Cisco buys NDS

Cisco Systems announced that it would be buying set-top box software maker the NDS Group for $5 billion in cash. NDS, founded in Israel in 1988 and now headquartered in London, focuses on seamless content streaming between different devices, as well as content protection security to combat piracy.

The firm already boasts media giants like British Sky Broadcasting and DirecTV as clients, as well as Sky Italia, and analysts believe the acquisition will boost Cisco’s Videoscape streaming platform and boost software revenue for the firm as its core networks business decreases.

The deal is likely to close by the end of 2012, after regulatory review, and NDS’s CEO Abe Peled will apparently transition to become a senior vice president and chief strategist for Cisco’s video and collaboration group.

Source: EEtimes.

Light & depth sensor

Samsung’s Advanced Institute of Technology has created what they claim is the first CMOS sensor that can collect both visible light data (which you’d use for a normal digital image) and depth data (like a Kinect). It’s accomplished by mixing in depth-sensing pixels with the RGB photosites normally found on such sensors.

The sensor, strictly speaking, doesn’t capture an RGB and depth image at the same time due to wavelength filter restrictions, but it can effectively time-share the available resources to make it appear as though that’s the case. It captures a 1920×720 color image and a 480×360 depth image.

Source: TechCrunch.

VP8 scalable hardware encoder

WebM project released the fifth generation of the hardware encoder for VP8, internally known as “Evergreen”. In this release they focused on improving the real-time communication features and on optimizing the encoding speed and visual quality.

In particular, they have now enabled temporal and spatial scalability for VP8 video coding, a valuable feature for live streaming, multi-way video conferencing and security applications.

Reportedly, there are no companies offering ITU-T/MPEG SVC (scalable video coding) hardware encoders for chipset manufacturers at the moment. With this release, VP8 now offers scalable coding at the hardware level.

Qualcomm shows HEVC

Qualcomm demonstrated a preliminary version of HEVC (ITU-T/MPEG High Efficiency Video Coding) video on an Android tablet at the Mobile World Congress show in Barcelona.

In the demo, Qualcomm showed a side-by-side comparison of AVC and HEVC video on an Android tablet powered by a current-generation Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 dual-core processor running at 1.5GHz. The video, showing race cars peeling around a track, played at a bit rate of 610 kilobits per second on HEVC compared to 1,183Kbps for AVC. The size of the video file itself was 3.10 MB for HEVC vs 6.01 MB for AVC. Each video had 800x480-pixel resolution.

Source: Cnet.

Quarterly TV report

DisplaySearch released the new Quarterly TV Design and Features Report. 

The report finds that North American consumers favor large, inexpensive TV sets with fewer features, unlike other regions. Chinese consumers are enthusiastic about richly-featured sets with 3D, LED backlighting and smart TV capabilities.

The report uniquely forecasts the prospects for DVB-T2 reception in TV. It finds that a critical mass of countries have now adopted or committed to DVB-T2. Shipments of DVB-T2-enabled sets are expected to grow from 3.4 million in 2011 to 64.7 million in 2015.

Source: Display Search.

iPhone 3DUI

Apple Insider reports that Apple has shown interest in developing a new user interface for the iPhone that relies less on the device's touchscreen, and more on manipulating a 3D environment with motion controls.

Apple could remove the need to touch the screen entirely by using orientation data from onboard sensors to determine a "perspective projection of the 3D display environment." Examples of this kind of interaction can be seen with augmented reality applications, or using the gyroscope to view a location with Google Street View in the iOS Maps application.

France Telecom sells Orange Switzerland

France Telecom SA agreed to sell its Orange Switzerland mobile-phone unit to buyout firm Apax Partners LLP for 1.6 billion euros ($2.1 billion), the first major step in Chief Executive Officer Stephane Richard’s plan to unload slow-growing European operations.

France Telecom is shedding assets in Europe, where phone companies are vying for a shrinking pool of new customers amid tightening regulation, to embrace faster-growing markets in Africa and the Middle East.

France’s largest mobile operator is also in talks to sell its Orange Austria unit to Hong Kong-based Hutchison Whampoa Ltd., people familiar with the situation said in October, and is planning to exit Portugal.

Source: Businessweek.

27% of photos and videos now captured on smartphones

More than a quarter of photos and videos shot by individuals in the U.S. are now being captured by smartphones, according to an online survey of 3,300 Internet users ages 13 and up. Sales data suggest smartphones are replacing consumers’ need for low-end point-and-shoot cameras and camcorders.


The percentage of photos taken with a smartphone went from 17% to 27%, a 44% increase from the year previous, according to a survey conducted by NPD Group. Meanwhile, sales of point-and-shoot cameras dropped 17% in volume and 18% in revenue in the first 11 months of 2011. Individual sales of pocket camcorders dropped 13%, with a 10% decrease in revenue.

Source: Mashable Tech.

Microsoft acquires VideoSurf

“VideoSurf’s content analytics technology will enhance the search and discovery of entertainment content across our platform,” said Alex Garden, director of Xbox LIVE for the Interactive Entertainment Business at Microsoft. “This holiday we will launch voice search across our entertainment partners on Xbox LIVE. Over time, as we integrate VideoSurf’s technology into our system, we are excited about the potential to have content tagged in real time to increase the speed and relevance of the search results.”

Source: Microsoft.

Online video revenues to triple

Consumption of legitimate free and paid for online video is on track to exceed 770 billion views across the USA, UK, France and Germany this year, according to a new report from Futuresource Consulting. Improvements in accessibility and ease of use are among the growth triggers that have seen the rise from around 640 billion views last year, with the USA dominating the market.

