Nouveaux progrès vers la télévision en ultra-haute-définition

Publie le 22 juillet 2010 (cyberpresse.ca)

Le conglomérat industriel japonais Hitachi a présenté jeudi une caméra qui saisit en vidéo une scène avec une précision égale à seize fois la haute-définition actuelle, dernière version d'un prototype développé depuis le début de la décennie mais loin d'être abouti.
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Hitachi | Écrans et moniteurs | Téléviseurs et décodeurs

«Il s'agit du premier et actuellement unique modèle de caméra au format super hi-vision (autrement appelé ultra haute-définition) conçu par Hitachi et la télévision publique NHK», a indiqué à l'AFP un ingénieur du groupe, Tadaaki Yanagi, lors d'une exposition des technologies et recherches de Hitachi à Tokyo.

Ce format, sur lequel planche activement la NHK depuis des années, est basé sur des images vidéo constituées chacune de 4320 lignes horizontales de 7680 points, soit un total de quelque 33 millions de pixels, contre seulement 2 millions pour l'actuelle haute-définition des téléviseurs de salon.

L'ultra haute-définition est associée à un son capté et reproduit sur un total de 24 canaux audio entourant la scène au départ et le spectateur à l'arrivée.

Cette caméra énorme, dont la tête (objectif, capteur, électronique) pèse plus de 60 kilogrammes, n'est encore qu'un prototype fonctionnel, adossé à une armoire technique pour tous les traitements nécessaires afin d'afficher l'image saisie sur un écran à proximité.

«Il va bien nous falloir encore dix ans pour intégrer tous les circuits électroniques dans un ensemble unique aux dimensions d'une caméra de studio ou d'épaule», estime M. Yanagi.

Alors que l'univers de l'image a actuellement les yeux rivés sur la télévision en trois dimensions (3D), les chercheurs de la NHK et de Hitachi jugent que l'augmentation de la définition des images et l'amélioration de la restitution sonore sont absolument nécessaires.

«La 3D actuelle repose sur une illusion d'optique, grâce à des lunettes spéciales à obturateurs, qui présentent des images différentes pour chaque oeil afin de tromper le cerveau», rappelle M. Yanagi.

«Il faudrait pouvoir percevoir des images en relief sur un écran en se passant de lunettes, ce qui exige d'abord que les images reproduites soient les mieux définies possibles pour être les plus proches de la réalité», argue-t-il.

The Price of Free

Publie le 13 novembre 2009 (nytimes.com)

When, in late September, rumors surfaced that Comcast was trying to buy NBC Universal from General Electric, Wall Street reacted with dismay. Grandiose attempts to combine media production and distribution — programming and plumbing — are nothing new in the entertainment business, but they almost always end in disappointment. Witness AOL Time Warner. So what in the world could be prompting the Comcast chief executive, Brian Roberts, to start down this accursed path?
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Heads of State

I fear that I’m to blame.

A few months ago, while stalking the aisles of my local Best Buy, I gave in to techno-temptation. I bought a Blu-ray player. What I didn’t realize until I unpacked the gadget was that it does a lot more than just spin high-definition discs. It is, as they say, Web-enabled. As soon as I plugged it into an outlet in my living room, its built-in WiFi antenna sniffed out my home network and logged on. The Blu-ray player became a gateway between the Internet and my television set.

Ever since, and much to my surprise, I’ve been using the device more to transmit Internet content than to play discs. I stream TV shows and movies from Netflix, music from Pandora and videos from YouTube. Beyond my existing $11-a-month Netflix subscription, I haven’t forked out a penny for any of this programming. It comes flowing out of the Web, whenever I summon it, free.

My new viewing habits must make Brian Roberts very nervous. The more I play movies and TV shows from the Web, the less I use my cable TV service. I almost never order pay-per-view movies anymore. And I recently canceled my premium Showtime subscription. Most of Showtime’s best programs, including “The Tudors,” “Weeds” and “Dexter,” are available to stream through Netflix, as are a lot of the movies currently playing on Showtime’s Starz network. Why pay $23 a month when I can get the stuff for almost nothing?

I have a feeling that it won’t be long before I and a whole lot of other people start asking similar questions about pay-TV subscriptions in general.

Until recently, the TV business was shielded from the turmoil that the Internet has visited upon other media industries, like music and publishing. The reason was largely a matter of network capacity. Sending high-quality video through the Web requires a lot more bandwidth than sending text or music, and until 2007 most Americans lacked high-speed Internet connections at home, according to the Pew Research Center. The Net simply wasn’t a viable alternative for distributing the signals traditionally sent over cables or beamed down from satellites.

