New Video Technology Rings the Bell(curve)

At this year’s NAB convention, there were two new video technologies that dominated the show: 3D and 4K. They are soon to be touted at CEDIA as well. Let’s look at both and see if we can pick a winner for Home Theaters.

You remember the “bell curve”, right? It’s low on the right and left, with a bell-shaped peak in the middle, and is used to show that the average always falls between extremes. While we home theater owners and fans like to stay to the right of the curve, industry basics, like video formats, distribution methods, and even TV screen sizes, fall right in the center peak of the curve. With that in mind, look for a moment at the new technologies.

3D could hardly be called new, though. It’s been lurking around since at least the 1950s (way before, if you’re picky), when it and wide screen processes where the desperate grappling hooks the film industry was using to try to snag the audience already wandering away from the box office to TV. There are so many 3D and wide screen processes, that each has filled its own rather substantial hard cover book (click HERE, and go to Technology Books to buy a copy). While widening the screen was fairly easy to do, and even worked better in existing theaters, 3D has the nasty and annoying demand of having two of everything, except the screen. And that’s where the problem has always been: how do you project two images on one screen, then separate them so that only one image is seen by each eye? Those darn glasses. Nobody likes them. They are usually cheap, scratched, don’t fit right, darken the image, and make you look silly.

Today’s 3D has come a long way. The issues of intraocular angle, alignment and convergence have largely been solved, and once you get past the camera, editing and post production are now computerized, making 3D easier to create. Even digital projection solves the issue of two projectors, as one can do double duty. And for all the advancements all the way up to the light leaving the projector, you still have that problem of two images on one screen, and glasses to separate them. But that’s not really what kept 3D from being a success historically. Sure the old processes were less than ideal. But it’s not a technical issue. 3D lends itself well to a very few films, mostly big action or animated features, and becomes a distraction in simpler films. Star Trek films might be great, but imagine what benefit or annoyance 3D would have been in “The Notebook”, for example. Or even “Benjamin Button”. The technology can actually get in the way of the story, and as we all should know by now, the success of entertainment is always content. It can be aided and abetted by technology, but take away the content, you’ve got a demo piece only, not an involving story.

When producing a 3D film, it’s very hard to resist exploiting 3D. Shots with extreme perspective, things flying at the camera, the camera whizzing forward over a set or landscape, etc., all because you’re working in 3D, but wouldn’t use otherwise. It’s a hard line to walk, and very few films are able to do it right. 3D must add to the shot, not dictate the shot. But why would you down-play 3D when it’s a marketing strategy? The results are mixed, but the more 3D work is done, the better they’ll be at it.

Special effects are the same. You can load a film with them, but that doesn’t mean you’ll have a blockbuster. And the films that achieve average success mostly are not effects films. 3D is more an effect, than a format. It’s great to see it, but those images are NOT reality, no matter how tangible they may seem, and our brains know this. 3D will probably never support the bulk of all films, for the same reason that film narratives are better supported by 24 fps than something higher. 24p puts a distance between the entertainment and reality. Something in 60p, for example, is too real, too smooth for fantasy, though technically more able to accurately capture motion. Hyper smooth, hyper sharp 3D may always be “too much reality” for story telling.
Then throw in the darn glasses, and you’re asking a lot from a casual viewer, much less a home theater owner who must now spend more money to play 3D content, which makes up growing, but as yet still tiny fraction of the available content.

3D is fun, but it’s not for everyone or every type of entertainment. Watch for it to establish a solid niche market, but probably not penetrate the main stream for quite some time, if ever.
4K is another story. Right now, our highest available display resolution is really 2K, otherwise specified as 1920 x 1080 pixels. Keep in mind that this refers only to screen resolution, the displayed content may be lower. Flat-screen TVs and monitors as well as projectors for home theater use come in two basic resolutions: 1080p and 720p. Depending on the size of your screen and how far away you sit, you may not notice the difference between a 720p and 1080p screen, given both are fed from a real 1080p source . And that’s not as easy to come by as you might think. Some TV stations limit themselves to 720p so they can jam more channels into their allotted spectrum. Others max out at 1080i, the right number of pixels to fill a 1920x 1080 screen, but not the maximum progressive frame rate. TV will likely be stuck there for the foreseeable future. They simply don’t have the bandwidth to fit a 1080p signal on the air, cable, or satellite. So far, the solitary source of 1080p content is found on Blu-ray discs. That’s un-scaled content, now. It’s possible to up-scale other resolutions to 1080p quite successfully. The excellent and affordable DVD players from Oppo, for example, do such a good job of up-scaling standard video to all flavors of HD that they might quench your desire to own a Blu-ray player at all.

