digiANALYSIS, BIZ + BITZ
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UWB Will Definitely BE!—In 2006, it appeared that the market launch of ultra-wideband (UWB) was imminent. Several factors conspired to delay that, but ABI Research now expects UWB to see strong growth starting in 2008, finding its first success in laptops and computer peripherals, and eventually in mobile handsets. Forecasts indicate that shipments of UWB-enabled devices will grow from virtually nil today, to more than 400 million in 2013. Conditions are ripe for a rapid takeoff. We are starting from “Year Zero”: in 2007, only about 40,000 UWB-equipped devices shipped. This year, there will be perhaps a million, and ABI Research expects the curve to rise sharply thereafter. Because an official UWB standard has now been ratified in the United States, North America is expected to lead this market for some time to come. The current “sweet spot” in this market is UWB’s application as a wireless USB enabler, connecting computers (especially notebooks) with printers, hard drives, and other peripherals. An initial UWB “hub and dongle” configuration will enable users to retrofit the vast number of existing PCs and related equipment with wireless connections. UWB modules are just starting to appear in selected laptops (initially from Lenovo, Dell and Toshiba), but true silicon integration will take more time. Later, other kinds of consumer electronics such as digital cameras and camcorders, HDTVs, and portable music devices will start to build the numbers—Scottsdale, Arizona
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It’s Greek to Ericsson—Ericsson will be the end-to-end IPTV systems integrator, solution provider and business consultant for tier one Greek telecom operator, Hellenic Telecommunications Organization (OTE SA). The integrated IPTV solution for OTE includes; headend systems from Tandberg Television, part of the Ericsson group; middleware application; content distribution platform and a customized and flexible consumer portal. The solution will also involve complete implementation and integration of tools for operational management— Stockholm, Sweden
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Mogul Motion—Sprint Mogul’s EVDO Rev A version will soon be appearing, according to the company’s announcement. With this information, the various (free!) web browsers available include: Opera Mini browser, Skyfire, and Mobile Firefox.
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Engineering A Certification—The Institute of Electrical & Electronics Engineers Communications Society (IEEE ComSoc) has launched a new program to certify the competency, practical knowledge, and skills of wireless communications professionals. The IEEE Wireless Communication Engineering Technologies (IEEE WCET) Certification Program has been specifically designed by IEEE ComSoc to address the worldwide wireless industry’s growing and ever-evolving need for qualified communications professionals who can demonstrate practical problem-solving skills in real-world situations. By way of this certification, professionals will be able to clearly demonstrate their knowledge of wireless communications technologies—employers will have a new means of selecting individuals for wireless engineering positions and projects. To qualify for the IEEE WCET designation, engineers with a bachelor’s degree from an accredited institution and at least three years of wireless engineering experience must pass a detailed comprehensive examination developed by more than 100 industry experts and experienced wireless practitioners. Overall development of the program was guided by Professional Examination Service (PES), a leading developer of certification programs—New York, New York
digiCONTENT, CREATION + DELIVERY
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Compression Considerations—A unique JPEG2000 hardware compression platform
has been launched by 4DSP that’s powered by Xilinx FPGA accelerators. This new system promises better image compression to meet the needs of nexgen digital cameras, 4G infrastructure and headsets. In addition, medical, military and other precision imaging applications will benefit from improved compression performance, as well. JPEG2000 is a wavelet-based, digital imaging compression standard superseding the original discrete cosine transform-based JPEG compression method. 4DSP’s JPEG2000 PMC daughter card is based on two ADV212 devices and a low-cost SPARTAN- 3AN FPGA. The JPEG2000 CODEC platform can grab and compress up to 140Mpixels per second from two independent cameras. It can either encode the video frames prior to or after applying an advanced video/imaging algorithm. Real-time pre-processing on raw data can be performed in the Virtex-4 or Virtex-5 FPGA devices. This flexibility can be used to correct effects such as local brightness or barrel distortion to enhance image quality and filter out elements that may reduce the compression effectiveness—Reno, Nevada
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Gordon Gets EA Gig—Electronic Arts Inc. now has Jeff Gordon, the legendary NASCAR driver of car #24, going to be featured as the cover athlete for EA SPORTS NASCAR 09. NASCAR 09 is scheduled to ship in North America on June 10th and will offer an authentic, exhilarating stock car driving experience for racing fans of all ages. One of NASCAR’s most celebrated and successful drivers for more than a decade, Gordon is ranked 6th all time in Cup Series wins with 81 and is a four time Sprint Cup Series champion. Gordon is a member and partial owner of Hendrick Motorsports. Gordon’s prestigious reputation aligns with the new NASCAR 09 career mode, “
Sprint for the Cup.” Gordon will be a guide and a mentor to help build your reputation to become the next NASCAR Sprint Cup Series champion. With a completely rebuilt handling model, the game will be more accessible to newcomers while continuing to offer options that will challenge even the most experienced virtual driver. NASCAR 09 is an authentic NASCAR experience that will appeal to every type of NASCAR enthusiast. Developed in Orlando, Florida by EA Tiburon, NASCAR 09 will be available for the PLAYSTATION 3 and PLAYSTATION 2 computer entertainment systems and the Xbox 360 video game and entertainment system.