That’s changing, and fast. With broadband becoming the norm and connection speeds continuing to quicken, what has happened to music companies and newspapers is beginning to happen to broadcast networks and cable companies. People like me are using the Net to bypass the customary providers of television programming, along with the ads they show and the fees they collect.

My Blu-ray player is just the tip of the iceberg that the TV business is about to hit. Today you can watch snippets of shows on YouTube or entire episodes on sites like Hulu or Yahoo TV. You can view news reports at CNN.com, sports events at ESPN360.com and documentaries at PBS.org. You can download shows, sometimes without charge, from Apple’s iTunes store and watch them on your iPod, iPhone or PC. Or you can stream them through your Xbox or Wii.

Television is escaping the TV set and the cable box. We no longer watch the tube. We watch, to borrow ex-Senator Ted Stevens’s memorable conceit, a series of tubes.

As the technology of television changes, so, too, does the experience of watching it. In the past, TVs often served as the focal points of communal gatherings. Families or groups of friends would collect around the set to watch the prime-time shows or the weekend games. They would laugh at the sitcom slapstick, cheer for their local teams, chat through commercials and, during the duller stretches, keep one another from nodding off. TV may have been a vast wasteland, as Newton Minow, the F.C.C. chairman in the Kennedy administration, said in a speech in 1961, but at least it was a wasteland we shared.

The communal mode of TV viewing isn’t gone, but it’s becoming less common. As screens proliferate and shrink, and as the Web allows us to view whatever we want whenever we want, we spend more time watching video alone. That’s one funny thing about the Internet: it’s an extraordinarily rich communications system, but as an information and entertainment medium, it encourages private consumption. The pictures and sounds served up through our PCs, iPods and smart phones absorb us deeply but in isolation. Even when we’re together today, we’re often apart, peering into our own screens.

Television companies, desperate to protect their sources of revenue, are trying to figure out ways to control or at least influence the shifts in our viewing practices. If a transmission company like Comcast — although it owns a few cable stations, Comcast’s main business is providing cable TV, Internet and telephone service — were to own more of the programs it distributes, it could, at least theoretically, wield more power over how that content reaches viewers. In buying NBC Universal, for instance, Comcast would gain a stake in Hulu, which NBC owns with ABC and Fox. It could impose limits or even fees on the shows streamed through that popular Web site.

Such opportunities reveal the conflict of interest that’s built into the TV business. The companies that supply us with pay-TV subscriptions — not just cable operators like Comcast but telephone companies like AT&T and Verizon — also tend to be the ones that provide us with Internet service. By blocking or slowing certain Net transmissions, they could shunt us toward their own programming and prevent us from viewing alternatives, particularly free ones. If my Internet provider degraded my Netflix signal, I would almost certainly go back to watching more cable programs.

That scenario is not as far-fetched as it may sound. In 2007, Comcast was caught throttling back its customers’ links to BitTorrent, a file-sharing network often used to trade bootleg copies of TV shows and movies. Comcast argues that heavy BitTorrent users were taking up too much bandwidth, to the detriment of other services. Looked at another way, Comcast was using its Web-access franchise to protect its pay-TV franchise.

But, as the company soon found out, impinging on “net neutrality” — the principle that Internet providers should treat all data the same — is a good way to make enemies. Internet purists went ballistic. Consumer advocates denounced the move. The government began an investigation. In 2008, the F.C.C. decided that Comcast had broken its rules, and it ordered the company not to impede access to BitTorrent and other such services. Comcast is appealing the ruling.

Under its new chairman, the Obama-appointee Julius Genachowski, the F.C.C. is becoming even more aggressive in defending the openness of the Internet. Last month, it voted to begin preparing regulations aimed at giving net neutrality the force of law. Though controversial, the commission’s move will be welcomed by most Web users. I know that I don’t want my Internet provider to control the sites I visit or services I can use when I’m online. Unimpeded access to the Net has come to feel like a right.

In the end, and whether they gobble up content producers or not, network operators like Comcast may be fated to be in the plumbing business. They’ll turn tidy profits by maintaining the pipes through which we get Internet service, even if we use those pipes to bypass their pay-TV offerings. We’ll go on gorging ourselves on free Internet video. We, the viewers, will be the winners.

Or will we?

The smartest, most creative TV shows, from “Deadwood” to “Mad Men” to NBC’s own “30 Rock,” tend to be the most expensive to produce. They have large, talented casts, top-notch writers and directors, elaborate sets and generally high production values. If the changes in our viewing habits stanch the flow of money back to studios, producing those kinds of programs may no longer be possible. In their place, we’ll get more junk: dopey reality shows, cookie-cutter police dramas, inane gab fests. The vast wasteland will become even vaster.

