NAB 2009 To Feature Less Expensive HD Cameras

According to an article posted by TVNEWSDAY, this year’s NAB Show will showcase a variety of cost-effective cameras that feature IT efficiency and fit downsized budgets.

In something that has been historically uncharacteristic JVC, Panasonic and SONY have released a lot of information about their product offerings long in advance of NAB.

GY-HM100 hand-held 3-CCD camcorder

In January, JVC introduced new Final-Cut-Pro 6™-ready solid state camcorders that feature their ProHD camcorders that can natively record Quicktime for Apple’s Final Cut Pro directly onto SDHC memory cards.

The GY-HM100  hand-held 3-CCD camcorder was introduced in January and on February 10, JVC introduced the GY-HM700 shoulder camera. Both camcorders record 35Mbps high definition video and uncompressed audio directly to SDHC media cards in the Quicktime format used by Apple Final Cut Pro™. The camera’s also inroduced solid state recording into JVC’s professsional line.

HPX-300 - World’s first affordable 10-bit, 4:2:2 camera

One day later on February 11, Panasonic announced a huge slate of products including the AG-HPX300 which is a shoulder mount P2 HD camcorder. Panasonic is billing it as the “world’s first affordable 10-bit, 4:2:2 camera”. According to the TVNEWSDAY article the HPX-300 will cost $10,700 U.S. and comes with a 17x Fujinon lens. The camera employs one-third-inch CMOS native HD imagers and according to Panasonic the imagers overcome the physics of small chips and deliver low light sensitivity.

AJ-HRW10 Rapid Writer

Just in case your interested in Panasonic’s other announcemnts you can find them here. In a nutshell they’ve announced a new 17” BT-LH1710 HD LCD Production Monitor, an AJ-CVF100G color viewfinder for higher end P2 HD and DVCPRO HD camcorders, an AJ-PCD35 P2 memory drive with PCI Express interface for fast transfers,an AW-HE870 2/3-inch 3-CCD HD convertible camera, a free AVCHD-to-DV transcoder update, the AJ-HRW10 Rapid Writer P2 workflow tool, an AG-HPG20 P2 HD portable Recorder/Player that features AVC-Intra recording and an expansion to their professional AVCCAM product line with a compact HD Recorder and multi-purpose camera head.

SONY HVR-Z5U - compact point-of-view camcorder

According to Glen Dickson of Broadcasting & Cable, SONY surfaced last week. According to his post,   Sony is saving most of its major product announcements for NAB 2009 but last week it previewed a handful of new products. They included an HDV-format high-definition camcorder, the HVR-Z5U, which is a compact point-of-view camcorder, the HXR-MC1; and two new LCD monitors, the BVM-170 and PVM-L2300.

According to Dickson’s post SONY also announced a new field recorder for the XDCAM HD optical-disc format, the PDW-HR1, which supports legacy formats including MPEG IMX, DVCAM and 4:2:0 HD 24P content.

Looking forward to NAB.

….brad….

Coming Soon – Marvell SheevaPlug – Eco Friendly $99 Linux PC

Marvell SheevaPlug Linux PC

According to SlashGear Marvell’s SheevaPlug is a device that hides an entire Linux PC in a wall-wart power supply. Priced at $99, inside it there is an ARM-based 1.2GHz Sheeva processor, 512MB of DDR2 memory, 512MB of flash storage, gigabit Ethernet and USB 2.0.

Eventually, prices are expected to drop to around $49  and it’s designed to take a USB hard-drive and turn it into network attached storage. Not only will this be from a home network but users can access the drive through a web-based portal. Marvell claims it uses less than one tenth of the power of a typical PC being used as a home server.

NerdLogger has a great post on this technology as well that goes into greater detail on its potential.

….brad….

More Than 70 New Exhibitors Join the 2009 NAB Show Floor

The 2009 NAB Show will be held April 18-23 in Las Vegas and according to an NAB press release there will be more than 70 new exhibitors as well as a wide variety of traditional NAB exhibitors on the 850,000 square feet (ouch my feet!) NAB Show floor.

New exhibitors include Electronic Arts, Phillips 3D Solutions and 3ality Digital, and they’ll join 1,600 companies, including 430 international exhibitors, that attendees can visit during the Show.  Apparently NAB 2009 is going to have several new attractions. Amongst them two pavilions dedicated to showcasing cutting-edge 3D technologies and the latest in mobile technology.  One cool area that I always visit is NHK’s Ultra High Definition TV technology. And perhaps just as cool are demonstrations that will be presented by the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology’s (NICT). They are going to highlight the latest discoveries in holographic television and 3D high definition transmission technologies.

