BBC Plans the First Live Ultra HD Broadcast Entirely Over IP
[Philip Lelyveld comment: This BBC activity demonstrates how a broadcaster can leverage the strengths of one distribution path (IP / the internet) to innovate without abandoning the benefits and acknowledged weaknesses of another distribution path (broadcast and CE industry's slow, coordinated tech standards processes).]
As several broadcasters get ready to test live Ultra HD broadcasts of the World Cup this week, the BBC has plans to go one step further. Journalist and ETCentric contributor Adrian Pennington tells us that the BBC has chosen next month’s Commonwealth Games for the world’s first live Ultra HD production that will use an entirely Internet-based infrastructure. While broadcasters have used IP to distribute content between the studio and remote locations, all-IP live production is not yet common.
“IP will enable us to be more flexible with services we already produce, and longer term, to introduce new kinds of services,” said Matthew Postgate, BBC R&D controller. “We wanted to do this in 4K to prove the system is capable of working at the highest resolution and of simultaneously working at all lower resolutions. By the time 4K comes around we won’t have to spend time doing the research all over again.”
“Beginning with the Commonwealth Games’ opening ceremony on July 23 from Glasgow, Scotland, BBC R&D will produce a series of Ultra HD broadcasts using four Sony F55 4K cameras converted into IP and mixed live before being encoded into HEVC, a compression system suitable for home viewing,” writes Pennington for The Hollywood Reporter. “To do this, the BBC will use technology of its own devising, dubbed IP Studio, which is a system that includes specially configured PCs to convert each 4K camera signal into IP and a production gallery featuring a multi-viewer and mixer.”
See the full story here: http://www.etcentric.org/bbc-plans-the-first-live-ultra-hd-broadcast-entirely-over-ip/
What It’s Like To Shoot A Feature Film For Oculus Rift
But the strangest thing is the surround sound headphones. Because you are in an immersive world, content creators are forced to use sound as a cue that instructs you where to look. The footsteps behind you and the screams from a corner make everything that much scarier--just as much as the monster or serial killer jumping out from behind the pile of trash.
Although distribution details are still sketchy, it’s one of the very first attempts Co.Labs has seen of Hollywood creating straight-to-Oculus Rift content.
Filming takes place with an array of cameras located in the center of the set in a large rig, with audio recorders hanging down from the ceiling. The big, this-changes-everything complication is that the camera array records everything in a 360 degree space. Or, as Plotkin told me, “If you see the camera, the camera sees you.”
And because footage from all those little cameras is merged, in a server-intensive process, into a single Oculus-compatible video file, every scene has to be done in a single take. Meanwhile, the actors are in front of, behind, and to the sides of the camera. The filming experience itself is akin to the bastard progeny of experimental theater in the round and video game production.
Everyone involved sees that there’s clear potential in making immersive virtual-reality movies, but no one knows what the audience will love, and what will just be too strange (or too corny) for them.
See the full story here: http://www.fastcolabs.com/3031890/what-its-like-to-shoot-a-feature-film-for-oculus-rift
Lego Fusion Sets Combine Physical Blocks and Virtual Worlds
Lego is launching a new line of building block kits this summer that enable 7-to-12-year-old children to build a physical building and then see that building become a part of a virtual world in the corresponding smartphone app. The budding builder would construct a facade out of the 200-piece Lego Fusion set, and then use the app’s camera function to capture the creation and turn it into a building within the app’s game, such as a tycoon game or a racing game.
The new Fusion kits are $35 while the apps are available for free. The apps come with a few demo games, but because each building must be made by real blocks before it will appear in the game, the apps require the corresponding Lego set.
Researchers at Lego developed the concept of the Fusion platform because they found that children do not differentiate physical and virtual play. “For kids, it’s really just one world,” said Ditte Bruun Pedersen, senior design manager at Lego’s Future Lab, as reported in The Wall Street Journal. “It’s all about the play for them.”
See the full story here: http://blogs.wsj.com/personal-technology/2014/06/19/legos-fusion-games-merge-real-bricks-and-touch-screen-play/
Whirling Wi-Fi: Vibrant images reveal how wireless networks sweep and surround us
Hernan created the photographs using a custom-made instrument designed to reveal them.
It scans continuously for wireless networks, and transforms the signal strength to colour LEDs.
The results are multi-coloured streaks of light which twirl and wrap in spaces, showing how they surround objects and people.