Other sources, like downloaded or streamed video might be called HD, but land at 720p or even less. But this is not necessarily a bad thing. The convenience and impulsive nature of download systems more than makes up for slightly under 1080p, and still looks great. But let’s return to the screen for a moment.

If you’re “average”, your new flat-screen TV is a 42” LCD, 720p set that internally scales up to some other real screen resolution. That’s what most folks purchased in the last year, both because of cost and size. If you have a 50” plus screen purchased in the last year, it stands a fair chance of hitting a native 1920x1080 (1080p) resolution, but if it’s a budget model, might end up a native resolution of 1366 x 768, with internal scaling to make up the difference. And, unless you sit closer than 6’ away, it looks darn nice. A native 1080p set might look a shade better in optimal conditions, but the difference won’t blow your sox off. If you have a front projection system, you will benefit from a real 1080p projector, though, and you’ll be most sensitive to other than 1080p material, scaled or otherwise. Sadly, you’re in a very small elite group of viewers, though.

So along comes 4K, more than double the horizontal resolution of the best we have now. And what does this get us? Sharper movies? Better contrast? Higher detail? A bigger more thrilling entertainment experience? Well, yes and no. We’ll put an emphatic “NO” on the contrast thing right now. 4K projectors so far can’t beat a good 2K for contrast, though in all but the darkest rooms where everyone watches movies wearing head to toe black leotards and tights (sorry for the mental image), you can’t ever hit the current contrast specs anyway, because your clothes reflect to much stray light back to the screen. Sorry, there’s no 50,000:1 in real life. Commercial cinemas are quite happy at 2000:1, and most don’t do even that. So “no” to contrast.

What about sharper movies? If, and this is a big “if”, film production becomes completely digital so that the entire chain right down to you remains digital and at high resolution, then yes, you’ll have sharper movies (assuming the focus puller has done his job, and they sometimes don’t!). So far, the film industry is clinging to film as the acquisition media. But analysis of the resolution of a “release print”, the film they show in theaters, shows it down around 700 – 900 lines, with losses occurring in film, negatives and printing the release print. However, film resolution is not the same as digital resolution. You in fact need nearly double the digital rez to match a given film rez, because film’s resolution falls off slowly, where digital’s just stops. 700 lines in film will actually still show a bit above that, where 700 lines in digital takes 1400 pixels, but that’s a hard limit. So, we’re kind of at “film” now, with 1920x1080. To exploit 4K, we need to shoot in 4K digital (just staring now in some productions, but not common), digitize the original camera negative (being done now), or do some deft up-sampling. So sharper movies is a qualified yes.

So why the interest in 4K at all? It’s huge in terms of data size. A 4K feature, even with today’s compression algorithms, won’t really fit on a Blu-ray disc, so 4K features might be a download-only proposition, except for the already overloaded Internet infrastructure. But what if we started with today’s 1080p and up-scaled to a 4K display? Hmmm! Now that could work nicely. It sure does right now, scaling from 480p standard to 1080p HD, so why not? Up-scaling is tricky, but if done well, is spectacular. After scaling, the bottleneck is the projector. We’re going to blow right past flat-screen technologies here because if you don’t sit 6’ from your 50” set now, you can’t even appreciate 1080p, and we have to assume nobody’s going to sit closer than 6’…ever. So, back to front projection systems that fill the peripheral vision. Big requires bright. Bright requires power, and big and bright requires money. Big lenses, lamps and image chips. 4K won’t be cheap, but will it be worth it?

I think you see where we’re going here. Ideally, money is no object. If it isn’t in your case, call me at once, we’ll work up a home theater for you like none other. But if money is an object, and you’re on a budget at all, you’ll want to weigh the cost of 4K home projection (when it’s available) against other budget line items that have equal or higher impact on the total experience. Things like acoustics, light control, sight lines, speaker placement and choice, etc., and make an informed choice. All the while keeping in mind that you probably aren’t seeing 4K in a film theater, and even in a 4K digital theater you may not see the full 4K resolution. Duplicating a theatrical experience at home is less about 4K, more about basic image and sound quality.