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Transoceanic Sports Success—For the second consecutive year, broadcasts of the recent Australian Open tennis tournament were transmitted to U.S. viewers via a transoceanic fiber link provided by Genesis Networks. The Australian Open marks one of the first examples of a major international sporting event that has chosen a fiber infrastructure over satellite communications for global transmission of broadcasts. Genesis Networks was under contract by two of the world’s largest sports cable networks to deliver video transmission services for the Australian Open. Genesis provided 24/7 transmission for up to 14 different circuits linking the venue to and from the sports networks’ production compounds in the U.S. In addition to prime-time coverage of tennis matches, Genesis provided fiber links for sports news-gathering feeds, such as interviews with players and special features. Genesis also provided highly reliable data circuits to support the networks’ voice and data communications needs between the venue and the U.S. as well as Internet access. The entire network infrastructure was diversely routed and protected for reliability and redundancy—New York, New York
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Harmonic Encoder Enjoys Mediaroom Conformance—Harmonic’s new DiviCom Ion AVC SD encoder completed its conformance testing for the Microsoft Mediaroom IPTV and multimedia software platform. The test was administered by Microsoft Corp. as part of the Microsoft Mediaroom Interoperability and Qualification Lab (IQ Lab) program. As a Microsoft Mediaroom ecosystem partner, Harmonic powers the video headends for a majority of Microsoft’s IPTV customers, and delivers more than 5,000 broadcast video channels around the world to more than four million IPTV subscribers. The Ion AVC encoder was tested in both NTSC and PAL formats for feature set completeness, compression performance and service uptime in video and audio encoding, picture-in-picture, closed captioning and other categories—Sunnyvale, California
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News Busting Development—OmniBus Systems will be previewing at NAB2008 their iTX NEWS.This is a powerful nexgen, multi-media news solution based on OmniBus iTX. iTX NEWS provides an extremely speedy, flexible and responsive workflow for today’s rapidly evolving, multi-format news environment. iTX NEWS has multi-format capabilities, allowing users to easily ingest and edit together SD and HD sources and combine them in the same playlist with non-broadcast material such as security footage and user-generated content—there are also real-time format conversion and rendering of effects. The iTX architecture streamlines the output of multiple versions of the same playlist for SD, HD, Internet streaming, mobileTV and other platforms, with automatic transcoding and distribution of content. iTX NEWS includes comprehensive media acquisition, asset tracking and logging tools, powerful browse capabilities and rapid Windows Media encoding for news streaming. Content can be acquired from a wide variety of sources—AVID, Final Cut Pro, live ingest, digital news delivery services and viewer-generated sources – and any mixture of formats can be combined in the same playlist. Frame-accurate proxy streaming is available to all users via the OmniBus SmartClient. iTX NEWS includes an optional, integrated, advanced 3D graphics package; it can also control many of the industry-standard graphics devices, allowing both graphics and video elements to be controlled from within a single playlist.