See the full story here: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2662507/Whirling-Wi-Fi-Vibrant-images-reveal-wireless-networks-sweep-surround-us.html
Google and Nest Acquire Dropcam For $555 Million
[Philip Lelyveld comment: I'm really curious to know why a good implementation of a non-original, undefendable idea is worth a half billion dollars. Given Nest's experience, why wouldn't it be cheaper for them to pound out a competing minimum viable product.]
Just months after being acquired themselves, the now Google-owned Nest has just announced that they’ve acquired Dropcam. We’re digging for more details on the deal now, but have confirmed that the final sale price was $555 million in cash.
Wondering what the heck a Dropcam is? They make a few different things, but their namesake device is a WiFi-enabled security camera ($149 or $199, depending on video quality) that requires little-to-no-effort to maintain. You plug it in, get it up on your WiFi, and you’re set. If you just want to be able to check in on your cameras remotely, that’s free; if you want Dropcam to keep an archive of recorded footage on their servers, that’ll cost you anywhere from $10 to $30 a month (depending on how long you want archives kept).
See the full story here: http://techcrunch.com/2014/06/20/google-and-nest-acquire-dropcam-for-555-million/?ncid=tcdaily
Report Claims PewDiePie Grossed $4 Million In 2013
The Wall Street Journal has posted a profile of Felix Kjellberg aka PewDiePie, the Swedish gamer who claims more subscribers than any other YouTube channel. According to the article, the 24-year-old grossed $4 million in 2013, making him a real-life YouTube millionaire.
In addition to citing PewDiePie’s mind-boggling revenue, the article also includes a rare interview with the Swede, who usually lets his videos do the talking. While dressed in an adorable floral circlet, Kjellberg opened up about his life on YouTube and lamented the fact that his fame has come with such a polarizing public opinion.
“I’m so central to YouTube now, and that puts me in the spotlight and raises a lot of questions like ‘Why is he so big?’” Kjellberg said. “I’d much rather prefer to have something like 5 million subscribers.”
See the full story here: http://www.tubefilter.com/2014/06/16/pewdiepie-4-million-revenue-2013/
LiveSphere: 360-Degree Immersive Broadcast Video Platform
“The part that attracts most attention is how the picture stitching is done, but the part that enables us to build a business out of this technology is the efficient means of compressing the entire video sphere and the ability to match it to the best decoding capability of the smartphone or tablet to render the best results,” said Benoit Fouchard, chief strategy officer for ATEME.
“There are no solutions in existence that match the needs of the broadcast market,” he explained. “We don’t intend to offer this as a service model but as an end-to-end solution that puts these tools in the hands of the same production team producing the HD or Ultra HD main feed.”
Interestingly, he also downplayed the virtual reality angle: “We don’t want to give the impression that 360-degree video is just for VR where you have to wear headsets, because this is the issue that proved problematic for the public perception of 3D.”
During the Roland-Garros tests, a rig comprised of seven HD GoPro cameras was used from different positions. The best images were captured closer to the action. A multi-camera approach may not be a permanent solution, but Fouchard noted that, “single camera panoramic video doesn’t work for broadcast.”
While the system stitches multiple streams together with an output of less than HD, the goal is to achieve similar results in 4K and 8K.
See the full story here: http://www.etcentric.org/livesphere-360-degree-immersive-broadcast-video-platform/
and here http://www.tvbeurope.com/360o-video-tested-roland-garros/
A Very Short History of LA Tech
[Philip Lelyveld comment: this is a good anecdotal story.]
The Internet was, in many important ways, developed in Los Angeles as a Defense Department project — a communications network that could survive nuclear war.
For that job, a lot of government money in the late 1960s went to Southern California universities, to such Internet pioneers as Leonard Kleinrock at the University of California at Los Angeles and Jon Postel at the University of Southern California.
From this foundation of hard-core engineers, many of the Internet’s important commercial players emerged.
That includes Sky Dayton, who built up EarthLink, one of the earliest and largest Internet service providers. And Bill Gross, founder of many tech companies, such as the pioneering paid-search company GoTo.com, which later become Overture. And Chris DeWolfe and Tom Anderson, who built Myspace, the early social network that was once the most-visited site on the Internet. And Richard Rosenblatt, who created Demand Media, the content-creation startup, as well as many other tech companies in the LA area in the sector’s early days.
See the full story here: http://recode.net/2014/06/14/a-very-short-history-of-la-tech/?curator=MediaREDEF