4K projection is a fine goal to aspire to. But don’t limit your enjoyment now because you’re waiting for 4K to become available or affordable! Today’s projectors are amazing devices capable of immersive entertainment. Tomorrows 4K projectors will be even better, but the step is a small one, not a quantum leap. And of course, if you haven’t though of it already, stand by for 4K, 3D! Yikes!

As always, our recommendation is: “Hurry up and wait”. But remember the “bell-curve” at the beginning of this post? The center of that curve is what really drives things, particularly content. Very few, mostly indie producers, ever make a movie intended for a small audience. It’s counter to the financial constraints of the movie making process. The only reason 3D has made recent in-roads animated and action films is that it’s become easier to make it downward compatible with 2D for the bulk of the audience. And, while we probably will see 3D capable TVs at big box stores soon, the content is limited, and you still gotta wear the goggles. That all places 3D at one end of the bell-curve.

4K home theater projection will get here, and eventually penetrate the projector market well. But 4K flat screen TVs may never become a reality for the center of the curve, because the benefit won’t be visible enough to justify the cost.

If you’re up on the top edge of the curve, you’re in for some fun. If not, don’t feel bad. We can still build a system for you that will be visceral and imersive with current technology. Remember, this is all about the fun!

New Apps for Plex

PBS and SVT Play

August 15th, 2009 | Category: Plug-ins | Author: elan

Thanks to a few new features in Plex v0.8.2, we’ve happy to announce a little bit of plug-in news.

We’ve had thousands of downloads of the SVT Play plug-in, and we just pushed an update. The plug-in, among other things, now has support for full and instant seeking within the videos. Daniel Eriksson, Mattias Norlander, Ivar Åsell, and Andreas (tassitassi) worked hard updating the plug-in.

PBS has been a popular request for quite some time now, and a feature added in the latest Plex finally made this possible. So now you can enjoy all 27 programs offered from the PBS website, browse by topic or by collection, see what the most popular shows are, or search for videos.

Enjoy the updates!

Real Home Theaters announces a partnership with White House Home Center!

Real Home Theaters announces a partnership with White House Home Center!

Real Home Theaters and White House Home Center announce a new partnership! White House Home Center will now offer home theater and flat panel plasma / LCD TV sales, service and installation through Real Home Theaters.

White House Home Center has agreed to allocate 300+ sq.ft. of show room space to display several home theater and flat panel, plasma / LCD TV installation demo systems. The room will include a high definition front projection video system projected on a 106" diagonal 16:9 fixed frame projection screen, accompanied by a 5.1 surround sound audio system, blu-ray DVD player and an advanced RF based remote. Also in the room will be demo displays of on-wall flat panel plasma / LCD TVs, in-wall speakers and whole house audio system options and numerous other home theater and consumer electronic products and accessories.

These products and services will be available to retail consumers and contractors for new construction and existing homes at competitive prices with the same great service you have come to expect from White House Home Center.

This demo room will be open for consultation appointments late August to early September of 2009.

More information will be posted along with pictures of the demo room over the following weeks.

Thank you to Jeff and the crew at White House Home Center for the opportunity for Real Home Theaters to service the White House, Tennessee area.

www.RealHomeTheaters.com

Plex 0.8.2 Released

Click here for the official post, or read below all the new goodness that is Plex 0.8.2 :)

Click here to download this new version.

Plex 0.8.2: Silky Smooth

August 09th, 2009 | Category: Release | Author: elan

It wasn’t until I was over at a friend’s house playing with Plex v0.8.1 that I realized how much better this new version is. We’ve targeted two major causes of user interface delay (beach balling) in this release (starting streams and browsing through directories) and the results should make your experience much better than it used to be. As always, many thanks to the talented group of plug-in developers who keep expanding the content tree, as well as help us track down bugs!

If you’re just joining us, you can find helpful and friendly support on the forums (welcome 10,000th user!), or follow us via Twitter. Heck, you can even follow Barkley on Twitter. Or buy us a beer via the donate link at the right.

