U2ube

Millions of people are thought to have watched the U2's show at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, Calif. on Sunday, October 25th -- the first concert to be streamed in its entirety live on the video sharing website YouTube.

LA Times reports: "U2's live broadcast Sunday night of the Pasadena stop on its 360 Tour generated 10 million streams across seven continents, according to a YouTube spokesman. What's more, since being archived on YouTube on Monday, the concert has tallied more than 1 million streams."

Watch the rebroadcast now on YouTube.

ST and ARM team up

STMicroelectronics and ARM today announced that ST has adopted the ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore™ processor, in addition to the Mali®-400 graphics processor, for its upcoming set-top-box and digital TV system-on-chip.

The Cortex-A9 MPCore processor provides ST with the scalable high performance required to enable the high-bandwidth broadband and broadcast content being streamed into homes, while significantly improving power efficiency when compared to alternative solutions. ST has also licensed the ARM Mali-400 MP multicore scalable graphics processing unit (GPU) technology to meet the growing demand for exciting new graphical user interfaces and the needs of increasingly sophisticated web-based services.

On October 21st, ST-Ericsson also announced a cooperation with ARM to accelerate the next step in mobile user experience and graphics innovation with the creation of a Mali technology-enabled development platform for content and application developers available via the ARM Mali Developer Center. The cooperation will speed up bringing consumers a better gaming experience in terms of high quality graphics, video and audio on their mobile devices.

H.264 (03/2009)

ITU-T Rec. H.264 version (03/2009) is now in force and freely available here.

This revision contains enhancement extensions to support multiview video coding (MVC), specification of a "Constrained Baseline Profile", and some miscellaneous corrections and clarifications.

Layar 3D Reality Browser

Layar 3D, the augmented reality browser platform, makes use of OpenGL, the accelerometer, the GPS and the compass of the phone. Developers can place 3D objects in their content layers based on coordinates. Objects can be optimized in size and orientation to create an immersive and realistic experience. The 3D capabilities support live downloading and rendering of 3D objects. Actions such as “open link” or “play music” can be assigned to 3D objects. Layar will launch 3D to the public in November together with the launch of version 3.0 of the Layar Reality Browser for Android.

YouTube's content identification

Digital Rapids -- leading provider of tools and solutions for bringing television, film and web content to wider audiences -- announced that the company is working with YouTube to integrate support for Content ID, YouTube's content identification and management system, directly into Digital Rapids' award-winning range of media production and repurposing systems.

YouTube's content identification tools compare existing and incoming user-uploaded videos, identifying the ownership of such content and taking the action specified by the owner's usage policies. Content owners can choose to block user-uploaded content, permit it on YouTube while simply tracking usage data, or monetize the uploaded media by running advertising against it.

ATSC approves mobile DTV

The Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC) announced the approval of A/153 Mobile DTV Standard, which defines the technical specifications necessary for broadcasters to provide new services to mobile and handheld devices using digital television (DTV) transmissions.

ATSC Mobile DTV was developed to support a variety of services including free (advertiser-supported) television and interactive services delivered in real-time, subscription-based TV, and file-based content download for playback at a later time. The standard can also be used for transmission of new data broadcasting services.

ATSC Mobile DTV is built around a highly robust transmission system based on Vestigial Side Band (VSB) modulation, with enhanced error correction and other techniques to improve robustness and reduce power consumption in portable receivers, coupled with a flexible and extensible Internet Protocol (IP) based transport system, efficient MPEG AVC (ISO/IEC 14496-10 or ITU H.264) video, and HE AAC v2 audio (ISO/IEC 14496-3) coding. ATSC Mobile DTV services are carried in existing digital broadcast channels along with current DTV services without any adverse impact on legacy receiving equipment.

The draft version of A/153 specifications is available here. Note that Part 7 "Video System Characteristics" (pdf) includes the ITU-T/MPEG Scalable Video Coding technology.

Read the full press release.

WD TV Live

Western Digital announced the launch of its new WD TV Live HD Media Player, an upgrade over the previous WD TV model, now adding Ethernet connectivity and digital theater sound to its extensive features. Available now for $149.99, the WD TV Live hopes to transform your television into a home media hub.

The concept remains the same: you plug the WD TV into a television set and any external hard drive. The WD TV is designed to take your media files from your external hard drive and play them on your TV. To that end, the WD TV Live is equipped with an HDMI port and a USB port. The device supports many different types of audio and video files and can play back HD video in full 1080p resolution.

Cisco to acquire Tandberg

On October 1st, Cisco announced a definitive agreement to launch a recommended voluntary cash offer to acquire TANDBERG. TANDBERG, based in Oslo, Norway, and New York, is a leading provider of telepresence, high-definition videoconferencing and mobile video products and services. TANDBERG's leading video endpoints and network infrastructure solution will be integrated into Cisco's world-class collaboration architecture.

Under the terms of the agreement, Cisco will commence a cash tender offer to purchase all the outstanding shares of TANDBERG for 153.5 Norwegian Kroner per share for an aggregate purchase price of approximately $3.0 billion. The acquisition is expected to close during the first half of 2010.

HTTP video streaming

With the next version of its Flash Player client, Adobe Systems Inc. says it will finally allow media companies and service providers to stream Flash video without using its proprietary streaming protocol.

Adobe Flash Player 10.1 will support all the same live, on-demand, adaptive bit-rate, and DVR-like capabilities through HTTP that Adobe has built out to work with RTMP, its proprietary streaming protocol.

Microsoft cited scalability as one reason it chose to use HTTP video delivery for its Silverlight Smooth Streaming capabilities. And Akamai recently announced its HTTP-based HD Network, developing its own workaround to enable Flash streaming via HTTP, without Adobe's help.

Source: Contentinople.

SVC and MVC transcoder from ViXS

ViXS Systems Inc. announced the new High Performance Single & Dual HD Transcoder/Encoder XCode 4100 Network Media Processor family. This family of media processors is the only single chip on the market having the ability to transcode two HD 1080i60 or two 1080p30 video streams simultaneously in real-time.

The transcoder engine also supports full 1080p60 MPEG-2, H.264 or VC-1 to 1080p60 MPEG-2 or H.264 transcoding. In addition the engine can support Scalable Video Coding (SVC) and Multi-view Video Coding (MVC) formats, providing product upgradability to work with the upcoming 1080p60 broadcasts and 3DTV stereoscopic broadcasts.

See the press release.