If you are interested in going NAB has offered ….brads blog…. readers free access to the show. The Free Exhibits Passport Code: TP01 which gets you a pass includes access to the exhibit floor and the opening keynote – a $150 value.  The link to use it is http://nabshow.com/passport

Below is another video that explains why NAB is important.  It’s called Content Central.

Vodpod videos no longer available.

more about “NAB 2009 Content Central“, posted with vodpod

Why pay for cable? Jerry Schwartz, Associated Press Writer Loves ATSC Sidechannels

Just a short post. I found another article about the benefits of switching over to free over-the-air High Definition Digital Television. It’s titled “The wonders of the new digital channels” and its written by Jerry Schwartz of the Associated Press.  As most of you are aware some of the American analogue stations have shut off their transmitters with the remainder of stations doing so later on in the year.

Yahoo News ran this article that talks about his experience in switching to DTV. He comments on a number of side (or sub) channels available in the New York City area. Funny he too asks the question….. Why pay for cable?

….brad….

Flexible Display Allows Interaction with 3D Media for Design

The Impress flexible touchscreen by Dis.play is soft and is said to break the distance in the relationship of the human and technology. The video below is really impressive especially in the way it allows for hand molding of computer generated 3D media.

….brad….

Vodpod videos no longer available.

more about “Flexible Display Allows Interaction w…“, posted with vodpod

Gasp! Stantum TouchPark – True Multitouch Interaction

Below is a demonstration of how touchscreen interaction is advancing.

Stantum’s technology employs resistive touchscreens that allows for accuracy beyond the pixel density of the display. The display offers some incredible input methods that includes gesture recognition, cursor management and physics processing.

Its market is for phone builders to stick on top of the phone with Symbian, Windows Mobile and Android supported

…..brad….

Vodpod videos no longer available.

more about “Gasp! Stantum TouchPark – True Multit…“, posted with vodpod

Vodpod videos no longer available.

more about “erase“, posted with vodpod

Pulse Smart Pen

Digital pens have been around for years. They started as devices that write with ink and record the handwriting so it could be displayed on a computer screen.

Livescribe’s Pulse can actually record audio and upload notes to your Windows computer. At US$199.95 it would be an expensive pen to lose.Employing a dot-positioning system, an embedded infrared camera tracks everything written or drawn on proprietary paper which is covered with nearly invisible dots. On the bottom of each sheet is a menu of controls that allows the the pen to start, stop, replay, and fastforward a recording on your computer screen.

The Pen also records audio as its recording the notes you jot down. The tip of the pen tracks your scribbling by taking 72 pictures per second. Later when reviewing the notes they are highlighted on your screen as the corresponding audio is played back

…..brad….

Vodpod videos no longer available.

more about “Pulse Smart Pen“, posted with vodpod

Nano-Sized Radio –No Not The iPod Nano!– Plays Derek And The Domino’s “Layla”

Nano Radio - First Real Breakthrough In Radio Millimeter Sized Wireless Receivers

Chris Jablonski ZDnet column talks about a breakthrough in radio where a receiver was built  out of a single carbon nanotube. Apparently the radio detects and plays songs and it has been noted by Scientific American as one of the first truly functional nanoscale devices. The magazine believes the radio, which is only 200 nanometers long, will have a “measurable effect on the larger macroscale world.”

You can listen to the playback by clicking here.

You can read the entire article on the Scientific American Website by clicking here.

Android – Much More Than A Mobile Phone OS

In having to do some research of late on Mobile devices for a project at work my attention focused on Android. Whenever I undertake this kind of work and start seeking opinions I usually get it form people who have formed opinions based either from a consumer perspective or an experimental perspective.

Apple’s iPhone

Apple iPhone

For those who fall into the consumer camp they usually know their technology based on what they’ve been sold. When I started taking a close look at this just over a month ago I have to admit that I fell on the consumer side of the fence. Based on what I heard I concluded that the Apple iPhone was probably as good a platform to jump in and do development with. After all it had the numbers in terms of sales, I’d seen it adverted a lot on TV and everyone on the Inernet mentioned how cool it was. The only person who I heard say anything negative about the iPhone was Steve Balmer who pointed out that it was awfly expensive given that it didn’t have a keyboard.