iTX NEWS also includes iTX Edit, a purpose-designed, multi-format, editing solution tailored for news and sports apps, with the ability to take edits to air without prior rendering—iTX does this in real-time, with graphics, audio and video effects, stills, captions and voiceovers. EDLs can also be exported to Final Cut Pro or AVID for craft editing if required—Denver, Colorado
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Ross Goes Into Overdrive—Ross Video will introduce version 7 software of the their OverDrive Automated LiveProduction Control System at NAB 2008 (Booth SU6010). OverDrive’s version 7 includes applications for News, Sports, Worship, and Live Event productions. MOS intergration is added for increased power for graphic and video server systems, enhanced Client / Server architecture, and the introduction of sideCar, a compact remote control panel. Additional new features include multiple user-programmable timers, Preview
CustomControls and the ability to enable or disable remote control of
mixers or robotic cameras on-the-fly. OverDrive is a highly flexible and scalable production control system with a real-time LiveLink MOS interface to the newsroom editorial system. The extensive device control capabilities of the Synergy Standard Definition and Multi-Definition production switchers combined with OverDrive gives users the ability to execute a more consistent, efficient, and sophisticated news production—Iroquois, Ontario
SES ASTRA Shows Growth—SES ASTRA has further increased the number of digital satellite TV homes reached by their ASTRA satellite system in Germany by 1.72 million. Access is now at 9.75 million households (+ 21.5 percent). In total, Germany had 36.98 million analogue and digital TV homes last year. The number of satellite households remains stable at 16.7 million. As a result, 45 percent of all TV households are directly served via satellite. Cable serves 17.9 million TV homes (48.4 percent). Terrestrial television is watched in 2.3 million homes (6.3 percent). While the number of cable households decreased by 600,000 in 2007, digital terrestrial TV increased its reach by 400,000 households. These are the results of the latest Satellite Monitor, conducted annually by the market research institute TNS Infratest on behalf of SES ASTRA—Betzdorf, Luxembourg
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Harmonic Encoder Enjoys Mediaroom Conformance—Harmonic’s new DiviCom Ion AVC SD encoder completed its conformance testing for the Microsoft Mediaroom IPTV and multimedia software platform. The test was administered by Microsoft Corp. as part of the Microsoft Mediaroom Interoperability and Qualification Lab (IQ Lab) program. As a Microsoft Mediaroom ecosystem partner, Harmonic powers the video headends for a majority of Microsoft’s IPTV customers, and delivers more than 5,000 broadcast video channels around the world to more than four million IPTV subscribers. The Ion AVC encoder was tested in both NTSC and PAL formats for feature set completeness, compression performance and service uptime in video and audio encoding, picture-in-picture, closed captioning and other categories—Sunnyvale, California
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Where Do You Place A Book Mark On A Mobile Phone? —This is a first—a book has been produced exclusively for publishing on a mobile phone. Andreas Markusson‘s new crime novel Første gang jeg døde (The First Time I Died) has now been exclusively launched on Telenor‘s Norwegian audio book service, Telenor Lydbok. All litcasts are 10-20 minutes in length. The partner in this project is Grieg Lyd, which has now also introduced the term ‘litcast‘, that being a short story written especially for mobile phones. Telenor is now planning a new crime page on its mobile portal for the Norwegian market to promote a selection of crime novels. This is targeted especially for the Norwegians who enjoy ‘whodunits’ at Easter—Fornebu, Norway
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Testing Treat—The video products division of Wohler Technologies is PANORAMAdtv and the firm has just released the Touchstone 3G portable signal test generator for digital video and audio. The palm-sized, battery-operated device serves a growing market’s need for flexible testing of signals, including 3Gb/s serial digital signals. The Touchstone 3G unit can generate 37 different 10-bit video test patterns with embedded audio signals that provide programmed tones for as many as eight stereo pairs. Video test patterns include motion zone plates and a pathological signal for 4:2:2 digital signals, including 1080-50/60P at 3Gb/s.
Touchstone 3G can be powered by rechargeable or single-use batteries, in addition to an included universal AC supply. When first introduced in 2007, the Touchstone 3G system earned a TV Technology STAR (Superior Technology Award Recipient) Award celebrating its technical innovation—the product is now shipping—Hayward, California
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