EBU technical review 2009-Q2

The new EBU Technical Review 2009-Q2 is available. The articles in this edition are:

• Editorial : Innovation - a core activity of public service media organizations
• DAB+ ... the Australian experience
• Implementing receiver profiles - the evolution of modules for digital radio
• TV displays - a progress report
• Display measurement - a simple approach to small-area luminance uniformity testing
• Why broadcasters should care about home networking

21:9

The Philips new Cinema 21:9 TV (2.39:1 aspect ratio) matches the original movie format used by directors, so you get no black bars or picture loss, just movies the way the director intended them to be seen! See a demo here.

Basic product specifications are as follows

• Aspect ratio 2.39:1, 21:9
• Brightness 500 cd/m²
• Dynamic screen contrast 80,000:1
• Response time (typical) 1 (BEW equiv.) ms
• Viewing angle 176º (H)/176º (V)
• Diagonal screen size (inch) 56 inch
• Diagonal screen size (metric) 142 cm
• Display screen type LCD Full HD UW-UXGA Act.matrix
• Panel resolution 2560 x 1080p

GIPS announces H.264 SVC integration

Global IP Solutions, a leading provider of IP multimedia processing solutions, announced support for a Scalable Video Coding (SVC) implementation integrated inside GIPS video engines, which allows incredible video quality using the minimal bandwidth by adapting to each user's available capacity.

Using GIPS VideoEngine products with H.264 SVC, multi-party video conferencing can now allow different users to take part according to their bandwidth without downgrading any other participant's experience. In addition peer-to-peer video calls have greatly improved error resilience.

Kodachrome retirement

The Eastman Kodak Company announced it would retire Kodachrome, its oldest film stock, because of declining customer demand in a digital age. The company, which is based in Rochester, now gets about 70 percent of its revenue from its digital business, but plans to stay in the film business as far into the future as possible.

DVB Internet TV questionnaire

The DVB Project recently initiated a study mission on Internet TV Content Delivery to investigate technology options to deliver DVB-type content over the Internet to a large number of CE devices (including game consoles), PCs or mobile devices. The study mission focuses on content delivery, but other functions such as codecs, security, or metadata are also considered.

To address these objectives, the study mission starts with a questionnaire to collect information on existing technologies in the respective area. DVB members and non-DVB members alike are encouraged to respond to the questionnaire.

You can find the questionnaire at this link.

HD TV channel and streaming service

Lionsgate, Paramount, and MGM have joined forces to launch Epix, an HD television channel and accompanying online 720p streaming service.

The Epix TV network will air movies that are in the "pay-TV" window, those weeks before a film appears on DVD in which it is available on pay-per-view or HBO, among others.

Epix viewers can access the same material online, on demand, at Epixhd.com. The video is offered through Flash and is multi-bitrate enabled; the player checks the available bandwidth every ten seconds to see if a larger or smaller stream is required. Epix currently creates six different encodings of each film which range from HD 720p support all the way down to 500Kbps (cell phone quality).

Source: ars technica.

GPU acceleration for Flash

NVIDIA and Adobe Systems recently announced that they are collaborating as part of the Open Screen Project to optimize and enable Adobe Flash Player, a key component of the Adobe Flash Platform, to leverage GPU video and graphics acceleration on a wide range of mobile Internet devices, including netbooks, tablets, mobile phones and other on-the-go media devices.

NVIDIA is also participating in the Open Screen Project, a broad initiative of 25 industry leaders to deliver a consistent runtime environment across devices. Led by Adobe, the Open Screen Project is dedicated to enable Web content and standalone applications across desktops, netbooks, mobile devices, televisions, and other consumer electronics that take advantage of Adobe Flash Platform capabilities.

For more information, visit www.openscreenproject.org.

No controller required

Microsoft introduced a prototype camera that can be used as a controller for the Xbox 360. Codenamed “Project Natal” the camera eliminates the need for a hand-held input device — instead, the camera can track a player’s full body movement, recognize their face and voice, scan images of real items and respond to both physical and vocal commands. Microsoft also debuted 10 exclusive new games and several additions to the Xbox Live online service.