HP to acquire 3Com

HP and 3Com Corporation today announced that they have entered into a definitive agreement under which HP will purchase 3Com at a price of $7.90 per share in cash or an enterprise value of approximately $2.7 billion.

HP said the acquisition would expand its Ethernet switching offering, add routing solutions and strengthen its position in China. HP will also gain a foothold in the network security space through 3Coms TippingPoint brand.

Logitech to acquire LifeSize Communications

Logitech International announced that it has agreed to acquire privately held LifeSize Communications of Austin, Texas for $405 million in cash. LifeSize is a global leader in high definition (HD) video communication solutions, with more than 9,000 video conferencing customers across 80 countries in large enterprises, small-to-medium businesses (SMBs) and public healthcare, education and government organizations.

Logitech and LifeSize plan to pursue existing and new relationships with unified communications, collaboration and VoIP industry partners and competitors to drive the development of an open eco-system for interoperable video communication.

Read the press release and the comments on NY Times.

Disruptive impact of SVC on videoconference

In the report "H.264 SVC: A Technical Assessment" Wainhouse Research compares SVC (Scalable Video Coding) to the H.264 Baseline Profile used in traditional video-conferencing systems and conclude that SVC videoconferencing systems can:

• Provide the ability to host video calls on lower cost, loss-prone IP networks, including the Internet, with equal or better quality than that of traditional systems

• Support video calls between endpoints with widely varying processor power and network connection
  
  
• Deliver much improved interactivity due to noticeable shorter delays on both point-to-point calls and multipoint calls between H.264 SVC-compliant systems
  
  
• Support an impressive reduction in the cost of multipoint infrastructure hardware

Source: Marketwire.

UHDTV market forecast

The recent In-Stat research "The Market Opportunity for Ultra-High Definition Video" covers the availability of ultra-high definition (7680 x 4320 and 3840 x 2160 pixels) TV units and the availability of ultra-high definition services around the world. In-Stat analysts found the following:

• The rising popularity of high resolution digital cinema will expose consumers to high resolution content. Then, early UHDTVs will be made available to provide a digital cinema high resolution viewing experience in the home. Ultimately, broadcasters will start offering UHD content to an addressable market of UHDTVs between 2017 and 2022.
  
  
• In-Stat expects the total installed base of UHDTVs Europe to approach 5% household penetration until 2021, and increase to over 28.2% penetration by 2025.
  
  
• In Asia-Pacific, Japan will be among the early adopter countries.

Read the press release.

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.