NEW: Allow Plex Media Server photo sources to be used for the slideshow screensaver. It’s kind of nice to have a subfolder of Web Gallery of Art as your screensaver, your date will be impressed.

NEW: This has been a popular request for those of you without surround receivers. We’ve added a new setting that links OS X sound volume with Plex sound volume. This means that you can use your Apple Remote for *all* of your volume changes, including all the WebKit plug-ins. (For those of you with surround receivers, you’ll continue to use your receiver’s remote for all of your volume changes.)

NEW: This is one that’s bothered me for ages. Setting the cache size in Megabytes is really silly, because the amount you want to cache depends on the bandwidth of the content. For example, if you set it high, your Apple Movie Trailers might play without stuttering, but then that low bandwidth FLV would take forever to buffer. With this version, we’re introducing Bandwidth-based Caching®, which dynamically adjusts the size of the cache depending on the needs of the stream. The result: lower bandwidth streams start faster, and higher bandwidth streams play with less stuttering. Also as a consequence, the cache settings now look quite a bit more simple. You simply specify the number of seconds of media that you would like to cache.

NEW: Greatly improved responsiveness when browsing. Things like entering or leaving a big list of items (e.g. iTunes artists list) that could hang the entire interface for 5-15 seconds are now instant.

NEW: Thanks to James, the keyboard backlight turns off during videos playing so you can grope your date more easily.

NEW: Maverick214 on the forums submitted a great patch for displaying the end time for videos. Always nice to know how much longer you’re going to be tortured watching So You Think You Can Dance.

NEW: We’ve added a “Shuffle” context menu item for the photos area.

NEW: Do you like having your cake and eating it too? Do you like the Now Playing screen, but wish you could induce epileptic fits in your pets with the visualizer at the same time? Luckily for you, Scott was stuck on a plane, armed with a laptop and he hacked together this perfect marriage. Not for you? Simply select the “Hide Now Playing in Visualizer” in the Skin settings.

NEW: Improved Snow Leopard support. There are still a few glitches, but Plex now runs quite well on the new kitty.

NEW: James cleaned up the shutdown options for Plex. In the skin settings, you can select which of Quit, Sleep, or Shut Down appears on the main menu. If you want to access the other choices, you simply hit “right” to pick another option. If you have your Harmony remote mapped to something custom, you can use the actions Plex.Quit, Plex.SleepSystem, and Plex.ShutDownSystem.

NEW: We display error messages when an item fails to play (as opposed to silently returning to the menu).

Along with all these additions, we’ve fixed quite a few bugs:

FIX: Manually added PMS sources can be removed via context menu (James).

FIX: The default folder for the slide show was set to “F:/” (#303)

FIX: Fixed an issue when Auto-Subtitles are enabled, we weren’t allowing manual activation of other subtitles if they were automatically disabled.

FIX: Crash in the Media Server in iTunes plug-in.

FIX: James made some minor tweaks to menu/keyboard handling, so that the ‘Move focus to the menu bar’ command (mapped to ^F2) works, and also ⌘W now closes the About window.

FIX: We now scrobble to Last.fm as “Plex”.

FIX: Thumbnails obtained from the Plex Media Server are all stored in their own directory, and given a limited time to live, so that you shouldn’t need to go manually whack icons or fanart any more. In addition, thumbnails created by the Plex Media Server with Quick Look are also only cached for a limited amount of time.

FIX: Removed the System Info window, which really wasn’t doing much good (thanks to James).

FIX: Disable cross-fading by default (also thanks to James).

FIX: Fixed an error in the keymap (thanks to Mickey for reporting, and James for fixing).

FIX: The Plex Media Server quit confirmation dialog didn’t always appear on top (James).

FIX: Improved A/V sync, those with senses tuned to this sort of stuff should find it better behaved.

FIX: iTunes visualizers didn’t show elapsed time (thanks to Daniel for reporting it).

FIX: Resume point for videos is now saved when quitting.

FIX: Years weren’t showing up in IMDB matches.

FIX: On updates or restarts, PlexHelper (and thus Apple Remote) could stop working.

FIX: If you had the Plex Media Server set to “Always running” it would not start on boot.

FIX: A crash starting a zoomed MKV (with software upscaling enabled).

FIX: A crash on startup with audio device changes.

