There’s a site from Acceller (a company that provides digital lifestyle services to the mass market) that’s dedicated to providing consumers with information they need to evaluate and purchase digital lifestyle services, from high-speed Internet to HDTV and Internet phones. It’s called Digital Landing and they wish to eliminate consumer confusion when it comes to selecting the appropriate products and services within the digital environs. There are a variety of topics at the site to help users, from preventing ID theft to uploading videos to YouTube… as well as how to make international phone calls less costly. Just head over to www3.digitallanding.com and see for yourself if Digital Landing can be of assistance to you—Miami, Florida
Joining Artisan, a company involved in the development of new audio and video apps, is Ed Brown as the firm’s new Vice President of Worldwide Sales. Ed is a veteran of the consumer electronics industry with more than 20 years of executive sales management under his belt. He was most recently with Niles Audio Corporation where he performed as their National Sales Manager. Ed has also served with McIntosh Laboratory, Sonance, Harman International and Starbucks Coffee Company—no wonder he looks so alert!—Incline Village, Nevada
dnp denmark has announced the company’s Supernova Epic Screen has been selected by the Consumer Electronics Association (CES) as an Innovations 2008 Design and Engineering Award honoree in the Video Displays product category. The new Supernova Epic Screen provides uncompromised widescreen reproduction of movies in all aspect ratios displaying superior high-contrast images in 100 percent neutral color. The Supernova Epic offers the flexibility of displaying all formats from 4:3 to ultra-wide 2.40:1 Cinemascope with enhanced resolution, contrast and 100% color accuracy. When used with a projector with an anamorphic lens, the Supernova Epic maintains full image height and unwanted black bars on the top and bottom of the screen are eliminated. The unit’s electronically controlled curtains silently glide into place to maintain constant image height and a superior viewing experience. The curtains are closer to the screen as opposed to other similar products; hence, no shadows detract from the image. When the film is done, the curtains glide fully closed again. The Supernova Epic is available up to 156-inch in standard sizes and can be delivered in custom sizes up to 156-inches, as well. The screen material has been certified by the Imaging Science Foundation (ISF) for exceeding the benchmarks of quality that define the best in video performance available for consumers. dnp denmark is the screen production center for Dai Nippon Printing Co., Ltd., and dnp USA is the North American branch of the company—Costa Mesa, California
Harmonic Inc. [NASDAQ:HLIT] revealed RCN Corporation (with more than 350,000 cable subscribers] has extended its video-on-demand (VOD) service capacity by adding Harmonic’s Narrowcast Service Gateway (NSG) 9116 edgeQAMs with Privacy Mode encryption as well as a software upgrade of existing NSG 8108 systems to add Privacy Mode. With the expansion, RCN can securely deliver more VOD services to more subscribers. VOD is an increasingly popular service among consumers and an important competitive differentiator for cable operators. The NSG family of edgeQAMs performs a variety of functions at the network edge, including multiplexing, program routing, PCR restamping, scrambling, QAM modulation and RF up-conversion. Harmonic’s family of NSG edgeQAM devices includes the widely deployed NSG 9116, NSG 8108 and the NSG 9000 universal edgeQAM. All three models support Privacy Mode encryption. The NSG 9000 is designed to support DOCSIS 3.0 and is in use today by leading cable operators worldwide for broadcast, VOD, switched digital video (SDV) and modular cable modem termination system (M-CMTS) applications—Sunnyvale, California (www.harmonicinc.com)
Highwinds Network Group Inc. has made Adobe Flash Video Streaming Service immediately available on their RollingThunder network. Their new service broadens the range of hosted services for delivering Flash Player compatible video for content publishers with video-heavy sites. RollingThunder Doppler Server, a proprietary application running on the RollingThunder network, helps Highwinds guarantee the delivery of all types of content through the most efficient and cost-effective means, with streamed live and on-demand video always given the top priority with lots of bandwidth to ensure it starts the instant viewers click Play. The video then runs seamlessly from start to finish, regardless of its length—Winter Park, Florida (www.highwinds.com)
Motorola has decided social networking is an element that should be part of their portfolio… to that end, Motorola Ventures, the VC firm of the company, is making an equity investment into social media platform developer Tilefile Ltd. Using a content-neutral media platform, users and communities are connected with a warp that includes audio, photos and videos, but all in a single format named Tile. This means the user experience is far less fragmented and the various packages can be readily experienced on a mobile device or on the Web. When Google purchased Zingku, others seemed to suddenly realize social networking was THE element all needed to garner additional customers!—Schaumburg, Illinois & Sydney, Australia
Omneon, Inc., now offers server support for the AVC-Intra HD format, with the new MediaPort modules for the Omneon Spectrum media server as well as the Omneon MediaDeck integrated server providing realtime encoding and decoding of HD material using the AVC codec. AVC-Intra is based on the advanced MPEG-4 Part 10 Intra standard. It offers high-quality record and playout at about half the bit rate of MPEG-2 based codecs. Incoming raw video feeds can be encoded in the AVC-Intra format in realtime with the new MIP-5600 line of MediaPorts for Spectrum and MediaDeck systems. AVC-I formatted files are created within the servers’ systems and they can be accessed and edited by non-linear editors (NLEs) that support the format. The files can then be encoded by the MediaPorts for playout—Sunnyvale, California
