I took an hour or so away from the excellent Connected TV Summit last week to stop by at the Screen Media Expo at London's Earls Court. While it’s not a consumer event I was interested to see what was claimed to be the latest in autostereo 3D from a Hungarian technology developer, iPont. iPont has recently established its UK office in Oxford, and is going to be in the news this weekend as it is supplying the technology behind the first public broadcast of an autostereo 3D football match.

Sky will be transmitting the European Champions League final in 3D, and most home- and pub-based viewers will need to wear 3D glasses. Sky’s 3D productions and broadcasts are tailored specifically to the needs of glasses-based technologies, but iPont’s technology converts the standard live Sky 3D broadcast for viewing on autostereo displays, and this will be demonstrated to an invited audience at the Walkabout pub in Covent Garden, London on Saturday evening.

iPont gave several demonstrations at Screen Media Expo, including 3D Blu-ray and football matches, though none of the latter were broadcast live. They were using autostereo displays from Tridelity and Alioscopy. As with all 3D content, the production quality of the material varied, but in general the 3D effect was impressive, at least relative to most other autostereo demonstrations I have seen. iPont claims that its current technology supports nine viewing angles, but I did not notice as strong a deterioration in viewing experience between viewing points as with some other technologies, such as Toshiba’s autostereo TVs.

iPont’s “secret sauce” is a box of software tricks which converts stereo 3D, on the fly, to multi-angle autostereo 3D. Autostereo displays rely on the availability of multiple angles in the video content which generate multiple viewing angles from the display. The (extremely) expensive way to do this is to set up multiple camera positions during content production, but this is always likely to prove cost-prohibitive. iPont’s current technology works at the consumer or viewer end, and could be included in 3DTVs themselves (iPont is in discussion with leading TV manufacturers).

Perhaps more significantly for the longer term is the prospect of including this type of conversion software into the production and transmission chain. Rather than having the set-top box or TV doing the work, the conversion would be encoded into the broadcast stream. Major US and European broadcasters are known to be interested in this approach. As the technology moves towards commercialisation it is certain that standards bodies and regulators may start to pay close attention as well.

David Mercer

Client Reading: 3D in Europe: Challenges and Opportunities

 

Sony has introduced what it calls a new device category at CES 2010: the “Personal Internet Viewer”. This takes the form of Dash, a small, 7” touch screen internet access device with WiFi access to the home network. It will launch in April 2010 and retail at $199. Dash is based on Flash technology, so, “for Flash, get Dash”. Dash is based on Chumby’s internet service. It currently features more than 1000 internet services and applications across social networking, news, music and video, and can access video from Sony’s Bravia internet video platform. It can run multiple applications simultaneously. One drawback is that it is only mains-powered, so in-home portability is out of the question. Nevertheless we felt this was a very nice implementation of a simple to use, and relatively inexpensive internet access device. At $199 it could well become a favourite for kitchens and bedrooms. We were also impressed with the progress made by Plastic Logic, a company originating from the well-known hub for advanced display technologies – Cambridge in the UK. PL was showing off its QUE ProReader e-reader. At $649 the product is aimed very much at the professional needing to access multiple documents on the move, such as newspapers, books, newsletters and reports. Barnes and Noble is behind the QUE bookstore, and connectivity is via WiFi and AT&T’s 3G network. The device is extremely thin, light and easy to read, and battery life is supposedly several days in normal use. If volume sales lead to cost efficiencies and price declines this technology could find its way into the mass market. In the meantime the company is looking towards adding colour and eventually video capabilities. Client Reading: Consumer Imperatives for Digital TV Media Browsers

