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digiCREATION—Eastman Kodak Company has redesigned the basic building blocks used to collect light and the company is incorporating that technology into a brand-new sensor. The company has combined its recently announced Color Filter Pattern technology with a new CMOS pixel to create the KODAK KAC-05020 Image Sensor. This is the world’s first 1.4 micron, 5 megapixel device. Designed for mass-consumer camera applications such as mobile phones, Kodak’s new sensor enables a new level of resolution in small optical formats, using significantly smaller pixels. Unlike other small-pixel sensors which can produce poor images, especially under low light conditions, the 1.4 micron pixel used in the KAC-05020 Image Sensor changes this convention. The sensor provides image quality that can equal, or surpass, what is available from current devices using larger, 1.75 micron pixel CMOS designs. Key to the performance of this new sensor is the KODAK TRUESENSE CMOS Pixel, a re-engineering of the fundamental design and architecture of traditional CMOS pixels. In a standard CMOS pixel, signal is measured by detecting electrons that are generated when light interacts with the surface of the sensor. As more light strikes the sensor, more electrons are generated, resulting in a higher signal at each pixel. In the KODAK TRUESENSE CMOS Pixel, however, the underlying “polarity” of the silicon is reversed—the absence of electrons is used to detect a signal. This change enabled a series of improvements to the design and structure of the pixel that ultimately results in CMOS imaging performance that rivals that available from CCD image sensors. The KAC-05020 will be demonstrated by Kodak at the GSMA Mobile World Congress held February 11th through 14th in Barcelona, Spain. Samples of the KAC-05020 are scheduled to be available in Q2 2008—Rochester, New York
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digiDELIVERY—Front Porch Digital will be showing some new products in April at the National Association of Broadcasters Show (NAB) in Las Vegas, Nevada. The company delivers unique CSM software, services, and integrated hardware solutions to broadcasters and media companies worldwide. Front Porch Digital’s patented CSM technologies are found in excess of 200 installations in more than 45 countries, representing 7.5 million hours of content and more than 50 PB (Petabytes) of data under management that provides functionality, scalability, performance, and customer satisfaction. Front Porch Digital’s award-winning DIVArchive technology manages the largest broadcast archives in operation for the major media brands.
Three new patented products will debut: newly updated DIVArchive v.6.1, a content storage management (CSM) application, offers multiple parallel transcode support—rebuild damaged data tape functionality—DIVArchive components running as services—Storage Plan Manager enhancements—LTO-4 tape drive support—IBM TS3550 library support—and partial restore of Leitch AVI DV-25 and Matrox IMX50. DIVAprotect is a new option for DIVArchive that provides continuous monitoring of storage device and media performance, and warns of degradation before it results in catastrophic data loss. DIVAnalyze is a hardware- and software-based automated assessment tool that enables improvement of efficiency, reliability, and repeatability of video and audio quality control, particularly in situations involving batch content ingest. The analysis step in the content lifecycle can be dynamically defined in DIVArchive, equalizing the company’s proven Storage Plan Manager. DIVAgrid advances the distributed architecture of DIVArchive. Each DIVAgrid Actor contains up to 9 TB of RAID5 protected storage per node. Any number of DIVAgrid Actors can be added to a DIVArchive system providing virtual nearline capacity equal to the sum of each of the individual node storage capacities—Louisville, Colorado
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digiDELIVERY—Harris Corporation [NYSE:HRS] now has a contract from broadcast systems integrator Snader and Associates to provide a comprehensive broadcast communications system for the American Forces Network, which delivers news, information and entertainment to almost one million troops worldwide outside of the United States. Snader and Associates is designing the new broadcast system, which will be installed at the Defense Media Center in Riverside, California. The system should be completed by this summer. Under the agreement, Harris will provide broadcast routing, automation, video servers, core processing and asset management products. The system includes the first members of the new Harris NEXIO AMP product family — the NX3601HDI media platform with integrated storage and the NX3601HDX media platform for use on a NEXIO storage area network. NEXIO AMP pairs a high-performance, high-definition/standard-definition (HD/SD) server architecture with best-in-class content protection—Cincinnati, Ohio
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digiDELIVERY—Low power, 45 nanometers of pure processing power—that’s the new Silverthorne chip from Intel, destined to power nexgen goodies from Apple and other manufacturers for their mobile appliances. Intel uncovered their chip during the Solid State Circuits Conference in San Francisco. Fully compatible with the Core 2 Duo instruction set, this beefy chip will have legacy legs, being able to run apps that have been written for Core 2 Duo machines. This chip will only digest between 0.5 and 2 watts, which is about 10x less than typical notebook chips, yet will offer performance of Pentium M chips. Mix in hyperthreading for numerous simultaneous threads on a single core, which means it’s sort of a dual-core chip emulation, and speed scaling up to about 2.0 GHz, and you have a chip designed for mobility that could well set the new standard. Deliveries are expected during Q2. Watch Apple make certain iPhone is a member of the early inclusions. Oh, by the by, the iPhone now has glommed onto about 28 percent of the U.S. smartphone market, all occurring during Q4 of ’07, according to the market analysis firm, Canalys. That places the Apple communication appliance in second place and in front of Palm, which came in with a 9 percent marketshare.