Even “free” has a price.

300 DVDs On A Single Disc?

Publie le 8 juillet 2009 (http://ca.tech.yahoo.com/)

Researchers at Swinburne University of Technology in Australia have come up with a new optical recording method that could allow a giant 1.6 terabytes of information - the equivalent of 300 DVDs - to fit on a single disc, according to Nature.

Their 5-D recording method uses nanometer-scale particles of gold as a recording medium and manipulates the light pointed at them.

How does it work? The nanoparticles record information in different color wavelengths, all in the same physical disc location. As the amount of incoming laser light absorbed by the nanoparticles depends on its polarization, this allows the researchers to record different layers of information at different angles to create the 5-D effect.

Previous recording techniques have been through polarization or color; this is the first to combine the two. And they say that refining the technique could eventually mean being able to put 10TB of information on a single disc.

James Chon, a co-author on the research, told the BBC:

"The optical system to record and read 5-D is very similar to the current DVD system. Therefore the industrial scale production of the compact system is possible."

The cost of the discs for recording this way are about a nickel each, but moving to silver nano-rods would bring that cost down by a factor of 100.

Pinnacle PCTV HD Pro Stick

Most laptops don't come with a TV tuner built-in, but you can connect one through USB with the Pinnacle PCTV Pro Stick HD. The beauty of this product is that you can watch live TV from your cable, satellite or even pick up free over-the-air signals with the included antenna in both standard-definition and high-definition. With the included software, you can also record and store your favourite shows by saving them to your hard drive or burning them directly to a DVD. You even have options for file formats. It's a cool piece of gear and the website has a short video that runs through the set of features. Pinnacle offers a model that works with Macs, and in an added benefit, the USB tuner can actually work with other non-Pinnacle tuner software as well.

Quand l’électronique devient transparente

Publie le 10 juin 2009 (journalmetro.com)

Grâce aux transistors et aux mémoires papier, les écrans transparents et les journaux interactifs pourraient devenir réalité en 2012.

Depuis qu’elle a remporté le prix du Conseil européen de la recherche l’été dernier, Elvira Fortunato est devenue une vedette à qui les étudiants demandent des autographes pendant ses cours magistraux. «Ils sont étonnés que cette technologie soit développée au Portugal», précise-t-elle.

Dans son laboratoire de la Faculté des sciences et des technologies de l’Université Nouvelle de Lisbonne, Elvira Fortunato et Rodrigo Martins, son chef du département, révèlent comment leur découverte révolutionnera notre vie quotidienne. Mme Fortu­nato investit son prix de 2,25 millions d’euros dans une technologie digne de la science-fiction la plus délirante.

Pouvez-vous expliquer en quoi consiste votre invention?
Elvira Fortunato (E.F.) : La silicone sert de semi-conduc­teur depuis l’invention du transistor, vers le milieu du siècle dernier. Nous avons utilisé un matériel céramique, présent dans les briques ou la crème pour la peau, c’est-à-dire des oxydes aux propriétés semi-conductrices, dans des appareils électroniques, ce que personne n’avait jamais essayé auparavant. Outre le recours à des matériaux non conventionnels, leur transformation à la température ambiante est le plus grand mérite qu’on nous reconnaît à l’échelle planétaire. Mes écrans sont souples, car je peux fabriquer toutes les composantes électroniques à la température ambiante. J’arrive à fabriquer un transistor en papier parce que je n’ai pas à le chauffer, comme je devrais le faire dans les processus de production conventionnels. C’est comme si je faisais un gâteau ou cuisinais à basse température.

À quoi ces découvertes peuvent-elles être appliquées?
E.F. : En 2006, nous avons mené un projet avec Samsung, qui nous finançait. Nos découvertes peuvent être directement appliquées dans le domaine des écrans. Chaque pixel des écrans actuels est lié à un minuscule transistor de silicone. Nous fabriquons ces transistors avec des oxydes transparents. C’est ce qui suscite l’intérêt majeur des sociétés internationales d’envergure œuvrant dans ce domaine, en particulier celles d’Asie. Par exemple, l’écran peut être entièrement transparent. En outre, le processus de production à basse température ne pollue pas, et les matériaux sont écologiques, contrairement à la silicone. Même si ces transistors consomment beaucoup plus d’électricité que les transistors de silicone, ils sont moins coûteux. Que des avantages!

