Media Paradox

Add “Dyle” to Your Vocabulary

techmanager — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 17:09:32 +0000

The folks at the Mobile Content Venture have branded their digital-access ATSC Mobile DTV services with the name “Dyle“. John Merli wrote about it in the August 24th edition of TV Technology.

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.

Power To The Node

techmanager — Sun, 28 Aug 2011 19:04:35 +0000

In the not too distant past there were plenty of arguments about whether fiber to the home was better than fiber to the home. 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.

The Monster That Ate New York

techmanager — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 03:30:01 +0000

When did the recap from ESPN replace the WABC-TV produced sports segment on Eyewitness News This Morning?

(First they came for the sportscaster, then they came for the weatherman…)

Rapid-Fire Tech & Business Bootcamp

techmanager — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 22:56:37 +0000

Media Paradox, The NYC Business Networking Group (NYCBNG) and the The New York Public Library, Science, Industry and Business Library (SIBL) invite you to attend the Rapid-Fire Tech & Business Bootcamp:

Thursday, July 21, 2011, 3:30 PM
NYPL Science, Industry and Business Library (SIBL)
188 Madison Avenue (at 34th st.) New York, NY

This 4-hour FREE event is part conference, part mini-expo and part networking event to connect you with NYC industry professionals, executives, business owners and decision makers.

Each 20-minute presentation is geared to business owners, executives & entrepreneurs who have already built a successful business and are looking to ramp up and expand. Now is the time to get you out of your comfort zone and to achieve even bigger goals.

Attend 8-10 short and informative 20-minute seminars on cutting-edge business products and services. You’ll learn how to quickly achieve success and go beyond your current business goals. Discover affordable technology to automate parts of your business and free up more of your time. Seminars will provide you with practical strategies you can implement immediately. The tips and tools you learn will drive business growth, revenue and ROI and save you time by operating your business more effectively.

CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFORMATION AND REGISTRATION

Steve Rutt, Video Pioneer, Dead At 66

techmanager — Fri, 03 Jun 2011 16:31:09 +0000

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

techmanager — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 16:27:45 +0000

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

techmanager — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 15:23:35 +0000

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

techmanager — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 14:08:14 +0000

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.

AT&T Unveils Usage-Based Pricing

techmanager — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 14:38:06 +0000

As Todd Spangler wrote in Multichannel News [subscription required], “It might be the beginning of the end for the all-you-can-eat broadband buffet”, as AT&T announced usage-based pricing last week for its DSL and U-verse customers. According to Multichannel [this link free], Sanford Bernstein senior analyst Craig Moffett says that this move may provide “air cover” for large U.S. cable operators to do the same. As more users are watching “over-the-top” video services instead of just web-surfing on their broadband connections, cable systems financial models are eing stressed.

Comcast, Cox and Charter cable systems already have usage caps on their broadband services and Canada’s Rogers moved to consumption-based broadband pricing several years ago. Time Warner, however met with customer resistance when it experimented in 2009 with usage-based pricing on some of its systems.

So what does this all mean for the average couch potato? Well if you were expecting to cut your cable service from the SuperOptimal Platimum Tier to Basic Cable and watch all your shows on Hulu Plus, your broadband provider just might have something else in mind.

UPDATE: Netflix Cuts Data Use on Canada Streaming Service [and the techie details from BGR.]

Online Blows Past Papers in Ad $$

techmanager — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 16:42:34 +0000

According to the the eighth annual State of the News Media report, more money was spent on online advertising than on newspaper advertising in 2010. This correlates with the fact [from the same report] that more people (46%) now get their news online at least three times a week, versus newspapers (40 percent) for the first time. “Only local TV news is a more popular platform in America now (50%),” says the Pew Study.

Another key finding in this year’s report was that “nearly half of all Americans (47%) now get some form of local news on a mobile device.”