Also, we’ve worked on the interaction between Plex and the Media Server, as well as the Python Framework. James just pushed the official v1.0 to the store, and he’ll be blogging about all the great changes in the final release. Note that all plug-in caches and data will be reset because of changes to the encoding, which means that you will need to re-enter login data into some plug-ins (we apologize for this).

NEW: We now support redirection from HTTP to RTMP, MMS, and WebKit streams.

NEW: Site configurations can live inside plug-ins.

NEW: We check for other Python files changing besides __init__.py inside of Contents/Code.

NEW: Seek bars are allowed to specify small/large percentages to jump.

NEW: Video items can specify bandwidth if they wish to override the automatically computed bandwidth (also useful for some FLV files where it’s not possible to extract it).

NEW: You can pass back cookies from the Media Server to Plex, which is useful for accessing authenticated content.

FIX: The Preferences item refreshes parent, useful for displaying/hiding sub-menus based on logged in status (James)

FIX: Javascript seek bars didn’t reset properly.

FIX: String keys are now allowed for album media items.

FIX: The Plex Media Server would crash if a site configuration moved to an unknown state.

FIX: Showing a message dialog at the top level of a plug-in didn’t work right.

FIX: The Media Server didn’t forward requests to the right plug-in when they shared a common prefix (James)

I know it’s been quite a while since the last release, and really, that only means one thing. You are owed, collectively, lots and lots of Barkley.

New Plex Plugins

Click here for official link or read below:

New Plug-in Releases

August 08th, 2009 | Category: Plug-ins | Author: iordonez

Holy Cow, Batman, we have such a great group of plug-in developers, it’s hard to keep up with them. Here’s a new batch to keep you entertained. The next release of Plex will be out shortly, especially since my little island is about to be ravaged by a tropical storm. Also, many thanks to Jay for providing the artwork for many of these plug-ins!

First up, and written by Gordon Johnston, Gametrailers lets you watch new video game trailers, and read reviews and previews of upcoming video games from GameTrailers.com.

Written by Jonny Wray, Howcast is the best source for fun, free, and useful how-to videos and guides.

Also written by Jonny Wray, the MPORA plug-in provides pictures and videos of Skateboarding, Surfing, Snowboarding, BMX, MTB, Motocross & Extreme Sports.

Written by Sander Spies, Bekijk live TV streams van TMF of blader door de videoclip database en bekijk clips van diverse artiesten.

Also written by Sander Spies, Gamekings bespreekt en beoordeeld wekelijks diverse videogames. Je vindt hier reviews, previews, interviews en trailers. Kortom, alles op het gebied van games!

Also written by Sander Spies, who never seems to rest, Nrc.tv biedt losse en informele televisiek. In nrc nu bespreken NRC-redacteuren, -correspondenten en -columnisten de actualiteit of een belangrijk evenement. In nrc rocks presenteert 3FM-dj Eric Corton per webcam zijn band, artiest of track van de week. In nrc kamatube registreert NRC-cartoonist en tv- en theatermaker Kamagurka elke week met zijn cameraman de absurditeit van het leven. In nrc kookt maakt kookschrijfster Janneke Vreugendhil elke week een recept voor het weekeinde.

Yet another plug-in written by Sander Spies, Radio Books is a plug-in which provides stories by Dutch and Flemish authors written and read aloud on commission to deBuren. They are new stories which have been specially written to be listened to and not to appear in print. Radio Books last between 20 and 30 minutes. The stories are read aloud by the authors in front of an audience once only. In addition, Radio Books are broadcast on the radio and distributed via the internet, where they can be listened to or downloaded free of charge. Radio Books are a nostalgic product of the present age. A new distribution technique via the World Wide Web is linked to one of our oldest traditions: storytelling.

Radioboeken kun je nergens lezen. Het zijn verhalen door Nederlandse en Vlaamse auteurs speciaal geschreven op verzoek van deBuren. Voor het eerst en voor het laatst lazen de auteurs bij deBuren hun verhaal voor.

Available languages: English, Dutch, French and Spanish

Last, but not least, Ryan McNally wrote a plug-in for the HD Trailers site, which was created for the sole purpose of allowing you to easily download HD (High Definition) movie trailers. Great for you trailer junkies out there.