Quand seront-ils mis sur le marché?
E.F. : Nous amorçons nos recherches. Entre la phase de la recher­che et celle de la commercialisation, il s’écoule en moyenne 10 ans. Dans ce cas-ci, ces sociétés présentent des prototypes d’écrans conçus avec des transistors à base d’oxydes depuis 2007. Elles offrent déjà cette technique d’affichage, mais ne l’ont pas encore commercialisée. À mon avis, d’ici deux ou trois ans, peut-être même moins, elle sera à la portée de tous.

Cette technologie peut-elle s’appliquer à d’autres types d’écrans?
E.F. : Bien entendu. Vous voyez le nombre d’écrans autour de nous : téléviseurs, ordinateurs, jeux vidéo, cellulaires, écrans tactiles... C’est un immense marché. De plus, la tendance veut que nous remplacions éventuellement les claviers par des écrans. On peut tout avoir sur l’écran, plus besoin d’un écran et d’un clavier. De concert avec Samsung, nous détenons un brevet international. Grâce aux excellents résultats que nous obtenons avec cette entreprise, nous avons lancé un projet avec LG.

Rodrigo Martins (R.M.) : Il s’agit d’un projet différent dans le champ de l’électronique invisible. Il fonctionne au niveau des surfaces de vitre d’une voiture ou d’une maison. Cette nouvelle structure informatique, qui n’est pas physique, permet d’installer directement un GPS dans un pare-brise ou une portière. En collaboration avec Volkswagen et Fiat, nous participons à un projet européen. L’un des concepts consiste à construire la voiture de l’avenir avec un écran incorporé dans la vitre. Toutefois, cette technologie ne sera accessible au public que dans trois ans.

E.F. : Pour le film Minority Report, Steven Spielberg est entré en contact avec des scientifiques parce qu’il voulait prédire l’avenir dans les domaines de la publicité, de l’information et des communications. L’avenir est axé sur l’électronique transparente. Samsung a produit le premier prototype de huit pouces en juillet 2008. En décembre, l’entreprise a présenté un prototype de
40 po (1 m) de diamètre. Selon l’angle, il est parfois impossible de voir clairement l’image, tout comme avec les écrans à cristaux liquides. Cette technologie, combinée aux diodes électroluminescentes organiques (DELO), garantit une définition d’image, une luminosité et un contraste supérieurs.

R.M. : D’après certaines analyses de Samsung, le rendement de l’appareil est trois fois plus élevé et le coût, trois fois plus bas. La technologie de la silicone ne peut pas changer du jour au lendemain, mais ce sont les cellulaires qui présentent le potentiel le plus considérable, selon Samsung. L’écran est petit et la définition, bien plus grande. Alors, il est manifeste que ce créneau commercial est viable.

Pourrons-nous imprimer des journaux avec ce papier?
E.F. : Oui, c’est le concept! Acreo le fait déjà au moyen de presses rotatives, d’après le concept du soi-disant pa­pier électronique. Nous avons le vrai papier électronique!

R.M. : Grâce à un système mis au point avec Acreo, nous l’avons aussi muni d’une mémoire, ce qui nous permet d’insérer plusieurs pages et de l’information dans la même feuille de papier et le même espace. Cette technologie donne une autre vie au papier.

The Future of E Ink

Publie le 1 juin 2009 (nytimes.com)

The introduction of full-color versions of electronic ink displays, the technology used by Amazon’s Kindle, Sony’s Reader and many other electronic book-reading devices, came closer to reality Monday with the acquisition of E Ink by Taiwan-based Prime View International.

Prime View said it signed a definitive agreement to acquire E Ink for approximately $215 million. E Ink’s technology is used to display text in e-book readers from more than 20 companies, including a Plastic Logic device publicly demonstrated last week.

“The number-one need in the market is to get color, but we did not have sufficient resources to develop it,” Sriram Peruvemba, E Ink vice president for marketing, said in an interview. “This acquisition gives us the manpower and cash we need.”

E Ink’s headquarters will remain in Cambridge, Mass. The company, which currently employs 130 people, is planning to add about 18 more staffers, including chemical engineers.

Prime View, based in Taipei, makes the electronics that drive the individual pixels in E Ink’s displays. The two companies have been working together since 2005, when Prime View acquired the ePaper assets of Philips Electronics. Prime View also makes LCD displays.

Mr. Peruvemba expects the company to introduce a production color display sometime next year and video in 2011. While E Ink displays can show animation today, the current 250-millisecond response time needs to be reduced to 50 milliseconds to display full motion video.

While E Ink is demonstrating a prototype of its color display at the Computex trade show in Taipei this week, the current quality is not good enough to attract consumers or content providers.

“The color is fine for ads, but it’s not there for applications,” Mr. Peruvemba said. “It needs to be much more dense, like that found in OLED displays.”