“Total online video views are on track to grow by 20 per cent and paid-for online video revenues will reach in excess of $3 billion this year,” advised Mai Hoang, Senior Analyst at Futuresource Consulting. “Online purchase and rental transactions are playing a part, but the majority of this revenue is coming out of the USA, predominantly through streaming subscription service Netflix. By 2015, paid-for online video spend is forecast to hit close to $7 billion across the four countries.”

Source: Advanced Television.

Video conferencing will hit $1bn in 2016

Businesses are increasingly adopting enterprise-grade telepresence. The market will boom, with spending hitting $1.1bn in 2016, growing with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 19.5% from 2011 to 2016, finds Ovum.

The explosive growth of the telepresence market means many companies new to the technology will soon be making large purchasing decisions. In a new report, the independent telecoms analysis firm explores the competitive dynamics within that telepresence market.

Source: Ovum.

Video Codecs 101

The guys at WebM Open Media Project have realized a very nice video that explains the basic concepts of video compression to non-expert people: very worth watching!

Read the original post on the WebM blog.

Gartner's Q3 2011 smartphone figures

 

Source: engadget.

ITU-T spots trends in gaming

The latest report from the ITU-T Technology Watch series surveys some of the hottest developments in the world of video games, describes the most common gaming platforms and terminals, highlights new technologies enabling a better gaming experience, and identifies future standardization activities.

Consumers are beginning to struggle with the ever-increasing number of set top-boxes, satellite receivers and gaming consoles. It is a logical and certainly desirable goal to integrate these closely related technologies on to a multipurpose, standards-based multimedia platform. Incorporating a variety of audiovisual technologies into a single 3D TV device is understandably a task demanding a great degree of standardization work. ITU will bring together service and content providers, including games developers, to attempt to standardize communication protocols, toolboxes, middleware and security frameworks.

Source: ITU-T newslog.

Kodak sells image sensor business

Eastman Kodak Company announced that it has completed the sale of its Image Sensor Solutions (ISS) business to Platinum Equity, a global firm specializing in the merger, acquisition and operation of companies that provide services and solutions to customers in a broad range of business markets.

While the financial details were not disclosed, Kodak will have continuing access to the image sensor technology involved in this transaction for use in its own products. Included in the sale is a 263,000 square foot facility in Eastman Business Park in Rochester, N.Y., that houses manufacturing and research facilities.

Source: Kodak.

Adobe to refocus on HTML5

Official declarations released by Adobe in a blog post:

• HTML5 the best solution for creating and deploying content in the browser across mobile platforms. We are excited about this, and will continue our work with key players in the HTML community, including Google, Apple, Microsoft and RIM, to drive HTML5 innovation they can use to advance their mobile browsers.
  
• We will no longer continue to develop Flash Player in the browser to work with new mobile device configurations (chipset, browser, OS version, etc.) following the upcoming release of Flash Player 11.1 for Android and BlackBerry PlayBook.  

A fifth of TV sets will be internet-connected by 2016

The number of TV sets connected to the Internet will reach 551 million by 2016 for the 40 countries covered in a new report from Digital TV Research.

The Connected TV Forecasts report states that this translates to 20% of global TV sets by 2016, up from 6% at end-2010. South Korea leads take up with a forecasted 15.0% penetration in 2016.

Source: Digital TV Group.

Disney and YouTube make a video deal

Disney Interactive Media and YouTube, a division of Google, will spend a combined $10 million to $15 million on original video series; those shorts will be produced by Disney and distributed on a co-branded channel on Disney.com and YouTube. The channel will also include amateur video culled from the torrent uploaded to YouTube daily.

The Disney-YouTube partnership follows YouTube’s announcement late last month that it planned to create dozens of channels featuring comedians, sports stars, musicians and other entertainers. It is also offering cash advances to prospective producers that totaled more than $100 million, according to people with knowledge of the plan but who were not authorized to speak publicly. The investments in the channels reflect Google’s belief that the Internet is the third phase of the television business, after network TV (with a few channels) and cable TV (with hundreds).

Source: The New York Times.

Rapid 3D mapping

9to5Mac reports that Apple is now the owner of C3 Technologies, a company that creates incredibly high-quality and detailed 3D maps with virtually no input from humans. The 3D mapping is camera based and the technology picks up buildings, homes, and even smaller objects like trees. C3′s solution comes from declassified missile targeting methods. SAAB, partially a former owner of C3 Technologies has a video that explains how the technology actually works.

Flash Player 11

The new release of the popular Adobe Flash Player added quite some interesting features.

Stage 3D Accelerated Graphics Rendering (Player & AIR desktop + AIR for TV) — Stage 3D is a new architecture for hardware accelerated graphics rendering developed that provides a set of low-level APIs that enable advanced 2D and 3D rendering capabilities across screens and devices (desktop, mobile, and TV). Using Stage 3D, app and framework developers can now access high performance GPU hardware acceleration, enabling the creation of new classes of rich, interactive experiences. Note: Stage 3D for mobile versions of Flash Player & AIR will be enabled in a future release.

Protected HTTP Dynamic Streaming (HDS) — Protected HTTP Dynamic Streaming (HDS) provides protection for streaming video across screens while eliminating the deployment complexity of a license server.

H.264/AVC Software Encoding for Cameras (desktop) — Stream high-quality video from your computer's camera with higher compression efficiency and industry stanard support, enabling both immersive real-time communications such as video chat/conferencing and live video broadcasts.

JPEG-XR support — Flash Player and AIR now include support for the JPEG-XR advanced image compression standard (International Standard ISO/IEC 29199-2). The computationally lightweight JPEG-XR format provides more efficient compression than JPEG, enables both lossy and lossless compression support, and adds support for alpha channel transparency.