Apple TV 2.0 vs. Blu-Ray, DVD & HD Cable: The Comparison [updated] | iLounge

Apple TV 2.0 vs. Blu-Ray, DVD & HD Cable: The Comparison [updated] | iLounge

Apple TV Take 2 released in the wild

The AwkwardTV folks are already at work hacking it. First word is that the OS is still 10.4.7, which means that old hacked plugins may still work.

Downfall of HD-DVD

Macworld Keynote: Apple TV Take two

Live from the MacWorld Keynote- the next big update to iTunes and the Apple TV: HD movies, 5.1 Audio $2.99 and $3.99 movie rentals from all the major studios (4.99 HD rentals), flickr and .mac photostreaming, rent movies directly on the AppleTV without a computer. Similarity engine movie reccomendations, and subtitle support (finally). If only they would let you add perian and movie subfolders or playlists without hacking it, I'd start giving them out to everyone I know as gifts. They're still too scared to address that "user with 800 divx movies with .srt subtitles" market. I guess I can't blame them.

Sony Offers a Single HDV Model for 2008 - HDR-HC9 - Sony

Sony Offers a Single HDV Model for 2008 - HDR-HC9 - Sony: "Sony has announced that they will release only one model in HDV category, the HDR-HC9, at least for early 2008. This decision only confirms the generally recognized fact that the tape-based HDV format has fallen out of favor compared to DVD, hard disk drive (HDD), and flash memory media using the newer AVCHD recording format." Retails for $1099.

Create Digital Motion � Pinnacle Video Transfer: Grab Analog Video Without a Computer

Create Digital Motion scoops video thing so often now that I'm beginning to wonder if we have become superfluous (!) Anyway, from CDM today- Super cool hardware H.264 capture device, plug it into any usb 2.0 volume (ipods, flash drives), and capture to H.264 without a computer. At only $129, I'm totally getting one.

Create Digital Motion- Pinnacle Video Transfer: Grab Analog Video Without a Computer

Also on CDM- The worlds smallest laser projector. I want one implanted in my head.

Tiny Create Digital Motion - Laser Projector Becomes World’s Smallest Projector

Retro Thing: Cartrivision

Bohus Blahut has a great post today about another forgotten video distribution format: Cartrivision.

[...]The format is called Cartrivision, and it dates all the way back to 1972. It was the first such format developed and sold in the USA. The unusual carts are square - the reels are one atop the other inside. It recorded only every third field of video and displayed it three times - a clever way to use the technology of the day to yield a decent picture and still fit a whole movie into the 8 inch square cassette.

The player was built into a number of specially made televisions, making the buy-in a hefty $1350 (nearly $6800 in today's money). Blank carts could record TV shows using the inbuilt timer, and there were pre-recorded movies and special interest programs.

Since there were no corner rental stores, you'd choose your film (the advertising copy does mention the availability of adult films, no surprise there...) from a catalog and the cartridge would be shipped to your Cartrivision dealer. You couldn't buy feature films to keep, nor could you rewind the cartridge at home. If you wanted to watch the movie again, you'd have to take it back to the dealer and pay a fee to re-rent and rewind the flick.

Why? Cartrivision was developed in cooperation with the film industry, and these were the stipulations they placed on this new home-based movie experience. It does smack a lot of the many current format wars, and the tyrannical terms of digital rights management. To be fair, home movie rental was unfamiliar turf for the studios back then, and at that point they made all of their money from a film's theatrical release and possibly a rare showing on TV.[...]

Cartrivision: The USA's First Crack At Video Cassettes

Create Digital Motion - Mobile Small form factor HDMI/HD recording - record your HD gigs in .. HD!

Create Digital Motion : Mobile Small form factor HDMI/HD recording - record your HD gigs in .. HD!

Oculon pocket svga projector

Link to CDM article, link to product page.

Eyeclops- $50 video microscope toy with rca out

I saw this cool 200x toy video microscope on amazon. Looks like it could be hacked or otherwise used for evil in some cool way.