SES AMERICOM, an SES company [Euronext Paris and Luxembourg Exchange:SESG], and AT&T Inc. [NYSE:T] have reached an agreement to supply AT&T U-verseSM TV with international programming via SES AMERICOM’s IP-PRIME platform. SES AMERICOM will also provide international programming for AT&T broadband and wireless platforms. IP-PRIME receives and encodes video from any source, formats the content, and distributes it to any media platform. The process takes place at IP-PRIME’s super headend facility in Vernon Valley, N.J., where content is encoded into the MPEG-4 video standard used in IP to optimize the picture quality of each program while requiring only half the bandwidth of programs in the older MPEG-2 standard. Programs are then uplinked to the IP-PRIME satellites, which in turn will deliver the content to AT&T video super hub offices for distribution to U-verse customers—Princeton, New Jersey & San Antonio, Texas (www.att.com) (www.ip-prime.tv)
SIRIUS Satellite Radio [NASDAQ:SIRI] has revealed three of the company’s products, Backseat TV audio/video tuner, Stiletto 2 portable satellite radio, and Sportster 5 dock & play radio, have been recognized for advancements in consumer technology design and engineering by the Consumer Electronics Association. SIRIUS Backseat TV has been recognized for the highest honor as the Best of Innovations in the 2008 International CES Innovations Design and Engineering Awards. Stiletto 2 and Sportster 5 were also selected as honorees by the judges. SIRIUS Backseat TV was selected as an Innovations 2008 Design and Engineering Award honoree, and the judges also awarded it the highest honor, Best of Innovations 2008, in the In-Vehicle Video Product category. Backseat TV offers live programming from Nickelodeon, Disney Channel, and Cartoon Network, plus SIRIUS Satellite Radio audio entertainment. Rear seat passengers can enjoy the best brands in family entertainment while front seat occupants listen to SIRIUS’ sports, talk and entertainment, and 100% commercial free music programming—New York, New York
The Air Force News Agency (AFNEWS), headquartered in San Antonio, Texas has placed orders for 10, eight-channel Sundance Digital, Inc. Titan automation systems. Sundance Digital (an Avid company) is currently in the process of commissioning the systems for deployment at U.S. military installations in Feltwell, England; Lajes, Azores; Incirlik, Turkey; Aviano, Italy; Spangdahlen, Germany, and in Japan at Yokota (Tokyo), Okinawa, Misawa, Iwakuni and Sasebo. Each of the AFNEWS Titans is being equipped with Sundance Digital’s TitanSync. In this mode, one or more air control stations or list processors serve as a "hot standby" backup of the primary playback system. Other system enhancements include SLQ Data Servers to provide automatic fail-over that mirrors primary playlists, and Intelli-Sat, a powerful satellite feed recording management system. AFNEWS is a field-operating agency of the Secretary of the Air Force Office of Public Affairs (SAF/PA) and gathers packages and disseminates printed and electronic news and information products during wartime and peacetime. The agency manages and operationally controls the Air Force Broadcasting Service and its outlets, Army and Air Force Hometown News Service and Air Force News Service.
Volantis Systems, developer of the Content Adaptation software for mobile content delivery to mobile phone users worldwide, has announced their Volantis Mobility Server is now available as a free download. During Q1 of 2008, the company will release the product under the GNU General Public License (GPL), version three. Some 1.2 million lines of code will be contributed to the community after seven years of development. With more folk moving toward the mobile Internet, enterprises need a simple way to build Web sites for mobile devices. Volantis Mobility Server provides an inexpensive path for companies to create this content and then distribute to the wide variety of mobile browsers on the market. Volantis is the first mobile content delivery solutions vendor to announce it will publish its code under an open source license—Guildford, United Kingdom (community.volantis.com)
Popular Science magazine does a thorough job of assigning compliments to great products when they are deserved. They take note, and award, products and tech goodies that are breakthroughs in their genre. The magazine’s “2007 Best of What’s New Award” for the Gadgets category is certainly no exception this year. The winner is XM’s Xpress RC satellite radio, which is distributed by Delphi. This satradio offers a programming guide in real-time, the ability to save 10 songs, a split-screen in full color and a 60-minute pause and replay. (www.delphi.com)
And speaking of Popular Science, their “Best of What’s New ‘07” awards are now online at www.popsci.com/popsci/flat/bown/2007/. Not only can you read about the various products, but you can also learn how they work! The Categories for their Best Of What’s New 2007 are: Automotive, Aviation & Space, Computing, Engineering, Gadgets, Green Tech, Home Entertainment, Home Tech, Personal Health and Recreation. Each category reveals the Grand Award Winner and the other winners for that genre. In the Aviation & Space category, the Grand Award Winner is CNES’ COROT space telescope. In Computing, it’s Meraki Networks Meraki Mini wireless router. Gadgets—well, what else—the Apple iPhone 2.0. Home Entertainment finds the Pioneer Elite Kuro Pro-1150HD plasma TV as the Grand Award Winner.
