Will OTT lead 4K in 2014?   

Ultra HD, predominantly 4K, might be advancing sooner than many had expected partially thanks to strong interest from OTT players like Netflix. With Netflix wanting to one of the big suppliers of 4K next year, it has been ramping up activities that would permit it to do so. The company recently posted several 4K titles, including one called "El Fuente: 24 MP." According to Netflix, the title is an example of 4K at 24 frames per second, although this has been strictly as test so far.  With 4 times the resolution of HD, the bandwidth required to transport 4K content is substantial. That means HEVC will play a key part in 4K delivery as it shrinks bit rates required for 4K to potentially under the 10 Mbps level.

During the Copenhagen "Future of TV Conference" held in September, presenters promised that consumers wouldn't need more than about a 15 Mbps over a 50Mbps connection to stream 4K video once content is available on the streaming site. He predicted that 4K video will first take hold on secondary platforms before getting onto the big screen. 

Now 4K SD memory cards  

Now, a faster UHS-Speed Class SD memory card has been developed to allow for 4K level recording.  A new Ultra High Speed (UHS) Speed Class 3 (U3) symbol will indicate which cards are capable of recording 4K/2K video and will operate exclusively on or in SDXC or SDHC UHS-I and UHS-II memory cards and accommodating field cameras, camcorders, D-SLRs and other devices. The UHS Speed Class 3 promises a 30Mbps (240Mbps) constant minimum write speed, which should allow 4K video to be recorded on DSLR or mirror-less stills cameras (like D-SLRs) and camcorders, and then played back smoothly. According to the industry body, the SD Association, consumers or pro users can be able to benefit from a single card that is capable of meeting all of their video, photo, music, document and data storage needs. SD cards are the most widely used type of memory card, with more than an 80% share of the market, thanks to their small size and large number of manufacturers supporting them, and are continually evolving to meet industry needs.  UHS-I supports data transfer speeds between the memory card and the device of up to 104Mbps, while UHS-II goes up to 312Mbps. The U1 symbol denotes a 10Mbps minimum write speed, while U3 can achieve at least 30Mbps. The SDHC and SDXC standards offer, respectively, capacities of up to 32GB and up to 2TB. 

First regional TV operations switch off in Spain, more likely to follow

 Paul Crouch Senior, founder of TBN, 79  

Global forecasting has pegged digital video at a 20% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) in ad dollars through 2018, with much of that increase coming from print and static display ads, with an increasing amount from non-print avenues.  

It is not clear whether traditional television and cable will suffer at the hands of digital, as the definitions begin to blur. Regardless of where the money comes from, reach and measurement are traditionally understood to be critical to digital video's ongoing success, but the Macquarie Securities team suggests that on-line video is getting there, and now reaching some 60% of the U.S. population according to their report.

CBS' Richard Wilhelm, 90

 A four-time winner of the Emmy Award and a "60 Minutes" and "Sunday Morning" veteran audio engineer and crew member, Richard Wilhelm, 90, died November 25th.   His work figured in successful productions for CBS over 52 years. He was later a resident of upstate Bearsville, New York. In his retirement, Wilhelm owned and ran a hardware business in nearby Woodstock, N. Y. which still exists. He also had been a Vice President of the Empire State Railway of Phoenicia, N. Y. for over a quarter century. Wilhelm was a World War II veteran who served in China, Burma and India.  

Japanese electronics giant, Toshiba, is closing its Chinese LCD TV production factory at Dalian Toshiba. "Going forward, Toshiba would optimize a balance between in-house production and production by original design manufacturer (ODM) partners, as a means to cut fixed costs and enhance operational efficiency," said a company spokesperson in a formal announcement to the Tokyo stock exchange.  Production of LCD TVs manufactured at DLTV for the Japanese market will be shifted to ODM, and Toshiba will continue to supply TVs to the Chinese market through a partnership with a local manufacturer but not with Dalian.  

Japanese public broadcaster NHK's president has confirmed he will quit in January. Masayuki Matsumoto heads up NHK's executive team, which reports to NHK's board of governors. Before coming to NHK, Matsumoto had been at the Central Japan Railway Co. where he was vice chairman, and had no previous broadcasting experience. 

Belgian broadcasters roll out a TV Everywhere service

The three main Dutch-language Belgian broadcasters rolled out Stievie, their shared TV everywhere service on December 6th. Public broadcaster VRT, and private VMMa and SBS Belgium launched the subscription service to the general public after a pilot with 10,000 users. The monthly fee is only €9.99.  Stevie allows viewers to see live streams of the broadcasters' channels as well as catch-up programs up to seven days after the original broadcast.