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digiDELIVERY—
Level 3 Communications has been selected by the Democratic National Convention Committee (DNCC) as the Official Live Video and Content Delivery Services Provider for the 2008 Democratic National Convention. The convention will run from August 25th through the 28th in Denver. Level 3 will provide video broadcast services, as well as online video downloading and live streaming of the four-day event, including speeches and other Convention content, via the Internet at the DNCC website. Level 3 will deliver live analog and High-Definition (HD: 29.14, -0.21, -0.71%) video broadcast services from the Pepsi Center, site of the confab. The DNCC will also use Level 3’s Content Delivery Network (CDN) to provide online video downloading and live streaming of the Convention. Level 3’s CDN will also cache the Convention’s web site on servers across its network to deliver a high-quality, online viewing experience. The 2008 Democratic National Convention is expected to pump an estimated $160 million into the Denver area’s economy and draw approximately 35,000 visitors to the region—Denver, Colorado
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digiDELIVERY—Apple wants to “touch” you with their newly debuted 32 GB iPod Touch, retailing for just under $500… plus, there’s a new iPhone pumped up to 16 GB for the same price, but it’s only a memory increase without the added, “hoped for” goodies, such as GPS or 3G support. Nothing has been dumped, either, so if your budget is more toward the 8 GB size, go for it—it remains available. More info….
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digiBIZ—Believability in Clickability, Inc., thanks to a second round of VC infusion to the tune of $8 million. Investments were received from round leader Shasta Ventures with additional monies from Convergence Partners who participated, also, in the first round. Plus, Shasta Ventures now has a seat on the board of directors, going to the managing director of the VC firm, Ravi Mohan. Clickability offers Web Content Management (WCM) via a software-as-a-service (Saas) platform, from creation to optimization, for the entire lifecycle of content on the web—San Francisco, California
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digiCONTENT + DELIVERY—Digital picture frames are popping up everywhere, and Frame Media Inc. couldn’t be any happier. In fact, this provider of content for personalized wireless picture frames has just signed a content partnership with Distributive Networks, which is a mobile content and technology firm. Their product, Frame Channel, allows owners of these devices to combine their computer-based or sharing website photos with content from the channel. This now includes such goodies as Style for Men, Dieting Tips, Beer Beer and More Beer, Sports Trivia and more. In fact, there are more than 40 titles of Distributive Networks’ daily educational, entertainment, lifestyle and sports content available—Boston, Massachusetts
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digiCONTENT + DELIVERY—Imagine, if you are able, having been in the publishing business for more than 80 years, with newspapers, magazines and online content and then mix-in all of the images, articles, recipes and more scattered throughout a maze of databases. That’s The Reader’s Digest Association, Inc. (RDA), who are a global leader in consumer magazines, books, music and other products. Now the firm is going to centralize all of their content using Nstein Technologies Digital Asset Management (DAM) and Text Mining Engine (TME). These apps will manage all RDA content by normalizing it in XML. The content will be automatically tagged with rich metadata so the content becomes more easily searchable, allowing for one single, unified user interface. RDA is the 17th major media company to select Nstein content management solutions—Montreal, Quebec
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digiDELIVERY—Verizon Communications is having to tell some new customers they must wait a while before they can sign up for the company’s FiOS TV service—they’ve completely run out of HD STBs and DVRs with everything now on backorder. Until the good stuff comes in, there are SD DVRs available for their use with no monthly charge, until the HD goodies arrive, a savings of about $15.99 per month for an HD DVR and $9.99 a month for just the HD receiver alone. Chat has it that the units should be available sometime after March 10th. Why the problem? Verizon’s STBs are of the QIP hybrid variety and manufactured by Motorola.
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digiCONTENT—ZVUE Corporation has signed distribution agreements with five new pro content creators and publishers featuring 17 channels of entertainment. These new content creators add an extensive roster of new video content to the ZVUE Network‘s combo of user-generated and commercial entertainment. In addition to content from Showtime, Sony/BMG, IMG, Canadian Broadcast Corporation and many others, ZVUE Network viewers can now access great comedy, music and lifestyle entertainment through ZVUE’s new content relationships with Comedy Time — FuTurXTV — GoTV — Link TV and Mobi Jokes—San Francisco, California
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