Sale on refurbished Mac Mini's

Apple Offers Refurbished 2.26GHz Mac minis
Thursday, August 6, 2009 - 12:45 PM EST
Posted by: Glenn

Apple has begun offering refurbished 2009 Mac minis with Intel 2.26GHz Core 2 Duo processors in the Apple Store. This includes a model with an Intel 2.26GHz Core 2 Duo processor, 120GB hard drive, 8x SuperDrive, 1GB of RAM, and NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics for $649, and model with an Intel 2.26GHz Core 2 Duo processor, 320GB hard drive, 8x SuperDrive, 2GB of RAM, and NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics for $799. Both models are covered by Apple's one-year limited warranty and include free shipping. I don't know how long they will last folks, but now you know to keep an eye out for these configurations.

Could Apple's rumored 10" tablet device be a replacement - or the future - of the Mac Mini HTPC?

Engadget makes some interesting points. And this is not the first time I've heard talk of Apple working into the TV market. With Samsumg and LG already producing TVs with internet connections and net based widgets, its not hard to think about Apple merging the Cinema Display with the Apple TV with the rumored touch pad and everything else out there to bring a real mass media solution. After all, 5 years ago if you said Apple going to make a phone, who wouldn't have laughed....

Click here for the official link or read below:

Switched On: The iPad could succeed Apple TV

by Ross Rubin posted Aug 4th 2009 at 5:35PM

Ross Rubin (@rossrubin) contributes Switched On, a column about consumer technology.

Much of the speculation around an "iPad" -- a rumored 10" Apple tablet -- has portrayed it as an Amazon Kindle-killer or a large-screen iPod touch, but there's a strong case that such a product could effectively serve as a replacement for – or more a compelling complement to -- Apple's non-platform sleeper Apple TV.

Apple faces a dilemma in moving iPhone apps to a larger screen size or higher resolution. It must either scale them (ugly), ask developers to create a large-screen version (cumbersome), or run them in a window (which would beg some level of multitasking at least beyond what the iPhone OS does today. Not only that, but a 10" device is simply inconvenient for some of the iPhone's apps. Just try focusing on the road with a 10" navigation screen suctioned to your windshield.

The base version of Apple TV is 40 GB, just a bit over the 32 GB that has been offered on the iPod touch and iPhone. By the end of the year, a 64 GB flash product could be well within reach for a flash–based iPad. That would easily store many consumers' photo libraries and a Netflix queue's worth of movies. Rumors about the "Cocktail" music experience notwithstanding, the tablet would make an excellent platform for watching and displaying video and photos. a 10" screen would be a fine fit for 720p video and the small size would mask artifacts that could show up on the 50" television. But the iPad would be even more versatile than Apple TV.
Perhaps the most popular digital tablets that are in the market today are digital picture frames. They've sold well because they've been cheap, but even companies that have had success with them believe the key to greater utilization is in connecting them. TV is becoming a more personal experience, especially for video downloaded from the iTunes store. The iPhone delivers an okay video experience (fine for YouTube) given its screen size, but it's not something most people would ideally like to watch a movie on.

Having full-time access to the screen would allow Apple to, for example, put Dashboard-like widgets on the display when it wasn't being actively used. That's something that Apple TV's walk-on role in the home theater makes more challenging. Like Apple TV, the iPad could serve as an Apple "media center extender."

The iPad would also be a great opportunity for Apple to introduce support for desktop Flash as its larger case could accommodate a more powerful processor and larger battery. Hulu's content partners would also be less likely to rally against supporting such a device since it would not compete as directly with the large-screen cable TV experience (although, that said, HDMI or DisplayPort would be a natural port for such a device).

The iPad could also be a great fit for in-vehicle video viewing. It would take about ten minutes for one of the iPod accessory companies to announce a case that allows it to be slung over a drivers' seat as an alternative to the portable DVD player. And Apple's recent embrace of stereo Bluetooth could enable backseat listening without headphone cables.

Finally, it would help Apple test the waters of the television market without having to compete head-to-head with Sony, Samsung and Vizio. An Apple television could simply be an iPad with a tuner, inputs, and programming guide. The integrated display of the iMac has made it far more more successful than the Mac mini. There's a clear opportunity for the iPad to similarly show up the Mac mini's living room cousin.