What does this mean for the consumer? Well most vendors will not have smartphones, tablets or portable TV’s capable of mobile reception for sale until late 2012. So forget about buying a TV set for your car this Christmas. It will still be a portable DVD player under the tree , more than two years & three months after the analog TV shutdown.

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.

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 !

According to the manufacturer, the box can even control your cable or satellite box through its built-in IR controller.

[Really though, this appears to be a useful box, but I had to make fun of what its called.]

3-D Related:
Consumer Reports Tests 3D TV Sets
Study: 20% of Viewers Might Have Trouble Watching 3D on Television

Other Posts:
The Second Coming Of Centralcasting
Oprah Winfrey Talks-Up Cisco Video-Chat Product

• Sony Sets its Sights On News Automation Biz
• CBS: No 3D Broadcasts Without Sponsor
• Mobile DTV: In search of a business model

The second is an article from TeamCast in the European Edition of the September 2010 edition of SatMagazine. The objective of this article is to provide some key elements that explain how 3DTV can be conveyed over an 8MHz DVB-T2 (QAM) channel, however there are some interesting calculations about the increase of bit-rates for various 3D encoding schemes.

Our friends at the ATSC wanted the best engineering solution rather than the most flexible. (Like CODFM.) It was only when the bean counters made the engineers realize that over-the-air television was a non-issue for 90% of the country, that thought was given to the potential market of non-stationary TV devices. (A revenue loss of 10% per year will make people rethink their business model.)

So will Mobile DTV take off or has the past 15 months of digital transmission soured the potential mobile audience?

(Thanks to Engadget.)

An interesting dispatch from Variety‘s annual 3D Summit (courtesy of the AP): If you were counting on viewing this year’s 3D Hollywood movie titles on your brand new 3D set any time soon, you may be disappointed. Because of studio / 3DTV manufacturer bundling deals, only three features and three documentaries will be on the shelves and playable on any 3D Blu-ray /3DTV combo.

For example, a Sony 3-DTV buyer won’t be able to watch DreamWorks “How To Train Your Dragon” because that movie will be tied to the purchase of a set from Samsung Electronics Co. And Disney said that its 3-D movies “Alice in Wonderland” and “Bolt” would be available exclusively to people who buy certain sets from Sony Corp.

I’d like to how they are doing this… (HDMI handshaking perhaps?) In any case, I hope that these exclusivity deals end soon, or there will be lots of 3D Blu-ray returns after Christmas!