News for August 2005

BBC’s iMP…

The BBC is about to commence trials on a P2P distribution service, called the “Interactive Media Player” (iMP). This will allow users to download TV and radio broadcasts, and copy them to other viewing or listening devices, keeping them for up to 7 days.

Read on for the details
Read more »

Posted: August 20th, 2005
Categories: News
Tags:
Comments: 2 comments

Samsung OLED technology…

Samsung
Ok, it’s old news, but Samsung have announced the availability of OLED technology embedded into future TV screens, up to HD resolution. The advantages of OLED (organic light-emitting diode) technology over the more common LCDs, is that the viewing angle is wider, and separate backlight is not necessary to produce a bright image.

Read on for the full press release.
Read more »

Posted: August 20th, 2005
Categories: News
Tags:
Comments: No comments

Universal color…

An article on the New Scientist website suggests that people perceive color universally. This is good news for all the graders out there.
Read on for the story.
Read more »

Posted: August 20th, 2005
Categories: News
Tags:
Comments: No comments

Anyone can be a broadcaster…

With Participatory Culture Foundation‘s open-source Broadcast Machine, anyone can become a broadcaster. The free web-based software plugs into pretty much any website, and allows easy publishing of video clips online. Each website can have multiple “channels”, and each produces an RSS feed, which allows for easy syndication between different websites, and also allows for the video equivalent of “podcasting” (“vidcasting”?), meaning that you can subscribe to websites and have new material downloaded automatically. Perhaps best of all, it uses bittorrent technology to soften the blow of lots of people trying to access popular files.
With the bittorrent protocol, the distribution load is shared between the original source and all the people currently downloading. This basically means that the distribution potentially becomes more efficient as the files become more popular. The net result is that even websites on a low budget can start putting movies on the net. For more technical details on the bittorrent protocol, take a look at this website.
At Surreal Road, we’re putting our money where our mouth is, so to speak. We now offer all our videos using the Broadcast Machine software, which you can see in action on the main Surreal Road website

…the real purpose of the software is to be the perfect publishing tool for our video player that will be released in August– Broadcast Machine creates channels that, when viewed in the player, give people a TV-like viewing experience.

PCF’s forthcoming open-source “Desktop TV” product aims to provide a player that runs on a PC or Mac to interface directly with websites that syndicate videos like those created by Broadcast Machine. A beta version for Apple computers is already available, with a Windows version to follow. Stay tuned for more on that.

Posted: August 13th, 2005
Categories: News
Tags:
Comments: No comments

Promise.tv shows promise…

promise.tv

Promise.tv takes advantage of digital television technology to automatically record a full seven day’s broadcasting across all selected TV channels. This wholesale recording means it is no longer necessary to choose programmes to watch in advance. All programmes transmitted over the last seven days are stored for viewing at any time.

Rather than having to pre-select what you want to watch, as is the case with current digital recorders, the promise.tv system records everything, from all channels, and keeps it for up to 7 days.

Promise.tv website

Read on for the breakdown of the techy stuff
Read more »

Posted: August 11th, 2005
Categories: News
Tags:
Comments: No comments