at speeds up to 8,000 frames per second, which is more than 260 times as many...

Laser TV Makes Green Claim

June 27, 2008 | Author: Muneeb Mannan

Mitsubishi has announced that it will ship a 65" LaserVue laser TV starting in the third quarter of this year, with a 73" model to follow. Now, the third quarter officially starts on Tuesday and ends on September 30th, but I'll be stunned if we see any shipments before Labor Day. This does imply that these models will be available for the holiday buying season this year, but we've heard...

The Game’s the Thing!

June 26, 2008 | Author: Muneeb Mannan

What drives technology adoption, especially for consumer electronics products? History has shown that pornography is a major (though often unmentioned) force. I suspect that sports comes in a close second. I remember that early color television programming focused on sporting events. Sports also make up a large part of the HDTV programming that's available today. Satellite radio and various subscription TV services stress their total coverage of one college or...

Cable Transition to Digital

June 25, 2008 | Author: Muneeb Mannan

I've been doing my best to spread the word about the details of the upcoming transition to digital-only terrestrial broadcasts of television signals. One of the key points I've try to stress is that if you have cable or satellite service, you will not be affected by the digital changeover when it happens next February (or this coming Labor Day, if you happen to live in Wilmington, NC). I'm very...

Wonderful World on the Internet

June 24, 2008 | Author: Muneeb Mannan

Content producers keep experimenting with the Internet, trying to find the right combination of features that make it a practical delivery system. One of the biggest names is trying something new this summer: free, full-length, streamed movies. I remember when I was little, I had to eat dinner and take my bath early so that I could stay up and watch The Wonderful World of Disney. Now you can use...

Sat-Radio Merger on the Way?

June 23, 2008 | Author: Muneeb Mannan

It has been widely reported that Kevin Martin, Chairman of the FCC, has announced his support for the proposed merger of the XM and Sirius satellite radio services. This is not a story directly about HDTV, but it is an important data point as we rush through a rapidly changing landscape of entertainment delivery systems. We need to understand the forces at work in the XM/Sirius situation if we're to...

Optoma Shows Tiny Projector

June 20, 2008 | Author: Muneeb Mannan

At InfoComm this week, Optoma showed off a new pico projector. It was in the Texas Instruments booth, which makes sense when you consider that it relies on TI's new DLP Pico imager chipset. The tiny box is designed to project a large image from an iPod, digital camera, mobile phone, or other device. The company plans to launch the four-ounce projector in Europe and Asia later this year, and...

Blockbuster Promotes Blu-ray

June 19, 2008 | Author: Muneeb Mannan

I received an email broadcast from Blockbuster yesterday, touting the "good news" that Blu-ray movies are now available for rent or purchase in "every participating Blockbuster store." That seems to be a curious way of saying that Blu-ray movies are available in all the Blockbuster stores where they are available. But I guess it's encouraging that they see HD movies as something that their subscribers might want. They are also...

Big Bucks for Olympic Coverage

June 18, 2008 | Author: Muneeb Mannan

As the saying goes, content is king. And when you have a worldwide sporting event that only comes around every four years, you can end up with some pretty impressive content. And so it goes with the Winter and Summer Olympics. According to a report in Business Week, the International Olympic Committee -- IOC -- has collected $2.5 billion in broadcasting fees from various media outlets around the world. That's...

Sharp Sells 9 Foot LCD Monitor

June 17, 2008 | Author: Muneeb Mannan

Okay, let's get serious about big flat panel TVs. Don't bother me with wimpy little measurements in inches. If you want to play this game, let's talk about screen size in terms of feet. And Sharp has sold a flat panel to a movie theater in Japan that is 9 feet diagonal. The Shinjuku Picadilly cinema complex in Tokyo will open next month with this monster LCD (that's 108" if...