Toob

HDNet To Carry Shuttle Launch, But?

It is wonderful that HDNet is covering the prelaunch, and launch activities for the shuttle Discovery's return to orbit. Kudos to Mark Cuban. In addition to using 14 HD cameras, they'll have some special shots up their sleeves.
<<snip>>HDNet will be deploying a special Canon DIGI SUPER 86 TELExs lens capable of a 2,322mm focal length to enable a 1080i camera situated at one of the tracking sites to follow Discovery at least 176,000 feet, or 33 miles into the earth's atmosphere. The network is also using a pan and tilt robo head at the launch pad from Eagle Pan Tilt, and is installing the Grass Valley Kalypso(TM) HD Video Production Center switcher, which is switchable between SD and HD productions inside NASA's TV control room.<<snip>>
Now for the "But" above. HDNet is still not carried by a couple of the major cable companies. So if you rent/subscribe with Comcast or CableVision you are without the opportunity to watch this...(On CableVision? This is reputed to be the fault of James Dolan, directly, as he reportedly dislikes Mark Cuban--which is just one more reason to like Mark. Grin) *Update, 13:25, 7/7/2005--see comments from Mark about this below.*

Call your cable company if they don't carry HDNet and you want to see this launch in HD.
Public outcry is the only way to get anything done if a large corp is being stubborn.

One could just hope that NBC (who have picked up HDNet programming a couple of times in the past) would do a deal so that we might watch the launch in HD via OTA or those cable systems.

If you want to contact Comcast Corp Offices, click here.
Ring up the Dolan Family Empire At Rainbow Media/CableVision? Click Here.
Call NBC TV? You'd contact the parent company, GE...

Either way, the return to space is a major milestone...at the moment, Discovery is poised and near ready at pad 39b, Kennedy Space Center, Florida--with a targeted launch date of July 13th.

Now if we could just convince Congress to repair Hubble.

A Few Little Things, Fast

Things have been harried at the House 'O Toob, and thus today, you get little bits of news--in one fell swoop. You have a promise for more meaty techno-babble on the 'morrow. Grin.

Child Three or Under=TV Verboten
An argument showed up yesterday, that any television watching by kids three and under is harmful. Fine. Could be. Maybe my second-grader could now be reading at a 9th Grade Level instead of sixth. Whatever.
Parents who use the Toob as a baby-sitter ought to be ashamed (as hard as parenting can be.) We at Toob allowed our little one to watch 20 or so minutes a day as a tyke. Today he gets an hour or two a day on any non-school day. But again, moderation in everything is a fair response--including moderation in losing your mind over kids and television. Sometimes, a kid'll watch. So what?  For those of you who let your little one watch stuff that even some adults wouldn't be able to deal with? Shame on ye.

Switched Video Broadcast

Showing up rather late on the radar is a story from the end of June by Multichannel News/Matt Stump. The discussion centers around SBV or Switched Broadcast Video. This product basically pumps the 20 most used channels out (always) via your cable co, and feeds the rest of the less watched goods (Oxygen? Discovery Kids? Hallmark?) on-demand via switching. This allows the company to do about 2.6 channels where they have one today. Download a  .pdf from one of the providers of the tech, here should you want more information. Supposedly this will allow 500 channels and 50 HD feeds in the current pipeline. But, if the content looks any more compressed than the crap we get today on digital sat -versus- what the original DirecTV feed looked like back in Spring 1994 (not to mention the awful local cable co here.) we don't want it. We'd rather stick with O.T.A., DVD's and a good book.

The FCC, Finally Acting Responsibly?
The Federal Commuications Commision appear to be putting the hammer down on a multitude of things. They've been holding feets to the fire on tuners, HDMI, et al. [Rubbing hands together, here.] Now it is the long-overdue time for the Cable Co's and their STB's or Set Top Boxes (locally called Botches.) Yay!!!

Hot Air Balloons ala Home Made
You might check the legality of this in your region, but this is a display that you can watch for up to twenty minutes sometimes, and it'll kick your butt. Literally? A gas. When I was a kid, I'd BEG my 'rents for their dry-cleaners suit or dress bags... and with a birthday candle in hand...[Wonder if my parents knew what we were doing with those bags?] Besides, that site deserves a pimping as their history, and data, and all are wonderful. And they link to the story of the little-known Battle of Los Angeles.

Silicon Optix One Of Red Herring's 10 Private Chip Co's

We here at Toob will rarely tout a press release. But, we reserve the right to do so if it means a great deal to us as end-users, investors in the HD and display space, or if the text or companies involved just-damned-well merit a heartfelt nod.

This situation is all of the above.

The fine folks at Silicon Optix have been chosen by Red Herring as "One of the Top Ten Private Chip Companies To Watch."