The channels available include Een, Canvas, Ketnet/Op12 from VRT, VTM, 2BE, Jim, Vitaya, and VTM Kzoom from VMMA and Vier and Vijf from SBS Belgium. Reception is possible on iOS and Android devices via WiFi or a 3G/4G network. 

EBU Creates Strategic Program on Digital Radio Platforms 

The European Broadcasting Union has formed the Strategic Program on Digital Radio Platforms. The group's chair, Javier Sánchez Perez announced a technical recommendation at the Digital Radio Summit in Geneva. That recommendation, called R 138, is the first EBU member first agreement about digital radio distribution, and it was recently approved by the EBU Technical Committee. 

The recommendation takes future expansion into consideration and is aligned with the EBU's Euro-Chip campaign, which advocates for devices to receive and switch between both analog and digital radio, as they wish.  This type of delivery is the only free-to-air and cost-effective method for truly mobile reception, particularly in cars. 

New York Magazine cuts back from edge

Since its founding in 1968, New York magazine has served as a prototype of literate, forward thinking publishing, on the very cutting edge of magazine journalism. And, NYM is strongly identified among weeklies as an archetype.

Leading so-called New Journalism, the magazine helped popularize the knowing, skeptical voices of writers including Tom Wolfe, Jimmy Breslin, Gloria Steinem and Nora Ephron. It was the birthplace of both Ms. Magazine (which sprung out from its pages) and the very concept of "radical chic."  

Now, this magazine that has been at the vanguard of Manhattan publishing for almost five decades is acknowledging that the cutting edge is not necessarily a sustainable position. Rather they are now on the edge of disaster, at least insofar as maintaining the same weekly schedule. 

Starting in March, New York Magazine will retreat from its long-standing status as a weekly and come out every other week instead. The change will upset magazine groupies, while some will just cheerfully 'click in.'  

New York Magazine, with a current subscriber base just above 400,000, according to the Alliance for Audited Media, got hit hard after the 2008 recession when classified ads dried up and stayed that way. So far this year, the magazine is down 9.2 percent in ad pages compared with the same period last year, which was pretty bad too. 

3D printing may stimulate wide-ranging illegal copying 

While printers are obtainable for as little as $1,300 it is the related 3D scanners that can often hold the key to getting the right quality and the precision. In addition, the right software is a critical element. In some ways, 3D printing is reminiscent of the use of MP3 files to capture and distribute music was a decade ago. Patent attorneys expect to have a field day with patent infringement lawsuits as 3D things get 'knocked off' by copy-makers. However, just as recording companies were generally unable to stop MP3 copies from being made from their original music, so too sculptural object makers may not be easily protected from 3D copying. 

Will the governments involved tend to take a tough stance towards infringing lawbreakers? It could be that the progression of technology may make stopping copy making from happening.  One advantage of 3D copying is that the original can be easily adjusted to suit the copiers wishes, such as regarding size and color. 

The Spanish film channel MIS Películas TV announced plans to enter the US Hispanic market, after a positive two months broadcasting experience through LibertyPR in Puerto Rico.

The channel has begun a new marketing campaign in Florida, aimed at catching the Hispanic audience and TV platforms' interest. It sponsored the Spanish movie festival Recent Cinema from Spain, held last weekend in Miami, where the channel was also formally presented in front of the festival audience. MIS Películas TV is a project of Spanish distribution company Video-Mercury Films, which has one of the largest portfolios of Spanish films from all genres and periods. 

Sony has shown its new handheld camcorder, the HNR-NRK, aimed at professional shooters who may not always be able to operate their image capture in person. It's the latest addition to their NXCAM line of camcorders. The uniqueness of the HNR-NRK is that it can connect with other devices such as smartphones or tablet computers with built-in WiFi technology allowing the camcorder to be controlled remotely and remain part of an Internet - wide production system.  The new camcorder features Sony's Exmor 3CMOS Sensor - based system with three 1/2.8-inch sensors providing 1920x1080 HD effective pixel count. Red, blue and green light are independently captured by separate image sensors, for high resolution, high sensitivity and wide dynamic range. A newly developed LSI includes advanced noise reduction and distortion correction technologies. What's more, the HXR-NX3 can connect with other devices to be controlled remotely or transfer footage. iOS (versions 4.3 through 7.0) and Android (versions 2.3 through 4.3) smartphones or tablet computers can be used to control the HXR-NX3 through a WiFi connection and video files can be transferred from camcorder to smartphone. 