How much is a cable-free TV worth? That’s the key question for TV manufacturers and technology vendors as they seek to stir interest once again in the concept of wire-free TVs and peripheral devices. While few consumers will have noticed, it’s been possible for a few years to connect high definition devices like set-top boxes and Blu-ray Disc players to HDTVs without using a cable. The technology has been built in to a few very high-end TVs from Sony and others, but at enormous cost. In fact, with 40” LCD TVs retailing at $600 or less, it can cost considerably more than that just to retrofit a wireless HD set-up. Clearly only those most passionate about clutter-free homes are likely to see the value in spending $1000 or more to remove one cable from their AV system. Until the costs come down dramatically it seems that wireless HD is likely to remain entrenched in its niche market. Those obstacles won’t stop two key wireless HD technology proponents from getting their messages across as CES 2010 approaches. We’ve published several times about this particular tech standards battle over the past few years. The conclusions in our 2007 review look pretty accurate with the benefit of two and a half years’ hindsight. At that time we didn’t expect much standards clarity or indeed volume in the market much before 2010, and that’s more or less how things have panned out. There are two major technology developers: Amimon, which supports the WHDI standard, and SiBeam, which backs WirelessHD. Behind each vendor is a selection of familiar names from the consumer electronics industry, with several appearing on both sides. For this reason alone it’s been difficult to predict the eventual outcome of this battle, if indeed one solution eventually comes to dominate the market. Sony in particular has flirted with both camps, and although it has recently indicated increased support for WirelessHD, executives have suggested they are still uncertain about the longer term potential for wireless HD technologies in general. According to Sony, the price increment is the main barrier to wider adoption. Amimon has also announced progress in the past few days, with the introduction of WHDI PC modules aimed at netbooks and notebooks. WHDI-HDMI adapters will also be launched so that HDMI devices can be enabled for wireless HD. Consumer products are expected to reach the market next year. Apart from the main technical differences between the two standards – one being that WHDI uses 5GHz, WirelessHD 60GHz – a key debating point is whether whole-home signal distribution has significant value. The WHDI camp pushes this as one its main advantages. Personally this strikes me as a strange argument: most peripheral devices will support one display at any one time, wherever they are placed in the home. There may be some demand for devices which support multiple displays (whole-home DVRs, for example), but these are likely to be an expensive alternative to buying multiple devices. The main user advantage of wireless HD technologies seems to me to be removing the wires within a single AV system, and both technologies do this job. The other arguments inevitably have focused on quality and performance, and these are always tough to judge from an independent perspective. I’m sure we’ll hear more from both camps over the coming weeks and during CES itself. But until they can guarantee more realistic consumer price points wireless HD solutions are likely to remain a distant prospect for mass market success. Twitter: twitter.com/DavidMercer_SA Client Reading: HDTV: Standards Muddle Clouds Outlook For Wireless Displays Technorati code: XRKDPAZFT879

Strategy Analytics’ recent user experience study concludes that there is a clear opportunity for developers to fill the need for more advanced TV remote controls, especially as TVs and TV peripheral devices add web functionality to the big screen. In particular we found that there was strong interest in a remote control which integrates a touch screen. Respondents would also value access to a full QWERTY keyboard so that browsing and using web sites becomes slicker than is possible with a standard numerical keypad TV remote. Some specialist manufacturers, such as Logitech, have been developing advanced TV remote controls for many years. While these have done a good job, at a price, of bringing control of multiple products through one handheld device, they have yet to successfully solve the challenge of offering easy interaction with increasingly complex TV interfaces on the big screen. I have also previously discussed innovative approaches from Hillcrest Labs, which we also researched in our latest study. The growing interest in touch screens apparently reflects the increased prevalence of touch screen-based mobile phones and other devices. Consumers are clearly becoming more comfortable with the touch screen experience in general, in spite of certain limitations, and it seems likely that this will find its way increasingly into remote control devices for consumer electronics products. CE manufacturers may protest that people are not willing to pay for these capabilities, but our research suggests that, for more sophisticated users at least, prices as high as $300-400 for an advanced device are not necessarily a barrier to purchase. Twitter: twitter.com/DavidMercer_SA Client Reading: Touchscreen Controllers Set to Drive the Connected TV Experience

At this week’s Ceatec event in Tokyo Sony will introduce a prototype single-lens 3D professional video camera, the first of its kind. The technology operates at a frame rate of 240fps which offers, according to Sony, the smoothest possible motion even with fast-moving sports footage. Our previous posts have identified one of the key challenges of 3D TV and video, namely adapting the production material to the ocular peculiarities of different viewers. When zooming and focusing using the current two-lens approach, human eyes are particularly sensitive to any discrepancies between the two images in quality, vertical alignment or other parameters. Complex processing is required to minimise these problems, and Sony claims that its system removes the need for such procedures. Sony’s prototype system allows incoming light to be separated into left and right images, which are then processed separately. Sony claims that, because the two images are captured at precisely the same time, 3D images are “natural and smooth” and can cope with rapid movement. Whether two- or single-lens, the need for improved 3D camera technologies is clear, so Sony should be applauded for taking 3D another step towards the mass market. Whether this innovation solves the problems it claims to, without introducing others, will only become apparent as it reaches commercial status. We fully expect other professional video firms to be working fervently on their own solutions and look forward to commercial implementations over the coming months. Twitter: twitter.com/DavidMercer_SA Client Reading: Digital Media Devices Global Market Report