You can read the release here (if you are interested in the subjective and metrical data involved or such.)
But the key quote that came out of the editors at Red Herring was a description of Silicon Optix's technology as "cool video-processing chips that squeeze high-quality images out of videos in the standard-definition format."

To learn more, you could go check out the wonderfully pricey Denon 5910 with Silicon Optix's Realta HQV chip in it (only $3,500. US.) The incredible 5910 makes the Denon-fairly-high-end-DVD-player-of-record in the House Of Toob look sad. [Sniffle.]  Download a pdf info sheet on the Denon 5910 courtesy of our sponsors now? 

Then you might go read a piece from Kevin Hunt, at the Hartford Courant that did some justice to Silicon Optix a couple of days ago...
<<snipped from Hartford Courant>>Optimum Multi-Tasker? Chip's 1 Trillion A Second Silicon
Optix's Realta HQV chip could be the next little thing in high-definition televisions and DVD players. This little bit o' silicon has the same video-processing firepower as Teranex's $60,000 3RU Xantus, a broadcast industry standard.<<snip ends..

Given the chance also take a gander at Silicon Optix's HQV Benchmark DVD ($30 here unless you enter the sales code GoHQV and they take off ten bucks.) This DVD is clearly designed to show off the HQV chipsets, but really gives whatever is currently making jaggies on your system -or- getting rid of them, a workout. 

Here's another article about the Realta HQV chipset and the DVD product called Judging Quality. (Dated now, so the answer to the sell- the-DVD-to-the-public question is a decided YES!)

Either way? The nod from Red Herring is deserved. We at Toob have seen the Teranex units at work, the Denon 5910, and the incredible number of awards that Silicon Optix has garnered in the past couple of years... Keep your eyes peeled for their tech or their stock or both.
While you are at it? These guys deserve the exposure. Digg this story? It'll move it to the front page of digg.com and give it wider circulation. Dig? Dug? Deal.

Buy An HDTV For $359 US?

Including shipping? Yeah. It is a refurbished Philips unit, but a 30" CRT set for $359.00 is an ideal purchase for:
* A Main Set (if you have no HD in your house)
* As da Toob for yer bedroom
* one of yer Guest Bedrooms--as your house will become The Place To Stay
* Videogaming--as Progressive Scan Gaming Rocks (on the Xbox, GameCube, and PS2)
* A gift--to us here at Toob (as there is a birthday coming up, and we NEED it,) or to a brother, a parent, a sister, a pal, whatever...
* Your front porch (so you can educate the neighbors)
* And lastly, to see just how incredibly crap-like analog cable looks on an HDTV.

Buy one now?

Download a Philips Sell-Sheet For This HDTV in .pdf format.

[And don't forget to click on an ad that interests you if you are downloading PDFs here. It helps with the bandwidth. Thanks!!! Happy 4th!]

Sunday Short-Bits

Gamers Are Good At Game-Related Tasks? Nah.
Under the heading of No Shit Sherlock, comes the ongoing penchant from the press to repeat the incredibly-obvious. CNET is reporting that (gasp) we videogamers 'May Have Quicker Eyes.' Ya think? Could that be why the rainbow effects on DLP displays bug My Dumbass™ so much?
And games? Might they improve other things? Could that be why we have reflexes that are double those of our compatriots in Science Museums? Duh. Sheesh.

Tweak The Hell Out Of Your Cheap DVD Player?
This terrific how-to-guide has Robert McNeice showing how he took a few hundred dollars in parts and a soldering iron and upgraded a one-hundred-dollar DVD player into something that would cost 10X more. He takes on both video and tonal aspects. Itsa fun read even if you don't dare destroy your own warrenty due to any personal sheer-frigging-terror of working with small bits and solder.

Deep Impact -Or- Whoops, That Was Close?
We on the West Coast of the United States are looking very forward to 11 pm P.D.T today. (But Toob will probably be fogged in...) It is with great hope that the gamers at NASA's J.P.L HQ. can hit the head of a pin with a projectile launched only 172 days ago. This display would be a blast to see in the night sky.

Louder And Flashier Display?
It could well be that the only reason to watch the Macy's Parade in HDTV on NBC tomorrow is the incredible fireworks display over the East River. Fireworks=Good.

Samsung 1080p DLP Units Ship

From a great number of sources...
Samsung's 1080p DLP sets are showing up at retailers across the US. It appears that you can find the Samsung HLR 6178W (at close to retail of $4799.00 U.S.) Other sizes are sure to follow soon.

One can suspect that the launch of the Mitsubishi 52" 1080p sets (limited to So.Cal. and supposedly limited to a PAIR of sets.) had Samsung ship early than they expected. It is rumored that they were waiting (with 1080p product at the ready) to clear out the backlog of 720p units they had in stores at higher margin and Mits forced their hand.

