Not fragile
+1 (Canadian) for the BTO reference!
All your audio, video kit is about to become OBSOLETE
Although much of the audio and video technology packed into CES 2013's 1.9 million square feet of exhibition space is indeed impressive, one panelist at an emerging-technology conference session channeled a little 1974 BTO, essentially telling his audience that "You ain't seen nothin' yet." Rich Doherty, research director of …
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Friday 11th January 2013 01:03 GMT Mike Flugennock
Re: What's New?
I've seen the HD remastered version of A Hard Day's Night, and it's gobsmackingly gorgeous. it was resampled from the original negs, as I recall, and they used the stereo masters of all the songs featured in the movie.
And yes, there were stereo mixes done of many of those songs even though there were still a lot of monaural record players around. Many albums back then were issued in two different versions: the mono version and the stereo version (bearing the famous advisory "playable on monaural equipment").
Add to that the fact that it had been quite some years since I'd seen A Hard Day's Night, and it was extra extra sweet.
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Friday 11th January 2013 09:45 GMT Stacy
Re: What's New?
@Mike Flugennock
I have a 1080p remastered Blu-ray of The Italian Job (the real one! You're only supposed to blow the bloody doors off!) and 2001 and the picture on both is just stunning.
The azure blue lakes in the opening of the Italian Job are sparkling! And in 2001 everything is crisp with bright colours.
The content is there, it's just not always new!
As for the speakers, I'm sure that there will be improvements made, but until I hear something to out do the CM9's in the living room (and are affordable!) I don't think I'll class them as obsolete! I guess I can keep them for a long time yet :)
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Tuesday 22nd January 2013 00:28 GMT Roland6
Re: What's New?
If you read about the remastering process you will know that for many of these older films, including James Bond, with the BluRay versions there is effectively a one-to-one mapping between film crystals and pixels, so for older stuff there is no value in remastering at even higher pixel counts.
What 4x and beyond enable is the home user being able to use the cinema release of a modern digital film (on all it's disks).
Don't expect terrestrial TV to upgrade as in the UK it is in the process of loosing spectrum to 4G/LTE ...
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Tuesday 15th January 2013 16:17 GMT Michael Wojcik
Re: What's New?
Agreed. None of this stuff sounds appealing to me. I'm perfectly happy with the audio quality of my mobile phone. I use the built-in speakers on the TV. For that matter, I own three TV sets (one of which hasn't been powered on in a year), and two are CRTs; the other's an inexpensive LCD just because that's what's cheap now.
I've seen hi-def TVs and films on Blu-Ray. I've heard fancy expensive audio systems. I don't find I enjoy the content any more with them.
Now if you'll excuse me, I must shake my cane at those damn kids.
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Friday 11th January 2013 00:52 GMT pPPPP
Noise cancelling in cars sounds like it might be a good idea, but I'd like to be able to hear if I've got a flat tyre, a worn bearing, etc. etc.
I'd rather they weren't cancelled out.
I also tend to find that on a decent stereo the best setting for tone controls are everything at zero. Anything that "adapts" is bound to sound crap.
I would be up for adaptive controls that turn down knob-ends' headphones on trains, and give out high-voltage electric shocks to people who play their crappy tinny music out of their phones in public. After stabbing them in the eye.
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Friday 11th January 2013 01:14 GMT Mike Flugennock
re: tinny, crappy music out of mobile phones
...and give out high-voltage electric shocks to people who play their crappy tinny music out of their phones in public...
Wow, talk about everything old being new again. A couple of years back I got aboard a subway downtown and heard some girl cranking her "beats" out of a smartphone of some kind -- in spite of a transit authority rule mandating headphones on radios, walkmans, DVD players, iThings, what-have-you. In spite of my annoyance, it brought back oddly-pleasant memories of my boyhood in the '60s... going to the beach with my family, and hearing a thousand teenagers with a thousand crappy little transistor radios cranking a thousand different songs, all with that same blaring, tinny, flattened-dynamic-range sound.
Mind you, I still wanted that chick clear at the other end of the car to PUT SOME FUCKING EARPHONES ON THAT THING, WILLYA?
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Friday 11th January 2013 16:09 GMT Mike Flugennock
re: sound canceling in cars
I got the impression that the sound cancelling could be done for the passengers separately from the driver, so you get to hear the road noise whilst they get to hear each other.
Y'know, now that I think of it, this article doesn't say a damn' thing about dealing with the whole issue of people in the front seats and back seat being unable to hear each other talking even though they're about three feet apart. What's the deal with that?
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Friday 11th January 2013 00:58 GMT Mike Flugennock
D'ahh, Christ -- AGAIN?
"...smart audio, Ultra HD eyewear..."
At first I was amazed, then I was amused, and now I'm just annoyed when the tech rags regurgitate slag like this. This sounds like the kind of cloud cuckoo jazz I used to see in Wired all the time about twenty-odd years ago.
How long has it been, now, where every few years some clown who can get the media to listen to him starts blurting out some cockamamie horsehockey about eyeglasses with TV screens, 360-degree TV, music piped straight into your brain, wearable computers...?
I didn't get that far into the article before the name "Envisioneering Group" set my bullshit alarm a'clanging.
"JANE! HELP! STOP THIS CRAZY THING!"