The good news for 3D TV proponents, in spite of the technical, business and creative challenges that lie ahead, is that they won’t have to worry about holographic technologies as a competitor for quite some time. Judging by the world’s first public demonstration at NAB by Japan’s NCIT (National Institute of Information and Communications Technology) of its electronic holograph, we will be lucky to see any consumer implementations of holographs in my lifetime, and possibly in my children’s as well. The demonstration involved an installation of multiple beams and reflectors across an area the size of a small room, the results of which bleeding edge technology were to produce a tiny holographic image of perhaps a couple of inches across. The image was a poorly defined representation of a revolving cube, and was only visible within a carefully designated viewing angle; any slight deviation meant that it disappeared from view. This is not intended to diminish the efforts of the Japanese researchers, who clearly have a very long term perspective as they evolve advanced technologies for the century ahead. But the NCIT spokesmen were happy to admit that holographs were unlikely to become commercially viable within the next ten years, and then only for limited applications. A major challenge for this technology, as well as for other advanced display techniques, appears to be the lack of ultra high resolution display technologies. It looks like the flat panel display, whether 2D or 3D, is here to stay for many years to come. Twitter: twitter.com/DavidMercer_SA Client Reading: Western Europe Digital Television Forecast: 1H'09

So I came looking for mobile/home convergence, and found it, but the overall impression is that it’s not something that is a high priority for the mobile industry right now. Given global handset volume declines of 10% or more, perhaps that’s understandable. Colleagues assured me Barcelona’s taxi lines were a lot shorter this year, a sure sign of falling attendance at any industry event. As expected we saw a number of signs of handsets moving towards true HD support. Nvidia’s demonstration of 1080p video output from an internally developed MID form factor device onto a full HD 50” TV was the most impressive sign of what is to come. The company’s Tegra processor was also used to demonstrate some impressive 3D graphics capabilities. End user devices are expected to reach the market during the second half of this year. The sticking point, as so often, is the practical issue of getting high definition media from the mobile device onto large screens. There is clearly going to be the inevitable standards battle as early HD handsets support HDMI output, Silicon Image tries to push a new handheld-centric variant called MHL, and others continue to promote wireless approaches such as WiFi. But while various solutions were being offered, and are apparently getting close to commercial viability, I did not get the impression that the mobile industry majors (operators, top 5 handset vendors) see this as a desperately important issue for the near term. Realistically it will be a couple of years at least before handsets begin to emerge widely as sources of HD content for the home, but that is clearly the path they are on. Twitter: twitter.com/dmercer15 Client Reading: High Definition TV, Video and Digital Media Devices: Global Market Forecast

I spent some time last night at Pepcom’s Digital Experience press event. I find this one of the most useful sessions at CES. A wide mix of firms, from start-ups to major corporations, present a few of their new or yet-to-be-launched products. I was able to catch up with Hillcrest Labs, a firm I’ve covered previously, initially at CES a year ago. Hillcrest’s table featured a prominent notice detailing the background to their legal battle with Nintendo. It’s a subject that not surprisingly occupies a great deal of their spokesman’s time. In the meantime Hillcrest has been continuing to pursue partnerships with emerging digital media developers, and it was showing the new Kodak media player which has been built using Hillcrest’s navigation software and remote control technology. As I’ve previously said only the lawyers can resolve the Nintendo dispute. But having tried the Hillcrest control again last night, it became clear just how different it is from the Wii experience. I had assumed my inability to master Nintendo’s point and click devices was simply down to the usual generation gap: I haven’t found anyone born after 1990 who can’t use the Wii Remote perfectly easily, whereas I have found it almost impossible to master smooth, steady on-screen control. But I had no such problem with Hillcrest’s device, which feels much firmer and more precise. The company tells me that this does indeed reflect some of its key patents, which enable its control devices to compensate for the tinniest jitter that everyone displays in unsupported hand or arm movements. Only time will tell whether that's enough to help resolve the Nintendo dispute one way or the other. Client Reading: Digital Media Survey: An analysis of US Online Premium Video Users