Either way, it is good to start seeing larger numbers of options in the 1080p display category. The 1080p units should combine the higher resolution (look) of 1080i (PBS, CBS, NBC) with the smooth looking progressive-scan ability of the current content in 720p (ala ABC and ESPN.)

Here are the reported initial specs.

• 1080p (1920x1080) Resolution
• Black Lacquer Screen Design, Anti-glare Matte Screen Finish
• Cinema Smooth Generation 6 (Light Engine), DNIe (Video Enhancement)
• Dynamic Black Level - Mechanical Iris to control light and improve Contrast Ratio
• Inputs: 2 HDMI , 2 Component Video, 1 S-Video, 2 Composite
• Inputs: VGA/PC (1920x1080@60Hz)
• Inputs: 2 IEEE 1394 DTV Link
• HDMI Supported Inputs:  480i, 480p, 720p, 1080i (1080p not offered)
• Digital Audio Out (optical)
• ATSC Tuner / NTSC Tuner, Digital Cable Ready with CableCARD
• (Wobbulation as discussed previously) DLP Chip Ops: 960x1080 micro-mirrors, each mirror made to produce two pixels displayed on the screen--yielding a 1920x1080 final resolution; pixels are diamond shaped and overlap slightly.

Get the Samsung 1080p 78 Series Line Catalog Here, via .pdf.
Get the Early User's Manual here (via .pdf)

[Click ads that interest you to support our large images and downloads, please.]

HDTV and Moore's Law Meet?

Forbes is carrying a piece about LCoS being the display tech to watch. They make salient points about electromechanical tech like DLP being unable to shrink to the sizes expected in forthcoming Liquid Crystal On Silicon because of their moving parts and lack of transistor density.

Here's why.
<<snip>>
Since the backplane is actually a silicon chip, there is some benefit to using smaller geometry. It is possible to integrate all of the drive circuits and almost all of the circuitry needed to connect the chip to the outside world, including the decoders and interface, and still have plenty of room for the reflective imaging elements. An LCOS chip is essentially similar to a memory chip with the addition of a mirror layer. The mirror is also one of the electrodes connected to the output of a transistor so that when the video signal comes in, it gets translated to a voltage that is then used to rotate the liquid-crystal molecules. <<snip>>

It is is a reasonable argument for applying Moore's Law to LCoS Display tech (something that one wouldn't think would apply to displays--as the sheer density of transistors doesn't improve screen resolution on a 17" versus 40" for LCD/DLP, et al.

It is also fair to think that TRUE 1080p would quickly surpass the current gen of (hacked into place) Wobbulation 1080p DLP if the prices and the picture were as good or better.

We all want plenty of display options in the marketplace--as it would continue to drive competition for better and cheaper and AWESOME displays for just about any use.

So, in that regard... Go LCoS. Luck to you, Brillian, Hitachi, JVC (called D-ILA,)  Sony (called SXRD,) SpatialLight, and Kopin.

Please compete and hit the street with prices 'n resolutions can't be beat. [That sucked. Excuse the rhyme.]

SED To Start Volume Production In August

It is being reported by NE Asia Online (and by Toshiba and Canon) that Surface-conduction electron- Emitter Displays (SEDs) are very-much on schedule and actually beginning to build in resale volumes in August of this year.

With the initial units expected to deliver peak luminance of 500cd/m² the companies are bypassing earlier reports of brightness issues. And with an purported 'true 12-bit color gradation' (no dithering to accomplish such) any questions about color should be resolved (LCD and Plasma generally do 8 and 10-bit color and have to dither above that...)

Now the two makers of the SED can get the public to focus on the key to this product. It delivers blacks in a way that no other product can...
<<snip>> The current prototype from the pair exhibits a black luminance (an indicator of black display performance) of 0.003cd/m², a marked improvement from the 0.04cd/m² level of October 2004.

Normally liquid crystal display (LCD) panels show degraded blacks due to light leakage from the backlight, and plasma display panels (PDP) from pre-discharge emission, making it difficult to reduce black luminance even as low as 0.1cd/m². A member of Toshiba's staff described the difference: "The black displayed on LCD and PDP panels is a moonlit night, and the black that an SED panel gives is a moonless, starry night."

SED panels adjust luminance by controlling the number of electrons discharged from the electron source.<<snip>>

As previously reported on Toob, you can expect the first run of these to be at a higher than plasma price-point and a 50" size.

Further reports now note that they expect mass market pricing soon after their new 1.7 B US assembly line starts up in early 2007.

From Canon: <<snip>>

                                              Structure of Electron Emitter

                              

Since SEDs apply the same light emission theory as CRTs, they provide dynamic color expression, a sharp picture, and faster videoresponse than LCDs and plasma display panels (PDPs). In addition, SEDs do not require electronic beam deflection, making possible screens of more than 40 inches in size that are only several centimeters thick.<<snip>>

Toob can only hope to get our hands on one soon. WANT!!!