CVM - Richard Baily

Tonight I recieved an email from the brother of Richard "Doc" Baily, the amazing mathematician and artist who contributed visuals to movies like Soderberg's Solaris Remake and Superman Returns (among others). I had written Doc last year about his 'Spore' Software and had recieved one reply but then the conversation abruptly ended. Doc's brother informed me in his mail that Doc had, sadly, passed away in April of last year, and he was now attending to Doc's archives of work. The one piece of good news he had to share was that the Center for Visual Music (who did the wonderful Oskar Fischinger disc) will be putting together a collection of Doc's work.

I am the legal trustee and copyright holder for Richard's artistic and musical work, and I apologize greatly for not replying to you in a timelier manner. Yes, I do have some high rez prints that Richard had developed and was marketing. One day I will place them for sale on Image Savant, just not right now. You are really thinking correctly about images. I will contact you when the prints become available if that is good with you.

If you wish to use or see some more of his material I have contracted with a company called Artbeats who is set-up to deliver a good variety of Richard's cg work at a very reasonable and affordable cost (Dreamlight, Dreamlight 2, Light Waves, Nightmare Light). If you wish, please check them out.

Dreamlight 1+2

There is a DVD coming out very soon of his collaboration with John Buchanan that I know you will be very interested in. The works are called Xtacism/ Aura which should be coming out this year through the Center for Visual Music (CVM).

CVM - Richard Baily

Magic Horse

My video for Horse Plus Donkey's song "Magic Horse". iPhone optimized version here

The New Wave - 70's doc on analog video synths

Thanks Demonbabies!

Warning! - Reduser.net

Warning! - Reduser.net

How to enable your AppleTV as an Xgrid node

This procedure will show you how to setup you AppleTV as an Xgrid node. I'm not really sure why you'd want to do this, but this is proof-of-concept. There's not a whole lot of Xgrid-aware apps out there, but Techspansion's excellent video converter VisualHub is aware. (as is Final Cut- ed.)

Link

Quartz Composer built stereoscopic recorder

Here's a nifty OS X application that creates red/blue 3D movies using input from two firewire cameras (like the two iSight camera setup featured in Res magazine a while back.

Link

Online Video Format Wars: News From The Front

Online Video Format Wars: News From The Front

Content-Aware Image Resizing

Yet another Siggraph video that blows my mind -- "Seam Carving for Content-Aware Image Resizing" by Shai Avidan and Ariel Shamir.



(via AE Portal News)

Part of what's so interesting is the idea of finding patterns in images/video that allow a system to be "content-aware". The use of edge detection to determine important vs. non important visual information reminds me of the process of analyzing time-sliced video footage to interpolate when cuts, dissolves, or wipes take place. Eddie Elliott has a great example of this on his website. Essentially, if you take all the frames of a video and place them back to back to make a cube, by looking at the sides of the cube you can see where a left to right wipe, a cut to different looking footage, or a cross dissolve take place. Someone told me a couple years ago about a company trying to refine the technique in order to create a software program that logged archived footage procedurally, rather than hiring someone to plod through hours of footage.


Image from Eddit Elliot's Video Streamer page. For more on time-slice/slitscan artworks, Golan Levin has a good archive here.

Adobe adds H.264 to Flash Player

Link to MacNN article

Steve Jobs poo-poo's little plastic discs for video

During the iMac/iLife special event Steve Jobs introduced the iDVD part of the package with a dismissive "There are some people who still want to make DVDs." This followed a demonstration of some really nice HD web galleries being generated by iMovie. It's nice to know somebody that high up has caught on to the fact that locked-up oxidizing plastic discs that are illegal to copy are a bad way to hold video.


Panic's Steven Frank chimes in.

(p.s. I know I'll probably sound like an Apple shill for saying this, but I just got one of those new iMacs, and it's the nicest computer I have ever worked on, and that includes the quad Mac Pro I use at work. The glass front LCD and keyboard and overall zippiness of the machine just plain make me happy whenever I use it. I just put FCS 2, Logic Pro, and all my assorted free video transcoders on there and it positively sings.)