Like most telecoms technology vendors, Alcatel-Lucent has been suffering from a stagnant market and intense competition from emerging players such as Huawei. In fact ALU’s 2008 revenues are expected to decline “in the low to mid single-digit range”, according to the company’s Q3 financial report. Alcatel-Lucent was formed in 2006 from the merger of two of the industry’s historic giants, each with a pedigree going back to the dawn of electronic communications in the late 19th century. Those roots are evident in the Bell Labs operation, still based in Murray Hill, New Jersey. Bell Labs was for most of its life part of the AT&T organisation, and has been known as Lucent Technologies over the past decade or so. Over the years Bell Labs has been involved in developing many new technologies, not just in voice communications but in media and entertainment. Somewhat off track, a particular story caught my eye. Back in the early 1930s, when the world’s economy really was in meltdown, Bell Labs was involved in various sound recording developments and worked with the famous conductor, Leopold Stokowski, to improve the recordings of his Philadelphia Orchestra. This led to the use of gold film to improve recording masters, as well as the development of stereo recordings. In 1933 a concert in Philadelphia was transmitted in stereo over telephone lines to Washington, D. C. As I’m often reminding clients, the concept of using our phone lines to “stream” content is really nothing new… While major firms around the world rightly review their finances in the light of the current global economic crisis, they also need to avoid the temptation to take their eyes off the innovation ball, because when markets and economies do begin to recover, companies with strong positions in the next wave of technology industries will prosper, as the story above illustrates. Against this background, ALU last week presented its Bell Labs Innovations day, which, in recognition of the Franco-American business alliance, took place not in Bell Labs’ NJ base but at Alcatel’s historic headquarters in rue de la Boétie, Paris. We saw a series of demos under the theme of “Transformation”, as well as specific projects focusing on improving existing applications like home management and IPTV. Within the Home demo, we saw online gaming (Mario Kart as it happens) on Nintendo’s Wii console using a wireless LTE connection, alongside a console using a regular fixed broadband line, demonstrating that 4G at least in theory can meet this particular home application. Next to this was a demonstration of 3DTV, without which no discussion of emerging consumer technologies is now complete. Like most other demos I’ve seen, this used the Philips 3D display. ALU is not about to get into the consumer electronics business, but it is exploring the potential impact of 3D on its IPTV business line, and in particular showed a couple of interesting examples of how 3D EPGs and user interfaces might be presented. Video conferencing is another application with potential relevance to 3D. There was also a display of a femtocell solution, in which various CE devices were sharing the femtocell wireless connection built into the home gateway. Telecoms vendors have been pushing femtocells, which are basically a very low power cellular transmitter, as one of the next innovation waves. The initial motivation of femtocells was to improve in-building cellular coverage. This demo suggested that they also provide an alternative home networking solution. My question was why this offered any improvement over existing, widely deployed WiFi technologies, and the answer offered was that femtocells will be easier to use, since devices will be easier to connect and will have better power management. We will have to wait for actual deployments to see how true that is. WiFi is certainly not perfect, and connecting a new device to a home network can still be a challenge, but once it is installed I have few problems, and it’s not clear to me exactly why femtocells would be an improvement. We also saw a prototype of a video microprojector, which beamed a video from a mobile phone onto the wall. It offers VGA resolution today. We are told that true HD is on the roadmap, although this will demand a larger footprint. As optical modules such projectors will be integrated into handsets, something which we can expect from around 2010 onwards. The quality is likely to be adequate for laptop-equivalent displays (~20” diagonal). Battery life will clearly be an issue – constant projector use would give a phone about 2 hours’ usage. A number of other demonstrations focused on media and content applications such as photo file management and intelligent video stores. The latter is a profiling technology that suggests video titles based on a user’s search activity. ALU was keen to point out that this would be entirely an opt-in process. Putting all of the significant near-term business challenges aside, ALU would appear to be well positioned to take advantage of new revenue streams, if and when they emerge. The challenge as always will be to predict the winners. It’s a reasonable bet that at least one of the innovations on show will make it onto the long list of past success stories, but it may be a few years before we discover its identity. (Footnote: I just arrived in San Jose for Cisco's C-Scape event, which will make an interesting contrast with the Bell Labs show - updates to follow.) Client Reading: CES 2008 and Beyond: Can the Wow Factor Make a Comeback?