Mr. Peruvemba added that part of the challenge in creating a color display is doing so without increasing the power consumption or reducing readability.
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E Ink, the company behind the e-paper displays on the Kindle and Sony e-book lineup, has been acquired by Prime View International, which makes e-paper displays. The deal was valued at $215 million.

E Ink and Prime View (PVI) were already partners. The goal is to combine forces and expand capacity and e-paper improvements.

In a statement, the companies said they hope to push color and flexible displays. According to iSuppli the e-book market is expected to grow from 1.1 million units in 2008 to 20 million units in 2013.

PVI acquired the e-paper business of Philips Electronics in 2005 and partnered with E Ink to provide displays for the Sony Reader and Amazon Kindle. PVI also invested in flexible displays and acquired most of Hydis Technologies in Korea. Hydis supplies transistor backplanes used in e-paper.

With the moves, PVI becomes a vertically integrated e-paper technology company.

The deal is expected to close in the fourth quarter.

Web site of PVI

Preparing to Sell E-Books, Google Takes on Amazon

Publie le 30 mai 2009 (nytimes.com)

Google appears to be throwing down the gauntlet in the e-book market.

In discussions with publishers at the annual BookExpo convention in New York over the weekend, Google signaled its intent to introduce a program by that would enable publishers to sell digital versions of their newest books direct to consumers through Google. The move would pit Google against Amazon.com, which is seeking to control the e-book market with the versions it sells for its Kindle reading device.

Google’s move is likely to be welcomed by publishers who have expressed concerns about the possibility that Amazon will dominate the market for e-books with its aggressive pricing strategy. Amazon offers Kindle editions of most new best-sellers for $9.99, a price far lower than the typical $26 at which publishers sell new hardcovers. In early discussions, Google has said it would allow publishers to set a suggested list price, but that Google would ultimately set consumer prices.

“Clearly, any major company coming into the e-book space, providing that we are happy with the pricing structure, the selling price and the security of the technology, will be a welcome addition,” said David Young, chief executive of Hachette Book Group, which publishes blockbuster authors like James Patterson, Stephenie Meyer and Nicholas Sparks.

Google’s e-book retail program would be separate from the company’s settlement with authors and publishers over its book-scanning project, under which Google has scanned more than seven million volumes from several university libraries. A majority of those books are out of print.

The settlement, which is the focus of a Justice Department inquiry about the antitrust implications and is also subject to court review, provides for a way for Google to sell digital access to the scanned volumes.

And Google has already made its 1.5 million public-domain books available for reading on mobile phones as well as the Sony Reader, the Kindle’s largest competitor.

Under the new program, publishers give Google digital files of new and other in-print books. Already on Google, users can search up to about 20 percent of the content of those books and can follow links from Google to online retailers like Amazon.com and the Web site of Barnes & Noble to buy either paper or electronic versions of the books. But Google is now proposing to allow users to buy those digital editions direct from Google.

Google has discussed such plans with publishers before, but it has now committed the company to going live with the project by the end of 2009. In a presentation at BookExpo, Tom Turvey, director of strategic partnerships at Google, added the phrase: “This time we mean it.”

Although Google generates a majority of its revenue from ad sales on its search pages, it has previously charged for content. Three years ago, it opened a Google video store, and sold digital recordings of N.B.A. games as well as episodes of television shows like “CSI” and “The Brady Bunch.” This year, Google said it might eventually charge for premium content on YouTube.

Mr. Turvey said that with books, Google planned to sell readers online access to digital versions of various titles. When offline, Mr. Turvey said, readers would still be able to access their electronic books in cached versions on their browsers.

Publishers briefed on the plans at BookExpo said they were not sure yet how the technology would work, but were optimistic about the new program.

Mr. Turvey said Google’s program would allow consumers to read books on any device with Internet access, including mobile phones, rather than being limited to dedicated reading devices like the Amazon Kindle. “We don’t believe that having a silo or a proprietary system is the way that e-books will go,” he said.

He said that publishers would be allowed to set list prices but that Google would price the e-books for consumers. Amazon also lets publishers set wholesale prices and then establishes its own prices for consumers. In selling e-books at $9.99, Amazon effectively takes a loss on each sale because publishers generally charge booksellers about half the list price of a hardcover ­ typically, around $13 or $14.

Mr. Turvey said that Google would probably allow publishers to charge consumers the same price for digital editions as they do for new hardcover versions. He said Google would reserve the right to adjust prices that it deemed “exorbitant.”

Miguel Helft contributed reporting.

Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that publishers would establish retail prices for books sold through Google's e-book program. Publishers will be able to set a list price, but Google will set the price paid by consumers.