Remote control features include monitoring of camera material on the smartphone display, record start/stop and zoom. It also features a NFC (Near-field communication) chipset which allows users to establish a WiFi connection by touching an NFC compatible smartphone or tablet computer on the camcorder.   

The company's G Lens features a wide zoom range that offers a 28.8mm angle of view at the wide end, with a 20x optical zoom range. The LSI contains 40x Clear Image Zoom technology which offers 1152mm focal length. Shipments start this month in Europe.  

Despite the rapid growth of car ownership, with over 20 million bought last year, China boasts a total of 430 million bicycles owned as of the most recent research.  Most of this it is reasoned is due to simple economics, but to some extent it also reflects convenience as parking can be difficult.

  Meanwhile, the European Union recently found that bikes slightly outnumbered cars owned among citizens. Even in sophisticated and relatively wealthy London, cars are outnumbered by bikes, where a new chic is being applied to the use of two wheels, especially in the light of congestion driving charges and confiscatory parking fees. Taken together, European states own over 220 million bikes. By contrast, Americans own slightly over 100 million bikes.

The launch of Netflix in France may challenge the status quo and threaten such operations as Canal+. With meetings between key company executives and French officials under way as of December, the government will look at copyright and use issues before approving the plan. Netflix, which Le Figaro believes is preparing to launch in France in the autumn of 2014 after making its debut in Belgium in April or May, is also looking at Germany and other EU nations as it expands.  Like many such ventures in the EU, Netflix will have to assure the French governing bodies, and those of other countries, that it intends to be a good neighbor and support the domestic TV and motion picture industry.

Orad announced in December that leading Czech public service broadcaster, Czech TV, has chosen Orad's PowerWall video wall solution and on air graphics for its sport oriented Studio 7 video wall. 

Czech TV was looking for a state-of the art solution to trigger the video walls in its Studio 7, where it produces the daily main sports news, short hourly sports news, as well other sport shows. Orad's video wall solution, which provides up to 16k resolution from a single box was chosen, amongst those scrutinized, to trigger Czech TV's 3 independent video walls. With Orad´s PowerWall solution, Czech TV can use 'canvases' to generate more than one set of outputs for different display surfaces in the studio, and feed different walls with different aspect ratio graphics.  

The walls themselves are powered by Orad's HDVG4 video rendering platform, providing 8 HD outputs in 1080i. All graphics on the video wall are triggered by 3DPlay while all full screen sports graphics and lower thirds are produced with Orad's Maestro character generator based on Orad´s HDVG platform. 

 The Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC) has elevated the A/105 "Interactive Services" system to Candidate Standard. A key element of the emerging ATSC 2.0 standard, A/105 is designed to enable the marriage of Internet-delivered and broadcast content. "Candidate Standard" status is a major step toward becoming a "Proposed Standard," and then on to consideration as a full-fledged ATSC Standard.  "Viewers are consuming television content on a variety of devices -- whenever, wherever and however they want it," said ATSC President Mark Richer.  

"Consumer demand for video has resulted in an increasing number of paths to deliver content to viewers. The ATSC 2.0 Interactive Services system allows the broadcaster to connect broadcast programming with additional services related to that programming," he added.

Multi-channel broadcasters in the UK include Bloomberg TV, BSkyB, the Chinese Channel, Discovery Networks, Fox International Channels, NBC-Universal, QVC, Sony Pictures Television, Turner Broadcasting System, Viacom International Media Networks and the Walt Disney Company.

In an attempt to show just how valuable the multichannel sector is in the overall TV sector, UK broadcast regulator Ofcom calculates that revenue generated by multichannel broadcasters grew by 8% to more than £5 billion in 2012, with nearly half of this figure coming outside of sports and films genres. 

German broadcastersARD launched several new HD channels on Astra in December. DTH satellite households will then be able to receive the regional channels MDR Fernsehen, RBB Fernsehen and HR Fernsehen, including their local windows, in high resolution.

