James Cameron appeared on G4tv’s Attack of the Show to demonstrate the tech behind the 3D in Avatar, the Cameron-Pace 3D Camera Rig, which he helped pioneer.
At TED 2010, John Underkoffler, the science advisor for Steven Spielberg’s Minority Report, gave a demo of futuristic g-speak 3D user interface.
Remember the data interface from Minority Report? Well, it’s real, John Underkoffler invented it — as a point-and-touch interface called g-speak — and it’s about to change the way we interact with data. John Underkoffler led the team that came up with this interface, called the g-speak Spatial Operating Environment. His company, Oblong Industries, was founded to move g-speak into the real world. Oblong is building apps for aerospace, bioinformatics, video editing and more. But the big vision is ubiquity: g-speak on every laptop, every desktop, every microwave oven, TV, dashboard. “It has to be like this,” he says. “We all of us every day feel that. We build starting there. We want to change it all.”
Watch the 15 minute video demo.
Major Hollywood studios are in discussions with Time Warner Cable to offer movies on demand in people’s homes just 30 days after films hit the multiplex. The concept is being called “home theater on demand”, with the idea being that consumers would be offered the recently released movies in High Definition for $20 to $30. The formal pitch was made during a cable industry convention last week.
According to the Wall Street Journal:
“That proposal is still being debated and talks are fluid. People close to the matter say that several studios could sign on to a version of it as soon as the fall, making the first movies available on such a system by the end of the year or early 2011. Among the studios who have reviewed the proposal are Time Warner Inc.’s Warner Bros., Walt Disney Co.’s Disney Studios, General Electric Co.’s Universal Pictures, Sony Corp.’s Sony Pictures, Viacom Inc.’s Paramount Pictures and News Corp.’s Twentieth Century Fox. … Despite concerns over theater owners, some studios could decide to test a Time Warner Cable’s proposal with smaller movies—what one media executive called a “trial balloon.” That would give other studios a chance to gauge the level of theater owners’ opposition, along with the damage the offering would do to DVD sales. ”
Hollywood movie studios have previously promised theater owners not to release the films on home video until four months after the theatrical release. Early this year, Disney announced that they would release the DVD of Alice in Wonderland almost a whole month earlier than usual, shortening “the exclusive theatrical window” to three months. Theater owners were upset and against the move, noting that a lot of films do big business after the first month of release. The idea is if the window is shortened, consumers who see movies five or six weeks after release might decide to wait it out for the home video option instead.
So it is very doubtful that they will be happy about this new concept if any of the studios sign on. Some exhibitors might even refuse to show films that will be offered through “home theater on demand”.
Right now independent distributors like Magnolia and IFC offer films on demand the same day and date as the theatrical release. And while this type of on demand distribution allows consumers outside of the major cities to see independent films which they might not normally have access to otherwise, it still hasn’t caught on in the mainstream.
Sir James Dyson has made a mint selling the story of his dogged pursuit of the vacuum cleaner that “never loses suction.” But Dyson’s newest product doesn’t suck. It blows. Now available for $300 for the 10-inch model and $330 for the 12-inch.
NEW YORK–Broadcast network CBS will be advertising its fall TV season with a video-chip ad embedded in an issue of Entertainment Weekly.
The September 18 issue of the Time Inc.-owned magazine will feature the first video ad to appear in print, George Schweitzer, CBS marketing president, said Wednesday at a press conference at the company’s headquarters here.
The ad will be launched in partnership with PepsiCo to promote Pepsi Max soda and the TV network’s Monday prime-time lineup. Not everyone will be seeing it: the ad will appear in a magazine insert sent to subscribers in the New York and Los Angeles areas–an edition without the video chip will be sent to subscribers elsewhere and show up on newsstands.
The technology for the battery-powered ads was manufactured by a Los Angeles-based company called Americhip, and each ad can handle about 40 minutes of video.
Here are some more details about the Americhip technology: the screen, which is 2.7 millimeters thick, has a 320×240 resolution. The battery lasts for about 65 to 70 minutes, and can be recharged, believe it or not, with a mini USB cord–there’s a jack on the back of it. The screen, which uses thin film transistor liquid crystal display (TFT LCD) technology, is enforced by protective polycarbonate. It’s a product that has been in development at Americhip for about two years, spokesman Tim Clegg told CNET News via e-mail.
“It’s leadership in innovation, which we really stress at CBS in every part of our company,” Schweitzer said of the ads, which were developed with the collaboration of the Ignition Factory, a division of the Omnicom Group’s OMD media agency.
PepsiCo has been experimenting with edgy, experimental ads for some time now, distributing millions of 3D glasses for its SoBe LifeWater Super Bowl ad earlier this year. It more recently launched a new Mountain Dew flavor by inviting prominent Twitter users to a party at a trendy Brooklyn venue.
Pepsi Max is the company’s new diet soda geared toward men, advertised earlier this summer with bold print ads that declared, “Save the calories for bacon.”
“The evolution of marketing television in the fall–it used to be as simple as this,” Schweitzer said, holding up a vintage copy of TV Guide. “It was axiomatic in those days. If you took an ad in TV Guide, people watched your program. Not anymore.”
Love bots could soon be a possibility, now that Japan finally has a humanoid that they’re willing to strut around on their catwalks as a fashion model. It’s really creepy when it talks.
Girl Robot to Model in Japan – Watch more Funny Videos
According to a report in Video Business, Panasonic is looking to launch their first 3D-ready HD sets in what they hope will be an industry-wide standard, and will do so as soon as next year.
It’s probably pertinent to tell you right away that while Panasonic aren’t the only manufacturers working on a 3D standard, they are the ones in league with James Cameron. That alone has very possibly won them any upcoming format war before it even reaches the shop floor.
The closest thing to a set standard so far is in Panasonic’s pocket. They already started coding Blu-Ray discs with left and right eye fields and pledge to release Avatar on a 3D disc next year. At the moment, the Panasonic demo discs require a pimped up player that can tear through twice as much data per second than normal. Hopefully this won’t be the case with the release software as asking consumers to replace their newly minted BD decks is simply not going to fly.
Video Business have embedded a recent YouTube video in which Cameron briefly mentions collaborating with Panasonic on “high quality” 3D for the home. It seems to be software, not hardware, that wins format wars, but perversely, it’s the price of hardware that determines how far a media standard will infiltrate the marketplace.
At TED this year, author Elizabeth Gilbert (of Eat, Pray, Love fame) took the audience into strange territory in her talk about creativity, expectation and the killing of genius. Unbelievably, Gilbert managed to receive a standing ovation from the scientifically-minded TED crowd after a monologue in which she asked whether we should embrace the ancient conception of genius and creativity being external and separate to us. Basically, she suggested we return to the idea that gods and daimons possess us at times – at least as a psychological crutch. Here’s the talk in its entirety:
