A closer look to H.264/AVC costs

« I read license agreements so that you don’t have to. In an update on its decision to remove H.264 support from its Chrome browser, Google cites “significant royalties” as a contributing factor. Just how much are those fees, and who pays? I’ve got the answers. »

Continue reading on ZDNet.

New Sony PSP announced

Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. has announced its next-generation portable entertainment system (codenamed NGP) will be run on a four-core Cortex-A9 processor from ARM and a PowerVR SGX543MP4+ graphics core from Imagination Technologies. NGP will make its debut at the end of the year 2011, Sony said.

Source: EETimes.

Korea demonstrates LTE-Advanced

Korean researchers at Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) successfully demonstrated Long Term Evolution LTE-Advanced technology, which is six times faster than the upcoming LTE network or 40 times faster than a 3G network with a maximum speed of 600 Mb/s for downloading.
 
ETRI expects LTE-Advanced to become available in the country by 2014, and plans to create a single-chip of the demonstration system within three years.

 Source: Telecoms Korea.

WebM Decoder in Flash

Ralph Hauwert has been posting on Twitter about work he’s doing on getting WebM decoding to work in Flash by compiling the libvpx source code using Adobe’s Alchemy technology, a research project that allows compilation of C/C++ libraries into code that runs on the ActionScript virtual machine used by Flash. 

The intial performance of a 1920x1080 VP8 video with no audio was decoding to YUV at about 1.5 frames per second.

See the Bluish Coder blog.

Google removes H.264/AVC from Chrome

In a few days, Google's Chrome browser will not support natively H.264/AVC video decoding anymore.  

Mike Jazayeri, Product Manager of the Chromium project, wrote yesterday that "Though H.264 plays an important role in video, as our goal is to enable open innovation, support for the codec will be removed and our resources directed towards completely open codec technologies".

New 3D TV services

The world’s first terrestrial 3D TV broadcast service has officially gone live in following a successful trial by Italian broadcaster Mediaset. The service, known as 3VOD, runs on Motive’s Bestv set top box, offers subscribers the ability to view films from a selection of around 50 titles. It was originally offered as a limited trial to subscribers from late last year.

At the same time, Vudu announced that 3D content is now available in world's first 3D streaming service. Pricing varies by resolution, but you'll be looking at $5.99 for a 720p rental and $6.99 for a 1080p rental. That's higher by their normal $4.99 HD rental pricing, but not by much. To buy a film, you'll be paying $21.99 instead of $19.99. You can grab it in 1080p, 720p and standard definition. There are only three 3D titles available now, but more are on the way.

Sources: The Wall Street Journal and High-Def Digest.

VP8 hardware IP availability

The WebM hardware development team, formerly part of On2 Technologies, announces:

• VP8 (the video codec used in WebM) hardware decoder IP is available from Google for semiconductor companies who want to support high-quality WebM playback in their chipsets.

• The Oulu team will release the first VP8 video hardware encoder IP in the first quarter of 2011. The IP is running in an FPGA environment, and rigorous testing is underway. Once all features have been tested and implemented, the encoder will be launched as well. 

IBM's 5 in 5

The annual IBM's "Five in Five" forecasts five innovations likely to be developed in the next five years. This year's predictions are:

1. "Citizen scientists" will collect real-time data about their environment using sensors in cars, phones or wallets, which can then be used by professional scientists for research.
   
2. Holograms will become commonplace. People will be able to interact with far-away friends in 3D, using something as commonplace as a cellphone.
   
3. Today's batteries will become obsolete. Cellphones may be powered by batteries that run on oxygen, and static or kinetic energy may eliminate batteries altogether for smaller devices.
   
4. Instead of wasting the massive amounts of energy needed to cool them, computer and data centers will recycle the heat energy the machines generate, potentially helping to power cities.
   
5. Adaptive traffic systems will personalize your commute, anticipating congestion and other issues to get you to work with a minimum of road rage.

Source: Los Angeles Times.