March, 2011 | HD TV PROFESSOR

Month: March 2011

Roku Scores Free Movies with Crackle

March 31, 2011 | Author: Muneeb Mannan

I love Hulu. About half of the programming that we watch at home comes from Hulu (and the other half from Netflix). This is because I have a computer right beside my HDTV, because my television doesn't have digital tuners and I wanted to be able to record broadcast shows for time-shifting. A computer was the most practical DVR option at the time. But when we buy our next HDTV...

YouTube Gamble Pays Off

March 30, 2011 | Author: Muneeb Mannan

Google isn't saying much about the financial side of YouTube, but it has been widely reported that the parent corporation does report that YouTube's revenues doubled in 2010 compared with 2009. It's not clear whether or that is enough to be profitable -- estimates put the 2009 losses at almost $500 million -- but the trend should help the company get better in a big hurry. One fact is clear;...

XPAND 3D to Tame Chaos

March 29, 2011 | Author: Muneeb Mannan

XPAND 3D is leading the charge to bring some sense to the active-glasses stereoscopic 3DTV market. Yesterday, the company joined with Panasonic to announce the M-3DI standard for 3DTVs, computers, and home projectors, as well as digital cinemas that rely on active shutter glasses technology. This new standard provides a communication protocol for the signals between the display and the glasses. This means that one pair of glasses will work...

Netflix Opens the Kimono

March 28, 2011 | Author: Muneeb Mannan

At the IP&TV World Forum in London last week, the VP of Business Development for Netflix, Bill Holmes, revealed some inside information about his company and its plans. You can watch his entire keynote speech at this link -- which I recommend -- but here are some highlights. Perhaps the most intriguing fact of his presentation is that he gave numbers. So many executive keynote addresses don't dip much below...

3D Imaging in a Fog

March 25, 2011 | Author: Muneeb Mannan

When we talk about "3DTV" we generally mean "stereoscopic" images. This approach presents different views to the left and right eyes. The brain then deciphers information from the small differences between the two images, and constructs a three-dimensional image from the combination. This can deliver the illusion of depth, where some objects appear to be closer and others farther away. This does not successfully mimic all aspects of real-world vision,...

Mitsubishi Abandons LCD HDTVs

March 24, 2011 | Author: Muneeb Mannan

When you've got an also-ran share of an enormous market and there are no signs that you can make a substantial dent in the leaders' share, what can you do? Mitsubishi has decided that if you can't beat them, quit. In a press release last week, the company announced that it was leaving the LCD HDTV business. Instead, it will focus on its DLP rear projection HDTVs as well as...

More Retransmission Woes

March 23, 2011 | Author: Muneeb Mannan

LIN Media blacked out programming on 27 stations in 17 markets for a total of eight days during a fee dispute with DISH Network. According to a release by the American Cable Association (ACA), the Univision affiliate WUNI in Providence RI has been blacked out on the local Full Channel TV cable system for 30 days, due to a dispute over retransmission fees. The same release points to a situation...

CEA Offers Individual Memberships

March 22, 2011 | Author: Muneeb Mannan

The Consumer Electronics Association hosts a little event in Las Vegas every January called the "Consumer Electronics Show," better known by its initials: CES. The original intent was to hold a trade show for electronics dealers, such as home stereos and televisions. Then the corporate side of the computer market got boring and Comdex went away, so the slack was picked up by CES and it became the biggest personal...

55″ OLED HDTV on the Way?

March 21, 2011 | Author: Muneeb Mannan

Okay, I'm probably the last person to write about this topic, but there was so much noise and confusion that it took me a while to find a source who could give me the straight skinny. And I mean, really skinny! You may have noticed stories saying that LG is going to come out with a 55" OLED HDTV in 2012. Then there are others who say that's wrong; LG...

LOST in the Cloud

March 18, 2011 | Author: Muneeb Mannan

There used to be a different entry here, but it's gone. The service that hosts the HDTV Almanac site had a little whoopie episode, and a week of entries disappeared. It took some doing and some shuffling and finagling, but I managed to get all the posts for this week back except this one. So if your RSS feed went a little all "Sorcerer's Apprentice" on you, that's the reason....