A Little Bit of the Old UltraViolet

You would think Darwin’s process of natural selection would apply to digital rights management (DRM) schemes. With AACS, Adept, FairPlay, Marlin, WMA and others, you would think that content creators would want fewer DRM schemes, so that their content would be more consumer friendly and result in higher sales. But those (republican?) concepts of free enterprise and innovation decree that the market needs one more DRM scheme to rule them all – DECE’s UltraViolet.

In the April/May issue of Streaming Media Magazine, Tim Siglin asks if DECE finally gets DRM right, as well as who has signed-on and who has not.

[Photo of UltraViolet by David Shankbone]

Parkervision Lives at ABC News

It looks like this morning’s America This Morning was the first “broadcast” network news show to be aired using an “automated control room”, in this case a Ross OverDrive system. More details as they become available.

UPDATE: World News Tonight officially began using the ACR on Wednesday, July 20th. Former ABC News Senior Broadcast Producer Stu Schwartz said “From my experience, the humans are usually better than the machines…but we’ll see. Too bad technology has trumped the human factor.”

I can’t wait to see what happens 15 years down the road. Will there be anyone left that could direct, switch or mix a major live breaking news special report? Maybe ABC will have to hire Joel Almeida !

Thunderbolt™ Technology

Not to be confused with ThunderBolt™ the phone, Thunderbolt™  ”the technology” is a high speed interface containing both PCI Express and DisplayPort protocols on the same connector. Developed by Intel©, and appearing first on the new MacBook Pro, it provides a single connector to both move data and drive displays. Twice as fast as USB 3.0 and compatible with DVI, HDMI, and VGA displays, it’s touted as a “an incredibly fast input/output technology that just about anything can plug into.”

What it also will be is just another confusing connector for those people whose VCRs kept blinking 12:00 all the time. Firewire 800, we hardly knew ye.