The other system I heard about was Android. To be honest I didn’t know much about it. I knew it had something to do with Google, I knew it has something to do with a Google telephone and I knew it was Open Source. Open Source usually means that the system has a much bigger developer base and its proponents would probably look at the phone from an experimental perspective.

Over the past few days I’ve had a chance to to sit down and take a close look at Android. A lot of news surfaced on Android given the GSMA Mobile World Congress that occurred in Barcelona, Spain so here is a compendium of a few things I discovered.

Android Background

One thing I’ve discovered is that I really like this platform for development. Android was developed by Google and has yet to own even a small part of the smartphone market because of its newness. Android is an Open Source, Linux-derived platform with major hardware and software developers that are part of the Open Handset Alliance. This OS already has a cult following among programmers eager to develop apps because of  its flexible, Open Source, back end primary because Android promises to give developers access to every aspect of the phone’s operation.

G1 Android Smartphone

When I did my initial research looking into Android I did not realize how new it was. As such when I first started looking at handsets for it, I didn’t realize that there was only one offical Phone (Android Dev Phone 1 or G1) which is a T-mobile G1. A G1 phone is unique because its equipped with Android Firmware.

Some developers had tried placing Android on other devices, such as the Nokia 810, only to discover that it wouldn’t talk to the units Bluetooth or GPS technology. Again this was because the Nokia 810 does not contain the correct firmware.

Most of the Internet chatter indicated that real Android devices would hit the market in the summer. This was because Google had announced new firmware for Android telephones called “cupcake”. What’s significant about the Mobile World Congress is that “cupcake” was released and the first G2 mobile phones were unveiled. Being a G2 device they contain the Android mobile phone firmware upgrade.

So what do these new G2 phones look like? Below is a video of one shot at this weeks Mobile World Congress.

Vodpod videos no longer available.

more about “HTC Magic in-depth look “, posted with vodpod

More To Android

However the big surprise of Android is that it appears to be evolving towards something way more than a smart telephony device. That’s because of its Open Source nature which is key to people with an experimental inclination to do much more with the device.

1080P Playback with NVIDIA Hardware

The video below was also shot at the Mobile World Congress. This is something that I didn’t expect to see related to Android. Below is Android running on a Tegra equipped handheld device. The significance of the NVIDIA technology is that it’s cheap for the manufacturer and the  video operates smoothly at High Definition resolution.

Vodpod videos no longer available.

more about “Tegra APX 2600 chipset running handhe…“, posted with vodpod

NVIDIATegra Takes The Video Output Of A Mobile Device To A Whole New Level – 1080P!

This next video has two different parts. The first part is a mobile interface embedded in a laptop computer where the laptop’s display is what one would see on the mobile device. The second part shows the Tegra’s output from a handheld device on a large 1080p display including its ability to render 3D. This is a bit of a showstopper….

Vodpod videos no longer available.

more about “3D capabilities NVIDIA Tegra APX 2600…“, posted with vodpod

Texas Instruments’ Android Zoom OMAP34x-II Mobile Development Platform

Below are a couple more Android Devices based on a rival to NVIDIA’s Tegra technology. These devices employ Texas Instruments OMAP34x-II Mobile Development Platform.

Vodpod videos no longer available.

more about “Texas Instruments’ Android Zoom OMAP3…“, posted with vodpod

Vodpod videos no longer available.

more about “Texas Instruments Android Mobile Deve…“, posted with vodpod

Experimental Nature Of Android – A Wireless Blimp Demonstration

I believe the two videos below will show the experimental nature of Android and why I like it. The video’s are a demonstration of a wireless blimp controlled by an Android hand set…… and one of them is a wireless Camera blimp….

Vodpod videos no longer available.

more about “Android Controlled Camera Blimp“, posted with vodpod

Vodpod videos no longer available.

more about “Robotic Blimp Under Google Android De…“, posted with vodpod

Freescale to use Android, ARM for $100 Netbook

And finally if the Camera Blimp is not enough to convince you, how about the planned Freescale $200 netbook? It plans to use Android as well….. Enough said about what one can do with an Android equipped device. Android is a perfect development platform for a University environment.

….brad….

Bit Bucket Hits #10 In WordPress Fastest Growing English Daily Blog

There have been some banner days relating to this blog and today was one of them. I got a message from WordPress that on this date this blog hit number 10 on its fastest growing Blog category for English and number 19 when compared against all its language blogs. That’s pretty cool considering there are over 200,000 blogs on the WordPress site.

Thanks everyone and I appreciate everyone checking the blog out every now and then.

….brad….