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New TV broadcasting standard will unlock Ultra HD TV broadcasts from BBC and Sky.
Source: www.techradar.com
Although this news specifically pertains to UK and European broadcasters, the key element in the story is the standardization of the HEVC compression codec for over-the-air transmission, the same codec currently being used by Netflix for their 4K Ultra HD internet streams.
HEVC (H.265) is a next-step up from MPEG-4/H.264 compression, but comes with a (licensing) cost: encoders and decoders will have a royalty fee imposed on them. Content producers don’t have to worry about those fees, but box and software producers/vendors do, which most certainly will be incorporated into costs to the consumer.
There is an open-source alternative, VP9, from Google. Open-source/free sounds good, but reports are that the quality of the compression results aren’t as good as HEVC (see a good report on these codecs along with comparisions at http://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/Editorial/Featured-Articles/The-Codecs-That-Make-UHD-Video-Possible-HEVC-Vs.-VP9-96926.aspx).
There are other codecs appearing, but it looks like we’re in for another VHS vs. Betamax battle over standards. Betamax famously lost in the consumer market, finding its home in studios long after home units disappeared. But the dividing line isn’t so clear this time, particularly with Internet streaming of both commercial content and billions of hours of Google-owned YouTube content, some of which is already being offered in 4K.
So keep downloading Flash or Quicktime or something else to play your AVI files, and start making 4K content.
Europe, show us the way to get that beautiful UHD video onto our big screens.
Oculus has suspended sales of its Rift virtual reality headset in China because people are reselling it.
Oculus recently began shipping the latest version…
Source: www.eurogamer.net
From a Kickstarter campaign to a Facebook purchase, the Oculus Rift story is probably the biggest news in Augmented Reality since… well, ever!
But the device is still only available “for development”, as that’s the agreement you’ll have to sign when you purchase units from their site.
Never mind that, apparently the number of “developers” in China is so overwhelming, Oculus has decided to suspend selling units to China for now, as they fear the massive resale of these very same development units and the profits generated (not to the Oculus people, of course).
A consumer unit is in the works for later in the year, but in the meantime, sales are for developers only in (undeclared) moderate quantities, please. But not to China.
Dean Meyers’s insight: Are you ready to post 60FPS video on YouTube? more music to choose from in your editing? new features for YouTube look like it’s meant for videomakers to get new things unheard of in broadcast.There’s more attention to mobile platforms and community as well, engaging co-cre…
Here is information on Adobe Video Apps and it’s plug-ins. We’ll update this list as we have new information, so bookmark this page!
