Happy 46th Birthday U-Matic!

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Happy 46th Birthday U-Matic!

Color VideoplayerFrom the Winter 1970 Sony® Dealer Newsletter: “Exciting the world!… Sony Demonstrates Color Video Videoplayer” says the headline. “The Color Videoplayer is considered the next home entertainment product that will win wide acceptance.” Well of course they were a bit wrong about that, as it was not what came to be known as the U-matic cassette player but the smaller and cheaper Betamax and its rival’s VHS players that became ubiquitous in peoples homes. But the U-matic VTR saw many professional applications (such as replacing news film with videotape) and the machines persisted in advertising agency offices well into the early 2000’s.

Click on the thumbnail for a larger version.

The FM Stereo System That Lost

The FM Stereo System That Lost

Remember Betamax, HD DVD, Cinerama? How about the Crosby FM Stereo system?

murray_g_crosby150In the late 1950’s, former RCA engineer Murray G. Crosby invented a method of broadcasting FM stereo that worked (and sounded) better in fringe areas than the Zenith/GE system under consideration at the time. Only one problem though – it was not compatible with the subsidiary communications authorization (SCA) services (think Muzak) that some FM stations were experimenting with to bolster their bottom lines. (Remember that this was before the FCC Report and Order requiring licensees to broadcast separate programming on their AM and FM outlets.)

Finally on April 19, 1961, after lobbying by the background music industry and the FM stations who held special experimental authorizations for SCA services, the FCC selected the Zenith/GE system as the FM stereo standard. Which is why to this day your car radio reception degrades to AM-type static as a station goes out of range.

(For details, see Broadcasting Magazine, 10/06/1958, page 64.)

Amar Bose – Aimed At Walls

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Amar Bose – Aimed At Walls

Bose VideoWave entertainment systemDr. Amar Bose, who changed the home loudspeaker industry in 1968 with his model 901 Direct/Reflecting loudspeaker system, passed away on Friday, July 12th. The Bose 901 incorporated speakers aimed at the walls instead of at the listener, unlike other hi-fi speakers made at that time. His company went on to make other familiar audio related devices such as headphones and TV’s, like the VideoWave , the inside of which is pictured here.

See the full New York Times obit here.

(Photo from PCWorld.)

Douglas Engelbart – Mouse Inventor

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Douglas Engelbart – Mouse Inventor

150px-douglas_engelbart_in_2008Ever since Little Charles showed me how he laid-out electronics racks in MacDraw, I have been enamored with the little box with the wire hanging out of it, an invention by Doug Englebart – the computer mouse.

Engelbart passed away on Tuesday, July 2nd, 2013 but his legacy is more than just the mouse. Inspired by the writing of Vannevar Bush, Engelbart envisioned workers sitting at computerized display stations, gathering information from various sources and harnessing workers’ collective intellect to solve problems together. Some of Engelbart’s ideas were further refined at Xerox PARC, and then again at Apple Computer.

Read Dr. Engelbart’s Obit and associated articles at the New York Times.

Power To The Node

Power To The Node

In the not too distant past there were plenty of arguments about whether fiber to the home was better than fiber to the node. Cable companies crowed that fiber to the home required expensive terminal equipment at each customer premise and that fiber to the node was the was the way to go. Well now I’m sitting here on Long Island with lots of power but no internet/phone/TV service. So much for those pole-mounted backup power supplies. Thinking about switching to Verizon FiOS.

Steve Rutt, Video Pioneer, Dead At 66

Steve Rutt, Video Pioneer, Dead At 66

Steve Rutt

From the New York Times:

“Steve Rutt, an engineer, inventor and artist whose early video animation system made images expand and contract and leap and dance, and in so doing helped propel the video-art revolution of the 1970s, died on May 20th in Manhattan.”

READ THE COMPLETE NY TIMES OBIT HERE.

Steve, who I knew through renting editing equipment from his company, was a respected member of the New York post-production community.

TO LEARN MORE ABOUT THE RUTT/ETRA Video Synthesizer CLICK HERE.

A Little Bit of the Old UltraViolet

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]

Thunderbolt™ Technology

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.