ARD's digital channels EinsPlus, Einsfestival and tagesschau24 will launch their HD simulcasts at the same time. The HD versions of MDR, RBB and HR will use transponder 61 (10.891 GHz H, SR 22,000, FEC 2/3) while EinsPlus HD, Einsfestival HD and tagesschau24 HD will occupy transponder 39 (11.053 GHz H, SR 22,000, FEC 2/3).

Korean post and broadcast house, CJ Powercast, has purchased a Quantel Pablo Rio high quality color and finishing system to support its move into 4K/UHD production for broadcast and multi-media applications. Equipped with the Neo color panel, the system is being supplied via Quantel's Korean partner, QAC Korea.  CJ Powercast, a division of the multi-national CJ Group, was founded in 2003 to provide production, post production and content delivery services to CJ Group's rapidly expanding broadcast stations portfolio. The Pablo Rio will operate alongside CJ Powercast's existing Quantel Pablo and PA systems, allowing the creative team to share projects across systems.

Quantel Sales Director, Martin Mulligan, said, "Naturally we're delighted that CJ Powercast has again invested in its future with Quantel. Pablo Rio is the perfect fit for their continued drive to be the best and to stay ahead of developments in our industry." 

Bharti Airtel has discarded plans to sell a quarter of its stake in its direct-to-home (DTH) satellite TV division Airtel Digital TV, according to the Times of India, reported in December.

Talks with prospective buyers, including USA-based investment company Saban Capital (headquartered in Los Angeles), private equity firm Carlyle, and Liberty Media, all failed to reach the desired valuation of around US$1.5 billion, the Indian newspaper reports. The DTH sale by India's largest telecommunications company was intended to help reduce $9.5 billion of debt that had been accumulated by Bharti's acquisition of African operations formerly run by Zain, and its spending during 3G mobile spectrum bidding battle in India.

Star India is investing US$3.2 billion which equals INR200 billion, over the next three to five years to develop sports coverage in the country and take equity stakes in new football initiative the Indian Super League, the Hockey India League and the India Badminton League. But cricket is Star India's main cup of tea.  

A new branding campaign will also be utilized across their six Star Sports television channels and its online portal starsports.com staring this winter. Star Sports will be renamed Star Sports 1, Star Sports 2 remains Star Spots 2, while Star Cricket will become Star Sports 3, ESPN will be rebranded Star Sports 4, Star Cricket HD will be called Star Sports HD1 and ESPN HD will be rebranded Star Sports HD2. Star Sports 1 comprises around 65% cricket broadcasts in English, concentrating on India's international cricket matches. Now, that's cricket!

The BBC launched five additional HD channels on in December in the UK. BBC Three HD, BBC Four HD, BBC News HD, CBeebies HD and CBBC HD will be available on Freeview HD, Freesat HD, YouView, Sky HD and Virgin Media. All five new HD channels will broadcast the same programs as their standard definition equivalents in HD.  The launch brings the total number of BBC HD channels to seven. All are broadcast over the air.  For the first time the BBC will use the HD switching on the Sky platform that means BBC Three and BBC Four will be on 115 and 116 respectively in SD or HD versions. The BBC will also benefit from improved channel numbers for BBC Alba, BBC Two and BBC Parliament.  

According to the National Association of Broadcasters CEO, Gordon Smith, the USA' local TV stations support over a million and half jobs. That comment was reported by ABC News' Rebecca Jarvis, who hosted NAB's 'TV on Wall Street' event recently. The NAB Show is scheduled for April 5th

through the 10th with the exhibit days set for the 7th through the 10th in Las Vegas.

Among the NAB's biggest current technology concerns is retention of ENG sprectrum that permits reportage of late-breaking news. Wireless companies have been pressing the FCC to allow them to grab the top two channels of the Boradcast Auxillary Service sprectrum bandwidth. But, NAB has expressed concerns that lack of that band could endanger the press' ability to make live breaking news reports. At the same time, sharing of that band is also of interest to the U. S. Department of Defence, further stressing the subject.  

Film and broadcast professionals will be seeing a lot of the new Thales Angénieux's powerful lens at their dealers, worldwide soon. Optimized for today's large format digital cameras, the new Optimo DP Series 25-250mm 10x zoom lens offers the perfect combination of zoom ratio, aperture and price that is ideal for features, TV series, documentaries and commercials.

"The legendary ratio of 25-250mm is being reborn in this brand new, modern day zoom design - joining the Optimo DP line-up and carrying on the tradition of outstanding quality and performance all Optimo zooms are famed for," said Eva Paryzka, Director of Sales, Thales Angenieux.