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Friday 11th January 2013 01:59 GMT Ole Juul
I remember HI-FI
It was very popular at a time when it was difficult to achieve "high fidelity". What I find interesting is that even now when it is relatively easy and cheap to achieve even higher levels of fidelity - nobody cares any more. The quality of professional audio that I hear is often dismal and wouldn't have passed muster 30 years ago. Sometimes that's because producers are indeed amateurs (and don't even know they are), and sometimes it's because fidelity isn't a very marketable quality in a world where individual sound preferences are more fashionable.
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Friday 11th January 2013 03:36 GMT Dave 126
Re: I remember HI-FI
Well, there is the current trend for compressing the dynamic range of music these days... a shame because most playback devices can do that should the user want it. Curiously, movies have gone the other way- turn it up enough to hear the dialogue and the next gunshot or car crash will deafen your neighbours.
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Friday 11th January 2013 09:42 GMT Vladimir Plouzhnikov
Re: I remember HI-FI
"sometimes it's because fidelity isn't a very marketable quality in a world where individual sound preferences are more fashionable"
Fidelity isn't marketable also because it is being mistaken for bad audio quality by modern teen audiences listening to "house", "dubstep", "rap" and other commoditised noise pollution.
People listening to that crap are not listening to music - they just "consume" a fix of repetitive noise to jerk and twitch in rhythm with it. It is the same as ritual dances in various African tribes - it serves totally different purpose to music and satisfies completely different set of instincts to those that determine our perception of music.
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Friday 11th January 2013 20:03 GMT Fatman
Re: I remember HI-FI
I guess you are referring to those days long ago where once could find a vinyl disc that was cut direct to disc, complete with its lack of tape hiss, etc.
I once put a vinyl disc on the turntable, and with the speakers about 12 feet apart, and your eyes closed; you could sonically place the vocalists and instruments from left to right.
Now a days, things sound too much like monaural shit, but, there are some exceptions.
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Friday 11th January 2013 05:49 GMT Crazy Goat Man Al
Great chavs get chavier
"if you're coming up along someone, the external exhaust note will sound like a dump truck, and maybe they'll move over a little faster"
Is it just me who waits a little longer if somebody tries to bully you out of the way? Come up behind me to a sensible distance and next gap I will move over, come up behind me sit on my bumper flash your lights and gun your engine and I will stay put for as long as possible!!
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Friday 11th January 2013 06:42 GMT Neil Barnes
I love the advanced mathematics displayed
Let's have video displays ten or fifteen times faster than required; let's have video codecs four times as efficient.
Hm. Can't see any bandwidth problems there, then.
To quote my favourite musical satirists:
"The ear can't hear as high as that, but I ought to please any passing bat..."
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Friday 11th January 2013 09:55 GMT Claus Møller
Re: I love the advanced mathematics displayed
Well..
Today I get my television - HD channels and all - through my internet-connection. Can even watch several streams on several televisions simultaniously. While recording a stream as well.
That seemed impossible/very futuristic 10 years ago. Today it is a rock solid solution. Why not 4xHD or 8xHD in 10 years?
Only upgrade I am looking for now is a filtering of "reality-stars" and idiotic cooking-competitions.
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Friday 11th January 2013 10:12 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: I love the advanced mathematics displayed
How else are the providers of cloud services to make back on their investments?
It's truly ironic that as computing power etc increases new standards are marketed to the easily pleased that ensure that we stay where we are.
I guess that it will be brilliant for the occasional film that has both a top notch story and superb cinematography which incidentally will look 100x better in the cinema than the average home anyway, but the rest of the 99% will still be rubbish where ever and however it's watched.
That EastEnders has lasted for decades clearly shows that people like the TV equivalent of children's drawings.
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Friday 11th January 2013 07:51 GMT Bob H
Typical imagineering bull, 1000fps in five years? Does this man even know that TVs evolve on an 18 month cycle? Does he know that frame capture at super high frame rates creates massive quantum-level problems for image sensors?
I could set myself up as an institute and spout crap but it won't mean that anything I say will become reality. Instead I just work with my R&D teams to make it happen...
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Friday 11th January 2013 07:58 GMT Rambler88
What I really want is a recordable voicemail message that sounds half as good as my long-departed cassette-tape answering machine.
And, to be quite blunt, I don't think that this time around I'm really going to want to ditch either my vinyl or my CDs. The low-res MP3s, maybe, but not the quality stuff.
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Friday 11th January 2013 08:46 GMT Lusty
Could we..
Could we get at least one person working on usability rather than headline technology features for a change? We don't need or want half of this stuff, but in the mean time it's still too hard to share content between devices unless you've bought everything from Apple which is expensive and then definitely won't work with anything else. By now we should be able to (without any complex setup) take any phone, laptop, tablet, music player etc. and send content to any tablet, stereo, TV, computer in the home. Never mind noise cancelling in my car, just let me play my MP3s in my living room without copying the whole collection or spending an hour setting it up!
Content makers need to stop "pushing the limits" and concentrate for just a moment on making digital content easily available (ultraviolet is a nice start) but also make it cost at least as little as buying a disk. I bought a CD yesterday because it cost considerably less than the download. They also need to spend 5 minutes looking at quality of content rather than quality of dots!
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Friday 11th January 2013 09:50 GMT Vladimir Plouzhnikov
We'll see 1000 frames per second
What the f*ck for, may I ask?
People can't see any difference between 30fps and 60fps or 200fps, so higher frame rate is either a huge waste of bitrate or destruction of quality through overcompression.
Oh, I know what it's for - it's a scam to lure punters into regularly buying new unneeded staff so that the industry could keep going without thinking much about what to do next. Just add more pixels, more frames (and more blades on razors?).
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